Ahem. So, I finally posted the last of my 1954 entries, nearly a year late. Take a look, if you’re still even interested.

Meanwhile, this blog remains dormant, awaiting time in my schedule to address an import into a different CMS (as previously noted). I’m hoping to have a little free time in the next couple months. (Thus, by claiming this, I’ve probably doomed it once again.)

I posted this over on my tumblr, marking the 10th anniversary of me3dia.com on January 3.

Ten years ago today, I became me3dia. That’s when my blog went live, first on Blogger, then on Movable Type. When it launched, “me3dia” already existed in Google searches, but only as a typo for “media,” which is how I got me3dia in the first place. I kept accidentally hitting the 3 key along with the e, and I liked how it looked for two reasons: I had dreams of a career doing journalism, PR and advertising copywriting — three forms of media — and I also liked the 3D in there. Media with depth.

Today, me3dia.com is pretty quiet; most of my blogging is happening elsewhere. I blog here on tumblr, on Gapers Block (which launched in 2003, and on which I’ve posted well over 10,000 times), on Twitter and on client sites. (Ironically, my last remaining pro blogging gig just came to an end — though time will tell if I start another one.) My online activities are splintered and spread out, and it’s time to get them back in order.

My goal is to overhaul me3dia and consolidate a lot of that splintered personal output back into this one site in the next couple months. It’s a birthday present to my site, and a good new year’s goal for me personally.

Years ago, I saw a great t-shirt design by Dutch design firm Experimental Jetset. It was super simple, yet sophisticated in that you had to know who John & Paul & Ringo & George are.

That design has inspired dozens more, some better than others. And while I think the concept has run its course, I had one more version I thought needed to be done.

This is Cinnamon and my holiday card this year. And it can be yours, too, if you hurry: I’ve made it available on Etsy for $12 per pack of eight. Order this week and you should still be able to get it in the mail for this Christmas — or hold on to’em for next year.

You’re probably under the impression that I don’t write here anymore. And you’d mostly be right. But though I haven’t been active on me3dia.com proper, there’s plenty going on in the background.

Those in the know are following me on Tumblr. There’s also a steady stream of introspection and reminiscence going on on 1954. Mostly, though, I’ve been writing for GB and other places. A Weightshift client project will soon make its debut, and I’ve done post-game interviews for Layer Tennis with Armin Vit, Mark Weaver and Oliver Reichenstein. More to come in that series.

I’m trying to decide just what to do with me3dia.com. It probably ought to evolve into something more than a seldomly updated blog… Probably into something of a landing page for all things Andrew. Stay tuned.

My senior year in high school, I directed an “experimental,” which was our school’s somewhat odd term for a student-directed short play. They probably got the name because they tended to be less traditional performances — plays written by students, adaptations of material from elsewhere, avant garde one-acts, etc. These shows were always presented in pairs. I recall watching several of my friends act in a ribald collection of Monty Python skits, coupled with a student-written play titled A Brief Nictitation, which bordered on performance art. Fortunately, the truly experimental piece went on first.

My experimental was simply called Dialogues, and it was paired with my friend Kyle’s production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It was exactly that: a selection of dialogues pulled from some of my favorite plays. The Question Game from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, one from Hamlet (though I don’t remember quite which one now), a scene from On the Open Road (which I’d seen the premier of at the Goodman), and a couple I’d found in a collection of dialogues I’d gotten from Mr. Faust, our theatre teacher. However, the one I was most proud of was one I put together myself. It was a dialogue built out of two monologues — the closing soliloquies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.

I arranged the lines in such a way that Puck and Prospero’s lines wove around each other, alternating every couple verses, so as to highlight the similarities in the speeches. It worked pretty well on paper, and I thought it really worked on stage, performed by my friend Brandon and an enthusiastic freshman named Rashmi. (Brandon, if you’re reading this, do you remember which played whom?) UPDATE: Brandon reminds me that he was Prospero, but really wanted to be Puck.

I thought I’d lost the script, but I found it recently in an old sketchbook. So, here it is, “Puck and Prospero’s Dialogue.”

Prospero: Now, all my charms are o’erthrown and what strength I have’s my own, which is most faint.

Puck: If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.

Prospero: Now, ‘tis true, I must be here confined by you, or sent to Naples.

Puck: That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.

Prospero: Let me not, since I have my dukedom got and pardoned the deceiver , dwell in this bare island by your spell.

Puck: And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.

Prospero: But release me from my bands with the help of your good hands.

Puck: Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend.

Prospero: Gentle breath of yours my sails must fill, or else my project fails — which was to please.

Puck: And, as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck no to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue.

Prospero: Now, I want spirits to enforce, art to enchant, and my ending is despair — unless I be relieved by prayer, which pierces so that it assault Mercy itself and frees all faults.

Puck: We will make amends ere long; else the puck a liar call. So goodnight unto you all.

Prospero: As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.

Puck: Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.