I was responding to a friend's f-locked post about her feelings in a polyamorous relationship. I don't have an overwhelming amount of romance in my life, but that which does stumble into my ken tends to be treasured. Even so, I guess I don't make a big point of announcing my tendencies toward open and/or poly relationships publicly. Which is no surprise, considering that all my relationships have been pretty much de facto vanilla for the most part, heh.

The closest thing I've actually had to the open, poly relationship that's my mind's-eye ideal was when an old girlfriend took on a second boyfriend for a time, then he insisted that she choose, and she chose him. (For those of you who know me more personally, that would be the girl who later re-emerged in my life as the 'psycho redheaded stripper,' a few years later when I didn't know her untreated bipolar had reached critical mass, heh.)

Anyhow, the way I generally try to explain my mindset to the people who care about me is that I'm like a bird in a cage. If you leave the cage door open, I'll know that I -could- leave at my pleasure, so I'll generally sit quite comfortably where I am.

But if you lock the door shut, I'll bash my head open against the bars trying to get out. It's just part of my contrary nature.


Translation into less metaphorical terms: I'm most comfortable in a relationship that is technically "open" and/or "poly-friendly." But knowing that I'd be allowed to stray (within the rules, of course), I'm generally satisfied with what I have, and enjoy nurturing the relationship I've already got.

It's an odd way of explaining things, but for some reason it seems to be a good way of telling my mindset to a lady who's not quite ready for a fully open or poly relationship. Basically, if we set the boundaries wide at the outset, I don't have a reason to "test" them.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Sid Meier, especially the Civilization series. I've been playing it for fifteen years, since the first one came bundled with my first CD-ROM drive. I just started playing Civilization 4 in the past couple days, and overall I'm quite pleased with my acquisition.

It's the little subtle touches that really put the special polish to the experience for me, though. For this game, it's the soundtrack. The Firaxis team put together an excellent selection of classical music for the ambience, which is a nice change from a lot of other games.
What really tickled me, though, was the way that period-appropriate music accompanies each historical era. The game progresses from Gregorian chant through Vivaldi and Bach on up to Boulez and Philip Glass John Adams as you go from Medieval to Modern age, and it's just... a really cool detail, to my geek mind!


Having Leonard Nimoy do the voiceover on all the little quotes in the game is just the icing on the cake, really. I tell you, those developers know their target audience and how to make them go squee.

Last Sunday my brother took his girlfriend to the Cubs/Sox game. At the end of the third inning, he pointed to the scoreboard and asked her to read it.

It said,
BETH
I LOVE YOU
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
DAVE

When she turned back, he was on his knees with a ring in his hand.

Her immediate response was, "Are you kidding me?"

And then she said yes.


Evidently, it went a little better than this little bit of late-night talk-show mayhem.

I've been playing little games over at Kongregate, and I found a couple minigames that are worth your five minutes or so.

Dissociation: Move the circle, catch the bouncing dot. The catch? You're controlling a red circle with your left hand, blue circle with your right hand, and each needs to catch their own color and avoid their opposite. Very simple gameplay, but fun and challenging if you're used to getting tunnel vision when you game. Encourages parallel thought and hand/eye. posicat especially, I'm curious to see how you react on this one differently from me - I tend to think in parallel, and you swap processes so quickly that it may as well be in parallel.

I Wish I Were the Moon: Manipulate the pixelated picture elements (Yes I know the derivation of the word pixel, why do you ask?), find all the endings. I got 'em all! I really enjoy this sort of Zen gameplay.


Also: I actually found a punchline to a viola joke I hadn't heard before!

Q: What's the difference between a viola and a chainsaw?
A: When you fill a chainsaw with gasoline, people don't come running with lit matches.

My cousin shall marry this coming August.

Her father, my uncle, was the one who moved away from the rest of the family, so I've only seen my cousins on rare occasions. So, I want to give her something to remember me by other than "That weird cousin from Chicago I haven't seen in years."

My wedding present to her is to be a wedding march. She's already got her wedding music planned, I'm not trying to impose into the ceremony, I just want to have a wedding present to send her, and this is very personal, for family. I've already got the theme in mind, now I'm translating it into a string quartet orchestration.

Sometimes I discuss with my closest friends what actually brings me the most pleasure on the internet.

