Friday, September 29, 2006

Thursday, September 28, 2006

"Alkaline"

New battery day for my camera!


For an outtake of this post, check this picture.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Sunday, September 24, 2006

"Machine Washable"


What is it?

I dunno. You can decide. I don't really care.

I went to Michele's party on Friday and we played a rousing game of "Manhunt", which is basically hide-and-go-seek outside when it's dark. We were all given lightsticks for safety, so most people hid them to prevent them from being seen.

One of the girls from our cast looked cold, so I gave her my sweatshirt. A couple of minutes later, her lightstick broke, and she spilled a little on the sweatshirt.

The game itself was fun. Everyone seemed to be convinced that there was someone stalking us from a bush because someone saw it glow. I, cynical as ever, was convinced everyone was an idiot, so I began walking over to the bush.

A couple of people started yelling, and someone ran over to me and hit me.

We dodged around the whole area in the course of an hour, diving behind dumsters, climbing trees, crouching behind cars.

The point was I enjoyed myself immensely that evening. It was a cloudy, pitch-black night, and twelve kids were running all over a neighborhood, attempting not to be seen.

On the ride home, I had my sweatshirt on my lap, and the little spot of lighstick chemicals was winking quietly up at me.

I swear, that little spot made me picture the whole evening perfectly, and made me remember everything about it. How much fun it was.

My sweatshirt got put through the washer, and now it isn't there. That innocent spot is simply gone, dissapeared. It seems I have nothing to remind me of the night.

Memories have a habit of doing this. They are there for the longest time, and then they seem to detiorate, as if your brain is washing them away. You try to hold on, but your brain seems bent on cleaning that memory out.

And it does.

And you forget.

But you should really try to remember, though.

That little spot of glowing light.

On your sweatshirt.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

"Nostalgic"


This is a picture I took today because I was depressed. It's my tie and newspaper from Guys and Dolls.

I have yet to untie the tie.

I don't know why I thought it would make me feel better.

It didn't.

I was a wreck last night. Instead of getting into bed, I just layed down on the floor of my shower and went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night some time and dragged myself to my bed.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

"Ripple"


Picture of the bath in my parent's room. The picture was taken in utter darkness, I used only the flash. Took me like 40 tries because I couldn't see what I was doing. I'm just glad I didn't drop my camera in.

If you didn't see "Split" look below, please.

Anyone have a better idea for a name for this one?

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

"Split"

This is a piece of slate in my dog's yard that broke. I think it's a pretty cool picture, but i wish you couldn't see that dirt towards the left part of the crack. Zooming in, the dirt looks cool and textured, but if you are simply looking at it like you are now, it would be better without it.

For the record, my posts during the week (mon-fri) are prone to being short like this. I take about 20-40 minutes finding a picture and taking it, and about 10 minutes posting it. So it is time-consuming.

I took that last picture during spring break last year. This one I took today.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Friday, September 15, 2006

Astonishment

Today I was astonished.

Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it isn't.

Today it was not.

Normally I am not astonished. I assume the absolute worst thing is going to happen in every situation, and it almost always does.

But today I made a mistake. I assumed that human nature was basically good. I don't know where that came from.

Anyway, I was just looking at the cast sheet for "Reckless", and I saw I got Tom Jr. Jesse came over and looked to see that he got Dr. S. At this point, he asked me who I was. I answered "Tom Jr."

He turned to me to speak. I assumed it'd be something along the lines of "Congratulations". This was my mistake. I thought human nature was basically good.

"I thought I did a better Tom Jr. than you," he said.

My brain shut off. I was astonished by what he said. And I was also astonished that I was actually astonished. I hadn't felt surprised in such a long time.

When people are surprised, generally they go into a sort of defensive mode. It is why girls scream when the lights go off or when someone scares them.

I might've punched him right there if my brain worked that way. Luckily, it doesn't. It went searching for an insulting reply. It came up with one shortly, and I prepared to say my line:

"Maybe that's because you don't know you suck."

I never got it out.

Gabe, standing next to me, sensed that I was about to say something immediately. He jumped in quickly, saying "It's probably because we were smaller than you."

My brain turned back on. I remembered that Jesse was my friend. I smiled and agreed with Gabe.

The funny thing with this story is that Jesse is right. He did do a better Tom Jr. than me. I don't know why my brain does that.

Anyway the moral of the story is that you should always set your standards so very low that you assume that basically everyone is a lazy, evil slob.

Wait no. Cynical is my thing.

I guess the moral of the story is that I should either learn to control myself during astonishment or just maintain my level of cynicism.

That's better.

Oh yeah. The picture I took myself. It's called "portrait of a carnation". Basically I just opened the aperture alot, letting in tons of light.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Periwinkle


I was looking up a definition in my bio book, and passed by "Periwinkle", like the crayon color. I ignored it, but, remembering it, I looked it up online later, and here's what I found.

