Internalise

It's been a big couple of weeks. Written three essays (two of them small ones), run four casting calls and just about completed production (as writer, director, producer and art director) of a short film. And that's just the Uni stuff. Needless to say having so many projects on the go means a few things get put on the boiler 'till I manage to move down the priority list.

That said, merci beaucoup to the lovely Leslie for getting on board as co-conspirator (<3), bringing us a comic every week or so until the posting schedule* catches up with our buffer. Make her welcome! Yes, both of you! Seeing as it was a book on her shelf that led to this project's conception in the first place.

*Posting schedule? What posting schedule?

1: A small cardboard cylinder. A little blue box, tabbed in the bottom corner with the words "post-shave balm". A scrunch of 3PLY paper, and a single cotton-bud, stained on one end with earwax.
2: Everything looks black, there, there's too much glare in the background - "is there a better spot I can stand?" he asks, and I curse to myself when I can't find a better answer than "no". It's the darkest spot in the house, but it's also the only one that makes sense.
3: This manuscript here uses only the first three systems. The first two are in 5/4, scrawled in pen, with a couple of short runs of chords in opposed motion, with the lyrics, "[scribble] - [scribble] - something, come out for breakfast [two bars of scribbling] I WANT TO DO A THIIIIIING". The third bar, instead of notation, has only the words "POWER CHORD".
4: I had another one somewhere that was written, "F#%$ YOU MICHAEL (repeat ad nauseum until...) (repeat ad nauseum)". It had no actual music on it.
5: It was good weather, so we put the big plywood table outside, and then left the set as it was for the following day (Tuesday). It rained. The table got soaked. But when I brought it inside, it didn't seem to have taken any damage.
6: Mum was scared to comment on my photos because she wasn't sure whether I'd be cool with that.
7: I think the postman might have overfilled our postbox. With catalogues. I wish we had a fireplace.
8: I bought two radios - exactly the same - lest the first one get smashed. It was supposed to smash. Turns out Logitech make their stuff sturdy.
9: He worked out that it was meant to be King Arthur, but the moustachioed sun on the tabard confused the hell out of him.
10: I'm sure I confused them when on the one hand, I said that I tend to write fairly dark drama-ish stuff, and thirty minutes later said I had more experience performing with light-hearted material.

The Imposter

1: Someone who would be lying if they said, "Hi, I'm Mike Gorrie!" is posting this. You get to guess who.

2: Last night, some drunken students on their way back from a party decided the side of our house looked like a pretty awesome thing to pass out leaning against. When the police showed up, one of the students assured the cops that they were "unaged" drinkers, whatever that means.

3: I very nearly stepped on a dying sparrow on my way to class. I thought it was dead until its beak moved. :-(

4: Still on my way to class, I passed a girl with curly, reddish-brown hair who was heading the opposite direction. On my way back from class, I passed a woman who could have been her doppelganger, only 15 years older. Both smiled at me--an "I'm genuinely cheerful" smile, rather than your standard "I'm acknowledging your existence because it would be more awkward to pretend not to see you" smile.

5: On my way to class the next day, I was crossing the street--at a proper crosswalk--and an old man in a white car kept creeping up farther and farther, as if to run me over if I didn't move faster. It didn't faze him that the car waiting right behind him was a police car.

6. A lot of things seem to happen to me on my way to class.

7: You're apparently still reading, despite not knowing who I am or why you should care if a little old man wants to run me over. As such, I'm going to be nice and give you a hint: the human being in the short comic above is me. Also, I may or may not own the book on creative writing that spawned the idea for this blog.

Mike thought the "comic diary" I had to create for my Graphic Novels class (a series of simple four-panel comics based on something that happened to me each day) was rather similar to the spirit of this blog, so I have been granted permission to deface it with some of my ramblings and doodles. :-)

Encore!

1: The new Blogger UI wanted me to know that A: It is very important, I could lose all of my information at any time if my account were to be hacked and I'd better have a backup plan in place to hijack it back -- B: It has charts! Colourful ones! They're white and blue! C: Where the "new entry" button used to be is now a "create a brand new blog" button. Actually I don't think it wanted me to know C, it wanted me to find out the hard way.
2: This time a year ago, I had a deep concern for Kasey's alcohol-related antics, for blind six-legged hive-minded bugs whose geographical standing happened to be micrometres above heated concrete, and for a sample I had collected of somebody snoring.
3: Emma passed me an unmarked envelope. I was expecting one marked "CENTRELINK". I opened it, and what I found inside was a notice of rejection. Confused, I called them straight away, expecting that somehow my lease information hadn't gone through. After waiting half an hour, turned out what they didn't have was my bank details and we can put that through right now, if you like -- dude, what!? Centrelink isn't supposed to be helpful!
4: Who was that call for --? Oh, "not me", cool. Wait, who was that call for --...this happens basically every time I do anything at work that involves noise.
5: The tram conductor felt the need to announce every single stop in a sing-song voice. Maybe I would have liked him better as a person than as a disembodied chant.
6: I'm better at Philosophy on Facebook than in real life.
7: Damn, forgot to charge my iPod again.
8: Apparently I've been a member of Actors' Equity for ten whole years now. Gold card!
9: Poor Munaf was tucked all the way in the back corner of the stage where nobody could see him. Where was that drumming coming from? Oh, right, the drumkit.
10: Pretty sure I was the only one shouting "encore!", but they listened, obeyed, and nobody complained.

