"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day," she said gravely.
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| Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | | 1:53 am |
Schedule
Taking: Macroeconomics Senior Seminar in Neuroengineering Computational Neuroscience Intro to Somatic Studies Auditing: History of Western Art Extracurriculars: Aerial Rope Tumbling Storytelling SPARK | | Monday, December 29th, 2008 | | 12:46 am |
I just attended two circuses in the last two days. One, Cirque Dreams, just toured on Broadway. The other hired me on to stiltwalk for them before the show from tomorrow until New Year's Eve. I didn't bring my stilts or my costume back with me but I'll decide tomorrow whether to use a pair of borrowed drywall stilts or just finish a pair I'd intended for a friend a while back and adjust the height a bit. The pants I'll make tomorrow morning from fabric intended for aerial silks instruction which "the kids didn't like" so it's apparently mine. And, if I play my cards right, there's a cape with my name on it in the costume shop. This is how life should be. | | Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | | 3:56 pm |
Good Stock
My father just qualified for the Boston Marathon for the first time. He decided that his goal was to be able to run it for his 50th birthday after years of setbacks and decades as a runner. Apparently, he fell flat on his face twenty feet from the finish line after 26.2 miles of running, having simply given all he had. It wasnt an injury or a misstep, just complete depletion of everything his body had to give. He stumbled across the finish line with exactly 52 seconds to spare. Through gusts of wind up to 30 miles an hour, he managed to complete the race at 3:35:07 (8:12 pace) and can say with the utmost confidence that he left it all out on the track. I couldnt be more proud of you, Dad. | | Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | | 5:35 pm |
Friday's TGIF was great. It was filled with circus, and I spent hours both teaching stilting and learning acrobalance, something I'd been meaning to for years. It was also filled with distractions and, as a result, I left my backpack in Wilder Bowl. Today, it has been returned to me. Most of it at least. My notes, handouts, books, forms and pinkie ball remain along with my nalgene, labcoat, sweats, and ropedart. Ironically, they didn't take any of my prescriptions (not that they're abusable) but did steal my advil and maalox. While leaving my pepcid behind, which, like razor blades these days, is kept locked under glass when it's sold. Of all the amusing things to find missing, they stole my pens and highlighters specifically leaving my nail clippers behind. I'm still out a laptop, mp3 player, 8gb SD memory card, business calculator, and headphones but at least most of my stuff is back. If I could get the laptop back, I'd be completely content, but as it stands I'm glad to have what I do back. | | Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | | 11:54 am |
To clarify, SPARK is the hip hop dance collective on campus. Just in case any of you needed a daily dose of amusement with that image. As for my progress: reasonably paced and I'm rather devoted to it so I have high expectations. I can do a beginning headstand, I'm working on a pike stall, have a small repertoire of top rock, and am learning the six step. That's just the first two sessions. Thanks for the wealth of responses to the last post. To clarify, I'm doing pretty well, not ready to crack or the like, but I did find it to be a matter of curiosity. I'll reply individually soon. | | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 4:26 pm |
Realization
I'm considering becoming just a bit more prolific on lj these days, not that that would require more than posting every quarter or so. Mostly I just have time to jot a few key reminder notes down and lock em in a private entry until I can find a chance to make them into a coherent post. Which, evidently, doesnt tend to happen. For what it's worth, I offer my schedule below Chinese Thought and Religion European Political Theory: After Marx Cell and Molecular Biology Body Re Education Principles of Managerial and Financial Accounting Introduction to Entrepreneurship Neuropharmacology Lab along with SPARK, and the Circus skillshare exco. Finding time will, as always, be a challenge but I'm hoping I'm up to it this time. While a lot of this will be time consuming, no one task is particularly difficult, unlike all the semesters of upper level neuro courses or the experiment in two sequential econ courses at the same time. Small revelation from last night: I don't really have things to comfort me. No particular activity (eg. dancing, writing), object, book, movie, or other guilty pleasures. I've got spicy food sometimes, massage (self or otherwise) and not much else for when I've had a particularly rough day. It's always worked reasonably well to do things this way (though in the last few years, I've relied fairly heavily on a person or two for the same purpose) but I can't help but wonder if it makes for a slower release of tension. Gotta relax somehow. I am rather curious, what would you all curl up with / do after a bad day? What can be classified not just as something you like, but a source of comfort? | | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 6:22 pm |
Steel Stilts
Over the course of last year, I'd started to forget that I was a stilter. Now that I've remembered again, I feel much more complete. To that effect, let me unveil the steel stilts that I'll hopefully use in the steampunk cabaret next semester. These definitely still need work -- I don't have treads on them yet, they wiggle a bit, I need to get used to the extra six inches, and the strapping mechanism for the knee should be modified -- but it's a proof of concept. And oh god the sound. Learned a lot working on these with my father and the steelworker down the street. Next time I'll try aluminum, I think. These are surprisingly not that heavy, though -- certainly a lot lighter than Eric's four footers. I'm really excited. I'll upload some close up pics later. EDIT: Now on facebook. See comments for link. | | Saturday, May 31st, 2008 | | 4:06 am |
