It’s about time, I suppose, but no one ever accused me of constantly getting things done too early. Which reminds me, I suppose I should start working on my financial aid forms for two weeks from now – or make sure I’m ready for the start of my new LSAT class, two days from now. Eh, whatever. Blog now, work some other time. So, I have requested a standing weekly room reservation from the fine folks at Cornell in my capacity as managing director of *Results May Vary improv.

Yeah, that’s right, I have a title and stuff now. No business cards, but who knows, that might happen sometime. In order to prevent any confusion, internecine squabbling, redundant and contradictory instructions, or narwhal attacks (you can never be too careful with those), we’ve split the tasks related to running *RMV. The FIBH is our creative director, in charge of running rehearsals, MCing at performances, casting – basically, everything in a rehearsal or on stage. I’m managing director, in charge of everything outside of rehearsal and getting a stage.  And business cards.

That’s all just fine and dandy, but this will be an interesting experience. On the one hand, things I’m interested in are always easier for me to do – yes, I know, this is probably true for everyone, but even a mostly-treated depression makes that a steep damn curve. So something like this, I have a fair amount of push to get behind, because I want to do it. On the other hand, I suck at up-and-at-em spirit. On the gripping hand, if there are several things I pride myself on, one of them is being able to take something I don’t know how to do and successfully faking it until I’m not faking it any more. I think I’ll survive this. Or at least get a few laughs out of it.

…because it’s an improv group. It’s a joke… thing… laughs… right.

So I live in a large college town. Now, that’s not “large college-town”, that’s “large-college town”. The student population is roughly equivalent to the local population, and I am a local. This means that about one person in two is between the ages of 18 and 23, and that is just terrifying. For the most part, it only affects my day-to-day living in that my job depends on those students’ parents paying for test prep – so it affects me a lot, I suppose. Bad example.

It only affects my family in that both of my parents have worked for Cornell University for pretty much my whole life. Damn. Wait. I can do this. It only affects the people I know in that only half of my friends from high school went to college in town.

I fail at this.

So the colleges are a big deal, and there are a lot of students puttering around, especially since I work and often travel through Collegetown, the four-block twist of street where half of the town’s student-oriented businesses (twelve cheap restaurants, six bars, three discount haircutters, FIVE GOLDEN RINGS, and a Starbucks) live. Collegetown, and the bits of campus near it, which are also on my “roads most travelled” list, tend to be lousy with students, and due to a quirk of New York law that gives pedestrians in or near a crosswalk the right of way and bars me from being allowed to run down jaywalkers, I get to spend a lot of time waiting for Entitlement Jones to saunter across the street against the light. This has led me to believe that all students are assholes, but I know that that can’t be true. Surely I don’t know all six non-asshole students out of 30,000. There must be some variation, right?

Today, I figured it out. It’s not that every student is an asshole, it’s just that, as in so much of life, the assholes are the ones you notice while the nice ones don’t disturb you. Good to work that out, I’d hate to accidentally incinerate an innocent when I learn to set fires with my mind. A little more thought and a highly questionable scientific survey of a random cross-section of students visible to me during the minute I spent actually thinking about this instead of making up numbers analyzing my results led me to this breakdown:

Of any ten students -

- One is a complete asshole. Doesn’t care about you or anyone else, should be poked in the eye with a stick daily, preferably by another complete asshole to save labor costs.

- Two are opportunists. To be fair, I fall in this category. Opportunists know where your car is and won’t stroll out in front of you and figure you’ll stop for them, roll out a red carpet, and offer them a hot towel and a mint, as an asshole might. However, if they have even a tenth of a second more time than they need, they will walk into the street. You, as the one with liability, will therefore slow down because you also don’t like them odds. (Now, I tend to hurry across streets, because the fact that the car shouldn’t have hit me doesn’t mean that I’m any less hit by a fucking car, so my pride allows a little asphalt jogging.)

- Five are sheep. Hear them baa. Sheep don’t think as a rule. They stand and look stupid at the corner, possibly having a false start or two into the road before they realize that there are vroom-vroom cars there and it might give them an ouchie. Problem with sheep is, once an asshole, opportunist, or other sheep starts into the road, they will follow suit, meaning that you might have to wait while a parade of sheep cross effectively one at a time, with each entering the road only an instant before the last one leaves the road, thus clearing the crosswalk and allowing you to progress. Baa. BAAAAAA.

- Two (and I am being generous in calling it two) are decent, sensible people who are alert, follow traffic laws, and believe in taking turns where applicable. Give them hugs and tell them they are good people.

Oh, the world. Can’t live within it, can’t live without it (no air is a problem).

Okay, so that face is probably more evil and sinister than this. This was more of a “I will make you wish I was not making this face, because this face means that I am looking for an excuse to make you my bitch” face. But that’s just too long and unwieldy to say a lot. Which, if anything, makes it more attractive to me.

