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What are you going to do?
I feel broken. I feel dismembered by the world and the impossibility of my own ambitions. I have been working for nearly a decade and I am worse off than when I started. I have sequestered myself in a job where there is no room to maneuver from the position I am in. I have written a play which has been read by, at last count, five people and threatens to be read by not many more. I have written scripts read by no one other than myself and have two unfinished novels that may eternally remain in that state. I have begun two feature films, one short film and a music video - none of which were finished - and have broken the hearts of many actors along the way by my instability and unreliable nature. And as of today my one possession of value, my camera, is on the block for sale.As of yesterday, I was ready to throw in the proverbial towel. Even now, feeling as I do, I wondered about the futility of even sitting down to type this....this two-cent sermon. This eulogy from the soapbox. I knew I had a voice, but of what worth is it if no one is there to listen?We live in a cynical and egocentric world and I can understand how easy it is to look out at it without any hope of reaching anyone. If you can't even get through to one person, how can you possibly get through to them all?We have created for ourselves a society designed to weigh on us until we break. Nobody is immune. Some choose to remain ignorant and take one foot in front of the other with blinders on and who can blame them? But for those of us with functioning eyes and ears and the brains to interpret what we take in on a daily basis it can be overwhelming.Every day, I wait on the platform for the train. And every day, without fail, there is a moment when I'm standing at the edge looking down at the rails and the traffic passing by underneath the wooden beams below, and nothing seems easier than stepping off into another world...free of debt and decisions and rent and ambition. No more worry. No more striving to be something more than I am. And I know that in that I am not alone. But for any of us who share in that moment of absolution, I ask: what good would that do anyone?If you die tomorrow, what is there to say? The people standing around your grave....what do they say about you? Do they say what a great man you were?Or do they say what a great man you could have been?What are you doing to change the world? To make your mark? To be counted?You want to be an accountant? Don't settle for getting tax breaks for rich people and living in some big ass house in Winnetka. It was an accountant that put Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, for god's sake!A lawyer? Don't spend your life writing contracts for corporations to screw their employees out of their pensions. Find a fight and take a side! You say you want to be a painter? A filmmaker? A writer? An actor? Well what are you doing about it? Are you sitting around waiting for your "talent" to manifest itself? Are you practicing? Are you taking classes? Or are you waiting for some benevolent angel to just come knocking on your door to offer you some life-changing opportunity?At 22, Orson Welles moved to New York. By 23 he was the most highly demanded radio voice in the city. He was working with the Federal Theater Project and put on what is still the most controversial version of Macbeth ever staged using largely illiterate black actors in Harlem. At the age of 24 he aired his notorious "War of the Worlds" broadcast that was listened to by an unprecedented 86% of the homes in America and the next day made the front page of every major newspaper in the country. Later that year, he got a contract from RKO pictures. It still stands to this day as the most lucrative contract anyone has been offered by a movie studio and he was granted unheard of creative control.At 25 he wrote and directed what is considered, by and large, the greatest film of all time.25 years old! And what did he have that nobody else did? Was he smarter? Maybe smarter than some, but he couldn't have been smarter than everyone. Both of his parents were dead by the time he was 15! His father drank himself to death!Wake up out there! Whatever you want to do in life, use it to be somebody! Don't you want to be remembered for something more than just having been alive? This...article, if you will, has - alas - a loyal readership of one. And, theoretically, a potential readership of two. But when I ask the above question, I am not asking it of either of them. I am talking to that man there, sitting in his polyester high-backed chair wearing dress pants and reading glasses. So I ask it again:Self, what are you going to do?
The Hunt for the Cube
Today I have finally received an email from Sente, with regards to the new game at perplexcity.com. I am still not sure what I've gotten myself into, but if you do like alternative reality games, you can check it out and share your ideas. Those of you geeks who like mind puzzles like me, this must be a good waste of time.My name is Sente, and I am the Master of the Perplex City Academy.
On January 16th 2004, an object of immeasurable value was stolen from
our city. You kindly answered my plea to assist in its recovery. Over
many, many months, we at the Academy have been assembling information
to help you in this task.
Today, we break our silence. There is still so much to share with you,
but for now this fragment must suffice.
http://www.perplexcity.com/video.html
I will be in contact again soon.
Stay alert.
