Quincy Ark, an adaptation

After a recent viewing of Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film Russian Ark there was a lively discussion among the house members recognizing the parallels between the two venerable historical institutions, the Hermitage Museum and the Quincy House. This lead to the development of a short film treatment.

Quincy Ark - Screen Treatment

Narrator/Camera view point - Nathan

Vignette 1 - Front of house

Coffee House revelers two men and two women are walking up to the house with narrator following.

Revelers go around the side of the house. Men are lagging behind women jostling for position as one claims a female.

Vignette 2 - Below back porch

Revelers go up the back stairs while narrator bumps into Santi at bottom of stairs, both go below stairs under house walk by window looking through to see Jeremiah Cunningham and Col. Brooks working on his still discussing the founding of the house.

Vignette 3 Back yard

Santi and narrator are interupted by loud noise behind them, turn around to find rugby players loudly reveling in the back yard. Santi and narrator wander through the partying crowd. No one notices them and Santi urges caution, discusses their petty jockishness while being drawn to the reality of their vital debauchery. One jock on the periphery notices santi and chases the pair off.

Vignette 4 In the basement

Enter the basement through the outside door. Come upon period couple and child huddling in corner whispering in fear. Discussing the know nothing riots. Santi recalls the fire to the narrator. They walk past and up the stairs.

Vignette 5 - The hallway/bathroom door.

Reaching the top of the stairs the two walk to the bathroom door. Santi motions as if to enter. Narrator cautions strongly and fearfully against it. Open door see house resident in bath tub scrubbing. Resident remarks about the terror of trying to clean the bathroom. Scares out Santi and Narrator.

Vignette 6 - Fireplace half of Living room - Scotch tasting

Santi and narrator enter the room to a resident (perhaps in some sort of period clothing) giving an introduction to a scotch with much pomp and circumstance. Santi quietly mocks while narrator disagrees. Both mention not knowing the taste of alcohol any more. Move to the dining room.

Vignette 7 - Dining room - contemporary people

Enter the dining room with 3 contemporary people, one staring at the St Bridget poster, one investigating beer on the table, and one looking at the movie shelf. Narrator and stanti move to the person at the movie shelf who is now holding a bergman film. Santi questions the person and ultimately berates them for a lack of taste in film.

Vignette 8 - (optional) Kitchen scene

Narrator tires of santi's conversation and wanders to the Kitchen, enters kitchen sees landlord fixing broken diswasher muttering about students trashing the place. Is approached by "re-founding" members of the house. Discuss their idea for a house of Catholic men.

Vignette 9 - Living room other half

Narrator begins to search for Santi again. Wanders through dining room now full of people talking. Sees performers in the stage area who begin to play music. walks through the area finds Santi hitting on some woman. Tries to talk with him, but Santi ignores/can't hear him. Band finishes song and people applaud, start to get up and make their way out. Narrator sees original couple that was entering now sitting hand in hand on couch. Narrator finds Santi standing there and they converse, Santi says he is staying. narrator makes it out to the front door, and out the window on the door one only sees water.

A Router and Space

After the two bodies were fused the next step was to route out the space for the keyboard to fit in. Doing this required a tool that I don't have, a router. Now since this is a rough economy and I don't have a lot of cash to throw around on tools I'm only going to use infrequently. Enter Chicago Electric, cheap tools in both sense of the word. This router is basically holding an electric motor in the palm of your hand with some cheap plastic casing. But it was only $20 and this project has been mostly eyeballed, so no complaints.

Next I set up a gate so that the sides would be straight. The gate was clamped down, and the body was lined up and clamped down as well. Finally the guard on the router, even though it's a cheap piece of aluminum, it got the job done.


And the resulting product:


Stay tuned next time for refinishing the body!

Rafter Music Video Contest

Here is the Quincy Studio's entry in the Rafter Music Video Contest:

90's Coffee

Flier

Scary

Firstborn children found to have higher intelligence

Doesn't it seem like the main function of scientific studies these days is to simply tell you things you already knew? I have been saying this for years, and now some scientists have taken it upon them selves to prove me right.

Firstborn children found to have higher intelligence:

"Wading into an age-old debate, researchers have found that firstborn children are smarter than their siblings -- and the reason is not genetics, but the way their parents treat them, according to a study published today...

Year after year, more Nobel Prizes go to firstborn scientists and authors. Firstborns garner more than their share of National Merit scholarships and fill American colleges in disproportionate numbers...

The findings suggested that the mechanism behind the birth-order effect is not biological but related to social interactions within families.

He surmised that older children are showered with attention early in life and treated as leaders in the family. They are handed more responsibility after younger siblings are born and live with higher expectations from their parents."

Jesus Bandages

Many people have interesting bandages, but I think that this takes the cake.

