Category: Uncategorized

So I got in a car accident yesterday. It was totally my fault, and I should have been more careful. Fortunately, neither of us was hurt. I ran into the back of a pickup truck going about 10 mph (maybe 15). The pickup’s bumper was higher than mine, and basically tore through the headlights and hood of my poor little Geo like they were made of paper mache. I posted some pictures on flickr.

Also yesterday, I heard about this Zombie Pub Crawl vlog entry posted over at mnstories filmed by my friend jeremy, and after watching it realized that I also knew one of the organizers. So as if that’s not coincidence enough, guess who I ran into at lunch today? That’s right, small world.

OK, so i did things a little back-ass-wards, and ended up totally fucking up the MT instance on my free hosting account (where all my friend’s blogs are hosted). So if you’re one of those friends, and you can’t post to your blog, i really appologize. I’m going to be re-creating your blogs from scratch in a new location (with a new upgraded MT), and then asking you to switch to the new login. Basically, what i think happned was that the old instance of MT just has too many spam comments on it for the MT upgrade script to handle it. I did a little searching on this problem, but not too extensively. I’m sure other people have encountered it if that is indeed the case. (My comments.db file is 204MB large, if that gives you any idea of how many comments. I believe Elia’s blog has like 30,000 spam comments on it. That’s some fucked up shit right there.)

I wanted to add another item to my blog TODO… it’s really quite a bit more than one item… but I’d really like to sign up for various APIs and start integrating the various sites and services that i use regularly into my blog. This would include my flickr photos, various last.fm (audioscrobbler) information, and possibly boardgamegeek.com information of some kind. (I’m just not very good about updating that site really.)

[Update: I also saw a post on the flickr blog today that led me to QOOP, that prints bound books of your flickr photos… that seems like such a cool idea…Makes me want to take (and post) more photos.]

In order of priority:

1) Install lilina RSS aggregator. (Just discovered this today via delobius… it’s the reason for this post! I think I might also consider contributing to the project by adding a feature to “delete cache before XXX date”.)

2) upgrade MT…

3) upgrade the super-crusty 2.66 MT on various friends’ blogs. (should be able to do this immediately following #2.)

4) somehow call more attention to the mindblurbs, as they are more frequently updated than the main blog. (this may have to wait till after #5.)

5) Full conversion to a blosxom variant. (I’m hoping the options are better now than they were 6 months ago, the last time I checked around for a good package with the features I wanted. I’d prefer to have comment support out of the box, please, and i’d rather it were written in php than perl too, but that’s a secondary requirement.)

I have no idea when i’ll get around to doing any of these. obviously that last one is going to take some actual time, and what a scarce commodity that’s become lately…

So I’m taking care of Dr. Bombay’s cats while he’s in europe for two weeks. Today I happened to glance on his dresser, and discovered a DVD that I had loaned to him a few weeks ago. The DVD is part of a set, and the set isn’t even mine, so I’d been meaning to ask him for it back before he left. Anyway, I grab the DVD on my way out the door, but underneath it is a stack of small papers, maybe one fourth of eight and a half by eleven sheets. One of the papers sticks to the dvd, falling to the floor.

I bent down to pick it up and was surprised to discover printed on it in a very small font these poems… The strange thing was that I could swear I’ve read them before.

[update: They were jason’s friend charlie’s poems. Fucking amazing stuff, some of it. I really liked what I read while sifting through, trying to find some identifying text.]

OK, so the preface to this entry is that I somehow have a myspace fanclub. I don’t know how this happened, other than that I think it’s really more of a fanclub for my brother Dan, (the people who started it are all friends of his) but they don’t want to admit that, so they’re diverting their attentions to me.

Anyway, they’ve asked me some questions about when I started to juggle and such, so here was my response:

I started juggling when I got the klutz book of juggling from my uncle when I was probably like 12. I learned to juggle three balls at that point, but no more. It wasn’t until 10th grade, (1992–I would have been 16) when I met someone else who juggled that I started to “get into it”. I think it was shortly thereafter that I taught my brother Dan to juggle. He and I were very competitive at first, but he learned things much faster. I did learn to juggle clubs before he did, but I think he was working on 5 balls at the time, and wasn’t interested in clubs.

So I’ve been juggling for 13 years, or maybe 17 if you count when I first learned.

