I was talking to someone via email (someone who has been the subject of a prior post) and the subject of my philosophical attraction to water came up. I realized I've never posted about this, but that it's something fairly relevant to my life right now, and decided that I should take the part where I explained it and turn it into a blog post.

To give some more context than the post provides, the reason it came up is because I'd like to get a tattoo that symbolizes some of this sometime in the near to medium future. I have grand plans of doing a shoulder sleeve based on the theme somehow, but that's too ambitious for a first time tattoo I think. Also too expensive for right now. So I'm thinking of getting a simple small one on the opposite shoulder (by which I mean upper arm shoulder, not upper back) I'd eventually like to sleeve. I have a small sketch of my own that's derived from the alchemical symbol for water (which is basically an upside-down triangle) and more literal gilding and colouring. I'll post that at some point later.

For now, this is the painting I'm talking about:


There's a painting my grandmother made when I was a kid of a scenic river view on the top going into a dark waterfall on the bottom and somehow this painting resonated with me really strongly. The contrast between the bright top and stark bottom, the powerful flow of water, etc. That and the fact that my grandpa was very very dear to me, and the painting brings back good memories, means this painting means a whole lot to me.

I loved this painting so much I made sure that I got it when my grandma sold her house and needed to get rid of things. It hangs above and to the side of my TV now. I don't really know if she knows how much this painting means to me as I don't really talk to her very much these days. Which is something I should probably change.

A long time later I read the Tao of Pooh, and while the book is just an introductory text on Taoism (and given the subject matter and such not to be taken entirely seriously) a lot of it resonated with those earlier feelings. Water is, by my understanding, of great symbolic importance in taoism as a shaper. Go with the flow, let the water carry you, shape you, etc. I've found that whenever, in my life, I try too hard to go against the natural flow of things, that's when things become complicated and difficult. Oddly, I feel like I'm doing that right now in my career, and I'm feeling that result a lot lately. I'm trying to find a way to get what I want *and* go with the flow and it's proving difficult.

I don't consider myself taoist by any means, since I know very little about it and tend to think of myself as a very unspiritual person, but learning about it has helped me be able to express fundamental things about myself, my personality, and my life that I might not have otherwise been able to. The symbolic power of water struck me long before I was able to express it, but reading that book focused it for me.

So I inherited an unfortunate trait from my mother's family: Male pattern baldness. I have a very visible receding hairline and some noticeable thinning on the crown. So far, my response to this has been to let my hair go shorter and shorter, but it's getting to the point where there may need to be a final solution: Go completely bald. I've resisted this a long time, probably mostly out of fear. So the question is, should I do it?

I'm very likely to try it out when I go on a family vacation to the Dominican Republic over Christmas either way, but I'd like to gauge what people think of the possibility. Especially people who know me in person, but random input is always welcome. There's also the question of how facial hair fits into this, as I'm exceptionally lazy about shaving I alternate frequently between beard and clean/stubbly.

Poll #1486905 Shaving
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Should I shave my head?

If I do shave my head, what should I do about facial hair?

So Nancy and I went to a wedding yesterday. A big, all-day, grand affair with five course meal, open bar, lots of dancing, etc. It put me in mind of how my feelings about relationships and marriage have evolved over the years. Nancy and I were married just over 8 years ago (8 years as of June) and it's been interesting. We married young, compared to our peers, but our marriage has not, as yet, evolved into the nesting/kids/house in the burbs kind of thing that most people seem to consider their wedding a declaration of intent to do. It's possible we never will reach that stage, as I have serious issues with the concept of suburban living and Nancy has serious issues with the idea of using her body as an incubation device.

To put it in perspective, we were married (just) before 9/11. Much as I hate to say it, the world did seem to change with that event, if not in fact then at least in perception. Since then, our society has seemed to stratify along religious lines in a way that didn't seem to exist before, or at least was more subtle and unquestioned. In a way, I credit that stratification with the rise of the gay marriage debate (where the non-religious, emboldened by the emboldening of the religious right, felt a need to push back with their agenda), which has had a huge impact on my views of marriage. It made me question a lot of things about the institution, its origins, and its value.

The honest truth is that if I could go back, I would not have gotten married. Looking back at it, I can see the societal pressures that led us to make that move: the desire for acceptance and confirmation from family and friends as to the validity and maturity of our relationship being the prime motivator, with general background pressure along the lines of that it's just what you do when your relationship gets serious. We had no big proposal, no real idea of what this meant on a core level to ourselves, it was almost entirely motivated by external forces.

Which is not to say that I don't love Nancy, or that we're breaking up or some such nonsense. I'm as committed to Nancy as I ever have been. She's my right hand in all my endeavors and the most important person in my life. I don't see that changing any time soon. But in the end, that has nothing at all to do with the fact that we're married. It has to do with how compatible we are, how much we care about each other, and how devoted we are to making it all work. Those things exist whether or not you get married.

Seeing and recognizing that there has been, all along, an entire community of people relegated to not having this societal validation of their relationships has somewhat permanently damaged my impression of the institution. That that community is not far removed from me, being married myself to someone who is bisexual (and who was or believed herself to be gay before we fell for each other) and knowing a lot of gay people, means this is a somewhat personal concern for me. Though I believe strongly in marriage equality, I would honestly be just as happy with the abolishment of it as a legal construct altogether replaced completely with common law shared domicile benefits and a simple procedure for establishing someone as power of attorney and visitation rights. That'll never happen, but it would work well enough for me.

The fact that I came to a realization several years ago that I don't buy into monogamy as a concept, to the point that we consider ourselves polyamorous in theory if not always in practice, also factors into this. I won't go into too much detail about that here, since I usually lock posts relating to poly more tightly than I intend to lock this one. If you're curious about details on this, let me know and I can add you to the filter or answer any questions you might have.

Interestingly enough, while I feel negatively about the institution of marriage itself these days, I actually really love the idea of weddings. In reality, they take many forms aside from celebrations of legally empowered marriages: commitment ceremonies, handfasting ceremonies, anniversary parties, etc. Everyone loves a good party, and a declaration of love is as good a reason to throw one as any. Though I would never throw one as extravagant as the one I went to last night (unless I got rich enough to throw them as a matter of course), I certainly appreciate the idea of them, and think there should be more of them.