SenteNow that I watched the video, what I am wondering is whether I should read all those newspapers mentioned in the video. Interesting beginning. If you want to know more, check out my earliest entry on this subject here. Following the link to the newbie thread is very helpful. Here is also a transcript of the video :There is a theme that has risen again and again in our studies across all relevant disciplines. The similarities between our peoples are truly profound and consequently serve to make the differences all the more shocking. It is as though our modern day societies took on collective cultural experiences, all of our shared history, and learned from it completely different lessons. One could expect then a feeling of alienation from the subjects of our studies. This is not so. Our researchers have instead come to identify very strongly with their counterparts on the other side of the curtain. The rhythm we occupy seems to be a long period of comfortable familiarity with a counterpoint of sudden and often sharp cultureshock. And if you get bored, look at this for another round of perplex migrene.
Anyone can send me copies of the newspapers or tell me where I could find them in Toronto? Damn, the 17th is today, but it seems there isn't much in there, other than an ad that mispelled perplexcity.com.Perlplexcity.com
LOST. The Cube. Reward Offered. not only an object of great significance to the city but also a technological wonder www.perplexcity.com
Here is the list of the newspapers :
17th February - USA TODAY
22nd February -New York Sun
23rd FEBRUARY - THE TIMES LONDON
8th MARCH - LA TIMES
21st MARCH - THE GUARDIAN
Help, I've got a headache already. Sorry for those who got here with hopes of finding more clues. Just do the same as me, read the forum, eat your vitamines and you carrot juice. Get a new pair of glasses or hearing aids if you need them. Think geek.
Update : After looking at the URL perlplexcity.com, I though "what if it wasn't a spelling error"? I might be going into a totally wrong direction, but if you take out "perl" from the URL, you find the page below :
Written exactly on 11 lines of text (if you count the blank lines as well). Doing a whois on this domain name I find these folks. Note that the hosting company is 1und1.com, which brings up the number 11, one more time. If you use their search engine and look for perplexcity, the firs link shows up like :
"a web site my friend made!"
Doesn't this look weird to you? Why would this engine show a personal reference to the webmaster? If you google perplexcity.com, the page is indexed like this : "Welcome to Perplex City!" I don't know, my mind must be just rambling here, but you never know.... the number 11 looks like a recurrent reference since the beginning. What do you think?
And finally, who the hell are these people?
Copyright: Copyright 2005
My Wedding Shall Be in Corsica
Where to begin.I had a fabulous time in Corsica, really really great fun; but sadly the last part of it was fraught with suffering. I had better start at the beginning.On Saturday morning I woke up at 5:45 am and stumbled into the kitchen to eat a quick breakfast before I was to meet the girls at the Office de Tourisme at 7am to leave for Marseille where we would catch a boat to Corsica. My host mom, as usual, was up and already prancing around the kitchen like she'd never heard of fatigue before, and as usual, found it endlessly amusing that I was struggling to direct toast to my mouth without falling asleep in it. Sensing that I was tired, however, she very kindly offered to drive me to the Office. At first I declined since I know that filling a car cost about 80 euro and I technically could walk, but she asked again and pointed out how early it was, and as I looked out the window and saw indeed that it was still pitch black out, I accepted the offer and practically wept my "merci"s.So, we arrived at the Office de Tourisme, I with my backpack stuffed full and sleep still in my eyes, and my host mom dropped me off and wished me a good trip and I said goodbye, etc. etc. I met the girls and we trooped down the street to the gare routière which is the bus station, and after some struggle bought our tickets and got on the bus to Marseille. As we made our way towards the highway, the sun began to rise and it was so beautiful out on the horizon-fuschia and orange and fiery red-that I began to feel that the early rise was a little bit worth it.We got to Marseille, which I suppose I can describe as looking something like New York or any city except full of French people, and tried to find a taxi. A man approached the seven of us and told us that he could take all of us in two trips for 30 euro each. We had no idea how to get to the port and could barely understand what he was saying anyway, so we had no choice but to accept the offer, even though we were all inwardly crying at the thought of paying 30 euro for what turned out to be a three minute taxi ride. Plus, this man drove as if his wife were in the front seat going into labor and every other car on in the city were spitefully trying to keep him from getting to the hospital, or the port, as it were. We actually got there in less than one Simon & Garfunkel song that happened to be on the radio in the car. He actually grinned at me deviously in the rear-view mirror as he hit the curb. My consolation, as I told the girls, was that he was building bad karma because of all this, and that eventually, he would get hit by a taxi driven by a mad Frenchman and playing the exact same Simon & Garfunkel song, in symbolic retribution.We found the boat, the Napoleon Bonaparte (how original