| Quotables |
"Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. ... I felt
very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
doesn't work, just recover in a hurry and try something else. ... Help develop a culture that is willing to fail its way to the future."
-- Price Pritchett, Culture Shift |
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"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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| kirksville bound |
| Saturday, July 25, 2009 |
For quite some time now, I've known that I wanted to take a weekend and get back up to Kirksville, and it would almost certainly have to be over the summer sometime; not that Fall is out of the question or anything, it's just that this summer holds some pretty significant importance in the overflowing nostalgia bucket that my head has become.
Some of you may remember that I stayed in Kirksville over the summer of 1999 to knock out some classes so I could graduate in December. Well, it turned out to be one of those summers you never forget. I met my excellent friend Rachael, I fell in with the theatre crowd, got cast in a mainstage play (the last one of my college career, although there would still be some one-acts), had a fling with one of the more high-profile girls in the department, I even wound up dating our assistant stage manager for most of the production... and that's only scratching the surface. Periodically, when I think back to that summer, I absolutely kick myself for not keeping a better journal and taking more pictures, because that's the kind of time in your life about which you want to remember every. detail. you possibly. can.
It's hard to explain why. It was really the way the place felt over the summer. Let me tell you, from a student's perspective, Kirksville over the summer doesn't look anything like it does when classes are in session at the University. The campus is bare and very quiet; all you can hear is the hum from the buildings (yes, the buildings hum). You have everything to yourself, you never have to fight for a parking space or a computer or a seat in the dining hall. It was hotter than all hell, but I got a bullshit doctor's note that authorized me to put an a/c window unit in my room, so when I wasn't out getting cast in plays or dating theatre girls, I was lounging in 70-degree air conditioning while temps outside climbed to somewhere in the vicinity of 200 degrees F.
This summer, then, would be the ten-year anniversary of all that nonsense I enjoyed so much as a mere 23-year-old college student, all the rehearsals, parties, gatherings, and get-togethers that made that summer what it was. And so I thought, what more fitting way to observe that than to take a weekend and head up to Kirksville? I'll catch the summer play, run wild all over my old stomping grounds, and take a ton of photos while I'm at it. It'll be a trip down memory lane, to say the least, and since I haven't been there since Rachael graduated in 2002, it'll give me a chance to see what all has changed since I've been gone.
A decade, my friends. Ten years have passed since one of the most pivotal times in my life... how is that possible?
My awesome friend Jen, who I met in my very last writing class at Truman, lives in Kirksville with her husband and chickabiddees, and I thought I would stop in on them as well. Unfortunately, that's the weekend of their yearly trip to Minnesota, so I'm going to miss them this time around. I hate that, but it can't be helped, of course.
The best news, though, is that I understand the hotel I'm staying at has high-speed internet access. So I'll be taking the Netbook and all the necessary accessories so I can blog and post photos before I get home. I'll be Facebooking, too. So keep an eye out for all the dish, because it's coming your way before I even get back.
I haven't been to Kirksville in nearly seven years, and after next weekend, it could be a very, very, very long time. There's just no telling. So I'm going to make this one count.
One last thing -- let me address this before one of you does. I know there are those of you who are still hoping for a visit from me... those of you in Denver, Houston, Pearland, et al, who may be wondering why I haven't come to see you but am going to Kirksville on a weekend in which I know my one remaining friend won't be there. The answer is all a matter of expense; I can afford one but not the other. My hotel bill for the entire weekend in Kirksville wouldn't pay for the gas it would take to just get to your house, let alone get home again. And I wanted you all to understand that that is the only reason.
They say that as long as you're an alumnus, which you are for life, there will always be something for you in Kirksville. I'm kind of hanging my hat on that at the moment, because the thought of not having a second home up there makes me really, really sad. Right now, though, I'm just looking forward to getting back and enjoying some old memories. I do love that place.
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posted by N.T. @ 9:04 PM  |
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| partners in wireless |
| Saturday, July 18, 2009 |
I'm sitting here at the kitchen table typing on the new Netbook with my gorgeous girlfriend in the adjacent seat, typing away on her laptop, which now shares my DSL connection thanks to the also-new Cisco router sitting on my desk in the next room.
Life is awfully good right about now.
I just reached over, squeezed her arm, and said, "I'm so glad you're on my wireless network."
Romantics, I tell you. :)
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| posted by N.T. @ 1:53 PM |
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| ex marks the spot |
| Tuesday, July 7, 2009 |
OK, I have a question to ask: what the fuck is up with exes e-mailing me months down the road wanting a reconciliation?
