I got an email from Gayden Wren. :) He has not seen the show yet, but he did in fact read my name. Hopefully he read it in the program first, but then someone evidently sent him an excerpt from my blog. How embarrassing and/or awesome.

He wrote other plays, and books, for the record. The book I found particularly interesting: A Most Ingenious Paradox. It's about Gilbert and Sullivan's creations... The plays, for the record, are Ernest (A musical based on The Importance of Being Ernest) and Baseball, Sex and Other Facts of Life. None of which I've seen...

I'll have to try and see Very Truly Yours, and then the others, I suppose. I find myself somewhat limited, in that most of the musicals I know are Gilbert and Sullivan, and being that they only composed 14 or so.

---

On Friday, August 21st, 1903, a man named Schuyler C Kelley was found to have been missing for a number of days. I just thought it was kind of neat, in a creepy sort of way. Luckily, my middle is Bertram, and this was over 100 years ago, so I'm relatively certain that there are no terminators out for me.

---

In other news, I've been stumbling around again. I keep changing my mind, what I want to do. I am certain, beyond doubt, that I want to do musical theatre or at least theatre of some sort, and that seems like a solid choice, but I know very well that I want something else. The problem is, the something else I want is everything.

It is times like these that I get depressed, hmm? Thinking about all that I am interested in and curious about--sociology, anthropology, (which covers everything under the sun, so I could stop there, but I won't) computer science, algorithmic science, mathematics although I still despise the simple stuff. It bothers me that the simpler it gets the harder it is for me to do it. (Excepting addition, subtraction and multiplication) Other subjects too, I have a passing interest in.

But going back to the depression, it is because I feel that I will never be able to learn it all. That may be good for me, in that I will never run out of materials to study when I am bored. That's what I do, I think, when I get bored with one thing I move on to the next, but I never finish anything. At this rate, nothing of mine will be finished by a hundred years from now.

I was reading today about Scale-Free Networks, and I intend to read into it further--ways I could make use of it, for example. This is what started me off thinking about mortality and such, although it does directly apply to what I'm doing recently. (A lot of programming. MUSHcoding, but programming nonetheless--I'll finish learning Python one day. (At which point I will make a damn FICS client for FreeBSD that works)) I just don't know how it applies yet.

---

I had a dream the other day where I was in a restaurant with my 12 year old brother, and I think 4 guys busted through the windows dressed as Ronald McDonald, brandishing weapons. 12-year old would not shut up, and I got shot for some reason. Grr.

---

I'm trying a new thing where I separate subjects by three hyphens, see? I think it's working. I feel slightly more organized already.

Boy-o, boy-o it's been a long week. Rehearsals, books I still haven't read or listened to even, PSATs, etc. Here's the week in no particular order.

The Wednesday before last. We were all just sitting around and said, 'Hey! Let's make a book club!' And lo, there was a book club. So we're reading two books for that, and I still haven't started either of them. There's Johnathon Livingston Seagull and Fahrenheit 451.

I could probably just read Seagull, but I haven't even had a chance to do that. I turned around for a moment and life sucker-punched me. It's my own fault, but still.

Oh, I went to MCC the other day to talk to Donna Burke about taking classes part-time next spring. I'm sort of looking forward to it, but I've reconsidered taking their theatre program now on the advice of more than one actor with the Off-Monroe Players. Apparently their music program is fine, but their theatre program sucks. Oh well. They all suggested Nazareth too, as well as a few other community colleges.

I am going to take a GED after all, I need it for financial aid. (I finally looked into it, just like I said) On a semi-related note, I took a practice SAT today. I'll have the results Saturday. I doubt I flunked anything, but I very much doubt that I did terribly well on anything. I might have done well on the English portion, including the essay, but the time ran out on me twice. (The other two or three times I was done on schedule) Math, on the other hand, butchered me, but I expected that. It didn't butcher me actually, but I hadn't prepared or anything for it. I haven't done any of this for ages... What of it I learned, I learned and then moved on, and the rest I was putting off. Time to get to it, eh! I'll let y'all know how I did when I know myself.