Some of you may recall (and those who don’t have a little trip to make to the archives, don’t they?) a post a while back about bagging groceries, the correct way to. Well, the excitement that is getting any given Stoner McDropout to not put tomatoes under a gallon of detergent was taken to a new level today as I met that rare beast – a customer service employee who talks back.

I worked retail for almost a year. In a pharmacy, in fact, which was fun, because there’s nothing quite like the look on a person’s face when they learn that the meds they forgot to order a refill for until they were out are out of refills and their doctor isn’t in today. And yet, I only once told someone just how much of a failed genetic experiment they were being. Next to the accusation that “you don’t care whether I live or die” (not true; the more you talk the more I lean towards one of those options…), correcting someone’s bagging mistakes seems a minor crime. And yet…

What follows is a perfect* transcript of my exchange with today’s taste of checkout genius**. Names have been changed to mock the guilty.

(Lights up. BOZO MCDUNDERHEAD, a 20-something waste of precious natural resources, is attempting to bag groceries, having put a carton of eggs in the bag before anything else.)

Me: Hang on, don’t put anything on top of the eggs.

B McDH: (holds up 2-pound bag of sugar) It’s not that heavy.

Me: (astounded that I did not just hear the words “sorry, no problem” come out of his face) I don’t give a damn how heavy it is, don’t put anything on top of my eggs.

B McDH: Chill out, dude.

Me: (quickly making the shift from startled bemusement to I-can-kill-you-with-my-brain) Excuse me?

B McDH: I don’t care if you’re having a bad day or whatever, don’t take it out on me.

Me: (leveling the aforementioned look at his empty little head and speaking in a voice like fine silk draped over an oncoming sledgehammer) Get your manager. Now.

I was nice to the manager – not his fault, and about six seconds after Bozo reached him to start telling his story, a look of “you are such an idiot” latched itself to the manager’s face and stayed there for a while, so I figured he probably had it under control. But yeah – I must be developing a reputation among the high-turnover crowd there, what with this and the time I minorly traumatized a trainee by rebagging everything (apparently she was afraid to bag things for an hour after that) (I was nice, too – dunno what the problem was)…

Maybe it’s the hat.

*not actually perfect

**not actually a genius

Well, okay, they were joint decisions, but come on, I have a format here. Today was day one (of two, apparently) of auditions for the BRAND NEW IMPROV GROUP that the FIBH and I have just started. That’s right, we started an improv group.

Why? Because we can.

Today, we saw five people (out of eight who were supposed to come… whatever.), and auditioned them in sort of an interview format. It was more conversational than anything else, the point being to get a feel for how they thought and what they were like, rather than seeing if they could do X improv game. We can teach someone how to do a game, but you can’t teach the things they need to have going in, so why not find out if they have those? I know, we’re pretty damn smart. Anyway, we were happy to see the level of ability in this group, and there are at least a couple of very strong contenders. I can’t say more because we’re going to be meeting a few more people tomorrow. By tomorrow night, we should have a lineup, the original lineup of *drumroll* *RESULTS MAY VARY improv (the asterix is essential)!

WheeenowIsleep.

So it’s a Wednesday (well, it was, anyway). That means karaoke night. In the last month or so, a couple of my friends from the acting class I finished in December have been coming regularly, which is awesomeness. One of these friends is – well, let’s not dance around the point. The girl is hot. Enough so that she attracts the attention of all the boys, the sketchier of whom like to try their luck. Tonight I spent a lot of time playing interference. Sometimes this means just wandering over while one is trying to drop a line and raising an eyebrow. Sometimes it means acting like there’s something exciting she needs to see over here. And sometimes it means having fun.

This was one of those times. The guy wasn’t that skeezy, but good gravy he was drunk, in that “blind to anything subtler than a meat tenderizer to the groin” way. Lucky him, he picked the cute girl who is too nice to tell him to fuck off (why do I never get that one?). The FIBH noticed this first and called my attention to it.

Me: “Should I go over there and help out?”

FIBH: “I think you should cockblock him to a degree hitherto unimagined.”

So I did. There are probably few things in life more awkward than some guy walking up to the girl you’re trying to chat up and giving her a shoulder rub while innocently leaning in to better hear what you’re saying. I give the man credit – he didn’t slink off, he managed to stay smooth (or at least, as smooth as passed for smooth in his slightly incapacitated state) and disengage with dignity intact (again, as much as possible under the circumstances). So, kudos to him, and I’ve met my “I don’t help” quota for the day.

