Sunday, June 25, 2006

Big doin's...

...Yes, "doin's" is a word! First off, there's a Taco Bell in Charlestown now! Yeah! It's kind of pathetic how exciting that is...
Secondly, my sister and I are planning a bit of a Independence Day celebration thingy. We were going to actually have it on the 4th (yeah, we're crazy like that) but it turns out that our mom's boyfriend wants to have a little cookout of his own (in his defense, he does traditionally have one), so instead of opening the door for blatant combatism (is that a word?) Christine and I are going to be the bigger men (teehee) and have our thingy on the 2nd. I have to admit, it is gratifying that I'm getting a laugh every single time I've invited somebody to our "Fourth of July party on the second..."! I'm not saying that we're in any kind of competition with Gary or anything...but our party's gonna be way better! We're going to have cupcakes! Quite possibly in a flag formation.
Speaking of getting laughs, Christine and I have also come up with the improv skit idea for our grandmother's birthday (July 8th). Tell ya what, I've never felt this much pressure over it (not that I'm losing sleep). After doing so bad on the last one I feel that we had better make this one mighty good! I must redeem myself! ;)

And now on to Critiquer's Corner. Let me know what you think about this little piece. All you need to know is that Sam is a spy who has been captured along with his partner Jared in Saudi Arabia. Those with finer sensibilities may not want to read this. Blood does come into the picture.

~ Sam paled visibly as his tormentor; Mohamed el Akbar, or Warren as Sam liked to think of him, strode in. Sam could feel his pulse quicken, throbbing in his neck.
Sweat ran down his back, mixing with blood, and seeping into the many lacerations, causing them to sting and burn worse then ever. He felt lightheaded and nauseous. As a gentle reminder that he was still alive, every little while his legs would go into vicious cramps.
Akbar circled around behind the chair and began to fasten Sam’s elbows together with a thin length of nylon rope.
“Now Mr. Evens, perhaps this evening you will decide to help us out? What do you think?”
Sam gritted his teeth and tried to clear the dense fog that was choking his logical cognition. “I have nothing to tell you. You have the wrong person. I know nothing!”
Akbar calmly and carefully finished tying off Sam’s elbows and then attached the rope to a pulley hanging from the ceiling.
“Come now, I think we both know better.” He pulled the rope taut and Sam gasped as the pressure on his shoulders moved and pulled at his broken ribs.
“Why were you in Coustani? What did you find there?”
At the blatant lack of an answer Akbar pulled the rope tighter putting most of Sam’s weight on his upper arms and contorted shoulder sockets. Sam thought for an instant that they just might rip off all together, and what was more, that that could only be an improvement. He writhed, as if that would help, trying to convince himself that this was just another thing to fuel his anger. Let your rage take over and it doesn’t hurt so bad. At least, that’s what Jared always said.
“Why was your friend always in the consulate?” Akbar demanded.
“I don’t know!” Sam screamed.
“Liar!” His captor roared back.
Sam’s head slumped on his chest. Akbar let the rope loosen again and strolled around the chair, slowly, deliberately. Then a very unexpected thing happened. Sam began to laugh, quietly, weakly, but definitely derisively. He raised his head to meet Akbar’s eye with a hard glare.“So I’m a liar am I? You’re torturing me for information that you’re not even sure I have and you’re accusing me of being the evil person?” He laughed again, and glanced around the room, returning his gaze to Akbar. “Am I the only one that finds that ironic?”, he gasped, wincing every time he took a breath.
~

So whatcha think? If you liked it, then I take credit for writing it. If you didn't like it, then I stole it from a Star Trek fan fiction site (only the names were changed to protect the innocent).

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Flaming mass of wreckage...

...That's what the long form improv skit that my sister and I did on Father's Day turned into. Ok, first a bit of background. A couple years ago my aunt turned 40 and was extremely bummed out about it. Being the caring, feeling people that we are, my older sister Christine and I composed a rather humorous, but flattering poem about our aunt and called her up to read it to her, deciding at the last minute that we should read this as two British people, living in London (in a cardboard box as it turned out) and writing these birthday greeetings for a living. The poem was a huge hit, and instead of just dropping character when it was done we continued on and improvised a dialogue that was about 30 minutes long. It was a huge hit, and quite funny if I do say so myself. Made our aunt's day! Flush with our sucess, a year later we pulled it off again, this time with a song about how rotten people are, and two totally different characters. Somehow this "tradition" grew and we were expected to do these little skits for everyone's birthdays and then eventually, all holidays in general. Fine by us, we love making stuff up! Most of the time we would have no idea what we would be doing until a few hours or even minutes before we went "on stage" so to speak. Usually we only went armed with a central idea to base the scene on and the accents with which to build the characters around. Maybe (probably) our extended family and/or friends are just easily amused, but most of the time, we killed. Well, this Father's Day, yes this Father's Day, June 18th, my sister and I absolutely bombed. If we had stopped after about 2 minutes into the skit, we might have escaped, but we didn't. After 5 or 6 minutes we finally wrapped it up, rather abruptly. Some of the more polite folks there claimed that "No, no, it was great, you guys were funny!" but we're not that stupid! We know when we fail miserabley! I believe we have pin-pointed the issue. Firstly, having nothing prepared, and very little time we decided to use a skit that we had done before for my aunt's birthday. She was the only one that saw it, so we figured it would be fresh for everybody else. What did not occur to us is that by using characters that we already knew, we had to try to find lines that fit those characters, instead of just flowing with the "feeling of the moment" and letting the characters build themselves. We were recycling, and we knew it! At the start of it we got in a few good lines, but then it just started petering out. In our defense, we saw what was happening and didn't let it go on for another five or ten minutes, but still, it was a big disapointment. Never will I try to reuse a character again! An accent, yes. A character, no.
The moral of the story children, is recycling is bad for the environment!