Periwinkle: any of various marine gastropods or sea snails, especially Littorina littorea, used for food in Europe.

Geez. We have a crayon color named after an edible marine gastropod.

Ah, well.

So anyhow my posts will more and more feature wierd arty or comical photos. This was one I this summer. I was taking my camera somewhere and managed, leaning rather dangerously out the car window in the process, to take this picture of a rainbow near Zuzu's.

I'm also writing a new story, but I'm posting it all at once later.

So that's that.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

How to Catch a Bunny Rabbit with Nerve Gas

AGH!

I FAILED!

AT LIFE!

Okay, so guys and dolls was tonight, and here's the story.

During the first scene, I enter twice. Both times, I enter from the same place, exit to the same place, am with the same person, and deliver lines to Nathan.

I got the two times confused.

The first time, Adelaide (Maeve) and Nathan (Jeff) are on stage. I enter and say "Nathan, yesterday Mindy sold 12 hundred cheesecake and 15 hundred strudle.

The second time, Sky (Nick) and Nathan (Jeff, again) are on stage. I enter and say "Nathan, we took Adelaide to the drugstore and she said for you to be sure to pick her up and don't be late."

The first time I entered, Adelaide was standing right in front of me, and I said "Nathan, we took Adelaide to the drugstore and she said for you to be sure to pick her up and don't be late."

* smacks self in head *

Benny, an eleven-year-old, manages to cover roughly for me, saying "Wait... no. That was yesterday. Today was the cheesecake thing."

We pulled that off.

Barely.

After this, Benny and I escorted Maeve out as I punched myself in the forehead a few times.

The next time I entered, I knew I couldn't say "We took Adelaide to the drugstore" because it would be obvious I had mixed up my lines, so Benny reccomended "deli". I thought this was smart, but I also decided in my head to change "Adelaide" to "your wife".

We walk on, I deliver my slightly modified line and I walk out.

As I walk out, I realize that the whole point of the show is that Adelaide and Nathan are not yet married. The whole point is that they get married.

I just ruined the whole premise of the show.

I walk into the elevator with Benny and Marie, curl up on the floor, and wonder if I threw myself out the fourth-floor window if would die when I hit the cement.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

As You Like It


It seems I have struck a nerve.

A nerve which is found in almost all of you that is simply an extension of your natural tendency to be nice to people: you want good people to have good things happen to them and bad people to go to jail.

I think most of your expectations were summed up by Angie's post:

"NOT COOL. the romantic people are supposed to live forever in happiness, not die and go to jail."

My question is this: Do you think the end was poorly written, or did you simply not like it because of the content?

My guess is that most of you were simply depressed, and therefore I believe an explanation is necessary.

When I finished part 4, I knew I basically had two options:

One: I could go with Kelly's method, involving a ridiculous cliché:

"I DON'T WANT ALICE TO DIE. THAT'S NOT HOW A GOOD LOVE STORY WORKS. she's supposed to be hit, but not dead right away. then you run to her side. "Alice, oh no alice. What have i done?! i love you, don't leave me!" then Alice says "These last few days with you were beyond my wildest dreams. Don't ever forget me. I-- I love you ....(falls down dead). Then you go" No, don't leave me. Alice. ALICE!!!!!!!

Then you angrily look at the killer and kill him in revenge for Alice. The police come and somehow you get off even."

This I actually considered, but decided, though my readers may enjoy it most, it was selling out. It made the story a useless piece of Hollywood crap that, despite the fact that people would like it, it would make me feel as though I hadn't evoked the proper response. In short, I would have been betraying the characters.

Two: I could do what I did, make a depressing ending bound to be unpopular. This was preferable to me mainly because I felt it was the thing that was bound to happen anyway. It would also evoke a lot of different responses, as it did.

The problem an author would face in killing off Alice and sending George to jail is that they would feel bad for the characters and the audience. I am not that way with my characters or my audience. I write my stories without emotion, and therefore care very little about the welfare of my characters, and I want to evoke a response from my audience, be it positive or negative.

I'm nowhere near as cool as Peter, and I hardly aspire to be, but I give him my apathy. Though I would say I am more apathetic than compassionate, I would say that tiny hint of compassion in me keeps me from being as cruel as Peter. Peter, on the other hand, is simply a cold-blooded murderer. He is not emotional about it as George is, but rather kills when he feels it is necessary.

This is how I am with my stories. I kill when I feel it is necessary. To bring out the emotional response that I wanted from my audience, I needed to dispose of Alice. She is the most likable character in this story mainly because she is the most human. If I had killed George you may have been mildly sad, but not nowhere near as angry as you were when Alice died.

