The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow

Obviously the easiest time to write a blog post is when you should be writing something else. However I am excusing this with the hope that writing this will loosen me up to write my essay on Wuthering Heights. I actually really like Wuthering Heights and the research I got into is very interesting, it’s just the academic writing part that is a struggle.

It’s all about games for me, it seems. The rules of this game are that writing a blog post will resolve paper-writing guilt. The rules of the game I played in McDonald’s earlier were if you look up at the creepy hobo-chic guy, you lose (Why did he pick the one seat where I could make eye contact with someone when the whole restaurant was very vacant?). The reason I’m in the library right now is because I know that there is no way I’d be working on my paper if I was in my apartment.

I tend to think in “if, then” statements. If I work on my paper today, then it might take longer overall, but I won’t be scrambling right before midnight to get to the word count. If I study today when it’s gloomy outside, then if it’s nice tomorrow I will have won and will finally be able to celebrate.

The reason I finally started writing this after thinking about it from that moment with the creep with the painted toenails at McDonald’s was because the sun just came out. Today, not tomorrow. Instead of spoiling my work ethic, I think it actually motivated me to work. My film production instructor this semester said in California they love it when Midwestern folks move in because they know how to come in to work when the sun is out. I take one step closer to becoming a responsible adult when I realize that even if the weather sucks tomorrow, finishing my paper today will be more of a triumph than leaving to go play Frisbee right now.

The sun’ll come out tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after that. It just might be behind some clouds at first. Now I’ve got to get back to writing about why Heathcliff is a vampire.

Barry Kramer Woke Up: A Game Grumps Fan Fiction

Barry Kramer woke up. He wasn’t sure why, because it was 4:17 AM, but then he heard something. There was a small metal clinking noise every few seconds. Slowly, he sat up in bed. He could see a something glinting in the light coming from under the door. Barry decided it would be alright if he flipped the lights on to get a better look. There were five knives on the ground, their points facing away from the door. There was a grunt from the other side. Then another knife poked out from under the door.

“Jon?” No response. Then another knife slid in. Barry took a step back.

“Jon, it’s four in the morning. What are you doing?” Then the knives did something peculiar. There was quite a bit of rattling, and then they all snapped vertical, standing on their points.

“Jon! Whatever you’re doing, stop!” The knives rose slowly into the air. They formed a small circle and began to rotate around a center point. Faster and faster they spun, and all Barry could do was stand and watch.

Suddenly, the knives stopped. Barry blinked, but apart from that, nothing seemed to have happened. He blinked again, and the knives were gone. Barry felt a new weight in the pockets of his pajama pants. Since this was not a normal occurrence, Barry decided it was a good idea to check. From his pockets he pulled out a sack of socks, three quarter halves, a can of Febreeze maybe one third full, the handle of a pickaxe, and thirteen clementines.

After that startling discovery, Barry decided to look around. He was no longer in his room. This new room lacked any furniture besides a pair of torches that cast a dim light over the room. There were two doors in front of him, both quite large. One was labeled “JON (100)” and the other “ARIN (1).”

Feeling suspicious, Barry decided to tie the sack of socks to the pickaxe handle. He used the best knot he can remember from Boy Scouts. As the doors stood there ominously and the torches flickered, Barry wondered if the knot would hold. Thinking on his feet, Barry sprayed a liberal amount of Febreeze onto the sockmace. Now if he hit something it would at least smell nice.

Speaking of smelling nice, Barry realized there was still a baker’s dozen of clementines at his feet. Barry hated clementines. He decided the best way to eliminate the problem was to step all over them, until all that was left was a mangled pulpy pile on the floor.

That spices up the room, I guess, Barry thought to himself. All the stomping he did called Barry’s attention to the fact that over the course of these events he came to be wearing boots. Not letting it bother him too much—who knows what he could have picked up if he had been barefoot—Barry decided to make the pulpy pile look more orderly. He bent down and used the flat parts of the quarter halves to squish the pulp into a neater lump.