So basically, if I could do a Quantum Leap kinda thing into myself at 19, I'd go for the wedding, but screw the marriage. My feelings for Nancy are none but my own, and I don't need a piece of paper to prove it.

Oh, and it's a hell of a lot easier to dance at a party where you don't know anyone there. That was a good self-discovery too.

I'm moving my yearly fringelog off my LJ and onto its own blog. You can check out http://www.goestoshow.com for my reviews this year.

I'll probably post some summary posts with links as I go, though. So far, I've reviewed the following:
Addition: An Unconventional Love Story *****
Sex-Bot ***
Douche//Awesome ***1/2
LOVEHATEKILL *****
Bashir Lazhar **1/2

(originally posted on my other blog, which is mostly for more professional content. This has an element of both, kind of, so I'm crossposting it here)

A few things converged to make this blog post happen, and it is a strange and mysterious convergence. First of all, the Fringe is coming up in a few weeks, and I'm super excited about it (more on that in a few paragraphs). Second, Mack Male posted a blog post to titled Discovering Live Theatre describing his early experiences with the Fringe festival. And then, last but not least, someone on an IRC channel I sit in mentioned that he saw Philip Glass today.

To which I answered, "did he buy a loaf of bread?"

Explaining this strange response requires going back to August 1997 or so (might have been 1998). You see, my father worked in Edmonton while our family lived in Red Deer. One thing that could always be counted on in those days is that my father would be out experiencing the Fringe Festival in late August. His claimed record stands, as I understand it, somewhere north of 30 plays in one season. This is a lot of plays to take in in one week. I thought it was a strange habit and didn't really get it at the time.

Well, I was up in Edmonton visiting him and at the same time getting my first taste of the Fringe experience myself. One of the plays I saw was this one, as part of a series of shorts (don't worry, it's not long -- just 5 minutes. Stick with it to the end):


This play, and all the other David Ives' plays that were performed as part of this set entranced me. It was probably my first real experience with stage performance, and it was love at first sight. I've since seen a lot of plays, both at the Fringe and outside of it, and my love of stage theater has only increased since that experience. Especially small, short, quirky plays like this one. This play makes words dance in a way I'd never thought possible, and that is very powerful to an avid reader like me. It's like interpretive dance (which I can't get into at all) but for book nerds.

I've been back to the Fringe at least 5 of the intervening years, seeing anywhere from one play to my record of somewhere around 20 a couple years ago. Every year when I get my grubby hands on the Fringe guide, the first thing I do is search through it for any sign of a David Ives' set. Someday, someone will do it again, and I'll be there day one to see it.

But this leads to the really interesting thing I've learned about the Fringe, as well as myself, in all these years. I should explain that in the printed form, this play is very vague. There's little stage direction, mostly just words. This leaves it highly open to interpretation. I suspect that every performance of this play is quite different, and looking at all the different youtube videos that suspicion seems to be the case. The one linked above is the closest to my fragile memory of what is to me the original of this play, but others may find other versions superior.

What I've learned is this: The beauty of the Fringe is the unique experience. No other entertainment venue I've ever experienced is so thoroughly dedicated to providing new, fresh, and unique experiences. Films are mass created for a mass market pretty much by nature. Music is likewise generally created always with the goal of the mass market in mind, and festivals around music are generally designed to pick out the next piece of the collective unconscious and give it wider voice.

But not the Fringe. Although I'm sure fame and glory are in the minds of more than a few of the playwrights, performers, etc. at the Fringe, it seems there's an effort to create something special and unique, often deliberately designed to not function well as a mass market piece. The actors and playwrights may go on to bigger and better things, but their little Fringe plays rarely seem to. In that sense, it's a venue for talent and not so much for product.

And that's what I love about it. That's what gets me back every year. It is my little rebellion against the collective consciousness, seeing things very few other people will ever see. Even fellow fringe lovers are unlikely to have seen the same segment of the hundreds of plays on offer as I did.

I'm gonna warn readers of my blog now: In a couple of weeks, there'll be a lot of posts about plays I'm seeing. I do it every year, and this year will be no exception.

I was up late last night (not unusual for me lately) watching something kind of amazing unfold. The Alberta Legislature was debating a new version of their human rights legislation that included two major changes:
- on one end of the spectrum, the addition of sexual orientation to protected status'. Technically, this was just a gesture, as sexual orientation has been a protected status in common law for years due to being read in by the courts.
- on the other end, they added the rights of parents to remove their children from classes with content relating to religion, sexuality, and sexual orientation. A right that, by my understanding, was already present in the school act.

Now, Alberta's legislature is a perpetual majority government by the Progressive Conservative party, and that party is capable of essentially controlling all legislation that passes through the house. They really wanted the latter and seemed to think the former would be a good olive branch to prevent argument.

But that's all politics as usual. Simple background information. What happened last night was that somehow, people on twitter were rallied to watch the debate unfold over the streaming video the Alberta government provides of legislature proceedings. If it had just been people on there bitching and moaning, it also wouldn't have been very special.

But last night, there weren't just average citizens participating. There were actually MLAs on twitter discussing and debating with the twitter users. Granted, most of the MLAs participating were backbenchers or otherwise not taking direct part in the debate on the floor, but they were there and they were talking to the very people they represent while making law.

I know that there are people concerned at adding distractions to people on the floor of governing bodies, but I honestly think this should be encouraged. I couldn't help but think I was seeing some element of the future here, where people are moved closer to their representatives in government and able to influence them more directly. And anyone who's ever watched CPAN knows there's plenty of zoning out, reading magazines (one MLA last night was reading a magazine while the MLA next to him was debating), chattering, etc. If their time is going to be wasted, I'd rather it be wasted on us.

I do think the MLAs could stand to learn some of the twitter conventions a bit better. If they'd used hash tags, it would have been easier to follow their discussions. Also, if more of the left side of the house (Libs and NDP) had been on that would have been nice too. I'm a little shocked to see the Conservatives on the forefront of this trend.

If you want to read the discussion on twitter about bill 44, you can go here.

I went into A Year of Winter not really knowing what I was getting into. I went largely on the basis of the author, Scott Sharplin. I have not seen a lot of his plays, but I have found it fascinating to follow his career since I found his blogs about touring his show, Inferno Sonata, on the Fringe circuit last summer. Although these two plays (the only of his I have seen as far as I know) have been quite cryptic, Scott's openness in talking about the process behind the plays he writes (even the ones I haven't seen) has been absolutely fascinating and enhanced my experience as a theatre-goer. I wish there was more of this out there. Maybe there is and I just haven't found it.