for Corsica), and got on ok; well actually one of the girls led us astray and we started to get on the service entrance and all these French people were like "non! non! arretez!" but eventually we got on ok. I had no idea we were taking a cruise ship, but that's what it was and it was damn big too. It had nine levels and two restaurants, a game room, shops, blah blah blah, a pool and mini bubbling pools which we thought were hot tubs but did not in fact have hot water in them so that ship staff missed seeing us in our bikinis. Still, for all that, we fairly quickly became bored and I realized then why it was neccessary to have so much entertainment on board; you really need a major distraction to keep you from remembering that you are on a boat and your roaming space is limited and you might go mad if you can't get some grass and dirt soon.I saw a young, handsome officer on board in his navy uniform and instantly began to plan my life as an officer's wife on board, charting the wild seas. Then I didn't really see him again for the rest of the cruise and became bored and realized that I would never be able to stand to be an officer's wife or on a ship for very long; come to think of it, I don't know how well I can stand to be anyone's wife unless I get do to exactly as I please. Never mind it for the moment.We got off the boat at about 6:45pm and didn't take very long in finding our hotel, the Hotel Fesch. The name Fesch was up everywhere in Ajaccio (where we pulled into port) and we finally found out that it was the name of a Cardinal or something when we visited the Maison Bonaparte (supposedly where he was born). Speaking of which, visiting that museum was fairly amusing because one of the men that worked there was so pleased when I asked him a question about the Bonaparte family tree that he pulled me aside and avidly recounted for me the entire history of the Bonaparte family, including where the last of the Bonapartes, Napoleon III, the prince Philippe, and Eugenie, are buried (England, not France). I felt bad for him; we were probably the only tourists in the last few weeks there.We did some shopping and I bought these cute little pink sneakers for only 11 euro. We also visited the docks and the beach and took about eight thousand photos there, and everyone stared at us, I suppose because this isn't tourist season and we were the only non-natives. But here's a great thing: we all felt highly elated not to be recognized at least as Americans when a man came up to us and offered to get our picture, and then asked if we were Belgian. Then we told him we were American and he said something like "oh, that's too bad" which was very funny to me since I believe he was referring to the current regime. Whatever, let's be Belgian!On our first night out we found the only restaurant open in town on a Sunday night, and it happened to be the best place I have ever been; (1) because the food was excellent and (2) because our waiter was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, and even Lisa allowed that he had a nice ass so I asked him if I could have my picture with him and he seemed really happy at that and pulled my chair from the table and practically sat on it with me as Liz took our picture. Then I asked him his name and it's Julien and by the end of the night I felt like declaring love for him; which is not to say that I felt any but that I was in the sort of dreamy mood to declare that I did. Instead the next day I left him a note at the restaurant with my address here and asked him to write to me. I told him I could help him improve his English and he could help me with my French. The import of this offer may be taken as it will. Well, if he writes to me, I'll be dying, first of all because I've never done anything like this before, silly as it seems, and second of all because I don't really expect him to have taken my letter seriously even though I wrote it seriously enough. Here's hoping. At least I have that beautiful photo of him.So the trip was a success until that point, and only did it decline in joy when we got on our boat to come home. Liz jokingly read the safety announcements to Claire and Elizabeth and I as we sat in our cabin waiting for the boat to take off, saying that dramamine was available from the main desk if "inclement weather should arise". I decided it would be a good idea to pick some up just in case so I headed to the main desk and asked in French for some medicine for "le mal de mer". He informed me that he could only give it to me if we got bad weather, and then asked me what nationality I was, and when I said American, he gave me this look that to me suggested I had been completely rude and presumptious to dare to think that I could ask for such a thing, and that undoubtably only an American would attempt it. I went back to our cabin. Just then the boat launched and in about five minutes we all noticed that it was swaying a lot more than that it had when we launched from Marseille four days ago. We happened to have the tv on and I flipped to the weather station and saw that there was a storm in the southern tip of Corsica, on portside in relation to the direction we were heading in. I got up, hoping that moving around would be better for the growing dizziness I was feeling. Claire felt nothing and began to read, lucky girl, and Elizabeth who was used to sailing was fine as well but Liz and I began to feel nauseated and we decided to go out and walk around the boat to feel better. However, as we moved through the hallways, clinging to the ramps that suddenly were fraught with purpose, we reached a door out on deck and found