The Bleak House of Blahs 90210

Months ago, I asked Bing Image Generator to craft a portrait of Ron, Allan, Carrie, and me mowing the lawn in front of the Bleak House of Blahs. I tried to describe our younger selves as accurately as possible, but Bing insisted in turning all of us into fitness models. Of course the faces are completely wrong, because I haven't modeled any of us; I need a far better computer for that, and of course even then I wouldn't without consent. 

That genie is probably out of the box, though. I'm sure it won't be long before anyone who's ever posted even a single photo of themselves on the internet will eventually find themselves artificially generated one way or another. Carrie herself, though, should be safe, as she's never had any social media presence. Good foresight! 

Note, too, how primitive these images seem compared to what generative AI is capable of now. The singularity approaches...

Meanwhile, on Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog: Sim Bleak House

A couple of weeks ago I found an old CD-ROM with some of my friend Jeff's art, specifically, art he'd created to customize characters in popular sandbox computer simulation The Sims. Jeff and I had a brief e-mail exchange about the old files, and I wrote, in part:

"I'm sure you created these skins for either the first iteration of The Sims, or The Sims 2 at the latest - but I'm sure it was The Sims. I, too, recreated the Bleak House of Blahs to run SimEarl, SimCarrie, SimRon and SimAllan through their paces, and I can still feel the bruises from the belly laughs. Most disturbing was the misery the Sims endured, how perfectly it mirrored our early-20s ennui and angst. I loved it most when one or more of us peed our pants with a plaintive 'Poo poo pee dee!' I was happy to see your memories captured in your recent blog post."

To see 1990s me, Allan, Carrie and Ron brought to virtual life, check out Jeff's story on the subject. 

Abandoned Review of Transition, by Iain M. Banks

Back in October 2009, I started writing a review of Iain M. Banks' Transition, a novel about parallel universes and, tangentially, eclipses. For reasons unknown to me now, I abandoned the review; only four short paragraphs remain. I post them here because the review opens with a recounting of a conversation I had with my friend Allan back when we were roommates in the Bleak House of Blahs. That conversation has always lingered with me, now more than ever, for reasons that will soon become clear. What the conversation had to do with Transition, I don't recall.

Here's the text:

Sometime during the summer of 1992 or 1993 - one of the summers, at least, during the time of the Bleak House of Blahs - Allan and I talked about the times. He was sitting in front of his Commodore Amiga.

"For all we know," Allan said, "Even with all the terrible things that are happening in the world, a hundred years from now people might look back at the 90s and think of them as a golden age."

"Or they could think that way even ten or fifteen years from now," I said.

This conversation with Allan has stuck in my mind for some years now, and it was brought back to vivid life as I read the opening chapters of Iain M. Banks' newest novel, Transition. 

Starring Earl as Earl in Toilet Chase

As the video above explains, I'm playing the part of myself as I appeared in Toilet Chase, an unproduced screenplay from the early 1990s. I'm unsure, as of yet, how to critique my own performance, except to say that I need to keep Brendan Hunter's advice in mind: this is a more intimate performance format than some others, so I need to be cautious about overplaying some moments, as I feel I have here. I also noted some engineering issues - I clearly have to figure out how to properly set the microphone, my own position, and my own volume levels.

Even with the hiccups, this was a fun exercise. Wouldn't it be cool if Jeff, Ron, Susan and Allan recorded their parts? Then I could create a real radio play, and the dream of producing some version of Toilet Chase would be reality. Heck, Jeff could animate it! 

Civ Weekend

Although my copy of Civilization VI appeared midweek and I did play for a couple of furtive hours on Tuesday night, I'm devoting this weekend to exploring the highly anticipated game in full as soon as I finish posting here tonight. It astounds me that I played the first Civilization on my Atari 520 ST back in 1992, when Ron and Allan and I were living in the Bleak House of Blahs. I wonder if I'll be around to play Civilization XII in about 50 years...well, not if I sit on my butt all the time playing Civilization, I suppose! 

Super Foul Mouthed

Back when I lived in the Bleak House of Blahs, I had a stand-up cardboard Superman given to me by the folks at comic store Warp One. One day Ron or Allan added a dialogue balloon with an inspirational phrase lettered across it. On another occasion, though, one of them wrote something so indecent and out of character that I was stunned senseless, as captured in this photo. I don't believe you can make out the awful text at this resolution - at least, I hope not! 