Eventually

1: They wanted me to stay back an hour, without overtime, because we were understaffed thus making the day exponentially more stressful already.
2: Exercise and practise feel good. No, seriously. I don't feel inclined to sit around on Facebook anymore. I still don't feel inclined to do homework either, though...
3: I learned yesterday that some authors (particularly for franchise novels) don't get months or years to write novels - they get weeks. Boy does that change my perspective. And my future job description.
4: Sure, we ate late, but Alicia makes one killer stir-fry. Couldn't tell between the red onion and the red cabbage, and the meat sure went quick, but I'm looking forward to claiming those leftovers.
5: The jugs were either poorly designed, or they were designed to deliberately cause people to spill beer. I have an idea how that might work, as a business prerogative; maybe if they want the whole pub to smell like beer? Do they want it to be everywhere and to have to clean it all the time? Stranger things do happen.
6: Kenny always stares at me. As soon as I'm in the room, he is watching me, alert, head tilted, to the dismissal of every other thing in the room that wants his attention. He never approaches to within a metre, either. Sometimes he'll give a quiet, defensive woof and dart away.
7: There is political dispute within La Trobe Stalkerspace, about itself. A "fake" Stalkerspace run by an authoritarian is somehow a threat to the administrators of the "original", who ban people for expressing displeasure about their lack of action against trolls -- am I seeing analogies to world history, here?
8: Iggy's pink whiskers were a little bit brighter than white, but only while she was outside.

Did I Just

1: Jim Schembri. Oh lord, Jim Schembri. All at once a deliberate belligerent and yet sort-of respectable reviewer; he complains that the rebooted Batman franchise (Christopher Nolan, 2005, 2008) doesn't fit the action genre and then sings all kinds of praises for Deathly Hallows Part II. And then in April 2011 he goes all Scott Adams and tells his fans they're idiots. You don't need a time machine to view google cache.
2: I write in spurts, inter-dispersed with Facebook and denialism and telling people about the amazing half-of-an-essay I just wrote. Then I get coffee.
3: Two minutes on the tram and I was already sweating. I wasn't even wearing second layers. It was hot today, and the tram was hotter.
4: I ran into CJ and Tassie within five seconds of each other on my way to the bus. HUGS ALL ROUND, it's hot today right? Okay gotta go
5: I got my essay finished with an hour to spare. It felt good. The home stretch was like thinking you're only halfway through a marathon and suddenly realising you've got ten metres to go - what to do with all that paced energy now?
6: I ID'd a group of three guys who looked like either high school or college. They were all 91's and 92's; a short delay later I realised, "yes, they are over 18." I turned to Kal afterward; "it's the 93's turning 18 this year, isn't it-!?" - sadly, yes.
7: Some guy near the front of the audience started singing - loudly - at around the midpoint of each song. He was skilled, but a little off. We weren't sure whether it was supposed to happen until Munaf's expression turned to a puzzled frown. Then we knew the guy was making it up on the spot.
8: A random, playing guitar. A djembe, left unoccupied. An opportunity too good to miss. Music is born. We played four songs and swapped contact details later. He says he's no relation to some old friends of mine, despite sharing the name.
9: Distant, suddenly. Preoccupied, maybe. I hope I didn't cause offence.
10: I've been in a good mood all day today, which is odd, because I feel as though I've been in a funk for a couple of weeks prior to getting sick. I feel positivity.
11: "Splendiferous, thanks! You?" he said. All I could say is, "...Um, good, thanks. I do like that word though." I tried to make up for lost ground by telling him that I hope his day continues to be splendiferous.

Ten Decibels Louder

1: My driving instructor chooses a different way to alert me to her arrival each and every time. The first time it was by phone. The second, she came to the door. This time she beeped as she made a pass.
2: We stopped at the servo on the highway. From the fuelling area I could just see inside to an pudgy old man standing behind the counter, his belly facing the register, his eyes lifelessly scanning the cars outside. He was so still that, had he worn camouflage, he'd have been disguised perfectly.
3: Sometime after the three-point turn I noticed that the wind was blowing. I was sure the window had been closed. I'm also quite sure it was closed later. I wasn't aware of it either opening or closing at any time.
4: Some of Kasey's quotesheet was from last year, which confused my sense of chronology. The exchange recorded between CJ and Tassie was much funnier that way.
5: I told my hairdresser to cut it by about half, maybe a bit less; I still wanted some curls in it. I'm pretty sure she misunderstood and took off a lot more than half. Now I look exactly like a taller, lankier version of my brother.
6: I had two productive chance encounters in the space of fifteen minutes. Ah, the Agora.
7: I wasn't paid in time to pay for my haircut. I had just enough on me to cover it, and then I had to wait to get paid just to get home.
8: CRUEL BRAWL IS CRUEL.
9: Statistically, my Halo-skills seem to be improved by about 1.5x when I get vocal about it and start -- well, I suppose exclaiming, "hey DJ[tenlettergibberish], I got you a present -- IT WAS DEATH" counts as trash-talking. I'm not sure which direction the causal chain goes in.
10: We pulled off the nine-minute Nightfall on the practise run. Or rather, Miles pulled off the nine-minute Nightfall --