If I Had a Billion Dollars

While commuting the other day, Sylvia and I heard a news story about Alberta's latest lotto winners. As many people do, I started to think about what I'd do were I presented with a huge windfall.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of lotteries. While they're a useful source of government revenue, I think the false dreams and dashed hopes they propagate are pretty damaging in the long run - not to mention the countless stories of winning players whose lives are made worse by their "lucky" day! Far better to balance a reasonable, progressive tax burden with prudent government spending, rather than levying what amounts to another tax on the poor and desperate. Why should essential services like public health care and community infrastructure have to depend upon lotteries? Madness.

Anyway, the larger political issues don't prevent a little harmless fantasizing. Let's pretend that Sylvia and I find a two-ton meteorite made of pure platinum and that we're sufficiently wise enough to stake a legal claim and sell the wealth bits at a time to prevent a platinum glut. (All pretty crazy assumptions with about as much likelihood of success as...winning the lottery.)

So we wind up with a billion dollars. What would I do with my half?

Naturally I'd take care of the essentials first - some money for mom and dad and my brother, some generous donations to UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and so on.

But on to the fun stuff. In all honesty, if I had more money than I knew what to do with and I gave millions to every charity on my list...I'd spend the rest of the cash being as eccentric as possible - but, I hope, in a fun and progressive way.

So. First order of business: Earl Acres, i.e., our new home. I'd have an architect build a haunting Gothic mansion, something out of Frankenstein. There would be a pipe organ in the main hallway, so that when guests arrive I would be ready, hunched over the keys, wearing a black cloak, playing that scary "DAH NA NA...DA NA NA NA NA NAAAAAAAAA..." music.

There would be a USS Enterprise bridge simulator room, built to scale, with all the stations intact and functional - well, functional in a simulator sense - this room would be used to play a custom-designed Star Trek combat/exploration game of epic scope. Naturally, this would double as a home theatre, with the stations folding out comfy home theatre seats, for those reluctant to sit for hours on those tiny retro chairs the crew had to endure.

Of course we'd need a staff to handle our estate and business affairs. I would hire each staff member based not only on their qualifications, but how well they fit Hollywood stereotypes for their roles. To wit, I would require:

One British butler, tall and gaunt and perpetually 60-ish, with a rapier deadpan wit.

One irritable French chef, a master of his art, but completely intolerant of his employers' lack of culinary refinement.

One beefy, handsome, macho, silent German chauffeur for Sylvia. He'd also be a crack bodyguard.

One gorgeous Brazilian housekeeper with an affinity for fishnets.

One inscrutable Japanese gardener, replete with Asian wisdom.

One officious, perpetually worried Canadian financial advisor, preferably balding with glasses.

One Indian secret agent woman, or at least an actress pretending to be an Indian secret agent, reporting all kinds of international intruigue and (fake) threats against Woods Foundation interests.

One African American martial arts instructor of the sweet sweetback badassss school.

One Ukrainian "mad"/absent-minded scientist - preferably a theoretical physicist. Must wear a lab coat constantly and play the Frankenstein role with glee.

I would pay all these folks extremely well, and provide them with state-of-the-art facilities for their daily routines. I think we could have a lot of fun running my little lunatic asylum, and in the process we might collectively make a point about cultural and sexual stereotypes. And perhaps make some scientific breakthroughs!

I wonder what Sylvia would do with her $500 million?

Finger Puppet Star Trek

Way back in the early 90s, some members of the University of Alberta Star Trek Club got together to film their own version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture...with painted fingers and cardboard sets. This is the result.

Superhero Speeches #1: The End of My Double Life, by Clark Kent

A few posts back, I promised to present a fictional speech, one delivered by a superhero. For this speech, I pretended that Clark Kent came to me with a very special request. Here's how I would have written Mr. Kent's speech.

The End of My Double Life
Speaking notes for Clark Kent
Daily Planet, Metropolis, Delaware
June 19, 2015

Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming today. Before I begin, I'd like to thank Perry White, Managing Editor of the Daily Planet, and Galaxy Broadcasting, owner of the Planet building, for hosting this news conference.

I have a brief statement to read, and I'll take questions afterward.

