Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
But, it’s all over now. And, i’m a better blogger for it, i think. For sure, SurvivorBlog managed to garner some of my best content within the last month, but i’d like to think that it’s refocused me a little, and allowed me to work the kinks out of my posting style without inflicting my pissiness on you all of the time. So, … i’m back. :p
Did i think i’d win? Well, i’m not sure, but i was sure at one point that i would be among the first to go. My personality isn’t too magnetic, i’m not too agreeable, and i’m not quite as incessantly chatty as all of the other contestants. What turned out as my experience on Survivor2 wound up being wholly influenced by the real life relationship that had blossomed the weekend before sBlog2 began. And so, where typically i might have been a character more like Ryan – loud and abrasive (but loveable!), i wound up immediately sympathizing with the gals (especially Alayna and Jess) as we opened up about our personal lives.
I decided very early on what my voting order would be and why, and i stuck to it with only two corrections. At first i was wholly prepared to give Benjy the boot at the first opportunity, because he seemed to be coming on to randomly talk about something and then disappearing. Then i realized that i was only having such an issue with him because his style of logging was so similar to mine, and after i realized that i softened up and i only wound up voting against him in the tie-breaker against Serra. My other bad call early on was on Bertie, who i just didn’t get. In retrospect i just didn’t have enough attention to pay to her at the beginning, and after we weeded some people out she became one of my favourites.
But, you want more gossip, don’t you? Very well, let’s start out with Tribe two. I would’ve voted off Brad in a hot second because i have Brad issues, so that was a no-brainer. Next would have been Josi, who just didn’t catch my attention. Then would be Marcus, then Dave, Steph, Bertie, AJ, and Serra. I was never voting against Serra and as a result of that i threw her tie-braker into an extra round of tie-break when i voted against Benjy (knowing that Tammy would tie-break against Serra). Steph was a sweetheart, and i wanted her around because she was easy for me to talk to. AJ makes me laugh out loud every day, and i only ever voted against him defensively. Dave is probably the person i wanted to kick off the most; he has a lot in common with me, but i just never felt as though i needed to keep him around to feel like the blog was complete. I wound up curbing my campaign against him because no one else would vote for him.
But, then, i was rather boring too, wasn’t i? Forgive me for being a full-time student working 14 hours a week and rehearsing over 15 hours, and with a brand-new full-time girlfriend. I’m actually surprised that i seemed to be as well liked as i was… but you don’t care about that; you want dirt, right?
I hated Erik. I don’t know why; he just didn’t do anything that piqued my interest. I almost put my fist through the wall when he won immunity for his parody page; he obviously would have been given the boot before Serra or Benjy would even be considered. [Did you know that Erik would have had even more votes against him in his final stand if it wasn’t for the fact that we were trying to break up the Tribe2 Trio? All of us other than Erik who voted for AJ wanted to kick off Erik more!] While i won’t dispute who’s parody was the best, many of the IC’s were decided in truly lackluster fashion by our Peanut Gallery, who never have once collectively lived up to their duties. How many of them read the parodies? Ditto on the Banal-Blog acceptance speeches; Ian’s statement that he thought they were all dull just proved how worthless he was as a peanut [as if we hadn’t figured it out already]. Big appreciation goes out to MJ, Ken, KevRock, the G-man (who i owe a song), Tony, and all the others who actively got in on the action. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Benjy would’ve been the next person i would have voted against, just because i wouldn’t have had the heart to vote off any of the girls. Sorry Benjy! Next off would’ve been… um… well, let me go backwards. I would have never voted against Alayna – i decided early on that she was my favourite logger and i would never vote her off, and told her as much early in the proceedings. Alayna is one of the nicest most genuine people i’ve ever met and i intend to stay friends with her long after the blog ends (though it’s obviously over already for me). The only real alliance i ever formed was with Alayna; that i wouldn’t vote for her and we’d try to protect each other. I don’t know if she would’ve kept following up on her intent, but i certainly would have.
As for the other four – C, Jess, Tammy, and Ryan – i’m just not sure. I think i was very attached to C and Jess, but i never had much time to get to know either of them. Ryan and Tammy are a different matter entirely; i find Tammy entirely amusing and i love the way she fends off attacks on her person, but at the same time i never felt like we ever had any sort of connection other then when we haggled over who would step in for the infamous game of Chinese Checkers. Having said that, i’ll also say that i probably would’ve stuck up for her for a long time. Ryan was the opposite; totally easy to get along with, but his content bored me to tears most of the time. However, Ryan had the uncanny ability to actually tap into his emotions every so often, which Tammy didn’t do much that i noticed. I think when it came down to it, i would have booted Ryan rather than Tammy (, but i might have hung on to Bertie over either of them).