The symbolism in the story is subtle, but it's there. It shows that in battle, a person who ignores their emotions (or better yet, has no emotions) will always triumph over those who react based on their emotions. However the person who acts based on reason will almost always be percieved as the "bad guy".

Another complaint I recieved was that I "left you hanging". I don't think there is any question as to what is going to happen next for those of you that see the story as Peter would, without emotion. Even those of you who are very emotional towards the story see what is going to happen. George is going to jail.

I think that there would be no question in your mind what would happen if the roles were switched and Peter was locked in that room. You would all know that the bad guy was going to jail. But George is the hero, so you are grasping at straws. You need him to be free, despite the fact that his fate was sealed. You assume the door is wooden and it could be kicked open, you assume that he could have killed the guards with the knife despite the fact that they have guns. You assume he could have out-gunned the guards and police and that after he escaped the police would not look for him.

George wasn't a good guy and he's going to jail. He killed John, and even if it was an accident he still was trying to kill the man talking. He went to try to kill Peter when he should have been solving Alice's case. You know so little about him, but you assume he a good person.

Alice was really the only innocent one. She killed one person to save George and then didn't tell him about the phone call, but otherwise she was pretty good. As far as you know.

But I think you should just understand how life works most of the time:

Bad things happen to good people.

((note: this is not an angry post. the comments I recieved were very good and I enjoyed reading them very much. please don't freak out at me, because I know one of you will write one of those long comments about how stupid this post was. I'm going to resume posting normally tomorrow.))

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Blog Conclusion, Part 5

The knife hit the ground with a clang.

"Well, that just wraps up this case, eh, detective?"

The man in the mask laughed. I picked up the knife and threw it.

He sidestepped the blow easily as his armed goons lowered their weapons.

"Let's be a little more careful now, detective. We wouldn't want anything to happen to Alice now, would we?"

He paused as he glanced pointedly at the woman, who was sobbing gently behind me.

"Before the police get here, I believe it might be good to let you know just who I am. I do believe we've met, but we were never very..."

He paused in thought, as if thinking what the next word would be.

"...close."

The face mask dropped silently to the floor, as the man slid his hood back. Standing before me was a tall form I had seen so many times before.

"Peter?"

He laughed. "Of course. I believe you must be quite confused at this point, but you must have some idea. You put me out of business, George. You have jailed and killed so many of my customers I have no more income. But I knew there was one thing I could do. I ransacked the girl's apartment as a favor to a friend of mine."

He smiled down at the body tied to the pole in the ground.

"I knew you would get the case, George. You were the only detective in these parts, and the police are so unreliable in little cases like these. So I planted the cocaine, knowing you would come to talk to me. I let you think that you extracted the information that I didn't want to give you, but I was happy to give it to you all along."

"I sent some goons after you to make you come back to see me. I never intended them to be any threat to you, but in the unlikely event that they were, I was standing with a sniper rifle on the building across the street, looking in your window. You can't imagine how worried I was when Alice here got in the way of my shot. If you died, the plan would be ruined. The goons would be traced back to me by the police. You can't imagine how relieved I was when Alice did my job for me and killed the one threatening you."


"So you came to see me and I caught you. Alice was so gullible."

He looked at her. "Your sister is dead, I'm sorry to say. We had to kill her so if you called her no one would answer."

Alice broke into a fresh cycle of sobbing now, much louder then before. He walked over to me, taking the gun out of my pocket.

"I was counting on you bringing your revolver like you normally did, but you brought your shotgun. I spent a lot of time looking for this gun. Your apartments wreck. But I guess that's just how criminals live."

He took out a bullet and placed it in the magnum, spinning the chamber around so it would fire.

"So now you know the story. I had to give you the magnum because it was the only thing you could open the door with. Leaving the door unlocked would not give us enough time to prepare ourselves for what would need to happen next. We chased you into this room, and I knew you would kill John here, thinking it was whoever was talking. But as a great mastermind, I needed to think of one more thing. Why would you kill John? What reason would you have?"

He looked back at Alice.

"You were cheated on. Your lover, Alice over there, cheated on you with John. So you tied him up and killed him."

He raised the revolver and fired before I could do anything to stop him.

Alice never even had a chance to scream. She hit the floor, dead, a bullet hole in her chest.

"But you were also mad at Alice for cheating, so you killed her, too. How very cruel of you."

He looked around at the carnage he had created.

"The police will be here soon, detective. I must be going."

He tossed the gun to me and walked out of the room.

The lock made a clicking sound.

The End.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Blog Horror, Part 4

The knife bit through the last of the rope, and I crumbled to the floor, my feet still tied to the hook on the wall.

I cried out in pain as my legs bent in ways that i'm certain they aren't supposed to, but at least I was free. I had carefully sawed through the rope tying my hands together by holding the knife in my mouth. I then had tried to untie my feet, but I couldn't reach them. I instead was forced to untie my arms first, and that's when I had fallen.

