Well, I am sticky, but I am alive and quite content. It’s not oppressively hot, but the humidity is certainly dictatorial.

After getting settled in, we had a new student orientation, which consisted of the program directors telling us the schedule, where things are, and that we’d all have at least one nervous breakdown in the next ten days. Please have it on Tuesday, they ask, since that’s the day off. (Presumably, this will let us recover from any festivities that may occur on the fourth of July.)

Following this, there was a horribly uncomfortable but fairly enjoyable time during which the faculty came down and introduced themselves only by name and genre, and then we were told, “Mingle.” True to every lesson that Michael McFee ever taught me about writing, I headed straight for the wine, and sure enough, the interesting people followed shortly or were already there.

Soon, all of the returning students were upon us, and a dinner was set out. There were Thai noodles with shrimp, which sounded delightful, but the returning students clearly knew the score, so while I was hobknobbing with an interesting faculty member, they, vulture-like, separated all of the shrimp from the noodles and gobbled it up. My dinner was cold noodles, cucumbers, and two glasses of wine. And I am no wine drinker. (Returning students, fill your maws while you may… I’ll not be last in the dinner line again!)

The first reading was thoroughly enjoyable, though I must admit– and you may not tell anyone in this program– my favorite reading of the night was fiction. Grace Dana Mazur (will check the spelling on that later), or Gretchen, read from a novel which I absolutely must find, because her selection was just delightful.

Now I am back at the dorm, enjoying a beer (I snuck into town to hit an ATM and buy some Blue, and came back to find that the place is ghostly quiet– apparently, weary travelers must sleep) on the porch and listening to Luscious Jackson through my computer. I’m pleased with the first day; already, one of the poets entering the program has given me food for thought that led to one of those a-ha moments (by not working on a computer, he finds that he doesn’t censor himself by using the backspace… simple, and it never occured to me). I’ll hit the bed fairly soon in my not-too-air-conditioned room, which has the same thick, muggy air that the rest of the place has. I wonder how long the four Blues I will leave in the fridge will last. I’m quite certain I won’t see any of them.

And yes, there are shitloads of bugs here, and I think I taste very good to them. After my recent poison ivy travails, I could care less. Bring on the itching.

For those following along from home, I am in the mountains of North Carolina for the next ten days attending the MFA for Writers Program at Warren Wilson College. I just arrived 20 minutes ago, so of course I did the most important thing first: set up Internet access and hop on Skype.

Then, of course, I blogged.

I’m here with next to zero information, and don’t know a soul beyond Jynne Martin, who is a returning student and won’t arrive until later. Thankfully, as I was bring my computer up to the room, the student who had e-mailed me recognized me from my picture on the Internet and gave me the skinny– everyone is working on zero information the first day.

That’s good to know.

Chris Kula recounts a delightful trip to GnomeDex… as a bee. Seriously, if you enjoy Improv Everywhere, go read Kula’s blog NOW.

I’ve been stewing about the Supreme Court’s decision to extend eminent domain to private use. So I’m glad to see that a developer proposes to have his local government sieze David Souter’s home for private use. I will publically support this, and I pledge to bring my tax dollars to your community when I next vacation if this hotel gets built.

Man, this is the kind of stuff that makes you sick: Nike shits all over Dischord Records. Never mind that Nike has made billions upon billions of dollars and has become the establishment in the sneaker industry… they must have felt that the holdouts in the indie arena either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care if they co-opted an image from one of the greatest punk albums ever, whose rightsholders wouldn’t have granted permission in a billion years.

The Grokster decision, handed down by the Supreme Court today, says that infringing technologies’ creators can be held liable if the technology is clearly labelled for illegal use. Which means that the little-guy innovators will have to run scared from the Hollywood machine even if their intentions and marketing were not geared towards illegal use, because the Hollywood machine is desperate to preserve that failing business model. But when the big guys clearly steal from the little guys… well, no one is going to raise much of a stink about that. Especially if your government is the one stealing from you.

Update: Winckles has some good thoughts on what Grokster really means.

An amusing anecdote from Erin.

Looks like this is a job for the Taint-Puncher’s Union!