Commencement week was interesting. In 10 days, I managed to: stop an attempted robbery on my house sprain my dominant index finger and spend a day in the ER to see if it was broken write a 20 page paper say goodbye to many of my friends and miss a few others teach eight people how to stilt try four foot stilts find out that a part of my extended family is in shambles create new friendships with alums and old Dallas acquaintances begin to trust more openly channel Tesla and Todd at the same time, more successfully than ever before and follow my 2+ year relationship with Aries into a hiatus I don't know which of these I'll end up expanding on in greater detail but it certainly feels like it's been quite the whirlwind. Now that I'm in Dallas, all I have to do is plan out the rest of my academic and career goals for the foreseeable future, finish the publication from my labwork that's still not submitted apparently, and stay sane in a city with no circus community. I'll be building collapsible stilts and creating at least one new costume so I can travel to places that do. I'll sleep when I'm dead apparently. I wish I could relax, but this is neither the time nor (more significantly) the place. | | Friday, April 11th, 2008 | | 6:37 pm |
A part of me thinks that what I've been doing at Oberlin lately is just hedging my bets so that if I do decide to run off and join the circus, I'll know how. And have a resume. ...and have attended workshops on finding insurance and booking and touring... When you can quickly understand the paperwork involved in running off with a circus, perhaps it's time to take a break. The real question is what constitutes a break at that point. | | Monday, March 17th, 2008 | | 10:48 pm |
Virgin Burns on Saturday: Catherine - ball Me - rope dart Becca - this rope dart Ray / Amanda - ever (using ball) Daniel Chenoweth - ever (using poi) Christopher - ever (using staff) Awesome. And I have a lot of video of the whole thing. | | Friday, February 1st, 2008 | | 2:57 pm |
| | Sunday, January 6th, 2008 | | 4:15 am |
Can anybody make sense of The Origin of Emotions? I think there's a social experiment going on, looking to see how people respond to something as poorly constructed as it is. It's fascinating that it's available both through amazon and for free in a "non printable pdf" on the same website. Perhaps it's a piece of overly subtle satire? Also interesting is the reviewers' response to it. Fascinating that it's not all negative. I found it initially via a paid link in facebook. Which suggests he's sinking money into sending you to the free download section of his website. Again, something doesnt add up. This certainly won't keep me up at night, though. | | Sunday, November 18th, 2007 | | 2:34 am |
Compared to Aragorn and Jayne in one night. Funny that. | | Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 | | 2:19 pm |
Victory is mine, victory is mine. Great day in the morning, victory is mine. Today I drink from the Keg of Glory. Bring me the finest bagels and muffins in all the land. The OCircus budget, crafted by Catherine and I from the ground up, has been approved in total. That means over four thousand dollars are available to us for costuming, props, tech, and fire safety. We will have certification for a handful of people to legally perform with fire in the state of Ohio. We will have the finest fire blankets and a host of other safety equipment. We will be able to create real costumes for performers. We will not have to worry about going without lights. And we can buy our own diabolos and an entire aerial arts rig for training and performance. And this all occurred in the budget appeals process where money is substantially more tightly regulated for the normal budget submissions. Last year's big show ran on one tenth of this budget. Now we can start to build an infrastructure, expand our teaching, expand our performances, and mature. This is the beginning. I got a fortune cookie today that reads "A lifestyle is what you pay for; a life is what pays out." I finally have a life again. Speaking of, playing mini hitler, averbally delivering a speech in a military jacket with Mooch translating for me was a blast. It's so much fun working with such a talented cast. It's a good week. | | Saturday, November 10th, 2007 | | 12:21 pm |
I have no idea why I enjoy it so much, but I feel rather at peace sitting at my computer with the sounds of a football game, the cheers and blaring hip hop, 100 feet from my door. Maybe it's just where it's not purely the game but where I am in the "Stream of Time." Lets see, yesterday my group managed to pull off a really strong presentation on addiction to the neuropharm class. We had a great range of styles. Lauren and Laura were on the first article, with Laura calmly handling most of the technical detail and Lauren doing intro and wrapping it up with occasional comic relief references to Lindsay Lohan. We started the second paper with Anne Cherry, the most talented student lecturer I have ever known. She can make even the staunchest powerpoint antagonist into a supporter, seamlessly interacting with the presentation like it was an extension of her body. It was really beautiful. Apparently I managed a calm sort of hyperactivity, which came out as a clear explanation of the material without taking it, myself, or the presentation too seriously. Practically, this means that I let myself appreciate the shiny when I rediscovered the laser on the pointer/remote control and vacillated between the technical terminology and descriptions of GFP transfection as "making sure that the fact that the cells now glow shiny colors after you jabbed a needle in the rat's brain doesnt have an effect." And then Lauren, who had been prepped enough to have all the material but just isn't comfortable with it. But still managed to look like she only hates presenting, not like she wasn't working hard, which is always nice. I got lucky with my group. After the performance presentation, the prof gushed a bit about how it went and he