A Year of Winter worked really well for me. It's set up in two very clearly delineated Acts, a year apart from each other. A particular mental breakdown sets the two acts apart and it is almost as if it was two short plays rather than one long play. It's hard not to point out that I preferred the first act to the second, for its bare, no punches pulled, portrayal of mental illness and its inextricable relationship to the act of creation in the form of art. But I also don't think it would have been complete without the second act to give us perspective on the insanity. To show us the schizophrenic break that precipitated act 1.

Two devices were used in the play to facilitate hiding the truth the play draws towards. First, the masks. In his blog, Scott Sharplin seemed very worried that the masks would seem pretentious or draw people out of the play. But I think in the end, the way he brings them into the story long before their use helps avoid either of those pitfalls. It also helps that the first use of a mask to denote a character shift is an over-the-top caricature of a radio personality. It's hard to worry about the mask when such a flamboyant character is on the stage. And by the time a more reasonable, understated character is on the stage using a mask, it doesn't matter anymore.

The other device is portmanteaus. The characters in the play have their own little language made of joining words together into new or existing words. It's a code that only they understand and that the audience is forced to learn as the characters rediscover their lost meanings. It also lends a realistic playfulness to their relationship that, in moments of clarity, contrasts the starkness of their illness.

Although the ending was touching and very powerful to me, I think it could have been improved. The first act has us looking at the inside of this relationship. From the point of view of the people inextricably entwined in schizophrenia, one way or another. Act two starts off by giving us an outside perspective, showing us the view from outside. Through the masks we finally see characters who were only presented off stage left, never seen, only occasionally heard or heard of. But in the final part of the second act, we seem to shift back to the insane point of view, and the shift is jarring.

The other downside to this play, from my point of view, was that while it seems well researched (mentions of an actual modern drug for treatment of schizophrenia in addition to the believable presentation of paranoia help lend credibility to the research) it does seem to skate the edge of an age-old misunderstanding of the disease that I won't explain here (as it would be a bit of a spoiler). I do not think this is intentional, but it could be taken that way.

The acting was all around quite good. Garett Ross as Terry and all of the masked characters pulled off the switching of characters well, doing each of them convincingly even if a couple of them were (necessarily) a little over the top. Tracy Penner as Alice did a good job as well, though in moments of non-lucidity had a tendency to play things a little over the top. She also seemed very familiar, though I can't remember where from. I didn't recognize any of the plays listed to her credit in the program, but perhaps she was in a fringe play I've seen.

Overall, I was quite impressed. The play ran the gamut of emotional responses, hitting the funny bone and plucking the heartstrings equally and appropriately. It kept its secrets well until the 11th hour and then revealed them with resonance. I anticipate Scott's next play, about Louis Riel and the Northwest Rebellion (the name escapes me at the moment).

So, tonight Nancy and I went to one of the sets of the New Works Festival's plays at the UofA. It was only $5 each, which is a pretty amazing price for four plays. Given the price, and the fact that it was student-run, my expectations weren't very high. But I was actually blown away by them. I would have easily been happy with paying Fringe rates ($10-14) for each of them (except the short one at the start, but that's not because it was bad but because a 5 minute play can't stand alone).

The first short one was called Vin-Oh by Anna Paquin. It was basically about a guy who like home-cooked traditional desserts like his mom makes, and his girlfriend who prides herself on making fancy chef-style desserts. When she finds out, she's disturbed that he goes elsewhere for his desserts. It packed a lot of innuendo and funny into a short package.

The second one, Pomplemoussy was by Elena Belyea. It was about a girl who's questioning her sexuality when she suddenly finds a boy she kind of likes at a gay party. In a lot of ways, it's a lot like Chasing Amy told from the girl's point of view. It had some pretty funny moments (like her first viewing of a penis "It's really funny looking, isn't it?"), and was overall very good. The only complaint I'd have is they were too ambitious with their set design. Too much shuffling things around before the show and between scenes. It really broke up the play and killed the flow. Overall it was pretty good.

The third play, All Matters by Peter Takach, was absurdity personified. The message seemed to be something along the lines of that words are more important than money, no matter what they are. I'm not sure I really 'got' it, but it was fun anyways. It reminded me incredibly of old LucasArts adventure games (made even more glaring by my recent playthrough of Day of the Tentacle). To the point that I think whoever wrote it could probably write a damn good absurdist adventure game centered around a Janitorial Administrator at a major company with big office. Damnit, no more new projects!

And last but not least, Electra by Morgan Smith was a modern retelling of the part of the greek epic cycle that concerns the various insanities of the Atreidai family after Agamemnon's return from Troy. It's a fairly loose adaptation, if I remember the story right, but interesting none-the-less. Interesting to see this kind of Greek story modernized, actually. Seems like the ones that involve family-sex, rape, and patri/matricide are left in their original greek form, or ignored altogether. It was easily the most well produced of the four, with a distinct intensity to all the performances that kept the audience rapt. The gunshots were a bit loud, but that may have been a really good thing. One should probably jump when one hears a gunshot. They also didn't always go off at the right time, but I imagine timing pre-recorded sudden sounds to a live performance is fairly difficult.

Overall, very impressed. Impressed enough to be seriously considering going to see the other four that are on tomorrow. I'm quite pleased. So far, what little off-season fringing I've done has been very successful.

So wow, lot's of stuff going on. For the last two weeks I've been working on a major component of the big picture that is my future plans. It's called CloudBridge, and I think it's pretty awesome. It's also effectively done, though still needs some polish.

I've also launched a site, called oncloud.org, which uses cloudbridge to basically act like a dyndns service for rails apps but with less in the way of firewall headaches. It is also pretty awesome.

And I've gotten onto twitter (late to the party on something yet again) and am enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. It's a lot like IRC, except it's like if you got all of efnet on one channel and had an opt-out ignore feature instead of opt-in (reverse those if the way I said it doesn't make sense to you).

I'm also now working only 3 days a week at nex, and that leaves me on day 2 of a 5 day 'weekend' (which really means 5 days of working on the important stuff).

I'm hoping I can find some time to start contributing to some other interesting open source projects as well. Drizzle looks really interesting. As does the just-barely-announced TinyRB.

