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Monthly Archives: March 2009
More Jonathan Carroll Quotes
Just remember this, sister. The world doesn’t need anything from you, but you need to give the world something. That’s why you’re alive. Kill yourself now, and you’re proving the majority right—you’re no different from the billion other skulls under the ground. Give it something, no matter how short- or long-lasting, and you’ve won.
Time talks behind our back. To our face it’s friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we’re not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it’s stolen.
Jackson Lewis and the Republicans are Lying
If you have any doubt that Corporations can’t be trusted, look at how they are fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act: pouring millions and millions of money into a campaign of disinformation and outright lies. The fact is that:
the Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate any method by which workers can elect to join a union. The two current forms — majority sign-up and scheduled NLRB election — will continue to exist. The Employee Free Choice Act simply gives workers, rather than employers, the choice which to use. (From Daily Kos: “Secret Ballot”? Or Opportunity for Intimidation?)
Of course, Jackson Lewis, the company that is all about strategies for preventing unionization (because that’s worked out so darn well for us here in America hasn’t it), has a big banner add on their site saying that the EFCA would prevent secret ballots, when the EFCA would not prevent secret ballots damn it and would, instead, let the employees make their own choice as to how they go about voting on unionization.
Labor law in this country has been gutted over the last several decades and look at where it’s gotten us as a nation. We need stronger unions not weaker ones if we want to become a country that is built around the notion of fair pay for honest work instead of a country enamored with the quick fix and the easy buck. Our companies need to pay living wages and take care of their employees if we want to create a better life for the next generation. The EFCA won’t fix everything that is wrong with labor, but it will offer employee’s more opportunity to organize and choose for themselves.
If you would like to contact Jackson Lewis and ask why they are lying to people about the EFCA, you can email them at efcainfo@jacksonlewis.com or call them at 1.866.300.5805
Saturday Morning Random Thoughts on Theatre
If given the choice between seeing good theatre and a failed attempt at great theatre, always pick the latter.
Theatre does not “hold a mirror” up to life. Bad theatre lies about what it means to be human, good theatre reveals something true about being human, something we don’t pay attention to in everyday life, and great theatre offers us the gift of ourselves.
I am more and more convinced that training theatre artists to be accomplished story-tellers—rather than discreet cogs in a theatrical production institution—is vital to the health of theatre (and theatre-artists.)
Believe you are brilliant in the face of the world, but accept you know nothing in the face of each new project.
Don’t trust your friends to be honest about your artistry. Don’t trust the audience to be honest about your ability to tell the truth. Only trust yourself when you know you failed to achieve perfection.
Listen. Watch. Reflect.
Don’t reward theatre that is intrinsically dishonest by making excuses for it. Recognize the lie and learn from it.
Just because you like a show, doesn’t mean it is good. Just because a show is good doesn’t mean you will like it. Sometimes we prefer comforting dishonesty to the truth and to pretend otherwise is to perpetrate a lie.
The Devious Astrolabe, Part 2
Our story continues . . .
Jorgee was utterly lost. This section of the city seemed deserted, full of hulking industrial buildings interspered with a few sullen one-story pre-fab rent boxes.The dome of the city was a hazy web of light. Enough so he could see clearly, but making everything look black and white. His limbs were sore as his intoxication oozed out from his elimination glands and his head was beginning to throb in pain. He tried to bring up a map on his iPod, but this section of the city was under a data blackout for repairs. Probably, he thought, had been under a blackout for years by the looks of this place.
Occasionally he’d hear a sound behind him: a soft scuffling sound, but when he turned he saw only shadows and rotting plastimetal. Fingering the new pins on his uniform, Jorgee realized that he might very well be in trouble. His father’s voice snickered in his head: “Not a very auspicious start there, Grenthy boy.” Jorgee’s father had never called him by his preferred name, always by the nickname he’d been stuck with as a boy. In his language, a grenthy was a slow moving lobster-like creature that had a propensity for walking into any traps set for it, curling up and going to sleep.
“No, Father,” he though, “It’s not. Now go back to sleep.”
The Devious Astrolabe, Part 1
Dedicated to Joya, the namer of this tale
Jorgeegrenthalu d’adr’tt Krendatel-5 (Jorgee to his friends) stood tall and tentacled, a terrifically handsome specimen of his race with large headbumps, peircing black eyes, and a sharp beak. Normally he was quiet and reserved, his movements always formal and highly controlled. Tonight, however, he had lapsed into movement patterns that were casual, bordering on intimate. His voice was slurred, and his normally smooth skin was covered in the orange bumps of serious inebriation. He’d spent the night celebrating his promotion to Navigation Lieutenant 4th Class on the good ship Speckle’s Pimple with crewmates, but had lost them somewhere along the way and he found himself in a part of town he’d never visited. The copious quantities of fermented methane had lent a romantic, rough-and-tumble charm to his current surroundings and he found himself buying the patrons of the Sailor’s Last Stop Saloon, a round of drinks without noticing just how closely those patrons were eyeing his wallet, 310 Gen iPod, and even the trail of gemstones that tattooed one of Jorgee’s tentacles in the pattern of his family dynasty.
New Writing Game to Keep Me Sane
My day job is soul-crushingly boring these days, and uses up about 2 hours of my 8 hour time there as well as using only about .005 percent of my brain power.