That would be, the META-LOL. The ability to analyze your own geektastic mind and discuss the original LOL, for equal or better LOLlery. It's like, yes, every viral meme that pops up and spreads like dysentery in a wading pool may be quite funny and/or intriguing and/or trainwreck on its on merits... But what REALLY interests me is the culture-like sociological phenomenological behavior of those who perpetrate the meme.

• The Early Adopters:
  These are the folks who seek out and broadcast the latest starlet. They are easily entertained, find just about every damn thing amusing, and simply MUST share it with all their internet friends.
  
  
• The Parents:
  Who get the lame memes two years past their expiration date and send them to their kids.
  
  
• The Monolithic Trolls:
  Who choose an avatar of their amusement at their fancy, and subversively flood the entire internet with a single meme all at once, then submerse back unto the depths until their muse strikes once more.
  
  
• The Internet Fail Police:
  Who futilely attempt to halt the onslaught of a meme with cries of "STFU" and "STOP POSTING STUPID SHIT," only to have their posts add to the noise level of the signal-to-noise ratio, and raise the postcounts of the memetastic threads involved.
  
  
• The BlogSheep:
  Who simply MUST post their latest quiz results, boast about how incredibly accurate/inaccurate this test was, then tag YOU to do it next.
  
  
• The Historian:
  Who feel the need to relate their detailed archival search for the TRUE root of your meme.

So, any other stereotypical categories from the idea factory?

I have just used the word "Circumlocation" correctly in a professional wrestling roleplay post.

Do I:

1. Continue as planned?
   
   
2. Turn myself in to the pedantry police?
   
   
3. Raise hell upon this silly idea of recreating fantastically the fantastic world of gladiatorial unarmed combat?

I do believe the answer is obvious.

Nota Bene: The previous will sound more funny if spoken in some sort of bad Scottish accent.

My folks recently went on vacation. Their standard trip is a week or two taking the RV, going to see some music, and touring wineries.

They came home from the latest jaunt with a present for me... A bottle of mead! I do enjoy the honey wine on the rare occasions I can find it. (Renaissance Faire notwithstanding.) This bottle is mellowed with raspberry. I think we'll crack it tomorrow night and share it over dinner.

Most good mead I've enjoyed has been on the sweeter side of wines, but it has a unique mouth-feel if you're used to grape-based wines. Because there's no grape skins in the process, there's no tannins in the liquid. So, you don't get the 'bite' against your cheeks etc, and it's physically smoother down the hatch.

We'll see what we shall see, but the parents generally have reliably good taste in wine, and they know my preferences.

I know several of you may even know this piece as Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," while the rest of you will recognize it as background music from either Warner Brothers or Ren and Stimpy cartoons, depending upon your generation. It's still a great piece of evocative jazz.

NOW PLAY IT ON THE FORTY-EIGHT CHORD HARMONICA!



(thanks to foxhack for having this in his journal so I could stumble across it.)

For those of us in Chicago, well-known conservative radio persona Mancow Muller has been around for a while. Like him or not, he's got brass balls, which is what makes him good radio. Still, there's something inside me that goes squee seeing him eat his words... Evidently he'd gone macho, claiming waterboarding was hardly torture, and even went to the level of volunteering to undergo the process.




That is all.

I was heading home from the grocery store, listening to NPR.

They were playing their music history and analysis show, and for once they were doing a show on early hip-hop. Just intriguing to hear the history and theory of hip-hop as voiced by serious critics, rather than the popular magazine columnists.

Interesting theory they brought up: that the emergence of hip-hop in the early eighties came when R&B and soul were turning to a smoother, more refined sound, so it was hip-hop that took up the edgier aggression of the urban community.

---

I baked a double batch of brownies yesterday, trying to clear out some pantry space, and I saw some kids playing outside down the block, knocked on the door. Wanted to get mom's permission first, obviously. She didn't know me, but that was the whole point. I grew up in this neighborhood, but the neighbors have changed, and there's no reason to be paranoid like my folks get sometimes.

They're living where my brother's best friend grew up, and they're the Santiagos, got three youngsters running around. Now I know someone new.

---

My brother introduced me to something new, Lipton's got a Brisk apple-flavored green tea. I'm not a big fan of green tea, but with the green apple essence, it clicked just right for me. Not quite as dry as green tea can get sometimes, and a little less subtle.

---

Also, I know a handful of you locals might be interested in this little stumble-upon find. I went into the new liquor store where the Pick 'n Save used to be on 120, east of Green Bay. Asked him, "What makes you unique?"