For ten years, I have served as a reporter for the Daily Planet. I am very grateful for that privilege. I have done my best to serve the public with honesty and diligence; to uncover corruption, to reveal heroism, and to shine the light of truth in the dark corners of this city.

In fact, it's truth that I want to discuss today. And I'll begin by admitting that I have bent the truth over the years - bent it, I hope, for a higher purpose. That will be up to you to judge.

Truth is a reporter's most cherished value, and I hope you'll believe me when I say that I did not bend the truth lightly.

As you know, the Bartlett administration has scheduled a news conference with the President, to occur later this afternoon.

At that time, President Bartlett will announce that I, Clark Kent, am in fact also Superman.

[pause for laughter]

The President is correct.

[pause]

I understand your scepticism, especially in light of past events that seem to have proved that Superman and I cannot be the same person. Today, I am telling you that those events were orchestrated by me or my circle of associates to hide the truth. If you saw Clark Kent and Superman in the same place, one of them was a robot, a shapeshifter, or one of my friends, typically the Batman, in disguise.

Please watch me closely for a moment.

[pause to stand up straight, remove glasses, fix hair, remove tie and unbutton shirt]

As you can see, for years I've been using a few simple tricks to hide my double identity. Different clothes, hairstyle, voice, posture and demeanour - it's nothing more than any actor would do during the course of a role.

So, why? And which role is the real person - Clark, or Superman?

I'll answer the second question first.

I was raised as a human being by my parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who you'll see are with us today. Hi, Ma. Hi, Pa. They raised me with human values: the importance of truth, compassion, of fighting for what's right, of helping others.

I think of myself as a human being, and an American. My biology may differ from yours, but I consider myself a part of this society, this culture. I am Clark Kent, Kansas farmboy, Metropolitan newspaper reporter.

Why, then, the disguise? Why didn't I simply become a policeman and use my abilities in the open, as myself?

Ma, Pa and I had to invent Superman when we realized that although I may be invulnerable, the people I love are not. We realized that any criminal I brought to justice, any politician or corporate giant I troubled, could retaliate through my friends and family.

I couldn't let that happen. So we invented the costume, a distracting blend of primary colours, designed to attract attention. I've always felt a little silly in it, but it helped establish a profound difference between my natural look and the public figure we invented.

There's a more selfish reason, too. Once I realized that I was different from all the other people around me, I started to worry that others might not judge me for who I am, but for the things I can do. I wondered if I could ever land a job on my own merits, or publish a novel, or find a girlfriend. I wanted to be loved and respected for my character, not my abilities.

I suppose a lot of wealthy folks and celebrities have experienced the same feelings.

[pause]

With my secret revealed, many people will feel angry, and with good reason. Any deception hurts. I regret hiding the truth from my good friends Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and my other friends and colleagues at the Daily Planet and WGBS television. I especially regret deceiving Lois Lane, who always suspected the truth.

Perhaps most of all, I regret hiding the truth from every citizen I've interviewed. You opened up your hearts and minds to me for the sake of truth, because you hoped that telling your stories would help make the world a better place.

You did. I like to think that together, by revealing truth, we've done as much good as Superman ever has.

And yes, I have used my abilities while performing my duties as a reporter. I have used my x-ray vision, super-hearing, infrared vision, super-speed and other powers to uncover facts that would have been closed to other reporters. Some of you will claim that gives me an unfair advantage as a reporter, and I cannot disagree. But I hope you'll understand that I never used my powers for personal gain or to invade the privacy rights of citizens - except in cases where lives were immediately threatened. In those cases, I knowingly committed a small evil in the hopes of preventing a greater one.

I hope no one will blame the President for choosing to reveal the truth to the world. Once his administration uncovered it, they felt that they had no choice but to reveal it. I am confident that they chose to take this step not for political reasons, but because they felt the people had a right to know.

What the administration's attitude says about privacy rights, I leave to others wiser than I to discuss.

I was born as Clark Kent, and that is how I intend to lead my life. I won't wear glasses or stoop any longer; nor will I wear Superman's primary colours. I'll still watch over the world as best I can, but don't look for the bright red cape anymore; it'll just be an ordinary man with a few extraordinary gifts, doing his best to help the community, like any other citizen.

