Say The Wrong Thing

It happens often that I'm reading some item on the internet and they lose me. I don't mean by that I fail to understand anything. They'll say something that, more than just rubbing me the wrong way, makes me lose all faith in their ability to credibly convey the information they purport to have. I think to myself, "if they're dumb enough to say that, the rest of this is a waste of time that I'm inflicting on myself." I had one of those the other day.

I got into it because of a comment on some other article I wanted to prove was wrong. There would have been no point in proving it to the idiot who said it, of course. It was only worth proving to myself. The comment I respected no more than a loose dog on the street, and a loose dog on the street I would not consent to engaging in a debate with. Now, this point concerned the new San Francisco 49ers football stadium. I wanted to prove, if possible, that it was not publicly financed. The answer on that is complex, although the team would have you believe it's more simple, I think.

Slow Death

I was in the worst kind of fix the other night, That is to say that it felt like it at the time, but it was the sort of thing where perspective was hard to come by. This is what happened. I'd gotten the opportunity to be a guest writer on Top Story Weekly, of which I've written in the past. This was the second time for me, and it was even more special this time that I got to do it. The way it works is that you go to a pitch session to present your ideas. After some feedback, you develop some into sketches, some of which are picked to actually do after a read through. So this thing happened while I was headed to the pitch session.

Everything was fine as I left the house. I had my needed writing materials, the most precious of which were the ideas I had to present. I had left in enough time to get there- just enough time. The bus itinerary I'd worked out would get me there a few minutes before I needed to be there. Things started going awry quickly, though. The first bus was a bit late. It finally showed up just in time to still get me to the second bus in time. At least if it had not become even more late it would have been in time.

The Boring Innards

Something that I fight against is isolating myself. It's very easy for me to spend the majority of my time holed up at home, remote even from my roommates (though schedules have something to do with that). The increasingly warm weather of late spring and summer compels me at least to leave my bedroom door open, allowing some interaction between them and myself to happen at least incidentally. I suppose that's a blessing of a kind.

A fair amount of socializing and exposure to society happens accidentally for me. The other day, I found a 90 minute public transit trip necessary. I went and forgot to bring my book or my headphones, leaving me few avenues to shield myself against the world and the people inhabiting it. I did, I should say, have my phone, and I spend much of the time composing jokes. The rest of the time was devoted to ensuring I made it to my destination.

I didn't honestly end up speaking to anyone in that time outside of the driver of a bus. I like to think that counts for something. I sure didn't have to say anything, and he didn't have to reply, but we both conducted a voluntary social interaction, and that felt nice. I also managed to talk to a grocery store cashier (since I can't buy alcohol via the automatic teller thing), and while this is another pitiful victory, it's still something. I have no shame in counting it.

This is all that came of being open to to socializing with people this occasion, but I've achieved more in the past. I had a whole conversation with a guy waiting for the bus not so long ago, and other stuff like that could easily happen in the future. After all, don't I do very well with people I know well, and in performance situations? Having the capacity to socialize in those ways means I'm capable, so I just have got to keep making the effort.

Deep Stuff

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me. The good news included an audition that did not go incredibly badly and the prospect of friends coming over to watch some movies (and it always pleases me to have my film-watching proclivities connect me to people instead of removing me from them). There was also the bad news of a neighbor accusing us of fraudulently signing for her medicine being turned into good news when she learned the error of her ways.

I was, therefore, in good spirits while on my way to the mail box out by the post office in order to return a DVD to Netflix that I'd received and watched that very day. I decided to do something that I occasionally do: snap my fingers until they blister. I think I may have written about this before, but maybe some fresh insight will sneak in there. Yes, I deliberately imposed very inconveniently-located blisters on myself, and you may well wonder why.

Moron Names (More On Names)

I have one or twice addressed the matter of my name, Calder. I was, as you may recall, named after Alexander Calder, an artist of note. Having that as a first name made it even more distinctive than it would have been as a last name, and considerably more so than Alexander would have been as either a first or a last. It took some time to come to terms with the name, but I eventually became very fond of it. It still seldom appears anywhere, though it is a touch more common than it once was.

I have met another Calder (online, if that counts), which was an odd but not unwelcome experience. It being a woman made it more peculiar still, though it's hard to say that it ought only be a man's name considering it's primarily a surname in the first place. She appears on Facebook by a derivative of Calder presently, which makes it easier to take. It was rather jarring every time I saw it before, and I don't know when that was going to improve.

Throw It Together

If you're a devoted reader, that's an extremely pleasant surprise, but more importantly, it means that you would be aware today's post went out late. I hope I didn't spoil anyone's day with that. I am a touch scattered, this being my birthday week. I did mention that yesterday, so I'll quickly summarize by saying that birthdays have grown increasingly tough and planning any kind of celebration is almost beyond my ability entirely.

I finally got on the ball yesterday, selecting a reasonable restaurant to start the evening off with. I had been there a few years before and remembered liking it. They make a big deal of their "Crack Bacon", which I do remember as being good. I got the BLT on that occasion. Maybe the weather will be nice enough that we can sit outside. That ought to burn those of you who live in cold weather regions (if there is anyone reading this who lives in such places).