Last Wednesday we had rehearsal for G&S Christmas Carol, and I attended even though I was dreadfully ill. I do believe very much that he was kidding, but when I was taking a little theatre class our director always said that if you miss a rehearsal, you'd best be attending a funeral and it had best be your own. I think that was either a joke or terribly short-sighted, and he's a fairly wise man so I lean heavily toward joke. Moving on, that night we were blocking my first scene, and I sequentially forgot every single thing I knew about acting well. Didn't face entirely forward, spoke too fast, I even upstaged Scrooge at one point. I don't know if I was nervous or what, but I need to fix it either way.

Ironically, I have the opposite problem with my song. I'm dragging it out! :P No one noticed though except one guy, (besides myself) and he just told me I should work on it, so.

I wrote everything I forgot down on little index cards, which I had stuffed into the back of my script for taking notes on blocking and recording my cues and such, so maybe I'll remember it in future with relative ease.

Tomorrow I'm going to listen to the third book I have to listen to all day, Evolution, me, and other freaks of nature. This is for a single program at the Penfield Public Library, and participating in this program means that I can have all late fees removed from my card. While I'll still have to replace the CD my brother broke, who the heck cares? :P

. You know, in all of my moderate excitement and anticipation of A Gilbert and Sullivan Christmas Carol--or something like that, I've seen the title written three different ways now, one with two Zs and a Q--it never once occurred to me that Fred Scrooge had a fiance. Oh, horrible!
. I could go on and on about this. Love is hard to portray. You, as an actor, may not know or love the person whom on stage you love dearly. You may even hate them. Of course, such conflicts crop up whatever you're portraying. For example, you may have just won the lottery but on stage you just DIED. You're sad and angry that you just died, but off stage you're jumping for joy and punching the air, shouting involuntarily every so often until you have to prove to the ushers that you're an actor.
. It's somehow different with love, though. Love and hate can be easily the most potent emotions, if for no other reason than your hormones usually back you up. (They make great personal coaches, those hormones) Without those little fellows there to give you pep talks, it's hard to be willing to kiss another person passionately.
. I'm quite obviously not the first person to have encountered this problem. I don't even know what sort of relationship Fred and his fiance have. I just thought I'd make the situation known to those of you who may not otherwise know it...

. The actress's name is Meg-I-Mean-Honey*smooch* until further notice. This is a completely different Megan than Meg-I-Mean-Yum-Yum, and unfortunately it also isn't Summer Glau. I've never met this one, (not that I've met Summer Glau) but apparently she's home schooled too and a friend of a friend of a friend.
. I only found out that I was engaged to her because a friend of a friend started teasing me out of the blue about being engaged.

. Ok, I've been on death again. I know you are all tired of this, but no really it's different this time I had an idea wait come back!
. Actually it's probably not different this time, beyond that this is an idea for a short story. (I'm into NaNoWriMo again, too, even though it's not for two months) I think the idea was that no soul is ever created or destroyed. Souls exist on the fourth dimension, and when someone dies someone fetus somewhere gets a soul. I need to account for the rising population of the Earth, and that will be most of the point of the story. I'm not sure how to tell it though.
. It obviously needs some tweaking.

. There was more I wanted to talk about, but I honestly can't remember it. Just know that it probably had to do with perception, the Human race, trust, and pebbles.


P.S. Someone remind me how to do tabs in HTML

I got the part of Fred in Gilbert and Sullivan's, a Christmas Carol. Not a huge part, but I think I'll enjoy playing him, reading about it. Rehearsals don't start until October, though. Until then, starting this Tuesday, we rehearse HMS Pinafore. (Which is good, as Fred's featured song is based on I Am the Captain of the Pinafore)

I made $50 bucks yesterday. Spent $10 to get some food, and the rest is going to buy me the Serenity RPG book despite the bad reviews I've had--I really need it for a project, and anyway it seems as good a way as any to start a collection of RPG books--and fix my library card.

"... I love you guys!"

We all just got back from an audition for HMS Pinafore and A Gilbert and Sullivan Christmas Carol. I thought the audition went well.

My brothers and I sang Three Little Maids, and I sang When I Was a Lad. That was the easy part, singing. The hard part was cold reading. I hate cold reading. I read the Boatswain (Bill Bobstay) from Pinafore and Scrooge from [25 points if you guess], and I hated myself as Bobstay. I think the directors liked me as Scrooge, though.
I doubt I'll get that part, thinking about it, just because the audition form says 45-70 years old. I am not 45-70 years old, obviously, so I might be more likely to get the Ghost of Jacob Marley. Or nothing at all. I'll find out by the end of the week. I haven't really got my hopes up, even though I sound like it.

