Well, this concludes my first year in the Sunshine state. No matter what happened I had always planned to make it at least a year, a date picked largely because of my signing bonus which I would have had to return had I quit last week. Now that the year is over I still have no plans of leaving in the near future, despite the fact that it is mentioned to me every time I talk to someone in South Carolina. My situation still isn’t exactly what I would like it to be, but thats life really. In general, they like having me around at work, and my days stay relatively busy, and of course the weather is nice (when we don’t have brush fires or hurricanes). I do like South Carolina, or should I say I like being near all you people up there in the South, but I just plain don’t know where I would work if I moved up there. If you really want me to move, find me a computer engineering job in Greenville, and then come find me.
Oh and by the way, in order to celebrate my anniversary here in the Senior Citizen state, two rather strange and bewildering situations have presented themselves to me in the last couple of days. One was a rather elderly gentleman, full head of white har, feeble, crouch and driving a car from the 70′s. The strange thing about this gentleman is that the old car that he was driving had green neon light under the car and spinner rims. I would like to believe that this little white man is a actually a hudlem and single-handedly stole the car from several members of some tough Melbourne gang which I am unaware of.
The second man was a begger. In general he was a normal begger type, ragged clothes, long beard, knit cap in 90 degree weather. As he walked down the sidewalk he carried a sign, a sign which read “Why Lie, I need Beer”. Haha, ok funny joke. It wasn’t working for him. The unsettling part is that he dotted the “i” with a big heart. hmm.
I have ridden in a lot of airplanes in my day, but none of them ever look like this.
This man had a dream, a dream he just wouldn’t let go of, a dream of creating clean, non-staining bubbles.
Last week I finally ordered a subscription to the local newspaper. It was something that I had been planning on doing for awhile but I had never gotten around to it. One might be tempted to think that since I am such a technology person, and since news is readily available online, I would have nothing to do with this relic of 19th century communication. To some extent, I would say you are right. I do get quite a lot of news online. But still, there is something about sitting down everyday for a few minutes and flipping through the newsprint pages that is positively appealing.
The fact that this is a unique avenue for hearing about the local goings-on, reading the voices of local opinions, or getting a targeted collection of world news is really not even the point. I bought the paper for the experience, for the daily ritual of newspaper reading without the plastic and electronic world of the keyboard, mouse and monitor that it affords me.
I do, in fact, love my technology, but its sort of sad how technology is replacing humanity (even without sentient, homicidal robots).The idea of a paperless society has been floating around for some time now, most of my life even. I don’t doubt that is where we may end up eventually. On one hand I welcome it. I would love to be able to do a text search on a book I am reading to go back and find some tidbit of information I had forgotten. I like being about to communicate effortlessly at any time day or night with whoever I want where ever they are in the world. But on the other hand, the more technology we have, the more it removes from what was once the halmarks of the human experience. At one time, calling someone meant you stopped by the home and had long converstations over a cup of tea; your transportation was your pet; and stuff that you bought might have been expensive but it lasted a lifetime. Today we have traded the quaility of communication, of connection, of creation for quantity. We make two minute phone calls. We have 200 people that we have only surface relationships with. We buy things to be used for a day, a week, a year and then happily throw it out only to go out a buy a new cheap, disposable replacement.
Bringing this back around, that is why I find myself every morning with a fresh paper on my doorstep despite the veritable mountain of news which sits constantly at my fingertips, just waiting to be googled.
Go ahead and mark your calendars now.� Well at least any who is going to be in Florida in late september/ early October should mark your calendars. Because on September 29,30 and October 1,6,7,8,13,14, and 15 you will be able to find me in a small beachside theatre playing the part of Ellard in The Foreigner.
Most of the time I have to really think about characters that I am playing, discovering what their mannarisms, the speech, and actions are like. Every now and then I come upon roles where I can very naturally and instantly slip into that character. Ellard is one of those roles, which is largely why I have wanted to play this him for so long.
I haven’t met this cast yet, and I have never seen a show at this theatre so I have basically no way of saying how good the show will be yet, but we’ll see.
Once upon a time, I thought Clemson had some bad promotional videos. I was wrong. Dead wrong.
all I can say is that men around the world can now rejoice because maybe, just maybe the phrase “our engagement plasma TV” could finally start entering the mainstream vinacular.