The Secret Blog of Walter Mitty

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nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:59:04 +0100

Found this video via MetaFilter a while back.

XKCD has now come out with a tribute, of sorts.

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Scratchings #17

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:50:01 +0100

She had a sing-song accent, a melody of a voice and smelled strangely attractively of - of all things - fresh laundry. If she were a little taller, blonde, and didn't have that weirdly huge chin I'd probably have collapsed at her feet in worshipful adoration, deeply inhaling her fresh laundry smell. As she was - I just breathed, and listened.

Although, come to think of it, it might have been the actual laundromat I was smelling, and not her. But let's not spoil the moment, hmm?

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Scratchings #16

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:54:36 +0100

So, after 5 weeks of putting it off, I have written a fairly straightforward note to myself so that, when I wake up in the morning, I'll stop putting it off:

"Go swimming/ You stupid fucker."

I wonder if my morning-self will cower with fear at the unbridled wrath of my evening-self and race out the door in haste to do his (my?) bidding. Probably not. But I hope to actually get that done.

Other things.

First off: my third improv performance will be on Friday and Saturday. This is the single longest thing I've done since I started attending university - nothing else has lasted quite this long. The level of enthusiasm I have for it also outdoes anything else by quite a long way as well, too. It makes me happy, though recently I have begun feeling rather dissatisfied with my performances - flatter than I'm capable of, less spontaneous and inspired than they have been.

We're also beginning to look ahead to the next year in the hope of keeping the group going in the next academic year. While we're losing at least 3-4 members (out of about 10-11), most of the core group - including one of the two experienced improvisers in the group - will be sticking around in Oxford. Which is good. We're already thinking about recruitment and getting a regular time-slot, possibly at one of the smaller theatres in the city, or possibly a watering hole with a small stage area for performances.

It's great fun. Pity Singapore has no improvisation theatre to speak of - and at the moment I'm far too inexperienced to run it myself. Maybe after another year. I like this stuff enough that I'm half-tempted to live in Chicago for a while if only to go for some Second City sessions. Crazy talk? Maybe! Maybe. Maybe not.

There's an "ImprovEverywhere-inspired" group in Singapore at the moment, but it's not quite what I'm looking for - I'm thinking theatre-based, not flash-mobesque type improv. Part of it is simply because I really like to, once a week, just not be myself for a while.

We'll see. Summer should be interesting. Or it might not be. I'll have something to do, at least...

Elsewhere - my libido is oddly low. Perhaps I'm moving on from the hypercharged state of the adolescent male to the more even keel of the older man... about time, really. Or am I deluding myself? Bleargh, stoopid hooman. Anyway the idea of being hopelessly obsessed with a single person is both repulsive and highly inconvenient. Better a detached, mild interest than an exhausting, all-consuming, ever-present obsession, I say.

Take G., for example. One of the more liberal Christians I've spoken to (for some indiscernible reason, a LOT of the Singaporean Christians in Oxford tend towards the Crazy Evangelist type), she's interested in politics and such, is articulate, and - get this - hates the idea of marriage. Like, omg where have you been. Sort of. I don't know, I don't feel particularly obsessed with her, which is a refreshing change from previous experiences... we'll see. At the moment, I have that show to stress out over, heh. Not to mention a truckload of frickin' essays. Which are in themselves actually quite fun to do, if I don't leave them to the last minute.

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Scratchings #15

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:01:06 +0100

Can't concentrate. Tired. Why tired? Had sleep. Had plenty of sleep.

Turns out my room faces east. At 8am the sun's rays shine directly onto my face; a delightful natural alarm clock. Love it. Will be great at the weekend.

It's three weeks into term and I haven't gone swimming as I'd planned yet. Tsk.

Tired. So tired. Why? Didn't do… I am repeating myself.

Had a lecture by Joseph Nye earlier this morning. Interesting, but lost concentration halfway through. One hour later and I'm losing it in an economics lecture. In the best of times I can barely make it through an economics lecture without nodding off.

Pity.

So much wrong with my head.

