The Blog of Love

Of Christmas Trees Past...

2011-12-26T13:27:00.002-08:00

The Christmas Tree is supposed to symbolize something about Christmas, but I don't remember what I read about it. A Wikipedia article says people have been decorating trees and celebrating around them during this time of year since the 15th Century. That's a long history of sweeping up pine needles. Anyway, Christmas has always brought mixed emotions for me, and the tree and the ritual of setting it up has always been a big part of that.

My earliest memory of a Christmas tree was a natural one that my mother's father (whom my sister and I lovingly called "Poppy") had set up in his living room. I was not more than five, and my sister Kim, maybe three. We were the age when we still believed in magical things, and where every shadowy closet still held the possibility of exploration.

Poppy's tree probably stood seven feet high, in a big red and green steel base. It was covered in lots of lights, shimmering tinsel and beautiful blown glass ornaments. I still remember one of those ornaments. It was a deep, dark midnight blue piece of glass, and sat cool in my hand. It was round and tapered, and almost black at the ends - an elegant and mysterious little thing that fascinated me. It seemed expensive and precious, and here it was, just hanging off Poppy's tree some delicate, stained glass piece of fruit that anyone could just pluck off the branch.

With me, my sister and my folks all there, we had more people than we had beds, so I was tucked in on the chesterfield in the living room next to Poppy's big tree. I remember laying there, looking at the reflections and shadows of the tree's lights as they played across the walls of the living room. That night, the room seemed alive with little flickers of light and trembling shadows. I had my little Alvin the Chipmunk doll in bed with me, and I hung onto Alvin, as I watched car headlights streak across the room whenever someone passed down Cook Street outside Poppy's house. That Christmas tree and that room were very special to me.

The next year, we moved out of Poppy's house, and lived in a trailer in Langley, near the transmitters of the radio station where my Dad worked. We were out of the streetlights of Victoria, and out in the bush in Langley, in the middle of 77 acres of scrub brush and dirt. That year, it was our turn to host Poppy for Christmas. Whereas with Poppy, we'd celebrated Christmas in the city, with a thick natural tree and ornaments that were possibly as old as my mother, this year, we had a brand new home, decked out in the latest of 1970s decor, and a brand new fire retardant plastic tree with a trunk that resembled a green broomstick with a hundred little holes drilled into it, and mass-produced foil garlands. Everything about that tree and it's ornamentation was modern, punched, snipped and trimmed out of steel, plastic and tin. Instead of pine, our tree smelled of plastic. We loaded it down with way too many garlands, tinsel and doodads. It was new, and it was all ours.

One Christmas, when we lived in the Mountain View Motel, Mum and Dad had a loud drunken party with some of their new best friends from up the lane. One guy, who way too drunk to walk, lost his balance and fell right into the tree, breaking the trunk of it. Dad fixed it by putting a steel hose clamp around the stick, and our little faux scotch pine lived to stand for another year.

For a couple of Christmases, when I was between the ages of 11 and 13, I remember being the only one setting up that tree. Dad would "supervise" from his armchair (i.e. watch me, have a drink, and watch TV). More often than not, Dad would fall asleep in his chair, and I'd work away on my own to get the tree finished. I remember untangling a really old string of lights, which might have been from the 40s or 50s. The cord was thick and black, and the light sockets were bakelite (a precursor to modern plastics), and much of the colour had faded or flaked off of the bulbs. Many of the bulbs had funny little tin reflectors that clattered and got stuck on each other as I tried to string them up on the tree. I wondered if these particular lights had belonged to my Dad's family. I found some home-made decorations made from egg cartons, pipe cleaners and glitter. Somebody - kids from some other family - had gone to trouble to make these little home-made ornaments, and had put them proudly on their tree at one time.

I was good at working on my own, without much supervision, and it did feel like something creative to do. In my early years, setting up the Christmas tree felt like a big deal for the family. In later years, as they got sicker and sicker, Mum and Dad just didn't seem to give a shit about it. Putting that tree up by myself for a year or two gave me a sense of responsibility, like I was keeping something going, while they laid passed out on the couch or in the armchair.

Over the next twenty years, that little fake tree outlasted many drunken evening screaming fights, happy, hopeful Christmas mornings, and paper thin, anticlimactic New Years eves. It ultimately even outlasted my Dad. I hung onto that little fake Scotch Pine and set it up many many times, and each year, it seemed to come out a little differently. Eventually, my wife and I gave it to goodwill and bought a new faux tree that looked more natural and didn't have so many sharp memories hanging off it. It can still be difficult for me to set up our Christmas tree these days, but I do really enjoy sharing the process, and not doing it on my own.

I was pleased to learn from my sister, that she still had one or two of Poppy's beautiful glass tree ornaments. I think most of the foil garlands that we bought for Dad's little scotch pine were thrown out a long time ago. They were never meant to last. Christmas tree lights and ornaments seem to survive from generation to generation, handed up and handed down, as families and friends perch and balance their love and wishes on the branches of some overburdened tree. Your tree is your family and yourself, and whatever you make of it. Some of it is good stuff that can be tucked away carefully and brought out again next year.

Abuse and sufferring run in cycles.

2011-12-06T16:42:00.002-08:00

If life has taught me anything, it's that abuse and family dysfunction is cyclical. Without some kind of conscious emotional intervention, it will so easily be passed on to others - a younger generation, a family member, a spouse.

It's almost like some kind of psychological virus. Someone abuses you, it affects you deep inside your core self, and (because it's too painful to confront openly) you swallow the pain and the bad lessons down deep. Over time, you can internalize them. They can become part of your psyche, practically steeped into your cells.

You get used to the way you've adapted to your early bad experiences. You tell yourself that it's "just who you are". In truth, you're changed in a fundamental way. Your experiences - all of them - affect who you become throughout your life. Nurturing, loving relationships and happy experiences teach you that you are worthy of love, so you will be more likely to give love to someone else. Negative, scary, violent experiences teach you to be afraid, to protect yourself, or to avoid taking risks.

Because you swallowed your reactions down and submerged the experience under your skin, you think they're gone. But they're not. One day, something traumatic happens, and you find yourself vividly reliving a past painful event - and you are unprepared for the emotions that arise in you. You are caught off-guard. You may even not be in control of your feelings and reactions.

Bottom line: Verbalize your traumas, bring them out (drag them out) into the light of day. See them for what they are, and have compassion for the you who was damaged. Forget about guilt, shame or self-pity. Just talk about the events, and the effects and results. Accept that you are a finite person who cannot control or resolve bad events.

Know thyself, and then the negative cycle will end with you, and a new positive cycle can begin in it's place.

"Grieve not nor speak of me with tears..."

2011-10-05T21:46:00.005-07:00

We recently lost Sylvester, one of our beloved cats. He passed away on October 1st, 2011, after almost 20 years - a good, long life for a little kitty.

Losing him has been much more difficult to bear than I'd ever anticipated. I've lost both my parents, and the loss of our little cat hurts as much, but in a different way. I can honestly say that I've spent more time with him, and have been around him more often than almost anyone else in my life, except for my wife. It's the time spent doing little things around the house: every little walk to the kitchen, every trip to the bathroom, every hour at the computer: he was there with us, communicating in his own way. His was a constant, comforting presence.

The emotional connection to a pet seems more direct and less complicated than with people. There are no ego, material expectations or cultural conventions to get in the way. It just is what it is. (Or maybe it's just me.)

With each passing day, Sylvester's absence evokes a little less grief, and and a little more reflection on the basics of a happy life. He never earned a buck in his life, but I never once questioned his inherent worth. He was priceless to me.

I'm amazed at how much love his little heart seemed to generate and absorb. He gave a lot more love and companionship than one would expect from a little five pound cat. In his life, he knew about happiness, fear, hunger, pain, pride and excitement. He knew about love and loyalty, needing and being needed. He knew about feeling tired and maybe even bored sometimes. But I don't think he ever really knew about sorrow, and I'm fairly certain he had no regrets. He was happy almost every day.

In that spirit, I offer this little poem:

"Grieve not nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you. I loved you so - 'twas Heaven here beside you." - Isla Paschal Richardson.

"Just like my Mamma and Daddy Did..."

2011-06-12T21:20:00.002-07:00

(Used without permission. With apologies to the great Paul Westerberg.)

Decided not to have any part of
Wonderful lie of (live) love
Decided not to raise any children
Just like mamama and daddy did
Just like mamama daddy did

Decided not to have any part of
Wonderful lie of (live) love
Decided not to raise some goddamned kid

Yes that was their way
No it ain't mine
Guess they did okay
At least they tried

Decided not to have any regrets
Whoa that's as good as it gets
Decided not to raise some mixed-up kid
Just like mamama daddy did
Just like...

A Scientific Explanation for Government...

2011-06-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

"A major research institution (MRI) has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named Governmentium.

Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause some morons to become neutrons, forming Isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass."

Finding Inspiration in Dickens: David Copperfield

2011-04-27T12:32:00.010-07:00

For a few weeks now, I've been reading Dickens' classic, "David Copperfield". David and I have some things in common. At the moment, we're both looking for opportunities to use our skills and forge new paths in the world.

In my current search for jobs and interesting projects, I've been reminded of how I was back in 1991, when I was 25 and recently released from the protective shelter of my first contract at the Emily Carr College of Art (then ECCAD, and now known as Emily Carr University). The end of my contract forced to get out there, find work on my own, and make some new associations. I figured it was all on my shoulders, and didn't consider how my past and current associations might pay me forward.

The pressure was real, but the need was more than real, and I was a very determined young man. Not unlike, I think, David Copperfield.

David Copperfield: Social Networker of Victorian England.

After David finishes his schooling under Doctor Strong in Canterbury, he takes an unpaid apprenticeship as a Proctor (a kind of lawyer) in London. He sets his sights on marrying a lovely girl named Dora, and faces the prospect of needing to get money and to support himself and Dora. David possesses an intense motivation to succeed, for his own sake, for Dora, and for the sake of his Aunt Betsy Trotwood, who has recently lost all her money. David seems bold and focused in his resolve, and he describes his new mission to chopping and hacking his way through a forest of adversity, one tree at a time.

Throughout David's story (so far, since I'm still only about two-thirds of the way through), Dickens illustrates that life can be cyclical and repetitious, bringing old friends, family, adversaries and locales back into David's life, while he grows and gains perspective from his many experiences.

David makes friends, works and/or lives with them (or at least commiserates), leaves them, meets them again, and resumes his associations, out of friendship and mutual advantage. This cycle of association seems to me to be fairly organic, natural, and true to life. The character of David Copperfield is networking, socially.

Me, C. 1991: Portrait of a Hungry Young Man.

Throughout my first job (the contract at ECCAD), I was meeting other hungry young men who were looking for projects in software development, video, and graphics. I joined local graphics clubs, socialized, read, found out what local businesses were doing in software, graphics and media, and dreamed my dreams of a glorious future. I found part-time work as an instructor of evening computer graphics courses, along-side members of the local Amiga computer enthusiasts community. Some connections helped me find one part-time opportunity, another connection helped me find another opportunity, and so on and so on...

But, David Copperfield never had our Social Media...

Over the years, the friendships and professional acquaintances that I've made have come back into my life in different ways.

The relationships I made with staff at ECCAD benefited me with part-time contract work as a computer studio technical assistant. The friends I made when I was freelancing around and volunteering my skills at BNG Design Group led to TVI and the VanCity home banking development projects. TVI led to TranDirect, and a referral to Sentry Telecom, where I met friends who would bring me back to work with them again at AirPatrol Corporation.

Looking back on my career path so far, it's not hard to see the connection between the dots, and I'm grateful for each and every one of those hard-earned dots.

Getting job referrals from friends is a two-way street too. In the past 20 years, more than a few of the friends and associates I've made I have suggested for a position to my current employer. Many of these recommendations have worked out well too, bringing qualified friends back into my work and personal life to our mutual advantage.

Not unlike Mister David Copperfield, Esq.

A Day at the Vancouver Art Gallery

2011-04-13T12:55:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, VanCity Credit Union provided free admission to the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) to its card-carrying credit union members.
(Admission being pretty expensive for me right now, I was happy to take them up on this opportunity.)

What a great series of exhibits!

We: Vancouver: 12 Manifestos for the City

This exhibit, located on the ground floor, presents projects that demonstrate a wide variety of visions for how Vancouver can be improved and enhanced. Manifesto statements cover the walls (and parts of the floor) to introduce the theme and goal of each project. It's a diverse group, encompassing graphic design, green architecture and urban planning, innovations in education, and film and photography that documents the history of Vancouver's struggles with homelessness, land development and corporate social responsibility.

The two pieces that stand out in my mind are:

A display of photos that show the history and diversity of that ubiquitous housing design known as "The Vancouver Special"
Film and photo-documentation of the Habitat '76 Project. (I remember having one of those Habitat buttons when I was a kid. I never knew what it was all about...)

Ken Lum

Most famous recently for his "Monument to East Vancouver" (look at the corner of Clark and Great Northern Way), Ken Lum has been active locally for many years. He has a strong interest in the relationship between words and images in public spaces (i.e. advertising and public signage) and uses that as a basis for ironic, poignant and often funny social commentary.

I think my favourite section was his business signs which had messages using those sliding clear plastic letters you'd see outside of gas stations. He'd show a flashy colourful sign promoting an all-Canadian business like "Akbar's All-Canadian Maple Leaf Clothing Store", and on the board next to it, in those sliding letters, Akbar will have left this message: "Going out of Business. Drop Dead Canada". Tragic, unreal (i.e. contrived, I'm sure), and funny as hell.

The biggest piece in his show was his maze. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to go in. Something about being in a maze or a hall of mirrors gave me the willies that day. Brr! I just couldn't do it. This became awkward when the security guard noticed my turning back from the entrance and began to encourage me ("C'mon! Go in! Go!") Well-intentioned, but kind of awkward

Walking and Falling:

A fascinating combination of artists who explore concepts of time, existence, motion and sequence, through key technologies from different eras of the past 100+ years:

The classic human and animal motion study photography by Eadweard Myubridge
Jim Campbell's haunting and mysteriously engaging LED displays
Chris Marker's hypnotic 1960s black and white film, "La Jetee"

Walking and Falling made me feel like an anthropologist from another planet, regarding and analyzing human motion, motives and interaction as if for the first time.

All of these exhibits seem to share themes of change and transformation: people and a city and its people in motion, and reacting to their environment.

TRIUMF and Physics as a household belief system...

2011-01-26T21:26:00.002-08:00

My father was an Electronics Technician in the RF group at TRIUMF from 1976 to 1983. His time there was a source of personal and family pride.

When I was a kid, our family went on a couple of tours there with my Dad. When I asked my Dad what he did at work that day, he'd talk about mesons and beamlines, and the Ion Stream Injection System, or being in something called "The Tank".

I didn't understand much of it, but the concepts that I did understand absolutely fascinated me: the scale of things, the smallness of the particles, the speeds of transmission (0.75 the speed of light!), and the worldwide efforts and experiments involved.

When Dad talked about these things, it was like physics suddenly became a dominant belief system in our household, full of questions and answers and the kind of mysteries that excited me in much the same way that I imagine people used to be excited when contemplating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

I went back and toured there with my wife a few years ago, and must admit that my feelings of wonder came back again the same as it did when I was eleven.

See Also:
TRIUMF (The Art and Science of Particle Physics) by Dr. Ron Burnett, ECUAD.

True Life: A Reader Reaches Out

2011-01-22T21:13:00.005-08:00

A few weeks ago, I received a touching email from someone who had found my "True Life" memoir web project (http://truelife.ejohnlove.com). This person's words really touched me...

In essence, the reader wanted to let me know that the themes and experiences they read about in True Life echoed their own life experiences: parental alcoholism and depression, and personally having to take on a lot of responsibility for the family as a result.

They told me that they had spent a great deal of time feeling like they were alone in their feelings, and that it was a comfort and an inspiration to encounter someone else who'd been through similar experiences.

Back in 1998, I began my True Life web memoir as a way to organize and purge my personal experiences in a format that I could control and continue to develop on an adhoc basis, for as long as it took.

I wish my new reader all the best in their future, and I have encouraged them to write their experiences as well.

Over the years, I've only received a few messages from readers of True Life, but this person's message meant a lot to me, and made me feel like the act of writing and sharing must automatically have an element of compassion in it - it's not just a selfish activity - it's a sharing, connecting activity.

A Buzzing in the Brain: Meditations on Winter, Parents and the Christmas Season

2010-12-03T19:45:00.005-08:00

The wind outside has a nasty cold bite to it, but the air inside the restaurant is still, warm, stifling from the heat of all the bodies that have found their way inside. Greeted by the girl with the genuine smile. How can someone smile all day long? Maybe you gotta really believe it. Don't think about so much shit. Just be pleasant in your mind.

Maybe she's twenty five, looking young, plump and healthy. Not a bad sign. Customers all look well fed too. Maybe they come here all the time, or at least more often than us. Same booth as last week. Oh look - same server as last time too. May as well order what I enjoyed last time too. Pot roast, mashed potatoes and veggies. Gravy on the side. On a diet, doncha know. This is me being healthy. Good boy.

When it finally comes, the smell of the beef makes my mind wander. We always ate roast beef on Sundays at my mother's father's house. "Poppy's House". It's the taste of family, every time. I'm a lucky man to have a beloved to share my beef with.

Roast beef brings on Poppy, which brings on his daughter, my Mum, Angela. I feel the meat stretch and mash between my teeth, and taste the juices. Hot, tangy, like life blood from whatever animal it used to be. Unlucky it. Lucky me.

Lame Christmas music comes over the restaurant's speakers. Who scat sings "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"? I miss Robert Goulet. Who are they and where do they find this shit? Somebody went music shopping in the bargain bin at Walmart for these winning tunes.

I'm lucky to be eating a hot meal inside a warm, dry place. This time of year, lots of people don't have that. It's getting closer to Christmas.

