December 9, 2008

Script for Two Actors: “Big Job Interview”

Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Improvised Writing, Play
No Comments 

Boss: How was the train in?
Tim: I biked actually.
Boss: Motorcycle!
Tim: Bike…Went great though. Traffic was good.
Boss: The bike traffic? Or normal car traffic?
Tim: Both I guess.
Boss: Well good. Thanks for coming in today, Tim. We got your CV and references in the email and we’ve had the chance to look them over pretty well and….Oh, have a seat. Have a seat. And…I’ve got to say, Tim. You look good on paper.
Tim: Well, I try to look good all the time. (strokes stylish new haircut)
Boss: (Taking note of the stylish new haircut) I see. Very good. (scribbles emphatic notes while humming) Yes, yes, good. So. Tim. It says here you studied at Harvard.
Tim: That’s right.
Boss: I’ve heard of that school.
Tim: You have? Good things I hope.
Boss: Well,………(both break out laughing)
Tim: I hope I’m not in the company of a Yale-Man.
Boss: God no. I’ve got my shoes on the right foot don’t I? (both laugh) No, I was at Harvard too. ‘98 to 2002.
Tim: Me too!…
Boss: Small world! I was Alpha Kappa Eta.
Tim: AKE-y Breaky Heart! I was AKE too! I lived upstairs, above the kitchen.
Boss: Tim. Timothy. TIMOTHY Hurkstadt?
Tim: That’s right! And you’re……
Boss: Mikey!!! Mikey likes it!!!! “Mikey Likes It”….The rape case…..
Tim: …..you lived in the basement-with Lawrence. Oh my god! Hell yeah! Drop ‘em and give me twenty!
Boss: Not the time or place, Tim. No. (serious again) Let’s just move right along here. Says here on your cover letter that you’re suitable for the position of the company’s vice president. That true?
Tim: Yes. Absolutely.
Boss: And I only bring that up, because you misspelled ‘president.’
Tim: Probably just a typo.
Boss: Yes, that’s exactly it. Its a typo.
Tim: These Blackberry keyboards, nowadays….So small.
Boss: You typed it on a Blackberry? Well…That changes everything….(writes another happy note on his paper while humming) Listed under “experience” it says here that you “corroborated with Police, giving anonymous eye-witness testimony leading to the arrest and conviction of a Harvard rapist.” Tell me a bit about that.
Tim: I….there….I….you….
Boss: This interview may be winding up here, and I’m sure that you’re a busy man-
Tim: I,…please…
Boss: This is a Fortune 500 Company, Tim. We have stocks. Okay? Did you see the lobby downstairs? That’s the actual set from “Scarface” okay? Do you think we play games here? No. Next week I am sitting before a congressional panel asking Uncle Sam for 950 Billion dollars just to retrofit our helicopter landing pad and waterpark okay? We need people here that are honest. But not so honest as to rat out a frat brother. Okay? We need driven people who will work hard for millions of dollars and play golf with people they don’t like just to keep business deals. Okay? We need people who are willing to wipe their ass thoroughly and wash their hands with soap because I’m a neat freak with a Howard Hughes like demand for cleanliness. We need-
Tim: Uh! Can I go to the bathroom?
Boss: Now? In the middle of my screaming?
Tim: Yeah, I’ll be really quick.
Boss: I guess. Sure. Down the hall past the glass elevator, take a left at the champagne filled fountain.