If Perry and Lois and Jimmy and all the others will have me, I would like to remain a reporter for the Daily Planet. I understand the special challenges this would entail, and it's quite possible that those challenges will prevent me from remaining an effective journalist. I understand that it might be hard for sources to trust a reporter who can detect lies, even the innocent ones.

Sharing the truth with you today has been hard for me - hard to admit that I have lied by omission and commission nearly every day, even if I considered each lie an altruistic one.

So I stand before you today with sadness and relief; guilt and hope; embarrassment and confidence. It's quite possible that I never trusted you enough, my fellow citizens: trusted you to understand and embrace the truth, trusted you to judge me fairly, trusted you to look after my loved ones those times when I cannot.

I would like to trust you today, and I hope that in time your trust in me will be restored.

Truth, like justice, is our way - the American way, the human way. I know your judgement of the truths I have revealed today will be fair, and I will accept that judgement.

Thank you.

Alberta Government Will Cover Cancer Drug Avastin Starting April 1

Every so often, you win one...this will provide massive relief to Albertans suffering from colorectal cancer. Kudos to the government for doing the right thing.

I Watched the Watchmen

Thanks to Michael and his studio connections, I was fortunate enough to attend a sneak preview of Watchmen tonight. I went in with low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised - this is a reasonably faithful adaptation that does little violence to the source material, even though the






SPOILER SPACE







ending has been updated to suit the times. Haunting, beautiful imagery, good performances from little-known actors - there's a lot to like here. It's even a little sexy in parts, never a bad thing. There is some brutality, however, so if you're squeamish, you may want to close your eyes during the fight scenes and one very disturbing rape scene midway through the film.

Rorsach definitely steals the show, but my favourite character remains Night Owl, who does his best to hang on to a sense of decency even in the face of armageddon.

Four bloody smiley faces out of five.

Trail of the Skulker

Yesterday I startled two coworkers out of their seats.

First, I innocently walked into Amanda's office to ask her a question. The words "Amanda, would you mind..." left my lips and prompted her to shriek and leap out of her chair.

Barely a couple of hours later, I walked into Michael's office to ask him a question. This time, my inadvertent victim coughed up some food, did a spit take and yelped, "Earl! Gah!"

A few years back, while working at the Western Board of Music, I scared Gloria coming up out of the basement and Leslie coming around a corner - or perhaps it was the other way around.

I routinely scare Sylvia at home.

None of this is deliberate. I would have thought that someone of my girth would make more noise while stumbling around the office, but apparently not. In any event, my apologies to all I have startled.

Giggle.

Bye-Bye, Alberta Advantage

Deficit Days are here again, and so the government is spending $25 million on a rebranding campaign for the province. A couple of minutes into this clip, Dave Taylor, Shadow Finance Minister and Alberta Liberal MLA for Calgary-Currie, provides a couple of clever slogans for free. (He also offers some sharp commentary on Alberta's financial position.)

Some other possible slogans:
Oil's Well That Ends Well...Hopefully
You've Read the Bumper Sticker
Yukon South
Upgrader Alley Oops
Boom/Bust Country
Wild Swings Country
Keep Your Filthy Hands Off our Oil, you Damn Dirty Feds
Sharing is for Socialists
Third Boom's the Charm

Speech! Speech!

I had a great time talking to students in Derek Drager's speechwriting class at Grant MacEwan this afternoon. They were a great bunch of students with good questions, and it was a pleasure to enjoy a classroom environment again.

Derek asked me to give his students a picture of the everyday reality of a speechwriter, and that's what I tried to do.

I've never had the benefit of any formal training in speechwriting, so I had to learn all my techniques on the fly. I won't reproduce my entire talk here, but here are the two primary lessons I tried to impart:

- Develop your empathic skills. Listen to your client, not just with your ears, but with your heart; find out what's most important to them on a personal and professional level. And develop empathy for your client's audiences; his or her speeches will be most effective if the audience believes that the speaker understands and empathizes with their issues and priorities.

- Speechwriting is a huge responsibility. A speechwriter's words, when delivered by a person of influence, can have a tremendous affect on people. A speechwriter should always use his or her talents for good; he or she should seek and share truth.

Of course there's a whole lot more to speechwriting, but if you keep those two points at top of mind, you're off to a good start.

