Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Keeping Up With The Smiths

Last night, my fiancee informed me that she was going from obscurity to popularity. At least in terms of last names. I'd never really put much thought of it myself; Smith has always been an incredibly popular last name. I've lived with it my entire life.

I'd like to think that at one point in history, there was an Empire of the Smiths, where we ruled as a powerful, wise and adored utopia. Those of you realists who can't help but rain on any sort of parade will be quick to point out that such a society of Smiths has never existed. My answer to you is one, simple word: WAIT.

Truth be told, the etymology of the name 'Smith' dates back to the decline of the Feudal era, where the buy-and-trade bartering system of merchantism began to rise in popularity. 'Smith' became a shortened form for specialised craftsmen (i.e.: blacksmiths), and stuck as a last name for those in the trade. Now consider for a moment how many were the smithing trade way back when; ever wonder why there are so many of us?

But I digress.

Getting back to my gorgeous, sexy and intelligent fiancee (who is no doubt blushing furiously as she reads this, and ruefully shakes her fist at the computer screen while threatening gratuitous bodily harm to her groom-to-be, namely me), she mentioned that she was going from having the 1,284th common last name to having the #1 common last name. She will soon be joining the ranks of the few, the proud, the Smiths. Okay, so obviously we're not 'the few', but two out of three's not bad at all.

Now Melissa can become unique & special, just like all the rest of us Smiths!

In similar news, I have discovered that my first name is the 87th most-common name for boys, and apparently a very rare name for girls. Though I'm not entirely sure that any girl should, as the website advocates, be proud of having as unique a name as "Phillip."

Today's Lesson: What's in a name? Find out. http://www.namestatistics.com/


posted by Phillip at 5:45 PM

 
Well…nothing is technically something when you consider it, right?

Somewhere long ago, someone coined the phrase “idle hands are the Devil’s plaything.” Truth be told, I think the Devil would be more inclined to use bulldozers or Michael Flatley as his playthings, since both can inflict more widespread damage. Yet unpleasant things can and often do happen when you’re idle.

It disturbs me to look back on the last few days, and marvel at how incredibly, brilliantly and assuredly useless I have been. This is not a good marveling, to be sure. With the exception of a few writing side-projects (one of which, should it get finished in the next few months, will mean interesting times ahead), I don’t have a lot to show for the last 72 hours.

Well…if we tried to break the last three down to its basic components, roughly 24 hours were spent sleeping. 2 hours saw me doing some puppetry for a group of people at Sunbeam, a group home for the developmentally challenged. Probably 3-4 hours were spent preparing meals, gorging myself on said meals (but in a very polite napkin-dabbing-on-the-cheek sort of way) and then cleaning up afterwards. And in a little slice of “Too Much Information” the odds are about 2 hours were spent in the bathroom doing bathroomy things. Mainly showering.

This leaves us with 40 hours of respective free time.

I probably could have solved some sort of horrid University-level Calculus equation by now. Well…faked having solved some sort of horrid University-level Calculus equation. Or else copied the answer from a friend of mine also taking the course, then gone out and got completely pissed drunk with the realization that I’d never pass that University-level Calculus course. Those courses are the Devil’s plaything too, come to think of it.

Yet even that would have made for an interesting water-cooler story.

Of course, that would require me going out to find a water-cooler to stand beside and regale my story to other passers-by. That could have probably helped me do something productive with my time.

This general malaise seems to be plaguing me more often than not. Certainly it’s because I have way too much spare time on my hands, and too many household distractions to ease the unpleasant slip into lethargy. But I’m always for weeding out a scapegoat and blaming it instead of taking form of personal responsibility.

I blame the afternoon.

You see, the afternoons are my most unproductive hours ever. From roughly 1pm to sunset, I am about as useful as a nacho cheese-flavoured Timbit. I don’t know why that is. Unless I’m out doing something of pressing importance, I lapse into apathy. I lose all focus for doing almost anything. The Internet bores me. TV bores me. Writing is near impossible to do. Reading is almost as vexing a task. For some inexplicable reason, the afternoon hours are horrid black holes sucking away at my will to live like a temporal parasite.

So long as I can get started on something in the mornings, I’m grand. After the sun goes down? Watch me be productive, or at least feel good about whatever it was I’d managed to get accomplished before falling asleep! But afternoons…bah.