Forty-five minutes later,

Tim: Okay, I’m back. Sorry about that.
Boss: No problem. Not a problem at all. Let’s continue this interview. You look really good on paper, Tim. Impressive. I must admit, you’re a great candidate for this position. You….Well, I’m just a little nervous, here. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m nervous because….God, its hard to be open. To be vulnerable. I’m nervous because I’m afraid you won’t take the job.
Tim: Why would you think that?…..Michael?
Boss: Because I screamed at you. I raised my voice and that was stupid of me. Look. Tim. I followed you into the bathroom.
Tim: (pretending to be surprised) Really?
Boss: Yes, and I must say. You must have used like an entire roll of toilet paper. Seriously, I heard the roll spinning and it was like the hum of a jet engine. And you washed your hands really really well. Good job.
Tim: Gosh, well, thanks.
Boss: So let’s just get you signed up, whattya say? Wait….wait….what’s this? I’m pulling up your Facebook right now. Hmmm. Interesting. It looks like there’s a picture of you groping a cardboard cutout of Hilary Clinton.
Tim: That’s not a cutout.
Boss: (Squints) Okay. Well, there is also a picture of you here in a bathroom and you’re standing by a sink holding up your hands that apparently have poop all over them and the caption you wrote was: “E Coli virus!! LOL”
Tim: ……Let’s not gloss over the fact that I groped Hilary Clinton. I mean, that’s pretty awesome.
Boss: Nevertheless, Tim. Nevertheless. I….Was that whole washing your hands thing in the bathroom just now like an act? Was it just a show to entice me to hire you?
Tim: If I say yes, you won’t hire me. If I say ‘no’ you will hire me.
Boss: Is that a question? Are you thinking out loud? Or are you trying to Jedi Mind Trick me?
Tim: Mind Trick.
Boss: Episode IV reference. Nice.
Tim: Actually, you made the reference.
Boss: Still. It was nice of you to play along. Episode I: Phantom Menace?
Tim: Sucked balls.
Boss: You’re hired. Get your company mug at the reception’s desk on the way out.

 

Ryan McGivern

 

December 7, 2008

Why I am so happy to be in the pre-ovulation stage of my menstrual cycle:

Posted by loliz under Diarrhea, Love, Sex, Violence
[2] Comments 

Well, it’s because, probably right now, my roommate, who I am falling is love with, is probably fucking his abusive ex, who makes him in return abusive.

I was fucking him two and then 5 nights ago. He is great in bed. I am also falling in love with him. Damn all those bipolar Aries.

And guess what.? Because I am in the pre-ovulation stage of my menstrual cycle, I really just don’t care. I want her dead and I maybe want to be with him and they are fucking in a close-by room. But, well, I finally don’t care! Rock On!

(true true true - you should’ve been there! with me being and feeling all detached and uninterested.)

I am really not looking for a long term relationship for this two week period of time, ya know.?

 

December 7, 2008

Dasein, Body Technologies, and Historicality: A Brief Word

Posted by Ryan McGivern under History, Ideas, Philosophy, Sex, Thoughts
1 Comment 

Dasein’s there, being always necessarily corporeal, exists with the ontical accidents including sex and its ancillary gendered inscriptions. The sheltering of truth in Dasein houses histories that precede us. Just as there is no presuppositionless thought, there is no body absolved of a history larger than itself; “a body resonates a world and history that are not only of that body.”[1] In each body there lay histories traced in the lines, scars, movements and resistances making every retrieval of the ‘having-been’ necessarily concern bodies. Historie and Geschichte deal not with concepts but the body’s meaning and possibility. In Heideggerian resoluteness, Dasein comes back and hands down factical possibilities and hands down in terms of a heritage possibilities at once inherited and chosen. The possibilities handed down, enigmatically; to oneself in resoluteness is done so with Dasein’s death and bodily finitude in sight. The there-being of history and future is located in bodies, and bodies’ temporality within the ecstatico-temporal horizon is such that the past, present, and future are located in the flesh. Bodies’ forms, dictated by radical fluidity, plasticity, and interpretation are inroads towards futures alleviated from patriarchal and colonizing systems of history.

Heidegger states that the interpretative structure of the hermeneutical circle excludes historiological efforts “a priori from the domain of rigorous knowledge.”[2] He writes of the historian, in this case implicitly operating from a patriarchal framework in search of objective truth value to a singular monolithic historical narrative, “it would admittedly be more ideal if the [hermeneutic] circle could be avoided and if there remained the hope of creating some time a historiology which would be as independent of the observer as our knowledge of Nature is supposed to be.”[3] Rather than a removed independent Subject, there exists a shared dependency where Dasein creates its context and vice versa. This occurs through the hermeneutical situation of Dasein having already a fore-having (Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht), and fore-conception (Vorgriff). The asking of a question in of itself determines context and furthermore; Dasein’s existential being defines itself in its activities and conversely creates the world it acts in.                Meaning in Heideggerian terms, takes its structure from the ‘fore-having-sight-conception’ triad and is an existentiale belonging only to Dasein. The corporeal considerations of feminisms face new questions of bodies through advancements of technologies giving new meaning to Dasein, the ground of which is an Abgrund, or abyss, giving the sense [Sinn] of Dasein an inexhaustible field of truth, and possibility. The conclusion drawn here is that equipmental structure, the artifacts that exist with Dasein and are currently becoming better integrated into cognitive, physical, sexual use are influential in the forms of questioning undertaken by feminists. As deconstructive efforts from feminists and elsewhere have brought new histories and futures, this process has necessarily been involved with technoscientific developments. Mariana Ortega writes that although we are socio-cultural beings, dependent upon the traditions, histories, and norms of our shared-world, “we are capable of re-interpreting our existences as well as these norms and practices.”[4] Furthermore, the re-interpretation of histories is centered in temporal bodies and as issues of corporeality further discourse opposing patriarchal and colonizing systems, technologies’ integrations into bodies benefit and strengthen this. Alongside of the questions that technology raises for the sexed and gendered body, body technologies are illustrative of Dasein’s re-tracing inscriptive scars of the past. So too do they damage histories and traditions reliant on categories as the interpretative platform of bodies prove to be as malleable and pliant as the histories they re-own in an authentic heritage.


