Now in the bar alone, Tom stared down into the mixed water-and-booze drink he'd inherited from the man he was before. His eyes burned through with white letters and he ground a calloused finger into their lids to calm them as the other dusty patrons swirled around him unnoticed. Resting his tired face on a rough hand, his mind tumbled down into his gut while images and sounds from his last days overlapped on the to film of his mind.

When he was growing up, he'd had a favourite question; something he would ask someone after knowing them for a week or so. It was something that required a prior trust in that way, something that opened the doors to discussion and understanding. It was one of the things that had convinced him maybe he should be a lawyer instead of... well anyway it always came back to that.

The question was: Who are you? And never became any simpler or bigger. It was the question of a child posed to adults, man to god. Man to man. Only three times in his life had he ever been totally satisfied with an answer, and he'd asked it many more times than that.

Certainly he'd asked himself before; when he'd left home, when he'd gotten his first command in flight school, when he told Lis he loved her and she'd told him the same. Now it was different though, he was afraid to ask himself. He was undefined, just aman in a jacket in a bar. No certificate, no symbol, no money, or parents, or friends. Just a member of that black and grey and brown sea that had always formed the background of his world. The faces in the cockpits he'd shredded, on the news, in the little arrows of coloured light on glowing screens he'd wacthed and gambled on through pressure glass. He pictured himself striding through the front door of this room, light rising behind him like a hero, highlighting the blue of his uniform and the brown of his hair. Everyone stopping and gasping, waiting to see what he would say or do, whose life he would change forever on a whim.

He'd been a god, of sorts; how had he never thought of it like that before? He'd known men and women who had, fighter pilots or destroyer captains or soldiers who loved the power to decide, but he'd always frowned on them, seen himself as bigger and better than that thinking. As if he needed another thing to hate about himself now that she was gone, and even at that he wasn't sure if he meant his ship or his wife.

The news came on and the war was getting worse. All of a sudden things were terrible, though the show they had been tuned to before would never have mentioned it. The Confederation was pulling out of Ross 128 and leaving Tom behind. It took a great amount of strength for Tom to turn and look at the faces of those watching the report, but on one seemed to care. Of course, he thought, this will bother them not at all. The war-work will end and new work will start. Not his job anymore either.

Someone sat next to him but didn't order. A pad slide across the bar to fall under Tom's gaze, and he deemed it appropriate to focus on the displayed image. There was a ship there, highlighted with words and lines, resembling a squat little urban bird with engines and doors. She looked not menacing or impressive but tired and useful, and in that Tom felt he shared half her characteristics.

"Rates about a class 2 in atmo, better in cruising. Much better." It wasn't Tom speaking but the voice was like his, albeit with more mischief and knowhow behind it. "I've got jump clearance to the core, if that's where you're headed."

Tom's heart started to pound at the thought of speaking, but somehow he managed to conjure a voice out of a dry gully. "I've been on a Redbird once before; had a tendency to fall out of the sky."

"That's handy," The voice answered, "When you're going to ground."

"Yeah. Guess there's no fallin' in space really. It's all sky."

"She could use a pilot. Her current one's... not agreein' with her."

"Nothin' much is agreein' with me these days Shaw."

"That's good." Curtis Shaw said to Thomas Freeman as the latter man looked into his friend's eyes for the first time, "This work needs invisible people."

"You're in luck," Tom said as he drained his drink, "I'm the best kind."

When the bartender came back to sullen flyboy in the dusty jacket the man had left. Among three bent local coins was something else; it had a noble face, and two wide-swept wings.

Hey Colin, wouldn't it be cool if that story about Darby down there and that bit about Tom and Lis right under here were actually happening at the same time? Think about it.