Crash Dummies Cartastrophe

Sometime during 1992 or 1993, Ron and Jeff played with a Crash Dummies set at the Bleak House of Blahs. I was around for the first few minutes, then went to bed. I dreamed of filing cabinets swordfighting, no doubt thanks to the clamour of the car crashing down the stairs over and over. 

More Event Cards for Toilet Chase: The Poop Deck Building Game

Rotten Pasta

Contrary to popular belief, pasta does not last forever simply because you've put it in a Tupperware container in the fridge. You open the container and are overwhelmed by the stench. Gain 2 Dolt Points and lose consciousness for one turn.  Negated if you're holding Ron's Reflexes. 

Day of the Triffid

The potatoes you left in the pantry six months ago have sprouted, then turned black, creating a horrible mess. Lose 1 Health. Negated if you're holding Ron's Reflexes. 

Ron's Reflexes

If you draw any Rotten Food card, ignore its effects and surrender this card. 

Placating a Hell's Angel

You intervene in a car crash in the alley, to the annoyance of the Hell's Angel at fault. But you placate him with politeness and hot chocolate. Lose a Dolt Point. 

Guilty on All Counts

You forget to renew your licence and insurance, and the authorities are not amused. Gain 1 Dolt Point and lose the use of Allan's Car. 

Crash Dummies

You step on a Crash Dummies toy left at the top of the stairs. Tumble down them and lose 1 Health. 

You Are Not a Candidate

You receive yet another job rejection in the mail. Gain 1 Dolt Point. 

You Fool - Oh No!

Jeff erases your cool answering machine message. Gain 2 Dolt Points. 

It's Time for DS9

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is on! Lose 1 Dolt Point. 

Necco Shampoo

Someone's put Necco Wafers in your shampoo. leaving your hair a sticky mess. Gain 2 Dolt Points. 

First Draft Event Cards for Jeff Shyluk's Toilet Chase: The Poop Deck Building Game

Jeff is working on a Toilet Chase deck building game based on our shared experiences at the Bleak House of Blahs back in the early 90s and the Toilet Chase screenplay, which concerns a toilet that comes to life and wreaks havoc in the house. In a lengthy exchange of e-mails between Jeff, me, and Bleak House survivors Ron and Allan, we inventoried every last possession we kept at the house so that Jeff could incorporate the items into the game. Jeff wrote in passing that these lists might amuse readers of this blog, but I don't want to invade the privacy or Ron or Allan. Instead, I'll share some of my early Event Card ideas, formed before Jeff had finished explaining his vision for the game. Since it's unlikely these Event Cards will appear in the finished game (at least in this initial form), I thought I'd share them here. Each card is (very loosely) based on real events that happened at the Bleak House of Blahs. 

By way of explanation, "Dummies" are the game's non-player characters, the guests who dropped by the Bleak House from time to time.  

Duck!

While racing down (or up) the stairs from/to the Loft, you crack your skull on the low-clearance overhang. 5 points damage. (Or whatever system you're using to track health.)

Shower Slime Mold

The downstairs shower hasn't been cleaned in so long that a Dummy gets exasperated and has to clean it. Maybe this card could result in an injury?

Crass Shinglers

Shinglers rain nails and scrap metal down onto the lawn. Anyone caught outside sustains an injury or has to dodge indoors, maybe?

Garage Thieves

Hoodlums break in and steal stuff, represented by cards from the inventory pile?

Fence Vandals

Vandals kick in the fence, reducing defences against the toilet and requiring repairs?

Cook It and Eat It

Jeff and Susan invite the Blahs-ians over for a Cook It and Eat It dinner. Invites free Toilet attack but replenishes Health if the attack evaded, perhaps? I guess this doesn't work if the Dummies are always inside the house. But it could still be done in-house - maybe the Dummies came over for a Cook It and Eat It in the first place.

Stupid Movie Night

Desperate for entertainment, the Blahs-ians (Bleak Housers?) make an emergency trip to the video store. Invites a free Toilet attack?

Food Poisoning

All Characters and Dummies have diarrhea, but there are only two toilets available (the third having been transformed into a monster). The two Characters and Dummies closest to the main floor and basement toilet suffer minus one to all CHASE stats. All other Characters and Dummies suffer minus three to all CHASE stats and have to change their clothes and shower!

