Category: Blarghing

For the last few weeks, I’ve been taking a beginner improv class as a way to meet people and broaden my horizons. Overall, the experience has been highly positive and I’ve learned a great deal on not just improv, but comedy as a whole.

The first phrase I have been telling friends what the classes are like is “adult daycare.” Certainly a lowbrow phrase, but how else can one interpret a class where we try to channel different levels of an animal? Or one where we try to perform a Busby Berkeley dance without a priori discussion? Another great example of an improv game that I (and I suspect many kids) would enjoy is equivalent to the everyone-tell-a-story-but-can-only-say-one-word.

At some point, silliness from all becomes just straight up fun. The key phrase there is “from all”: we all paid for the lessons, and thus had a stake in being whimsical. I’m glad none of my classmates  hesitated to do any of the exercises and in fact most put themselves out there. This was one of the lessons from improv: action with confidence supersedes hesitancy, especially if no one knows what you’re doing.

Joking aside, it’s been actually very informative on what exactly makes good improv, well, good. Some can be attributed to the spontaneity of the performers, but there are general frameworks which help add structure. For one, we learned that it’s much easier to grasp a scene if we self-impose a goal and also add some sort of familiar relationships between the characters. People can grasp onto the characters much easier that way, and there’s established frameworks to manipulate.

As something that I signed up for willy-nilly turned out to be quite the happy accident. I really did enjoy the class and the challenges it gave me.

Nowadays, home is not only where the heart is, but also where my office is. I spend over twenty one hours per day on average inside the confines of the four walls. This is partly why I splurged for the two bedroom instead of the one, and why I’ve been sort of obsessing over air quality recently.

Ever since college, I’ve developed some sort of allergic reaction whenever I visit my parent’s house in Florida. I’m convinced it’s due to some sort of ragweed floating around, or the sudden changes in stress leads to a floundering immune system. When there’s nobody around, I just stuck tissues up my nose… luckily, my sinus passage has so far enjoyed New Mexico… for the most part.

I’ve noticed in the afternoons that my nose are constantly flared, and that repeated vacuuming of my carpets still leads to large amounts of dust piling in the bin. The rays of sunshine streaming into my apartments laid bare the amount of dust floating around. It makes sense; the dust comes from, well, the twenty one hours I spend at home and the fact that the dry, high desert environment readily kicks up the sand and particulates from the ground. Since no home is sealed, those little particulate matter diffuse into my castle.

Ever since I got my Airmega 200M air purifier, that nose flaring has gone away for the most part. A side effect is that I have to dust my home less with that HEPA filter running. It has also made me more aware of the effects on indoor air quality of cooking and vacuuming. The filter plus my humidifier really makes my indoor air quality much better. This translates to a happier Marshall.

Now, I’m concerned about my water quality…

Tommy was really excited about his new store. Ever since he was in high school, he had an unusual fondness for antiques. Whether it be the history of the chair, or the lost art of a hand-crafted mortise and tenon joint, he didn’t know or care. He just knew that he liked antiques.

The store was a labor of love, and took hours comprising of locating an appropriate retail location to securing the bank loans. Unfortunately, the literal pay off after the grand opening was non-existent. It was due to the fact that he opened Tommy’s Antiques during the 1970s downturn. People didn’t have that much money, and those that did wanted to spend it on new mass manufactured crap instead. Those unrefined new money he would grovel under his breath.

One day, while looking for new income streams, Tommy noticed a new fangled ad for an “ATM.” A machine which can dispense cash, freeing the consumer from the shackles of bank hours. Unbeknownst to Tommy, the arrival of ATMs marked a tectonic shift in the banking industry. But Tommy just saw the immediate profit potential of owning a machine, and placed an order.

The wait for the delivery and setup wasn’t too long. In the meantime, Tommy ran into another problem, how does one advertise the fact that he now owns an ATM? Often, the easiest solution is the most effective and so he decided to place a placard in the median of Menaul boulevard with the simple phrase “ATM” and an arrow.

The advertisement worked. People came in to see the new gizmo on the weekend, and also realized the beauty of the furnitures. Tommy’s business bloomed from the passive traffic generated by the ATM and he eventually sold the store to a couple when the arthritis started effecting his store keeping duties.

To this day, that placard remains on the median.

In response to a placard on Menaul blvd that advertises an ATM… in the year 2021.

I probably spent dozens of hours fretting about with my college admission essays. At the time, a good application meant a great college, meaning a great career and a happily ever after. The writing was not an easy process; turns out I really didn’t have that much life experience as a… let me check… seventeen year old boy. Nevertheless, I crafted something that I was relatively proud of.

Eleven years later, I remember nothing about that essay. My mom had to remind me that I actually written about a Chinese idiom. The essay is nowhere to be found on my computer hard drives. A probable victim of the great purges of my Linux reinstalls before I found out about home mounting.

All things considered, I had a decent application process. I got into some nice schools, and proceeded to have a pretty decent life so far. Still, I wonder how much did that essay matter? Would I be as (—insert flattering/demeaning adjective of me here–) if I slacked off? Maybe the Marshall who stayed close to home and went to FSU ultimately found his true calling of inner tube water polo coach.

Maybe the above is a farcical question. The Marshall of eleven years yonder would’ve never slacked off.

Having a big boy job for the first time means that I had access to movers for the first time ever. It’s a luxury, that once experienced, becomes a necessity. I’ve moved around quite a bit in college and grad school, but this past move to Albuquerque is the smoothest ever. There was no need to worry about boxes nor trigger my anxiety by driving the UHaul with no rearview mirror.

The guys would come in, pack/unload my stuff, and call me “boss.” I’ve never been called “boss” so many times within 2 hours in my life before, and honestly, I was so flattered.

But as a side effect, I just felt… bad for the movers the whole time. Am I supposed to really just stand around while three hard working men are moving my stuff? It just doesn’t really suit me.

Honestly, they need to have a “for you to do” task just for the antsy ones.

“Here’s a box, load up your stupid plates in there. Should take you longer than us to pack up the rest of your house.”