Now that all that silliness was over, Barry reasoned he had better figure out what was behind these doors. He walked toward the door labeled “ARIN (1)” in his tangy boots, and before he could reach the doorknob he heard a loud click. Below his citrus-tinged boots was a large panel of wood that Barry assumed was a switch. He looked up just in time to see Arin Hanson falling from a newly opened hatch in the ceiling. Barry sidestepped away, noting that Arin seemed to be sized more like his roommate, Jon Jafari. Barry didn’t have the time to think about how he noticed such a minute difference, because his sidestep landed him right on top of another switch. This one, in front of the “JON (100)” door, opened another hatch, revealing one hundred Jon Jafaris that seemed just a bit taller, probably the height of Arin.

Speaking of Arin, the Jon-sized-Arin fell flat on his face as all of this transpired. Barry felt this would be a good place for the sockmace. To cheer Jon-sized-Arin up with the memory of happier days spent frolicking in meadows, he hefted the sockmace over his shoulder and gave Jon-sized-Arin the best lavender-scented smack he could muster. Jon-sized-Arin got up and walked around with a silly grin on his face while the Arin-sized-Jons hopped out of their hatch, one at a time.

Jon-sized-Arin snapped out of his reverie and grabbed the first Arin-sized-Jon he saw. He pitched him the idea for a YouTube channel, and they walked out of the room through the “ARIN (1)” door, chuckling.

Barry still had the problem of the 99 Jons, but he wagered he could handle them without Arin being there.  However, these Jons looked like they were on the verge of becoming grumpy, so Barry had to think fast. He grabbed one of the torches from the wall and set it on top of the pulpy pile. It was aesthetically pleasing enough for twenty of the Arin-sized-Jons. They began to crowd around the pile.

One of them wondered aloud, “what’s this nice pile of squished fruit doing in this dank-ass cavern?” Barry laughed, but the seventy-nine other Jons were not as amused. They still looked at him with disapproval.

Suddenly, one of them broke off from the group and barreled toward Barry. Possibly because he was unused to the gait of someone Arin’s height or perhaps because he just had poor balance in general, this Arin-sized-Jon careened past Barry, missing by quite a large margin, and proceeded to fall flat on his face.

Barry laughed again and said “Ha! Look at that guy.”  Not really disposed to laugh at their own self, the Arin-sized-Jons looked at the poor attempt of an attack and tried to devise a better option. Thirty of them broke off and began a discussion of the pros and cons of continuing an attack. They eventually digressed into a more philosophical discussion about their motivations, but were hindered because not a one of them could remember Aristotle’s name. It bugged them for quite a while after that.

The other forty-nine Arin-sized-Jons decided to take a more direct approach, and they began to form a tight circle around Barry. Thinking he should have remembered this a long time ago before he got into any of this mess, Barry began to casually speak a few letters aloud.

“X. Y. Z. Z. Y.” And with that, Barry was instantly warped away, to a new spot in space. This room was lit by two lamps instead of torches, and there was a black leather couch in the center of the room. Jon-sized-Arin and one of the Arin-sized-Jons, presumably the pair from before, were sitting on the couch, holding a piece of paper. Barry tripped over a cat walking over to them, and this caused Jon-sized-Arin and Arin-sized-Jon to look up. Then, coming from not too far away, was the sound of ninety-nine Jons screaming “"WhaaaaaaAAAAAAAT!??!"

The piece of paper the two men on the couch were holding had three things written on it, but all of them were crossed out:

Goom Gamps

Gum Groomps

Pumblooms

Brushing himself off from his minor scuffle with the floor, Barry grabbed the pencil from Jon-sized-Arin and wrote “Squidward” at the bottom of the page. Arin-sized-Jon considered the new addition.