Your Turn to Mow

Play against a Character. That Character has to go the garage and mow the lawn, risking Toilet attack and suffering a stat reduction of some kind? Or another penalty?

Your Turn to Wash the Dishes

Play against a Character. That Character is forced to wash the dishes, risking Mold and Disgust.

Unpaid Bills (This would be five separate cards: Gas or Water or Power or Cable or Phone)

Power or Water Cable are turned off, rendering certain Event or Inventory cards useless - cards that have one of the corresponding Tags. I have no idea if your cards have tags, but maybe they could! E.G. Microwave Oven card has a Power Tag, Toilets have Water tags, Stupid Movie Night would have Power and Cable tags, etc.)

How Can a Toilet Cut the Phone Lines? and How Can a Toilet Cut the Power Lines?

The Toilet cuts the phone or power lines, affecting Event or Inventory cards with the relevant tags in the same way as the Unpaid Bills cards do.

My Favourite Words, 1992 Edition

A couple of years ago I posted a list of my favourite words. Such tastes evolve over time, and thanks to Ron and his Freedom BBS there's a record of my favourite words as they stood on May 7, 1992, at 7:39 pm. Here's the list as I posted it back on Ron's BBS back in those halcyon days before the World Wide Web:

Earl's favourite words: 

mannequin
accident
yeti
bag
hammer
clowns
fistfight
shiskebab
pipe
escalator
wheelchair
defenestrate
wound
pain
gut
finger
disembowel
teeth
smash
launch
jab
bubblegum

Yikes! This list appears to reflect the angst I was internalizing during my underemployed, girlfriend-less post-university years. The newer list is much more diverse, not to mention more reflective of my current taste. Still, this is an interesting look at where I was at back in my early 20s, and I'm grateful to Ron for keeping an archive of our writing during those years. 

Last Day at the Bleak House of Blahs

When I started this blog, I called it The Bleak House of Blahgs in memory of my short but memorable time living with Ron, Allan and (briefly) Carrie in our ramshackle rented house at the corner of 107 and 107 in Edmonton, Alberta. We started called it the Bleak House of Blahs after Carrie moved out, for we were then all single, all unemployed or underemployed, and drowning in the angst of the twenty-something. If only we'd known how good we had it...

Here are a few seconds of video captured on my last day, featuring Susan and Ron. 

Things You Realize Years Later

1) Those Jack Ryan movies weren't very good, except maybe the first one.
2) I sure wasted a lot of time, money and effort taping every episode of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Lois & Clark when they were broadcast.
3) Never should have started drinking Coca-Cola in university.
4) Really should have made English my major and Political Science my minor instead of the other way around.
5) Staying at Hole's for seven years and the Official Opposition for six and a half was too long in each case. I enjoyed both jobs, but I got too comfortable and probably set my career back about a decade. When you only get one shot at life, that's a pretty serious mistake.
6) On the other hand, I wish I'd toughed it out at the Bleak House of Blahs for another year or two.
7) If I'm still blogging ten years from now, I'll probably realize this reads more like a list of regrets than a list of things I realized years later. Maybe future-me will revisit this.

The Adventures of Allan Lad

Back in the late 40s/early 50s DC produced a short-lived comic featuring the fictional adventures of real-life movie star Alan Ladd. Something about the double consonant in Ladd struck a chord. My friend Allan has two ls in his name, so I stole Ladd's second d, transformed it into an l, and turned Alan Ladd into Allan Lad, presumably a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I imagine Allan Lad's powers would be sarcasm, sardonic humour, logic and computer hacking.

A couple of days ago Jeff Shyluk posted a very useful tutorial showing Photoshop users how to give artwork an artificially aged look. I've used some of Jeff's techniques here, though not all of them; I had a hard time making the half-tone layer look right.

The First Decade

Ten years ago, my career as a professional writer was well underway. I'd written or contributed to a number of bestselling gardening books, I was selling short articles under my own name to a couple of different magazines, and I was the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta's official speechwriter. Things were looking good.

Earl and his notepad at the Bleak House of Blahs

And yet something was missing. Why else would I have felt the urge to start blogging, or to name this digital journal The Bleak House of Blahgs to reference a place (the so-called "Bleak House of Blahs) I lived only briefly - and that ten years prior to the blog's first post?

