What's with This Worldly Widget?

 I'm in Edmonton; I usually am. 

Here I am in a hailstorm. The map--if it appears--will show that this hailstorm took place in Edmonton, Alberta. 

NOTE: The map did not appear. 

Oregon Trail Mixup

Woe is me
I've posted again
AI artwork that's the same
A post repeat I much regret
Causing me to fume and fret

Thanks be to Jeff
Faithful reader
Who spots it when my effort's meagre

What can I do but
Add a poem
Edit title
Nourishing loam? 

Woe is me
A repeat post
Overstaying its welcome
Unfriendly ghost



 

Ventilation with Telephone Line

Photograph, 1990.

I see you on the ceiling
Connecting distant feelings
Bringing air for us to breathe
Tunnels for cats that make us sneeze

No ceiling fan in field of view
But I assume you lurk there too
Just out of sight, ready to blow
Winds from very long ago

Spotless Sanctuary

Here's how my home office in our first condo looked after we moved out and cleaned everything back in August 2010. I think we left it in pretty nice shape for the new owners. Note that I left the drape-thing behind because the previous owners left it behind for us. Paying it forward! 

Spoon Man

Jeff's Personal Fame Meter

As is my wont, I sometimes write "as is my wont." But also as is my wont, I also sometimes, and not just because I'm feeling sick or lazy, use this blog to advertise the work of other bloggers. In this case, I'd like to direct Earliad reader's to a JSVB post from a couple of days ago, in which you can view the current status of Jeff's Personal Fame Meter. Not only is the Fame Meter well executed, I quite enjoy the dry wit evidenced in the work. Oh, and there's some football stuff there for sports fans, and an "I'm Nearly Famous" callback to my days when an actor gave me a button with those words way back in 1985 when I appeared in a pilot on CBC. Still nearly famous, never quite getting there...thankfully. 

Facets of Madness

Here's another in a quickly growing array of bad self-portraits/lazy blog posts. At least there'll be a Wonder Woman review coming soon! 

Midnight Glob

Of Inspirations Lost

Today at work, in one of those moments of clarity that sometimes appear as you switch from one task to another, I came up with a a great idea for tonight's post. "Aha! I like it. It's funny, original, and it's not recycled or lazy content!"

I was pretty pleased, since a good portion of my posts of late haven't been terribly special.

Of course, you're not reading that post, because I've completely forgotten what I meant to write about.  I really should carry a notebook. 

McDonald's McNugget Sauces Ranked in Order of Flavour

1. BBQ
2. Hot Mustard
3. Sweet 'N Sour

Yes, this is possibly the low point of The Earliad's 11-year existence, but this is one of those the-bear-gets-you days and there are three unused packets - one of each flavour - sitting on my desk right now for some reason. If Hemingway had a blog I'm sure he could write a post of enduring beauty using the same inspiration. I'm not Hemingway. I'm not even Michael Butterworth or Ed D. Wood.

And now I'm  thinking Hot Mustard is actually tastier than BBQ. 

Suite of Tarts

The Everyday Blahg Blahs

I admit it - posting every single day is taking its toll, as my ten or fifteen readers have almost certainly noticed. Sylvia suggested something simple: "Thanks for the break in the heat wave! Have a nice day!"

I will say I'm happy that Kent Hehr is seeking the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of Calgary Centre. Kent's a great guy, a hard-working politician, and a smart, realistic progressive. He'd be a great federal candidate and an even better MP - cabinet material, even. I hope he wins both the nomination and the seat. Of all the MLAs I worked with - and I worked with some very good ones - Kent always impressed me as the one with the most potential to go very far and do some real good for the country.

That's certainly no slight against Darshan Kang, who's also leaving provincial politics and hoping to win another Calgary seat for the Trudeau Liberals in the riding of Calgary Skyview. Darshan became an MLA in the same 2008 provincial election as Kent, and I enjoyed working with him as well. I remember Darshan as a particularly effective champion for the tunnel underneath the new runway at the Calgary International Airport, as well as just a plain generous human being who always treated his staff very well.

Good luck to both of them.

Lazy Lego Saturday

The Tyranny of Choice

The Intertubes are Clogged

My Internet connection is slower than the proverbial January molasses tonight, and it's already eaten two posts. Will this be the third? I hate to interrupt my once-a-day posting streak for a trivial technical glitch...

Another Milestone

This April The Earliad received more visitors than ever, or at least more page views: nearly 9,500. When I started this blog ten years ago I never imagined an audience larger than a few friends and family members, but as you can see from the graph (which only goes back to 2007, unfortunately), traffic has increased slowly but steadily. I appreciate everyone who drops by, and I hope that the daily posts or the archive provide a quantum of entertainment.

I'll be spending the next few days at Gaming and Guinness VIII, so posts until Sunday will be very short - probably just an image of one of the day's activities.