Tom rolled his Thunderbolt over to port, shaking his head as the sluggishness he'd been trying to fix with Cantieri was very obviously still present and may even have gotten worse.
This, apparently, was not unnoticed by his wingman, "Still sticky huh?" Lis asked over the comm, her voice slightly muffled and distorted by the speed they were travelling and the military encryption protocols.
"Yeah," He replied, wiggling the stick to try and loosen it, "I'm officially out of ideas."
He smacked his orientation indicator like he'd flick away a speck of dirt.
"What was that?"
"I lied; now I'm out of ideas."
She laughed as he brought his fighter back up into formation slightly ahead and above her, then rolled over 180 degrees so he could look up at the drydocks. "City in the stars." he whispered, and could swear he heard Lis smile.
The two fighters opened up into cruising speed and quickly streaked away from the Monolith, whose distinctive double-hull design glittered in the dark; flat white windows gradually becoming indistinguishable from the innumerable stars. When the ship was only visible to Tom as a blue outline in his vision when he looked over his shoulder right at her, he stopped turning back and focused on the trip to the shuttle.
Proxima was an unexciting system, its natural features ignored by relocation agencies. Instead the bustling city of its only habited planet, Prospero, was the main attraction for offduty servicers and tourists from the central planets. Prospero was the biggest extra-solar city despite having no political importance. Proxima was, however, a major naval repair yard and the only system through which ships could travel to the eastern systems. This high traffic made it especially colourful, though the number of ships were closely regulated by requiring all shipping be conducted along established and clearly marked Confederation lanes that pierced the system on Tom's onboard map.
The shuttle they were to escort was travelling along a sparse trade lane that ran from the Prospero naval officers academy to Prospero Junction. As military fighters Tom and Lis were not required or expected to follow the lane and so instead of cruising to the Junction and then up the lane to the academy they had triangulated an intercept point through darkspace; the regions of all Confederate-settled systems that lay between the trade lanes and local bases' spheres of influence. This path would alos carry them over a major tradelane leading from Junction to the jumppoint to Lalande 21185; the colonial captial system of France. As the mission timer clicked down its first hour the chevrons representing civilian shipping vessels began to give way to hull-specific outlines. Tom and Lis blasted unnoticed over the lane, their latent military sensor camouflage darkening their fighters to the lowgrade civilan scanners, and made the final course adjustment to meet up with the officers shuttle. Tom, in the lead and serving as mission commander, was monitoring local radios and picking up an anomaly. He was about to ask Lis about it when she jumped onto the comm ahead of him.
"Lead," his interest in the anomaly dropped as soon as he heard his formal title for the mission, "I've got something off the lane about two klicks at our depression."
Tom recalibrated his scanners to where Lis had them set, as mission secondary she was monitoring the actual contacts, and immediately picked up the rough outline of a wrecked freighter in gray, his helmet interface allowing him to see it through the instruments in his cockpit.
"Looks like a Huxley-class freight," He rolled a 180 again to see if he could make a visual check, "Appears she's been split down the middle Ten." He used her squadron call number.
"I'm picking up a few scattered crates, appears they've been spread less than a quarter klick from the wreck; suggests recent raid."
"Means whoever took this thing down might still be local." Tom slowed from cruise and flipped his fighter into combat ready. "Call it in, I'll do a scoot n' snoop."