What was Christmas dinner like for my Mum in her last few years? Even without her teeth in, I bet Mum would have gnawed her way through a tender piece of beef and some yorkshire pudding. A skin and bones woman with short-cropped white hair, rocks alone in her chair. Line of juice running down her chin and into a bib around her neck. If Mum had beef, I bet she'd eat with the rapid enthusiasm and abandon of a little kid.

It's so easy to worry about the future and fret over the past. Was it like that for Mum? People from different families, sitting on the ward next to her, all in their own chairs, and not talking to each other. Everyone's got their physical and mental problems. Some more than others. Not many visitors in the hospital talking to them. Maybe Mum was lonely, if she could remember it. Or maybe she was lucky, and couldn't remember any happy times, so she wouldn't miss them. No memories of having babies a million years ago. Nothing about living in a townhouse, watching TV, or missing her parents. No sitting home alone drinking, being sad and lonely.

Maybe, if she were lucky (and by God she deserved some luck), all she'd remember tied into her little hospital chair was how good that last bite of beef tasted. Nice bite of tasty, juicy meat. Warm air inside the ward. Some weak but vaguely reassuring music on the speaker. Peaceful. Life, just one bite at a time.

A Bus Ticket at the Airport?

2010-09-19T21:36:00.003-07:00

When I graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (ECCAD) in 1989, one voice in the faculty stood out: Bob Evermon. In an impassioned letter to the graduating class and college (which I cannot completely recall), he likened the Diplomas we would receive to getting "a bus ticket at the airport". His point, I believe, was that the college should be a degree-granting institution. I have always wondered if getting a Bachelors of Fine Arts would have helped to further my career.

During my four years at ECCAD, my studies progressed from Foundation through a series of computer graphics, drawing, art history and multimedia courses. Of particular note was an amazing, inspiring all-day Senior Multimedia Studio taught by Gary Lee Nova and Michael Agrios, which combined a morning theory session with an afternoon practical session. I learned a lot about the development and impact of modern media on culture, and got a lot of hands-on experience with consumer-grade audio and video equipment and production techniques.We were just on the verge of the convergence of the Computer, Print, and Broadcast media, and it is incredible to see how far that integration has progressed, affecting whole swaths of culture and lifestyle.

By my final year, I was taking a number of self-study blocks, which meant that I had to define my own project for the semester and pursue it under the guidance of a consulting instructor. I used those sessions to develop ideas for an interactive slide show of computer graphics and an electronic sculpture idea. I read obsessively about art, science and technology, especially cybernetics and AI. I taught myself how to use a breadboard to prototype little circuits, how to solder (badly) and how to program in BASIC. I made many trips up Fourth Avenue to RP Electronics that year, and felt a huge amount of gratification from running my own creative projects on my own terms and schedule. (Instructor and electronics artist Dennis Vance was a huge inspiration to me during those projects.)

I'd be lying if I said that I had any idea back then what I'd be doing with my career in the long term, but with the collaboration and help of some classmates (especially the always-brilliant Martin Hunt) my grad projects were completed and shown successfully. Impermanence is part of life. After the 1989 Grad Show was completed, I documented the pieces and dismantled them. Their purpose was served.

Now, over twenty years after graduation, I've managed to keep my career alive as a commercial artist in the IT sector, working for a succession of small-to-mid-sized companies. Most often, I've succeeded by creating a role for myself as an "everything art guy" or an all-round digital and print designer.

I'm still interested in technology, but I find that I don't often get the opportunity to create anything that interests me, or of which I can feel particularly excited. In the first 10 years of my career, every brochure and business card design, website layout or programming challenge seemed unique and exciting to me. Between 1992 and 2002, I got to flex my graphic skills, create animations, or help to tell a story using words and pictures. The design mojo had started to develop in me in art school, but the actual design technology skills and production experience came face-first, on the job.

I think I have always been happiest if I had one project that I could control from beginning to end - a pet project. These opportunities seem to be few and far between, and getting fewer all the time. But, every employer's needs are different, and it's unrealistic to expect a commercial design position to afford too many opportunities for personal expression or even personal satisfaction.

There's always been a little voice in the back of my mind asking things like "Is my Do It Yourself career a good enough path for me? Would I be happier if I pursued formal training - maybe got some credentials in design or multimedia or something? What about teaching? The few times I've worked as an instructor, I've always loved it. What about that?"

Did I get a bus ticket at the airport after all? Maybe it's a good time to ask if I need a transfer...

Of Diet and Destiny.

2010-09-11T21:27:00.004-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my MD diagnosed me as pre-diabetic. This was a bit of a shock to me, I must admit. However, in the spectrum of disease and mortality, on the scale of news that you don't want to hear from your doctor, it's pretty damn good news.

In recent months, my wife and I had talked about Type 2 ("Adult Onset") Diabetes, and I'd even tested my blood sugar once using her little pin-pricker-tester doodad. By learning about my wife's diabetes, I realized that it is a manageable condition, and not that scary once you do your homework and develop some changes to your lifestyle.

At 5 foot 9 inches, I weighed as much as 214 pounds a couple of years ago. I cannot remember exactly when my weight increased above 200, but I'm sure that I wasn't thrilled about it. Hitting 214 was, for me, a weight record and emotionally, something of a low point.

Although he was well over 6 feet tall, my father had been between 220 and 240 pounds and at least 44 inches around the waist when he had a heart attack at the ago of 62. He survived six more years after that, but at a huge cost: five strokes, an epileptic reaction to alcohol, and a plate and pin in his hip from a bad fall in a hospital shower. He was a life-long smoker and drinker and not health conscious in the least. Born in 1921, perhaps Dad was a product of his times. Emotionally and physically, he had not taken care of himself for years and years, and he ended up suffering serious consequences because of it.

I'm using my Dad as an example, but not in any spirit of disrespect. I have a vague memory of him telling me not to repeat his and my mother's mistakes in life. Memories become blurred and distorted over time, and it may well be that he never actually said this to me at all, but by reflecting on my parent's living examples, not following them has absolutely the most important advice that I've ever taken to heart. Dad passed on in 1989, and Mum died in 1995, and not a day goes by that one or both of them are not in mind. I have used the examples of their lives as motivation to pursue my goals with enthusiasm, to improve myself intellectually, artistically and emotionally, and to listen to myself and to others with attention and compassion.

I suspect that a good deal of my Dad's lack of interest in his health was related to him not wanting to get bad news from the Doctor. I'm sure that Dad didn't feel that great much of the time, struggling with lack of sleep, few close friends, no emotional support network, a poor diet, and loads of stress and accumulated guilt and sadness.

My Dad was from the "don't air our dirty laundry in public" school, which is fine if (A) it's possible, and if (B) you have a plan in place to actually deal with your private problems on your own. However, the main thing I learned from being raised with that outlook is to avoid bad news and wait for things to get better on their own. Serious changes sucked then, and they still do. This is a common reaction to events that seem to be too much to deal with - that seem to be outside of your control.

In physical terms, at 214 pounds, I saw myself beginning to resemble my late Dad. Although I had quit smoking at 18, and don't drink too much (haven't been tipsy or buzzed more more than a few times in the past 20 years), my gradual weight gain and a few bouts with lower back problems had begun to frustrate and worry me.

A few years ago, as a Christmas gift, my wife gave me a few free hours with her personal trainer. It has turned out to be one of the best things that anyone has ever done for me. I have kept going to this trainer, appreciated her advice and support, and have gradually developed a healthy attitude towards exercise. I've found ways to integrate low-fat, healthy eating choices and over 40 minutes of brisk walking into my daily routine. However, until recently, I never really paid attention to how much I favoured carbohydrates and "sweet" foods, and how bad my after-meal crashes were becoming.

In the past couple of weeks since my pre-diabetic diagnosis, my outlook has transformed from disappointment and worry into a feeling of hope and enthusiasm. This experience is giving me the boot in the ass that I needed to start making more significant positive changes to my diet and lifestyle, and to encourage me to step up my exercise regime to another level.

I'm fortunate that I was informed early on, and that I can look forward to learning more, and hence, gaining more control over my health.

A Lovely Home, on the Sea...

2010-07-17T16:19:00.003-07:00

Today, my wife and I checked out Open Houses in Vancouver's lovely (and busy) Coal Harbour. We weren't in some $400K high-rise condo though (although there are a lot of those to be found - we were down at sea level, looking at detached homes for under $200K. Real detached. In fact, they barely touch the earth. They were floating homes, or sea homes, moored down at the Coal Harbour Marina.

Living in a sea home has been a dream that's been growing in our minds for a couple of months now. It's not for everyone: you must buy the home, and then pay yearly moorage, kind of like living in a trailer park. In the Coal Harbour neighbourhood, I bet moorage runs in the neighbourhood of $900/month, which is enough to make most people run for the moorage-free hills. It amounts to almost paying two mortgage fees, so if you can't float that, you're sunk for sure.

There's definitely a novelty, "gee-whiz" factor (if you'll permit me to talk like I'm from the 50s) to living in a house that floats. Back in the 80s, when I worked as a pedi-cab driver and studied art down on Granville Island, I looked at the floating homes all the time. It seemed like a pretty sweet life if you could swing the money part: $350-$500K for the home, plus whatever the Canada Mortgage and Housing Commission decided was a fair moorage rate. Still, bobbing around on the water, watching all the ships, sea birds and an occasional seal go by, and walking 5 minutes to the local shops to stock up on goods.

Local Futurist and columnist, Frank Ogden (aka "Dr, Tomorrow"), lives in a funky sea home, that resembles the nose of a submerged 737. Sailboats and Yachts are coming and going alkl the time, so the neighbourhood is varied, to say the least.

Today, we did a tour of three extremely cozy sea homes in Coal Harbour: "Cumberland", "The Caribou" and "Sweet Pea", all seemingly built from old fishing vessels or something, and quite charming in their own way. Check them out here:
http://www.vancouveruniquehomes.com/FloatHomes.ubr

("The Caribou" reminds me of the kind of sweet, oddball place that Popeye the Sailor might retire to. It also has the largest deck of the three we saw, located on it's roof. Overall, it's a bit too small for us, but still just as charming as hell...)

In addition to Coal Harbour and False Creek, there are a few Marinas that have floating communities: Mosquito Creek, just west of Lonsdale Key on the North Shore, and there are others in Richmond, Fort Langley, and in Ladner, near the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. There's also Fisherman's Wharf Marina in Victoria, BC. Here are listings of sea homes in these other locations, most of which are a bit less expensive than Coal Harbour: http://www.floatinghomes.com/classified.htm

We're city mice who require lots of shops or at least one 7-11 and two coffee joints within walking distance of our humble abode. Victoria appeals to me very much, but North Van seems the most likely for us, Our cunning plan is to pay off our current condo mortgage over the next 10 years or so, sell it for a nice profit, and buy a sea home all-in, and then use profits from the sale to cover the first year's moorage fees, etc.

It's not a cheap prospect, but I think we can do it. Oh - what a lovely dream...

Memories of Rocking GM Place, Tibetan style...

2010-07-12T21:15:00.003-07:00

This is kind of an update to an ancient post I made back in 2006.

On Sunday, July 11, 2010, my wife and I attended a Tibetan Fundraiser at the Van Dusen Gardens. There was a silent auction, Tibetan food, lots of jewelry and CDs on sale, and the place was place was jammed with people. Coloured flags inscribed with little messages hung from the ceiling and everywhere, and even though we were shoulder-to-shoulder, standing room only, in over 30 degrees of heat, there were a lot of smiles to be seen.

In the main meeting area, there was a stage, and on it, a variety of live performances of music and singing, mostly children or young people who appeared to be teens and pre-teens singing folk music. We watched two monks playing those looooooooooong Tibetan horns, which was pretty neat.

But, for me, the day was made by this one boy playing his three-stringed Tibetan guitar. He twanged away on his guitar-thingie in time with the beat of the song, and in time with the little boy who was enthusiastically singing the melody. Then, in a space between verses, there came a guitar solo, and something about his playing seemed familiar to me. The kid began rocking out on his Tibetan folk tune: I watched him lean way back on his hips like Jimmy Page, with the body of his instrument way down below his hips, and the neck pointed up high. There was a familiar and distinct air of confidence in his posture. He was rocking out, Tibetan style, and having a great time!

After a moment, I became convinced that I'd seen this kid play before. I am sure I saw him at GM Place, playing the same way when the Dalai Lama came to Vancouver in 2006. And boy - that time, he was on the big screen in front of tens of thousands of people, and his Jimmy Page posture really caught the attention of the crowd.

He rocked GM Place with his three-stringed Tibetan guitar solo. Right on kid.

http://ejohnlove.blogspot.com/2006/09/dalai-lama-dialogues-in-vancouver.html

A Visit to Klahowya Village in Stanley Park

2010-07-04T15:21:00.004-07:00

Today, we went to Klahowya Village in Stanley Park. In place only until September 2010, this aboriginal-themed attraction is set around the Stanley Park Locomotive and the Children's Petting Zoo.

After walking along the quiet path that took us around the perimeter of the miniature train tracks - which amounted to a peaceful stroll under the leaves, looking at native symbols and carvings that had been placed among the trees - my wife and I settled down and sat in front of a small pine stage that had been built over top of a little pond, and looked freshly-cut.

Two native women sitting to my right were chatting away, getting to know each other. The one right next to me said that she was from Alert Bay and her daughter would be dancing in the group that would be on next. Soon enough, the dancing troupe was introduced by the our host, who was a Hereditary Chief of the First Nations up in Alert Bay, BC. The mother next to me was very proud of her daughter, saying how she danced all the time with a few different groups, and that she's always traveling with one group of the other.

The other woman asked where Alert Bay was, and what it was like. The mother described to her seat-mate how she'd spent a long time in the residential school up in Alert Bay, starting as a child in 1964. She said her Dad had been in the residential school too, and that it was school in the Military style. She said that you weren't supposed to be Native back in those days. School tended to end at about Grade 8, and those who continued on with their education "wouldn't be considered Indians anymore - they'd be like white".

The Hereditary Chief up on the stage said that between 1885 and the 1990s, the Federal Government of Canada mandated the Indian Act - the residential school system - and that this legislation had caused so much pain and suffering for Aboriginals. (I read later that the last residential schools, located in Saskatchewan, was closed in 1996.) The Chief said that the Government of Canada didn't realize the damage they were doing - the pain they were causing - and he went on to say how fortunate he felt to be able to demonstrate traditional dances and songs which had been passed down to him from his father to people of all races, who came from all over the place. He said he was proud to promote his culture. He said that just a few days earlier, we had celebrated Canada Day, and as he looked out at all the different colours of faces in the crowd, we should each be proud of our own unique culture. He said that when he traveled with his troupe, he was always proud to say he was First Nations and a Canadian.

After the performance was over, we clapped and said goodbye in the word that the Chief had taught us. As we walked off, he was teaching a young boy how to use a native drum. I heard his laughter halfway out to the parking lot.

Mum's Birthday, 2010: Connecting the dots between my Parents and Groucho...

2010-06-19T14:58:00.008-07:00

Every year, on the anniversary of my Mother's birth, I post a little something about her on my blog. This year, I missed it. Her birthday comes a day or two before Father's Day this year - a chance to remember my Dad. I missed that too.

So now I'm taking time to raise a glass (a Grande Americano, really) to each of my parents, and spend some time reflecting on their personalities.

Angela Huntley Love (nee Clarke) was a complicated woman: a talented musician and singer, an amateur actor (Victoria Gilbert and Sullivan Society), and generally full of lively talents both realized and unrealized. Angela could be loud, boisterous and manic (literally), or quiet, withdrawn and depressed. Each of us has our polar extremes of behaviour, but her poles were a bit farther apart than most people.

Angela would sometimes doodle this little cartoon bird for fun. It looked kind of like a crane, with a round head, large pointed beak and long flowing neck. He always had glasses and smoked a big fat cigar. It was obviously inspired by Groucho Marx. Even as a little kid, I could recognize Groucho's face, even if I didn't know his name.

The maiden name of Angela's Mother, Edna Ursula Marks, might phonetically have spurred in her an affinity for Groucho too. I can only guess. Angela was also a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, as was the famous Mr. Marx.

So nowadays, while I'm re-reading Steven Kanfer's excellent biography of Groucho, I'm hearing little refrains from Gilbert and Sullivan, and thinking of Angela.

My Dad, James Evan Love, loved Groucho's speed and wit. Intelligence, and a fast mouth with which to use it, equated to a form of strength or power - something to be admired. Groucho was the comic rebel of my parent's generation.

Dad used to love to paraphrase Groucho, saying "I'd never belong to any club that would have me as a member." True to his word, Dad belonged to no clubs.

Well, maybe both of them were members of The Lonely Hearts Club.

Hello, I must be going.

I love you Mum and Dad.

Here's to you both...

Owe Nothing: Taking Book Marketing to the next level...

2010-06-05T15:33:00.008-07:00

Ah, Spring. A time for growth, renewal, and positive change. And spring cleaning.

My personal web presence at www.ejohnlove.com has been in play since 1998, and has been the home of a variety of online personal shrines and pet projects, not the least of these is "True Life", my personal family memoirs project.

Creating Characters, and a world...

In 2002, during a particularly bleak period of unemployment, I reacted to my frustration and lack of control with an old, familiar escapist reaction: I began developing a habit of writing fiction. Scribbling in my notebook on the edge of my bed in the late and early morning hours, I created a cast of characters and a world for them, through which I could tell stories that spoke about the events and values of my personal life. I created a mythical family and others, composites based on real people. Jack Owen and his family, friends, his motel home, and his fictionalized Vancouver-Kingsway neighbourhood resulted from this. After 7 years, countless Starbucks runs, and seemingly endless, paragraph-by-paragraph writing and editing sessions, my first novel, Owe Nothing, finally came into being in April 2009.

September through October of 2002 had been an incredibly productive time for me. Not only was that when I began writing the first scenes of Owe Nothing, but it was then that I developed ideas for many of the characters who appear in the book, and also when further ideas for related stories were roughed out in my notebook.