A quick talk with fellow students reveals what I'd been dreading: that my standards are horrendously low. Horrifying; I was satisfied with 60s and 62s on my essays; others consider those scores to be the nadir of their academic career. It would seem that I have some catching up to do. Same tutor, mind you, so at least the measurement is consistent, if depressing.

Some work to do.

Longish day today; things to do. Alan Rickman coming to the Union? Okay, but I'm not really that interested. If that bug-eyed guy who played Mister Pink in Reservoir Dogs came, maybe I'd give a hoot.

I will spend a while sorting out my calendar for the rest of term. And figure out a way to drag myself from bed to go swimming in the morning. Gaah.

Sleeping on time is an indelible ingredient. Perhaps if I got everything ready the night before, so I could just get up, grab a bag and throw on a shirt and go, rather than actually have to stumble around half asleep getting the stuff I need, it might be easier…

Right now: still tired.

Expectations are important. My expectations of myself, if I were to be brutally honest, are very low. I am capable of more; I have done it before. The problem is, expecting little, I produce little; there is no pressure, no motivation to produce more than I have to. How can I raise those expectations so I drive myself to give more? Questions, questions.

I mean, I'm as good as any of the blowhards around me. Why, then, am I performing so frickin' badly? All things being equal, it is therefore likely to be a problem with the most overt variable: myself.

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Note to Self regarding Catnap Music

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:29:56 +0100

Ou Mono

Hirasawa Susumu

Note to self: When taking a 20-minute nap, letting the Paprika soundtrack play in the background is a Bad Idea. Especially this song. This song... this song WILL make you have nightmares. It will. It is guaranteed. It's practically designed to induce them.

Case in point: an hour ago, while taking a nap, I foolishly let the soundtrack play. When it got to this song, I was dreaming about being a part of a SWAT team (or something similar), and we were approaching a door at the far end of a long, wide corridor. When it started playing, my dream-self was utterly convinced that clowns would burst through the door and charge us, doing horrible things to us on the way. This went on for a while, until I recognised the loud, horrifying music as coming from the soundtrack.

Eureka. Instantly I pictured fluffy bunny rabbits running through the door instead, and poof! The horror went away. The bunnies did come through, but that's okay; no killer rabbits here.

Interestingly, from then on my dream took on an interesting twist - being now aware I was dreaming, I think I actually started controlling my own dream - shades of lucid dreaming there. It was fun until I had to wake up to continue writing my economics essay.

Still, those few minutes of mind-numbing, inescapable horror were intense. Like nothing else I'd ever felt before. Ugh.

To lighten the mood, a rather nicer song from the same soundtrack:

The Girl in Byakkoya

Susumu Hirasawa

Incidentally, I really like the soundtrack; it's actually very good. It's just not bedtime listening material.

The movie Paprika, incidentally, is also excellent. If you don't have an aversion to anime, it is definitely worth a look. Ironically, it's about a dream-travelling super-agent who can travel through dreams with the aid of a high-tech device. Surreal.

Paprika

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Religion. What is it good for?

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:35:34 +0100

An excerpt from

Jesus Made Me Puke: Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right

... Here I have a confession to make. It's not something that's easy to explain, but here goes. After two days of nearly constant religious instruction, songs, worship and praise — two days that for me meant an unending regimen of forced and fake responses — a funny thing started to happen to my head. There is a transformational quality in these external demonstrations of faith and belief. The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self. Even if you're a degenerate Rolling Stone reporter inwardly chuckling and busting on the whole scene — even if you're intellectually enraged by the ignorance and arrogant prejudice flowing from the mouth of a terminal-ambition case like Phil Fortenberry — outwardly you're swaying to the gospel and singing and praising and acting the part, and those outward ministrations assume a kind of sincerity in themselves. And at the same time, that "inner you" begins to get tired of the whole spectacle and sometimes forgets to protest — in my case checking out into baseball reveries and other daydreams while the outer me did the "work" of singing and praising. At any given moment, which one is the real you?

