Cary’s 100% Generic Blog

Listening to: Daft Punk - Alive 2007

That whole “writing everyday” thing didn’t really work out.

Such is life.

I’ve really wanted to get in on the whole “25 Things” craze on Facebook but have held off for a few reasons. Firstly, I think it’s ridiculous. You might as well post “here are 25 things about me that you probably wouldn’t have known but tell you absolutely nothing meaningful about me!”Secondly, there fairly self-indulgent. Right, you say, this coming from the guy who’s writing a blogpost on the website that bears his own name. The difference here is that I know no one reads these posts except for me (and maybe Scotto, but he’s probably just Ctrl +Fing his name, like I do with his blog). On Facebook that little piece of your soul is open to your entire friends list. I know more about people I haven’t seen in 5 years than I do about some of my own closest friends.

As much as I make fun of them, though, I love reading them. In the interest of being fair, I wrote a “25 Things” of my own, but it was just a list of 25 cheeses that my brother, Scotto, CB, and RyLai came up with. Erin felt that many of the cheeses could be interpreted as windows into my subconcious, metaphors for things I had long tried to hide (such as processed cheese representing all the plastic surgeries I had undergone to hide the fact that I am biracial). Sadly they don’t, but it was pretty hilarious reading the stuff she came up with.

Here’s a list of 12things that are actually true, but that I was too lazy to figure out how to work into this post in a real way:

1. I am playing viola and bass in a play called Casket Cases. It’s one of the Honours Performance Series shows, and it’s absolutely hilarious. By far the best HPS show I’ve ever seen. My housemate Nick wrote all the music and it’s pretty frickin’ awesome.

2. Casket Cases is the first show I’ve worked on since coming to McMaster that doesn’t include Monica.

3. I am hoping to get emails back from: Shad Guy (to say he wants to hire me), Zsuzsi (with the PIN code so I can send in my EOHSS apps for Drama Night), all the Drama Night directors (telling me that they’re cool with me changing the date), and the Metrix Group people (telling me that they’re opening a Hamilton office and that I wouldn’t have to move to Toronto if I wanted to work for them).

4. I do not want to receive emails back from: my thesis supervisor (he scares me and I’ve done zero work since we last met), Shad Guy (to say he doesn’t want to hire me)

5. Since last summer I’ve become really interested in cell phones and telecommunications in general. If you’re thinking about buying a smartphone but have no idea where to begin, come talk to me.

6.  It’s awesome playing viola again. I had forgotten how much I loved it (and how much I missed it). I think I can add “giving up playing viola when I came to university” to the List of Things That I Regret.

7. Speaking of the List of Things That I Regret, here it is:

• Beating the Secret of Mana by myself, even though Chris and I had played the entire thing through on Coop before that goddamn final boss (fuck you, Flammie).
• Not learning to play piano when I was young.

And that’s it. Ladies, feel free to break my heart and add yourself to that list.

8. I’m pretty sure Henry V is the best show I’ve ever worked on.

9. When handing back our papers on Plato, my Ancient Greek Philosophy TA said that he wanted to discuss some aspects of my tutorial’s papers. My stomach sank immediately - even though it’s a second year course and I’m in fourth year (and a pretty decent writer to boot) I’ve had some… issues writing about Plato ever since second year (long story). Anyway, his issues were that 1) we didn’t know how to use commas properly (which recalled memories of “comma, splice” from highschool) and 2) we didn’t use the word “that,” and that our refusal to use the word “that” combined with our inability to use commas properly made for some very confusing sentences.

Having grown up with a mother who holds a PhD in English Literature, I was quite relieved.

10. Chrome won’t work with YouTube on my computer. I find this extremely amusing (and frustrating), given that Google owns YouTube. Stupid super-intelligent fuckers.

11. I can’t wait for Google to come out with a desktop OS. Now if only some Android handsets would launch in Canada…

12. I’m too bored/boring to have anything more than 12 things here.

Ta-da. Twelve things about me that you will never see posted on Facebook.

Yesterday was a good day. Why?

1) I get an email from Dr. Rodde (ArtSci Logic prof) asking me if I would like to TA for the remainder of the term. Of course I said yes.

2) Despite having prepped myself for a rejection email (I thought the zombie stuff would be too weird), I got an interview from the Kaplan people asking me to come in for a second interview. Sweetness - one step closer to not worrying about a summer job.