“Dude, hang on.” Then hurriedly he motioned for the pencil, eager to put his idea down on the page. Barry noticed the door at the back of the room when he heard the noise of a confused crowd coming from that direction. With cautious regard for the door, Barry handed Arin-sized-Jon the pencil. While Barry was still looking at the door, Arin-sized-Jon sribbled furiously on the page.

“Okay, dude?" said the Arin-Sized-Jon. Barry looked down at the page. The “ward” of “Squidward” had been crossed out, and now it said “SquidGrumps.” “This is literally perfect,” continued Arin-sized-Jon. Jon-Sized-Arin nodded in agreement.

"Totally, man. It's like, exactly what we were looking for."

Barry didn’t have the chance to add anything to the conversation before a hard knock came from the other side of the door. Barry opened the door quickly. A single Arin-sized-Jon stood there, startled that the door was actually opened. Behind this Arin-sized-Jon, Barry saw the torch in the pile of clementines. Barry was amused that his spell didn’t take him very far, but that amusement turned into disappointment when this particular Arin-sized-Jon looked over to the left and shouted,

“Hey guys! I found him!” Behind Barry, the SquidGrumps became worried, and they stood up from the couch.

“Shit, dude,” said the Jon-sized-Arin, “you’ve gotta get out of here.” Barry dug into his pockets to see what was left. His hand emerged with the tangy quarter halves. Barry thrust the thirty-seven and a half cents of citrusy currency toward his antagonizer. This particular Jon-sized-Arin looked down in confusion at the coins. Then, the Jon-sized-Arin just shut the door. From the other side of the door, Barry heard, “uh, never mind guys. It was a bird. Like, a really big bird," followed by ninety-something irritated sighs.

“Huh,” said SquidGrump Jon, sitting back down. “That was easy.”

Barry stood there at the door, admiring how much his quick thinking had done for him so far. Once he finally had a moment to himself, Barry realized he still needed to get home. It seemed there was no imminent danger, so Barry gave a casual scan of the room. The room actually had more than the one couch and one door. There were a few empty bookcases along one wall, and a large portal on the other side of the room. The portal had a large neon sign on top that said “OFF,” with additional tubing to switch to saying “ON.” There was a coin slot on one side of the portal. Barry walked over to the portal to give it a closer look. The portal was about six feet in diameter. Unfortunately, it was completely empty in the middle. The coin slot on the side said “25 Cents.”

Unsure of what to do next, Barry turned to the SquidGrumps. He looked at Arin-sized-Jon and asked, “How much ass do you think MegaMan gets?”

Arin-sized-Jon paused for a moment. "Huh." He began to do some math on his hands. Barry caught bits of his mumblings, "One, two, three, four..."

"What was your favorite Megaman?" he asked Jon-Sized-Arin.

"Uh.. probably 7."

"That could be it."

"How much ass Megaman gets?"

"Yeah." Arin-Sized-Jon laughed.

"Did you ever play Megaman 7?" asked Jon-Sized-Arin.

"...No?"

"Dude. We should totally play Megaman 7."

This moment felt historic to Barry. He stood there, wondering what all of this would come to, but then he had to return to business. He took a closer look at the couch. Barry decided it would be worth it to fish between the cushions, so, pushing the two SquidGrumps apart, he dove into the couch. Barry emerged with two dimes, four pennies, a pencil, and four Pogs. So close!

Barry figured his luck had been alright to this point, so, sighing, he used the pencil write “Legitimately 25 cents” on one of the Pogs. As he wrote “Legitimately” across the top in his best American handwriting, Barry wondered how long ago it was that he actually enjoyed playing Pogs. As he wrote “25 cents” across the bottom, he realized he was not able to remember a time when he did. Crossing his fingers for luck, Barry slid the counterfeit coin into the slot on the portal. The neon sign switched to the “ON” tubing, and the middle of the portal filled up. In the haze, Barry could see a blurry vision of his house.

