This is the Life! (of Nathaniel Jones) » 2005

Posted by wisenaboo in Uncategorized (6/20/2005 at 11:04 pm)

I was very much struck this weekend by the fact that a ridiculous amount of my life is imaginary. I can tell you plenty stories about my incredible adventures sailing the seas and fighting dragons and the time I became a vampire and a pirate and saved the world from destruction, but - and this may surprise you - all of those stories are just make-believe. And so many people I know right now are off having these actual real adventures - traveling to countries far away, having adventures in countries where the people don’t speak their language, coming back with incredible stories about the people they’ve met, the places they’ve gone, the things they’ve seen and done… I hear all these stories, and I look at my life and think “what have I done?” and the answer is coming back “not a whole heck of a lot.” Don’t get me wrong - I’ve done quite a bit. But even the things that I have done have been fiction-based: I’ve played piles of imaginary characters on stage, I’ve written piles of imaginary stories, and now I’ve completed two fiction books and a screenplay…

I’m feeling very dissatisfied right now. I really need to get away and experience something real for a change.

On a different-but-related topic, this past weekend was the last weekend of Peter Pan. I stayed the night so I could listen hear spend some time with Sarah and hear her stories from Europe - one of the main reasons for my discontent right now. The bad part was that I spent pretty much the whole evening stuck in my ‘fortress of solitude’ thinking about my life and not enjoying the people around me - which is really a pain because I don’t know how long it’ll be till I see all of them again - normally I’d say ‘I’ll see them at the show next year,’ but I don’t think that’s the case this year - especially if I get into summer stock next summer. One of the troubles with being some an amazing wonderful genius is that my brain doesn’t always pick the best times to ponder large life issues. But the good news was that I did get to see much of the ol’ gang there this for at least a little while, and I had fun running around in a pirate costume selling concessions. And Sunday it was even hot enough to bring out the bucket for ‘Dunk Your Head in a Bucket of Water,’ and since I started that last year it’s one of my favorite things to do as a concession-er. And maybe even all my stuck-in-my-head time will turn out to be good news if I get off my duff and actually start living. And other good news is that my grandparents - grandpa on my dad’s side and grandma on my mom’s - are in town for my sis’ high school graduation. It’s always nice to see them, and it’s rare because we’re all across the country from one another.

I didn’t get to see them much at all today, tho, because I had to go to work at 6:30am, then I got back about 4:30, and from dinner until now I’ve been working on e-travels with e.trules. But I have more good news - I get the day off tomorrow! Woop.

In other news, I made another mix CD, but I’m not going to put up the track list yet because after listening to it at work I decided I need to put some of the songs in a different order, and cut a few and add a few. When it’s finished I’ll let you all know.

Now to bed I go - sweet dreams, all.

Summer Update0

Posted by wisenaboo in Uncategorized (6/15/2005 at 10:39 pm)

Happy Summer To You All!
When Last I Updated, I had Just Finished My Last Final, and so since then I have been on Summer Vacation. And Now I’ll Tell You About It.