You may think you know the answer, but by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your "sinful" self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really? It was an incomplete thought, but it was a scary one; it was the very first time I worried that the experience of entering this world might prove to be anything more than an unusually tiring assignment. I feared for my normal.

-----

So, this group psychology/ hysteria/ conformity thing - does it vacuum, as well?

It reminds me of a couple of things - Nazism, with its rousing rallies and an entire nation coming under the charismatic thrall of one man. Religion, in general (because this is religion, after all).

And it makes me think, we're all doomed after all. It's only a matter of time before one incredibly charismatic man leads the entire human race into oblivion. How? Where? What? I don't know, I'd be lying if I said I did; but man is, for better or for worse, a social animal, and we're all going to follow him like lemmings leaping into the abyss of extinction.

I only hope I won't be around when it happens. It would be unpleasant. Well, it probably would be quite pleasant at the time, but dying from an inherent tendency to happily participate in groupthink is not really how I want to die.

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At the last improv session...

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:07:52 +0100

One joke got quite a laugh from the team. We were playing "It Just Gets Worse", where four players take turns to tell the story of a disaster which has befallen a small town, each taking on a different persona.

The disaster was, "The post van has broken down". The story got to the point where an angry naked man who wanted his Super Duper Food Processor was chasing a titanium-legged feral boy through a forest with a phlegmatic postman hot on his heels...

"If you're a naked man running through a forest, and only a postman can see you - do you make a sound?"

It's one of those "You Had To Be There" things. But it was hugely satisfying.

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Champions League wish-list

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:47:21 +0100

Mmm. I'd love to see Liverpool beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge 1-0, Gerrard get yellow-carded for overly- enthusiastic celebrations, and Manchester United beat Barça home and away. Without Gerrard, Liverpool doesn't stand a chance.

Oh, and the icing on the cake would be to see Man Utd beat Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford Bridge. LURVE.

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London.

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:34:35 +0100

One of those days – lost my phone, never a good thing, feeling isolated – people used to exist perfectly well without mobile phones, but expectations are raised – people now expect you to have a phone, when previously nobody had phones, so it was okay if you didn't have one either. Was late for lunch wit h WCH; pleasant enough lunch – discussed, among other things, the Arsenal-Liverpool game last night (a real cracker, that one), and Monty Python ("Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!").

No internet access for 36 hours so far; am feeling disconnected. Definitely an internet junkie, now. None of that stuff about physical withdrawal symptoms – am not actually having the shakes, for example – but am feeling nervous and unsettled, need internets now. Very nearly paid GBP5 for 30 minutes of access at a Starbucks – bad idea, no doubt, but verging on reasonable for me. A symptom? Left London A-Z at WCH's office – had to walk back. No museums today, am sad, sad, sad.

On plus side, match tonight should see Manchester United go through to the Champions League semi-finals. Hooray.

Am tired, tired, tired. Walking.

YT was boring. Pleasant, but boring. I do like her, but she's so... bleh. Trying to find something particularly interesting that she does or thinks or says is a bit like trying to hit a fly with a BB gun in pea soup. Lots of pea soup. A large barrel of pea soup. I wonder what she is thinking in her lawyerly little head. Curious. Friendly, but not thinking with her dick (which she doesn't have, of course, which probably works in her favour). Wish I could do that. It's difficult. Lobotomy plz kthxbye.

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Windsor Castle.

nobody@vox.com(Walter Mitty) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:33:46 +0100

Visited Windsor Castle today, as symbolic of the anachronism that is the British monarchy. They are rich; more than the usual rich, of course. And privileged. A rather convincing argument for egalitarianism as an ideology; such privilege! Nevertheless, there was much of interest in the palace; many paintings, and a lot of history. As much as I find the excess and privilege displayed by the monarchy distasteful, they are an undeniable part of history, and there is much that can be learned from a quick traipse through their quarters.

I have doubts about the endurance of the monarchy as an institute. There is much respect for the current Queen, but her heir has a decidely smaller reservoir of goodwill. And the rest of the family's mostly tabloid fodder. Still, as a source of foreign exchange in the form of tourism for the UK, the royal family does have its uses.

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