There were two reasons. I was lonely, and sharing my thoughts with the world was a way to feel a little less alone. And just as importantly, I needed a place to experiment. While writing for Lois and Jim Hole (and later a series of Alberta Liberal MLAs) was satisfying and challenging enough, the blog gave me a place to be as analytical or shallow or serious or goofy as I wanted to be.

Most of my early writing at The Bleak House of Blahgs centres on the mundane; should anyone struggle with insomnia, read a few of these early posts to learn what DVDs I was watching at the time, or whose birthday party I was attending, or what I was doing at work. Coming up with original content is a challenge for any writer, so I often filled the gaps with old material I'd composed years before, a sin I resort to less often these days. There are a few cryptic references to Sylvia peppered into these early posts here and there; I'd met her in late 2002, not long before starting this blog, but we didn't start a relationship until spring 2003.

Sylvia's presence, of course, informs virtually everything I've written since. While I'd had relationships prior to meeting Sylvia, they were short-lived and "unofficial," if that's the right word for it. Sylvia was my first real girlfriend, and that represented a sea change in my outlook. Suddenly I was responsible for someone, someone who in turn felt responsible for me in ways that parents and siblings cannot be; it was an entirely different kind of relationship, one I was discovering for the first time. It felt strange to be loved romantically, but it cleared my mind and freed me from many of the stresses that were preventing me from exploring the limits of whatever talent I might possess. Sylvia gave me the freedom and confidence to move forward on a number of fronts - personally, professionally. She made me a better writer and a better person, and that's given me the courage to publicly explore the questions that have always vexed me most:

Who am I, and why am I here?
What does the future hold for humanity?
Why do people suffer?
Are we alone in the universe?
What's the true nature of reality?
What does it all mean?

It's always bothered me that so many of my posts seem to focus on me, me, me - what's happened to me, what did I do today, etc. And yet this is the lens through which each of us experiences life, so unless I construct some kind of artifice I'm forced to write about myself, at least tangentially, to struggle with these questions. Better writers do this successfully all the time, of course, but I work with what I have, and blogging, for now, is the best way I know how to explore the subjects I care about.

Several years ago I changed the name of this blog from The Bleak House of Blahgs to My Name is Earl (J. Woods), a change made half out of boredom, half to capitalize on a sitcom I had enjoyed at the time. Today this blog endures its third and final name change, one that's not only shorter and snappier, but also contains a classical allusion, a bad pun and a more succinct characterization of the blog's nature: The Earliad. While I have no illusions that I'll join the ranks of Homer or Virgil, I've long thought that if I ever became famous The Earliad would be the perfect name for my autobiography. While I foresee no fame in my future, I still like the title, so I'm going to put it to use.

The desire to write often comes with some hubris, particularly if the writer hopes people will read his material. How large does one's ego have to be to broadcast his thoughts to the universe?

Pretty large, I guess, and sometimes - perhaps much of the time - without much justification. But in my defence, I write because, well, I find life interesting, and that includes my life - and yours. I write because I hope that my readers will discover something that touches on your own experience, that makes you think about the world in a different way. I live for the comments people occasionally leave here, many of them far more insightful and interesting than my original posts.

I think most people want to share their experiences, because through those experiences we learn to know one another. We learn how to deal with the universe's challenges together, and maybe we even learn how to begin answering some of those big questions. And along the way, if we're lucky, we have a lot of fun together.

I've certainly had a lot of fun writing this blog for the last ten years. So much has happened since that first post: Sylvia and I were married, I ran for office against Alberta's Premier, drove the Alaska Highway, made new friends, stood on the shore of North America's east coast for the first time, flew in a helicopter, dove in a submarine, had a post featured on Reddit, served as an online tutor at MacEwan University, bought two condos, met James Cameron and returned to northern Manitoba...twice.

It's been a heck of a decade. Along with the moments already mentioned above, here are a few more of my favourite posts:

Fitzpatrick's War
The End of My Double Life
The Killer Inside
Behold...The Barf Thing!
The Only Logical Choice
The Ketchup Katastrophe
The Walls Have Ears, the Doors Have Eyes
No Job Too Small...for Superman!
Earl Jumps on a VCR
Wisteria Hysteria
The Speculative Fiction Canon
Star Trek Season Four Episode Guide
The Answering Machine Message
The Art of Friendship
Farewell to the Legislature
You Seem Wise, for a Woman

It's interesting that this anniversary should fall at this moment in my life, a time of transition. I left politics behind, but discovered that I really enjoy teaching and reinvigorated my freelance career. While I would still prefer a return to full-time work, being home has given me more time to work on my novel and short stories, to spend more time with Sylvia, to learn how to fix little things around the house, to finish the library and theatre room. I feel like my life has some balance at last, and I can't wait to see what happens next. I hope you'll join me.