Final words? I had fun! I love all of you people! However, you all managed to vote off more and more of the interesting and opinionated people, leaving us only with the middle of the road. Voting off Serra, who had challenging things to say about love, sex, and relationships, as opposed to Dave, our resident Mr. Nice? Voting off Benjy with his quirkiness and programming skills rather than Ryan, who’s just got the lewd sex stuff going for him? Maybe i come off sounding a bit harsh, but it seems i was the one of the last people consistently attempting to make valid and continuous conversation. Was it mostly about my girlfriend and totally irrelevant? Yes. But, did it always respond to everyone else and try to say something new? Totally. I started the first deep conversation we had; I wonder if we’ll see any more of them.
Ok, that’s enough dish. Good luck to all, and if you vote off Alayna i’m coming to your house with a crowbar.
Whee! As of midnight pacific time, my ass finally got kicked off of SurvivorBlog by a currently undisclosed margin. So, you’ve got me back full-time now. Parting comments soon to come.
Today is my last day at the coffee shop; just another tiny end-parentheses in the string of open ones i’ve managed to create in my life. The funny thing is, i open a lot more things than i close. Maybe it’s just the packrat within me, but being the drama-king that i am i always thought that i really did sever as many ties as i’ve made. But, i haven’t. I don’t end friendships, or memberships, or hobbies, or anything. Sometimes some of them get put on hold for a little while to make room for other things, but nothing ever goes away; i still have boxes upon boxes of comic books at home and a years-old saved campaign of StarCraft on my computer. So, the feeling of something ending is strange to me – powerful and relieving and bittersweet. No more free bagels. No more trying to entice customers with free music. No more coming home with the scent of ground coffee and too-sweet pastry ground into my fingerprints.
Off to work i go…
I’m still on SurvivorBlog2, as improbable as that might seem. All of my net-friends loudly proclaimed that i’d get booted fast when they first found out that i was a contestant, though i don’t recall any of them qualifying their statement with any reasoning. It’s an odd thing,… all the fun dynamics of a group log but with the subtle undercurrent of competition for attention and favour. I actually quite like it. I managed to win immunity from voting all this past week, first with a lovely speech i made in ra/mp3, and then by being the least popular logger still on our virtual slice of the outback. That least popular bit surprised me at first, but it didn’t burn at all; i open up as much as any of the other posters, but i’m not around as much and i’m just not as quirky.
I’ve yet to have a vote against me, but since i was protected for a whole week for all i know i could be voted off by everyone tomorrow. In a way i want to stay around, but i see how much this page is suffering. Yes, i run to them with the hottest sparkling shards of my life, and this is just the bits that fall through the proverbial cracks. For a while the many hits i was drawing from Sblog2 related links subsidized the slow decline of you all (my actual readers), but now it’s getting a bit out of hand. It’s true that i needed some kind of break from this (as was evident from my mean-spirited and belaboured posts in early January), but i never intended to let it shrivel up and die.
When Blogger adds this week’s archive to the page, it’ll be the 26th one; i’ve been doing this for half a year now. Time fools me the same way that physical scale does. This school year seems to be dragging on forever, but it’s a whole month shy of how long i’ve been blogging and that seems like just a tiny dent in the whole of my life. I’ve been rehearsing Good Woman of Setzuan for a month now, and there’s just under a month left. The month that’s passed seems like it stretches back infinitely far, and the one to come feels as if it’s going to evaporate before me, leaving my grasping for my lines tomorrow night under the spotlight.
Coincidentally, today marks the month anniversary of something else too. If you read closely i think you might know what. I’m sorry that i haven’t been as omnipresent on here as i’ve been in the past, but it’s just the way things go. Maybe, finally, my life has gotten up enough momentum of its own that this can’t be just a continuously updated daily log of boredom. Maybe now i’m bringing back the tiny shiny gems of experience i find during the course of each day. Or maybe i find myself a bit too important for my own good. Who knows. Love ya, and i’m off to work on lines so that the spotlight doesn’t catch me by surprise.