On Friday I spent my morning/afternoon packing all of my belongings up into boxes, and then cleaning my room - it took some doing, as there was a school year worth of dust and grime over everything. Once I finished vacuuming, the floor was actually a foot lower, and a complete different color, than it was when I started. In order to clean out my fridge, I invented a ‘Clean Out The Fridge Lasagna’ with all the remaining ham, chicken, cheese, butter, and milk (plus the non-refrigerated lasagna ingredients). It turned out quite tasty, considering the recipe was basically “take all the stuff from the fridge and put it in a lasagna.” Once I was all packed and cleaned and I did my share of the rest of the apartment cleaning, I enjoyed some Comedy Central (because I don’t get C.C. at home) till my mum and sis picked me up, and we went out to dinner at Skippers before heading home (because we don’t have Skippers anywhere near home).
When I got home I plopped all my boxes on top of the boxes I never unpacked from moving home last year, and had a lovely sleep in my own bed.
My sleep was interrupted in the morning by my alarm at 8am, telling me that it was time to get up and get ready to go to Kitsap for the weekend to watch/sell concessions at my sister’s play, ‘Peter Pan.’ So I pulled myself out of bed, took a shower, got dressed, threw together clothes for Sunday and a lunch and other necessities, and then it was off to Kitsap.
What I like to do for selling concessions during Mountaineer shows is to dress up in costume of some character-type from the show and then go around in character selling stuff to the audience pre-show and during intermission. Last year I went around as a street kid/pickpocket for ‘Oliver,’ and this year I went around as a pirate - with a lovely purple fancy smoking jacket-type thingy and a black shirt with a frilly front, and a fake mustache from my “Dad” Tom.
I was having fun running around as a pirate before the audience came down - but then it started pouring rain. Pouring, Pouring, Pouring Rain. Pouring so much that people began saying it could be a record-breaking rain, even more than the time during Little Mary Sunshine that it rained so hard that there was a waterfall going down the hill (it’s an outdoor theater, for those that don’t know). So when the audience came down with their umbrellas, I ran around all pirate-ey, being hillarious and regaling the crowd with stories of the time when on my pirate ship it once rained so hard that it was actually wetter in the air above the ship than in the sea below it, and the only way we survived was by taking over a clown ship and breathing the air from balloon animals. People enjoyed my pirate stories and jokes, but there were not a lot of sales - everyone wanted hot drinks, and I did not have those as I leapt about the theater. But it was still fun, if not as profitable as it could have been.
The show was pretty grand - and after a little while it stopped raining, so most of the show was dry for the audience, even if the stage was covered in the mud for the actors to roll in. I’d write more about the show, but right now I don’t feel like it.
After the show it was up to the cabin for chillin’ and chattin’ and dinner. After dinner, it was time for an epic quest with Ariana to find a beanie baby so she could muddy it up and tear it open to fill it with things symbolic of American Greatness for a school project. Apparently Beanie Babies are not as widely available as they once were - first we went to Target, and they didn’t have any, but they said that Toys R Us did, so we went over there, and they didn’t have them either. We were finally able to find one at the Hallmark store in the Mall. So our quest was victorious. Hoorah!
When we got back to the cabin, I sat down to read some funnies, and after I got through with the first page, I noticed that Sarah was there - a surprise to me because she wasn’t there at show time, and so I didn’t expect to see her. So I was happy, but unfortunately before I actually got to spend any time with her, my sister pulled me away because earlier I had told her that I’d be willing to drive her home if she could find a drive back, and she had found a way back - dagnabbit. The happy part was that when I told Sarah I was taking off, I got a few hugs, and she told me she’d be there next weekend - so I will be there as well. I drove home and slept in my bed for a second time, and Sunday I slept in for the first time, and enjoyed the first real vacationy day of vacation.
Monday I got a job. I started Tuesday. It’s just a temporary gig - three weeks, full time, working for a printing company in Tukwila. It’s not a fantastic job - I have to leave at 6:40 in the AM to get there on time at 7:30, and then it’s 8 hours of folding things, and then a 45 minute drive back home. So it pretty much takes up my whole day, but at least it’s some money, and it’s only three weeks. And today I found my CD player, so tomorrow I’ll be able to play my tunes while I’m working, and that’ll make the time go by much faster. For some reason there’s something playing a mix of “eensie weensie spider,” “frara jaqua,” and some other childrens song, put together with some strange ringing noises thrown in, on a constant loop. I learned after a couple hours that it’s the theme song to the game ‘lemmings.’ I did not learn, however, why it is constantly being played on a loop at this printing company. Oh well - hopefully I won’t be able to hear it with my headphones on.
In other news, everyone go look at my website - http://www.guywiththecoat.com - because now there is a fantastic GuyWithTheCoat News Feed, giving you all the headlines that the Liberal Media is afraid to show you.
Now it’s bed time, because I have a long day of folding tomorrow.

Vancouver, BC (That’s in Canada You Know)0

Posted by wisenaboo in Uncategorized (6/10/2005 at 1:31 am)

Few people know this, but Tinkerbell is actually a Canadian.

Here we see Lisette and Jason giving the Thumb’s Up to taking a drive to Vancouver,
British Columbia. Notice that even tho it is called "British Columbia,"
it is neither in Britain nor Columbia. It’s actually in Canada. That’s a fun
geographical fact you can use at your next cocktail party.

After we crossed the border into the Great White North, we saw this lovely
gas station, selling very Canadian gas for only 87.5 cents per litre! Those
lucky Canadians! (that’s actually $3.31 cents per gallon. But it’s Canadian
money, so it’s actually $2.64 per gallon in American.) That was a fun Math
Trivia Section that you can quote at your next cocktail party.

In Canada rather than having 20 ounce bottles of Pepsi, they have 355 milliliter
bottles. According to Google, that’s about 12 ounces. So they have their can
size in a bottle, and their bottle size in a…

Holy Bonanza! Look at the size of that bottle! 2 Litres! Have you ever heard
of something so crazy as a two litre bottle of soda!?

In Canada, rather than having a cell phone company such as t-mobile handle
the cell phones, they have volunteers that go by on rotation. When I was in
Canada, it was Roger’s turn to keep things running. But I turned my phone
off after taking that picture to avoid roaming charges, so I can’t offer a
first hand account of how well Roger was doing with it.

