A day.

Again, unable to commute without wheels or adequate public transport, so I spent the day reading in the coffee shop (La Reunion of great vegan soup fame) and the Triangle Park. A beautiful day-I went back and forth between reading and just gazing at the beauty of Forest Park in September. Tough day, right? Well, it would be heaven except that, Protestant boy that I guess I still am, I feel guilty about "skipping work." I'll be happy to get back into the groove of work, but since I can't get to work I may as well take full advantage of the situation.

Also I already miss Twelfth Night. Backstage on that show had everything I could want from life-good conversation with smart people, cute women, funny kids, Shakespeare and some good acting seeping in from onstage. I'm going to have to come out swinging when I return to work, and really impress my bosses with how well I'm doing on the job, and to do that I can't afford to have theatre draining my attention and energy, but I intend to get back in the theatre just as soon as I can.

So, back to the good stuff. Still working on Things Fall Apart. The White Man has shown up, and it's telling that the instant converts to Christianity are the goofballs and screwups of society. Also read the first volume of Mome and the latest of Drawn and Quarterly, two art-comics anthologies. Both were full of tasty stories; perhaps I'll provide a review or something later.

Buried Treasure

In the course of sorting recyclables I've been ripping up old junk mail, and what should a generic-credit-card-comeon-looking package include but a birthday gift card from one year ago. I just activated it, and starting with month 6 they start deducting a monthly maintainance fee, so this old card has ten bucks left on it. Happy birthday indeed.

The Ol' Homestead

Since my car's on the mend and I find the busses just won't take me from here to there, I'm taking some time off from work. Boo. But I'm sure not gonna waste this time; I've got plenty of cleaning to do, which is always the case thanks to my general laziness, but compiled with the lack of time and energy thanks to Twelfth Night it's gotten so bad that even I'm appalled. My recyclables have piled up almost thigh-deep, and while I may not be able to drive the whole mess to the recycling center I can jolly well organise it.

In slightly more exciting news I'm currently reading Things Fall Apart, which I borrowed from the star of our recently finished play. She wrote a paper comparing the portrayal of community in this novel with that in Neuromancer, and I'm eager to find out what comparisions and (more likely) contrasts she made. In Things Fall Apart the whole civilization is so integrated and community-oriented, and everyone is so totally plugged into it, while in Neuromancer society is so fragmented that people are either alone or are in little cliques; wealthy families, gangster organizations, Rastafarian communities. The plot is set in motion because (spoiler warning) an AI computer seeks connection and integration with its counterpart AI, and once they finally link up they reach out to alien intelligences which they, but not humanity, have contacted. But heroine Molly leaves her part-time lover, the protaganist Case, so the humans wind up seperate again. It's almost as if our only hope is to create AIs that are better able to find fulfillment than we are. It's a glum-yet-hopeful variation on old SF themes, not only of AIs and alien contact, but of human improvement (Clarkes' Childhood's End, Van Vogt's Slan, Octavia Butler's Dawn.) I should read some more of Gibson's works to see how he builds on these ideas about community and the fragmentation theirof, and discover wherein his hope for the future lies. .

I've recieved intimations that white folks show up and wreck everything in Things Fall Apart. I am not enthusiastic; whatever the faults of the society the novel portrays (women get a pretty raw deal, although some of them, like the priestess, are able to find their own routes to power) it certainly isn't likely to be improved by europeans, and I'll hate to see how things fall apart. I haven't been this personally absorbed by a novel in a while, although A Celebate Season by Carol Shields and Blanche Howard came close. I may have more to say about that book later, but outside it's right at that sweet spot where it's sunny but not oppressively hot, so I'll go try to waddle this flab off, then get back to recyclables.

Statement of short-term purpose

I've decided to take Harvey Pekar as my example and record a few things about my life that may be mundane in the grand scheme but which may be of some use for future students of the ordinary person's past. Since community theatre is for me what church is for many of my nieghbors I intend to write a series of posts about my B'ham theatre experiences, the first of which, dealing with the Birmingham Festival Theatre production of Angels in America 1, may or may not be finished tonight.

A new home.

Hello all. Due to popular demand I have moved from my old blog. By popular demand I mean Steiber's constant complaining. This is not yet a content-rich site, but as I have a few days off from my latest theatrical attempt I should have time to fix things up a bit. Until then your instructions are to get off the internet at your earliest opportunity, speculate about what deathbed regrets you'll have for things not done, and do one of them.