And yes, I can unicycle too. I’m working toward level 5, and only have to get my wheel walk solid before I can probably pass it. My sister and I are competing to see who can pass their next level first… I have to get to level 5; she has to get to 9.

I can also juggle while standing on a slackrope, and like to work on various slackrope skills like turning around, standing perpendicular to the rope and walking while rocking from side to side.

Right now I’m also taking an aerial acrobatics class from xelias studio here in Minneapolis. (http://watchhumansfly.com/).

Also, after watching the new cirque du soleil show Corteo, I really want to learn German wheel. I have this whole cirque-like routine worked out in my head where I balance inside a huge ring suspended in the air… do a little juggling, maybe some trapeeze type tricks, and then the ring is lowered to the ground, released from the rope, and I roll around in it like a spinning coin. We’ll see if I ever even get as far as the first suspended part…

I have only one month to plan for nanowrimo. I’m thinking a galactic space odyssey, but I have no idea what will make due for plot, or even characters at this point.

Last year I’d thought I wanted to try my hand at humor, and maybe that would be fun too… maybe I could do both. I really have no idea yet… I’m starting to compile a list in the back of my brain for possibilities.

Tonight was going to be me all alone and sitting around… playing video games and reading the novel that I’ve been carrying around for over a month without reading. (It’s good so far, but slow.)

But I’d forgotten about plans to watch more eppisodes of Lost, the only TV show I’ve been even remotely interested in lately, and furthermore, Laura is over packing boxes for next weekend’s impending move. (I’m planning on being out of town, maybe camping in the badlands.)

This month is so booked it’s fucking crazy. Every saturday has a party (but this next one), and the last weekend I’ll actually be in Chicago (just finalized plans last night) to see my friends Brian and Lana perform at Six Flags Great America. I guess we are also going to see The Midnight Circus while we’re there.

It has now been over two weeks since Laura and I broke up. On one hand, that seems like not all that long a time has passed, but mentally, it feels as though it has been years. I am able to write her an email now without feeling a giant pit of horror in my stomach, and that’s (obviously) a big step. We are supposed to meet next tuesday and discuss the CD situation… (She separated them, and I can think of at least six CDs I owned that she does not that are missing from my collection. There are supposedly duplicate CDs in piles on my floor that I have yet to put away.)

I want to thank everyone for being so supportive. I have really felt everyone “being there” for me, and there are probably twice as many people who have offered to lend an ear as there are people I’ve made suffer through my depressing chatter, so even if I haven’t ranted at you, please know that I appreciate you anyway. Most of the times I’ve really “let it all out” have been circumstantial anyway, and there are at least a couple of times I’ve talked about things with people I wouldn’t have otherwise brought into my confidence necessarily. (Don’t worry, I’m sure that’s not you!)

Ren Fest has been extremely therapeutic. I have been rather promiscuous in the last couple of weeks, and perhaps obviously that would not be possible without fest as a backdrop. I’m actually going to try and tone that down a bit now. I realize there are other people’s emotions involved, and with that realization comes a certain amount of guilt. I also know on some level that I am nowhere near ready for another relationship, and yet I also feel very close to falling into something relatively serious. (Just the fact that I am even considering such a thing seems an indication of my relative mental recovery.)

So yeah, my point was to say thanks… and now I’m just rambling.

Next monday is talk like a pirate day. The Monday after that Four Tet is doing a show, and the Monday after that the Mates of State are playing. (Both shows are at the Triple Rock.)

If anyone would like to acompany me to either show, please let me know. At this point I’m planning on going all by my lonesome.

What else has happened in my absense of titillating blog updates? Well, the biggest thing for those of you who have not already heard (and if you have not, please forgive me, I have not exactly wanted to talk about this), is that Laura and I broke up last Monday. It has now officially been a week, although I suppose technically it happened much later in the day.

She had been home for a little over a week at that point from her month in switzerland, and claims she just didn’t miss me as much as she’d expected to while she was away. She did not treat “us” with much enthusiasm or respect in that week, and I knew pretty early that something was up. There were some unfortunate events which led up to the breakup itself that I have not decided whether or not to relay here. Let it suffice to say that she is obviously not having any problems “moving on”, and clearly didn’t find our four-year relationship (coupled with my birthday, for that matter) nearly as important as someone she’d only just met upon her return. Maybe someday I’ll attempt to write a bit about how I feel our open relationship failed in that last week, but I’d rather just call it a lack of communication… something common in most floundering relationships, I’m sure. (Especially when one party is no doubt trying to decide whether they want it to be over.)