Speaking of theatre, I had an odd dream about Pitti-Sing. You may know her as 'The One With Heart-Stoppingly Strong Perfume,' or something else I forgot. It was an odd dream, I think involving a baseball diamond, a truck full of costumes, a urine-stained bathroom (At the baseball diamond) among other things.
We were at her house for a cast party after the baseball diamond thing. Maybe they were two different dreams. I wish I remembered more...

We received the CDs of our concert recently. How fun! What wasn't fun was trying to rip it and zip it in a format that could be uploaded ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET. Freehostia just sucks, I can't upload anything there, so I finally uploaded disk 1 in WAV format zipped up.

There's 12 songs on disk 1, and that's all I have right now. My computer won't even recognize disk 2 as a CD. Now there seems to be another problem, the WAVs are in a format Windows refuses to recognize without extra codecs... Hopefully they're available.

Later on I'm going to rip and upload both disks as MP3s. A format everyone knows and loves...

Disk 1

Oh dear. Two nights is not long enough, we need to do more! But alas, we already struck the set.

Tonight's show went a little better, which was good considering it was being recorded both for CDs and for DVDs. We actually had audience members order CDs! Although we don't know how many. I guess they'll be received in two to five weeks. I hope it gets here before my Ubuntu disc.

People are giving me advice now. The Off-Monroe Players are one big extended family, basically. And so I've been receiving shining compliments from all sorts of people, in addition to advice on colleges and the like... They seemed to agree that my original plan would work: Get a job, go to MCC for performing arts and maybe psychology. (Although, I've been less into that recently)

Multiple people have suggested that I take singing, and now piano lessons too. Piano lessons. I wouldn't mind doing that again, but I can play the piano well enough as it is. I can sing well enough as it is too, but I'd much prefer to take voice lessons. We honestly don't have the cash for it, again I need a job...

More to come, if I remember it. Stories and the like from this most recent show, and links to photos if they are posted.

Rehearsal went very well today... The show is really coming along. A few rough patches, but other than that it's really sounding nice, at least from the back of the stage. I get the feeling from there that I'm one of maybe four people singing the bass line, but I can't hear beyond the two on either side of me really...

Turns out my costume change works. I'm no longer in the Sorcerer number, but oh well.

They changed my night cap, though. Apparently the director and costumer--among other people--were all giggling while they watched me, 'cause I looked like an elf. It was a bright green cap.

I only hope I hung my pants up, and didn't leave them on the floor of the dressing room. :S

For this, because it's a vocal concert, we will have both a DVD and an audio CD made. We're ordering one of each. I checked, and because the shows aren't copyrighted, I'll be able to rip at least some of the songs and throw them on my 'website'. Probably just the audio, I can't rip DVDs for the life of me.

There was more I wanted to post about, but I can't remember what.


Oh yeah. I had a thing about streams of consciousness. I can't write them. I suppose technically I can, but they don't seem like streams of consciousness when I do it; I think in full sentences. :(

οἱ πολλοί: A greek remark. (Hoi polloi... 'The many', used in english to denote the masses in a generally derogatory manner)

I learn a lot in theatre.

Anyway... There's not a lot to talk about today, oddly.

Happy Mother's Day to those mothers--or otherwise female persons--out there I didn't say it to already.


I've been thinking about going to a plus account, instead of basic anymore. I don't know why, really, there's not a lot of differences that matter to me. Especially for just my personal blog, the only thing I can think of is that I might want to post an actual poll someday, instead of just asking questions like 'Hey, how do you view math?'

The problem with polls, of course, is that usually people can't write in their own answers. It's possible that livejournal lets you... Maybe I'll find out later.

Here's a question, for now: What is your shell of choice?

I love this question. I'll tell you why, and give you my answer later.

P.S. I have a deviantART account, now. I have no idea why, it's not like I do any real art, but it's there... http://zalethon.deviantart.com/

As predicted, I don't have time to write out a long list of stuff. Incidentally, that was 4AM/sleep-talk for a list of my values and views on the world, and general good advice. No one would probably have found it terribly interesting anyway, I just figure this is just a good place to write all of that stuff...