Memories of DS9

A modern CGI recreation of Deep Space Nine by artist Tobias Richter.

Twenty years ago this week, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered. DS9 is often referred to as the dark horse of the Star Trek world, perhaps the least-remembered series among the general public. But it is also quite possibly the very best Star Trek show, its strongest episodes comparing quite favourably to the strongest of the original series. And on a personal level, it was the show I needed to endure my angst-ridden twenties.

When "Emissary," the pilot, debuted in early January 1993, I was living in the Bleak House of Blahs with Ron and Allan. We watched the episode in the so-called Ron Room, Ron's first-floor library and office.  I don't remember their impressions, but I was impressed right from the start. Unlike Star Trek: The Next Generation, which featured an at-times embarrassing pilot and a very rocky first season, DS9 began with a cast of compelling characters and a premise that inverted the Star Trek formula: instead of boldly going to explore strange new worlds, DS9 was all about staying in one place and working on a single long-term problem: the reconstruction of a formerly-occupied world and its struggle to earn membership in the United Federation of Planets.

While TNG featured a cast of almost too-perfect heroes on the Federation's shiny new flagship, DS9 was crewed by misfits and average joes struggling to get a scuttled enemy space station back in working order while dealing with a ruined planet and the double-edged sword of a nearby newly-discovered wormhole to the other side of the galaxy, a kind of Silk Road to potentially great wealth and knowledge, or (as it later turned out), a very dangerous existential threat.

DS9 has often been characterized as "dark" in comparison to the other Star Trek shows, but I think that's too simplistic a description. I would characterize it, rather, as more political, more ambiguous, more complex and only a tad less optimistic than the rest of the Trek canon. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry declared that by the time of the Next Generation era humans were essentially perfect, an edict TNG's writers struggled with. By the time DS9 premiered Roddenberry had died, giving writers greater freedom to explore interpersonal conflicts among the the show's cast - and the friction between DS9's diverse characters was one of the highlights of the show.

Single father and DS9 commander Benjamin Sisko had an almost impossible job, and unlike Captain Picard he wasn't shy about using anger as a tool to motivate his staff. His son Jake wasn't a wunderkind like Wesley Crusher, but an average kid overcoming the loss of his mom. First officer Kira Nerys, a native of planet Bajor - the world recovering from occupation - was a former terrorist/freedom fighter with a huge chip on her shoulder and a distrust of the Federation. Policeman Odo was a delightfully curmudgeonly alien shapeshifter, always at odds with shady entrepreneur Quark, the station's bartender/black marketeer. Doctor Julian Bashir was the station's overenthusiastic doctor, who annoyed the hell out of everyone including his best friend, former Enterprise bit player Miles O'Brien, the show's salt-of-the-Earth everyman.

Even the recurring players on DS9 - people like Cardassian tailor/spy Garak, Quark's brother Rom and his son Nog and the show's primary antagonist, Gul Dukat, receive more character development than many of the starring cast members of other Trek shows.

But characterization means little without solid storytelling. DS9 started strong, with several stories about the clash of Bajoran and Federation values, political intrigue, personal loss and, yes, space exploration. With every year the show's continuing storylines grew more complex, culminating in the four-year Dominion War arc.

I was the perfect viewer for this show. During the 90s I was struggling to find my place in the world, just as DS9's occupants were. I had some of Quark's ambition, hoping to escape the poverty of minimum-wage existence. I had Bashir's naivety and optimism, tempered by Odo's anxieties, Sisko's early struggles with self-confidence and a touch of Kira's cynicism. The 90s recession mirrored DS9's bleak tone, but the characters managed to overcome their difficulties; they were, after all, the show's heroes.

And I needed heroes then, because I wasn't sure I'd ever realize any of my dreams. I moved in and out of my parents' basement several times, and I bounced around a number of different jobs and apartments. Becoming a professional writer, my primary dream, was echoed in Jake Sisko's character arc, and it's fair to say that his perseverance helped encourage me to keep writing. I sold my first professional work midway through DS9's run, and by the time the show ended in 1999 I'd earned my first co-author credit.

