Why Lack of School and Too Much TV Don't Mix

So I was watching the news today ( I have time for that now!) and I had a " No shit!" moment. As most of you know the pope is in Palestine. He's basically telling the Israelis to back off. What I'm getting from the opinions of the west is they're kinda like " well if the pope says so he's probably got a good reason". This is where I feel pretty lucky I escaped the whole Catholicism thing. What people seem to have forgotten is that this guy was a hilter baby. He's probably in that group of ex Nazis that pretend the whole holocaust thing that never happened and the rest of the world came up with the nasty rumour because they were jealous that the Germans invented the Volkswagen and they didn't. Following that train of logic ( Bear with me on this one) Pope Benedict probably just thinks the Jews are batshit insane with crazy imaginations so he sides with the Palastinians. Now when it comes to the Abrahamic religions I stay out of it generally speaking because it's all the same shit. So I really don't have an opinion on the Israel/ Palastine thing. I love my Jews and make jokes at their expense but that's about as in to it as I go. So my comment on this is to just remind everyone that Benedict was being groomed for SS so maybe he shouldn't be influencing anyone's decision on the matter. Go ask the Dalai Lama what he thinks, he's cool, he swears.

Dog, Plant, Blender

How do those relate? Those are my incentives to come back to my parents place. I'm so upset about having to move. I don't think anyone can fully comprehend how much I love Toronto and how much it's killing me to leave. Everything is down here. My career, my culture, my god damned blue banana..., my friends. Back home I'm the weird one because I'm one of those "Artsy Folk". Yesterday I got bored so I wandered around Kensington Market and went out for dinner in Little portugal and I was half tempted to find some new fabrics down in the Fashion District. To re-enact that in hicvkille I would have to bum around the upper canada mall, eat at some dirty mom and pop bakery in bradford and drive to walmart so i can hit the craft section. Where is the poetry in that?! ...And there are large carnivorous dogs in the walking trails...

But anyway my family is there, my dog is there and when I find an appartment I'm getting a fish and keeping him in a specially rigged blender and his name will be francois the angry german.

In response to the flu outbreak... oh and school.

So that swine flu... some scary shit eh? It's actually a strain of Influenza A, H1N1 to be exact. If you do end up getting it you're going to camp out in the bathroom all day just like you have every other time you've come down with the flu. The people who are dying are the young and elderly. Same as every other flu outbreak. My mom's company is only preparing so they can add the strain to their bug collection and rape you lot out of money for a vaccine. It does not kill people with a healthy immune system. That rumor probably started up because the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 caused the sufferer's immune system to overcompensate resulting in your body kicking it's own ass. Even if this strain does that it's like taking antibiotics. That's more or less how they work btw. anyway. enough nerdiness for one post.

School is over. I still think I'm lying about that. I almost wish that was the case. Almost. Wasn't ripped a new one which sounds like no academic probation. I can honestly say this year has changed me at an alarming rate. I was an actor, a hick, and a going no where sissy before coming here. Humber Studio Theatre as broken me in a good way. I've grown to become a glorified construction worker with all of the bad manners that go along with that title. Nothing like hard hats and scarves. I still want to stick to rock shows and film, more rock though. I've been given the new option of becoming a lighting designer which was something I didn't think was possible even at the end of semester one. Now i'm starting to feel passionate about hitting buttons. That does include sound mixers shamefully. So instead of pulling the would be gut wrenching and very relfective bullshit that everyone is spewing on facebook I'm going to leave you with one thought. Jen Mclean: The Zombified Lighting Designer On Fire. I give you my career.

Fuck My Life

Oh what a phrase. At the beginning of my college adventure I was taken aback when someone in rez loudly exclaimed "fuck my life", seeing as I live under a rock I thought she was rather emotionally unstable. I was thinking to myself is what's wrong really so bad that "fuck getting a ticket" or " fuck the pigs" didn't do your situation justice? As the college thing has progressed this phrase seemed to get more and more popular. Now it's to the point that if someone has homework or has to do dishes their life needs fucking. Now, being in theatre I can tolerate exaggeration. It gets me a paycheck, but really? Using the phrase fuck my life for everyday struggles just makes you sound like you're suicidal or just plain whiney. I kind of want one of these kids to say that in the presence of an AIDS victim and I kind of want to be there. However I do not want to be there when the following conversation happens " Man I just talking about my homework and said fuck my life and an AIDs victim was behind me, fuck my life." Now, that being said if you do have AIDS, or your spouse died in a car fire which was your mercedes and you have no insurance then yeah, fuck my life is kinda appropriate.

On another note, I may get a music player for this thing so you readers can get even more of the Jen experience. For those who don't know, i'm practically neurotic about people seeing my music selection so consider yourselves greatful. On that note I should be in Intro in like 15 minutes so I should really stop typing... there we go...