[1] Vallega-Neu, Daniela. The Bodily Dimension in Thinking (Albany: State University of    New York Press. 2005), 95.

[2] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row. 1962), 194.

[3] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row. 1962), 194.

[4] Ortega, Mariana. “New Mestizas, World Travelers, and Dasein: Phenomenology and theMulti-Voiced, Multi Cultural Self” Hypatia, Summer2001, Vol. 16 Issue 3, p1,  29p; (AN 5431928), 8.

 

 

December 7, 2008

Fictional Letters: To Mel

Posted by j.j. under Letters
[2] Comments 

My friend Bonnie wrote to me:

do you still think you can write a letter to mel from a professional soccer player, preferably one from guadalajara, mexico? i think i should send her this check really soon and i’m hoping that if i send something amusing along with it she will forgive how late i am in sending it in the first place.

Hola Mel!!

Please excuse my English is not so good.  I met Bonnie in the hot tub at the Holiday Inn in Houston and she said for me to write you, that you would like this.  I don’t know what to say, though, so I will tell you about myself.  I live in Guadalajara in Mexico where I play futbol for my career, I am the goalie.  I am not married because I prefer blond girls, and redheads.  I do have two kids, maybe you should know this.  They won’t be a problem when we meet though because they live with their mothers.

My favorite thing to do when I am not playing football is to cook exotic Chinese food.  This is because I spent a year playing for the Shanghai Dragons club team and there are so many strange foods that I learned about because I had lots of time because and no one to talk to .  I can do sexy things with bok choy and my favorite dessert to make is lotus seeds in rock sugar syrup.  I get lotus seeds from Amazon Mexico which is a wonderful thing, they even deliver groceries from trucks around Guadalajara.  I am usually the only vegetarian on my team, but I do like to eat chicken sometimes after we win a game.

My mom is very old and nice.  She lives in in a village 20km from San Luis Potosi.  Her job is to sew the stars on your American flag.  She is very patriotic towards your country.  My dad ran away with a hooker when I was 8.  I don’t blame him anymore and he and the hooker have given me two very beautiful sisters.  My dad is an elected official in San Luis Potosi and is highly respecred.  He is the transportation minister and he has a very large collection of snakes including a python!  The snakes do not have cages, my dad lets them roam around the guest room.  Sometimes one snake will eat another which I believe is cannibalism but can also be exciting, especially when a big one eats a small one and then the python eats the big one.  The snakes are like Russian dolls.

Anyway, I am very happy to write you.  Bonnie tells me you are a very kind and smoking hot American woman and I would like to meet you up close and personal some day soon.

Ciao baby,
Liborio Vicente Sánchez

 

November 30, 2008

Official Buy More Stuff Theme Song

Posted by j.j. under Activities, Blog, Merchandise, Nostalgia
No Comments 

buy-more

Last year, my friend and current roommate Abby and I wandered downtown and suggested that folks “buy more stuff.” Then, I co-authored a song about my experience with another friend, Shannon. Last week it became the official song of the Buy More Stuff movement! And last Friday it got press in one of the primo Seattle blogs! Check it:

From Seattlest.com:

Busiest shopping day of the year, nexus of downtown Seattle commerce, the hard core of the retail core: Westlake Mall. And what do we have? Well, people doing their holiday shopping, of course. And getting ready for the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas Tree. But who are those spoilsports with the signs, already? Ah, that would be the protesters, the anarchists, the enemies of the public good. So nicely dressed, too. So polite, so well-groomed. Those signs, what do they say? Down with the capitalist state? No, the signs are actually encouraging commerce. “Buy More Stuff,” they implore. “Hurry,” they urge.