I watched that final episode alone in my apartment near the University of Alberta. "What You Leave Behind" was powerful and sad and as ambiguous and difficult as ever, and its final tracking shot away from the station left me profoundly moved. Of all the Star Trek shows, DS9 is the single series that hadn't yet exhausted itself creatively; more than any other, it could have gone on for another two or three seasons, and I wish it had.

But for seven years DS9 helped sustain me. For an hour each week, the show gave me food for thought, a chance to escape, inspiration to dream. During a lonely time in my life, DS9 was a stalwart companion, and I'm grateful to all the creators who provided seven years of superb entertainment.

Meme Master

My old friend Allan is enjoying some Internet fame at the moment thanks to a simple but clever observation about the exponentially increasing graphic complexity of computer games. I'm not surprised that Allan's found a wide audience (nearly 500,000 views as of this writing!), because I remember the very passionate conversations we had on the topic back when we were living in the Bleak House of Blahs.

At the time my favourite game was Civilization - the first one, seen above. I played it in my basement room on an Atari ST with relatively primitive graphics. Around the same time I remember visiting Tony to play Wasteland on his IBM-compatible, while Allan used his Amiga to experiment with the then-cutting edge Video Toaster. We often wondered how long it would be before computer games were completely photo-realistic. We're not there yet, but I'm sure that in another twenty years Allan will need to post an updated graphic, one that places the Skyrim image on top and something with fidelity we can't even imagine on the bottom. I can't wait to play that game!

The Parable of the Putrefied Pasta

Earl, Ron and Ron's future wife Joanne relaxing in the Ron Room at the Bleak House of Blahs, July 1993.

For once, we decided to cook. With recipe and ingredients all carefully arranged, Ron and I concocted a batch of delicious chicken pasta in an elegant white sauce. No longer would the bachelor denizens of the Bleak House of Blahs - unemployed Allan, Bag-Boy Ron and Truck-Drivin' Earl - subsist upon tepid take-out; from now on, we would emulate our friends Jeff and Susan and cook for ourselves.

It couldn't have turned out better. The pasta was tender, the chicken succulent, the sauce savory. We'd made only one mistake; we cooked too much.

No problem, we thought. We put the leftovers in a Tupperware container, tossed that container into the fridge, and went about with our business.

At the time, none of us understood that even in the fridge, food doesn't keep forever. It seemed natural to assume that once sealed in an airtight container, our pasta would remain fresh for months, perhaps years. So when Ron and I found ourselves alone in the house with nearly-bare cupboards several months later, we decided to heat up our leftover pasta.

I watched Ron reach into the fridge and retrieve the container. I remember clearly how ordinary the day seemed; the chill of the January air, the cool natural sunlight that filled the kitchen, the piles of dishes arrayed sloppily on the counter. I was completely unprepared for what was to come.

Ron peeled the Tupperware lid back slightly, breaking the seal. A calamitous stench immediately filled the kitchen, an odor so vile it had physical presence, oppressive, dank, bitter. The stench invaded our nostrils, our ears, it oozed over our bare skin, sank tendrils of putrefaction down our throats, through our hair. Tears sprang from our eyes and we cried out, staggering, panicking.

"WHAT THE HELL!" Ron shrieked raggedly. I gagged, waving my arms uselessly. I couldn't breathe. I felt as though I might pass out.

Maybe it was his Safeway bag-boy training. Perhaps it was his years hunched over 80s arcade games. Or maybe it was just plain heroism, bubbling up like a life preserver at just the right moment. Whatever the reason, Ron regathered his wits and sprang into action. As I sank helplessly to my knees, I watched Ron dash blindly for the back door. He crashed through it with a banshee cry, flinging the deadly pasta like a discus. The dish hurtled through the chill winter air and buried itself deep into a snowbank. Ron had snapped the lid shut on Pandora's Box just in the nick of time.

Once the air cleared, Ron and I recovered, wiping our eyes, shaking our heads in disbelief at our narrow escape.

"Why did that happen?" One of us asked.

"I don't know...how long can you keep pasta in the fridge?" another answered.

"I guess it's less than three months," we realized.


