January 2012
1 post
5 tags
All Your Tiles Are Belong to Us
No “game” snuggles more intimately with our 26-strong alphabet than Scrabble™. This “game” carries few fun-like qualities as its brethren: no pop-o-matic bubbles, no chutes or ladders, no collecting of railroads, no sinking of battleships, no invasion of countries, no repeated beatings of hungry hippopotamuses. Scrabble is a game of angst, turmoil and desecration whose sole element of fun...
December 2011
2 posts
22 tags
P.R.E.D.I.C.T.I.O.N.S
Predictions – I has them. That is a shout-out to LOLcat-speak, which seems to be on a downturn, but perhaps not so much in Japan. My predictions here are for 2012, a grand year that may usher the end of civilization on Dec. 21st, at least according to ancient Mesoamerican calendars and Nicholas Cage.
Off the bat, I feel emboldened to make one grade-A prediction: Facebook is here to stay. It...
6 tags
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This got me to thinking. Time Magazine editors decided, as they have in recent years, to go mad with power and unleash a small army of year-end top-10 lists. This time: 54 toptens.
It got me to thinking that while 2011 approaches its final page, tis the season of topten lists. Every self-respecting media outlet and blog puts forth an assortment of lists on a flurry of subjects. Some of them, not...
November 2011
1 post
6 tags
In Medias Res
In a eulogy delivered at the funeral of Steve Jobs, the Apple founder’s sister used a phrase I hadn’t heard before. “We all — in the end — die in medias res,” she said.
In medias res. That it isn’t English is the likely reason I hadn’t come across it, but when I read it, it instantly sounded important. Beautiful, even. So I looked it up and the good wikifolks online described it for me.
Latin, it...
October 2011
3 posts
4 tags
A Reunion Fit for the Circus
This is the only short story I’ve ever had published. That journal, “Wanton Words” from somewhere in the States, does not appear to be around anymore. I still have my copy.
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Sipping from a can of unsweetened coconut nectar, Evergreen watched suburbia unfurl out the limo’s tinted window. “The world’s greatest juggler” hadn’t been on this street in 15...
6 tags
Extra Lean, Cold as Hell
There were three piles of meat, frozen, raw and of unidentifiable origin. Left by the butcher I had never met were three sticky notes penciled “Extra Lean,” “Lean,” and “Regular.”
It was the cold room of the local IGA, a grocery business that evidence would say no longer exists. This particular location, in St. Catharines where I grew up, is now the palace of cost-savings...
4 tags
Do Not Use This Product Into the Fire
The first “declaration” in my friend’s GPS Handbook indicates what is to come. Which is hilarity in the form of impossible English. Nobody could actually make this up.
1. The information hereof has been carefully checked to be accurate. However, the check would not exclude all the printing or translating mistakes. Please contact customer service if you find any of mistakes.
Honestly, their...
September 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Question of the Day
My friends and I travelled to Cleveland for blog research purposes. Also to attend Indians and Browns games. We stayed at a historic hotel downtown, selected for its proximity to sporting events… ignorant of the fact that the city is anticipating some kind of downtown “renaissance” in the future.
Let’s put it this way: ghosts wander the streets outside weekday business hours without fear of...
1 tag
Bill, No Friend of Mine
Electricity courses through my house. Water flows from multiple taps, and will turn hot if I require it to. Gas powers my stove. When my TV flashes on, shows emerge and, when I flip open my Mac, Google is there without being asked. On the telephone I can speak to people a world away, not that I do much.
For these privileges I receive bills that command me to pay money. (Much like you, likely.)...
3 tags
Story of Conflict
The sun’s out, I’ll drop here a short piece of fiction I wrote in 2001. It is untitled and meant to convey conflict, as it was assigned by a creative writing prof. Hope you like it.
*****
He walked on the left, she on the right, both amid the throng of Celtics fans exiting the Garden on a blustery Saturday afternoon. His hand on her shoulder was tight and flexed, not so much a loving...
4 tags
‘A Creeping Horror’
One morning in Boston, where I lived, I found a corner store that still had a copy of The New York Times. Paper discoloured, edges peeling, that issue sits beside me now. Its date is Sept. 12, 2001; the forecast was sunshine, high of 72, a few clouds.
A decade has passed since 9/11. I’m not going to pretend to write something significant here. I don’t think my blog is any place to describe the...
August 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Anybody Got a Story?
The summer of 1998 I left the glory of cutting grass to be a cub reporter for the local daily. There had been a strike in the newsroom so there were openings. A second-year J-school student, I was into getting clips and not worrying about what scab meant.
Sans vehicle, my beat was more or less the fax machine and anything in walking distance of the Standard (or at least a reasonable taxi chit)....
3 tags
When I Tried to Get Into Columbia
A funny story from the winter of 2000. Its topic concerns my applying to the prestigious journalism program at Columbia University. Manhattan would have been nice. Let’s start with a letter.
“The Admissions Committee has completed its review of your application to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. We regret to inform you that your request for admission has been denied.
We want to...
2 tags
That "V" Word
This is a fun little piece I wrote for the hell of it, about my son being vegetarian as a consequence of his parents being that way. It is too long for the blog, so below are the first few paragraphs and a link to where you can read it in full. I encourage you to click over and see the rest….
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How are you a vegetarian but don’t yet know it? When you are my four-week-old son. During...
July 2011
3 posts
3 tags
At The End Of The Day
“But you know what, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.”
“At the end of the day, it all comes down to dollars and cents.”
“At the end of the day, the message just has to get out.”
“At the end of the day, we just didn’t play well enough to win.”
And so on. No expression in the English language has nudged its way into common lexicon more than the phrase “ATEOTD”. I think it started in the...
5 tags
Brown v. Jurmain CAN 2003-2005
In 2003, I was a newspaper subscriber and each Saturday I flipped to a certain section to verify what seemed to be happening. Weeks after weeks, to my growing concern, one name seemed to holler at me personally from the page. Taunting me from the bestselling book list where he had become a permanent resident.
You might know Dan Brown from such stories as The Da Vinci Code. This rose epically past...
2 tags
Alone, Spectacular
One lesson I’ve come to appreciate as my blog trudges forward in its young swampy life is that the demands of actual work are demanding. Oh the demands! And then, after dinner and playtime, the clock marks 23 hundred hours, the soft pillows upstairs call out ravenously for my head, and soon I’m asleep. My last thought on these hot nights in the Big Smoke is that The Canon was again neglected.
I...
June 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Are you a real person now?
My three-months-old baby spends a good deal of time scrutinizing such objects as the wall or the pillow with such wide-eyed fascination that I feel that I am seriously missing something. What is captivating for me is his gradual emergence as a human. Are you a real person now? I ask him frequently. Or are you still just a little baby? My rule of thumb is that if he erupts in soundless...
1 tag
Like one tree in the forest
Like the sound of one tree crashing to the floor of the biggest, widest, most ever-growing forest, what will happen if I launch a blog but nobody is around to read it?
My guess is that it will become progressively more awesome. Perhaps in a converse twist, the fewer people who read it, the more insightful, witty and entertaining it will become.
This is my first post in my first blog. Though I am...