Jesus Adhesive Bandages : Stupid.com

Burnt ikea with a hint of orange...

This weekend I encountered a fascinating smell of a quite unique vintage. I entered the kitchen and I was overcome with a scent that carried dim echos of times past. At first I couldn't place it. I was reminded of burning the tips of nylon ropes when camping as a child, and the happy hours of playing with a lighter and a can of hairspray. As it turned out an ikea spoon had fallen on the heating element in our dishwasher. The smell of burnt ikea, while similar to the nylon ropes and burning plastic wrappers of my childhood, has a very distinctive character. The melted plastic as it begins its slow bubbling combustion has a slight hint of a rancid burnt orange peel with strong overtones of rotten driftwood and displaced chemical waste.

Surprisingly enough, this was not my first encounter with the ikea scent. Last winter we had an ikea chair that somehow caught fire in our living room and blanked the whole room with a fine orange film. A chair and a spoon. You would not think immediately that they have the same scent when burned. But, while the chair carried more subtle hints of oily fabric, somehow the magic that is a burning ikea product persisted through.

I can't say that I recommend burnt ikea. As far as combustible petroleum products go, I prefer the simple straight forward melting nylon, it's just more honest. But if you are interested in a unique and unforgettable olfactory experience, then ikea is the way to go.

Love and Jokes

It has been intriguing gathering reactions to our April Fool’s Day joke. Some seem to have found the idea of a Quincy Dating Central, which we added to our house website, both relevant and absurd enough to be funny. And on the other side of the spectrum, some seem to have found it distasteful that someone would joke in such a manner, about something so serious, making light of the difficulties that face the modern single Christian in a culture such as ours, etc. And certainly, there were those that didn’t realize it was April 1st, and moreover were unable to see the humor in it, and supposed we actually intended to set ourselves up as so great that traditional rules don’t apply, that women should pursue us and submit to the embarrassment of completing an online application for the ‘privilege’ of dating one of us. And perhaps, no one’s actual reaction could be identified completely with one of these here described, but I have no doubt that these elements are familiar.

As far as jokes go, I’ll readily admit this one was a little more risky. There is much bound up in such matters as dating, much indeed, and it’s different for everyone. But given the risk, why make such a joke?

One of the themes that has been emerging in my mind, and in discussions I’ve had with others, is that we Christians (Catholic’s especially) tend to be a little up tight about matters vocational, especially when it comes to dating. When you add the confusion of looking for love in a sinful world and of experiencing that loneliness so typical of the human condition, it’s easy to get out of sorts. If I like so and so, and it doesn’t work out, I’m quick to grow discouraged, or to hold on to my disappointments as if God were not really in the details. I’ve heard no call to the religious life, I might think, and I’ve always desired to marry and start a family, and here I am living a life I didn’t plan, unmarried and growing older. After a while, and perhaps it’s always been this way, the whole business starts to feel pretty serious. And there are other concerns: One must not get too attached too quickly. One must be extra careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings. One must follow enough of the traditional etiquette, but not too much. One must be assertive, but not overbearing. And on, and on, and on. So it’s all very complicated and difficult, and given the stakes, it’s risky, and very, very serious.

But it seems to me that only fear could make it this serious. Only a lack of hope in God’s providence could keep me so concerned, so desperate to tread lightly that I would be unable to laugh about it all. The reality is that God is in control, and male-female relationships are hilarious. There’s such a splendid comedy in the awkwardness of dating, and not dating. At the heart of romance, I would suggest, is a very good joke.

And I think the comedy is essential, in part because on the other side is tragedy. Love that would be free to grow, to flourish and pour itself forth in the sublimity of the gift, is love that must suffer. We can see this clearly entering Holy Week, meditating upon the sacrifice of our Lord, the suffering that he takes on for our sake. We will die with Christ, so that we will share in his Life. Some of us will do (or are already doing) this in marriage, in act of giving our lives for a spouse, and for the children of such a gift. Other of us may experience this in a different way, as singles for the kingdom of God. And to each there is a season, and likewise a time for laughing and for crying.

So if the Quincy Dating Central joke was a poor one, it was at least an effort. We long to love openly, to be vulnerable before the Mystery. We tried to mock our own pride with a faux role-reversal and technological approach to an un-technological problem, a strange and clumsy reflection of the beauty of awkward singleness. I think we hoped that somehow, we might all take ourselves a little less seriously for it, and that maybe, rather than presenting obstacles to openness, greater openness might be encouraged.

Yesterday's Cavlin & Hobbes seems fitting (hat-tip to Aaron for finding it):

Funny Because It's True

For some reason the picture won't import into Blogger very well, so just check out this comic at its own website.

Deperate graduate students out there, don't pretend the thought hasn't crossed your mind too...