specifically complimented me later in the day. I beamed a little -- neuro spends so much of my time trying to convince me that I'm not worthy that it's nice to know I'm getting somewhere. Having that and all the preceding stresses off my back must help. Having the neurophys lab in a good place can't be bad either, all the thinking's almost done and we can just work on data collection now. Genderblender definitely helped last night -- dressing in something between goth and circus, interacting with a group of people who all just seemed comfortable with themselves and each other (both my own friends and everyone else), and dancing for hours was great. Also seeing Johnny and Carly again, each respectively donning an alter ego that so suits them (the ridiculously suave gentleman and an androgynous robot with sparkly stubble) was amazing. And watching Lizzie's Taiko beforehand was great to set the mood for rocking. The more I see of Taiko, the more I enjoy it. And tonight there will be: more research to be fully caught up with work (never would have thought that possible), a burn with Lizzie and Becca, and a Bucketkickers reunion concert. Just like old times. It's a good place to be. | | Thursday, November 8th, 2007 | | 9:44 pm |
Schedule
ECON 253 Intermediate Microeconomics - Lipow 9:00 am - 10:50 am TR ECON 322 Public Policy and Happiness - Lipow 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm TR MENA 101 Introduction to Middle East and North African Studies - Mahallati 10:00 am - 10:50 am MWF PHYS 111 Electricity/Magnetism/Thermodynamics - Styer 9:00 am - 9:50 am MWF PHYS 111 Lab - Richards 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W | | Friday, October 26th, 2007 | | 1:59 am |
Dallas theater is apparently not quite an oxymoron. It's also not quite as good as I've been hoping. I saw a production of Scapino a while back that was amazing, one of Debbie Does Dallas that I loved, and I'm struggling to quite replicate the experience. Saw The Last Days of Judas Iscariot tonight, first performance of the troupe in a new space they had just built. Enjoyed the script, though it did break down in the end. Enjoyed the production for the most part, though the actors did occasionally flub a line. Worthwhile certainly, but not Pillowman, and that was just in little theater. I'd say the same of the more "professional" performance I saw of Glengarry Glen Ross on Tuesday, which was enjoyable but just slightly off. Perhaps I have bad seats to blame for that one since the critics loved it so. I suppose being in the wings when the first act is staged with actors facing directly stage left and stage right at a booth is predictably a bad idea. Oh well. | | Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | | 5:57 pm |
A movie and some thoughts
Across the Universe is the first movie I've seen in a long time where the characters consistently find that subverting the system is less productive than working within in. It doesnt glorify radicals, even during wartime, and kicks out a main character who's an illegal immigrant until he gets a visa. Has an appeal to it. Even if it was a musical set to Beatles songs that occasionally felt like Momma Mia meets Hair. Funny to see a movie about the Vietnam era and realize that there are a lot of parallels to our life. It's not that all of Oberlin is stuck in the 60s, but in a way the circus community recreates the communities that formed during that time. The idealized parts, the peace and love that nobody thinks exist anymore at least still have a spark here. With a bit less of the drugs needed. Funny also to think that back in the day, it was the psychologists with their new "insights" that drove a lot of the culture and now...it's the neuroscientists. I guess it's had a lot of impact that Becca said a third of the fire spinners at Wildfire have a neuro background and another quarter come from psych. It's interesting to think of how much more difficult mobilizing our generation for anything will be. Forty years ago, nobody knew of an injustice like Vietnam and it touched everyone directly so real protests were possible. Now, Iraq is just one of many things that tangentially affect some of us -- we know too much to all care as deeply about one thing. Until it's really on our doorstep. Darfur, Iraq, climate change, declining civil rights, they're all just a little unreal. But we were all ready to be mobilized after 9-11, we just didn't have anybody smart enough to do it. Wonder what'll happen when something overcomes our data saturated, collective ADD, with someone smart enough to use our polarized mass. | | Sunday, October 21st, 2007 | | 3:05 pm |
5:55 AM flight with a 4:15 taxi. Apparently the cab company managed to forget that they were supposed to pick me up so I called another number that Chris had just happened to give me. They had nobody out in the fleet that early in the morning so they sent me to Safe and Reliable Cabs. Fortunately, they did and managed to get me to the airport just in time. Had an interesting conversation with the driver about strippers. Apparently they use cabs often, or the low class ones do. Come from rather dilapidated neighborhoods, act like they own the world. He also said that he dated one a while back who pulled in around 6K a night and only had to work 18 hour weeks. Strange topic of conversation. Also mentioned that Male Revue night at a bar is a great time to go. The men leave by around 10, leaving behind a bunch of drunk, sexually charged women... I couldnt quite decide whether that sounded predatory, or if he should be given credit for being comfortable enough with his sexuality to go to openly admit to his buddies that he goes to bars when the men strip... | | Saturday, October 13th, 2007 | | 10:41 pm |
Virgin burn tonight. I took the last half of Becca's second burn with her new staff. She just proposed it out of the blue. I hadn't been intending to start with staff -- I'm not that strong yet, but it was there. She says she'll give me second burn on her ropedart when it comes in too...which I should be more prepared for. Such awesome. |
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