My second novel, The Two Sisters (currently in progress towards a first draft), was sketched out in 2002, and not long after Owe Nothing launched online with Trafford, I revisited my notes for Two Sisters and started trying to flesh them out into a full-length sequel.

It was around this time that I realized that I might actually have a second novel in me, and maybe even a third one after that. I realized that this fiction writing thing was starting to become a major preoccupation, and maybe I should think about evolving it into a minor occupation.

Taking my book marketing to a new level...

In the first year since publication, I've confined my marketing and sales efforts to anything I can do online, particularly on some sort of semi-automatic basis. A Facebook page, AdWords ads, Twitter, promoting and linking my old fiction page (http://fiction.ejohnlove.com) in directories, blogs and message boards all over the web - I tried a number of tactics. While these may have helped somewhat to get me some web visitors, none of it seems to have resulted in any sales - if Trafford's records are to be believed, anyway.

I began to feel as if I were flailing around ineffectually, so I decided to find myself some good advice. Nowadays I'm taking counsel from a book marketing pro, and thinking about the future of Jack Owen, the character, and of E. John Love, his official biographer. It's time to move Jack and the "Owe Nothing Universe" off of my personal hobby site, and develop a separate new web presence - one that gives Owe Nothing and any related stories the focuses they need and deserve.

It's time...

Meditatng on Personal Freedom...

2010-05-21T21:56:00.004-07:00

In recent weeks, I've been researching mental health - manic depression (now called bipolar disorder). In my second novel, The Two Sisters, one character (one of the Sisters) has struggled with manic depression most of her life, and has been in and out of hospitals and halfway houses over the years. Her name is Rose, and by the time her nephew (and the novel's main character) Jack Owen meets her, she is a long-term resident of British Columbia's provincial mental health hospital.

Rose is based, to some degree, on my experiences with my mother, Angela Huntley Love (nee Clarke), who struggled with manic depression, depression, and alcoholism continually through her life. Mum seemed to always be somewhere in the middle of extremes of behaviour: happy, laughing, loving and normal sometimes, and loud, loopy, drunken or depressed at other times. As a kid, it was difficult to know who she was, or how to feel around her.

My Mum was an enigma to me. I can honestly say that I cannot remember having more than one or two actual conversations with her in the 12 years she lived with me. Perhaps it is unfair of me to think that way. Kids' perceptions are often very subjective and skewed. I wish I could have known the lovely, charming and talented musical performer that Mum's friends and family got to know. Anyway, water under the bridge...

After bouncing in and out of a few private hospitals over the course of a year or two, Mum finally landed in the Burnaby Psychiatric Centre on Wilingdon Avenue in Burnaby. Dad explained that this facility was essentially a "holding pen" for patients who were bound for Riverview.

Riverview. That name was a caution to me back then, something to be feared. Dad used to warn Mum: "Angela - behave yourself, or you'll end up in Riverview!" I never took this to be an idle threat. Dad's voice conveyed the worry and stress that told me that Riverview Hospital was not a good place to go. It also sounded like the kind of place that you didn't come back from. These are the kinds of words that form stereotypes which tend to stick with you. And they did.

Mum was admitted to Riverview in 1980. Our first few visits with her were extremely difficult. Looking back, now that I'm almost the same age that Mum was when she was admitted there. However sick and brain damaged she might have been, she was aware of what was happening to her, and she was scared to be left alone in that place. Once or twice, we had to leave her while she was crying and calling for us to take her home again. It was absolutely brutal, and I'll never forget her scared cries and her desperate face, pushed up into the little window in the centre of the ward door. It's an awful moment that haunts me to this day.

Back in 1977, not too long after her father Ernest died, Mum went into a prolonged depression. She rarely rose from her bed or the couch, except to eat, drink, or vomit. Initially, she stopped eating meat, and eventually, she stopped eating altogether, and did nothing but sleep. We lived with this for a long time, and it was rarely ever acknowledged.

Finally, one day, my little sister Kim couldn't wake Mum up (a moment that traumatized Kim for years). Kim's frantic protests got Dad to call the Doctor. Dad didn't want to deal with the reality of Mum's situation either. My few happy memories of my Mother are all I have, and my little sister has no personal memories at all.

Mum's liver had quit, and if she had been at home for 24 hours longer, she'd have surely died. As it was, she'd suffered permanent brain damage and a fair amount of recent memory loss.

Mum went through a full transfusion at Burnaby General Hospital, and after she had detoxed and was able to see us again, I noticed how much her personality had changed. Her personality was almost like a clean slate. She was much more direct and basic in her needs, and she never ever brought up the past anymore, the way some people do (raising old issues, or chuckling over shared memories). The person she had been was changed forever, and now, it was almost like we had a new, different Angela to get to know.

Mum didn't seem to have any concept of how her own actions or inactions might have put her in that situation, and she didn't seem to get that she'd never be able to live alone or independently again. How could we leave her alone in the house during the day? She never blamed anyone else though. There was no bitterness directed at her situation or towards anyone in particular either. She just wanted to come home. She cried for it.

The character of Rose is a bit like Angela, and shares an event which happened to Angela. In "The Two Sisters", Rose's meds are adjusted on the advice of a new Doctor, and she changes from her regular quiet, almost vegetative state, and becomes much more lively. During this time, Rose has slight episodes of mania, but otherwise seems quite normal. It's during this "awakening" that Jack is able to ask her some questions about her past, and about his late mother Barbara, who was Rose's cousin.

Jack's Aunt Rose becomes something of a surrogate mother figure for him, and has her own brand of road-worn wisdom and street smarts to impart. After a week or two, Rose has a particularly bad manic episode, complete with hallucinations and violence. Reluctantly, her Doctor is convinced by his peers to reinstate Rose's original drug regime, which returns her to her passive, non-communicative state. Jack feels as if he has lost Rose, but continues to visit her periodically, providing her with some companionship and care in his own way.

Rose's "Awakening" episode is based on my Mother's similar experience. Around 1991, late one evening, when I was thinking of going to visit her, I got a phone call from a Riverview Nurse, telling me that my mother wanted to talk to me. This had never happened before, and I listened with a pounding heart as this slightly excited, frantic-sounding voice greeted me. I spoke to her for a few minutes, and told her how nice it was to hear her voice, told her I loved her, and that I'd see her as soon as I could. Then, after we hung up, I immediately called my Sister and we laughed, cried, and were generally amazed.

However, when I went up to see her, she'd already been put back on her old regime of meds, so that phone call is the only window I got into who my Mother might have become. I just never got there in time, and that phone call feels like the last true contact with my Mum, even though I continued to visit her in person on and off over the next four years.

I decided that Jack deserved a few weeks' worth of that wonderful awakening so that he could get to know the real Rose.

I don't believe in Ghosts, yet they keep coming back...

2010-04-24T15:51:00.006-07:00

This morning, I was given a nice little snapshot of my Mum and Dad from the days beofre I was born, back in the sixties, when they had a house in Saskatoon.

A relative of mine - a lovely lady named Bonnie - phoned to ask me for the addresses of other family members so that she could update her family tree project. Of course I said I'd be happy to help. (It turns out that we've both been updating family trees using the same source material: a family tree that had been begun back in the 1960s by one of my Dad's cousins.)

Bonnie told me that she'd last talked to my Dad back when he and my Mother were living in Saskatoon, in the sixties. (This would have been before 1966, when I was born.) Bonnie recalled hearing my Mother playing piano in the background, which is a nice image to be reminded of. I always feel grateful whenever some family member or friend mentions my Mother, like a gift of recognition has been given to me personally. She has been such an enigma to me for so many years.

Bonnie also remarked that my Dad possessed a photographic memory, which doesn't surprise me much, given his ability to recall details and specific events in his past.

My folks have been dead for quite a few years now: Dad since 1989, and Mum since 1995, yet it takes to little to stir them up in my mind. I must be carrying them around in my hip pocket (or somewhere closer to my heart, I suppose).

Words are so powerful. Thanks Bonnie for yours, which evoked the ghosts of my Mum and Dad so strongly for me today.

Owe Nothing: Two Reviewer's voices help me to listen to my own...

2010-04-02T17:42:00.012-07:00

In January, I entered an excerpt from my novel, Owe Nothing, in the 2010 ABNA Amazon Fiction Contest. I held no expectations of success - at least that's what I told myself going in. There were 5,000 entries along with me, in the General Fiction category - to me, it seemed like a big field.

In March, I learned that Owe Nothing had succeeded to the next round, along with 999 other contestants. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't happy about that!

The underlying question motivating me to enter a contest like this must have been " How good is my book, really?" I spent years writing it, paragraph by paragraph, with little to no outside input as the first draft came together.

I finally started getting feedback in April 2008, after Owe Nothing was finally published. I would never disparage the opinions of the readers who've been kind enough to offer me their feedback on it. They went cover to cover, as far as I can tell, and seemed to enjoy the story, and I appreciate that. Most of the feedback I've received has been enthusiastic and positive, and I must say, gratifying or even comforting. But, my eyes are open - Steinbeck, I ain't. I tell myself that I can see myself clearly, and that I'm a relative babe in the woods in the world of fiction.

All the same, I was a bit disappointed to learn in March that I'd not advanced to the next round in the ABNA contest. 500 writers advanced, and I was not among them. I shrugged this off, swallowing a tiny dose of disappointment.

To set the scene for the reviewer's comments, the excerpt I submitted was from the second or third chapter, where the main character, Jack, and his pal, Parm, have been called into their boss's office at the Paradise Car Wash. Their boss, Bill, wants to recruit them into a covert group of evening vigilantes called "The Insiders", who are engaged in spying and courier operations all over greater Vancouver. Parm and Jack are not convinced by Bill's offer, so Bill plays them a recording from a man called "Ed", who explains their mission in idealistic, somewhat moralistic terms that resonate with Jack more than Parm.

After this, Bill takes them out to his storage shed behind the car wash and shows them the bullet-riddled car that belonged to the last operative - a man who'd recently left his employ very abruptly. Bill might have been trying to discourage them with this evidence.

Later, away from Bill's office, Jack and Parm have a long discussion about the risks and benefits of joining the Insiders, and the possible motives of their handlers.

A few days after learning that I'd been eliminated from the ABNA competition, I received an email from the contest advising me that there were reviews written about my submission. I was curious to know what the judges or reviewers of the ABNA contests thought, so I went online to read them. Having been written by 'Professional Reviewers', I knew Iwould give their feedback some weight. Plus, I was waaaay curious to read what they had to say.

The first review from ABNA said that the "dialogue between the two individuals trying to figure out whether to take the vague offer to do the angel's work " was the strongest aspect of the piece, and that the weakest was "the recorded voice giving directions and reassuring the operatives that they're doing good", which was considered to be "very reminiscent of the TV show Charlie's Angels". This reviewer felt that Owe Nothing was "good, well-written" and "creates some tension, but I'm not quite sure where it is going at this point".

The second review from ABNA said that the excerpt "has trite dialogue with phony dialect and inflection", and felt that the story was unoriginal, too focused on the inner monologue of one character, and too derivative of "tough guy, private eye fiction".

The reviewer that gave the more positive review seemed curious about how the story would progress. The other reviewer was turned off, and not interested in reading the rest of the story.

Now, some personal admissions of my own:

I have steeped myself in old-school "tough guy, private eye fiction" over the years, particularly the now dated, but undeniable masters of the genre, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Contemporary writers like Brad Smith and Elmore Leonard have also been influential.
To a certain degree, I have consciously set out to write like them. Perhaps that's just a symptom of a novice in a beloved genre. It's fair to ask myself if this emulation serves the story or just serves my own personal enjoyment.
I do indeed write to amuse myself, first and foremost.

I must also admit that after I wrote that scene in Bill's office, I did chuckle at the similarity to "Charlie's Angels". Looking back, maybe this was a kind of vague parody - a tongue-in-cheek homage to aspects of low-brow TV detective fiction that could have subliminally influenced me.

I'm fairly philosophical about this kind of feedback. Some people dislike low-brow dialogue (or perhaps more accurately, dated, or poorly-executed low-brow dialogue), and some accept it. I really don't take myself all that seriously, but I'll admit that the first few chapters of Owe Nothing are written with less confidence and more self-consciousness than the rest of the book. Maybe I shouldn't try too hard to make characters (or the voice of the story) sound a certain way.

I pondered all this while watching "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", Steve Martin and Carl Reiner's hilarious tribute to (and parody of) 40s tough guy detective movies. After I watched it, I did begin to notice that some of the idioms and colloquialisms uttered by Raymond Chandler's character, "Philip Marlowe", in his novels seemed a bit overdone, or too much of their time.

I think that all feedback can be potentially positive if you can learn something useful from it. I'm going to keep on studying, and keep on writing. Jack Owen has a few more stories to tell, and if he keeps at it, they will probably get better and better.

Owe Nothing - a different look at life in Vancouver...

2010-03-13T23:55:00.003-08:00

Recently, people from all over the world have been watching Vancouver, BC perform at its best, and there certainly is a lot to be proud of.

This city has many sides to it, and truly, no two people experience this town in the same way.

Owe Nothing is a non-mainstream look at this city: an adventure novel based upon real people and places that I knew when my family lived in dodgy Vancouver Motels for over a year. The names of the people in Owe Nothing are fictionalized, but the events and feelings are based in reality...

Meet a few of the characters...

Jack Owen:

A young guy looking for adventure, and an escape from his lower-class rut. By accepting a bizarre job offer, he soon discovers that the back alleys and rooftops of East Vancouver hold more mysteries than he may be able to hide from his Dad or his Sister.

Parminder Singh:

Jack's buddy from work, and his companion through some bizarre surveillance tasks that they've been recruited to do for a man they've never even met. Parm's not sure if this is on the up and up, but he'll do it for the money.

Mike and Chris Coffey:

Brothers, and friends of Jack from the neighbourhood. They've got to find a way to get rid of their violent alcoholic step-father Ted, without their mother Regina finding out. Maybe Jack can help them...?

Read more at http://fiction.ejohnlove.com

The Reviews are Good:

So far, readers have given me some very positive feedback:

"Awesome", "Engaging, endearing... with a deft humorous touch", "a great read!", "A real coming-of-age story", "Vancouver is a city without much appreciation for its history... you've rendered a great service with such a vivid picture of that time and place"

Recently, Owe Nothing also got a very good professional review from Apex Reviews:

"With an effective balance of wit and suspense, Owe Nothing is an equally compelling and entertaining read. In skillful fashion, author E. John Love has crafted an enjoyable tale of a lovable loser in search of a bit of adventure. An engaging, endearing tale with a deft humorous touch, Owe Nothing is a rewarding literary treat."

Read the full Apex Review.

Check out Owe Nothing on the web
Become a fan of "Owe Nothing on FaceBook
Follow E. John Love on Twitter

In this for the long haul...

2010-03-03T22:09:00.003-08:00

Man, whomever said that life is a marathon wasn't kidding. Of all people, Milton Berle was quoted as saying that "life is one long street fight". Personally, I'll bet ol' Uncle Milty was one tough old sonofabitch. A lot of those old vaudevillians were pretty tough folks.

I don't know. Life seems to be cyclical, with some events pumping you up towards success, and other events smacking you down, so that you can rediscover the coppery tang of fear and humility.

You know how it is: Life seems to be meandering along reasonably well, and you're doing a good job of not paying attention to those nagging little voices that are telling you to not take each day for granted - that stupid, correct voice that tells you that the status quo is just a contrivance of your mind - bullshit, in a word.

But, like the darling ostrich that you sometimes are, you keep a pleasant smile on your face (even though you're worried and not extremely happy at all) and you keep your head buried deep under the surface of your daily routines (down where your ears are just muffled enough from the truthful opinions around you).

You might remember being called "wise" once when you were young and still did everything that you were told. You might act brave and tell yourself that your previous experience with stress has prepared you to hear the bad news, but come on man, if it happens again, you'll probably be just as afraid this time as you ever were all those other times. Admit it. It's scary.

It's funny how stresses seem to come in groups, like cars backing up during rush hour. They come from all the different "fronts" of your life: Work, Family, and Friends.

It's from the stress of the unknown in the economy, and how that might negatively affect your livelihood at some point. You can't guarantee your financial security.

It's from the stress of hearing people whom you love utterly falling apart, reliving horrible past traumas, and knowing that no matter how hard you work with them, love them, and counsel them to reach their closure and peace of mind, you cannot make them see the solutions until they are ready to see it for themselves.

Maybe it's the aggregation of all the small worries that creates some new thing that threatens to become overpowering: You are not in control of any of it - you can only control your own actions and reactions. You're as much along for the ride as anyone else is.

People will make mistakes and hurt themselves, or hurt those whom they love. People will push themselves too far emotionally or financially and have a breakdown, parents will fight each other and overlook how it injures their children. I will try to live up to the label of "wise" and give out as much love, compassion and guidance as they can stand to hear. Some of it may even stick.

I truly believe that failure isn't falling down - it's staying down. Life may or may not be "a street fight" (sorry Milton), but I absolutely will get back up and I will stand tall, because at the end of the day, that's all I have. But, my hands will remain unclenched and open, my fingers unpointed, so that I am able to reach out to someone else, to help them stand up, so that they can stand tall next to me. Just because existence is suffering, it doesn't mean we must face it alone.

Owe Nothing has Advanced in Amazon's 2010 Breakthrough Novel Awards

2010-02-27T15:36:00.006-08:00

A good start: I'm excited to report that Owe Nothing is now one of 1000 entries that has advanced to the second round in Amazon's 2010 Breakthrough Novel Awards!

This fiction contest is sponsored by Amazon and Penguin USA. I'll keep you posted...

Check out Owe Nothing on the web
Become a fan of "Owe Nothing on FaceBook
Follow E. John Love on Twitter

Spam, as poetry (or "O, yes, into a thousand similes. This file defines the custom interfaces.")