Barry could not believe how happy he was to see it. Home. Even if Jon was going crazy back home, it couldn’t be much worse than what was going on… wherever he was. In one final act of defiance, Barry did his best Charleston, and he followed that up with some moonwalking around the room. The SquidGrumps, taken over by Barry’s elation, also took to the dance floor. There were many sweet moves involved.

When it finally came to an end, Barry and the SquidGrumps flopped onto the couch, laughing.

Arin-sized-Jon placed his hand on Barry’s shoulder. "Hey man," he said, "before you go, I just want to thank you for not beating me up with your socksack thing."

"He didn't beat you up?" said Jon-sized-Arin. "He totally hit me, like, right in the face. With his sack."

Arin-sized-Jon began to laugh hysterically. "Oh, I'm sorry, what did he hit you with? Cause it sure sounds like you said he hit you with his sack!"

"Oh you know that's just the kind of thing that happens when you hang around bad parts of town for a while—just walk around and get hit with sacks, like it just..." SquidGrump Arin trailed off into improvised silliness.

Barry laughed with them, but he had to go, because he did not know how long his counterfeit quarter would last in the portal. As he stood at the threshold, the SquidGrumps waved goodbye. They looked quite jolly, despite what inconsistencies there may have been with their new name. Barry did not dwell on this. He needed to get home. He waved back.

Then, there was still the portal. Barry wasn’t sure of its reliability, but he puffed out his chest anyway and took a step into it. The trip, if one could call it that, was instantaneous, but Barry felt incredibly uncomfortable. The sun was beginning to rise on the horizon. I wonder how much time I spent in that dungeon, Barry thought to himself. Succumbing to the dizziness, Barry fell face first into the grass. The morning dew woke him up a little bit. With not much dignity left, Barry considered just sleeping out on the lawn.  At least I’m 24 cents richer, Barry thought to himself. The last thing Barry heard before collapsing from the extreme dizziness was, “Thank you for using ACME Portals. Please pick up your emotional baggage on the way out."

***

Barry Kramer woke up. He couldn’t remember where he was for a moment. Then a piece of grass tickling the inside of his nose reminded him. Barry let out a groan and rolled over. Jon Jafari—Jon-sized-Jon— was standing over him, wearing one of his black button down shirts and a pair of boxer shorts. Jon looked down at Barry in silence for a moment, and then he said,

“Where the hell have you been?”

 Fin

This story was inspired by this thread of comments on Barry's AMA. So many props to ObligitoryPuzzleRoom for his awesome adventure game scenario! (Also to Barry for participating)

Dream Journal: Romeo and Juliet

I had a peculiar dream last night. Usually my dreams are interesting escapades filled with people that I know, often with humorous or startling juxtaposition. Last night, my dream certainly had a journey, but I could not recognize anyone.

Now, even writing those three sentences helped clarify some of the dream for me already. I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 a lot, and recently I’ve been playing parts of the game that absolutely require cooperation with others, so in my dream where I defended my backyard from a giant with a few complete strangers, I can see how that relates to playing a cooperative online game before going to bed.

That part was incidental to what really concerned me when I woke up, though. After the battle with the giant, I met a girl. I did not recognize her at all. She was noticeably shorter than I was, but that is the only detail I can remember, and I think it matters little, anyway.

The thing that I am the most affected by from this dream is that there was this immediate feeling of love. It was innocent, but it wasn’t naïve. It was passionate, but it was pure. And I had just “met” this girl in my dream. She was nothing like anyone else I had met in appearance— I knew that even though I did not really have any details about how she looked—and I knew nothing about her character besides the two small interactions we had.

It was very Romeo and Juliet. It may be nothing special, because poor Romeo and Juliet are brought up in discussions of romance all the time, but I have had my fair share of unique situations centered on them. This time it was a new part of the story that was important. It was love at first sight. I have never subscribed to that theory, but it may be because I have not experienced it. I don’t know if having the experience in a dream counts, but it happened. I knew that’s what it was: love at first sight.