Yet Another

It's my birthday today, and since I'm writing this in advance, I can only hope that I'm coping with it well. As in most years, I have dawdled about planning anything. The time when I should be thinking about it is the Christmas season, and I'm just treading water during that time. I just begin to think about it for real after the new year, and every day finds me briefly trying to think of something to do and then quickly giving up.

I finally have a faint plan, although as is fashionable, I have pushed it to the nearest available weekend night. There is a burlesque show I'd like to see, and so I'm hoping to do that on Friday. It should be a pretty good time, and most of my friends are of the sort to enjoy that. Some are not, which I can respect. It's just as well to pick something that will put some people off, because as much as I want everyone's attention, I react poorly when I have it.

Golden Age Of Dreams

I have, as I think I may have said, been tired all of the time lately. It's difficult to account for, and I hope it will pass, but one interesting positive has been an increased propensity for remembering my dreams. A friend says that this is common when one is very tired. All I am certain of is that I never manage to remember my dreams, except that sometimes I wake with just a hint of a wisp of one. There is not even even to begin articulating it.

That has not been true lately. I have recorded at least the bare bones of six dreams that I have had in the past week or less. I would have killed for this back in college when I was supposed to keep a dream journal. I believe I got through that assignment with theft of dreams from my roommate and outright lies. It seemed fair when the alternative was failing through no fault of my own. Ought I have been punished for then being well-rested?

Too Unique

Once again I am reminded that I am not like anyone else and that I especially don't think like anyone else. I read an item about some police officers shooting a dog. I don't know whether they were justified in doing so out of self-defense as they will likely claim or if they were in the wrong, but other people are not so reluctant to form an opinion. Without praising myself, I think the smartest people are the most aware of their ignorance. When I see a picture or video, I wonder what lies outside the frame, what happened before it was taken and what happened after.

Probably I would be the object of much disgust if my thinking about the matter became especially known. Anyway, it isn't that story that concerns me so much. It's just that thought that I am so painfully unique. There are plenty of people as smart as me or smarter, and naturally I'm bested by many in a variety of other areas, so don't get the idea that I'm saying this entirely in a good way. It's good for me, but it's also bad.

My Way Is Okay

The way that I think is definitely unusual. I am always quick to agree that it's good for me to be unique, since what I have is marketable, and would therefore be diminished if it was less scarce. Still, I do wish it was a little less scarce, because it can be lonely when no one has the same natural reaction to something. I guess I'll get over it if I make some money off it. Anyway, I had this thing happen that showed again how different I can be.

I was waiting at a security booth for someone to give me a pass onto a studio lot, only there was no one there. I was a bit at a loss as to how I should proceed. It occurred to me that I might go over to where some guards were wrangling a studio audience, but I shied away from the idea of going and making contact away from the managed process I was used to. I stood around looking helpless and examining my phone for a while.

Ennui, On Me

Something is really bugging me. I have said how I strive to not let something I disagree with online take up too much of my time. Sometimes I do well with that, but today I don't know that I did. What happened is that a friend was excited by the news that a Robocop statue meant to be erected in Detroit is nearly finished. It has been substantially financed by that odious fundraising site, Kickstarter. Needless to say, I'm not a supporter.

I made my points about how Detroit needs plenty of things more than it needs a statue of a character from a movie that casts the city in a bad light and which was filmed in Dallas anyway. I was answered that the statue would somehow be an example of law and order and that public art is laudable. I disagreed and said no more about the matter, but I kept thinking about it all day long. I'm still thinking about it now, and I can't say I'll have let it go by the time you're reading this.

Making Nice

I have read a fair amount in recent times about a staple of mens' profiles on dating websites. Many men avow that they are nice, and frequently bemoan their paucity of success with women. A perusal of all the materials that constitute their profile commonly reveals that they are not nice at all, but are in fact the worst sort of man. This seems to hold true rather consistently, to the extent that women would be well advised to avoid any man who believes himself nice.

You will never here me seriously lay claim to being nice. I just don't see that as true. The most I will say is that I try to be nice and struggle at it. I am sporadically successful, but not enough that I would regard it as a defining trait. I will allow that I am generally civil, although whether this is due to my reluctance to confront or a truly civil spirit I can hardly venture to guess. I'm certainly no behavioral psychologist, if in fact that is who would be qualified to say.

A Downer

I am getting to a good place in life, and it is happening none too soon. Finally, if slowly, I am becoming convinced of my abilities and the virtue that is my uniqueness. Being different means a lot to me. Because there is no one like me, I can triumph even when I am not objectively the best, and as I am a novice in the acting game, the value of that cannot be overstate. That is not to say that being different always feels great.

These days, this is not exactly a lone voice crying out in the dark. Lots of people are expressing themselves in one fashion or another about being different, so one could say that by adding my own two cents I am doing little except for indulging my own vanity. I am certainly not beyond that, and so here it is. I do wish sometimes that I were more like others in my way of thinking. Naturally even better would be if they were like me, but maybe I'd be sorry for thinking that.