2010-02-21T22:09:00.005-08:00

At work, back in 2007, our spam bucket received this message.

Here is my theory on the genesis of the following bizarre prose:

Mix tech docs, pulp novel and just a smattering of Biblical prose, and voila - vile spam prose!

Just go with it. It almost works...

Here it is, the theory. Suddenly she stood up, very pale, and with a strange light in her eyes.

Blood, blood, blood, was rushing through his entire body. Evening's coming on, and we
ought to get a move on.

Nevertheless, the average user can still gain much important information from them. WX5DX presents the Best Cyber Ham Award.

By the time I tipped my hat back, he was past us. There was undisguised respect in his voice.

Just because you bought the disc, don't expect to use it in some way in which its owners don't approve. I still squirm and emit low moans of remembered embarrassment.
Min discovered she was hugging Rand's unconscious form tightly. Starts an asynchronous invocation of a method of an XML Web service.

For some clear answers to such questions, see the no misunderstandings page. You can
populate a cfgrid with data from a cfquery.

They did not pause to rest along the way, but passed through Alundil at a rapid but
dignified gait. The steak, Flint swore, was the best food he had ever eaten. On the creative arrow, structural information is lost, and on ours it spontaneously reforms. You must specify all three options explicitly.

Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him That with his very heart despiseth me. You must
specify at least 2 characters, for example, US.

O, yes, into a thousand similes. This file defines the custom interfaces. Believe it or not, there doesn't exist an example for every single possible coding practice in every possible platform. But Perrin knew he did not have Mat's way with the girls.

An excerpt from my second novel, "The Two Sisters"

2010-02-21T21:50:00.003-08:00

The following little scene is from my second novel, tentatively called "The Two Sisters".
This will be a sequel to my first novel, "Owe Nothing".
I hope you enjoy this little preview...

"Jack looked down at his plate, still preoccupied with thoughts of the Paradise Car Wash. He wondered what to eat next. The more he sat back and thought about the Paradise, the more crazy the whole thing seemed, as if the farther away he got from the place, the more different (and maybe more objective) his view of it became. The idea that a car wash could front for a secret operation which fed information to law enforcement (or god knows who else) sounded utterly fantastic and completely ridiculous. Car wash attendants acting as amateur field operatives - it was like something out of a bad novel, except it became all too real once he was hip-deep in some operation with Parm. As unlikely as it seemed, it had turned out to be financially rewarding and exciting work, and on more than one occasion, Jack had proven himself to be surprisingly adept at spying on people and appearing natural while recording the sights and sounds around him. Even though the idea of skulking around old warehouses or creeping down dirty alleys would never have appealed to him if anyone had suggested it, once he'd started doing the night-time work as one of Bill's Insiders, he was amazed to learn that in practice, he got a huge rush when doing something that could be considered dangerous or even illegal. It was a weird thrill, and a guilty, secret pleasure.

Jim looked at his quiet son and wondered what was eating him, and why he was eating his dinner. Then Kelly noticed her Dad's interest and looked over to Jack as well. “You're not still working at that car wash, are you Jack?” she asked. Kelly had always tried to be supportive of her little brother, but it used to grate on him that she'd never thought very much of that job."

Check out Owe Nothing on the web
Become a fan of "Owe Nothing on FaceBook
Follow E. John Love on Twitter

"The Night I Met Einstein - by Jerome Weidman"

2010-02-21T21:45:00.002-08:00

A great story about Albert Einstein:

"When I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philanthropist. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments. Apparently I was in for an evening of Chamber music.

After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe to unplug my ears. At once I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right.

“You are fond of Bach?” the voice said.

I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and the ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein."

Read the rest of the story here:
http://sivers.org/weidman

Real ink on paper? Where's that going?

2010-02-14T15:39:00.005-08:00

In my life, I wonder if ink on paper is slipping away from me, just a little bit. There's something reassuring about a newspaper: you know what it is, it's size and shape and depth are self-evident.

Yet, I now receive much more info each day on my Pre than I could ever read (or need to, for that matter). Online news text has replaced the newspaper for me. I have never subscribed to one of the local dailies, and rarely pick one up. I think that eventually, I'm going to do most of my reading on my handheld.

Podcasts (mostly the CBC) and MP3 music files have started to replace my radio. It seems like more motorists listen to the radio than others, these days. (I'm just guessing...)

The "convergence" that people have referred to in mass media is the tri-fold convergence of broadcast, print and computer technologies. At leat, that's what I learmed back in Media Class, back in 1988. Like Vannevar Bush's idea of a "Universal Machine", computers and digital tech have co-opted, transformed and consumed the roles of older analog media. Digital is a medium for media, or a medium about other media. A meta-media?

Now, is the "convergence" truly occurring between my mind and the Internet? It seems like that digital immediacy that I've become used to in the past 5 years is the kinds of convenience that's most likely to change my perception of the world around me.

A few 2010 moments in Vancouver...

2010-02-13T20:54:00.002-08:00

Went to downtown (Vancouver) to check out a few Olympic venues and see what we could see. Truly, the nicest moment today was seeing how social people are to each other on rapid transit! Normally, folks don't just up and chat with each other on SkyTrain (our light rapid transit system). Normally, folks just keep to themselves.

Today, it was like being in a rolling living room, with folks freely chatting away across the aisle with complete strangers. It was nice to see...

My 2nd favourite Vancouver Olympics moment: A few dudes on SkyTrain, all wearing parkas and tuques, and I hear one say to another "How's it going, eh?" (And for real... not in that faux-hoser way).

I know that's not the same spirit as everywhere else in the city right now... Every large event like this carries with it a fair degree of controversy (remember Expo 86, anyone?).

It's nice to see friendly, welcoming spirits though, even if only because it's a party, and company's come.

what is love anyway?

2010-01-24T13:41:00.003-08:00

what is love anyway?

is it feeling special, or making someone else feel that way?

is it romance and romantic rituals?

is it believing in someone when they don't believe in themself?

is it dedication or loyalty?

is it putting someone else's needs before yours and not taking them for granted?

is it a state of being or just a state if mind?

who do you love?

prototypes of life

2009-12-28T22:33:00.004-08:00

Your father becomes the model for all fathers and authorities.

Your mother becomes the model for the idealized or typical woman.

Siblings become rivals, competitors, and perhaps even friends.

Learn! Look! Break out and redefine yourself!

Time is your one enemy. To yourself be true!

the new tablet

2009-12-27T00:19:00.003-08:00

I just bought a Wacom graphics tablet.
It's my first tablet since maybe the KoalaPad on the Commodore 64. Seriously.

It will be nice to keep the ink, graphite or pastel off my hands, but this new doodad is going to change how I draw again... It will take some practise...

Living in the Digital Multimedia Domain...

2009-12-26T13:51:00.006-08:00

Our urban world has become this freaky, converged, digital bubble.

As a post-boomer, I was born long enough ago that analogue, mass broadcast and print media were the dominant ways through which information was received. You listened to the radio every morning at breakfast, you read one newspaper on weekends, you read an occasional book, and you watched TV every night. We had 13 or so TV channels. Interacting with this information went as far as turning the page, or changing the channel. If you were very brave or opinionated, you might write a letter to the Editor.

Everyone probably watched, listened and read the same information as their neighbours, and getting access to some special information, like something historical or non-mainstream, meant physically travelling to the local library and going through the card catalogue and searching little code numbers on the spines of books until your neck was sore. (Microfiches were cool though - like using a history microscope.)

Multimedia, if you could call it that, started coming into my life between 1973 and 1975, when my classroom had a Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputer, and those workstations with audio cassette players for listening comprehension. It wasn't all that far removed from the Disney audio-slidestrips you could buy back then: "When Tinkerbell rings her bell, go to the next slide! *Bing*" and then you dutifully pull the little cardboard strip one slot to the right and wait for the lady on the tape to start telling you the story for that slide.

Now, 30 years later, if you live in any remotely-urbanized area, you probably have Internet access and cellphone coverage. Most people have little telephones in their pocket that have 1,000,000 times more computing power than that TRS-80. Mobility and access to information and communication wherever and whenever you want it, seems to be the defining characteristic of the current generation. Kids in their tweens have access to and are in almost constant contact with friends and family in a way that, mentally and psychologically, makes them more socially integrated and less physically present than their parents must ever have been. Global village, and global tribalism, I guess. Media and information-wise, we've changed from the mass, cookie-cutter approach, to the individualistic, a la carte menu. I find the number of TV channels available for a digital subscriber to be bewildering.

As a curious kid, I used to ask myself questions about my life or my world. Occasionally, I'd read a book to seek an answer, but most often, I'd watch a TV show. TV made us consumers of images and sounds. It changed us from page turners to channel flippers, and as a race, it probably trained us to absorb information in multiple different modes, like pictures AND sound AND text.

The next step was interactivity. Video games and other multimedia presentations showed us how immersive an interactive experience could be. We now live in an era where cinema and interactive games are becoming more and more integrated. Video games look like 3D animated action movies, and big-budget action movies possess sequences that make for good video games.

To me, the Internet, and Google in particular, is the most significant reference tool that has entered popular life in the past 20 years. Where would I be now if I wanted to research something for my next novel? There's no way in hell I could ever find the time to go down to the library and dig through some stacks or whatever. But, I can pull out my Palm Pre, enter some keywords into Google and email the results back to my Desktop PC at home. Google has replaced the Librarian, and Wikipedia has replaced the Encyclopedia Britannica. Convenience and instant access have surmounted the authority of institutionalized experts. And, it's freaky how quickly and easily I accepted Wikipedia as a reliable source of facts.

So, is it ironic that I'd use modern wireless networking and Internet-based research tools to create an old-fashioned paperback novel? Are printed books dead? Will people continue to read once they start seeing books that can read to them, or show them a video, or act out the scenes in high-res 3D? Although for years now, I've received my daily news text on my smartphone (and have read a few novels in PDF or eReader formats), I think that I'm still in the transitional phase of print. Nothing seems to legitimize the written word like a physical book, a good ol' paperback novel. I don't know anyone who owns a Kindle eBook reader, but maybe it's just a matter of time.

The Good Son

2009-12-26T13:34:00.004-08:00

The Good Son writes love letters to his old family whenever he can. He writes of how he remembers them, together and whole, with sun peeking down from between the pine trees and the smell of freshly-cut lumber in the breeze. These are some of the nice things that he wants to remember and memorialize. The Good Son feels loved now, and wants to portray to his world a lasting image of a family that did love each other once.

The Good Son writes other letters sometimes: letters asking his parents to forgive him for not saving them if he could. Or, he writes angry letters asking why they did unforgivable things to each other and themselves, and he wonders how he can forgive them.

The Good Son tries to be the Good Husband, the Good Uncle, the Good Colleague, the Good Friend, and the Good Samaritan. He wonders how good he is, or why he needs to be good at all.

One Good part of him builds and maintains a relationship with his familiar family of ghosts. The other Good part is in training: learning more and more each day to reach out to the descendants of those ghosts, and build real relationships for the future.

Bittersweet, those little twinkling lights...

2009-12-22T22:30:00.004-08:00

Do you know that quiet moment, that happens around Christmas time? That beautiful, gentle, sweet moment? That calm, peaceful moment when all the lights in the house are off and everyone is in bed, but you're still awake? That moment when you get up and the only lights that are still on are those on the Christmas Tree or on that string of lights that you hung up as a decoration in the living room?

Although the lights are very small, they seem to emit more than their capacity in brightness and warmth. Joy isn't even physically possible from a light bulb, yet somehow they seem to beam that out too.

I have the same reaction every year: The warmth I feel is the warmth of security, where I'm part of my own loving little family. The satisfaction of having built a home where the lights can shine warmly, and where a boy doesn't have to decorate the Christmas tree all by himself because his parents are passed out.

Christmas can be bittersweet. Indeed, there were a few sad and nasty, painful Christmases, but that same kid remembers lots of good ones too. The kid remembers a real tree that smelled like pine, and the texture and weight of 40-year-old Christmas lights that probably were hung up dozens of times by his Dad's Dad, with their wrinkled cords and cracked, faded bulbs that had all but lost their tint.

The kid remembers elegant and beautiful tinted glass baubles that spoke of his Mother's family with their sense of fashion and style. Then, there were also those home-made decorations composed of egg cartons, pipe cleaners and glitter that spoke of school projects, leaner times, or of your parents back when they were kids themselves.

So, during these nights, sitting with that little string of sparkling lights glowing warmly at you in the dark, many of those old memories and feelings will creep out as you look back into your past. They're the tiny, twinkling reflections of you as you once were. They're the last remnants of the people you loved, and the magic moments from your youth, streaming back out to your adult self like million year-old light from ancient stars.

Words of Wisdom, from a wise and gentle man...

2009-12-20T21:55:00.002-08:00

Each year, my wife receives a letter from the man who was her Special Education professor at the University of British Columbia. His name is Bob Poutt, and he instructed teachers at UBC for many years. His students are known as "Pouttians", and there are many, many of them.

Each year without fail, we receive a Christmas letter from Bob. He is always eloquent. This year, Bob 's Christmas letter contained some very beautiful words, poetry, really, and to me, it illustrates Bob's spirituality, and his humanistic, compassionate approach towards living. Please take these words to heart:

"Life need not be counted in candles or measured in numbers of years. Instead it may be counted in awe and intimacy, in triumphs, in benefits of belief, in laugh lines, in personal intensities.

"Life need not be counted in candles or measured in numbers of years, but in plans accomplished with effort and surprise, with possibilities we followed boldly, with compassionate responses, with hopes and beliefs kept alive.

"Life need not be counted in candles or measured in numbers of years that have flown. Instead it may be counted in devotion and delight, in deepending friendships, in connecting with loved ones, in building family, and in all the sweet momewnts we've known."

Hell is other people's bathrooms.

2009-12-07T22:54:00.002-08:00

Sometimes I think that Big Brother isn't in the Government like how George Orwell predicted. Real life is even more subtle and insidious...

Sometimes, I think it's found in the mundane everyday things that are embedded in my world:

In the prescribed amounts of soap and water doled out by well-meaning ergonomicists and accountants in public washrooms.

In the watchful gaze of overly-interested cops, litigious lawyers and over-active doctors.

In some Engineer's idea of how much length of paper towel should be dispensed so you can dry your hands.

Hell really is other people.
Or maybe, Hell is just other people's bathrooms.

Trial by Hair

2009-11-13T23:35:00.003-08:00

Getting hair coloured is becoming more and more of a production as the years go by. Luckily, I'm in good hands.

The colour itself has the consistency and temperature of yoghurt. I remind myself that I asked for this but I feel self-conscious about the process every time. Chris the hairdresser is awesome, low key fast & pro every time. I'm just self conscious about how I look during the process. I always imagine myself taking before, during and after photos, but I never do it. I think that I wouldn't want to embarrass or distract Chris from his important work. The man has a job to do and a schedule to stick to.

Halfway through applying the colour, the top of my hair is slicked down flat and the untouched ends with their faded old colour curl out and up like two big upturned wings of hair. I start to snicker when I realize that I resemble Flat-top from Dick Tracy (the movie, not the comic book).

Now I'm apparently so grey (white to be precise!) that my head must be heated under a dryer in order to open the cuticles and 'push' in the colour, so Chris puts a plastic bag on my hair and a metal clip on the front which looks odd and feels odder. Not a good look for me.

While I'm wrapped up in plastic like I have an expiry date, I must sit under the noisy magic helmet for 20 mins slowly heating my hair (and scalp and maybe brain) to some requisite colour-penetrating temperature. It's a great time to get some important writing done. Or this.

A little bell goes ding and I say that my egg is done. Nobody laughs or seems to notice. Oh well.

After the hair dryer, I sit back in the barber chair with the plastic bag on my head for 20 more mins. My scalp is all hot burning and tingly. When the bag comes off there's a rush of cool air and it feels like my brain can breathe again. Chris brings me a coffee. I feel rewarded.

The shampoo is the best part. Period.

Chris gives me an awesome cut. When it's finished, it looks great and I feel pretty damn good about it.

Remembering...

2009-11-11T15:33:00.003-08:00

Watching the Remembrance Day Ceremony on Parliament Hill today, I was reminded of how much sacrifice Canadian soldiers and their families have endured over the past century. It's something about which I have no direct experience, and yet with all the conflicts going on in the world today, something about which I need to remain aware.

There is military service (and "pseudo-military" service) in my family. My maternal grandfather and namesake, Ernest Huntley Clarke, applied to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI, although he was discharged on medical grounds soon after applying. After that, he joined the RCMP, and served at posts all over western Canada over the next 30 years.

My Dad, James Evan Love, enlisted in the Canadian Army in the 1940s, missing his chance to go over to Europe during WWII. Someone had measles or smallpox, so his entire group went into quarantine, during which time the war ended. He served as a Military Policeman, and distinguished himself as a very good marksman in various competitions. Later, Dad would join the RCAF and study radar and communications, flying in planes like the Hercules and the Lancaster Bomber.

One of his other sons, my brother David, also served for many years in the Canadian Navy. I'm sure that there are also Uncles and cousins who've worked in the military, and of whose stories I am ignorant.

Watching the ceremony from Ottawa, seeing the faces of the veterans from WWII and onward, I was struck by the amazing variety of eras, cultures, conflicts and generations that were represented. Yet, when a voice called "Attention!", it looked like the whole assembly, hundreds of veterans and personnel, adjusted their stance in unison. With all that cultural and temporal diversity, there was still a common understanding of duty and personal sacrifice.

Not crossing that bridge...

2009-09-20T16:46:00.010-07:00

I've only ever mentioned this story to a few people. It's one of those sad and embarrassing episodes that is uncomfortable to tell, and yet, important to talk about.

When I was about 10 or 11, my Grandfather came over from Victoria to visit with us. While in Vancouver, he stayed at the old Alcazar Hotel (long gone now, I believe). Poppy, as my sister and I called him, was formerly a Corporal in the RCMP, and by all accounts, a gentleman and as they say, "a stand-up guy".