Darby leapfrogged his way down a wide main street parallel to the plaza, throwing one IFF flare to distract a sniper while he sprinted from the cover of a tall red news box across a dusty boulevard to the cover of an abandoned landcar, whose owners had left so fast the doors were still open on both sides. Keeping an eye on the small red diamond that highlighted the sniper on his visor, he poked his head up to take a look down the boulevard at the plaza. He felt the minute impact of a spark hit his faceplate moments before the impossibly highpitched whip of the sniper's bullet blew past his right ear. The round punched a clean hole through the top of the trunk, down the bottom of the car, and sent a puff of asphalt dust up form the road right behind Darby's left boot. Not wanting the give the shooter even the minute time it would take to chamber a new round, he almost dove from his cover point into an awkward crouch walk, swinging his rifle in his arms for balance and momentum. The movement also served to agitate his active camo, which vibrated tiny gelatinous cells under the fabric to make his outline indistinct. Another round corkscrewed a smoke trail in a diagonal in front of his chest, so he spun with his right shoulder and crashed through a falsewood door, tripping on some debris and tumbling onto his back. Rolling with the impact, he came up in a crouch with his rifle up and ready but the dark old storage room of an abandoned restaurant was empty. He quickly moved against a steel counter for cover and waited for a ranging shot form the sniper, but apparently he was out of the shooter’s sight.
The storage room opened into the kitchen, where the light coming in from the shattered door danced on hanging pots disturbed by the violence of his entry. He scanned in thermal for a garrison upstairs or further ahead, but could only detect the faint outlines of chairs stacked on tables. He found the front door and snaked his helmet camera cable out a crack opened in the door scanning for threats, especially more snipers. He was only fifty feet from the location of the French unit, which constituted one more boulevard and a short alley. He cleared that next street without incident, apparently the sniper cover was patchy, and made his way down a narrow, debris-strewn alley as the chevron representing the entrenched french unit narrowed and the distance numbers decreased to nothing.
Darby stepped out of the alley into a sun streaked hole of a three storey building. A shell had apparently blasted straight down through the roof and all three floors and made a sizeable crater that was ringed with sandbags and razor wire. He realised he was inside the french unit’s perimeter, a neither he nor the soldiers occupying it had noticed. He spoke loud enough that his comm unit broadcasted his greeting out from his helmet speaker as well as his comm link to the other Wolverines.
“Lieutenant Darby arriving at waypoint.”
There was a number of startled cries from around the sandbagged emplacement, and a trio of dirty men in Gens D’Armes uniforms rushed him from the darkness of the store front. It took the presence of an equally dusty noncom with a pistol to ease them down from shooting the stealthy Wolverine.
“Sergeant Reno?” He asked the NCO, who was staring right down the alleyway Darby had unwittingly infiltrated the position from.
Though Darby didn’t ask again, there was a noticeable delay in the NCO’s reaction which came with a snap look and a lurching grab for the front of Darby’s vest. He greeted the Wolverine with a slap on the helmet and various tugs at his uniform, which felt very much to Darby like arriving at an Italian dinner party. Apparently satisfied with the new arrival, the french NCO retreated with his trio of soldiers back into the dark storefront without saying a word. Darby followed, his visor polarising the make the dark interior visible faster than his naked eyes would have, and hesitated as the troops sat at a table and began playing a card game they had apparently abandoned when they heard his announcement. He walked swiftly the to NCO, who was no successfully ignoring him, and stood as close to the mans face as he could.
“I’m here to relieve you of command Sergeant.” He said, to which the french NCO nodded disinterested. “You’re under my authority now, along with your unit.” He added as an after thought, hoping that would snap them into soldiering properly.
Seeing they seemed to have no interest in manning their positions, he took the card river on the table in one hand and dropped them to the wrecked store floor. That seemed to motivate the rest of the french unit to man their positions, or at least go somewhere else in the area to avoid the inevitable chewing out their Sarge would soon be receiving from this Confederate soldiering behemoth.
Instead, Darby walked the man to the back of the position, where he had entered unnoticed, and began to illuminate the various glaring holes in their defences. The still silent NCO nodded and softly issued a few orders in French to his unit, prompting a few tired-looking soldiers to come back with a kitbag and begin loose reinforcements. They then inspected the storefront placing the plaza, where the wrecked chamber of an overheated machinegun lay in a pool of spent casings and had been propped on a counter split in half by a shell inpact and dusted with debris from the ceiling. All of the shelves and tables closest to the window were black and most were at least partially melted while any vertical surface was pocked with bullet holes big and small. Darby noticed that, while the NCO was certainly listening, the man didn’t seem remotely interested in keeping his unit or himself alive. He grabbed the Sergeant by the shoulder and pulled him close.
“Listen, I know that I’m not a local, and you must think that I’m only here to boss you around and get you killed for nothing. I’m just a soldier, just like you and them and those people in the plaza across the street. I don’t want to die, and don’t want any of your boys to die either but I am better at this job than you are. I have better training, better tools, and better opportunities to showcase them. I need you to listen to me out there, and I promise you I will not waste your lives.” Just as he was thinking what a terrible politician he would make, he realised the rest of the unit had gathered behind him while he’d been talking and were now in some semblance of parade. He turned to address all fifteen of them. “I’m a representative of a mobile company from the Confederation carrier Monolith, we have two hundred infantry fighters on the ground and almsot half that number are poised to assault this plaza. We will be providing suppressing fire to the quadrant visible through this storefront, and will be expected to backup the assault.” He paused, thinking maybe he should say more, but decided he might as well move on to topics he was comfortable with.

Quarter to four on a Thursday.

Might be rehearsing tonight, might not. Made some progress over cake and tea last evening, working more and more on a total lack of acting ability in my character; harder than you'd thgink, you non-actors out there, to make the audience believe YOU are a genius and generally-not-so-bad guy, but your character is a flub.

Would really like to purchase a 360 this week, doubt it will be possible. I might be able to borrow money form my father until I can pay him back with showmoney, but he'll probably cite being broke/a loser to get out of it. Not that I really deserve a loan; if I had managed myself properly I could get one without any outside influence. But I'm lazy and I like shiny things, so there's no use lamenting my non-having.