Today's experience, combined with yesterday's very motivational creativity workshop, have given me an interesting idea: speeches for superheroes! I have a concept in mind already, and I intend to turn this into a recurring feature here at My Name is Earl (J. Woods). The first speech will be delivered by Superman.

40 Trips Around the Sun

Well, I turned 40 at 7:37 pm tonight. I can no longer be a theme-appropriate guest star on thirtysomething.

Today I attended a very entertaining and informative seminar on creativity at Grant MacEwan college - the orange campus on 100th ave and 156 street. Great presentation by Georgian author Sam Harrison - one lecture on how to approach a proper brainstorming session, and another on igniting your creativity. I hope to put what I've learned today to use both at work and on my personal projects, including this blog. Perhaps not tonight, though - it's been a very busy week, with more to come before I get a break.

There was cake for me at work, phone calls and emails from family and friends, and Sylvia found a set of Star Trek Pez dispensers AND a Captain Picard action figure WITH captain's chair, AND Jeff Pitts found me an authentic Flash Gordon movie poster.

Wow - good birthday!

Layton on the Edge of Forever

I learned about layers and channels in Photoshop last week...here's a simple, silly blending of two disparate images into one.

The Colours Out of Space

As you can see, I've changed my blog colours - this time, I hope, with some sense of purpose. Yesterday, as part of my graphic design course, Jeff gave me a quick introduction to colour concepts, including the colour wheel, and now the blog uses a triad of primary colours - red, yellow and blue. I leave it to you to decide why I picked those three colours...

Jeff also gave me a homework assignment, and only YOU can help me complete it by looking at the graphic above and answering a series of questions:

1. Name each colour, from 1-6.
2. What emotion does each colour make you feel? E.G. 1 - envy, 2 - desire, 3 - sadness, etc.
3. What specific object (i.e., what noun) does each colour remind you of?
4. How would you use each colour? Or, in other words, what is the purpose of each colour?
5. Name an inappropriate use for each colour.

Please post your answer as a comment, or email me. Your help is greatly appreciated!

My Pitch on Breakfast TV - Alberta Election 2008

For those that missed my appearance on Breakfast TV during last year's provincial election campaign, here it is. (I'm the third guy in, for the Liberals.) I lost my train of thought a little bit at the end, but overall, not too bad, I think.

Of course my cockeyed optimism sounds a little funny now, having been defeated by 10,000 votes or so - I can hear Grand Moff Tarkin barking, "I think you overestimate your chances!" in my ear.

UPDATE: On second thought, I probably shouldn't have posted the video - intellectual property and all that - although I think you could claim that it's just an excerpt of a two-hour long show, and therefore falls into the "fair use" category...

If you'd like to see the video, shoot me an email.

Whitmore Nevermore

While adding labels to all my old posts, I came across a blank draft titled, as you can see, "Whitmore Nevermore." I have no idea what I originally intended to write. Something about Walt Whitmore and Edgar Allan Poe? Was my intent to rewrite "The Raven" in Whitmore's style? I sure hope not - perhaps merely contemplating such an effort created a temporal anomaly that wiped any possibility of the event from history.

I'm writing this on December 23, 2009 - from your perspective, the future. Hey, somehow I've accidentally invented time travel!

Resolution Update

I feel like I'm doing okay on the resolution front. I'm about to start a graphic design course thanks to Jeff, and I've been working out every weekday for the last four weeks: half hour cardio, plus crunches, weights, pushups and stretches.

Still working on the other items on the list. But oh, in other exciting news - I'll be guest lecturing at Grant MacEwan on February 23rd and 26th, talking to students about the ups and downs of professional speechwriting. I'm really looking forward to that.

My Social Media Aware PC MLAs

There's a new site for members of the government caucus: www.mypcmla.ca. In all fairness, it's a pretty good site, but I'm a little puzzled by this section, which seems to offer Albertans advice on how to use social media.

The title of the page reads, "The Nine Commandments of Social Media," and reads more like something of interest to politicians aiming to manipulate social media than a guideline for ordinary Albertans. My favourite bits:

Thou Shalt be Honest – it’s a pretty good maxim to live by in all areas of life but it s particularly true online. If you’re telling a lie or trying to pull a fast one, you will always get caught out. Bad news travels fast, so any lies you do tell are certain to come back to haunt you.