Twisting round as best I could, I cut the rope that bound my feet to the wall. Standing up experimentally, I discovered that, although they were aching, they weren't severely damaged.

Alice smiled. "Great. Now untie me."

As I began working on the ropes on her hands, I asked her if she knew what was going on.

"No idea," she replied, watching the knife saw back and forth, "I got a call this morning that John-"

"The ex?"

"Yeah. It was from a guy that said my sister had been killed, and I was to meet him at the corner of 4th and Maple."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

"I was afraid she might be involved. Someone tried to kill you last night, George. I don't think this is just my apartment being robbed. I think this could be something bigger."

I smiled grimly, "We're currently being held prisoner in what I don't doubt is a sort of criminal hideout. I'm starting to agree with you."

She continued. "I don't know what's going on with my sister, but when I got to the place, it was deserted. Three men burst out of the building behind me and injected me with a serum of some sort. I woke up here."

I finished cutting and she jumped down from the wall. Picking up my revolver, I remembered that today I had brought my shotgun.

I swore.

"What?" Alice asked, trying to open the door.

"I didn't bring pack my revolver today. They must have broken into my apartment to get it. It doesn't make sense. Why would they?"

"Beats me," Alice replied, "Did they leave you any ammunition?"

I looked in the gun. "A single bullet. That's odd. Well, I know how we're going to use it."

"How?" Alice asked, turning to look at me.

Pulling up my gun quickly, I sent the round blasting through the green door, next to the knob. It swung gently open.

"That's how." Pocketing the gun, I grabbed the knife and ran through the door. I was in a hallway with bleak cement walls similar to the one in my cell. When I came to the end, I heard shouting and running feet to my right. Without pausing, I continued sprinting to the left. This hallway was a dead-end, save one green door at the very end.

When I came to it, I yanked it open. Alice ran through as I slammed the door, locking it behind me.

We were, once again, in a pitch-black room.

"Hello, detective. How are you on such a fine evening as this?"

"Well I'm a bit ruffled, seeing as hundreds of goons are attempting to kill me."

"Always the comedian, our detective. And Alice, his unlikely romantic partner. When I thought of this scheme, I never envisioned you two as a couple, but it makes it that much more interesting."

He paused. The silence was so tense, I almost wished him to keep talking. I was following his voice, trying to seek him out in this dark.

"You must realize by now that you both have played into my hands this entire time. Even as we speak the police are coming, and they will arrest you both."

I was closer. I took out the knife, walking closer.

"And do you know what it will be for?"

I jumped, yelling. I felt my knife sink into a human body, and then warm blood on my hands.

"The murder of our friend Mr. Michaelson."

The lights came on.

A metal pole was imbedded in the concrete in front of me, behind it standing the masked man and two armed body guards. Tied to the pole was John himself, bound and gagged, looking terrified.

I looked down at my hand in horror, knowing exactly what I was going to see.

I had just killed John Michaelson.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Blog Drama, Part 3

I stepped into the bright sunlight, straightening my tie. Glancing quickly at my watch, I walked down the street.

Alice had gotten a call on her cell-phone at about four in the morning. She had answered cooly, but gotten more frantic as the call went on. She had hung up and I had asked her what that was.

"It was... nothing. Nothing."

She had got dressed and quickly left.

That couldn't be good.

At eight o' clock, I had left myself. My normal morning ritual this morning differed slightly when I loaded my shotgun and put in a bandalier over my shoulder.

Normally I took my revolver, but today was different.

I was meeting Alice's ex.

Meeting someone's ex is never a pleasent experience, especially when there was a good chance this person's ex would be trying to kill you.

But first I had a personal errand to take care of.

I had to talk to Peter.

Making a left, I kept walking as the buildings around became more decrepit. When I finally came upon the alleyway, it was empty.

I swore under my breath and turned around when the window to my left exploded.

Blackness cut into the edges of my vision as I landed in the middle of the street.

Someone came up to me, smiling a crooked smile, and hit me with something.

And everything went black.

I woke up in blackness.

I didn't know if I was awake, but I was pretty sure. I felt duct tape on my mouth and ropes tying me to a hard surface.

The lights came on.

As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw Alice, bound to a table, looking frightened.

We were in a bleak, grey room. There was a grimy green door to my right.

I looked at Alice and tried to calm her down.

It's difficult to do when you're tied down, but she seemed to get the message. She stopped straining.

The door opened and someone in a hood walked in wearing a face mask. He ripped off the duct tape covering our mouths and gave me a knife. Walking over to Alice, he ripped out my revolver. She cowered, but he simply placed it on the table next to her. Nodding his head at me, he left, locking the door behind him.

Alice looked at me.

"Now what?"