E3 has been exciting this week, though I still can't get over to PS3 controller just being a motion-sensitive, wireless PS2 controller. I know a lot of people out there really love the dualshock (Itself a PSOne controller with double analog sticks.) and there is something to be said for keeping a consistant controller for a fan base, but the 360 controller is a good example of an upgrade that adds new features while maintaining the core working elements of the previous generation. The other side of this, of course, is nintendo's controllers which have been drastically different with each generation. The Wii controller sounds sort of cool, but most of the first party games I've been reading about seem to have little to evolution past their gamecube iterations other than the nunchuk peripheral support.

I've been feeling really out of shape this past week, alternately sick and weak and unmotivated. Finishing school pulled a rug out from under me that even doing CGS isn't fixing. I should start working out, I guess, but I don't really feel like it. I have been writing a lot more, though, as this site can attest, so that's good.

Damn I want to play Oblivion...

Tom marched heavily into starboard flight control from the shipside hatch. His eyes were burning at the rims, and he almost bumped into Boss Munro as he squeezed them between his fingers. Munro was hunched over a terminal speaking in hushed but intense tones to the control officer. Both were bathed in the wiregrid glow of the terminal and Munro didn't look up at the pilot as she crossed to the observation window.
"What's the rush Boss?" Tom asked, stepping around a hurrying Ensign.
"It's Captain Blair." She said curtly, as if a complete response.
Tom waited for another Ensign to step away from handing her a PDA, then asked quietly, "What about him?"
Munro finally looked into Tom's eyes, and hers were almost as tired as his. "He's been off-comm for three hours, Freeman."
Tom felt his whole world explode into clear focus for the first time since his last communique with Shaw, and tried his best to keep a look of professionalism about him as he followed Munro to a quiet part of the O-Deck.
"What's..." Tom paused, trying to be diplomatic and not overstep his bounds, "Uh, being done?"
Munro looked up sharply, her features softening somewhat but not what she had to say. "Admiral Trotter won't send out a search party while we're facing a shooting war."
Munro quickly moved to get away form him, but Tom began to stalk her around the O-Deck, "Won't? Has he asked for volunteers? Is he only considering Hornet, or will Apex be considered?"
The Boss whirled on him then, in the middle of the deck, clenching the PDA close to her side, "I've got one pilot MIA and an empty space in my hangar. The Admiral is facing the biggest armed crisis of the century out there, we don't have time to search for a downed recon flyer and you know it."
Tom found himself stepping forward to press the issue but, in the manner of the very stressed and exhausted, quickly switched his mind to a remembrance of his rank and position, and instead left the O-Deck for his quarters. Inside he switched on the wireless transmitter while he connected to Shaw's frequency. The intel agent spoke to him from the pilot's seat of his ship, the unnamed wetwork operative sitting in the shadows behind him. "Got all that," Shaw said before Tom could explain, "And I've already got a remedy for you." Shaw flicked a switch and the lights in his cockpit darkened. Tom's wall-mounted comm unit chimed and Shaw spared him a wink before the channel swtiched off. Tom got up from his chair and hit the response stud on the wall panel.
"Freeman." He said, rubbing his eyes again more in bewilderment than anything.
"Meet me on the flight deck Silencer," Major Halverson said over the comm, "I'll brief you en route."

- Shaw 'disables' his own ship and sends out a distress call, Monolith responds with Apex and Campbell sends Spider and Silencer.
- Shaw knows where Blair disappeared and why, but doesn't know where he is now.
- CIB sent an emergency order to Blair mid-mission to scan a civilian freighter. That freighter was carrying weapons to Italian front line forces and they fired on Blair. Shaw lost Blair's fighter in the gunfight but doesn't think he was killed.
- The Apex pilots escort Shaw to the Monolith where he inroduces himself as a pro-Confed privateer. Unbeknownst to anyone on Monolith, Shaw's landing was a cover to get Snake/Fisher onboard.
- Shaw leaves, promises Tom he'll find Blair. Snake/Fisher begins surveillance and prepares for sabotage.