Irony, how clever! Performance art, for the third year running! A theme song! Who’d have thought up such an ironic and clever protest against consumerism? (Connect the dots, if you will; you’d be right.)

 

November 26, 2008

Grant House Sewing Machines Santa Barbara Will Suck Your Life From You

Posted by Ryan McGivern under Merchandise, Shopping
[6] Comments 

If you want the worst of customer service, ineptitude, and absolute dismal performance,
check out Santa Barbara’s Grant House Sewing Machines!!

There is nothing worse than people who don’t care about their customers.
And this establishment of thougtlessness takes the cake.

I have personally seen service people ignore customers, be completely ignorant in their duties,
not know anything about sewing machines (which you might expect a sewing machine store to), and be unapologetic about their dismal performance and ass-clowning.

These barnyard troglodytes make elephant seals look totally elegant in the way they go about their business. This is the picture of what happens when a store has no competitor in town (though I heard that a team of banana slugs were opening shop in Santa Maria so watch out, Grant House).

If you like life, sewing, kindness, customer service, smiling, basic human kindness, or brain activity, stay away from Grant House Sewing Machines in Santa Barbara.

Cynthia McGivern

 

November 24, 2008

Turkey Day: A Time To Remember How Douchebaggy the Pilgrims Were

Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Religion
No Comments 

So I was just reading James Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me”
and I came across these fun facts!!

-in 1492, the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Europe had about 70 million people in it. The Americas had about 100 million.

-between 1520 and 1918, there were 93 epidemics among the indigenous people in the Americas. (41 of smallpox, 4 of bubonic plague, etc.)

-in 1617, just before the religiously persecuted Pilgrims washed up, there were already many English and French fisheries and tradespeople some of whom would nab Native People to sell as slaves in Europe. While ashore doing their nabbing, they traded some bubonic plague too and within three years, about 93% of all the East Coast Native People were dead.

-The Pilgrims came to a wasteland of dying brown skinned people. And thanked God for it. The Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony called the plague “miraculous” and wrote that God had ‘pursued’ the the plague victims. The plagues were seen as divine providence to pave the way for the Christian settlers.
“Hey guys! Wanna come over for dinner? We got a shit loadda turkey over here.”
“Uh, we’re kinda busy. And….everytime we hang out, we get a new disease.”
“Pish posh. (Coughs in their direction)”
“So uh.”
“Yes. Well. How’s that dying thing going over there?”
“Not good.”
“Praise God!”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“…..I thought you said…”
“This turkey is delicious.”

 

November 24, 2008

My Tattoo Trilogy

Posted by Ryan McGivern under Art, Comedy, Self Improvement
No Comments 

Wanna see my new tattoo?
Oh, you could already see it since I’m wearing a tank top?
Yes, it did hurt like hell…or that’s what my friend who watched it go down told me after I sobered up.
Its not much to look at right now, I know.
This one just sets up the characters you know. Kinda introduces the archetypes that will be appearing. What I like about this first one is that it works as a stand alone project.
Its got its own merit.
But this isn’t the end. No. There’s gonna be a sequel.

Dude. Check out my new tattoo! Oh, you could see it since I’m not wearing a shirt?
I forgot that I wasn’t.
This one is a little darker isn’t it? You see, I knew that my audience had aged and would be a little more jaded than last time. There’s definitely some surprises in there huh?
Well, as if you couldn’t guess, there’s gonna be another one. Kinda to wrap up the loose ends.
I know, I know, it’ll be hard to wait but it’ll definitely be worth it when it all comes together.

Hi. What’s up?
Not much. I just uh, been hanging out.
What? A tattoo? The last installment of my tattoo trilogy?
Yeah. Uh…Its done. I uh gotta run and pick up my niece….okay, okay.
Here. Look.
There were production problems. I don’t know where it went wrong.
The story was there, but I guess its just past its time now huh?
Shoulda struck while the iron was hot. All the themes that seemed so
pertinent under the Bush administration just aren’t as applicable in today’s new culture of “hope”.
I blame it on the lighting. It just looks fake. The first Hulk movie had better graphics.
Oh well. Hey! I got this great idea for the next tattoo though: A remake of my first tattoo but this time set in the future!