Randomness

I had one of those mornings where you wake up and life is good. It makes no sense because the weather gloomy wet and cold and I woke up to beeping but I still woke up in a good mood. I'm having one of those days where I'm thankful to be in good health with semi stable living arrangements and a job. I also feel compelled to make sure all my friends know how much they mean to me. I lurve you guys, even if you influence me to go to strike hung over ( I'm blaming all of you for that :D). MMM serotonin and your strange effect on the mind.

Hello procrastination, did you miss me?

I love how every time I need to type up an essay I end up here. Yep. Two and a half weeks left and I'm still screwing around. The thought of being done my first year of college scares the shit out of me. It's not the fear of failure that has me. It's the fear of letting go the thought that in a mere two weeks i'm done for the year. That's it. No helping it. I'm also apprehensive of the change back to hickville living. I don't know if I'll be able to hack it which is funny because i spent 18.7 years there. And to think no one really believed I would be happy in the city...











Oh Longbranch... how I'll miss you.

When desperation finally finds distraction...

I just found one of those funny things about the english language. After enough of those I could see me changing ma langue de preference a francais. Voir je suis aller. j'ai besion du sommeil. Anyway. to prosecute: To initiate civil or criminal court action against. to persecute: To annoy persistently; bother. that's really all i have to say. bon soir.

Breathing is a healthy activity.

Oh to be a perfectionist and imperfect. School has snowballed into a pile of hellish, joyless, overwhelming shit and now that I'm on the other side of it everything is alright. The last three weeks I've genuinely felt like I was in hell. Could have been the downward spiral that is the nature of my thinking, could have been the diet that has been 85% coffee lately. Either way I really need to learn how to sit back, breathe and actually see what I'm doing with myself. If I did that sometimes I would probably be much happier more often. Sure I'm out of two classes and I'm failing another two but it's workable. Am I a failure because of it? No. From this side of the fence I'm feeling a tad retarded for not dropping comm and drafting earlier. So yeah, I still can't run away and join the circus but I think coping in is the agenda. Bring on the 12 hour hang.



On another note I'm really starting to hate social networking sites. I want to ditch the facebook account and properly connect with my contacts I've made there. I've come to the conclusion, thanks to Karyl, that facebook, twitter, even myspace make it so that we don't have to do anything worth talking about. Before facebook no one posted on their sites, blogs and the like about anything that wasn't exciting. They would post about a kickass vacation, mind blowing shows or books that really made them think. Now you're seeing posts along the lines of " omg I just picked my nose" or " wow I hate mondays!!" the exclamation points make it ground breaking. I'm guilty of it myself I used to strive to do stuff worth blogging about now I just post about picking my nose and how montonous my life is. I apologize readers. I think to save my intelligence I'm unplugging. Anyone who doesn't want me to fall off the face of civilization will be able to keep tabs of me here or through msn. If you've never grabbed my email get it soon.

At least I procrastinate creatively...

So... i should be doing a couple of assignments that I promised myself I would have done by midnight (whoops). Essentially new camera plus spreadsheets equal lack of finished stage management homework... a couple of nights ago it was dressing up like a princess and running amok downtown. I don't know if I should be proud of my creative procrastination habits. The other option is to be very worried..

and nobody was naked...

Opening night has come and gone and no one was naked nor did poo water seep into the theatre. All in all I think this show was a success. Looking back on the show, sure didn't want the girly sissy crew but I'm walking out of this with something. I've got a lot closer with the actors. They're more than props that eat and wrinkle their costumes. I really enjoy working with them. Sure there is an asshole or two in the bunch, but hey, so goes humanity. There are a few assholes on our side of the show too. I've also left with some mad pressing skills and a new contempt for spandex.

Outside of work i finally found drinking time. I didn't think that existed any more... Catch is it was an opening night party. ha ha. I am pleased to report that although I was in a large crowd of fellow drunkards I didn't drop trou once! And you guys didn't think I could keep my new years resolution! I win.

Going back I think I should explain the poo water ordeal. Poor outsiders. I left you hanging... So I pretty much live in a building chock full of technicians. We are electricians, carpenters, welders, riggers, painters, seamstresses and computer techs. We can do almost anything. I would have said everything if the plumbing didn't fuck up. It's a painful sight seeing repair men making their way into our DIY haven. It took them almost two weeks to fix the problem. In the mean time there was a gaping hole in the floor which we were affectionately calling the poo pit. When you haven't had proper sleep in weeks and your freaking out because your show is going on in two days and there is still poo water all over the place the phrase poo pit is effin' hilarious. The poo pit was transformed into the spooky poo pit when they had green running lights. It was at that moment that I realized that hysteria did hit during this show. I was worried I had surpassed that insanity.

I can haz moar coffee?

How does that sound for a formal report? I kind of want to make that work. If I can get facebook into a valid research resource then I can get lolcats speak into an essay... This blog is actually coming to you live from Communication 300.