My mum wasn't with us, so I assume this was during a time when she was temporarily under some Doctor's care, perhaps at Riverview or somewhere else. As kids, we just knew that Mummy wasn't well, and that she was away and we really didn't know when she'd be home again.

We all went for a car ride in Dad's 1968 Plymouth Valiant. Dad was dressed in a white long-sleeved dress shirt, no tie, and dark dress slacks. Normally, he'd wear a coloured or patterned shirt and roll up the sleeves, so the white dress shirt meant that this was a somewhat formal Sunday event. Kim and I were dressed in nice clothes as well. For the life of me now, I cannot remember if this "Sunday drive" included a visit to see our Mother, but it's a distinct possibility. My Mother would be the first person Poppy would want to see, and a major reason for his visit to Vancouver. My Mother was always very dear to Poppy, and he to her. For all I know, as genial and respectful as my father always was to his father-in-law, there might have also been a bit of tension between them, or some resentment from my Dad, seeing how much his wife idolized her father. (I can only speculate, and will never ever know.)

Anyway, Dad drove us all through town, with Poppy in the front seat and Kim and I in the back. The day was a clear and cool, with sunlight coming through the occasional cloud. We drove quietly through the West End of Vancouver and into Stanley Park. This was probably my first look at Stanley Park, and I enjoyed seeing how green everything was, and how many trees there were.

Dad seemed very quiet and didn't say very much at all. I thought his mood was strange. I didn't realize what was really going on with him.

As we approached the Lion's Gate Bridge, I saw Dad look in his rear view mirror and say something. Just before the bridge, Dad pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped. A Police Officer came up to his window and said something to him, and Dad went into his pocket and handed over something. We all got out of the car.

Dad's face was down, and his expression was very dark. We stayed by the car with Poppy while Dad was led over to the police car. The policeman put Dad's hands behind his back. I saw the glint of the handcuffs and heard the clicks as they were fastened around Dad's wrists. My Dad had been arrested for driving drunk. I'm certain that he was deeply ashamed of himself. Back then I felt so disappointed in him, and also sad for him.

The bottom had completely fallen out of our strange Sunday family drive, and we stood by the side of the road with the cars rushing past and no more sense of purpose. Kim asked Poppy something, and then Kim and I began finding a way to place or distract ourselves until a cab would come and take us home. I don't remember Poppy getting angry or even saying much at all. He kept his opinions to himself for our sake.

Thank god Poppy had been there with us. I loved my Dad, but this time, it was Poppy who was the one I looked up to.

I hate Sinatra... except when sung by this other guy...

2009-08-24T21:09:00.002-07:00

It seems like all the local Starbucks have begun playing old swing era crooners like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Tony Bennett. I'm not a Sinatra fan, especially when I've heard "New York New York" numerous times, with each Americano, over the past two weeks.

But there's one exception: I loved hearing Sinatra when he was sung by this other guy...

Here's the story:

My wife Grace and I were sitting in our local 'bucks, crowded on a Sunday, with chattering patrons, and the same Frank playing on the speakers, yet again.

As Frank started unrolling into the second verse of "New York New York", I started hearing voices behind me. Above them, one weak voice, getting louder, singing along "Top of the Heap! A-Number-One! King of the Hill!", getting louder, and the people behind us chanting along, going "Yeah buddy! Right on!" It was a mentally challenged man, out with his housemates and his care workers, standing up with his arms outstretched, singing for all he was worth in his happy little voice, as if he was belting the chorus out right in the middle of Times Square. "Newwwwww Yoooorrrk!"

As the song ended we were all smiles, and Grace and I, and all the singer's pals and their care workers gave him a nice little round of applause. It was a sweet moment, watching someone else's unbridled joy at the act of singing...

To me, much better than anything I ever heard from Frank Sinatra...

Wiggle out of that corner, writer boy...

2009-08-03T21:05:00.005-07:00

Joseph Campbell wrote about "The Hero With a Thousand Faces". I just had an image of my next novel having a few faces too - maybe not a thousand, but perhaps half a dozen or so.

Okay... three. I got three.

1. Framework: The Laws of my Universe

My story has a skeleton, a framework, a basic structure upon which everything else is mounted. For me, this structure helps to define the "physics" of the world in which one or more events take place. My particular framework has a few premises, such as "you can't fly or change the laws of physics", "people are born, live, and die", and many other premises that make the world of the story resemble my own reality to a large degree.

Psychologically, in some cases, dreams or imagination can be just as real or have as much impact on my characters as their waking experiences.

Real-life experience, or research that results in plausible actions and events - cause and effect - is what drives the creation of the framework, and helps to determine it's structure.
Thank God for Google. I do not know how people researched things before it.

2. Believability: Dancing on the Edge

Once I've have established a plausible-sounding story framework, I feel that any fantastic-sounding elements which I introduce don't need to be overly fantastic in order to surprise, or hopefully entertain, my reader. I think that this juxtaposition of expectations is similar to how the same middle-tone colour can appear to be darker or lighter in tone, when placed next to black of white. In other words, context is key. But how much unreality is tolerable? How much camp and wit is acceptable? How many cliffhangers can the reader stand? That kind of exciting stuff rarely happens to me. How much unbelievability is believable?

3. Dialogue and Characterization: "What are you lookin' at, Bub?"

How should people talk and behave and react to the things that happen to them? Admittedly, this is largely subjective territory, although in some ways, this aspect, which encompasses things like culture, age, society, "life" experience, and strong plot-lines, is connected to and driven by (or perhaps just interacts with?) the "Framework" aspect and the essential laws of my world.

Sometimes, this aspect of writing becomes easy and almost automatic, and for me, occasionally emerges almost spontaneously, almost from within itself. Some dialogue or setup scenes emerge in a blur, like raw material forced through a die into an extrusion that seems to have just the exact profile that's needed at the moment - a "Fuzzy Pumper Writing Factory". This experience is a major high in the process for me, emotionally.

At other times, writing is like digging a well with your fingernails - a real tough claw through very hard and stubborn territory. That's where I end up questioning myself as a writer, questioning my raw material - my past (that well that appears too dry to give me anything useful at the moment), and questioning my endurance as a writer. At these times, writing feels like a real elusive bitch-goddess... That's when I find myself going back to do more research, or seeking inspiration from other writers or from stories in other media, or just dropping the project for a little while.

But man, when I can get it so I can see that character's face, smell their hair, their cigarette smoke, and can see right through their skull into their minds, it feels like I know exactly what to say for them. When that happens, the well runneth over, and the paragraphs seem to grow and grow.

That's when it's fun to write.

Once upon a time, there was a boy with a song...

2009-08-03T20:38:00.003-07:00

Once upon a time there was a boy
Who put his past on display for others to see.

"My life made me different, special" he sang.
"There's nobody else quite like me."

As he grew older, wiser too,
He learned that what he'd thought of himself just wasn't true.

People are unique, beautiful, intricate things,
Worthy of story and the songs that we sing.

But singing has been done over countless years,
Infinite songs sung to infinite ears.

So, no matter what you sing, your song isn't new,
No matter how hard you try.

But if you come up from the heart,
you may find that your true tone resonates and makes someone else ring.

Solos are nice, but the boy learned
that nature wants us to sing together.

Some words for my old man, for Fathers Day...

2009-06-20T20:51:00.005-07:00

My Dad was possibly born in the wrong era: I think there was an adventurer in him, or a cowboy of some sort, trying to live a black and white life, while contradictory and complex psychologies and modern mental illnesses swirled around him. My Dad always told colourful, exciting stories of his past, that made him out to be the hero and the good guy. He was an MP in the Canadian Army, and flew in big planes when he was in the Air Force. In his heart, he was conservative and authoritarian, and in his best moments, he was firm but fair.

On the outside, people in our neighbourhood would probably see my Dad as a fairly quiet, silver-haired older man (my friends' Dads were in their forties, when mine was in his late 50s), and someone with a serious, lined face which got softer as you approached it up close.

To me, as a kid, Dad was the toughest, strongest man on any block. Physically, he could take care of himself using his voice, his head, or his hands. Even when there was more than one guy against him, swinging bottles at him, he would walk away the winner. When I was nine, we lived in a rough neighbourhood. When he had to be, my Dad was a fighter, and I was so proud of him.

When I was 11, Dad become a single parent when my Mum almost died, and went to stay in a succession of hospitals. Dad always knew what needed to be done in most situations.

When I was 13, I got a bad case of chickenpox that kept me home from school for a couple of weeks. Then, he was the nurse, dabbing calamine lotion all over me until I thought I would throw up. Past this age, I stopped kissing him goodnight - not because I didn't love him, but because we understood that it's okay for little boys to kiss their fathers, but men don't kiss like that.

As I got older and more self-sufficient, he got frailer and more dependent. When I was 17, I was by his side when he suffered a heart attack and multiple strokes, and a fractured hip. We were both scared as hell for him, yet he found the strength to say "I love you boy" to me from his temporary bed in the ER. He became helpless for a while, and had to learn to walk as part of his stroke rehab. He was learning to get back on his feet (literally) and I was getting on my feet, acting the part of a responsible young man. I started looking after the house as best I could, and he learned to walk and talk and move his limbs. We were reversed.

The sad part of Dad's physical downfall was that it came about as a result of years of alcohol abuse, smoking, stress and poor health. The lesson he taught me indirectly was that to live my life the way I wanted, I must take better care of myself than he did. He also taught me that addiction is a mysterious and bewilderingly powerful thing. After he was "healed" and back home after his many months of rehab and therapy, he began drinking again. Within months, he had another stroke, and was back in hospital, this time for good.

By the time I was 18 or 19 years old, I was aware of my Dad's weaknesses: how the same temper that gave him strength against other bad men, was a horror when brought to use against his wife or me and my sister. We learned that sometimes, his drinking or his temper meant that we could not trust him, or feel safe around him. I learned that addiction is a bitch, and the strongest man I knew was also the weakest man I knew. As I witnessed how he let himself lose control to his addiction, I vowed that I would never be that weak in that way.

Now, at 43, and after years of reflection, both loving and resenting him posthumously, I see my father as a fascinating composite of the best and worst traits we all posses: a complex man who could be gentle and loving to little children, animals, or those closest to him, and a man with a fierce pride and temper which could seem insurmountable when challenged.

At his best, he was an intellectual trapped in a blue collar, with an ability to explain aspects of electronics, RF or particles like mesons to his curious son. He was literate enough to quote Will Rogers, tell me about a Jazz trumpeter he liked, and to know the lyrics of some musical theatre on TV. He was silly, laughing along to Blazing Saddles or Wile E. Coyote.

At his worst, he was alcoholic enough, unhealthy enough, and probably depressed enough to permanently ruin his relationship with my sister, and never reflective or honest enough to admit to his own weaknesses. The hero that I had as a little boy was still inside him somewhere, but years of stress, poor choices and bad living eventually overshadowed all that dreamy, good stuff.

In his last years, Dad seemed to find his peace living semi-paralyzed and bruised, in a small room in a private hospital in Burnaby, where I'd visit him every week. Often, I'd cycle over in time for the 7:30 pm snack of sandwiches and tea, and we'd chat and watch some TV, and later I'd help him find something which he had misplaced.

He couldn't really take care of himself at all anymore, but he had 24 hour care if he needed it. In a way, his earlier life choices had taken away his later choices as well as his responsibilities. Sometimes, when his old ego and sense of self-importance would flare up, his dependence upon others would frustrate the hell out of him. Other times, he appeared relieved to not have to make decisions or deal with the stresses of life anymore.

Up until the time he passed away in 1989, Dad was one of those story tellers whose tales got bigger and better each time he told them: "The older I get, the better I was", as they say - that was my old man. Often, I would arrive outside his little room to find him sitting in his wheelchair with his chin propped up on his good hand and a dreamy grin planted on his face, probably dreaming of some adventure that had happened somewhere else, way back in the day when he was still someone's hero.

Wherever you are, old man, Happy Fathers Day. I still love you.

A short biography of James Evan Love

That faint artistic thread...

2009-06-14T22:13:00.006-07:00

As I've slowly, gradually backtracked through my family history a little, I've come to see a number of artistic abilities in my relatives. This became one of the first commonalities that told me I shared some kind of values with someone else: the artistic urge.

That lousy lost feeling, growing up...

When I was in my tweens (like, 11, 12, or 13), I didn't know much about my family history. Perhaps this is the same for many kids from a dysfunctional family background: the sense of not belonging, the detachment from family, or sense of "being different". On the other hand, maybe that was just what was going on for me... As a kid, a sense of belonging felt important, and it never seemed to materialize in my life to that point. I always felt like a bit of an outsider to the world around me, like I didn't fit in, or was not fully integrated. I wasn't part of it - just watching it.

I saw lots of disparate pieces of life, but could not draw them together into any sort of cohesive whole relationship; there was no overall structure or system that bound life together for me. Stuff just happened, and it was hard to make sense of it all.

I also had no religion, nor any real spirituality. I didn't (and still don't really) believe in god, and saw many organized groups as havens where misled suckers consoled and supported each other. As I have grown older, and learned more about religion and spirituality, I've developed a healthy respect for religious belief and a healthy skepticism of much of organized religion. (I have great respect for another's right to believe whatever they wish, so long as they harm nobody else while doing it.)

I liked rationalism and science a lot. Practical, scientific inquiry always made some sense to me, and nature continues to awe and impress me. I'd never seen a club for atheists (why would people who don't believe in something need to come together in common cause?), and science and rationalism were everywhere I looked for them. Affiliations seemed useless.

The closest thing that ever approached a sense of the mysterious or spiritual for me was the peace that I experienced when drawing, or when absorbing myself in some literature, including pulp fiction and comic books. Something fascinating and special happened whenever I drew, coloured or looked at art that I liked: a feeling of calm, and happiness, a sense of peace. That's as close to a spiritual mystery as I have ever gotten then and since.

In the family...?

I had always known there was a little artistic flair in my Mother's family. My mother, Angela Huntley Clarke, was a talented amateur singer and pianist, and had acted in amateur theatre productions with the Victoria Gilbert and Sullivan Society in the '50s. Something in her loved music and expressing herself.

My Mum's father, Ernest Huntley Clarke was a prolific amateur photographer, documenting his life, his wife and his only daughter with hundreds of stills and moving images over the course of 40 or 50 years. "Poppy" (as my sister and I called our maternal grandfather) was also a dabbler in oil painting, and we had a few little landscapes he'd done in his later years, in his cramped little basement studio. I still have Poppy's old Walter Foster art instruction books in my bookshelf.

My mother's cousin, Shirley Nash (nee Marks) has always been a passionate oil painter in traditional still life and landscapes, and taught and encouraged painting privately for many years, in her community in Apple Valley, California.

As for my Dad, James Evan Love, although I never saw him play an instrument, apparently he could read music a bit, and could carry a tune. My Dad's brother's wife, Palma Love (nee Lovstad) was an incredibly skilled self-taught painter, who made many oil studies of local boats, and harbour and river scenes (including water traffic along the historic Skeena River) for many, many years, from her home up in Prince Rupert, BC.

To refer to my eldest sister Maggie as "quite musical", would be an understatement. Maggie has taught music to elementary school kids for years, and in her previous career, picked up a couple of Junos. Her partner, Bill Usher, has four of his own, and according to my brother Dave, this collection, sitting in their livingroom floor, is affectionately referred to as "The Clutter".

Maggie's eldest, Michael, is a musician as well, and has recently worked as an actor. My sister Kim, writes poems for herself and for friends.

For my own part, I feel very fortunate to have been able to develop a love of doodling and colouring into a professional career that has expanded on those basic impulses in shape and colour, and has projected them into modern media, in pursuits like web or graphic design. On a more personal front, fiction and storytelling has become my favourite art form in recent years.

So, there is this tendency, this artistic thread in my family, this need to create and express in some tangible way, whether it is for entertainment or as part of a profession, or whether it's for pure personal, emotional, or spiritual completion.

In that way, I think that I feel more connected than ever to my family, and to a lesser degree, somwhow connected to a long line of artists and designers going back through history, who, I expect, also probably had their own personal creative and spiritual revelations by making art.

My novel, "Owe Nothing", is now available for purchase at Trafford.com:
http://books.trafford.com/08-0266

Writing the novel was fun! Marketing it... not so much.

2009-05-30T15:28:00.005-07:00

...but that's life, right?

In my naivete, back in the heady days April 2009, I imagined that the act of publishing my novel "Owe Nothing" would automatically bring some level of attention, and - more importantly to me - some new readers.

Money is great, but to me, it's a by-product of the other success: popularity.

Back in 2008, as I slowly reached the final editing stage and started thinking about the publishing process, I wondered how and if my little book would make some kind of splash in "the market". I barely understood what "the market" is, much less had a plan for penetrating it successfully.

(Hm. Let me rewrite that last bit...)

...much less had a plan for joining it successfully.

(Better.)

A few things I've learned or opinions I've formed since April 17, 2009, when my book first went live on the Internet:

I probably expect too much from the webbed world, for my sporadic e-marketing efforts. As with my personal web projects, I am throwing a pebble into the sea, not a boulder. The initial splash and it's ripples won't be noticed amidst all the other motion of the ocean.
In many ways, it is the author or their personality or reputation that are being marketed, more than the work itself. Am I prepared to market myself in this way? I've certainly had a life worth telling. Is that the hook that will get people's attention?
I only need between 100 to 1000 fans. There are, I don't know, millions of authors out there, vying for attention! Good god - how would I ever be heard in a room that size? I am trying to find smaller groups, more targeted to me and my stories. "Sniper marketing", instead of a weapon of mass promotion. (Gee, I hate that metaphor.)
Physically, books have a long lifespan. In popular terms, less so, unless you can stir up their relevance in some way. A book can be a flash in the media, and then linger in old age in discount bins and archives for many years. Maybe all I can hope for is that copies of my book will outlive me...
I want feedback, commentary and reviews. Me and my jangly nerves survived the critiques back in art school. I'm ready. This is all part of the growth and refinement process. But, I must go out and make an effort to solicit the feedback I need. It won't come to me, and many ways, won't come for free.
At the end of the day, the story's the thing. I'm not in this to be a marketer or a salesman for my own wares. I'm in this to try and affect people and connect to them by telling my own story, thinly veiled behind some entertaining avatars.