 

November 24, 2008

Nate Silver: 98% chance my next fart will be ‘a wet one’

Posted by Ryan McGivern under 1, Adventure, Comedy, Philosophy, Science
1 Comment 

Some people never learn.
They think that the world is ruled by ‘math’ and ’statistics’.
For example: you can’t predict the outcome of a baseball game because there’s WAY too many factors involved-i.e. screamed chants from the fans, the prayers of a sick boy in left field nose bleed seats, etc.
Haven’t you people heard of “chaos theory” and “random acts of kindness”?

Besides, isn’t it a little misogynist to completely rely on the masculine assumptions of rational reductionism? The modern project of control and oppression through the privileging of narrowly defined “acceptable knowledges” is bullshit man, so when Nate Silver tells me that there is nearly a one hundred percent chance that my next fart will result in a teaspoon of anal leakage, I tell him that I’m gonna trust my gut.

Sure, I’m in the middle of making out with that girl I met at Friday’s last week during my cousin’s work party and she’s just gone down to the kitchen to grab another beer and will be back in a second, but I think that this is a perfect time to just let out this fart that I’ve been holding all night.

It will probably be a nice little silent and mostly odorless fart. She’s been drinking a bit and won’t even notice if there was a smell anyway. Probably. That’s my guess.

Nate Silver’s breakdown of my bowel situation might have a cool statistical accounting for every factor including columns labelled “Nachos”, “Seven Beers”, and “Two Gin and Tonics”, but you know what? I failed
college algrebra and I’m still doing pretty well for myself.
Oh! And guess what? When I said that the new James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace” would suck before seeing it, I didn’t need no stupid pie chart. I trusted my intuition. And who got the last laugh on that one?

So, as I begin to push and bear down on my sphincter, I do so knowing that humanity will never be programmable, predictable, compartmentizeable, for the human soul is a mysterious thing beyond knowing.

 

November 24, 2008

Bible Camp Was Way More Fun With The Demons

Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Religion
No Comments 

Jesus!
I’ve been camp counselor and waterfront staff at Circle Pines Bible Camp since I was eleven years old,
and this will sadly be my last year.
I just can’t take it anymore. The life, the zest, the gusto, the fun, the purpose of Circle Pines has just been
completely sucked dry, leaving each summer just more and more meaningless, tedious, and unaffirming.
Don’t get me wrong: its not me. My faith is as strong as the Euphrates. Stronger than the very loins of Samson himself. No, its something entirely worse-
The absence of any demonic possessions.

The summer of 1975 saw not one or two possessions, but twelve. It was the summer of what we called The Purple People Eaters Curse.
In ‘84 I personally cast the Demon of masturbation out of a pre-teen girl and cast it into a herd of swine.
There was a time in the early 90’s that I personally confirmed the existence of three Succubi among the
craft shack staff.

Those golden days are over, however. Now when a kid throws up, we blame it on “too many smores at the campfire”, and instead of telling kids that they have the evil spirit of Zu Khali, Lord of the Air, we’re more apt to check with the camp nurse to see if their parents notified the camp of an allergy to gluten.

Fuck that! Bible Camp has been and always should be about spiritual warfare consisting of midnight rallies at the chapel, entertaining questions of how to pray away the overweight girls’ lesbianism, etc!

I’m lucky if in my cabin there are as many kids who bring their King James Bible and Holy Water as there are kids who are on Ritalin.
How am I supposed to rid 8 year olds of Satanic oppression when they have ’sports asthma’ and can’t sustain their balance on a blessed wooden cross in the middle of a peat bog while screaming Latin? I can’t work within these parameters, people!

So I’m quitting. Yep. I’ve decided to move on to bigger and better things. So I’m starting my new job 
tomorrow at Crystal Massage in the Galleria Mall near Encino.
I’m not a licenced masseuse, but I certainly can lay hands on you for the gifting of the Holy Spirit with
the evidence of tongues.
I take appointments or drop ins, and if you refer me to another customer, your next exorcism massage is five dollars off.

 

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