In this economy and in these times I need to be thankful for work even as I try to figure out a way to get better employment for myself between now and fall of 2010 – at which I point I hope to get into a Theatre Ph.D. program. However, I need to find a way to not go absolutely bugfuck crazy while at my current job. So I have a new game to play.
Simply give me a title for a story and I’ll write either a short story or, more likely, a piece of flash fiction (under 1000 words). I will then post the story on Living the Liminal and dedicate it to the person who suggested the title. The majority of these stories will be either science fiction, fantasy, or horror because those are the story forms I most often read and write, although I may branch out to other genres if the inspiration strikes.
I have two titles already suggested from people on Facebook: “The Devious Astrolabe” (Joya) and “staring into a person’s neck hole can be a form of intimacy” (Kris). I’m currently writing “The Devious Astrolabe” and it’s turning out to be a longer story than I expected so I’ll be serializing that one here for the next couple of days.
A note about quality. I’m not aiming for it. Or, rather, I’m not going to be taking time to do rewrites on these stories before I upload them here. Some will probably be worthy of further development, but what you are going to be reading in this series will be very raw and definitely first draft material. Still, I hope they will provide you some amusement and enjoyment. Feel free to leave comments about what you do or don’t like.
So, that’s the game. I look forward to your titles and hope this will be fun for all.
Free Range Trolls
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion. (Wikipedia Link)
As anyone who has spent any time in a forum or comments board can tell you, any and all kinds of engagement with a troll can only lead to frustration and negativity. A troll’s entire reason for being is to make you mad, to get you riled up and, by extension, to get attention. Lots and lots of attention.
That last seems to be the root that feeds the gnarled and sickly branches that pass for a troll’s intellect. Even dismissing them casually feeds into the particular emotional ecosystem that is at play in these sad, stunted lives.
A troll doesn’t want to engage in a dialogue.
A troll doesn’t want to deal in facts.
A troll simply wants to get attention with inflammatory rhetoric.
A troll will not listen to reason or come to any kind of epiphany. You could argue yourself to death and the troll will merely bask in the glow of your anger and frustration, warming its hands with a gleeful cackle on your emotional turmoil. A troll gains a sense of power over the world when it causes other people to lose their tempers. Because the troll doesn’t have the emotional maturity to live in the world as a reasoning adult, because the troll cannot gain power over its own fears and desires, the troll feels utterly powerless in the face of a complex world. To compensate for this, the troll steals power from you by inciting anger and by making itself the center of attention in whatever room–be it analog or digital–the troll happens to be in.
Trolls do not just happen on the internet.
In fact, there’s one specific troll that has been in the news a lot lately and is getting lots and lots of attention from progressives and liberals. On the one hand, I understand the tactics of using this troll and making him the SpokesTrollTM for the GOP. On the other hand, I am suspicious of any attempts to feed the trolls and this particular troll is gorging on the attention it has received over the past few weeks.
Of course, the situation is made worse by the fact that the mainstream media LOVES trolls. The uglier and louder and more inflammatory the better, so in a sense, even if the progressive and liberal communities wanted to do the right thing and starve this troll by withholding attention, it would survive by open grazing on our national media which would spread itself out like an open and verdant field just waiting to be turned to cud.
Trolls can also survive for long periods of time by chewing their own cud, however they can’t survive indefinitely without feeding on other people’s anger.
So what to do about these free range trolls? I think the best thing is to ignore them completely. Let them starve to death. However, since that isn’t always practical on the national stage, if you do feed the trolls, make sure to feed them poison pellets. You probably won’t kill them, but may get lucky enough to give them a case of serious indigestion that will slow them down and, for a moment or two, shut them up.
Just remember, however, that anger is what feeds them. Don’t ever let a troll steal your power by making you feel anything more than amused pity at these ugly, stunted, terrified, and small-minded creatures.
Not Attending Brown University This Fall
On Friday, I was notified that Brown University did not accept my application to the Ph.D. program in Theatre and Performance Studies. By email. At a temp job that is boring and using about .0005 percent of my brain. Needless to say, this weekend has been a difficult one as I’ve gone through various waves of sadness, dissapointment, anger, self-doubt, hope that I can turn this rejection into a positive, frustration, rueful awareness of the irony in the situation, and one or two moments of existential angst.
At least the weather was nice.
I had planned to write a long, detailed account of how I feel and what my plans are now and how I’m going to turn this rejection into opportunity. But I’m tired and the draft that I have been working on for the last 40 minutes is uninteresting and scattered, so I’m simply going to leave you with a quote from the latest book I’ve read by Jonathan Carroll:
Everything you want in life has teeth.
Ain’t that the truth.
The Liminal Shop Has Fun T-Shirts Just For You
So I have a shop over at CafePress.com and have designed two t-shirts that I think are darn fun. Of course I’d love you to buy them so I can get a couple buck of extra cash, but more importantly, I’d love to know what you think of them as designs.
The first references a post I wrote a while ago:
The second was a silly Tweet I made up and subsequently fell in love with:
They come in a variety of colors and styles and if you like the design but there is a style of shirt on CafePress that you would like it on, drop me a comment and I’ll be glad to add it to my store.