Some exciting news coming in a few days…

So some (many? all?) of you may already know, but Netflix lets you watch things online – I’m just learning this because we just got Netflix a couple of weeks ago and I hadn’t explored the extras. It’s a bit of a revelation, though the limited options mean that I may have to keep up with my normal mass-torrenting of TV series. Also, as nice as it is to have, on demand and in decent resolution, any of a very large number videos, it does demand reserving a serious chunk of my monitor for a Firefox window to play them in – not so bad if I just want to watch, but it’s rare for me to be doing fewer than two things at once on my computer, and three is more normal…

Anywho, I tested it out by watching the pilot of Sliders, a sci-fi show that premiered in 1995, when the unfortunate fashion effects of the 80s were just wearing off, curved cars were just coming in, America was still flush with victory from the Cold War, and “gritty” was something that happened when you didn’t vacuum enough. Oh, and I was 10. I didn’t realize I was that young when this stuff came out the first time. But I digress. Let’s talk about how television entertainment has changed in the last 14 years.

First, we have something minor, but strikingly obvious – in 1995, CGI was creeping in around the edges, and while we all oohed and aahed over it then, I now am reminded of the famous words “this looks shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from having seen quite a few shops in my time.” Also, please stop switching from lime green to blacklight purple to electric urine yellow in your wormhole sequence. My poor retinas…

On to some substance. Apparently in 1995, “acting” meant being really enthusiastic about your lines. Not that it was all hammed up and campy, but egads. Let’s be fair to the actors – the director might have been saying “hey guys, that was great, but can you act a little harder?”. Or maybe I’m just reacting to the lack of angst. We expect a certain degree of inner turmoil in our characters these days, as media types realize that a nation of severely fucked up individuals can’t connect to characters whose problems come and go between commercial breaks… 14 years ago, not so much.

I like it, though. Campy, perhaps, but pilots are always rough around the edges. Let’s see if the next few episodes clean up a bit and live up to my memories. Besides, it’s got Sabrina Lloyd, and she was quite a cutie back in the day.

It’s so weird to see someone in a city wearing flannel unironically…

I know, it’s been a long time, but I’m back. Probably. Depression is an unfortunate condition – once I stop doing something, it just gets easier and easier to keep on not doing it until someone pushes me hard enough.

So measurement systems are, in the end, pretty arbitrary. We start with a foot – whose foot, I don’t know. A foot is twelve inches, which is probably based on fingers or something. Maybe big toes. Then a yard, which is three of those – three because… yeah, whatever. A mile, which sounds like mil, one thousand in Romance languages, is 5,280 feet for reasons unknown. A second is a sixtieth of a sixtieth of a twenty-fourth of the time between two noons. Days and years make sense on this planet, anyway.

Metric is no better. A meter is the length of a special bar in Paris, defined by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures to be the distance travelled by light in free space in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. Why not 300 million, I don’t know. Seems like a small difference. Units of mass are based on mass of pure water at sea level at volumes defined by meters, so the entire system is nested layers of silly.

So, in a burst of our usual unpredictableness, the FIBH and I started on a new system. If it must be arbitrary, let’s make it really arbitrary, huh?

We start with distance. A Fling is defined to be the distance that a man of medium size and build can throw a medium-sized dog after being hit in the opposite arm by another medium-sized dog thrown by another medium-sized man from a distance of one Fling. Yup, it’s recursive. The first Fling will have to be found by repeatedly throwing dogs until both throws are statistically equivalent a statistically significant number of times. There are a few other distance measurements to be noted – a Chuck is the distance the man can throw the dog if one of the dogs bites him (an A Chuck is when the dog he’s holding bites – a shorter distance because the dog is latched to him – and a Z Chuck is when the other dog bites, causing him to flail), and a Long is a thousand times the distance that a small woman can throw a large dog under Fling-measuring conditions.

Now, with distance, we can derive more. A Thud is a unit of force, equivalent to the force imparted by the flinging man’s foot against the ground when a dog bites him and he stomps while swearing loudly in pain. An Oof is a unit of mass, such that one Thud of force can move one Oof one Fling in one Tick, where a Tick is the time from when the dog lands to when it runs back and bites its thrower on the stomping leg.

The speed of light is defined to be eight.

And that’s all I have for you right now.

So for those of you who are behind on the lingo (that is, over the age of 26,  female, or with functioning social skills), a little definitions party: a griefer is someone who, while playing a MMORPG, engages in PvP for the single purpose of making their victims sad or angry. This usually means attacking carebears or ganking lone travelers instead of getting involved in straight-up fights.

…okay, I’ll back up a little. A MMORPG (“mimorperger”) stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game. Or something like that. The one I play is called EVE Online. It involves spaceships. PvP stands for player vs. player, as opposed to PvE, player versus… um… e-computer. Or something.  A carebear is someone in EVE who does a lot of non-combat or PvE activity, or someone who is right now engaging in PvE instead of joining a fleet and killing something. Finally, “gank” is short for “gang kill”, and refers to six guys blasting the crap out of one. Got it? Simple, really.