Anyways, yeah. Interesting times. For the first time in a really long time I'm actually excited to be working on things, and am really interested in communicating about the things I'm working on. It's pretty awesome.

So, since I last updated, a lot has firmed up about where I'm going for the next little while. Part of that has meant getting back into coding in C++. And in fact, what I'm working on right now causes some flashbacks to something I was working on just before I got hired at Nexopia. I called it cabal back then, now I call it cloudbridge. And it is pretty awesome and part of a major shift in how web application serving works.

But that's only a piece of the puzzle of what I'm doing now. Not quite ready for the full reveal. If all goes well, I'll be able to say more at the end of the month.

But since I've been tagged several times now, I may as well do this damn meme that's going around. I have to admit, I think it's a pretty interesting one compared to most.

( 25 things... Meme behind the cut. )

I tagged some people on facebook and I'm way too lazy to figure out people on my friends list here to tag.

So... I have officially quit my job as of a couple of weeks ago. It's been an incredible ride with Nexopia, but things change. My plans to leave have been in the works for over a year now, with my original departure date planned for about now, then pushed back to the summer, and then pulled back to sooner. Officially my end date is mid-february, but I'll be taking severance to the end of March, and I'll probably really just be going gradually off the clock more and more over the next two months as I prepare what's next.

And what's next? Well... I'm working on it. And by it, I mean a lot of possible things. So until one or more pans out a bit more, I don't really want to talk about it much. But I do intend to blog some more. I don't do nearly enough talking about the things I work on or the industry I work in, and I should really change that.

Crazy times, I tells'ya.

I am really amused by this video on so many levels.

Ok, so did anyone else notice that the music they played after McCain's concession speech was the music from Crimson Tide? I found this weird at first, but then I realized there's some interesting symbolism in that choice.

In the first scene where that music plays clearly, the crew of the boat yells out a chant:
"GO 'BAMA -- ROLL TIDE"

Also that the movie is about a young black guy stealing command from an old white dude, but whatever.

I'm no pundit by any means, but I figure I should get my prediction out there now before real numbers come in. I think it'll be a huge win for Obama. I think the polls weren't reflecting the number of new voters who are voting today, and that most of those people are out for Obama.

Good luck, Americans!

Last play of the normal fringe! Well, this one was a good one to end off on. It was hilarious. It was so funny I bought the guy's album for $20. It was a humorous take on music history and a bit of theory.

It's one of the holdovers. If anyone still wants to see any more fringe plays, I recommend looking into this one as a holdover.

So yeah. This year I went to 23 shows, 20 of them unique. It's a record and I don't think I'll try and beat it. Any more and I'd forget 'em.

I think I need to make friends with some theatre geeks so I can keep up to date on theatre stuff all year instead of just packing it all into the week of the Fringe. Anyone know any local theatre people I can friend on here?

Incidentally, I find it funny that I can tell I've spelled theatre right when the spell-checker tells me I spelled it wrong.

( Occupied (low expectations, good show) )

( Anime! (Not what I expected, but really good for what it was) )

( Teaching the Fringe (incredible) )

Only one more left! My only regret is still not seeing any Die-Nasty. Ah well. Maybe I'll try to catch it during the regular season this year.

So I'm posting my impressions of Fringe plays on Facebook primarily, but I figure I should import them over here periodically. This post will be big, since I've seen 9 plays already. I'll cut tag them individually so they're still accessible but don't take up too much room.

( 25 Plays About...Love (really good) )

( The New Step (weird and not very pleasant) )

( B-List (awesome but not because of the play itself) )

( The Overnight (awesome, seeing again) )

( Liink and Zellda (not so hot) )

( See Bob Run (good but not my thing) )

( The Pumpkin Pie Show (awesome, seeing again) )

( Sad Victoria's Pelican Day (good) )

( Coffee Dad, Chicken Mom, and the Fabulous Buddha Boy )

Diablo II is still awesome.

I don't believe in new years resolutions. At least not as traditionally practiced. They're just sound bites to make it look like you're moving forward.

But I do believe in goals and plans. Last year, I decided to make a plan (not a resolution) while we were down in Vegas. I set a goal to get myself into shape. I planned to use the weight room and stationary exercise bike I had access to in my apartment building every day. And when summer came around, I planned to get a bicycle to keep that going. When we went out to buy a condo, I made it a primary issue that the place we buy have a pool so I'd have something other than weights to do this winter. I also planned to change my eating habits so I wasn't consistently overdosing on calories (no major changes other than that), first step being to cut out all sugar drinks altogether (yes, even juice).

I did it. Aside from a few weeks where I didn't make any serious progress (including most of August and last week), I consistently went down in weight and developed my muscle strength by a measurable amount. I'm not quite to my final goal (which is more of a body shape than a number), but I'm so close that I can taste it. And I did it without any really unhappy lifestyle changes.

I've lost approximately 60-70lbs in the last year (I only started keeping serious track in late May, so I don't have the exact starting point number except in memory, and that's a bit fuzzy). Which, for anyone who worries about this stuff, is within the 1-2lbs/week range that's considered safe. I did lots of homework before I started getting into this seriously. :)

( Graph from the end of May behind here... )

I didn't post about it until August, because I didn't want to set myself up for public failure. It seemed more valid to make a goal and keep it to myself, because then I was doing it *for* myself. This year I'm changing it up, and I'm actually going to say my goals on here. I've gotten a lot of confidence out of achieving my goals last year.

So, my goals for this year are:

• Finish the weight loss, and then maintain the body shape I want.
  
  
  • This one's just a continuation, so I don't need to do a lot of planning for it.
  
  
• Start my own business.
  
  
  • I need to figure out project(s) I want to start as a business by the end of January
  
  
  • Determine the funding and/or time I need to pull it off
  
  
  • Get the funding and/or time I need
  
  
  • Do it
  
  
  • (incidentally, if anyone's interested in helping with this one, or knows someone who might be, in whatever way possible for them, please do let me know)
  
  
• Learn to play the violin (cwazy, huh?)
  
  
  • Figure out as much as I can on my own, by learning some songs (currently working on The Godfather theme)
  
  
  • Take a few lessons to correct whatever I inevitably learned wrong and what I can't figure out on my own
  
  
  • Pick back up on my own
  
  

So that's my recap of 2007, and my plan for 2008.