While Monolith conducts peacekeeping operations in Ross 128, a pair of next-generation superiority fighters is delivered to the ship. Donated to Apex's best pilots, Major David Halverson and Captain Thomas Freeeman, for morale and publicity tours of the system, they seem to be one-man tickets to on-flight shore leave. However, during a fly-by of a major trade lane through the system, the two pilots receive classififed orders to destroy an aggressive ship harassing civilian shipping. Confidant of the new fighters' abilities and pleased at the show of Confederation power the display will surely make, the two begin the attack without hesitation. Soon Tom begins to doubt the validity of the claim, as the so-called agressor doesn't seem to be firing on civilian ships at all but rather armed vessels outside of the main trade lane. Under heavy pressure from Admiral Trotter, Silencer and Spyder destroy the ship using long range missile strikes and are immediately ordered back to the ship where the fighters are pulled form the flight line and shortly depart. Back on active duty with his Thunderbolt, Tom begins to replay the event sleading up to the attack in his mind, eventually meeting with Halverson to discuss his fears they were manipulated into making an illegal attack. With the situation in Ross 128 rapidly degenerating towards war, Tom is consumed with finding information regarding the engineers and officers who shuttled the fighters to Monoltihin the first place. Following a digital trail on his spare time on board, Tom runs into powerful firewalls and blocks and is even cautioned by the ship's quartermaster to give up the search. Now convinced that something is amiss, Tom takes shore leave on Ross 128's main starport to hire a code slicer named James McCanny who digs up information on the officer who brought the fighters to the supercarrier. Just as McCanny and Freeman discover the identity of the officer as that of a Confed Intel Agent, they are arrested by another CIA named Curtis Shaw. Shaw tells theneverything concerning a high-level military conspiracy orchestrated by the CIB to prolong the conflict in Ross 128. The ship Tom and Spider destroyed was a French diplomatic shuttle carrying a negotiator from a meeting with a local terrorist group, the attack was staged to show the French how much Confed knew but wouldn't allow the Ross French government to openly acknowledge that identity of the shuttle. Shaw doesnt' know why the CIB wants the situation in Ross 128 to escalate, but he and his wetwork operative had been given incresingly illegal missions to probe both French and Italian governmental processes from high in the CIB structure. With Tom's leave time ending, Shaw gives him an injection with a subdermal recording device and a communications scrambler, allowing the pilot to reach him and download anything the implant recorded weekly. Shaw also recruits McCanny for his slicing ability.

- Keeping Shaw's involvement secret form his handler
- Keeping Tom's surveillance and communication secret from everyone on board
- Cool shit with the wetwork operative (References to Fisher, Snake)
- possibly have Fisher/Snake infiltrate the Monolith
- Have more black-ops missions set up by CIB, not involving Tom but he thinks he knows what's really going on; high paranoia
- Eventual source of Brotherhood War be attempted Intel coup disguised as no-confidence vote in Senate over Confed's handling of the Ross 128 war

First run through of Shakespeare tonight, took us three hours to do it and that was with some people skipping their monologues. The skipping was fine, but some people treated it like they were going to get their heads bit off if they didn't do it; most of them would whisper the first line, apologise, and sit down without actually getting up. We just did a cue to cue people, just repeat what you did there because you're not helping anybody mouthing an apology form your seat. I didn't mind so much that the q2q was agonosingly slow, since I don't expect people to know proper procedure in these sorts of things, but that monologue shit bugged me.

My stuff was great though; my Malvolio brought the house down though it was too over-the-top, and Alex and I did possibly our best Macbeth run ever that had people gasping and riveted. My monologue went okay, but wasn't as connected as it should have been. I'll talk to Ian about it Thursday but I already know what went wrong.

The other scenes were what I expected, though Prince surprised me with both his 12th Night scene with Brett and his Henry V monologue. He's gotten really watchable since scene study.

Speaking of Prince our Matrix fight is finished now, all the moves locked in for one last viewing with Simon. I expect he'll add one or two cool ways of doing things, minor adjustments that will increase our badassness by a factor of 5 to 10. Speaking of badass, I can do five tornado kicks in a row without stopping to hitch up; they all flow into another. It's pretty much the coolest thing anyone has ever seen me do ever.

...Except for that time I double-kicked Andrew's car as it drove by, and that ultimate catch I made when I jumped for it, missed, then turned, dove and caught it.

Tomb Raider: Legend hit today and I was going to get it but our tech run ran later than I thought it would. I'll probably pick it up tomorrow after stage combat and post some thoughts soon.