The man didn't miss a step. Behind the counter, he had a bottle of absinthe. Now legal again, and not one of the imitations, either. Full 135 proof, or the thujones won't extract from the wormwood, now I know where to find it. Thirty-five dollars for the bottle, if you're interested. Not too unreasonable for a rare treat with a mystique about it.

---

And again, rosencrantz23 finds good stuff. Speaking of smoother R&B... B. Storm, the ASL interpreter who did the Marilyn Manson "The New Shit" video interpretation has done a proper cinematic approach to his latest project, Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy."
(YouTube has taken the vid down despite explicit permission from the artist, so get it instead at Storm's page, under videos.)

Videos like this help explain why I seem to love Chicago.


BluesFest is coming up June 12-14, I've managed to miss it by a month two years in a row, and I'd like to go with friends, and it's FREE in Grant Park. Locals, Metra still gets you downtown for five bucks, and it's walking distance from either train station, if you've got decent legs.

I wanna bring my fiddle, do my thang, and if I get a chance to plug in, hell why not? There BETTER be a jam stage out there somewhere. And if not? We find one of the designated street musician spots and make our own music.

So who's up?

Several, in fact. Granted, being Carl Johnson isn't exactly unique. (Well, not by default. I have to work hard at it.)

I know there are at least two other Carl Johnsons in my locale, due to mixups with bank accounts, library cards, and medical bills.

I've also contacted two other Carl Johnsons online. One found me on Facebook. He's a schoolkid in Bangladesh. The other, I stumbled across. He's a professional film composer, did work on several minor Disney films and a few cartoon series. I got in touch with him out of curiosity, and he's a decent fellow.




ATTENTION ELJAYS:

The folks are on vacation. I woke up snuggling a curvy lass. I spent much of the day doing yardwork and planting flowers, working up an honest sweat.

Now I'm putting the showman's polish on a damn good monologue, listening to some right dark drum 'n bass, and reading a few issues of Transmetropolitan. I think I'm in a right proper headspace. A glass of wine and a salad shall commence shortly.

Okay, I decided to settle on a monologue from a show I know and have performed, The Fantasticks. Rather than aiming for comedy, I'm going to use a bit of El Gallo's magic of the raconteur, the fantasy-spinner.

El Gallo: You wonder how these things begin. Well, this begins with a glen. It begins with a season which, for want of a better word we may as well call- September. It begins in a forest where the woodchucks woo, and the leaves wax green, and vines intertwine like lovers; try to see it. not with your eyes, for they are wise, but see it with your ears: the cool green breathing of the leaves. And hear it with the inside of your hand: the soundless sound of shadows flicking light. Celebrate sensation. Recall that secret place. You've been there, you remember: That special place where once- Just once- in your crowded sunlit lifetime, you hid away in shadow from the tyranny of time. That spot beside the clover where someone's hand held your hand and love was sweeter than the berries, or the honey, or the stinging taste of mint. It is September- before a rainfall- a perfect time to be in love.

Ahoy, yon fellow thespians and raconteurs!

I was at the College of Lake County tonight, watching my dad in a band concert. Looks like their auditions for the summer musical, The Sound of Music, are going to be this upcoming Monday/Tuesday, and I feel like treading the boards again. Auditions will require a song from the show, and a two-minute monologue.

I know there are more than a couple folks on this list who are more intimately acquainted with theater than I. I can get the song fine, I'm a musicker by trade. However, I haven't done any acting since high school, so I'd like help finding an appropriate comic monologue that I can pick up over the weekend. (Yes, I'm going to hit up the library, etc tomorrow. I'm just using this social network as another resource available to me while the idea strikes.)

I'm a twenty-nine year old male, baritone. Much stronger in supporting roles than spotlight leads. Much stage experience as a musician, some acting experience but all in high school.
Am made of delicious meat, best served in a thick cut cooked to medium rare, marinated in a basil vinaigrette.


Thanks in advance for any ideas.
- CJ
-Noble in reason, infinite in faculties, beauty of the world, paramour of animals, quintessence of dust, $19.95/hr

The word of the day:

Borborygmus

Nota Bene:: In double-checking the context of "A rumbly in my tumbly" that I was going to use for flavor text, I found out that it was evidently made into a video game. Now I wanna play this just for the hell of it.


Addition: I'm playing Sonny 2 on Kongregate. It's a decent combat-oriented RPG where you play a sort-of zombie.
I'm in a cave level, and one of the monsters is a giant bug named Gregor. He just did an attack where he threw an apple at me, which got stuck in my back and is now poisoning me. I LOLed.