Casting a play with composite characters

2009-05-25T09:35:00.003-07:00

My first novel, Owe Nothing, was finally published on April 17, 2009. This is, of course, the achievement of a personal goal that took me years to accomplish (I write slowly). It's also an accomplishment in how it has allowed me to continue writing about my family history, using surrogate characters instead of directly writing about the real people.

Owe Nothing takes scraps and bits of my own personality and embeds them into the main character, a twenty-ish young man named Jack Owen, and to a lesser degree, his father Jim. Jim embodies little pieces of my Dad (also Jim) and of my brother David. Aspects of my sister Kim live on in the characters of Jack's older sister Kelly, and in Regina Coffey, whose struggles with her abusive partner Ted form a central theme in the book. Old men look back with regret on the mistakes and losses from their past, women struggle in abusive relationships, and young people try to learn about who they are and where they are going in their lives.

The list goes on and on and on through the dozen or more characters that appear throughout the novel. Structurally, it represents the method and challenge that I put to myself when originally embarking on this long writing project: How can I use the memories, emotional energy, joy, anguish, smells, temperatures and opinions from my scattered memories, and form them into a cohesive and compelling story.

Almost like a form of psychological recycling; taking images and impressions from my past, reforming and refocusing them, and spinning them out there in a new form. My hope is that it will result in a story that others will recognize and enjoy - something that resonates outside of its pages.

Near Death, and Taxes...

2009-04-30T23:26:00.004-07:00

So, a number of months ago, I was walking to work along Broadway - a fairly busy street - enjoying a crisp, sunny morning. As I approached a driveway, I glanced at an SUV that looked like it was going to pull out in front of me to enter the street. I was sure the driver saw me approaching, and would wait for me to pass. As I crossed in front of the SUV, it started nudging out into the road, and I found myself leaning over the hood, with my feet sliding along the asphalt.I skated like this for a foot or two, hitting the hood with my hand, and immediately, the driver snapped her head to me, and a look of horror crossed her face. Obviously, she hadn't noticed me at all! I must have crossed in front of her hood just as she was checking for oncoming traffic from the opposite direction.

She slammed on the brakes, and I took a breath, stepped past, and waved her off as if to say "don't worry about it". I was adrenalized but otherwise completely unharmed, and wanted to get along to work as quickly as possible. I figured from the woman's facial expression that she might never drive again, and I decided never to assume anything about motorists.

Flash forward to last week: my wife and I were at our local H&R Block to have our taxes done. We were looking forward to seeing the same lovely lady who has prepared our returns for us for the past few years. Sure enough, she was there, and we greeted each other happily, and sat down in front of her desk.

Then she took a second look at me and started saying "Oh my god! It was you! Oh my god!"

I started to realize what she meant: She had been the driver of that SUV that had very slowly run into me! She said that she was so sorry, and that she really didn't want to lose me as a customer - especially not like that! I replied with something cute about how death and taxes always seem to be related to each other.

I saw her again just this morning at her driveway. She was pulling out and I was almost walking past. There was an obvious need to keep our eyes out for each other now, with this little scary moment in our past. She greeted me with a huge, warm smile and enthusiastic "Hello!" and held her hand out of the driver's side window for a handshake, which I happily returned. I said "I saw you!" and she said "You too!" I told her that it was always nice running into her.

Who Watches the Watchmen? We do - Again.

2009-04-27T13:11:00.012-07:00

"Watchmen" is the movie I waited for with anticipation for years. Alan Moore's dark, complicated and apocalyptic story of flawed good and evil - and the difficulty in telling one from the other- became a benchmark, a high water line, for other comic book writers to emulate throughout the eighties and nineties. It was unnostalgic and unsympathetic to the plights of its characters, and utterly uncompromising in its realistic portraits of damaged men and women running around in strange costumes in the wee hours of the night.

So, in addition to being a total Watchmen fanboy, I was happy to learn that Watchmen (like Fantastic Four and other recent superhero movie franchises) was filmed here in Vancouver. Reading director Zack Snyder's blog back in 2007, I'd also learned that a major portion of the city street scenes were filmed on a backlot located somewhere on South-east Marine Drive, near where the southern edge of the city meets the Fraser River. Unfortunately, I had no idea where the set was located, having only seen a couple of promotional photographs on the web.

Yesterday, my wife and I decided to see the Watchmen a second time before it left the theatres for good. Driving from our Starbucks-of-the-day, passing the corner of Byrne Street and Marine Drive, I noticed a large paved lot in front of a warehouse. Standing up on the lot was what looked like half-completed buildings on some sort of construction site. On second glance, I saw completed storefronts, sidewalks, signs and light posts. It had to be the Watchmen outdoor shooting location!

A security guard in a truck honked at us, and waved us off - in other words, it was time to leave!

As we were driving off, I saw the following words spray painted on the back of a set piece: WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

We did... twice in the theatre, and now from behind the scenes.

Relates Links:

Watchmen Movie Photos
Watchmen Backlot
Watchmen Locations (IMDB.com)
Watchmen FAQ

"Owe Nothing" is now published!

2009-04-09T18:52:00.009-07:00

"Owe Nothing" is now available for purchase
at Trafford.com

After a part-time effort that took six years to write, and over a year to edit and publish, I'm very excited to have finally reached this stage!

I hope you will take a chance to enjoy Owe Nothing!

Join my Owe Nothing page on FaceBook:
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Is Fiction a "Do Over" of Real Life?

2009-03-31T22:41:00.005-07:00

Since 2002, I've been writing fiction (well, trying to write fiction), and over the past six and a half years, I've cobbled together a fairly extensive cast of fictional characters, all inhabiting a world that has numerous similarities to my own - but better.

Surprise, surprise.

In my first book, titled Owe Nothing, my main protagonist (there are a few of 'em) is named Jack Owen. Jack is a slang or familiar form of John, or so I have been told throughout my life. (Given that I was apparently named for my grandmother's brother, John Edward, who was my Uncle "Jack", I take it as gospel.) So, Jack is a twenty-ish version of me. Kind of. Or, the me I almost with I could have been when we briefly lived in motels.

Jack's Dad is named Jim, after my Dad. He's about 55-ish, and his main issue is that generally, he questions how he got to this stage in his life with apparently so little to show for it, and with such a weak and tenuous relationship with his son (so he thinks). I'm 43 - not so far behind Jim's age that I couldn't imagine his predicament. Both my Jim and his son Jack are in a kind of life path rut, but while Jack is near the beginning of his journey, his Dad is closer to the other end.

Jack has an older sister named Kelly. I drew a lot of inspiration for Kelly from my sister Kim: her love of animals, her tenacity, and her ability to defend others to her own deteriment. A seconmd character also represents qualities of my sister: Regina Coffey, who suffers through an abusive relationship, and struggles to assert herself while raising her two sons with very little income. Regina is a survivor, but not a prosperer in life.

The world of "Owe Nothing" is a 2001-2002 version of East Vancouver, with a few curious throwbacks or hold-overs from the '70s left intact. The main incongruity is that the two large, neighbouring motels in which much of the story takes place exist at all. The Mountain View Motel (where Jack's family lives) and the Peacock Court Motel (where Regina Coffey and her sons live) were real places, both bulldozed sometime in the mid-1980s, I believe. The motel culture of Kingsway in East Vancouver was dying even when I lived in it briefly, as a kid in the mid-1970s. It was grimy and harsh in places, but also lively and friendly - like a motor-hotel version of a low rent, big city tenement project.

More to come...

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A Good Room to Work In

2008-12-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

A good room to work in is both a luxury and a necessity, at least if you feel that you're someone with something to say, or someone who needs somewhere to store your thoughts and ideas when you're not using them.

A good room to work in is a haven, a safety zone, and a refuge where you can reflect on the past, face your fears and look at yourself with serious intentions for minutes at a time. Perceptions, waking thoughts and even your own breaths are all fleeting and transient, making your desk a kind of shrine to remember yourself by.

A good room to work in can also be a shrine to important memories of people and places. I have created many images of my late parents there. When I think about it, I realize how much I hate the phrase "my late parents". In my own small ways, through images on web sites, on my walls, and in sketch books, or by journals or in my fictional stories, I will try keep them alive somehow

Maybe then, my good room to work in is also a meeting room - a place to commune with the people and things that have made me.

My Life Between Man and Machine

2008-10-28T21:17:00.034-07:00

The Animatronic Andy Warhol...
To me, the ideal symbolic merging of creative imagination and technological processes.

It has just occurred to me: I've spent a great deal of my life caught between man and machine.

My father was an electronics technician for many years. My mother was a performer, an artist. Each of them and their tendencies and backgrounds have influenced me. Although it sounds like a sexist stereotype, my father was usually the calm, rational one - the authority, the controller of my family. My mother suffered from depression - possibly bipolar disorder- alcohol addiction. She could have small bursts of creativity, and be spontaneous, energetic and fun. Dad was the responsible one who kept things running as they needed to. I'm sure that this is where my man-machine dichotomy was formed.

Growing up, I always wanted to know how things worked, and so I would would take things apart to see, only to be unable to put them back together again, and get chastised for "breaking my toys".

All my life, I also loved creativity and imagination. I loved to draw, to colour, and to read picture books or newspaper strips, and to have someone's images and words transport me to another world where my imagination could run free.

Early Ideas of Man and Machine

Since I was old enough to recall, images of human-shaped robots have been a source of fascination to me. When I was four or five, my Dad bought me a fascinating metal walking robot toy. It required four D cells and weighed a ton. Most amazing of all, it walked upright, shuffling forward by sliding its feet one at a time, kind of like a hospital patient in thin slippers. After a few steps, it would stop and doors on its chest would swing open, revealing little guns that would blaze ("rat-a-tat-a-tat!"). After strafing the living room in a 360 degree pivot, it would close its chest and begin striding forward again.

As a kid, I was fascinated by the excellent mechanics of it, and the light-up excitement and cool sound effects. My Dad said he bought it for me at the Rosetown Fair. (Looking back, I figure that it must have been some kind of import from Japan or somewhere. They always make the coolest robot-shaped toys.)

Pre-teen Robot Boy

As a pre-teen, I became a huge fan of the TV show "Six Million Dollar Man". Many of the plots were dumb or a bit predictable, but I was really watching the show to see the electronic stuff that was implanted inside Steve Austin. I wanted to see them roll up his fake skin on that bionic arm and show me the wires and circuits inside. He was a man, but also a machine - a CYBORG ("CYBernetic ORGanism"). I didn't know what Cybernetics was, but I knew that he was a step beyond a human-shaped machine - he was a blend of man and machine under the skin.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a great time to be a science fiction fan. Many science fiction TV shows and movies (most of all "Star Wars") featured at least one android or robot, and usually in a humanistic shape.

My Mom, as a Cybernetic System

In 1981, my mother was admitted for long-term care to the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital. She had suffered permanent brain damage as a result of kidney failure after extreme alcohol abuse. I understood that she had almost died, and that her brain had been irreparably altered. Her memory was altered - memories from most of the past five years were apparently wiped out - and her personality was also different. She seemed a bit more simplistic and direct in her wants and how she expressed them.

By 1984, I had begun to see her as "a broken system" - a burned-out circuit. It was painful and difficult to picture her as a person first and foremost. I loved her in a child's longing, loyal way, but she had never connected with me very well, and I could never recall her speaking more than a few words to me at a time over the years. We never had a discussion in any way. So, in a way, she was probably not humanized enough in my heart and mind, and this remote objectivity and de-personification of her probably served as a convenient screen for me to hide behind. It was probably easier to think of my mother as a broken system than a hurt, scared and lonely woman whom I knew had trouble remembering me and whom I was supposed to love.

The Image of Animatronic Andy

Around 1984 or 1985, American pop artist Andy Warhol was recreated as an animatronic puppet in order to portray him in a "no man show". The image of the robot's pale eyeless rubber face mask layered over the bare steel skeleton stuck with me. It reminded me of my mother's pale, scarred skin, her pure white, short-cropped hair, and her impassable, sometimes blank facial expression. Sometimes, I couldn't read her at all. Occasionally, a prolonged, direct eye contact would be my reward for persevering through a visit with her. It was rare to know if she recognized me at all.

I began to draw images of her face with empty, black holes where living eyes should have been. It has been a recurring image in my head - my internal image of her.

Art School Cyberneticist

In 1985, during my Foundation (first) year of studies at the Emily Carr College of Art, I learned how to use graphics software to create images, and I became a fan of the pixels that made up the images on the computer screen, and a fan of the electronics (or the ideas behind them) that painted the pixels in the first place. I started teaching myself a little programming, and then studying how computers and electronics had been used to create art and interactive, shared experiences.

As I continued to take more of an interest in computers, electronics and artificial intelligence (or "artificial rationale", as my instructor Gary Lee Nova called it, insightfully), I appreciated more about how far A.I. still had to progress, and also how over time, as A.I., robotics, and other technologies progress and converge, we will get closer to building a useful human-shaped helper. This is a big reason why Honda and other major manufacturers have spent so much time and effort developing Aibo and other anthropomorphic, walking robots: they are developing the synthetic Butler's and nursemaids of the future, for an age of Japanese baby boomers.

Throughout my senior years in art school, I studied cybernetics (essentially, the study of systems), and with the help of my classmates and instructors, I developed ways to connect myself even closer to computer graphics by mounting joystick parts on my hands and arms and wiring them into the game ports on Atari 800 and Amiga computers. I wanted to get closer than a keyboard and a mouse, and connect in a more direct way.

And Today...? What Will These Robots Think of Us?

One piece of art that expresses the issues in the "evolving" (hee hee!) of a synthetic race, is "AI - Artificial Intelligence", developed by Stanley Kubrick and directed by Steven Spielberg.

I still think it might be really cool to have a bionic hand, and even cooler to make friends with a robot. Maybe one that's just as interested in me as I am in it. Then, perhaps the "man-machine interface" would be the relationship itself.

About Plucking Old Strings

2008-10-13T20:37:00.007-07:00

As I slowly evolve my second novel, a question that has come up in my mind:

For how long can you mine old emotional veins - pluck old strings - in the service of creating compelling stories?

This question stumps and almost staggers me. When will I run out of gas, and have nothing interesting left to say? Without that, I'm dead as an artist.

I can't see the future, and by myself, I can't answer this question, but the prospect is scary as hell.

Ironically, why would I worry about this when I still haven't even begun the career as a writer? The first story is yet to be published, and I have little idea how good or bad it is as a work. Maybe it's premature to even worry about this... Maybe. All the same, I've got to go there.

What Strings Can I Pluck?

There are a number of themes I can harvest for telling stories of fiction:

A life's potential lost because of manic-depression and alcoholism. What is a person worth? What are they obligated to accomplish?
A father's/leader's loss of control - loss of power and leadership - because of bad choices, age, depression and chronic guilt. Can he redeem himself and his integrity?
A young girl's sense of betrayal because of physical abuse; the horror of the loss of family security. Can she find security and strength?
A child torn between loyalty towards one parent or the other, and fear and insecurity towards each of them. Is the child trapped?
The joy of finding surrogate parents in friends and relatives...
What do you do when your hero becomes a villain right before your eyes? How can you love someone close to you and hate them at the same time?
Why do people carry childish jealousy, envy and pain within them throughout their life? How does it affect the people around them?

...okay, so there is some meat on those bones, I admit, as long as I do a good job of it. But still... there's some insecurity.

However, a recent biography gives me some hope for my creative process in the long-term.

The Life of Cartoonist Charles Schulz

Schulz is the creator of "Peanuts", Snoopy and "good ol' Charlie Brown". He's probably the most famous cartoonist of the post-war era. In the book "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography", author David Michaelis illustrates how a man can mine insecurities, painful losses, and personal defeats, and weave them into character traits, phrases and attitudes that can fuel a small world that people in countries all over theworld have visited for over50 years.

Schulz' Peanuts characters looked like children, living in a world of invisible (or at least off-screen) adults, and yet as a kid, I knew that his kids were telling truths in a sophisticated, grown up kind of way. I didn't understand all of it, but looking back, I think there was angst, cruelty, power issues, depression, love, fate, philosophical pondering, and flights of fantasy, all played out with subtlety and intelligence. There was depth and heartfelt emotion.

I think that Charles Schulz built a world for himself in which he could say the things that he needed to say, to express his truths, through the personas of the little people he created. The fact that he was still expressing these feelings dozens of years after the fact, tells me that he had resonant, meaningful things, unresolved meaningful things, to say. That they resonated with such a large audience for so many years tells me that he was very talented and committed to his art.

There are a lot of crappy, shallow daily comic strips being published today - the three panel equivalent of cheap, rim shot jokes. Schulz and other significant artists, were able to get beyond that, and extend what is a very limiting medium into something better.

I think that if Schulz' material hadn't come from a powerful reservoir of personal experience, it wouldn't have been so good for so long. This gives me some hope for my own efforts.

Walking into Art School.

2008-09-12T22:07:00.009-07:00

Back in 1984/85, I went everywhere with a cheap felt pen and $1.99 sketchbook that I'd bought from Shopper's Drug Mart on Davie. My high-school art teacher, Mr. Prinsen, had impressed on me the importance of keeping a sketchbook, and I tried to be that guy.

1000 sketches of people's faces and the backs of heads on the bus on the way out to Coquitlam to visit my Mother in Riverview. Once, when she wasn't awake, I got a very nice sketch of her sleeping. Slowly, my hand became able to do what my eyes saw. It was a goal that started to give me a sense of control and accomplishment.

Getting There...