After that first encounter, I woke up momentarily, but after seeing it was only about 8 AM, I went back to sleep. This new (or was it?) dream transported me to a giant lake, and I had to find my way out of it. It took me a long time, with detours and many methods of transportation. Once I finally made it back to land, I was ushered inside a building to get ready for a performance of some sort. Behind some doors there was a large room with windows at the back. Several characters from my first dream were present, including the girl.

Her head was shaved. It was understood she had to do it for something important, but I couldn’t tell you exactly without making something up. We held each other and it was the same feeling as before. How my brain knew what this feeling was like, I don’t know, but it took me a while to recover once I woke up again.

While the action of my dream may have been centered around my experiences with others online, I know this girl was a part of me that lives in real life. The situation was all about being with the other. It was all about presence and feel, things that I know are not part of the internet.

A lot of me waits for things to happen. I’ve been waiting a long time, so I don’t know what kind of things I should make happen on my own. I’m not sure about love at first sight, but I do believe in love at first date, or love at first kiss, or love at first laugh. 

Be Myself

I can’t be myself.

I don’t know when I am “me.”

And immediately this feels like a bad idea, but it didn’t before I opened Word.

There are so many ways that people change their mood purposefully: coffee, exercise, drugs even.

I usually wait till late at night because it’s “easier” to write.

Why? Shouldn’t I be able to write the same at all times of the day?

But I can’t. And my mood changes all the time, and then I wonder if that’s changing more than just my mood.

Am I still myself?

And then the sarcasm kicks in and I wonder if Mr. Bordwell was right.

When questions get asked in writing, sometimes the answer then is “stop reading.”

But Ze Frank asks questions in his videos all the time. I can hear his tone now, echoing in my head.

So who is writing this paper?

I thought I conquered my “Multiple-Ian Complex,” but I think I just made it more complex.

One of the first things Ishmam told me when I started my blog was that the writing didn’t sound like me.

I don’t know what he thought of that, but that made me worry, because I thought it did.

But me talking to Ishmam is at a different time than me writing a blog post.

The one shard of sanity I have left is that I do proofread some things.

None of these posts are really proofread at different times of the day, but serious school stuff is.

And I do make changes, but I feel as if I can keep a constant voice or flavor.

And just like writing this has calmed me down, maybe writing is what unifies me.

I just need to keep writing, then.

And the writing can be me.

We, Us

Well, here we are. We’ve spent four years together, and in just four months, we’ll be separated—scattered; from here to Chicago, from New York to LA, from the United States to England. We’re all waiting anxiously for the moment that’s been assigned to us since we got our Novell usernames. Two-thousand twelve seemed too far away back then, but here we are.

This is the end. Our time at the school is done, and there are so many memories of the school. Having spent so much time in one building, there is a connection we have with the place. The school has been a vessel for so many of our memories these past four years. All the time we spent and connections we made have made an impact on our lives. However, as we leave, it will be difficult to say if we have made an impact on the school. If we come back to visit in a few years, will the things we did be remembered? Some of the younger kids and the teachers will remember us, but our specific actions will probably not impact the school after we leave. But I think that there is something wrong with wanting to impact a place.

 Wherever you are, wherever you go, a place is special because of the people. We shouldn’t ask ourselves, “Where do I belong?” Rather, we should ask “With whom do I belong?” I think that we, as human beings, do make a lasting impact on other human beings. When your best friend goes off and develops a cure for cancer, you can remember the time you dunked on them while playing basketball. When a friend in band becomes a famous musician, you can remember all the goofing off you did in class. You can remember freshman gym class with that pro athlete. There will always be memories of our shenanigans.   What we do in the school won’t matter to the kids that come after us, but those kids won’t matter to us, either.