- this was a blog that I had started in comm one morning. I found it while editing. I don't understand it either...at the time it was clever if I remember correctly.

sometimes life lessons come in the form of obnoxious sirens sounding late at night in the middle of jauary....

Sorry readers for the delay. Sometimes it takes a fire alarm to get your ass in gear... so two weeks back in and so far i've seen some pretty ugly sides to both my education and more recently,god-damn-drunken-womb-clingy-dregs-of-the-gene-pool, erm... my living arrangements.

So far my time back has taught me how much i hate schism...or more lightly gossip. It hit me yesterday how much that's been eating at me and how inescapable it's going to be in this career. It seems that every theatre techician is going to know every other theatre technician's relationship status, who hates who, every quip and quarrell anyone has on any crew, or whatever else made high school complicated. Being the backwards individual i am i almost completely avoided that drama in high school so i'm not equipped to handle it just yet i guess. I suppose it's something i'm going to have to grow into and then out of. hopefully not. I enjoyed dodging that bullet. Maybe i just have my back up because i feel hard done by for being stuck into two soft crews in a row. Guess being short and weak and dare i say dainty doesn't a carpenter make. Could just be the fact that i'm on the other side of a few opinions among the general populace. Still just a rough spot though, theatre is where i belong and no one for the good nor the bad is really going to do a hell of a lot about it. Looking back on it maybe is just people in general I don't like. hmm...

Anyway I've decided that a list of do's and do not's for living in a building with a thousand other people might help others avoid living in college residences.

1. Do become aware of the fact that in high concentrations people of any age tend to become stupid. Stupidty leads to lots of messes that will have their own categories.

2. Don't assume that because you would like the place you live to be pleasent that others will agree. In large concentrations people tend to prefer the opposite. Gotta love that bystander effect!

3. Do pest proof your living arragements. People are gross. they bring their bugs with them. Pest proofing should also include sound proofing and a shut the fuck up stick that you can use to hit the walls, ceiling, floor, window, to make noisy neighbours do just that...shut the fuck up. You should also conceal any indication to pests...i mean... outsiders that you live where you live, they will come to your door when you are hung over among other things. Normally at times when you don't want them there basically.

4.Do Fire proof your living arrangements. Yes. People in high concentrations are stupid. Stupid people can't be trusted with any sort of combustables. your fire proofing should also include sprinkler proofing. Tonight I have learned from other's misfortune to keep EVERYTHING off the floor.

5. Just don't live in a building that houses more than say... five people...

Day one

So to start off I'm going to state something that Griff pointed out so wisely. The first class of the semester was Comm 300. Business writing. That would have been a very bad start indeed if, say, Stella was teaching it but it was someone more hyper so it was amusing. Stella seems nice enough but she lacks the insanity needed for a monday morning...

This guy trumps all of the tech teachers in his ability to get lost in rants so he's pretty awesome in my books. However. Communication classes are not. Nor are the dim witted registrar gophers that stuck your sad responsible ass in that damn class to begin with. Ooo look at that snappy change of mood! I wouldn't be so ticked if you know... they looked into their computing fuck up. That would have been pretty swell. According to some higher schooling power I'm exempt. I tell them I think there has been a mistake because well... i have little to no experience writing formal business pieces and I haven't done anything to prove I have. So what do they do about this? Without even looking into how i got that exemption status the toss my ass into class without a second glance back. Makes me nervous that these are the people also handle my finances within the school. I've slapped down 11k already with these guys. You do 11k of work wrong on a car and you're losing fingers.... makes me think that they're either assuming mommy and daddy pay for everyone's schooling so we don't care or that we're just in school because we have to be so we don't care. Either way I'm getting the feeling that they think we don't care which seems kind of ludicrous because even the richest people would probably feel a little twingey about flushing 11k...

oh and there is more to come with the lack of communication thing kiddies! because that's the main issue here. I'm thinking they don't think we care as long as our ass in a chair preferrably in a class room and with an instructor. This other tidbit comes from rez. So my roommate moved out just before break (thank effin god). So that's cool, I had the entire dorm to myself for a couple of weeks. Then i come back three weeks later and the place is still empty and I clear some space for the new chick. fine by me. then the electricians come in and open the room up to get at the fire alarm and i notice it's set up like a display room. I wasn't notified that the place is a display so i'm left here thinking do i get a roommate? is it safe to continue running around in my skivvies? are random tour groups chock full of high school kids going to be stampeding through my room only to run into a very cranky me after a wild night? I really hate kids. That would be messy indeed...

Hopefully this is just beginning of the semester bullshit. Other than that it was great to be back in class. It was amazing how quickly we all picked up where we left off. feels like we've been away for a weekend, which is still a retardedly long time to be appart in this industry. I'm really looking forward to where this shit storm is going to take me. Ha ha. bring on the three weeks to opening!