Last night's concert erred on the side of success and AWESOME, if at all. If there were any minor technical imperfections, we more than compensated with raw showmanship. Okay, maybe not raw, more like... half-baked. Heh.
This was the sort of performance where having a live audience made all the difference in the world for the choir's energy levels and sheer fun. Those folks just ATE UP the "Knock, Knock" suite; it was an excellent opener to get the audience warmed up for the show.

Many ugly ties were worn, the sneeze-takes had the essence of comedic timing, the Airhorn solo was on pitch, and the flask was surreptitiously passed about the chorus in full view of the audience. (Usually we keep it hidden from them, or wait 'til the intermission.)

I'm not certain if anybody was taking a high-quality recording of this concert, but I was determined to have SOME sort of record for myself, at least. I brought my handy-dandy bright pink Sansa MP3 player, put it into "Voice Recorder" mode, and left it on the front pew. It's actually not all that bad of a recording, given the hardware considerations. A bit weak on the bass frequencies, but the Sansa picked up where it was important. (Naturally, the tenor lines cut RIGHT through.) I transferred the files to this box, and I've been doing the drudgework of marking down where I'll need to put in breaks between movements while writing my LiveJournal entry. Now just to go tweak some normalizing and equalizing, chop the WAV files, burn to CD, and convert to MP3.

Tomorrow, Saturday evening, I've got a concert with the Waukegan Concert Chorus. This is going to be a LOT of fun.
I've had the fortune to sing with this group such epic pieces such as Orff's Carmina Burana, rich work like Duruflé's Messe Cum Jubilo, and classic repertoire like Mozart's Requiem.

Now comes a concert unlike most anything else I've done so far, though. I've got the opportunity to sing a concert of work by a truly great man... P. D. Q. Bach.

Even better, I've got a solo! In addition to a few minor recitatives, I do get to have my moment in an upbeat movement from The Seasonings, "Open Sesame (Seeds)."


Fortunately, I seem to have healed up enough that a couple Vicodin (Yes, I have a prescription) and a bit of caffeine let me feel human long enough to get through some musicking. This is going to be a LOT of fun.


EDIT: It'll be at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Waukegan, just behind the public library. Concert starts at seven o'clock. Ticket prices are... I don't know off the top of my head, but I want to say around fifteen dollars for an adult ticket.

Today, instead of griping randomly about catching a nasty cold just as I was starting to recover, I'm going to share some geeklols.

Today's topic of geeklolery:

The Hairy Ball theorem.

Technically, it's a mathematical theorem that states, given a sphere covered in hair, like a tennis ball or a coconut, if you try to comb all the hairs in a single direction, you will inevitably reach a point of clash, a cowlick in the hairs.

But more importantly, we can get cheap giggles over mathematicians discussing the real-world ramifications of Hairy Balls. (Evidently it causes hurricanes.)

Hiya, folks. It's been an ever-so-thrilling couple of weeks in the hospital. I'll skip most of the colorful details here (though watch for my followup post to alt.tasteless!).

Once I finally got in, the consensus diagnosis basically came down to, "Gall stones, we'll need to get that gall bladder out, except that there's a nasty case of pancreatitis. So, we'll keep stalling day by day and hope that the pancreas comes down 'til we feel safe chopping into your gut to get that gall bladder out."

Thus, a couple days to watch for the pancreas to come down turned into a week and a half sitting around, watching TV and reading Scientific American, keeping an eagle eye on the spikes in temperature and white cell count that were keeping me off the operating table, and sweet-talking the doctors into lowering the delay between my doses of Dilaudid. I tried not to depend on it all the time, but there were certainly moments when the waves of pain started triggering that I was very glad to be in the room next door to the nurses' station and their friendly little addition to my IV line.

Anyhow, the doctors finally decided I was healthy enough to go dig around in my guts for a while, come Tuesday. They did so, I woke up minus a gall bladder and with a few interesting slashes in my belly apparently held closed with superglue.

A couple days later, the last of the drains and IVs have come out, they've sent me home, and now it's just... Well, for a few days at least, more of the same, only with better food and more TV channels. So long as I stay in one basic position, I'm pretty good physically. It's when I have to move to stand up or sit down or whatnot in the first place that all the Ouch Hurty Time comes to bear.

A handful of ibuprofen's no replacement for a shot of Dilaudid, but here's to hoping it'll take the edge off.