Crushed

I remain no more able to persuade people to take my point of view than I have ever been. I don't know how that is the case. I wish I would have taken speech and debate in school. I do Toastmasters, but there's no debate in that, and I have never been any good at debating. My most strenuous arguments are no more effective than tires spinning in gravel, and my best hope is that someone more adept takes up my cause. Given the uniqueness of my thinking, that is rare.

While watching football with friends, a commercial came on extolling the virtues of Subway's breakfast menu. Incredulously, and not for the first time, I wondered aloud who could possibly wish to eat breakfast at a sub sandwich restaurant. In a matter of seconds, I found that the entirety of the room, amounting to five people, stood shoulder to shoulder against my way of thinking. They were all entirely glad to eat the breakfast food there.

My Way

I talk a lot sometimes, and sometimes I talk fairly little. The only way I can account for it is that sometimes I am very comfortable with the people, the place and the situation. Sometimes that is not the  case, and I clam up. Mostly I think that these are correct judgments that I make subconsciously or consciously, and I do tolerably well in social situations as far as that goes. Other people might beg to differ.

Even I'll concede that sometimes it goes awry, and I talk when I shouldn't. There's some kind of crossed wire so that I get comfortable when I shouldn't. I'll feel a green light where there's just red. I should recognize that zinger after zinger is being met with the iciest of cold receptions, but I just don't. There are plenty of examples, and the day I made malpractice jokes while a doctor sewed stitches in my thumb is just one.

A Day, If You're Interested

As I write this, I am on the tail end of a reasonably eventful day. To begin with, I had my first Toastmasters meeting following my victory in a humorous speech contest. It's a lovely feeling to be the recipient of a lot of love and good will, and cake and gifts will do that for you. I was very proud of myself after the meeting for successfully transporting a piece of said cake on the back of my bicycle without any mishap in the process.

In the evening, there was an improv performance. It went reasonably well, and I credit myself with some of the good as well as the bad. I think that portraying a bartender working at a museum bar is enough to wash away plenty of sins. I'll admit that eating a giant bacon cheeseburger shortly before the performance may not have been my wisest decision, but it ultimately seemed to do no harm. It even may have helped by slowing down my thought process (and probably my heart functions).

Who To Be But Me

I was thinking yesterday about the notion of posing as someone else. There are many films, television shows and novels that depend upon the conceit of a person pretending to be someone that they are not. Such persons vary in the degree of success with which they carry off this attempt. In the episode of "Remington Steele" I was watching, the titular character managed yet again to maintain the show's central deception, but a guest star failed at the same thing.

I don't know that I would do very well at adopting a false identity. I never have tried really, outside the bounds of acting in character either on camera or on stage. A couple of months ago, I did give a fake name to the guy at a burger restaurant. It was on a night when I had gone in costume to a themed dance performance. Having taken on the garb of a yuppie, I thought it might be amusing to take the name of one as well, and 'Brent' seemed appropriate. I think I managed to pull it off, unless the guy listened to anything I said after that.

A-Jar

I wrote some time ago about beginning to favor the use of glass jars for drinking water. I use them almost exclusively at home, but do use plastic bottles away from home in most cases. There are certain situations in which I take a glass jar away from home, one of them being my improv comedy class. It happens to take place just a few minutes' walk from my home, so it's fairly convenient to do so. I didn't imagine I'd arouse any comment.

In fact, each class seems to bring fresh interest and incredulousness. I in turn am in disbelief. I can scarcely see any real novelty in the situation at this point. I was excited by the idea of doing it, but it really seems like a kind of obvious thing to do. Plenty of people drink from both glass vessels as well as ones with lids to seal them. In this, I only am combining those two things. I suppose it's reasonable to be bemused once, but these are people who have seen it plenty of times.

No Disrespect

Always of considerable interest to me is how others see me. I value most the opinions of those who know me best and who I naturally trust, but I'm also curious to know how strangers see me. In a sense, their perspective is every bit as informative as those who are actually qualified to say what is actually true about me. These strangers are not encumbered by what lies beneath the surface, so only they can really say what the surface entails.

The other day, I was coming home from a Toastmasters meeting. I happened to be going from a bus to a subway train, and at that particular station there is a hot dog cart which offers its wares at the exceptionally reasonable price of a dollar apiece. I often partake. I get the hot dog, load it up with ketchup and onions and do my best to find a shady spot to eat it. Usually I'm going from one bus to another, and I eat the hot dog near the pickup point.

Check Yourself

One of the things I do which strikes me as normal but which is evidently a source of some amusement or bafflement to others is to carry a mirror in my wallet and to gaze into it periodically. I do this when bored or interested in testing out facial expressions. I feel this is reasonable given my intentions of making a living based in part on my ability to carry out those expressions, but I guess it looks weird and vain to others.

Less strange is to watch myself in a video or see myself in pictures, maybe because the acceptable purpose is more evident. I requested and received a video recording of a recent improv show in which I performed. It's not always easy to watch myself, although I can't say that it's unpleasant as a rule. I think that perhaps my reaction is dependent on how well I think I did. For some I gather that it's always difficult.