that it was locked. We climbed the stairs to the next level and found the crew locking those doors as well. It didn't seem like a good sign to me that the crew feared we might be tossed overboard if we went out on deck. Then I saw the man who had denied me any medicine and looked at him resentfully. We turned back and walked into the bar where people were sitting around looking a little green and we realized that we couldn't stay there without falling over, which is probably why everyone already there was sitting. At some point Liz and Claire saw a man get sick in one of the little vomit bags that had also been denied me, but I luckily missed seeing this.We headed back to our cabin and tried to stay still for awhile. Liz managed to fall asleep but I was so dizzy that I couldn't, so Elizabeth offered to get up with me and walk around some more. On our way we stopped by the other cabin that Abby, Lisa and Kristen were staying in to check on them; they had all thrown up but were now lying down so we left them to repose and made our way to the little cafe/restaurant to get something to eat. You may wonder what I was thinking to be eating, but since I have hypoglycemia I have to eat every few hours, even if I feel sick. When we got there, the restaurant was completely empty and the three men working there seemed very surprised that we were there to eat. I got a soda to begin with since I really didn't want to eat and Elizabeth got some spinach pie and we sat for a bit and watched the lightning out over the water. When that became boring we watched 102 Dalmations, the actors-version, that was on tv and it was of such a quality that you could follow the plot even though it was dubbed in French. Then I got a croque monsieur which had a weird flavor which did not help my stomach but I did my best to instead concentrate on the poor acting skills of 102 Dalmations. At about 10 o'clock we headed back to the cabin and I took a shower which helped a little but I was sure that at any moment I was going to break down and lay myself before the gods of projectile vomiting. After my shower it was all I could do to lie down on my bed with my hair still in my towel and not move as the boat swayed up and down, shuddering every time it hit a great wave. It felt too strong to be a storm to me; I kept thinking, what the hell did we hit, a deer? we're in the water!Poor Liz finally got sick after the boat tipped to one side and crashed back down again with tremendous force. She was on the top bunk which is a lot more dizzying so I told her to sleep next to me which she eventually did. I buried my face in my hands and tried to imagine myself back in Aix in my soft bed with Joëlle in kitchen on the phone, maybe making dinner or smoking or something comforting like that. Nothing could keep my mind from the horrible reality that there must be some damn big waves out there to move a damn big cruiser like this, however. I finally fell asleep and it was a great comfort to have Liz next to me because she was warm. But I had the strangest dreams that night that I can't remember, though they had something to do with moving around a lot.When we finally landed I nearly cried to be off the boat and on land; my dream of living on the sea, sailing to the ends of the earth has been thoroughly shattered. When I got back to my house at about 8:30am, I fumbled with the key in the lock and my host mom opened the door for me and gave me a strange look. I guess I looked disheveled. I explained about the boat and she wisely let me go right to sleep, which was pretty much what I did all day yesterday. From about 9:30am I slept to 2pm when I went down into town to meet the girls to check email and chat, etc., as if we hadn't all seen each other four hours previously. :) Then I came back, went to bed, got up to eat dinner, then went back to bed and slept later this morning that I usually do. Joëlle expressed complete amazement that I was able to stay asleep so long since apparently her early hours are not just a willing action but an unavoidable one. I said I felt like I was still moving and she just said "ah" and then I went back to bed. But I couldn't stay in bed for too long because I want to be able to sleep tonight, so I got up and came down to the school which is where I am now.I also discovered that my face has all these freckles on it from the Corsican sun, which extremely vexes me. Joëlle says freckles are pretty and she likes them, and all the girls tried to comfort me with the same sentiment, but the thing is I don't think they look pretty on me and I've never gotten so many before this early in the year!! So I'm going out to buy some sunscreen and am contemplating wearing my sunhat every day. Freckles are only cute on naturally cute people.Oh well, despite some of the bad stuff that happened, my trip overall was a lot of fun and I am now planning my Corsican wedding with lusty Italian-French accordion players and lots of pasta and chocolate and coffee and palm trees. Maybe it could be on the beach with the waves crashing as the service is being read...
How much more can i take Before i Completely Break
Okay. For starters to start this entry out as more Positive.. i cant fucking wait for their concert. Getting FLoor tickets. Todd said hes guna get me to the Front, i might get a black eye but fuck WHO CARES!? its greenday!! Going to New York City for a day and a half this weekend for some shoppi>
Fun Activities For Kids On Break
When New York City's public schools close next week for winter break, here are some fun family activities going on around town.
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