So anyway, lets hope the coming Mondays are better than last week’s. And do let me know if you can make either of those shows.

I just ate a piece of pizza that sat overnight on the coffee table.

This morning I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine that contained lights, darks, cottons and delicates.

Zelda has taken to walking the house meowing loudly to himself. When I try to console him, he will often let me actually hold him in my arms for a bit (something he almost never does).

Hmm. I guess that’s it for now. I’ve spent too much time today on flickr. I discovered geobloggers from the flickr blog, and also read an article about how flickr got started, and their development process. Oh how I would love to work on something as cool as flickr. Their collaborative development sounds really sweet too. Now if only laura didn’t have my (our) camera… but then I guess we wouldn’t see pictures like this one from Switzerland. (The LG indicates she took it. There are 11 of them with cameras on the trip, so I guess there are a lot of pictures to choose from at the end of every day.)

Lets face it, I am not a theater person. I’m a hobbyist juggler and unicycler, with healthy appreciation for fine arts in general, and a more than passing fancy for circus themes.

That having been said, here are some reviews of the fringe shows I’ve seen so far. I was going to rate them all, but I realized I would have probably rated everything a 4, so I just left them all off.

No Name Jugglers Live
This is my brother and a good friend, so I can’t really say anything unbiased, but I do think they are both really excellent jugglers and quite passable performers. If you want to see some good juggling, they’re it this year in the fringe.

Unicycle Showcase
This is my show, and I won’t apologize for it (anymore). The thing is, in retrospect, I don’t think I should have apologized in the first place. I think we did a great job with the performers at hand, and there is DEFINITELY nowhere else you’re going to see unicycling like this in a theater setting. I have great performers, and am just lucky that anyone showed up at all.

Adventures in Mating
Absolutely fucking hilarious. The opening monologue alone was worth the price of admission. It felt borderline sketch comedy at times, and the gimmick (choose-your-own adventure) felt a little forced (the waiter made a couple of the choices for us), but it was a great show none-the-less.

GaME (Give a Man Enough)
This was definitely interesting enough for me to recommend it. I guess it was military themed physical comedy, with some touching moments of humanity all told without any discernable dialogue. I’m sure they didn’t want to use the word “mime” in the show description, so they used “clowning” instead, but neither word really describes this adequately. I would have liked to see more rope-play, but ultimately, this was a great show.

The Scrimshaw Show
If you’ve never seen the Scrimshaw’s show before, shame on you. This is sketch comedy at its finest, with a bit of improve at the end for good measure. I particularly liked the musical edge that Pablo gave everything. He’s a good match for the Scrimshaws.

I’m Sorry and I’m Sorry
Brilliant!!! Any show that compares itself to Cirque du Soleil is on dangerous ground, as far as I’m concerned, but in this case, they took a couple of Cirque-esque clown characters, and created a really great story for them to unravel for us on stage. Was it comedy, or was it tragedy? I really enjoyed this show and might even try to see it again if I get a chance.

10-Speed Revolution
Quite good: witty and complex, this show was a roller coaster ride of anarchist and punk dogma combined with a fun story and interesting punk-caricature characters. I hadn’t expected to suspend quite that much disbelief, but I didn’t really have any trouble shrugging and going along with the gangs of mercenary bike couriers taking down the bike-lock company’s corporate puppet government. And the soundtrack rocked!

Quarter Life Crisis
Ultimately, this was an emotional drama about a couple in a long-term relationship who don’t quite have it all figured out yet. But the show was punctuated by moments of surrealist comedic brilliance that would never have worked with a less dynamic cast. Well worth your time, highly recommended. There were parts that were easily as funny as anything in Adventures in Mating. (It’s an inevitable comparison, with similar sets, premise, and cast of characters.)

I posted a few of these on the fringe site, but these are the “unrefined” versions. (I guess you’re not supposed to compare one fringe show to another, or your review gets categorically thrown out.)

We have our second Unicycle Showcase show tonight at 8:30. Just thinking about it gives me stupid butterflies.