The people that have stayed with you are the ones that know who you are and what you’ve been through. I think that the most important thing in life is relating to others. It’s difficult to do, so we have to give our full effort to understanding each other. Because if we don’t have other human beings, what do we have? We won’t leave an impact on the school, but we’ll have left an impact on our friends. In our new lives, there will be more people to impact. That is what we are going out to do. We’re going out to make an impact on a larger amount of people in the real world.

We must remember not to forget. When we go off to new and exciting places, we might lose our old connections. There will be times to make new friends, but don’t let your best ones go. Keep this time with you. It’s been a good four years, and as we go off into the wild of the real world, I hope the friends we’ve made will stay connected. We’re here for each other. Remember that it doesn’t matter where we belong, but with whom we belong. Good luck, class of 2012.

The Average American Summer

I’m getting rid of my brain crack in chunks, hoping I will be forced to eventually complete my project.

I was inspired by Elsa’s comment: “the average american summer”.

With my very vague post I think the people that read it all had a different concept of what kind of show I wanted to do.

I figure Elsa might have meant some kind of documentary, which I’ve been filming a lot of anyway.

But that doesn’t matter, because I was inspired.

I wanted to film a drama, not a soap opera, but a legitimate show.

This is what it’s going to be centered on:

The Average American Summer.

There’s a lot that happens in three months. There’s a lot that can change in three months. There’s a lot that stays the same in three months. There’s a lot of free time in three months.

When school doesn’t take up 7 hours of your day and then more because of homework, there is a lot more quality human interaction. Even someone with a job probably feels freer just because they’re not doing the same thing everyone else is.

The problem is we’re still bound by the same system. Summer is just a function of school, even if the goal is to have as little to do with school as possible.

There’s a lot that goes back to normal after three months. There’s a lot of nothing that happens in three months.

This is about kids having their own unique Summers in the same way.  This is the average American Summer.

The story will be centered on unique characters so that there is a plot. The events taking place will be average in that they aren’t spectacular, but not average in that everyone does them. Sure, there will be events that most people expect, but I’m not going to be taking a poll on what the most average activities are.

I haven’t decided anything about the characters yet, because I don’t want to force it. I want to have these sudden great bursts of inspiration I’ve been having, and let those guide my work. That’s no way to get work done on time, but so far this has been moving faster than other ideas I’ve had.

So this is my way of doing as little school as possible—my own Average American Summer.

Tell Me a Story

I need to do something. And if I do something I think I can prove to myself and to my mom that I don’t need to get a job this summer because I’m doing what I’ll be doing in the future and getting real experience instead of selling drinks I’ve never tasted or selling some twelve year old a game I’ll never play.

I know that money is important and if I do this I’ll probably end up losing money overall. But I think if you were bitter enough you could describe life as a sequence of losing money. So what I want to do is get the best out of life that I can at this moment, and then in the next moment, and then the moment after that.

Maybe I should get a job so I can afford a nice camera, but maybe I don’t need a nice camera. I do have a nice camera already. What I need is skills. So I’ve repeated myself a couple times now, I figure I should get to the point.

I have this urge, as I said up there, to start something. I know what I want to do, but I need a little more inspiration than that. I want to film some sort of serial show, like a drama; something that I haven’t written for in a long while. But I don’t know where to start. I could think about and force something out, but there’s nothing there but the idea of filming a show. I’m just waiting to be inspired.

I’ve already been inspired to do something by watching Ze Frank, but now I want the something to be changed from “some” to a specific thing. I could go scour around for a good idea, but I want permission to be inspired. I don’t want to infringe on someone else unless they are offering their ideas to me.

The last time I tried this, I got zero responses, so I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this again, but I’ve written this damn post so I’m going to publish it. I know people read the posts, but they barely respond. I hope you’ll respond at least on Facebook this time. I just need ideas, and then I will go to work. I want to entertain you. Maybe the best way to do that is to get inspiration from the people I want to entertain.

Tell me a story so I can tell it back.