I could do something productive and sleep through afternoons, but I enjoy just having one large sleeping session. If I try otherwise, my internal clock starts refusing to tick right. And the afternoon has rudely sandwiched itself between two sets of productive hours for me. If the afternoon and the morning switched places, I’d be all set. I could just stay awake all morning and for most of the night, and then sleep all afternoon.

All humour aside, I am looking for things to busy my ample spare time with. Like a job. Or write non-stop. Or learn how to play ping-pong. Or memorize Neil Gaiman’s book “American Gods” backwards.


Today’s Lesson: it’s never my fault. It’s the afternoon that’s to blame. That, and the squirrels.


posted by Phillip at 6:31 PM

 
Tis But A Scratch!

Today was spent doing 1 of 2 things, though not both of them at once. Either I was lounging around with an arrow electrically-taped to my armpit. Or I was on-set, filming scenes where I got beaten up, with an arrow electrically-taped to my armpit. Though it made for some rather humourous, casual conversations with my fellow disposable vampires:

Me: "So, how've you been?"

Random Disposable Vamp: "Staked. You?"

Me: (gesturing to my chest) "Shot."

Random Disposable Vamp: "Ah. Usual, then."

Me: "Yes, quite."

That conversation probably sounds funnier if you imagine us having English (as in British) accents. Or else trying to fake English accents. Things always sound funnier with English accents for some reason.

Anyhoo, today found me on the set of Stages once again, this time from 9:30am to 7pm-ish. It was a Do-or-Die day for filming, and in more than one way. Not only were we finishing up all the shots of the final battle, where we get to see the film's bodycount jump from 2-3 to roughly 24 in the span of ten minutes. Also, this was the absolute last day we could do anything at Stages; we finished filming our last scene in under the wire at 7pm, and at 8pm the contractors were due to arrive to start rennovating the club. Needless to say, it would shoot to shit any continuity we once had if the club undergoes a major facelift in the middle of a grab-bag of scenes.

Everything came together at the last minute for the cast & crew, which is an amazing miracle unto itself. At the last minute we were able to get Stages procurred, and have all the principle players available for the filming. Not to mention that despite the primary digital videocamera breaking down, our director was able to find another one right in the proverbial nick of time.

And so once more, and happily for the last time, I became Wade, who can also be known as That-Creepy-Depraved-Omni-Sexual-Vampire-Who-Really-Ought-To-Get-Kicked-In-The-Nads-Somewhere-During-This-Film. But that other name's a bit too long for such a little bit of nowhere, so we'll just stick with "Wade".

Early in the morning, my face was paled, my hair was sent all awry, and the arrow was strategically fastened to the side of my chest with black electrical tape (a happy thing, since the undershirt I was wearing also happened to be black). The arrow didn't leave my side, literally, until the end, since my close-up scenes were all done at the end of the day--though I spent most of the rest of the day being in the background, since the battle requires 5-6 near simultaneous melees going on regardless of where the camera's focused.

My hair is still all gelled up in the "Wade" look, which more or less resembles what might happen if I had gelled my hair in the morning, and right at that crucial moment where the hair and gel would have gone from wet and useless to dried/solidified, I sneezed and botched the whole process.

But the real prize-winner for me was the blood. Fake blood, of course. Strawberry syrup, if you wanted to be really precise. Apparently strawberry syrup is a laxative; I'm rather glad that despite having it poured all down my wounded arm (and I do mean poured like a small river), shirt and chin, I didn't ingest too much of it. There is an inherent disadvantage to making it appear that you've been bleeding beneath your clothes, however. Namely the fact that you have to apply the syrup/blood on your skin beneath and beyond the edge of your cuffs or sleeves, to give the impression that it just didn't magically start where the sleeve ended.

Take a moment and follow my logic here: the "blood" is syrup; syrup is sticky, very sticky; syrup being applied to the skin in rather gratuitous quanitites results in both the shirt sleeve and the skin being soaked with syrup; since the syrup is very sticky, it glues your sleeve and skin together like a temporary paste, with your arm hairs trapped helplessly between them; adjusting your sleeves for better mobility in a fight scene requires ripping your sleeve apart from your skin; and this in turn helps to rip the hairs out of your arm.

It hurts. A lot.

Currently my left arm is sporting a lot of reddish holes where my strategically-placed elbow hairs once were. I look like a heroin addict, or else a deforested landscape. Despite the ever-constant injuries as I was repeatedly forced to tear the hairs from my arm between takes, I quite enjoyed the last day of filming at Stages. Unfortunately, time could not afford me to get a disposable camera for today, so alas, no photo's could be had.

