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Generations

I was joking today that we put old people in homes to make sure that we don't have to learn anything from them but it got me thinking a lot about "The Greatest Generation" and their effect on … [Read More...]

Great Teachers Love What They Teach

This probably sounds obvious. But I think we often speak of great teachers separate from their love of what they teach. There are many people who love subjects who are incapable of teaching about … [Read More...]

Logarithmic Sense of Time

I recently listened to a Radiolab show entitled "Numbers" which, among other things, dealt with logarithmic counting versus integer counting. All humans naturally count logarithmically. If, for … [Read More...]

Rigid Roles and a Lack of Play in the Nuclear Family

I am very frightened of my parents getting older. I have no experience of old age. I worry too about how little I am able to anticipate the demands and pitfalls of parenthood. I feel unprepared, … [Read More...]

Expectations of Perfect Form

I wasn't able to write for a long time because I wasn't into fixing things. I wanted them to come out perfect right away. I would sit and wait for the sentence to come out just right. I didn't … [Read More...]

Author Blurbs From the Future

"This is Ruskin's third book. He will write two more to middling success before his wife discovers that his torrid descriptions of extra-marital affairs come primarily from personal experience and she … [Read More...]

This Face My Dad Makes

I now make this face my dad makes. When he thinks he clever or he's making a witty or off color comment my dad kind of scrunches up his cheeks and pokes his tongue out a little between his teeth and … [Read More...]

People Killed by Exactly What They Were Complaining About

I'm not sure how this is cut together. It could be interviews where people self-righteously complain about something that later is revealed to have killed them in an ironic manner (like someone killed … [Read More...]

Welcome to MyHeadExploding

My name is Nate Baumgart. I am a writer in Chicago. This site is a showcase and collaborative space for my work.
"Ideas" contains a micro-blog of observations, concepts, plots, etc that are free for the taking. Use what you find however you like, just tag me back with a link to your work.
The other sections contain longer pieces of finished writing there for your perusal or adaption.
Thanks for visiting!

Improv

Questions

Improvising is Asking Questions

A good improviser has a natural inclination to ask questions and does so constantly. In the process  of unfolding a story and its meaning for an audience, our role as both the architects and enactors of that fantasy is to constantly be pushing ourselves one step ahead of the audience in constructing their experience. The [...]

traffic

Traffic as Improv

Improv is an area where skeletal rules structure free movement such that efficient systems are created. This kind of limiting the movement of autonomous individuals and structuring their choices is readily apparent in many areas of human life. Consider traffic. Our roads have rules that are essentially limitations. Speed limits, passing lanes, stop signs. These all structure the [...]

paul

Breakups

I wanted to highlight a favorite short of mine done by a few friends. It is part of Ted Tremper’s “Breakups” series and this installment stars Paul Jurewicz and Cecily Strong. I wrote an article about Ted and his process for Chicago-comedy.com which you can read here.  I wanted to comment a little more specifically on [...]

Media and Culture

kirk-james

Kirk

There’s an Old West episode of Star Trek. They land on a planet and there’s lots of tension because Kirk has to use a real gun. They get moronically and weirdly ambushed as soon as they land by some mysterious group eventually revealed to be brutish or dumb. And in the meantime the ship has [...]

Ad Campaigning

Ultimat

Ultimat Drinkers Raising a Generation of Fucked Up Kids

Ultimat: what to drink when you can only form emotional connections with money.

bar graph

How to Track Your Spending When You Are Obese and Well Read

Virtual Wallet: when your three largest expenses are coffee, print newspapers and fast food burgers. In this world mass transit happens on street trams and is super cheap.  

New-Twitter-006

Communication dissolves despairingly into branding

The new version of Twitter was released over a month ago but I thought the promo video they produced had a tremendous amount of interesting specifics in it. The video plots, socially and commercially, the audience for whom they believe such an update would be relevant or interesting. The video is a journey through a [...]

100 Stories

The Stories We Tell to Ourselves

It is astonishing how rapidly my mother can find a reason to recount to you that her sinus surgeon told her that she has “ a really large brain for such a small head.” Or how much of my dad’s experience is bookended by his astonishment at his own ignorance and the sentence: “See, no [...]

DSC00013

Adulthood

  March of last year I was in grad school at Northwestern for Creative Non-Fiction. I had spent a year preparing and saving to go, two years if you count the time I spent in Africa forcing myself to write an hour each day. I quit even before the first quarter ended. I thought that [...]