Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
Eek, i think the hummus was spoilt! My stomach is hating me with a passion right now, and i’m about to spend five hours under some pretty hot stage lights with nary a chance for a bathroom break. Ugh… the gods of blog must be getting revenge on me for something.
I’m sitting here with a bag of frozen white bread and a tub of hummus that i accidentally stole from my girlfriend’s roommate two weeks ago snacking away while my ftp server mysteriously blinks in and out of existence. To get the white bread defrosted enough so that it’s not similar to eating cardboard i’ve got to hold it close to my mouth and breathe into it slowly, feeling the frost evaporate onto my fingers on the other side as my snack gets soft and flexible like it’s meant to be. I’m not sure if you’re actually reading this at this point because of my FTP issues, and that surely explains the lack of a new Trio despite my obviously having new material to work with.
The play goes up next week … 10 days from now. That’s scary. I mean, i can track my entire experience with the play through this log and it just doesn’t seem long or substantial enough. Not so long ago in the archives i was contemplating whether or not i should audition and now i’m contemplating if enough my extended family are going to want seat to gets a group discount. Maybe it’s because i haven’t had such a large role since high school, where we’d rehearse from January to nearly the end of March every single day, that i feel so grossly underprepared for this show; i don’t know my lines well enough, i don’t sing my song well enough, and i’m still finding my character. Of course, none of that really matters when i’m on stage, because somehow i just make it all work. I’m looking into getting some digital video to post to the page, so… we’ll see. I’m off to munch more hummus and rehearse for my rehearsal; take care of yourselves.
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.
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.
I really think i might be trying to fail out of school this semester. Of course, by this point i think we’ve established that failing out for me would be equivalent to getting a C in any one subject.
I’m not in class right now. I’m in the building where class is held, i have no physical restraints to attending class, but i’m not there. None of my classes are holding my attention, it’s as simple as that. I’ve managed to pull straight A’s in Literature attending half the lectures and reading a third of the books, my public speaking class is so useless that i honestly think i’m getting worse at speaking publicly, i haven’t learned anything in recording for two weeks (although that’s entirely my own dumb fault for being so tired in class all the time), and i couldn’t even go to Aural Skills last week because i couldn’t hear or sing through my headcold.
Am i trying to fail? Is it just that i already got my role in the play and my co-op position and just don’t want to fight for anything else? Are my classes all so easy that i think the only way i could possibly have to work for them is if i only attend once or twice a week? I’m really not sure, but something’s gonna change – and it’s either going to be my behaviour or my grade point average.