Thou Shalt Have an Opinion – if you are scared to voice your point of view you will struggle to get anyone to listen to you. There’s a level of professionalism we should all strive for but it’s a lot lower than you might think!

Was this page really intended as advice for Albertans who sign up for facebook and twitter? If so, what's it doing on mypcmla.ca? This reads more like an internal document, intended for MLAs who are thinking about using social media...if so, why give away your secret social media marketing tricks?

Strange indeed.

Superman vs. the Pocketbook

(Click to enlarge)

In this peculiar scene from Action Comics #562, Superman encounters some folks who have been stuck to their cars by a strange form of magnetism. Of course Superman has to rescue them, but were I the fellow in the first panel, I'd be less concerned about my belt and more concerned by Superman firing his heat vision, which can incinerate continents, so close to my crotch.

And the lady with the handbag, while a little rude, does have a point - why would Superman snap the strap when it's clear that all he has to do is lift it over her head to free her?

Then again, who am I to question how Superman does his job? After multiple exposures to every type of kryptonite from pink to silver, not to mention thousands of concussions, a couple of deaths and resurrections, mental manipulation, body transferrals and who knows what else, I'm sure his judgement has probably suffered some permanent impairment.

Priorities

Aquaman, aside from being the most-mocked member of the Super Friends, is also the King of Atlantis, the underwater kingdom comprised of the ancient cities of Poseidonis and Tritonis. In his role as King, Aquaman has certain duties as head-of-state. But see how he blows off his responsibilities in this late 1970s issue of Adventure Comics:



Canada gets little respect in the comics. Is meeting the Canadian ambassador so dull a task that Aquaman will grasp any straws necessary to avoid it? Testing Mr. Weisbogg's robot, indeed.

Of course, I suppose they couldn't call it Adventure Comics if the stories revolved around diplomatic meetings...

Itty Bitty Bumper Boats

Shrunken tourists at West Edmonton Mall.

Canada Day 2005 in Miniature

A "small" crowd showed up for the Barenaked Ladies concert on Canada Day, 2005.

Honey, I Shrunk the Car

In 2006, I brought Sylvia on a road trip to Leaf Rapids, Manitoba. The shrinking car phenomenon was not the strangest part of that journey.

The (Really) Little Church

In 1981, my grade six class went to Drumheller for a field trip. We saw the famed Little Church, and I took this photo from atop a hill. Thanks to tilt-shift trickery, now the church really does look little.

Mini Honolulu

Here's a far more convincing example of the tilt-shift process. I actually shot this from a helicopter over Honolulu, but it looks as if you could reach down and play with the miniature buildings and boats.

The Earliad in Miniature

Tilt-shift photography creates an illusion that reduces life-size scenes to the scale of model railways. Here's an example I created by using the tools at tiltshiftmaker.com:



They may look like toys, but that's our camper and my grandparents' farmhouse circa the early 1970s.

The technique seems to work best when photo subjects are at middle to long distance.

Trek Bowl

According to TrekMovie, an ad for the new Star Trek movie will air during this year's Super Bowl. Now I'm faced with a real conundrum: do I sit through three or four hours of sports on the off-chance of seeing some new footage from the film? There's a good chance they might just air the same old trailer. On the other hand, Super Bowl ads are famous for their cleverness - what if Paramount comes up with something really cool?

Ay ay ay. What to do, what to do? I suppose the ad will run on the Internet the next day, anyway...

2 II or not 2 II...II

(Notice the irony in the title of this post...)

In response to a comment on the last post, here's how I might retitle parts II and III of the Back to the Future films:

Escape from the Future
Back to the Ranch

The Rambo films had an odd titling sequence. The first film is First Blood, followed by Rambo: First Blood Part II, followed by Rambo III, followed by Rambo.

How about...

First Blood
Rambo's Revenge
Blood of Patriots (the ham-handed flag-waving and violence in this film has to be seen to be believed - I think this title really suits it)
Last Blood (I haven't seen Rambo, but judging by the previews, this film looks bloodier than the first three films combined. Last Blood gives the film the ghoulish finality I imagine it needs.)

To be fair, there are plenty of good sequel titles out there. I was quite tickled by the irreverent Live Free or Die Hard, and I've always loved Scream, Blacula, Scream.