Almost twenty years later, I've finally come up with the perfect way to summarize our adventure: that pasta really reeked havoc.

The Art of Friendship, Part I

On June 18, Sylvia and I travelled to visit some old friends in Vancouver - Jeff and Susan Shyluk and Steven Neumann, Susan's brother. Though these friends weren't aware of it, there was a special reason for the journey, a reason that connects themes of friendship and art across two decades.

On our first day, Jeff took Sylvia and I to see his painting "Hyde Creek" at the Green Revolution Art Show in Port Coquitlam's Leigh Square Gathering Place. As an art critic I make a pretty good blogger, but I think it's a marvellous piece and I'm thrilled that Jeff secured a place in this show. For more on the Green Revolution, check out Jeff's blog on the subject here. And here's a better view of the painting itself.

Sylvia and I had to pose with Jeff's work, which is available for sale, by the way.

Since taking a graphic design class from Jeff via electronic correspondence last year, I've tried to pay closer attention to the patterns in nature and art - the straight lines, the curves, the play of light and shadow. (If I'm not mistaken, Jeff's frame appears to be a Golden Rectangle...) I'm never going to be a visual artist, but I still find it challenging and fun to stretch the limits of my talent in that regard. While touring the Gathering Place and nearby Hyde Creek, I kept an eye out for interesting shapes and lines, and shot the following:

The ceiling of the Gathering Place.

Stone sphere in Port Coquitlam. If you look at this for a while, it begins to look like the flag of some imaginary nation.

Sylvia and an outdoor art installation made of old mailboxes.

Sometimes art is a happy accident. Jeff had his hands full so I attempted to perform an extended-arm couples portrait - no easy feat with a bulky digital SLR. I caught this image of half a Sylvia.

Tilting the camera over a little created some interesting diagonal lines.

Port Coquitlam is beautiful, but like any industrialized city, it has its share of urban ugliness. From a construction site behind Hyde Creek, I call this "Cyclopean Scream."

An untitled compantion piece.

I met Steven (pictured), Susan and Jeff during my first year at the University of Alberta (1987-88) - we were all members, Geek Alert, of the U of A Star Trek Club. This detail will become important later on!

Jeff and Susan were excellent hosts, making me feel bad about the insidious trap I'd laid for them and would spring upon them the following night.

Sylvia was aware, but sworn to silence.

Aside from his talents in painting and drawing, Jeff is also a student of the culinary arts. I was amazed by this dough-rolly-thingy, which Jeff used to make homemade pasta. I am amazed that such a thing is even possible. And yet, there was Jeff, creating dough with his bare hands, flattening it and shaping it into...I think he called it rota. Whatever it was, it was delicious.

Like Sylvia and me, Jeff, Susan and Steven enjoy board games. I brought along my newest favourite, Last Night on Earth, a very cinematic survival horror game that pits a quartet of heroes against a gaggle of hungry zombies. Afterward, Jeff had me draw, from memory, the layout of the Bleak House of Blahs, a house I shared with three friends for about a year and a half in the early 90s. Jeff is working on a board game adaptation of our Toilet Chase screenplay, which features the Bleak House of Blahs prominently. Creating board games is an art too, and I'm extremely eager to see the fruit of Jeff's labours.

The next day, we walked around Jeff and Susan's immediate neighbourhood. Susan, Sylvia and Jeff were dwarfed by the trees just a few metres away from their doorstep. I was consciously attempting to follow the rule of thirds in several of these photos, with middling results. Clearly having a light pole coming out of Jeff's head is pretty poor composition.

Another attempt at following the rule of thirds, and I've cropped the photograph in an attempt to create a golden rectangle. Rather than properly measure the ratio, I eyeballed it, wanting to test Jeff's assertion during the graphic design course that such estimates are usually closer to correct than one might expect. I'll leave the judgement to others.

This photo is too dark even after my feeble image correction, but I like Susan's gesture and I think it illustrates how the rule of thirds draws the eye of the viewer from one subject to another.

Again, a little dark. But Sylvia was fascinated by the soft, silky texture of this tree's needles.

I'm a pretty terrible macro photographer (I'd probably be better with the right lens), but I'm still pleased with this image of Susan's hand.