In Canada, instead of Freedom Fries, they have something called "French
Fries!" Those cooky Canadians make EVERYTHING French! And look at that
- they get dipped in Gravy!

Thumbs Up goes to "French Fries" with Gravy!

After dinner we crossed the border once again - although we almost didn’t
get through because the border crossing guy that I looked suspiciously like
a Japanese guy posing as a Canadian pretending to be an American because I
offered to show him my student ID, and he tried to force Jason to bribe him,
but luckily we were able to beat up the guard and sneak into America without
having to pay him. Hooray! And there’s Jason demonstrating how tired we were
after our trip to a Foreign Land.

The End

And now as a bonus, the logo from Tech Zone Books:

Sono LIBERO!0

Posted by wisenaboo in Uncategorized (6/9/2005 at 8:31 pm)

Well folks, I just e-mailed in my final web project, and a few hours ago I had my last final. And that means…
I’M ON SUMMER VACATION!
It’s has been approximately 10 years since my last summer vacation, and since then I have been working non-stop on a plantation where I had only dry wheat chaff and mud to eat, and they would whip us 20 hours a day with our own feet, and then when the whipping was over they’d make us work for another 20 hours a day. They had some sort of magic time slower-downer that they could use to make that work.
Yes, 40 hours a day, 10 days a week they kept us at that for those ten long years. But now I’m Free! Free, I tell you! FREE!
Now to celebrate I’m going to go out to dinner, and then home to pack up my belongings (they didn’t let us have a lot of posessions on the plantation, so all I have to pack up is my pair of shoes with no soul and a nail in the heel, my spare whippin’ cane, and a propeller beanie the boss would make me wear when he wanted to be amused), and tomorrow I’m goin’ home.

But first I’ll catch you up on the posts that I haven’t written for the past week:
Part One: Theater Prom!

Last Saturday was Theater Prom. I didn’t think that I was going to go, partly because I thought I’d be out of town seeing ‘Peter Pan,’ and partly because it cost money which I didn’t have, and partly because I’ve been so un-involved with theater this year (and this quarter especially) I didn’t know if it would even be fun. But I didn’t go to Peter Pan, and I found out I had some more money in my bank account than I thought ($40 rather than $0), and I figured even if it wasn’t a thrilling time, it’d still be better than sitting around twiddling my thumbs. So I went.
It was supposed to be a fancy masquerade-type costumey ball, so I went out Saturday to try to find something to wear. I had my tux jacket and red shirt that I bought during spring break and haven’t worn except for Rocky Horror, but that was certainly not enough for a fancy masquerade. So I went to Value Village and found some tux pants - but they did not fit, so I did not get them. They didn’t have any nice black pants that fit me, and nor did they have any amusing masks or other masquerade costume bits, so I left V.V. empty handed. Value Village is right next to the mall, so then I took a walk up to the mall and looked around there for a while, and visited Lisette at Victoria’s Secret to check on our plans (she was supposed to meet me at the prom, but later had to cancel on account of hives), and looked in all of the stores that might have had masks, but none had any. Really the only party masks I could find (apart from big feathery ones that cost more than I wanted to spend) were little paper Darth Vader masks, so that’s what I got. With my Vader masks in hand, I went back home to find something to wear.
Since I was wearing half of what I wore to Rocky Horror, I figured I might as well wear the other half too. But then I had second thoughts, because since most of the people in the theater department don’t really know me, I wasn’t sure if it’d be a good call to meet folks wearing a tux coat, skirt, and high heeled boots. To be safe, I wore pants, but brought the skirt and boots in my backpack just in case. As it happened, once I bought my ticket and went into the prom, the first person I saw was a guy in a full dress, so I took that as a sign that Rocky Horror was the way to go, so I changed in the bathroom and then had fun dancing the night away.
As was expected, I didn’t know virtually anyone that won any of the awards they gave out, and I had only seen two or three of the plays they did parody skits of, but the dance part was a lot of fun. And it should be even better next year because I’ll be more involved and actually know who the people are and what’s going on and everything.

I’m hungry and want to go to dinner, so I’ll speed through the rest:

Part 2: Vancouver, BC
Last night I went to Canada with Lisette, Dan, and Jason Hauglie (who I haven’t seen since EWHS). We drove up to Vancouver and went out to dinner and had fun looking at crazy Canadian things. Lisette got some Dunkaroos (apparently they don’t sell them in the US anymore) and some Tylenol that’s so extra-strength that it’s illegal in the US, and I got some french fries with gravy at the restaurant we went to, and we all got some pictures (that I don’t have with me because I’m in the computer lab). I’ll put those up later.

Part 3: 360
Last week I had tried out for the upper level acting class that you have to audition for (360), and I found out right before my final today that I got in! Woo hoo!

And now it’s dinner time. Yum yum.