This happens periodically. One in particular would e-mail and/or message me on Myspace every five/six months or so and ask if I was still mad, why I wasn't speaking to her, etc. I think I broke her of that; our last exchange ended with a threat to kill newborn animals if I ever heard from her again, so hopefully she's fucked off for good.
This one was more of a surprise. Back in November, she e-mailed me, ok, saying we couldn't see each other anymore because she "just can't do it." I never got any more information out of her than that.
Until recently. This e-mail rolled in, and well... she never was much of an English person:
"Hi here how are you doing? I would like to say sorry for what I have done to you. I would still like you to be friends with me but if you feel like that you can't then I understand. I feel so bad for what I have done to you. I hope that one day you can forgive me and we can be friend and talk once again. I really miss talking to you. This is all my fault and I am very sorry. So will you forgive me and call me sometime?
Well I said it would be just a little note so I will talk to you later."
It seems innocuous enough, and I'm sure you could read any number of things into it, but here's my rough translation:
I didn't have any real, discernible reason for breaking it off, I was really just being an impulsive kid, which is how I got into my situation to begin with. But I didn't expect to still be single eight months down the road, so I'm going back to the well because I figure there's no way you've found anyone either, and well, something is better than nothing, right?
I used to think so. When I was nineteen.
Needless to say, I won't be replying to this. I got a voice mail from her about a month before this e-mail, and I didn't return that either. The truth is that I have been seeing someone since late November, thanks for asking, and I'll be damned if she doesn't show me a bit of respect every now and again (read: all the time). So thanks for playing... with yourself, which is apparently what you're doing nowadays, or you wouldn't be writing to an ex you so unceremoniously blew off via e-mail.
Sorry... I don't have a lot of patience for this kind of thing.
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| posted by N.T. @ 1:36 AM |
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| a word from our 10,000 sponsors |
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Tonight (I guess it was technically last night), my folks and I went up to a ball game at the stadium and got shut down 4-1. But that's not what I'm here to complain about.
As a side note... does it trouble anyone else that I have come home from every single ball game this year with a complaint? It's almost as though going to a game is a chore anymore, which is a bad sign.
This isn't a new complaint, though, and it's not limited to the ballpark by any stretch, it's all around us: everything... and let me emphasize this properly...
EVERYTHING...
... has a goddamn logo on it. A fucking sponsor. Some dumb ass company splashing their name across it so that you'll see it and want to buy something. You can't wipe your ass anymore without taking a trip to the Coca-Cola Restroom Facilities. It makes me ill, to be perfectly honest.
At our ballpark, they have bits of entertainment on the scoreboard in between innings that are fun to watch, but they're included in the advertising madness. There's the Heinz Hot Dog Derby, the Schweigert Hot Dog Launch, the John Deere Lawn Mower Race, the Midwest Airlines Suitcase Shuffle, and much, much more.
The kid-size baseball diamond called The Little K? It's now the John Deere Little K. We've also got the Pepsi Party Porch, the Miller Lite Party Deck, as well as the MLB2K9 Game Lounge, and entire sections of seating called the Dri-Duck Fountain Seats and the Hy-Vee View Level.
Entire stadiums and arenas have fallen victim to this, and some of them have shed some pretty historic names in the process: in 2003, Comisky Park was re-named U.S. Cellular Field after those asswipes purchased the naming rights for $68 million. Seattle has Safeco Field; Tampa has Tropicana Field; Detroit has Comerica Park; Cleveland has Progressive Field; and that's just American League Teams.
Never mind the National League stadiums, which include Citizens Bank Park, AT&T Park, Petco Park, PNC Park, and Minute Maid Park.
Altogether, a whopping eighteen of the thirty Major League Baseball stadiums have sold out their names to a fucking sponsor.
Can't we just have a party deck? Why can't we just have fountain seats? Two years ago at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, the grass beyond the center field wall was just that -- outfield grass. And that was nice... until John Deere paid to mow their fucking logo into the grass for a hefty sponsorship fee.
We can't even have grass without somebody slapping a goddamn logo on it.
Many cities and towns across the country have considered selling ad space on police cars to raise revenue. And then there was that wretched idea to put satellite billboards in space that would be visible in the night sky from the ground. When you think about the lengths to which these marketing weasels are willing to go to make their next buck, a company logo cut into the stadium grass shouldn't surprise me... but somehow it still does.
Needless to say, I'm going to buy what I'm going to buy -- half the time it's generic store brands anyway -- and no amount of hitting me over the head with company logos is going to make any difference.
I'm off to my Mattress Firm bed now; I'll shut down my Dell computer, brush my Arm & Hammer Baking Soda teeth, and get myself a good night's sleep, sponsored by Unisom.
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| posted by N.T. @ 12:40 AM |
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