Some Days It's Easier Than Others

Billy Preston's Nightmare

He awoke like a cliché: with a shriek of terror, sitting "bolt upright" just as they do in dime novels, eyes bulging, skin pale and glistening with the sweat of his fevered dreams.

"The gateway to Hell!" he screamed, still half-trapped in the nightmare. "I saw it in Dawson City. I was bringing in my furs and the whole town was being pulled in! And no one back home even knew I was there! No one would remember me!"

The darkness didn't respond. He began to breathe again.

"I know what the dream means," he thought to himself. "Ten years after I die, will anyone remember me? Hell, will anyone remember me even a year later? Did anything I've done make a difference?"

He concocted a plan. He would create art. It didn't have to be good, it just had to exist, and it had to catch someone's eye. And if he was lucky, maybe something noteworthy would happen to him. Maybe he'd be the first victim of a new plague. Maybe he'd find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and accidentally become a hero. Or maybe he'd go mad at the end and become famous for the form of his insanity.

That would be the trigger, he thought. And then someone, some reporter or historian, would look into his past. And they would find the slapped-together art, and infuse it with meaning.

"Billy Preston's Nightmare (2013, image manipulation) was his first attempt to reconcile his obsession with popular culture with the slow dissolution of civil society as he saw it. In Nightmare the artist alters a photo of crumbling infrastructure by combining it with murky scarlet clouds reminiscent of the early computer game Doom (1993), a game he was known to enjoy during his "blue" period post-university studies..."

They would never know that Billy Preston's Nightmare was just another lame attempt to complete a blog post when he couldn't think of a blessed worthwhile thing to write about.

Milestone Approaching

I can scarce believe it myself, but in a little over a month My Name is Earl (J. Woods), formerly known as The Bleak House of Blahgs, will be ten years old. Clearly I'll need to do something special for such a momentous occasion, but what? Another name change? A redesign? Some kind of commemorative post? A best-of list? Finishing that short story I promised Jeff? A retrospective?

I know what I should do. I've long threatened to novelize the screenplay of Toilet Chase. But that's a better project for National Novel Writing Month.

Ideas from the peanut gallery gratefully accepted.

Still Nearly Famous

Back when I landed the co-hosting slot of the CBC pilot "If Your Parents Split," one of the actors gave me a very nice card and a simple button that read "I'm Nearly Famous." I wore that button for years and it remains in my collection, though I don't wear it around town anymore. I thought the sentiment was cute and it helped keep me grounded during those heady teenage days of near-fame. It was and is a good reminder not to take myself too seriously.

The pilot wasn't picked up, but it did earn a couple of awards, and since then I've had a series of medium-profile jobs and activities that haven't exactly catapulted me to fame, but have put me in the orbit of a few reasonably famous people. I've certainly never wanted fame for its own sake, but it some degree of notoriety goes hand-in-hand with the careers and activities I've pursued: acting, politics, writing. I'm drawn to these activities for a number of reasons. I like writing and other creative pursuits because, well, they're creative; I enjoy exercising my imagination and bringing something new into the world. I gave politics a try because I thought perhaps I could help people. I never pursued acting or the theatre seriously, but I did dabble from junior high school to university and quite enjoyed it.

My greatest dream has always been to have my name in print, something I technically accomplished back in 1997 with the publication of my first freelance article. Of course the BIG dream was to be listed as the author of a book - again, something I almost accomplished with Herbs & Edible Flowers, in which I'm listed as the co-writer with (the much more famous) Lois Hole. But that wasn't quite enough either. In truth, my biggest dream remains to finish a novel and have it published. It could sell five copies for all I care; I just want that book on my shelf with my name on it. Why? Well, for whatever reason I decided at a very young age I wasn't going to have children, and on some level I want to leave something of myself behind; a novel would fill the bill very nicely.

But given the slow demise of traditional publishing and my own lackadaisical habits, I doubt I'll ever see that dream fulfilled. I still have hopes of selling another short story, but a novel...well, that dream is more distant now. By the time I finish I'm sure traditional publishing will be dead and gone and I'll have to settle for e-publishing, which I'm not knocking at all...it's just not the dream I had in mind.

On the other hand, this blog hit a new high of just over 8,000 page views last month. When I started this project I assumed I'd be writing just for me and maybe a few friends; it was really just a way to experiment with new media. Now it appears I have a much larger audience than I ever intended, and it's frankly a little intimidating. Now I know how cartoonists feel, trying to craft something funny 365 (or 366) days a year. It's a grind and some days you know you're disappointing your readers.

Like tonight, maybe...some nights insight comes easily, some nights you ramble.

Fame? I guess I'd like just a little - just enough that maybe fifty or seventy-five years from now - it would be the height of hubris to hope for more - a few people will know that I existed. Why that should be important to me I honestly don't know, but there it is.