Back in the late 90s, I wanted to write a book about the Shadow People. This was my name for those unfortunate souls illustrating the dangers of everyday life in the modern world. Here a hapless Shadow Person is electrocuted, presumably because he decided to play with a transformer. There's a lot going on here; the sticker is upside-down, adding to the drama of the Shadow Person's death pose. And the rusted-out state of the transformer and its arcane logo at upper right remind me of the post-apocalyptic aesthetic of the Fallout video games.

Jeff and Susan urged me to ingest a native berry. I did so, and took the opportunity to ham it up. I used Photoshop to create this dramatic sequence. Probably went a little overboard with the lens flare, but the stroke tool is awesome. Again, what little prowess I possess can be credited to (or blamed on) Jeff.

British Columbians are remarkably conscious of their impact on the environment. This fish symbol indicates that the drain here leads to salmon habitat. It's a warning not to throw crud down there.

Mock me all you like, for you are my puppets as as demonstrate once again the rule of thirds. Sort of. Well, there are three people in the frame...

As our short sojurn came to an end, I was already vibrating with anticipation for what was to come. Soon I would lure my friends and my long-suffering wife into a conflagration of art, angst, pop culture, geekdom, long-lost relatives and public humiliation. Stay tuned for Part II!

The Answering Machine Message

In the comments of my last blog post, Jeff Shyluk makes an oblique reference to an answering machine message I created that "somehow" got lost.

Here's the story. Anyone who's followed this blog for a while knows that shortly after university I moved into an old, beat-up house on the corner of 108th and 108th with Allan Sampson, Ron Briscoe and Carrie Humphrey. Carrie moved out after a month, and so we christened the house "The Bleak House of Blahs," for we were all underemployed or unemployed, had no girlfriends and no prospects of rectifying either shortfall. Plus, there was a double machete murder at the donut shop a block away a day or two after we moved in. It was a dark time.

However, it was also a time of great creative energy for all of us, and this energy often manifested itself in odd ways. One day, while shopping for something else altogether (probably comics at Warp One), I came across a keychain that had eight buttons. Each button would produce a Star Trek sound effect: the red alert siren, a photo torpedo firing, an intercom whistle, and so on.

"I could make a great answering machine message with this!" I thought, and so I scripted a mock battle in which Captain Woods (i.e., me) couldn't answer "your comm signal" because I was in the middle of a battle right now, thanks very much.

I wrote a script, then painstakingly recorded the message. I set up my record player (!) to play an authentic Star Trek music track (probably something by James Horner from Star Trek II or III), hit each keychain sound effect at the appropriate moment, and delivered my dialogue as melodramatically as I could. Coordinating the music, the sound effects and my own performance was quite a feat, and it took many takes to get everything just right, but in the end, I had produced what I felt was the ultimate Star Trek answering machine message. Now all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the astounded reactions of my callers.

I believe the first person to call was my mom, and to my recollection she didn't react to the message at all, just left her message as if her son were normal. I guess she'd developed an immune response to my eccentricity.

The next call was a wrong number, but at least it provoked a strong reaction. A group of drunken twentysomethings left me a message composed of mostly uproarious laughter. Success!

But then, the fatal error. Writers and wannabe performance artists love nothing more than audience approval, and so I invited all my friends to listen to my message and to the reaction it provoked. I went upstairs to get something, LEAVING JEFF ALONE WITH THE MACHINE. Jeff wanted to listen to the message again, but hit the wrong button just as I returned, and so these words, or something very near them, were recorded OVER my painstakingly crafted message:

EARL: Hey - wha - WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU FOOL!

JEFF: Oh no!

I was crushed. All that work...I didn't have the heart to recreate perfection. It would have been like Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa again had it been lost in a fire. Instead, I allowed Jeff's re-recording to serve as the message for a while, then recorded something more conventional.

These days, the story of creation and loss is just as valuable to me, if not more so, than the actual message itself. All art is ephemeral in some sense, and without Jeff's accidental destruction, I wouldn't have this wonderful story about those crazy days at the Bleak House of Blahs.

Inside the Bleak House of Blahs: The Ron Room

Allan and Ron in the Ron Room

Located in the northeast corner of the main floor, the Ron Room was home to Ron Briscoe's television, couch, computer (home of the FREEDOM bbs), books and stereo. We spent a lot of time in the Ron Room, playing with Crash Dummies, watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation, and talking about our pathetic lives. Doesn't seem so pathetic in retrospect, though, which somehow seems even more pathetic...