I've been waging a fierce intergalactic war against the Drengi Empire in GalCiv2 this week, with acceptable losses given their penchant for not defending their troop transports or colony ships. So far none of my planets have fallen and I've taken four worlds from them.

Big reason I've gotten back into GalCIv is because some guy on wcnews.com is developing a WC2 mod for it; I crave WC mods like candy these days.

I also got Alex hooked on Psychonauts, which I've been playing through again being a collection fiend. I'm on my favourite level of any game ever, The Milkman Conspiracy, and Alex loves the humour. Little-boy protagonists seem to be her gateway drug...

Dad recommended Lucky Number Slevin to me, so I think I'll check it out Good Friday. He saw and liked V and I told him to see Inside Man ASAP 'cuz I'm sure he'll like that too.

(I'm currently listening to my friend Bremner sing opera, and it's awesome.)

I have a history final tomorrow that I'm pretending to care about, so I'll get back to the books.

I was wrong; I did have 12th Night rehearsal today in addition to Macbeth. Macbeth went very, very well and 12th Night barely went at all. I was either pissed off about being back in regular classes or too fucked up after Macbeth, probably both. I also had almost two hours off between rehearsals, which is way too long a break between works even if they are polar opposite energy requirements.

When I got home I contined my KotOR 2 revival, getting off Telos around eleven thirty (with a break in there to do some speech work.) I had planned on going to bed at midnight but I started to work on my fight scene and got more into it than I thought I would. It took my half an hour but I locked in Neo's opening stance flourish and set out his first three strieks and his first block and reposte. I'll talk to Prince about it tomorrow but now I fdeel a little guilty for not putting any work into it over the break. Whatever, I made a choice and I'll live with it.

Tomorrow shouldn't be too bad; group one did authentic movement with Leslie today so we'll certainly do the same and speech will be a decent enough diversion. I'll be fucking exhausted though; what the hell am I thinking still being up at this hour?

The strike is off; we have a regular day tomorrow. Luckily regular Tuesdays are Voice and Shakespeare SS, and I think I'm only doing MacBeth with Dixie and The Wife; no comedy for me...

Worked on my Berowne monologue with Ian today, and it went so well we barely used the whole twenty minutes. I've said it before out loud, but since it wasn't on the internets it doesn't count: the strike was awesome. It was like actually working, not doing bullshit core class busy-work like day-before-they're-due word lists and twenty-minutes-before-class movement pieces. Of course it's not like the core classes are useless, but working with Dixie and Ian has been so much more professional and worthy; I don't feel like I'm wasting my time and money on those pieces. I'm literally dreading doing sonnet work tomorrow, and it's only going to be ten/fifteen minutes of text-based floor work. I could do it with my eyes closed - hell, I probably will.

At least we get Stage Combat back on Wednesdays; Prince and I have got to get our Matrix fight in gear now that classes are back on.

In other news, Seann and I rented Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on Thursday and it's totally awesome. It's like Spider-man 2, but instead of swinging around the city you smash things. Everything(s).

Also Oblivion came out last Monday and has pretty much made the 360 decision for me; once I get paid for the Hamlet gig and get my tax return, so sometime after the tour.

Speaking of the tour, Alex got the ok from ACTRA so she should be joining Dave and I under the Black Sheep Theatre banner on our tour of the Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon Fringe Festivals. We're doing a show by my friend Tom X. Chow called 'Can't Get Started.' It's funny. And poignant. But mostly funny.

I watched Princess Mononoke Saturday night too, which I hadn't seen in a while. Gorgeous film, it still makes me gasp sometimes, especially the last half-hour. Plus that goddamn Forest Spirit/Deer God face is the creepiest/prettiest thing ever.

I've also started working on New Unity, the third evolution of the Monolith series. The goal this time is to simplify the story and make it more realistic by confining the narrative to one or two characters and really locking down things like governmental organisation, place locations, etc. It's funny that even after eight years of work I can still easily take this thing down directions I hadn't initially thought of, some major and some not-so-major. Big changes for this iteration are: Tom is the only narrator, the outside invader has been replaced by internal colonial unrest, and the character voices are more individual and adult. One thing that's going to be tricky is maintaining a probable level of realism while serving the plot; something that's always been an issue since I'm not a physicist or a fighter pilot. I do play a lot of Wing Commander though...

Time to sleep, got to be fully alert to read sonnet 29 on my back for half an hour tomorrow.