So anyway. These griefers had just been chased by a friendly fleet across a good 15 systems after taking down a couple of carebears, and, having reached a safe and friendly station to dock up at, they were showing their honor and courage by smacktalking (do I really need to define that) in local chat. As classy smacktalk goes, it wasn’t exactly “I fart in your general direction”. So, because I’m not in the alliance that was chasing them (and therefore couldn’t get yelled at for this), I decided to talk back.

The thing to remember about your average griefer, much like your average internet message board troll or your average Prop 8 supporter, is that they are at their core unhappy. Depressed or angry, really, or both. If you could get one to admit this to you (not easy), they would tell you that it’s someone else’s fault, that the world or someone in it has hurt them. And so they treat the world like a zero-sum game, where their joy comes from giving others pain. They’re pitiable, really.

…which is what I told them, among asking them why they were griefers. Yes, I see you’re having fun, but why is it fun for you to make other people upset? Now now, saying that they have a problem if they get upset over an internet spaceship is deflection, you get excited over killing internet spaceships, so at best you and they have the same disorder there. Really, we all do, we’re all flying internet spaceships. But you get your jollies tracking down people who are happier than you and making them unhappy. Well, I know they’re happier than you because they’re carebears. They play a few hours a week for fun in between having fulfilling jobs and kissing ladies with tongue. You’re online eight hours a day hunting. Okay, very droll, you can think of other places to kiss ladies. Stay with me, please. Why do you like to make other people upset? Now now, no need to tell me to shut up, I’m just asking a few questions. Oh goody, your group’s 13-year-old (there’s one in every player corporation) has begun freestyle rapping in local chat about how much better than me he is. Before I block him and forget he exists, let me just note to him: even if you are a lot better than me at this game (which maybe you are; see my last post regarding my reflexes and above regarding these people playing all day and night), I don’t rap in local chat, so I’m pretty sure I win at life there.

Now that he’s silenced – oh, one of you is relaying his words to me. Okay, you’re blocked too. Now that they’re silenced, I return to my original point. No one can deny you’re good at what you do. I’ve seen your killboard – it’s an impressive record you have. But by your own declarations about internet spaceships, this is meaningless. You’re good at taking some internet spaceships and killing other internet spaceships. What does this mean? Nothing. Nothing at all. Do you have any real skills? Anything happy in your life? You have a girlfriend under the desk right now. Sure you do. Ah. She’s my mother. Of course, I should have known. Well done.

Anyway, this went on for a good half an hour. Their leader seemed to be pretty level-headed throughout, but I think I got under the others’ skins a little. Which probably means that, once my corp joins up with the alliance they’re hunting, I will be given a higher priority. But that’s okay.

I recommended to my corp that we kill that rapping kid at any cost if we come up against him in a fight. Why are teenagers allowed to speak?

That has to be the first time that any native of my town has wished out loud that the students would come back. Thing is, though, I’m getting a little tired of being “employed” in the sense that every so often an automated e-mail tells me to send in my timesheet, which has nothing on it. I wish for some impressionable minds to warp! I mean… students. To educate.

Probably too much to hope for that I can warp the minds of a bunch of college seniors. Maybe I should train to teach SAT.

In other news, the applications are sent and now I’m trying to negotiate the logistics of letters of recommendation.

In other other news, the FIBH and I need to stop saying the same thing at the same time, it’s kinda freaky when it happens. On the other hand, if it’s for a good cause like making fun of people we knew in high school at karaoke because they are hilariously bad, then it’s okay. Still weird, though. He probably thinks the same thing. The exact same thing.

Remember, kids, it’s not paranoia if everyone is plotting against you, not pretentiousness if you actually are better than everyone, not megalomania if in fact the world would be better off with you as supreme ruler, and not illegal if it’s not explicitly banned. And now you know.

It’s sad to say I’m not eleven any more, and I just have to accept that. My reaction time and manual dexterity aren’t what they used to be. I mean, I’m going to be twenty-four soon. Damn. I’ve also learned now that it is a bad idea to play Guitar Hero for two hours straight in socks on a concrete floor  in front of a monitor that is set up to be used from a seat at my waist level – my feelings of old-mandom are not helped by aching feet, knees, lower back, wrists, and eyes…

In other news, work on letters of recommendation proceeds. Two professors have responded with promises to write letters, so that’s awesome. One more, and a few credit card charges, and I’ll be all set. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that I’m actually going to do this. Actually going to apply, and get in somewhere, and go there… and then get ground fine by being a first-year law student, but that’s so far from now as to hardly be worth thinking about. Hooray for willful ignorance!