My good friend Eric sent this tidbit over the weekend, and I have to say, I’m fascinated:

CNN.com: Students offered online PE courses

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/06/22/online.pe.ap/index.html?section=cnn_offbeat

I’m all in favor of online courses, and I’m quite certain that this idea has some merit behind it. In fact, the online course may well promote a more rigorous physical program than the average PE course. And certainly, the scheduling flexibility would be wonderful– I know kids really struggle with PE requirements when trying to build a well-balanced schedule that adequately prepares them for the workforce or for college.

But the news that PE has moved online raises several questions for me. I think my greatest concern is the problem of perception. I already wonder how online courses are viewed, and have tried to steer our program towards courses that I think students and parents could easily conceptualize as “online courses.” We’ve begun to explore more adventurous territory, tackling a foreign language (Latin) out of necessity, and an art course out of the belief that we can use online courses to create more meaningful offline experiences in online courses. But even those efforts have met with some resistance because it’s hard to envision what a course with a heavy speaking component would look and feel like asynchronously, and I think people naturally think of art as so hands-on that removing the immediate presence of “the master” would render the course impossible. So I can imagine serious concern about an online PE course.

My biggest question would not be the validity of the experience– there’s an abundant amount of information about health and wellness on the Web, and people are able to use that to create personalized workout regimens that help them feel better. I’d worry more about liability and supervision– part of the school’s responsibility during a PE course is to create opportunities for students to exercise and learn about fitness in a monitored environment. Does online PE take the capable teacher out of the equation and replace him/her with an untrained eye (or worse, no supervision)? If the answer is yes, I think you have a safety issue; you may have a student who ends up exerting himself beyond his limits and no reasonable capacity to catch that behavior. If the answer is no, what does the online course do that the face-to-face teacher could not do?

Still, it’s worth considering that we are definitely able to supplement or augment our physical education curricula with Internet-based tools, and hey, I may come around one day and trumpet the virtues of online PE.

(Note: The CNN article will expire on July 22, 2005.)

Taking a break from my studies. That’s weird, too– I’m studying. I really began looking at the materials for the MFA program in earnest this week, and to no one’s shock (certainly not my own), I was behind. Well behind. Behind in a way that made me feel foolish for having waited so long to get cracking with the books and such. You see, I had this inane sense that if school started at the end of June, I would really be starting at the end of June. This was poppycock. It seems that from the moment I entered the program (or at least, the moment they cashed the $1,000 deposit check), I should have been working. Some of that work was just the mental preparation– steeling myself for graduate-level criticism. Yet, the rest of it was actual work. Pfaugh. I loved the idea of graduate school until I began working on it.

Wait, no, I loved the idea of graduate school until I had to pay for it. I think that came first.

What can you do when your workday is winding down? Why, you can browse Flickr for a few minutes. After spending the 3:00-4:00 PM hour unsuccessfully trying to corner my boss to get some gossip (he snuck out while I was helping a client on the phone!), I was pretty well done for the day. Hey, I’d put in my 8 hours, about 7 of which were exceedingly productive.

And when you browse Flickr, and you just look at the images that have been uploaded recently, you tend to find some neat stuff.

pretty

ugly

pretty ugly

Mac worship… inevitable

Update: I chose one… and Meljo took it.

NC Theater Space Update

Dirty South Improv would like to thank everyone who has donated and helped to raise funds for the North Carolina Theater. Going through the process of business development, building inspections, and commercial leasing has been a positive experience for our small juggernaut of improv comedy, and we’re moving right along. DSI’s Auction, NC Raffle & DSI Chicago Raffle brought in almost $6000 for the renovation and buildout of a permanent theater space in North Carolina. Now for the update and overall good news:

The space DSI Theater was looking to lease at 128 E Franklin St. was reconsidered by the Town of Chapel Hill Department of Inspections due to a miscommunication about the most recent (2002) building code when they originally inspected the space. The initial approval for space was given with the inspector’s knowledge of the 1997 building code for Assembly (theater) businesses. An important change which affected this space as a possibility was it being located below grade. That meant, according to the 2002 building code, a required active sprinkler system, which the space does not have. This upgrade would not be covered by the Landlord, and was something that DSI Theater deemed cost-prohibitive during early April. We would like to thank Michael Fox for all of his work, but unfortunately Franklin Street won’t be home for DSI Theater this Fall.