Once I decided to apply to Emily Carr College of Art, it became a major obsession. For weeks, I worked on drawings and sketches that might help my portfolio. An older guy named Les Gallus was a practiced illustrator and gave me some advice on prepping my portfolio, plus a little practical tutelage on how to improve a few pieces. He also showed me his portfolio: a collection of slides of 2D and 3D pieces from some art program on the prairies, I think. Les never seemed to have that much interest in actually working for a living, but I never held that against him. He was a super friendly, helpful person, who helped me get a couple of sketches published in the Community Arts Council magazine, and whose advice and support bolstered my confidence. I was scared as hell of going to art school. All I knew was that it had to lead to better experiences than those I'd already had.

When the interview day came, I remember literally walking across Granville Island from my summer job, over into the school's entrance, entranced. My interviewers had been a black haired man named John (whom I was convinced was humouring me - my insecurity at work), and an older, gentler bald man named Dennis, with whom I immediately felt comfortable. I also saw an energetic and slightly authoritarian bearded man in the hallway whom I would later learn was the school's Dean, a gentleman named Tom Hudson.

Weeks (or months?) later, I received my acceptance letter in the mail. I couldn't believe it. At that moment, it was the biggest positive thing that had ever happened to me. I was living with my Dad in an apartment on Hornby Street, although I can't remember if during this time he was home, or if he was in hospital.

I felt like I'd just squeaked through the portfolio interview process, but who knows how. If it's possible, I think I felt simultaneously proud and ashamed of my portfolio pieces - a series of pen and ink drawings and sketches - mostly scribbly portraits of my face and my friends and family, plus a couple of felt pen "pointillist" attempts done in Grade 12. "This art school must have some kind of quota system for taking in new students" I thought later. My East Van neighbourhood felt a long way away. I was 19 and still very, very green in my views.

Being accepted made me want to sketch the people and things around me even more - I felt I needed to prepare myself for a massive new challenge, so I tried to bolster my meager skills however I could. I took a life drawing session down on Granville Island, and blushed a little at the young woman who posed naked while we all scratched away on large sheets of paper. She saw me blushing and smiled at me, so I smirked and blushed some more. Dad would never approve of this, so I never told him. Years later, when I recounted a similar experience in Life Drawing class, he practically lost his temper. "What the hell do you need to draw a naked woman for?!" he almost yelled. "Why not draw fruit!" I almost doubled over laughing at him for that one. My dear old Dad didn't get it at all - not back then. (He got it later, and eventually was 100% on board.)

In what could only have been some subconscious act of self-defeat, I actually slept in on Registration Day! I showed up hours late, in a panicky state, mentally berating myself with every put-down I knew, feeling sure that I had just fucked up the first good thing I'd ever done before even getting a chance to do it.

I wandered around the school for a few moments, not knowing where to go or who to speak with, but soon enough, I saw a familiar face, Dennis Rickett, the older bald English gent who had been one of my interviewers. I explained my predicament to him, and within a moment, I was sitting with two Foundation Instructors, John Wertschek (my other portfolio interviewer) and Sam Carter. Soon enough, they had me slotted into my Foundation classes, and I felt immensely relieved to have my situation sorted out.

Going There...

Like every new school I've ever entered, my art school smelled unique - vaguely like acrylic paint and freshly cut cardboard. This was the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in September of 1985.

The white walls, blue doors and window frames and lego-like IKEA flooring hinted at a modernism that I wouldn't be familiar with for a year or two. Boys and girls with punk hairdos and black leather jackets strutted together looking like and talking about lifestyles that I was sure were foreign to me.

My first class, on the morning of my first day at Emily Carr was Creative Process, with John Wertschek. It felt like some alternate universe version of homeroom in high school: a bunch of young people blinking at each other across wide work tables, not knowing what to say. This was the first time I saw my classmates, and I could tell I wasn't the only young 'un in the room. John had set his room up with black walls, low lighting, and some nice Chinese paper lampshade hanging low over the massive table in the middle of the room. We did an exercise he called "The Rock Game". Everyone took a turn placing or moving a rock on the table. I didn't "know" what the hell I was supposed to do, but I felt something out of it, or at least I thought I did... I tended to worry about things in my life a lot, but that didn't help you in the rock game. You pretty much just had to do the game. I decided the rock game was very cool.

A Pantheon of Heroes, Villians, Gods and Monsters" or "That Wonder Alternate Reality"

2008-06-28T18:18:00.006-07:00

I think that the modern mythologies and worlds that have been created by comic book writers, artists and publishers are nothing short of amazing. They are also worlds that I love to escape to whenever I can.

Little People Talking in Word Balloons.

My earliest memories of reading are the word balloons in the Sunday colour comics section of the Times-Colonist newspaper. I remember the smell and touch of the thin paper sheets, spread out on the fireplace hearth in Poppy's house (my maternal grandfather), at 1002 Cook Street in Victoria, BC. I would be laying flat on my belly with my noise an inch away from the paper, poring over every detail - immersed in some abstract world of various levels of meaning. I was engaged by the colour printing and fascinated by the sometimes crappy registration of the colours, which revealed to me the layered process that created the images and words. I read it all with curiosity and conviction, as if it were my personal bible. Many of the words I didn't understand, but I usually could infer the meaning by looking at the pictures.

The little rectangles of the Sunday colour comics, or the even tinier, more cryptic ones in the dailies, portrayed a small, safe world, full of familiar characters in familiar poses, doing and saying familiar things. It was a welcoming, non-challenging world of boxes - like pretty little presents served up by some unseen hands. I knew that the authors, whomever they were, were not speaking to me specifically, but were doing something like talking through their words and drawings. They were telling me their many stories. And from it, there was that same, warm comfort that I had experienced from hearing a bedtime or school-time story: "Oh boy! A story! What fun!"

Occasionally, I wondered who it was who drew and spoke through "Peanuts" (who was "Schulz"?) or "The Lockhornes". When I was five or six, much of the humour, sarcasm and double entendres of more the subtle newspaper strips, like "B.C." or "Rex Morgan, M.D." absolutely confused me.

Ah, Sweet Sarcasm and Scary, Grown-up Stuff

I have that same maternal Grandfather, Poppy, to thank for my becoming aware of other more mature forms of comics. Thanks to him, I got my hands on my first "Mad Magazine" and on Warren monster mags like "Creepy" and "Eerie". These were probably tossed in the trash by my Dad or my Grandmother, but it was the photographer's eye, and even more, the mischievous little boy in my dear old Poppy which brought me those little glimpses of a more daring, more grown-up and less saccharine world. Thanks in part to Mad (and more likely to my parents), I probably called my sister stupid for the first time, and used a disrespectful, sarcastic tone of voice when speaking to her. After this behaviour earned me a few raps on the head from my Dad, the sarcasm didn't seem quite so empowering.

The Warren mags showed me glimpses of men in mysterious space helmets blasting monsters while protecting voluptuous, scantily clad women. Most of this was beautifully rendered in stark black and white line art. The stories felt just a little dirty, and much more interesting and serious than the shallow Sunday funnies.

The darker, grittier themes really resonated with me as I got older. My earliest comic book memory was of a Batman comic that I thumbed through at a corner grocery store in Langley, around 1972, when I was about six. It might have been illustrated by Neil Adams - it was in his era - but the dark tones and sombre mood showed me that little colour comic books could have an adult level and depth of character as well. At the time, I didn't know why they appealed to me so much, but I just knew that I liked them.

Five or six years later, I rediscovered "Creepy" magazine at a local grocery, and knew I had to have it. Over the next few years, I bought "Creepy", "Eerie", "Vampirella" and "Famous Monsters of Filmland" as often as I could, and amassed a collection of 50 or 60 such magazines. After the Warren mags ceased publication in the early eighties, I began collecting Heavy Metal with much the same fervor.

Heavy Metal brought me back to that same mysterious, bad boy feeling that I'd enjoyed years before with Eerie, but this time, I could understand all the stories and the dialogue, and enjoyed it all in luxurious full-colour artwork by artists such as Bilal, Mobius, Corben, and McKie. I collected dozens of these mags too, and occasionally I will still pick one up today.

High School: A Good Place to Study Comics

Later on, to my great delight, I discovered that my high school library carried many hardcover books on the topic of comics and comic artists. I began to learn more about the origins and development of many famous heroes, and some of the culture that brought them into being.

I learned about Superman's genesis as a character, and the mythology of how he came to Earth as a superhuman protector of the world. I also learned about the Fantasic Four, and one of my all-time favourite characters, "Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds". The classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby story arc from the sixties showed me that little colour comics could contain immense scope in their plots, with grandiose and complex settings like alternate realities, and Gods walking the Earth, and abstract, massive-scale themes like the destruction of the world. With vague references to Neitcheism, Religion and Nihilism, the FF seemed to be written for dope-smoking college philosophy students. It was all served up with that blend of pathos, soap opera melodrama and bombastic exposition that characterized a Stan Lee Marvel tale. For pure energy and bang-per-buck, stuff-per-panel quotient, Marvel kicked DC's sorry ass up and down the block back in those days. The John Byrne era of "Fantastic Four", in the mid-eighties, is to me a high point for that series - a high-water mark both artistically and thematically. "THOOOM!" is still one of my favourite words.

The Best Panteon of Gods and Heroes

The more I read comics, the more interesting, god-like characters I discovered. The Marvel and DC Universes each have their own creation myth, and are crammed full with hundreds upon hundreds of beings, possessing varying degrees of superhuman abilities, comprising a vast pop culture mythological hierarchy. It's so complex now, that it makes the Pantheons of Greek or Hindu dieties seem like a laundry list, and has done a lot to confuse and even alienate some new readers.

All in all, I suppose that all this would make pop culture - more specifically comics - my true religion.

Feel Like I'm Walking Ten Feet Tall

2008-06-28T17:37:00.005-07:00

Happy I'm floating
Around on my feet now
You make me go dizzy
I'm weak at the knees
I feel like I'm walking
Round ten feet tall

Well you say I'm faking
And I say don't worry
The way that I bubble
There's something in the make
I feel like I'm walking
Round ten feet tall

Right, the chemistry is right
This boy has reached his height
The feeling just goes on and on...
From strength to strength
I'm ten feet long...
I feel like I'm walking
Round ten feet tall

How to become a writer, Part 2.

2008-06-19T18:18:00.004-07:00

How to Become a Paperback Writer, in 16 E-zee Steps: Part 2
Note: I didn't say "popular paperback writer" or "good paperback writer".
Just so you know, you were warned...

Need to catch up? Read Part 1...

I am currently stuck at...

14. Here I am, waiting, waiting, waiting...
In late May, I submitted my final, proofread manuscript and my finished cover design artwork and in early June I uploaded related notes and instructions to the Publisher via email. So they now have everything needed to start creating a first draft for me to review and approve.

I have learned that a Printing Technician at the publisher has now finished assessing my materials - probably to see if they can get my draft composed within the 2 hours labour that my Publishing Package specifies. But, progress is happening: I have been assigned my ISBN number. Woo hoo - it's a book.

So, thus far, not much hand-holding through this process as far as I'm concerned (he said, wearing his "worried customer" hat), but now it's *completely* out of my control, so I must wait patiently while other people do their job...

I look forward to the next step...

Earnest Angley's Cathedral Buffet and Life of Christ Display

2008-04-09T21:36:00.002-07:00

Out of boredom and curiosity, I did a Google search for 'earnest oh" (the name of my avatar in Second Life), and came upon "Earnest Angley's Cathedral Buffet and Life of Christ Display".

Holy Cheesey, saw-them-comin'-a mile-away Batman! This is a monument to kitsch that makes other kitsch look pretty good...

How to become a writer, by john.

2008-03-05T22:42:00.005-08:00

How to Become a Paperback Writer, in 16 e-zee Steps:
Note: I didn't say "popular paperback writer" or "good paperback writer".
Just so you know, you were warned...

Get laid off from your day job. Nothing motivates more than the fear of not having an income or a future.

In 2002, I was laid-off after my employer, a small high-tech firm, ran out of money. Pending new financing (which was never a sure thing), I was back in the job market. After a fairly aggressive job search for the first month or two, I needed some kind of creative project to keep me from going totally loony. I decided to start writing a spoof or parody/social drama of the detective/adventure thriller genre, featuring a cast of low-income, East Vancouver characters. I took structural inspiration from Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers, which have been a favourite of mine since I was in my teens.

Sketch out the motivations of your characters. Build the world in which they live.

I started scribbling in a notebook, perched on the side of my bed mornings or nights. I tried to pin down the most significant characteristics of my key characters, basing them on traits from real people in my life. Some traits would be exaggerated to help identify a "type" or class for the character (good guy, bad guy, helper/friend, victim, observer).

Start writing. Keep doing it.

Kinda self-explanatory, but really the most difficult and time-consuming part. I had to just plunge into things on the page and not worry much about structural issues, just to get something down.

Step back and check for realistic frames of reference: time, place, pacing and organization.

As my story evolved and became more complex, I discovered that I really needed to pin down a time frame within which the whole story would take place. I needed to be certain about which events would be happening when, if they'd overlap or interact, and how long (realistically) each event would take to happen. Basically, my hope is that if this kind of detail is tended to, it creates a foundation of realism that can support more fantastic or less-than-likely situations.

Whenever I was outside an area of personal expertise - if I wasn't sure about some fact or technical detail (like a detail in some character's past career), I'd find someone I could ask about it. In my case, I needed some terminology, procedures and place-names for a character who had retired from the military. I am fortunate to have a brother with a military background, and who has friends with similar backgrounds. I ended up with more information than I could use, but something of it will be useful in future stories, I expect.

See Step 3. Also, see Step 3.
Despair may set in. Don't give up.

I started my initial writing and character development back in September of 2002. I got as finished as I could with a "final draft" by February of 2008. That's basically five and a half years of on-again-off-again effort.

Take a break from writing the story, and look at other aspects of the projects.

Occasionally, it was refreshing for me to spend a little time researching on the topics of publishing or book design. Almost all of this was done online. I ultimately decided to self-publish, primarily so that I could *ensure* that my novel would see the light of day under my own terms. I visualized a book being created - a physical novel being in my hands at the end of it. As I got more convinced that I was evolving an engaging work, it became easier to visualize it in some kind of finished form.

Sometimes this was an inspiration. Other times, it was a distraction. Don't take too much time off from writing like this, or the damn thing will never get done!

I was going to self-publish, so it was time to pick a publisher.

I looked at AuthorHouse and Trafford. I selected Trafford because they are Canadian and local to me. You can make your own decision.

When you think the story is done, it probably isn't. Be your own critic.

Take a break from it for a few days or a week. Then, read it through and see if you feel the same way.

Repeat Step 9 as many times as it takes until you feel that the story is bullet-proof.
Hire a Pro Editor and have them do Step 9 too.

I've written enough technical stuff in my career to know that even when I think it's rock solid and has been double-checked, someone else will always find something I missed. I'd much rather be informed of a mistake by a pro on the inside of my project, than by a customer on the outside.

Close the deal with the publisher.

Read everything carefully, phone or email to ask questions about anything you aren't sure of, and finally, sign the contract, and pay the money to do the self-publishing thing.

I like the design part too. Make it a good-looking book.

Even at the edge of some burnout on the project, I decided to create original illustrations and a book cover design for my novel. I decided that people may look more favourably upon a novel that has an attractive, engaging and colourful cover. I wanted my book to look different from the other self-published books. I researched source imagery on the web, and got out the pencils, India ink and paper. And a scanner. And Photoshop. But that's just me.

Here I am, waiting, waiting, waiting...

I have now submitted my manuscript to the Editor, and have begun the cover design artwork myself. I expect to hear from the Publisher before too long, so that I can get a little hand-holding through the rest of the publishing process.

If all goes well...

In a couple of months, I will have a bunch of books with my name on them, and my words in them. I intend to take a good long whiff of that lovely "new book smell" - savour the smell of success. It smells like... victory.

So, is it selling? How well? Who's buying it? Anyone?

Who can tell what will happen here. I'll update this later...

The Power of 1000 True Fans

2008-03-05T22:36:00.002-08:00

I got this originally from Darren Barefoot's blog - a report on the original topic by Kevin Kelly - and a fascinating and empowering concept...

From Kevin Kelly's blog:

...the actual number may vary depending on the media. Maybe it is 500 True Fans for a painter and 5,000 True Fans for a videomaker. The numbers must surely vary around the world. But in fact the actual number is not critical, because it cannot be determined except by attempting it. Once you are in that mode, the actual number will become evident. That will be the True Fan number that works for you. My formula may be off by an order of magnitude, but even so, its far less than a million.
I've been scouring the literature for any references to the True Fan number. Suck.com co-founder Carl Steadman had theory about microcelebrities. By his count, a microcelebrity was someone famous to 1,500 people. So those fifteen hundred would rave about you. As quoted by Danny O'Brien, "One person in every town in Britain likes your dumb online comic. That's enough to keep you in beers (or T-shirt sales) all year."
Others call this microcelebrity support micro-patronage, or distributed patronage.

The Christmas Spread...

2007-12-15T15:12:00.001-08:00

It's feeling like with each Christmas season, my list of cards and gifts for relatives and friends gets just a bit smaller.

Stuff I'll miss or regret this year:

Christmas Gift Exchange and dinner with my sister and her kids. This will be my number one Christmas bummer from now on... I miss them all so much.
Buying presents for my parents. They're long gone (but always loved and never forgotten...)

Stuff I'm looking forward to and am thankful for this year:

Christmas Gift Exchange and dinner with my wife's family (they're really my family too). This is the best time, with lots of laughter, jokes, silly faces and funny photos. I can't wait.
My first cup of Egg Nog and my first mince meat tart. Those tastes often "lock in" the old Christmas feeling...
Christmas Eve or Christmas morning: on one of these, my wife and I will exchange our gifts.
On Boxing Day, my wife and I will do our Boxing Day tradition: Watch a movie trilogy - either Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

...well, at least the "thankfuls" outweigh the "regrets". I'm going to suck it up and donate some money and unwanted goods to the needy. Doing something for someone else is the antidote to feeling blue over your own little problems.