I haven't been up this early since Vocal Masque day three weeks ago on a Monday. If coming home after midnight after seeing V for Vendetta and playing StarLancer for two hours to calm yourself down with the full knowledge that your window of healthy sleep time is dwindling like rose petals is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Not sure what the cause of it is, but I'm definitely losing some of the intelligence I once had. Base things, I mean, like being a good speller or recognizing dangers inherent in the metropolitan process of this century.

For example, I just looked at a can of frozen juice my roommate bought and thought to myself "What the hell kind of fruit is 'Framboise'?"

Thank you

Right, well here we are in the midst of post number one of Failed Attempt (at an online journal) number 3.

All previous failed attempts were under the same banner, that of 'Life of Darby', a chronicle of my life after high school graduation generally falling into three categories: observations (varying in poetical content, lamentations of my social/romantic life (varying in rhetorical content), and geeky ramblings (varying in validity/correctness).

Each previous attempt failed due to lack of interest, something I fully expect to transpire here, but hopefully with the duress I have suffered in the past few months, due to life aboard the USS Young, this will serve as a mine for my slowly depleting mental sanity.

Anyway, to recap, since my last post on LoD I've started at George Brown's Professional Classical Acting program and am involved in a tumultuous love/hate affair with the entire institution. We're the first year to be operating in a new, commercially-focused building we're sharing with Soulpepper Theatre. The arrangement is difficult, as we are limited access to our building during performances and the general sense among the Team is that we're not taken seriously.

Not being taken seriously would appear to be the theme of the first year of this program, in fact, as many of our assignments are made to us to seem extremely important while the rest of the program and the faculty regard everything we do as a simple rite of passage. This may be only due to the attitude of Team Awesome; I've never worked with a group of people who assign such gravitas to such a myriad of topics. It is occasionally exhausting.

We're on strike at the moment, entering our third week of one-class-a-day scheduling. Happily this one class is an extremely enjoyable study of Shakespearean scenes with two very capable instructors. I get the opportunity to explore the (arguably) three categories of Shakespearean text: Comedy, Tragedy, and Romance. I have a brief but hilarious bit part as Malvolio in 12th Night, one of my favorite scenes from MacBeth, and I'm doing a Berowne monologue near the end of Love's Labour's Lost. Add to this the fact that Prince and I are doing a fight scene from The Matrix for stage combat, and the year could go on like this until April as far as I'm concerned.

unfortunately it looks like this respite into serious, focused work will end sometime this week and we'll be back into the ludicrous four to five one-hour classes a day schedule we've been dealing with all year, leading to the quality of my work dropping in every class no matter how much I enjoy doing it while I'm doing it.

On the social side I've met some incredible people this year, some forgettable people, and some total assknobs. The secondary reason I came her in the first place was to network, and I could form a versatile working company tomorrow if I had to. Some of the most dimensional people I've met are stuck in this tin can with me, and it works to our advantage. I'm doing that MacBeth scene with my girlfriend, who is of the most complex and radiant women I've ever met.

I've been playing a lot of Guild Wars in the past week, got my Ranger/Warrior up to lvl 10, and started to put the usual suspects from the fantasy story into the game as well; so Mathis the Ranger also has his father the Warrior and his wife the Mesmer backing him up. (Though of course they never appear together because they're all on the same account.)
I've also modded the hell out of Bridge Commander to a point where I enjoy just flying to different systems and taking pictures for my wallpaper. It has replaced Spider-Man 2 as my relaxing game.
Queen Video is slowly amassing all of what little money I have, I've been going through their wonderful TV/DVD selection, currently with the complete series of Bill Oakley/Josh Weinstein - produced Mission Hill sitting on my tower case. I've also downloaded the first season of the Battlestar Galactica revival, helmed by ex-TNG and DS9 exec Ronald D. Moore. If it had been released during my mad-hot Wing Commander love affair (Still present, as my bi-weekly visits to wcnews prove) I would have been my obsession.
I live with a girl in my program who happens to be best friends with Alex, so things work out nicely. Our apartment is currently gripped with Zelda-mania, mostly Wind Waker but I brought my 64 down to mess with Ocarina.

Which reminds me that last weekend I was in Ottawa for two days shooting a short film in which I portrayed a paranoid schitzophrenic with spouted lines from Hamlet. I should get paid $1000.00.