DSI has always kept its options open, so we were able to quickly identify a space located at Carrboro’s Carr Mill Mall. It’s walking distance from the current DSI Training Center, a stone’s throw from the Weaver Street Market lawn and it’s a huge space with active sprinklers, high ceilings, and possibilities. The property manager for Carr Mill Mall, also the Chair of the Downtown Development Commission, has been an incredible resource, working to walk the plans for our theater space through the inspection process himself. It’s a huge jump for the theater, looking towards a slightly adjusted marketing plan, but absolutely do-able.

Carr Mill has proved to be a positive option and DSI plans to finalize negotiations soon for a September opening. More details coming soon…

Thanks,
Zach Ward

I thought it was tough to get some people to re-learn how to play when I am teaching improv classes. Now I’m thanking God I’m not a German, because they need a school to learn how to laugh. And seriously, the next time someone derides Zip, Zap, Zop, I’m seriously going to reference the techniques in this article and say, “Is that more like what you would prefer? Because we can do that.”

Jess, usually known for her solid people skills, responds to the question, “So, what do you think about all these people we work with?”

Moser launches a horseshoe. He was summarily schooled in the art of horseshoes.

I took a set of pictures of Miss Kitty last Friday. She spent about two hours on the couch with me and Heidi. She seemed to be feeling much better, which made the rest of the day so much more difficult. She purred loudly, and I like to think those were some of the happier hours of her life.

Just a sad day. I worked all day yesterday to try not to think about loss, but trying to avoid grieving is foolish– it all spills out of you like a water peeking out over the edge of a dam. The thing that made me lose it today– steam-cleaning the carpets. Ladybug wanted me to vacuum, and all I could think about was that it was Miss Kitty’s fur that we’d be cleaning up. It’s hair rubbed into a carpet, something completely insignificant. But for a moment this afternoon, I couldn’t bear to let it go.

Oh my good heavens, I am pooped. I woke up at about 9:15 after a little bit of drunken moping last night, so Ladybug and I went over to the other house to continue the steam cleaning, which lost momentum last night after I got into Lisa’s beer.

So we cleaned until about 11:40, and that was much more productive once Ladybug started heating water in the kettle while I was streaming. We basically re-did most of what I had done last night, which helped tremendously. That house looked and smelled like a whole different place.

I took Ladybug to Chili’s for lunch, because there may be no better way to tell a woman you love her than by surprising her with some of those Southwest egg rolls, which are freaking fantastic.

Then, back to the house for some final cleaning, and we wandered home with the carpet steamer in tow. Ladybug did the upstairs carpet and I steam-cleaned the bed, which had been a victim of an overactive feline bladder and hadn’t quite smelled kosher since. (It wasn’t like we were sleeping in cat pee for any real length of time, but every once in a while you would turn over, and POW!, there’d be this wave of nasty smell.)

I hopped on the lawn tractor and scooted over to the rental house, so that the lawn wouldn’t be overly nasty when Corey and Lisa move in, then headed back, showered, and chilled for a while. By that time, I was ready for a nap, but after a while, I discovered that Lisa had called s we went back to the rental house to help her move stuff in there. When we arrived, the truck was empty and everyone was leaving, but we accompanied her back to Raleigh, filled the truck up again, came back to Durham, and unloaded it all into the house. You can barely walk through that house, but she’s 98% done.

Now I am on the couch, which I do not wish to leave again tonight unless I am showering, sleeping, peeing, or pooping. That’s it. And I may just sleep on the couch, because walking up the stairs just to sleep seems so much like work.

To all of you that knew and loved her, Miss Kitty passed away today at 2:30. Heidi and I were both there, holding her in her last minutes. Thank you, everyone who has wished us well or asked if there is anything you could do. I miss her terribly already.

I just helped Lisa P move some stuff into the old house on Kirkland, which is groovy. Chris and Jaclyn have moved out, and my plans to one day be able to sell the house are underway. Corey will join her in a couple weeks, and soon thereafter, the missing doorknob might be replaced, the trees might be pruned, and the house might not look so generally awful.

It was nice to help her out, even if it only took five minutes, because I have been distracted by a stream of just general unpleasantness. There are a couple of things I just don’t want to talk about, Miss Kitty continues to worsen and we have had unpleasant talk about that (the vet will call me tomorrow to discuss options), I spent a couple of hours convinced that a laptop had been stolen from my training at the CCEE (turns out it was in for repair), and I’m just sort of generally exhausted from a training that was really pretty good.

If Angela DeManti goes, she’ll be thinking about Bill Cosby when she does. Maybe.

Also, this was in Kate’s blog, and I laughed some more.