3) I saw on the Shad Valley Alumni Facebook group that Mac Shad is hiring not only an Assistant Program Manager, but also hiring PAs. Totally going to apply for both - I don’t know about my chances (since they seem to want Engineering/Science/Commerce types), but I think the fact that I went to Shad and that I am awesome will help.

I’m tidying/sprucing up my resume this afternoon so I can send it to both Shad and the Metrix Group later today. For some reason I really really really wanted to keep it down to one page for the rest of my life, but I’m beginning to realize that that just isn’t possible. Which is kinda nice - I’ve finally gained enough experience that’s relevant to have two pages worth of material. Also, I no longer have stuff from high school on it (except for listing “Shad” in my Education & Awards section).

Back to work.

Listening to: whatever jazz is playing from Chris’s iPod.

I’ve made a promise to myself to blog everyday. Not long posts, necessarily - just something to keep me writing. One of the few tangible skills I’m getting from my Arts & Science degree is the ability to write well (correction: to write essays well. Whether or not I can write well remains to be seen). I know that my writing lapses every summer, but I’m usually able to get it back to a reasonable level after the first few months of school. I figure if I start blogging now I’ll keep doing it once I graduate, and my writing won’t suck quite as hard once I start law school (if?).

I had my audition with Kaplan today. I honestly have no idea how it went - I thought I was about average for the group I presented in (there were 7 auditioning and 3 instructors). We’ll see Thursday, when they email me to tell me whether or not they’d like to email me. I volunteered to go first, so I’m hoping that may give me a bit of a bump. Also, I was the only one who wanted to teach the LSAT in Hamilton. Whoo-hoo.

I was going to give a talk on how to buy a cell phone, but at about 10:00AM this morning I decided that that topic was derivative and boring. Instead, I chose to talk about something very near and dear to my heart: surviving the zombie apocalypse. I think some of the people in the room were a little weirded out. Because I went first, I think some people were reconsidering what they had prepared. They were probably also thinking “what the fuck is that guy doing?” but whatever. I had fun.  And it meant that playing Left 4 Dead last night with Mackenzie wasn’t so much a waste of time (although, we did beat No Mercy in 44 minutes and Death Toll in 49 - my fastest times ever) as it was prepping for my presentation the next day.I tried to frame my discussion of the zombie apocalypse in terms of basic responses to large-scale disasters that seriously disrupt society/civilization as we know it. Below are my notes for the talk.

***

Recognize- You have to recognize the threat (what is a zombie? how do I know when I’m dealing with a zombie?)

React- How I react to the threat (offensive/defensive measures. No exposed flesh. Destroy the brain)

Survive- How I survive the threat (find food/water/shelter. Money will soon be worthless. Fill up the bathtub. Get to a fortifiable building with good visibility of surrounding areas)

***

Not too much for a 5-minute presentation, but a lot of what I wanted to say was in my head. I’m something of a zombie movie nut; I just know this stuff (for those counting, I own Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead (2004), Day of the Dead (2008 - never watch this movie, it is awful), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Shaun of the Dead, Dance of the Dead, and Dead Alive). 

Edit: So apparently WordPress hates Chrome (my browser of choice - it’s just so damned fast) and that’s why all of my WYSIWYG-written posts end up as one big jumble. Another reason to switch to Blogger - Nate, are you sure you want to fuck around with WP and not Blogger?

Listening to: Avishai Cohen Trio

I’m at home in Oakville until tomorrow sometime. I got a basic page up for caryferguson.com. I’m immensely proud of those 45 words. You wouldn’t believe how much time it took me just to get that up (hint: it’s around 2-3 hours of me messing around).

Time to go teach myself all that HTML I was supposed to learn in high school (beyond how to bold, italicize, and link).

Edit: I hate WYSIWYG editors. Three edits to get the formatting I want, and I end up just using the HTML anyway.

Edit #2: why does the blogging interface delete all my code everytime I try to edit? Grrrrr. A strong incentive to get things right the first time.

First!

I love the corporate style. Definitely me.

Look at those people up top. I imagine them saying dirty, dirty things to one another.

Update: I changed the style. I couldn’t stand the thought of what those dirty, dirty corporate types were saying to one another.