This is why I need to keep a notebook more handy. I had one for a long while, but it turns out that when I actually remember to take a notebook, I don't think about anything interesting. It wasn't a spiral-bound pocket notebook thing anyway.


Rehearsal today was mostly just rehearsal, up until the end of it. As you may be aware, the Off-Monroe Players are not the richest organization in the world. We operate primarily out of the lower levels of a church, using both the basement and the gym/auditorium/room-of-requirement. So there are basketball hoops on each side of the area we rehearse in...

So as we finished putting the stage up, we--and by we I mean a good half of the male chorus--noticed a flat basketball sitting in the corner. As the rest of the chorus was in one of the back rooms, someone started tossing the ball toward one of the hoops as the rest of us went about our business. (Meandering around and talking whenever we happened to run into each other)

Gradually our small group all gathered around the hoop, and took turns taking shots with a flat basketball. It was more fun than it sounds. One of the group decided to get sneaky and run off down the court with it, though, and a game started.

Through some form of telepathy we decided that the game would be between those under the age of 18, and those over, and began playing. We basically just chased the ball to each end of the court, and when it was on the 'adult' side they scored a point, while on our side we just threw it to each other until someone from the other team took the ball back.

The director just walked calmly to the middle of the court, where her desk and chair were still set up facing the stage, and packed up with the game still going on around her... Very trusting. (She wasn't hit, of course, her trust was well-placed)

Long after the game ended, and we--my brother, my mother and myself--were on the way home, I was told that we had bothered the female half of the chorus going over their parts in the back room. The scene was something like this:

All of the women are sitting--or more likely standing around--singing. Suddenly their singing is interrupted by their spidey senses tingling, and one of them says, "Are they playing basketball out there..?"
My mother walks to the door and peeks out, and nods quietly. "Yes."


Alright, the story's over. I probably have more to write about, but I'm tired and anyway I've used up enough space as it is.

By the way. Punctuation of the day: The em dash! (That isn't actually available on most systems, so really just a double hyphen)

So... Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next we have rehearsals/crew work etc. And then on the 13th, and the 15th. And then on the 16th and 17th we have performances... I'm fairly certain the stress will be tangible tomorrow evening. I am fairly certain, actually, that we'll pull it off, with or without the entirety of our blocking. (Blocking for a vocal concert? Pfft (Not really how I feel))

I was looking at this schedule today, and I thought, "Gee, I sure am busy for the next week or so." And then I realized that not only am I not really that busy, but I'll be even less busy next week.

I need a job, just to keep my sanity. I thrive on being busy, whether I like to admit it to myself or not, and when I'm not busy I just sit around letting my mind atrophy. I need something to do constantly. I used to have a 'worry stone', and then a little stress ball, that I carried around with me to distract hands. It actually helped me to pay attention a lot, I need to start doing that again. Especially for chess games.


I'm starting sort of to question just how much difference thinking of mathematical notation as its own language (possibly a programming language) actually makes. I wonder how everyone else views maths.

This is my problem all the time... I am told, in many cases, that I am a natural; acting and music, for example. But I never know that until someone tells me... I tend to assume that I'm no better at anything than anyone else. (Certainly not at maths) Ironically, it's always a shock when I'm wrong about that...

I'm too tired to go into reasons for assuming that I'm average when it comes to my skill in just about anything. If I started to type out theories, I'd be here for another hour, and then I'd delete it all and start over because it sounded stupid 'on paper', so to speak. I've already done that once, in fact.

I need to be less afraid of looking stupid. Maybe I'll go into a long list of stuff tomorrow. Probably not, though, 'cause of the rehearsal...

But I digress. The point of it is, I'm always wondering how everyone else sees stuff. If it's different from the way I see things, or if they think of it in the same way... Maths is a prime example. It's possible that a ton of people think about it the same way I do, but they just associate it with something else. Or they associate it with maths itself. Maybe someone looks at programming the way they look at maths...


I like this new theme, you may have noticed it. The thing I don't like is that tag cloud. The reason I don't like it is I haven't really paid attention to my tags, so they're all over the place. Oh well...