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Let's take another crack...

...at actually writing a post with a body instead of just a topic, however classy the latter may be.
Alrighty then, the game that I was proposing before was one I like to call: "What the bleep is that picture of?!?"
Here's the picture:
Take your best guess, write it on a $50 bill, read the rest of the post, find the answer at the end, and mail the $50 to me.

And now news!
I went spelunking the other day! Yeah! Under our house. There's a leak in the water main. Yup, you heard right. A leak in the water main. And let me tell you something. It is not cozy and fluffy under our house! It is wet(!), and muddy(!), and spidery, and cramped, and cold, and dark, and every other nasty adjective that you can think of. Picture in your mind some poor soul (not claustrophobic thankfully) crawling into this tiny, nasty, horrible space, taking a good look at the pipe, the leak, judging the size of both, estimating where exactly under the house it is, and then laboriously snaking her way back out. And now picture (*! THOSE PERSONS WITH WEAK STOMACHS OR PALLID DISPOSITIONS SHOULD STOP READING NOW !*) that self same person shaking the leaves, sand, mud, dead bugs, and Lord only knows what else out of her underwear. Now I know what you're thinking! And you're wrong. The picture at the top is not of me burning down the house. Guess again. The yard is far to wet by now for the house to burn anyway.
In other news, mom still isn't sure about the wedding thing, but she is thinking of things like: "What am I going to do with the house full of stuff? I won't want to take most of it if I do go through with this."
I just told her not to burn her bridges before she'd counted them.
Speaking of burning things, it's now time for the recipe of the day! Assemble french bread, turkey breast, pepper jack cheese, a bit of mustard, and Doritos into a sandwich (yes, put the chips on the sandwich!). Try it, it's good. I can tell by the look on your face that you don't believe me, but that's what I'm eating right now! As we speak. Seriously.
And now to the Health Forum! Tomorrow I go to get my second PPD test for work. For some reason they want to make sure that I don't have TB. The first one I had no reaction to at all. Nothing, not a bump or a bruise or anything, so that's good.
In the Popular Entertainment Forum I must mention that I got the new Narnia movie and watched that for the first time. I wish I had taken the time to see it on the big screen, but ah well, such is life. It was really good. Awesome effects, uber cool, dramatic battle scene without the viewer actually ever seeing a drop of blood. Very tastefully done in my opinion. I don't like gore. It was dramatic enough that I will watch it a couple more times, but well enough done that a small child could watch it. Good music score too. I give it a lot of thumbs up.

Ok, it is now time to see if you figured out what is in that picture. If you guessed that it is my 9 year old brother burning his school in effigy, then you're right! Yup, he built a model of his school out of cardboard boxes and set it alight (under supervision of course). His great loathing of organized education and abiding love of fire were momentarily combined in that one simple arsenistic action. Goodness knows what kind of psychosis this has awakened in the boy! His advice to get the most out of the viewing: "Imagine that that's really the school and you're just watching it from far away!"

The moral of the story children, is if you are going to be groveling underneath a house, don't wear expensive underwear.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Friday, June 09, 2006

Getting good reception...

..Speaking of reception, I'm a receptionist now. I spent my first shift today actually at the desk learning the job from a lady named Wilma and I'll be doing the same thing tomorrow and Sunday. Next weekend I should be flying solo. It's actually fairly interesting. More then just answering the phones at any rate. You have to keep a lot of stuff in order.
In other news, I got a call about my baby, by which I mean my horse. Apparently he got a cut just above his right, front hoof that was bleeding pretty bad. The Thompson's got the vet out and he bandaged it and gave him a tetanus shot. I miss him. A lot.
Moving on, I am now on academic probation! Yeah, fun huh? Stupid chemistry! Just when I'm getting used to Purdue they start threatening to kick me out! Ahh...I remember the good ol' days...back in physics III...back when I actually had a GPA. Grrrrrrrrrr. So this means that I will be dropping at least one of the aero courses that I got in for this fall and switching it for something soft and fluffy that I can be sure I'll actually pass! Tell me something. Why the heck did I choose engineering? There are so many fields that I find interesting and that I actually excel at, but noooo, I have to go and bust my butt to get an engineering degree! Geez...I think there's something wrong with me.
Going to a different subject, my grandmother heard somewhere (and also seems to be completely convinced of her facts) that Gary actually proposed to mom and mom answered with a resounding "Yes!". Which didn't actually happen. I know cause my mom told me, and my mom is never wrong! And because I think she'd know if there was a feller in front of her down on one knee. At least I sure hope she would!
I've been doing a bit of oil painting lately. It's very relaxing. And I actually did one that didn't turn out to bad last week. It's of some mountains with a mist covered lake in the foreground. I took a picture of it, which I might post later. It's not a very good picture. That coupled with not a very good painting makes me look bad. :-) You don't want that, do you?
Anyway, today I'd like to share with you a passage that I've really, really liked for a long time. Read it out loud, a couple of times even, to get the full effect.

~ At the hole where he went in Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist--
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)
~

A piece of: "Rikki Tikki Tavi" from "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Alrighty then...

...Because I haven't posted in a bit (I tried, I really tried! Stupid dial-up!) You un's out there won't know that I have a new job. Receptionist at a retirement home every other weekend. Anyways, today is my first day of training, so I thought I'd drop a line or two here while waiting for my hair to dry. (Yes! I know you're shocked, but I did in fact bathe!) I will write again tonight perhaps with other news and goings-on, because a lot is goings-on. haha
Until then!
~ One day you're going to look back on this...and ram into a parked car. ~