Happy New Year, everyone.

You know that thing where people go on facebook and put in names of people they knew 10-15 years ago and find them through it?

Well, that just happened to me for the first time. He was one of my best friends from grade 6 through grade 8, which is also the only period of my grade school education I remember very well.

But.. he's apparently pretty religious. Not surprising, as his parents were as well and he was a bit of a momma's boy. I... well, I am not. Not only that, but I openly scoff at the sanctity of marriage and all that. So the question is, does it even make sense to contact him? Is the gulf of years and religious views between me and him likely to be too wide to even bother?

I've been reading old sci-fi short stories as an interim between reading actual novels. It's kind of amazing how the mood of sci-fi shifts over time. World War II and the atomic bomb had such a massive effect on science fiction mood that it's impossible to escape. The stories written between about 1950 and 1970 are so convinced of a dismal human future that it challenges the notion that science fiction is 'escapist.'

But I guess it's also inspiring. Because tonight I wrote a little short story of my own. For the first time in a long long time. And boy is it a sad one. I'll see about posting it if I still like it tomorrow.

I suspect that most people, when visiting a non-chain restaurant, don't wonder about whether they could manage to buy the restaurant and if it'd be a good investment... Honestly, there's a place downtown that I think has huge potential that it's not living up to and If I Were A Rich Man, badle-beedle-badle-beedle-beedle-bum, *ahem*, I would probably buy and try to make into what it could be. I think it's a business crush.

And, like many of my crushes, is probably doomed. After all, restaurants are the most likely type of business to fail. And boy howdy do they ever fail.

Also, who's the ghost who left a comment anonymously on my last post? I've ruled out all the likely suspects, I think.

It's been a while since I've posted here. At least, anything of consequence.

Over Christmas/New Years last year, we went to Las Vegas with Nancy's mom. The trip itself was fun. Las Vegas is like a big giant outdoor West Edmonton Mall. That comparison is actually pretty funny overall, because going to Vegas showed me just how spoiled WEM has made me. Going to the supposedly big malls along the strip (all attached to casinos, duh) was funny because we'd get from one end to the other and be like "wtf, that's it?" This post has been a long time coming. In fact, I kind of wanted to post about the feeling of something clicking after we got back, but I didn't want to jinx it or set myself up for a fall, as so many so often do after New Years. It wasn't a New Years resolution, and I don't think it had anything to do with the time of year at all. But I guess it worked out like one.

But anyways, I think something clicked while we were there. I can't really explain it, but when we got back I was much more motivated to do a lot of things I had wanted to do but never really did before. I started working out every day while it was still winter, and then got a used and then new bike over the summer and started riding that to work every day when it was nice. I also stopped drinking pop and juices on a regular basis (I figure it probably accounted for something like 1/3rd to 1/2 of my calorie intake alone). I didn't really change what I eat, even though it's not a particularly healthy diet, mostly just the quantities.

In that time, I have literally lost over 1/6th of my body weight and am managing to continue to lose it at a decent rate. If it weren't for the fact that I'm actually working pretty hard for it, I'd be worried at the loss. I have passed two major milestones that I set for myself and am well on my way to the third. I fit into shirts now that I originally bought as overshirts. My self-image has improved drastically and I've started to actually *like* caring how I look. Which is extremely strange.

I also switched from glasses to contacts, originally as a planned first step towards getting surgery, but the process of putting them in and taking them out isn't as tedious as I thought it would be at first (except while camping) so I'm not really so worried about going that extra mile anymore. This means my default avatar on here is probably not so accurate anymore.

On the dating front (remember, I'm poly), I can't say things have improved too much. I've been on a couple of 'dates,' basically people I've met on okcupid, but they didn't really turn into anything much. There's a waitress at a restaurant that I'd really like to ask out, but despite my feelings of having an improved self-image, I still think she's probably out of my league. Maybe I'll work up the nerve someday.

Professionally, I've been taking on more and more management responsibilities, and while there are definitely areas where I think I need improvement (mostly dealing with outside-company contacts and ensuring technical goals are met, not just coordination goals), I think I'm doing a pretty good job. I like my job a lot. I like the people I work with and I like that I'm getting the opportunity to shape the team I'm building.

So yeah. Life is good. It's been a very good year so far.

So my bank has recently decided to start DEMANDING security question/answer pairs for their web page login system. In order to log in, you MUST answer one of your security questions in addition to your password.

They give you 5 sets of questions to choose from and a freeform field to put the answer into. Am I the only one who sees the gaping stupidity of this? If they could allow you your own questions, maybe that'd be ok. But since all their questions are easily discoverable (stuff like maiden names, high school mascots, pets, best friend names, etc. In fact, the very things that all these years password security policy has advised you to KEEP OUT OF YOUR PASSWORD, and for very good reason), change really often (favorite magazine, favorite chocolate bar, favorite restaurant), or are very gender selective (favorite fashion designer -- and a big wtf to that one in general too).

If someone can take the time to find out your actual password, they can take the time to find these things out. There are only 5 questions, so at a minimum it'll take 5 random attempts at login from different computers over a couple of months to find out what they are and do some research without setting off alarm bells with the bank.

When are companies going to realize that security questions are a serious regression in security?

So, I defriended someone today. I'm sure a lot of people reading this do that all the time, or at least don't find it strange to do. But I sure do. When people talk about cutting down their friend list, I can't help but wonder why they feel the need to remove people from their life for the simple crime of not being interactive enough.

I was discussing this with Nancy, and it's obvious that we have really different ideas on this. I don't really believe in ever deliberately burning bridges with people, while she definitely feels that it's worth doing sometimes. Generally I think you can adapt any relationship to the level of trust it deserves.

But this time I feel really subtly deceived, and too confused by it to deal with it. Oh well.

qmail has a limit of 900 characters on email addresses it'll relay.

So, we were thinking of going to Rocky Horror this weekend at the Garneau. Only thinking, hadn't really decided yet. We went to the last one in Calgary while we were down there, and all we had to do for that one was show up, wait in line, and buy a ticket. We were there for one of the pre-shows (Nancy's Calgary crush was in it), and didn't stay for the whole thing, mainly because it was expected that we'd just go to the next one in Edmonton.

But no, it's sold out. Lame. I assume part of the reason for this is that in Edmonton, they only do it twice a year. In Calgary it seems to be a bimonthly thing. I don't really get why this is the case, but it seems to underscore a rather interesting difference between the two cities.