There was also a lot of talk today about nipples. My nipples especially, which unnerved me to no end. I have discovered that if you want to make someone shuffle around uncomfortably, say some random thing about their nipples. The remark to me was: "Oh, look! You've been shot in the tit!"

Now such an impressively macho wound as having been hit with a crossbow arrow just above the heart just loses all its impressiveness when the word "tit" is followed close on the heels of "shot in the". I told the offending vampiress so, but unfortunately I failed in making it any less bruising to my ego.

Saying, "It's a manly wound when you get shot in your muscular...something-or-other" doesn't quite work. Especially when she's the one who has to prompt you with, "Pectorals?"

This was quickly followed by her laughing at me having been shot in the tit...and that was quickly followed by her tweaking my other nipple, which was happily still intact. And then she walked off cackling manically as she danced upon the tattered pieces of my molested ego. I feel so violated.

Right now, I'm just sitting back and marvelling at how I'm still grinning like an idiot over this. For as tedious if not downright boring as shooting a feature film is at times, it's still a wonderful adventure. I'm happy to have spent time on it as Wade, That-Creepy-Depraved-Omni-Sexual-Vampire-Who-Really-Ought-To-Get-Kicked-In-The-Nads-Somewhere-During-This-Film. And the best part: soon enough, we get to start shooting all the ballroom dancing scenes at the end of August.

Life may not be great, but it's good enough for me to grin and look towards seeing what tomorrow will bring. And those of you who immediately thought I sounded like the end of an episode of "Hamtaro" should be shot in the tit.

Today's Lesson: it's harder than you might originally think to eat a lasagne and salad dinner with an arrow sticking out of your chest.


posted by Phillip at 6:05 PM

 
Might I Recommend The Duct-Tape

In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s book, “Good Omens”, we encounter Sister Mary Loquacious, a nun of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl. According to Mr.’s Gaiman and Pratchett, the Chattering Order of St. Beryl was founded by,

Saint Beryl Articulatus of Cracow, reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century. According to legend, Beryl was a young woman who was betrothed against her will to a pagan, Prince Casimir. On their wedding night she prayed to the Lord to intercede, vaguely expecting a miraculous beard to appear… instead the Lord granted Beryl the miraculous ability to chatter continually about whatever was on her mind, however inconsequential, without pause for breath or food.

According to one version of the legend, Beryl was strangled by Prince Casimir three weeks after the wedding, with their marriage still unconsummated. She died a virgin and martyr, chattering to the end.

…The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl is under a vow to emulate Saint Beryl at all times, except for Tuesday afternoons, for half an hour…

Where am I going with this? (aside from a potential lawsuit for putting up a few paragraphs of a published novel without the writers’ expressed permission, or at least not having bribed them first with money and banana daiquiries.) Well, yesterday I encountered someone who might very well have been a member of the Chattering Order.

They, whoever They are, say that silence is golden. If Plato’s dichotomic order of the universe is to be believed, then the polar opposite of silence is nigh-unending noise; and the opposition to gold is, debatably, gravel. If all such things are the case, then this woman could have supplied contractors with enough unpaved driveways in rural Mexico about ten times over.

I’m usually amazed at how some people can keep quiet, but for the first time I was amazed (though not in the pleasant "newfound discovery of knowledge at a museum" amazed) that this woman simply could not shut up. Compounding my growing desire to imitate the afore-mentioned Prince Casimir was the fact that while she talked an awful lot without really any sort of pause, she had very little of worth to talk about. Most of what she babbled on about were third or fourth repetitions of previous babble.

I was almost tempted, aside from merciful strangulation (strangulation as in her, and merciful as in sparing everyone else), to think that she was terrified of silence, that somehow an absence of noise would cause a horrific pressure imbalance inside her brain, causing her head to explode.

If I recall my book of Proverbs correctly, there’s a proverb in there that goes something along the lines of "A fool loves to hear the sound of his own voice." A finishing paraphrase might be, "and a wise man knows when to shut the hell up."

This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to a rant inside my Little Bit Of Nowhere. Odds are it won’t be the last, but ideally all the others after it will come off as quirky and somewhat silly as this one.

Today’s Lesson: The world will not end if your talking does. Shhhhhhhhh….


posted by Phillip at 5:28 PM