Saturday, June 30, 2007

In the Mind of a Madman?

So much to write, so little time to do so...

How about I start with the colorful "message to the world" I posted a few days back. Some of you were perplexed as to the meaning, but here's the basic gist:

There is no meaning.

The history of this goes back a few months...no, it goes back further than that. You see, I tend to make "things" out of the most random stuff. For example, during my RA training a year ago, I had to do a virtual reality practice session about handling a case of depression (something I've had real-world experience with). The weirdest part about VR, though, is always the intro lines. So, here was my opening lines in this session.

Me: "Hey Andrew (his name was also Andrew), I haven't seen you around lately. Are you doing alright."
Him: (Sullenly) "Yeah, I guess I'm alright."
Me: "How are classes going?"
Him: "Eh, not too well, I really don't like my Math 127 class. Too hard."
Me: "Oh, do you have Professor Smith...en...john?"
Him: "Uh, yeah."
Me: "Yeah, he's a real bitch."

At this point, everyone around me was cracking up (which wasn't very conducive for a depression training session), mainly due to my horrible creation of the name "Smithenjohn." And that became one of my running jokes in that staff (though not nearly as famous as my "Clarrecrefun" idea). The way this worked was that I would take Post-It's or other pieces of paper and put the following on them:
I would them post them in places where they'd be sure to be found, such as on people's keyboards and such. No real reason, just a little bit of fun.

(Side note; I've also decided to use Prof. Smithenjohn in my University of Satherton series of short stories; acting as a satire of the "tough" professor. In fact, Prof. Smithenjohn is so tough that he tells his students on the first day, "I've been known to give grades so low that they lead at least one student a semester to suicide. I will expedite the process." He then takes out a gun and shoots one of the students in the front row.)

Now, this brings me back to the yellow & blue thing. This also began when I was with my CKC coworkers. We were at a program to help people choose their next year's housing. I was sitting around and doing nothing while standing by a chalkboard (nobody was really there). So, I pick up a piece of yellow chalk and write on the board "Yellow." No real reason; I just had the impulse to do so. So, I did so again. The board now read:
Yellow.
Yellow.

I also saw a piece of blue chalk, so I wrote under that, "Blue?" Because 1) Question marks are inherently funny, and 2) where the heck was blue coming from? I then decided I needed some closure to the little string of words, so I added "Blue!" to the end. It then read:
Yellow.
Yellow.
Blue?
Blue!

Again, no real point. Then my friend Carlos sees it and asks what it means. I tell him what I told you. He then told me that some Art (or maybe English) major would try to interpret it, possibly is as a realization that something must interrupt the status quo before it is accepted. He said I should take a picture, then sell it to some snob.

I never did that, but I have continued to put that message wherever I've found the colors yellow and blue (which, when you go to Cal, are not hard to find). For example, the other day, I found some yellow and blue scraps of paper, wrote those words on them, and taped them to my supervisors' door. And I've done similar things all over. I guess you could consider it a kind of softcore vandalism; nothing actually gets damaged; people just become confused.

So, anyhoo, that's the story on that. G'night.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll be sure not to wear yellow or blue around you...Speaking of which, considering that there are both yellow and blue pieces in a lot of board games, that would be odd.

By the way...the music on your "Clarrecrefun" piece sounds like some sort of distorted, amature MIDI composition from a 1980's or early 1990's video game. Now I'll have that damn thing stuck in my head for a while.

-Comrade Chavez

Andrew Schnorr said...

It's the "Carnival Night Zone" from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It is early 90s, but I doubt the guy who made it was an amateur...well, maybe he was.

Anonymous said...

Well, I got at least one part right. Unless you consider 1994 as mid-90's. Then, I would be wrong all the way around.

And well, I'm sure with the MIDI, programing, sound synthesis and technology in general we have now, our composer could've have an well-complied piece instead.

-Comrade Chavez

Anonymous said...

yellow
yellow
blue?
blue!
doggy doo!

My thoughts.

Clarrecrefun? Never heard of it? what's the story on that?