Anything non-mainstream seems to have a much larger culture in Calgary. Considering the political demographics, I would have thought exactly the opposite. Mind you, there are exceptions. The Fringe and the Edmonton Film Festival are, as far as I know, much larger events than their equivelents in Calgary. I'm not sure why this would be a good city for The Fringe, and not so good for Rocky Horror. I am definitely baffled.

I would think LJ Talk was cooler if I could use Google Talk's client to log into it. Don't suppose anyone knows of a jabber client that successfuly clones gtalk?

So it seems like there's been a lot of death around me lately. The most significant is the death of my father-in-law. It was a long time coming. He's been sick with thymic carcinoma, which was initially misdiagnosed as Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma -- More details on that can be found in Nancy's journal, for about 8 years now. That's over 2/3rds as long as I've known Nancy. It's about 1/3rd of her entire life.

So really, I have not much in the way of memories of him in his prime. Back when he wasn't ill, I would see him fairly regularly because I was often at their house. And they had a tradition of going out for pizza at Boston Pizza on fridays and I often went with them. But still, the overwhelming amount of my interaction with him involved him slouched in his big chair, occasionally shuffling off to the washroom. I hope that doesn't come across as rude, because I don't mean it to. It's just the truth.

And when I say this has been a long time coming, I mean it. He hasn't just been ill for 8 years, he's been to the brink of death and back so many times now that when I took off the second half of last week to go down to Red Deer with Nancy and he was mostly normal when we visited him right away that I thought this might be another time like when I was on a business trip in San Francisco (on which Nancy had come along) and we were called back urgently because it looked like he was going to die.

I would not have regretted it, and I didn't regret coming home from San Francisco either. Family comes before work, and that's a fundamental value for me. In both cases, I was doing it more for Nancy than I was for her father, but that doesn't change a thing. I wouldn't have been able to deal with not being there.

But when they went back the next day (without me because I had some work to do), and it was pretty clear this was not like other times. At 10:00AM the day after that, Nancy's mother (who had been teaching classes) called every one of our cell phones and her home line several times to let us know that the hospice he was staying in believed he was on his last legs, so off into a cab we got to be there.

And I can honestly say that this was the first time in my life that I have been present while someone died. And I can't even figure out for myself how I feel about that, let alone describe it. I wish I had been there when my paternal grandfather died. I consider him one of the most important people in my development as a person. I wasn't even there when they put down my cat Cujo when his mystery-probably-some-kind-of-cancer-illness got too bad for him to even stand up, though I did get to say goodbye in that case.

But I was there for this, and I feel a little guilty because I'm not sure I belonged there. Through all the events from Wednesday to Sunday, I felt like I should be an outsider to this event. No one made me feel that way. Hell, apparently when I wasn't there on Thursday he actually asked where I was, which surprised me.

And when, on Saturday, my mother-in-law was passing around a sheet on which to write a piece of the obituary, I couldn't think of anything. My parents were there and they could think of something. But I was at a complete loss. I don't really think I knew him well enough to write a piece of that.

All I know is what I can see of him in Nancy. And it seems somehow rude to consider the most important thing about a person the offspring they helped mold, but I do. Very much.

So here's to Geoff, and all he contributed to the world.

So we finally saw the play we'd been meaning to see all fringe last night. Man 1, Bank 0. This is a one man show about the man who acts in it, who cashed a $95000 junk mail cheque to his bank, and through various wranglings with his bank found that the money legally became his (mostly due to the bank's stupidity).

But the initial catalyst for all of it was the fact that the cheque met all the criteria for a valid cheque. It had "Pay to the order of," it had a date, it had a signature, it had a bank with an address, his name and address, and an account number. The only thing it had that made it questionable was the words "Non-negotiable" written along the top.

Which apparently serves for most forms of 'negotiable instruments,' but NOT cheques. So the cheque was a valid cheque. But the real fun comes when the bank discovers that it bounced. And it was definitely fun. One of the best plays I saw all Fringe, for sure.

If you ever get a chance to see this (and it won't be today, at it's last showing, because that's apparently already sold out as of last night's show. The audience was directed to say "neener-neener" at all the people we know who won't get to see it), do so. It's hilarious. You can also read the whole story if you want on his website.

Maybe he'll be at next year's Fringe. But then the one show I keep hoping does another Fringe performance every year never does, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

---

So to recap, my favorite Fringe Shows this year were probably the following, in no particular order:

• The Aleatory Project


• Get Off The Cross, Mary


• Man 1, Bank 0

We saw 15 plays total. I'd say about 5 of them were bad, 5 good, and 5 really good (three of which are my favorites above). That's not a bad ratio for an unjuried play festival, heh.

Taken from Bart and Elysia, on another site. Lack of cut tags on said site makes me post it here instead of there.

( How dumb am I? )


I'm 30% dumb! Which makes me less dumb than both the people I ripped this off from. I can't decide if that makes me happy or sad.

We didn't do the Fringe on Thursday or Friday, but we went yesterday and today. Yesterday we saw Beyond Therapy, 52 Pickup, and Jem Rolls Off The Tongue. And today we saw How Not to Suck. And now the fringe is over.

Beyond Therapy is about a man and a woman who's therapists have suggested that they place a personal ad and respond to a personal ad respectively. The man is bisexual and involved with a guy at the time, but his therapist never knows who he is and is completely unaware of the fact that he's not straight, let alone in a relationship with a man, hence the bizarre advice. In fact, everything about his therapist is strange. She has a snoopy doll that she talks to, she barks to encourage when she thinks her patient (or porpoise) is doing something positive, and she mixes up words (like dirigible for her secretary, or porpoise for patient). She also has no files in her briefcase, only slinkies, spam, and other toys.

Of course, the woman has slept with her therapist. And he's always trying to get her to do it again. Yet she always comes back.

Anyways, they meet at a restaurant that appears to have no waiters (in fact, they never get service at this place until pretty much the climax), and proceed to flirt in strange ways. Whether each thinks the other is independent, protective, or vulnerable seems to change with the wind, and they go quickly from taking everything too far (ie. marriage proposals) to being painfully aware of how strange they seem to the other. Which reminds me of some interactions in my recent life.

