Month: June 2008

A project of mutual benefit

Spammers don’t even make sense when you talk to them on the phone. Daniel Cressey makes a telephone call to “Robert Pasteiner” about a claimed affiliation with the University of London.

My name is Daniel and I’m a journalist at the magazine Nature.

Daniel, or journalist, or whatever. You should have to learn how to approach someone. OK? How do you mean that I’m claiming to be? I am the person that is talking to you and you’re telling me I’m claiming to be. You should have some courtesy before you call someone on the phone.

Incorruptible update

We’ve blocked Act 1 and have worked it a couple of times through. Lots of familiar faces in this cast (Robin, Craig, Ted, Kathie, Sally), but I’m particularly pleased to be working with some people new to me, John, Jose, and Vincent. This should be a very funny show, so long as everything keeps fizzing along quickly enough that the viewer doesn’t realize that some of the gags are venerable. I tell people that Leta has chosen to direct a door-slamming sex farce (Leta dislikes door-slamming sex farces) without any doors (Andy has designed this cool colonnade for the up right wall) and very little sex. Incorruptible is actually a black comedy about grave-robbing monks in the Middle Ages, but it has a silver kernel of faith inside it, and that faith is vindicated.

Jumbo

Joe Queenan gives me another megabook to strive to complete: Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities.

I’m not suggesting that gigantic books are useful only as an excuse for avoiding responsibility. No, those who read them also reap the psychic benefits of being admitted to an exclusive club, like Icelandic rodeo queens or American presidents whose administrations did not end in disaster.