The play sort of goes on in this strange way for the whole thing. It is bizarre, but also really funny. If the Fringe weren't over I'd recommend it. I was especially fond of the way that it dealt with alternative relationship structures, because there seems to be so painfully little of that out there, even in the lowercase-eff-fringe of culture.

52 Pickup was the play I meant to see when I saw The Aleatory Project, which we saw on our second day and I really liked. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as fond of 52 Pickup as I hoped. Where The Aleatory Project tells a random story in linear order, 52 Pickup tells a linear story in random order. This was more like Memento, but where Memento tells a story that is in itself interesting (if not surprising) if you put it the right way around, this one tells only a relatively dull story.

The main plus to 52 Pickup is that the actors, when doing intimate scenes, had by far the best chemistry I've seen all Fringe. This may be because they're very much into each other, or it may be they're just good at it. But compared to the utterly laughable intimacy in Identity (man yanking himself up onto a table that the girl is sitting on), for example, it was very very well done.

Also, I totally have the hots for the woman in this play. She's adorable.

Jem Rolls Off The Tongue was spoken word/slam poetry, and as such not really my cup of tea. Rhythmic and rhyming poetry tends to lull my brain to sleep. It was ok for what it was, but it wasn't as good as Bold and Spiky (or at least not Bold). Not much more to say about that. I think there was something I wanted to quote here, but I can't remember it now.

How Not To Suck was sketch-comedy that was described, by Vue I believe, as being like early Kids In The Hall or SCTV, but it also said that doesn't do it justice. Well, I'm pretty sure that doesn't do KitH justice. It is much like the zany, bizarre, and bitter KitH sketches that nobody really gets, so I can see the resemblance. But it is nothing at all like their best work.

It had its moments, though. Just not really enough of them.

And that's it for the Fringe. We're going to see Man 1, Bank 0 on the holdover showing if we can, but otherwise it's all over. We saw 14 plays and the ratio of good to bad was actually pretty good.

So yeah, there'll be one more of these next weekend when we see the holdover.

Today we only managed to see one play: Get Off The Cross, Mary! The other play we meant to see was Man 1, Bank 0, which was having its last showing tonight. Maybe predictably, that last showing was sold out six ways from sunday, so we didn't manage to. So we just went home.

Get Off The Cross, Mary! was really damn funny though. It's about three puppets (who's careers supposedly started on The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock, but went downhill from there) who are trying to make a film comeback by making a movie about Jesus being gay. It opens with the auditioning of their handlers (you know, the people who stick their hands up the puppets' asses *wink wink*) and is hilarious pretty much from the first moment to the crazy musical finish ("At first I was afraid, I was crucified!").

Especially good was how they dealt with mistakes. This is the Fringe, so you don't really expect flawless execution. Least of all in the BYOVs, which are almost all bars. Three times during the play a bottle was dropped (once was me... oops) and every time they worked it into the play. When a line was dropped, it was similarily worked into the play. I found that pretty impressive, since most plays I've seen at the Fringe didn't deal very well with that sort of thing.

Good play. Totally worth it and I highly recommend it. It may even have tied with The Aleatory Project as my favorite of the Fringe so far.

---

On a completely unrelated side note, Kari Byron can explode my pants any day.

Today was apparently Naked People Day at the fringe. We saw Gayface (gay guys dancing around in underwear) and Girls' Guide (dominatrix woman with top nudity).

Gayface is, essentially, a collage of observations about gay life set to a story about a couple who have been together for well over a year and their inability to be in love with each other at the same time. The observation moments were depicted by wearing masks and were done sketchcom style. Had some really funny moments, like the old-folk gay guys lamenting about how easy it is to be gay in the big city these days compared to their experiences in the little towns: "In my day, we had to walk 5 miles uphill... IN THE SNOW... to get a trick. And we had to do it IN THE OUTHOUSE. And watch for CAYOTES all the time..... AND WE DIDN'T HAVE LUBE BACK THEN EITHER." Also amusing was the MSN smilie bit where two guys who want very different things try to hook up. One ends up with a rolleyes smiley after flipping the mask over, and the other a sadface.

While it was good, it didn't really feel like the main story went anywhere. It had the feel of a play with a political or sociological message, but never really managed to reach it.

But it was worth the ticket price. If nothing else, it was a fun time. Reminded me a bit of Kids in the Hall gay sketches. And some portion of the proceeds go to a good cause of some sort.

Girls' Guide is a one-woman show about a girl who goes to New York to try to break into Broadway, but all she really manages to break into is stiletto heals and a big black trenchcoat (which she foolishly thinks will work as a dominatrix outfit). Basically, while working as a waitress, she sees an ad on Craigslist for a dungeon that needs new dominatrixes for $75/hour. She goes to it, expecting training but it turns out the only training she can get is when someone is ok with having her watch (presumably because they like to be watched).

This one is not for the weak of stomach, that's for sure. It references acts that most people probably don't think too much about and does it like it's yesterday's meatloaf. But it was also really fucking funny. And the performer manages to get the audience involved in hilarious ways. If you sit in the front row, she may even sit on your lap. And like I said above, if you want a bit of a striptease, you'll get it here.

So today was a good day for us at the Fringe.

Today we say: The Bold and Spikey Poetry Show, Dragonfly: Identity, and Criteria. 2 good, one bad.

The Bold and Spikey Poetry Show was a couple of British guys reciting somewhat dour poetry about angry bus drivers, the end of the world, the idiocy of love (that one's a title), the right to life (but not the kind you're thinking of), and Veterans/Remembrance Day. All in all it was good, even if I do sometimes have trouble following rhyming poetry (it lulls my brain to sleep). These were pretty funny though. I liked Bold better than Spikey (names assigned by us as the audience, not by themselves -- one is bald and the other has a big purple spike in the front of his hair -- actually Gollum is a better name for Bold). Spikey overused repetition in his poetry and generally the delivery was harder to follow, while Gollum/Bold/Bald tended towards the lighthearted.

My favorites were the angry bus driver (about a hijacked bus where the bus driver starts to enjoy the things the hijacker wants him to do -- and has a bit of a surprise ending), the end of the world one (actually called The Day the Earth Stopped Turning) which was about the idea that humanity would be freed from its ills if it knew there was no more -- sort of a baudy version of Imagine maybe, and the Veterans Day one that Bold claimed was both commissioned AND banned by the BBC which ended in the sentiment (like it or love it) that "as long as we send people to replace them, we should wear our poppies with shame and not pride."

They were definitely worth it.

Dragonfly: Identity, on the other hand, was quite terrible. Overchoreographed, overdramatic, overeverything hackish story of a person with a big giant brain and a person with a big giant heart (and superpowers to match -- telepathy and empathy respectively). Granted that any story can be made to sound horrible with the right description, I really think this one was quite bad. Every now and then the story would break into a nativesque story about a dragonfly saving humanity by biting the first Man, thereby giving Man more heart so rather than destroying the world quickly, they would do it slowly and painfully (my embellishment, but it's pretty close).

The protagonist being the woman with the giant head, very little about this play made any kind of sense, and it was clearly wishing it were a movie or tv show. It just didn't work on any level.

Criteria, a sci-fi dystopic 'thriller' (in so far as a one man play can be a thriller) was very good. It had all the makings of a good 60s sci-fi short story. The premise was that the US has, in the 24th century, broken up into 6 countries based on the first number of the social security number for the states in them(I looked on wikipedia and a lot of the bits of information about SSNs used for the premise of the play seem to be incorrect, so I won't go into a lot of detail on that), which were then swallowed up into 3 larger superstates based on the prefixes 2 (Twoland -- the eastern states), 4 (Fourland -- the middle states, a stripe beginning on the south side in Texas), and 5 (Fiveland -- the western states with California being the dominant).

People in these new states have their SSNs tattooed to their hands as a means of identification, and there's lots of racial allegory in the way the dominant SSNs treat both each other and the less dominant prefixes (0, 1, and 3). The main character is from Fourland, and is part of a government program to use untattooed people as terrorists against Fiveland. The audience follows him on his journey to blow up an important train via suicide bombing, which is a pretty relevant topic.

I felt it a bit slow, such that a lot of scenes seemed to drag on a bit longer than they should have, but it was still pretty good. On going in, they stamped a SSN on people's hands as a 'participation stamp,' which had me worried we'd have to do something, but we didn't.

All in all, not a bad night. Better track record than the weekend, at least.

So far, over the two days we've gone to The Fringe, we've seen 4 plays. Twisted Things (Saturday), Yellow Fever (Saturday), The Bible: The Complete Word of God Abridged (Sunday), and The Aleatory Project: an experiment in fate (Sunday). The short story is that the first two weren't quite what we expected, but were ok for what they were. The second pair were more in line with expectations and I liked both of them. The long story is:

Twisted Things was just plain strange. The description in the guide involved a woman and her crack-addict cat, which was definitely intriguing. I was expecting more zany and less angst, though. The premise is that there's a woman who lives with her deranged, jealous, and lame (literally) cat. She's more or less permanently depressed due to the death of her boyfriend quite a while back (he died at a rave by drowning after taking ecstasy). She goes out one night and meets a guy -- identified primarily by the statement: "Pump. 28. Scar." -- and of course her cat gets jealous. Making the cat, and pump for that matter, even more jealous is the fact that she's also starting to spend time with the unloved dog next door.

Basically, nobody ends this play really happy. Let's just say the cat does something really nasty, Pump gets what he wants and then leaves, and the end is even more depressing than the beginning. But that's all well and good for the type of play it is. If you're in the mood for that, it's great.

What could potentially kill it (at least for me), is the crows (yes, even more anthropomorphism) who act as chorus. Unfortunately, their random jumping around stage and throwing of a step ladder and bad-Poe-style rantings make things a bit more juvenile than they really need to be. The rest of it mitigates the crows, but I'm not sure it's really good enough to rise above it.

Yellow Fever was one we meant to go to, but we made a point of going to it when we found out that an old colleague of Nancy's was involved in making it (and it appears to be basically a family production). It's supposed to be about growing up as a a Japanese-Canadian girl and some other related stuff. And it might very well be. But unfortunately, I'm really not very good at all at interpreting interpretive dance. I got the childhood stuff from some origami things she did (at the start a crane, at the end one of those finger toys kids use to do fortune telling (Nancy says it's a MASH game, for "Mansion, Apartment, S(omething), House"). And there were bits where she was dancing like she was having sex or something. But other than those bits I really have no idea what was going on, so I can't say anything more than that. The dancing was well choreographed though.

The Bible: The Complete Word of God, Abridged was pretty damn funny. It only got two stars in The Journal, but I think the review was needlessly harsh. Despite being largely about making fun of the Bible, it does it in a pretty respectful way, and when they claim that they are "one christian and two jews," it's pretty believable. So I actually kind of recommend it to religious folk, who may get more of a kick out of it than I do.

It was funny, and it was worth the $10. Not much more to say about it than that.

The Aleatory Project: an experiment in fate (I keep accidentally typing faith there, and for good reason) is a play that is partially constructed as it's performed. Supposedly the variables in the play make it so there are as many as 512 variations. The variation we saw was, in my opinion, pretty poignant. The basic premise, that supposedly all performances have in common, is that there are two people in a hotel room for a night and they play a card game that's designed to help them get to know each other better. The relationship they have to each other and even their characters are determined by things like the coin toss that happens at both the beginning and end of the play, the card game, and the time on the clock when a particular event in the play occurs.

I like the idea. Normally I'm not very fond of improv (because it's usually either extremely rehearsed *cough*Who's Line is it Anyway?*cough*, or just really bad *cough*Theatresports when I've gone*cough*), but this struck a pretty good balance. Especially interesting was what happened when they got the Joker the first time (they got it twice). They swapped roles, reversing the decision made by the first coin toss of the story. Some of the cards seemed underdeveloped or even like they didn't really know what to do with them, but mostly it was pretty interesting.

At halfway through the play, a ticking clock noise signaled what I think was a freezing of the characters so that no more 'discoveries' were made through the cards, and the plot started to evolve on it's own, and that's where it really becomes interesting.

I'd definitely see this one again, and one of the interesting things about it is that in order to prove that it's really different every time *they give away tickets to the next showing* at the end. So if their claim holds true, you can actually see two plays for the price of one, which is a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, tomorrow's showing is at a time I can't do, so we didn't grab tickets for it. But I would have taken them otherwise.

So yeah, that's my reviews of the plays I saw. I'm still looking for people to go to plays with, if there's anyone interested. There's still lots of stuff I want to see, and I'm doing short days this week at work to do it.