No matter how bad you feel, there's always someone else who is doing worse than you, so help them already...

As for the somewhat shrinking card and gift list, I'll add a few new friends to that too...

Swansons.... Grrr...

2007-11-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

How to make your "Hungry Man Dinner"
(by John)

Remove tray from box. Look at the different compartments for each food group: fried chicken, corn, mashed potato (in theory) and chocolate brownie. (What - no cobbler?!?)
Remove frozen corn from the other compartments and return to the corn compartment. (We can't have any inter-food-group mingling.)
Remove plastic covering from everything except the corn. Poke holes in plastic over corn. (You'd have to be a surgeon to get this part right the first time...)
Replace pathetic, hacked, torn flap of plastic over the corn compartment, and hope that the corn doesn't somehow get over-cooked or spoiled due to your lack of skill. (You ruin everything you touch!)
Put dinner in microwave for Phase One of cooking sequence: 3:30 minutes. (Hurry up! "Heroes" is just starting!)
33:30 minutes later, take out dinner. According to package, "carefully remove brownie from tray and set aside".
Finish cursing and place scalded fingers under cold water for 20 seconds.
Place broken-yet-still-atomically-hot, molten brownie pieces onto side dish, after picking them up off the floor.
Remove remaining piece of plastic from the corn compartment (free at last!) and replace tray in microwave for 1:30 minute burn to cook the Swanson's chicken and potatoes to their yummy completion.
Run to couch to catch a few seconds of Heroes before the second commercial break.
Blow on fingers. (Cold water didn't work that well.)
Return to kitchen and throw brownie parts away. Who are you kidding? It was on the floor.
Remove dinner tray from microwave. Watch out - the tray is hot!
Pick up tray from counter. Blow on fingers. Repeat Step 7 if necessary.
Read label: "Let stand for 1 minute before serving."
If potatoes have the taste or consistency of wet cotton candy, scoop out and throw down the sink.
Re-read label: "Stir potatoes before serving."
Run to couch to catch a few seconds of Heroes before the third commercial break.
Wolf down Hungry Man dinner before end of the third commercial break.
Make some toast to pack in the corners.
Heroes is over, Hungry Man.

Digging on the Family Roots - Part 2

2007-11-17T12:17:00.000-08:00

Since March of 1999, I have been developing my "True Life" web site as a repository of my personal family history and of my extended family history, while I discovered it.

The story section of my True Life site has progressed slowly but steadily over the years, with over 50 illustrated personal tales online in various "story albums". There will be hundreds and hundreds of stories added before the project is anywhere near complete. I figure this will be sometime just before I die, due to the slow rate of my writing, but still - it's progress...
(To read my various life stories, go here: http://truelife.ejohnlove.com)

On the other hand, the Genealogical side, the family tree aspect, had never really progressed much as part of the web project until just recently. For years, I've been gradually entering data from family records, photographs, films and correspondence into a Family Tree Maker database. This has been an on-again-off-again effort, done a few hours at a time, here and there, whenever the urge compels me, or something inspires me. (The most recent inspiration came from Alex Haley's "Roots" mini-series and novel, neither of which I've ever seen until recent weeks.)

I'm happy to report that a family tree and browsable index of names are now on my "True Life" site here:
http://truelife.ejohnlove.com/treehouse/index.html

See Also...

"Video opens old wounds" - The video of Robert Dziekanski

2007-11-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

My response to the post on Patti Gillman's blog, "Truth, Not Tasers", on the despicable tasering of Robert Dziekanski by RCMP at Vancouver Airport ...
http://truthnottasers.blogspot.com/2007/11/video-opens-old-wounds.html

"The video of Robert Dziekanski showed a disgusting level of excessive force being used on a confused, desperate and defenseless man. One media commentator has described the RCMP on the scene as acting like "bullies", and another has stated that the officers stationed at YVR as being among the poorest trained or something. (Maybe it was that the cops posted at YVR were among the least experienced.) In any case, the airport, customs and the cops all failed in their job to help someone in need. It is disgusting that it takes deaths made public to embarrass our public servants and officials into a sense of moral outrage and accountability. Meanwhile this Robert's mother, and you and yours, continue to suffer."

Digging on some Family Roots...

2007-11-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

As a kid, I often felt detached, as if I didn't have a strong sense of family to be associated with.

A good deal of this feeling must have come from my typical pre-teen angst and my constant impression that everyone else had gotten a better deal in life than me. But also, and very significantly, I think it evolved out of the fact that I really didn't have a very close extended family. My Dad seemed to only contact his brothers or his sister once a year (like a phone call on Christmas Day) or less often. By 1977, after we'd been in Vancouver for a few years, my Mum had also lost a lot of her family connections: her mother, Edna, had passed away in 1971, and her father Ernest, after whom I am named, had recently also passed on.

In my Dad's case, he tended to move us every few years for a new job or for some other reason. My Mother, as an only child, hadn't had very much direct family in the first place - a couple of cousins with whom she had been close as a young woman, before marrying my Dad.

It seemed like marriages, jobs, and life in general all tended to pull people apart as a family, but what was done to bring them back together?

My Dad told me stories about his upbringing in Price Rupert, his family, and my mother's family, and it's primarily because of his storytelling that I became curious about my roots and began to form some sense of who I was and who else was in my family.

As I have grown older (and hopefully wiser), it has become easier to cultivate a sense of family identity, heritage or common background. I discovered Genealogy in 1998, and began doing a little research on some family names and birthplaces using the Web. I realized that it was also far easier and more gratifying to write about my direct experiences and memories from my immediate family, than just to research dead relatives, and so my True Life web project was born, and launched in March of 1999.

The story section of my True Life site has progressed slowly but steadily over the years, but the genealogical side, the family tree aspect, had never really progressed very far until just recently, and I can thank Alex Haley for it, sort of.

My wife and I have been watching the mini-series "Roots" and "Roots: The Next Generations" on DVD. I never did see much more than a glimpse of Roots when it first aired back in the late 1970s, so I've always been curious about it, and have wanted to watch the whole series from beginning to end. When I finally did this year, it is a great experience - moving, inspirational, and eye-opening in many ways. Watching Roots motivated me to put more effort into getting my family tree online as part of my True Life web site.

I've always had a picture of my family tree - a graphic chart of it - since the time I hit my teens. My family tree is a yellowed mimeograph of a hand-drawn chart, originally produced sometime in the 1960s by a cousin of my father, a gent named Osborne Love. Cousin Os's family tree chart sat rolled up in a cardboard tube in my Dad's briefcase for years and years, tucked away, and mostly forgotten. Dad showed it to me and my sister once, and we did talk about it. It was interesting, but I didn't know what to do with the information beyond the fascinating first moments of presentation. So, we were descended from the MacDonald clan back in Scotland. Some relation to a woman who helped a guy called "Bonny Prince Charlie" (whom I did know was some kind of Scottish Royalty). Cool, but not connected to my current concerns very much, and so nothing much came from it after that. I now believe that Dad's Cousin Os did a great deal of research over the years, and appears to still be actively pursuing it. (A *huge* tip of my hat to you, Os, for all your hard work!)

Other members of my family have also taken an interest in the family history, researching Love family roots back in Prince Edward Island, citing books that mention old relatives, and giving me details of various people's births, deaths, and life details. Once I started my True Life project, the various documents, stories and records began to take on new significance. Using the paper family tree charts from Dad's briefcase as a starting point, I began building a family tree using a program called "Family Tree Maker", and have updated it that way on and off ever since.

After publishing an initial version of my family tree database to an online "World Family Tree" project, it was discovered by a distant relation named Audrey, with whom I shared a great-great grandmother. Her introduction, how she found me, and our shared relation was a major revelation to me, and I was delighted to receive her grandmother's photographs of my great-great-grandfather, Edward Bright Love, and his son, my great-grandfather, Albert Henry Love, and others. Combining Audrey's photos with cousin Os's documentation, anecdotes and dates gave me, for the first time, a picture of people I had never known about, and it was quite exciting.

Recently, relatives from my mother's side of the family discovered me and my web pages in a similar way, and have offered their comments, memories and inspiration for me to continue onward. Most recently, I finally published an interactive family tree on my True Life web site.

In my past, there is a good deal of English and Scottish culture on my Dad's side (the names being Clanranald, Love, Owens, McConnell, MacDonald), along with, I believe, some English and Jewish heritage on my Mother's side (the names there being Clarke, Gillman, Huntley, and Marks).

There's still so much more to learn, but I do now have a clearer picture of my lineage, going back seven generations and 250 years! Even though a lot of it is in the abstract historic realm, I do feel a sense of belonging - of being part of the history of a large, extended family.

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

2007-10-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting theory... (not mine!)

"When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet. And when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down.

I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago."

-John Frazee

The drama of "Shake Hands with the Devil" brings Rwandan tragedy into focus, again.

2007-09-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's not sensationalized, and there are no real heroes in the "rah-rah" Hollywood sense. It's an international co-production starring a Canadian actor. I doubt that "Shake Hands With the Devil" will be widely exhibited or receive much media attention in the United States, although I sincerely hope that I'm proven wrong about that.

This movie can only remind the viewer of the devastation of armed conflict and how the innocent invariably get caught in the middle and suffer for the sake of other people's agendas.

In the movie "Shake Hands With the Devil", actor Roy Dupuis portrays General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian leader of UNAMIR, the United Nations peace-keeping mission in Rwanda, with incredible sensitivity, humanity and smouldering frustration.

The movie takes a natural, straight-forward and inglorious approach to telling the story of the horrific Rwandan genocide. This is just like the tone and style in which Romeo Dallaire himself described it in the book on which the movie is based. As in the book, you feel as if, in some small way, you have witnessed the suffering and death of the innocent, have seen the ineffectiveness and lack of commitment of the United Nations (and many major world governments including the U.S.), and have felt Dallaire's frustration and helpless torment at not being given the mandate, people or equipment with which to prevent the deaths of almost a million people.

You truly feel as if you are walking with Dallaire through his experiences, and to some small degree are bearing witness yourself to a horrible series of human tragedies. I think it is a credit to the movie and to the measured and restrained portrayal of Roy Dupuis. The movie is as inglorious as it is beautiful and hauntingly realistic. There is such a prevailing mood of cold, depressing bleakness, that when there are moments of heroism, like when Dallaire and his second-in-command get out of their vehicle and walk the gauntlet, or when Dallaire saves a few goats from being slaughtered because "something has to survive", you feel a mix of relief and emotional exhaustion, as if the respite is too little too late.

That is, I think, the point that Dallaire made about the response of the world to the Rwandan tragedy as well - it was too little, too late.

After watching the movie, I highly recommend reading Dallaire's excellent book, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. This is his tragic and awe-inspiring first-hand account of his experiences inside the Rwandan genocide.

My original review of Dallaire's moving book is located here:
Book Review: "Shaking Hands with the Devil"

Related Links:

Ode to a Dead Bird on Sept. 11th

2007-09-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, on September 11th, 2007, a co-worker and I discovered a dead bird outside our office window.

It was the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Images of that morning here in Vancouver came into my mind, as I'm sure it did for many people. But other than that, September 11, 2007 had started out as a weird morning too, full of nagging little annoyances and discomforts...

Not long after waking up, I got something small and painful stuck in my right eye - like a whisker. My eye went red and watered so much that I couldn't open it much for an hour. This irritation developed into a nagging, annoying headache behind my right eye, which lasted the better part of the day.

My co-worker Victor and I discovered a little chipping sparrow laying dead on it's back, on the second floor balcony right outside my office window. It's little eyes were open, and it's feet were straight up - rigormortis. It must have hit the building pretty fast and died from the impact. Very sad. I love to feed the sparrows and chickadees whenever my wife and I go to the Reiffel Bird Sanctuary out in Ladner. They'll land right on your hand and eat the seed out of your palm if you stand still for a moment or two.

Victor and I discussed the idea of burying the bird somewhere. I thought that burying it under the dirt in a large ceramic planter on the balcony would be quick and reasonable, and might provide some kind of acceptable burial for the poor little thing. Victor suggested that on the ground under a nearby tree would be better. I pictured one of the ladies who manages our office complex trying to dispose of it. Neither of us did anything, but I resolved myself to give the little bird some kind of burial/disposal.

By the time lunch came, my headache was bugging me more, and I felt that I didn't want to be around too much light or noise. I felt a bit anxious about it, but decided to go with my workmates for a quick walk of a few blocks so I could pick up some lunch and return to the office. Vancouver is enjoying a truly delayed summer and it was a beautiful, hot and sunny day. Walking outside with my workmates, the bright sunlight and intense heat really started to bother me. This is a rare thing. I normally love being in the sun, having a walk and getting some fresh air. But this time, all I could think about was getting back inside some dark, air conditioned place as soon as possible. I was maybe a tad over-hungry or dehydrated as well. I just wanted to get away from excess light and noise, and find somewhere quiet to cool off, eat my lunch and get some work done. My reactions are basically a mild form of migraine headache I think. It has happened periodically since I was a teen.

On the walk back to the office, I visualized myself picking up the dead bird and dumping it in a hole in the large planter. I was a little worried that people might see me, and not know what I was doing. It could work, I decided, if I was fast enough. Someone had to take care of that little bird.

I holed up in an unused office and closed the door. Thank god for air conditioning, I sighed, as I felt myself cooling down. After popping a couple of Tylenol (thanks Victor!) and eating lunch, my headache finally went away, and the little bird came back into my mind. I worked alone in the office for a little while more, and then decided that the dead bird wasn't my responsibility, and why did I have to always go worrying about stuff like that anyway? Someone else can deal with it.

So, it's been a couple of days now, and the dead bird is still out there. When I turn my head to the left, I can kind of see it laying on the deck. Maybe I'll dispose of that little bird tomorrow. This is just going to get worse...

Tripping on my favourite names in Google...

2007-08-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

Using Google, search for the name of someone you know, or search for yourself.

The essence of the web is going from one idea (or "place") to the next via links. Your name, or parts of it, is connected to other people in webspace in the same way.

It's weird for me to take something, a label that I have always thought of as my own, and see it attached to someone else. It makes me question my own label. I keep picturing someone else wearing my name on a sign around their neck, like it doesn't belong to me...

*sigh*
That whole "sense of self" thing...

John Love
So many, but I like this one ("John Lee Love", inventor of the pencil sharpener):
http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventors/a/John_Lee_Love.htm

Ernest John Love
http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/physics/P001316p.htm

James Evan Love (my Dad) led me here...
James Evans - Open Frequency artist

Angela Huntley Clarke (my Mum) led me here...
http://truelife.ejohnlove.com/treehouse/bios/angela_story.php3

Okay, I admit that last one was a bit self-serving...

...and here's another:
http://truelife.ejohnlove.com/treehouse/bios/dad_story.php3

Where did the name "Love" come from?

Some search results:
http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070806195137AA3wFnF
http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/love-family-crest.htm

Other names in my family...
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=owens
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=clarke
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=huntley
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=gillman
http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&s=marks

(Boy, except for those Markses, my heritage is pretty darn WASPish...)

How Should Vancouver Deal with Violent Panhandlers?

2007-08-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Recent news stories have reported violent attacks by homeless people. This is disturbing on several levels.

Of course, my heart goes out to the victims of this violence. Society should help those people first, immediately, as they are the obvious victims of crime in that moment.

However, in addition to providing that immediate relief to them, we must also look at circumstances that helped to create the conditions in which the violence arose. This may get muddy and vague on an individual basis, but might be easier to identify when detected as part of a larger urban trend.

For example, Mr. Homeless Jones beats on a more vulnerable person, takes their money and blames their behaviour on a lousy upbringing, or some mental illness. At street level, it becomes a criminal/legal matter which prosecutes the offender and seeks some restitution for the victim (in theory). Law enforcement also has a vested interest in seeking the contributing factors, as an aid to prevention or mitigation.

But if there's seen to be an upsurge in the numbers of crimes caused by homeless people, what larger scale patterns are contributing? Drug addiction? Mental illness? Desperate poverty? Doctors, social service workers and law enforcement all are aware of these factors.

I have in the past become familiar with a few street people - folks who beg for money every day - and over the past five or ten years, I have never experienced any violence of any kind, and have only ever had someone get "in my face" once. I have rarely felt threatened. Nonetheless, everyone must make their own judgments about other people, and about how safe they feel personally.

A few of my close friends recently mentioned the news stories about violent beggars to me. They just read the headline to me out loud, and I swear I can detect a bit of an "I told you it was dangerous" tone of voice from them. To me, this is just an indication of their own fear and concern for their own safety, which, while I respect their point of view, does not dissuade me in the least. If I was going to get attacked by someone, there have been lots of other circumstances under which it might have happened and did not, like in the Downtown East side just walking down the street, on the grounds or in the wards of Riverview when I was used to visit my Mother, or in many other places. The homeless or mentally ill do not scare me too much. I think they're the ones who need the most help. They're at the bottom of the food chain, getting beaten up for scraps by bigger badder people. It's the gang members or crime-oriented people, who live well hidden within the lower and middle class - the social and economic predators who have all their faculties and coping skills down to a fine art and know how to effectively camouflage themselves inside the beats of everyday society - those people are the real danger, not the poor, brain damaged bastard who is trying to scrape together fifteen bucks for a bed for the night.

My heart goes out to the elderly gent who was beaten up for not giving his homeless acquaintance a few bucks. From what I've heard, this old gent had been helping this guy in his own way for quite some time. I just hope that the "crime and punishment" approach isn't used indiscriminately as a blanket answer or to in effect, punish street beggars for being on the street.

I believe the biggest reasons behind these problems are:

Increasing numbers of mentally ill people who are not under proper care. (Inadequate facilities? What will replace large institutions like Riverview? Are current facilities and programs adequate? What role do the Provincial Government and the Health Care providers play in this?)
Huge drug addiction problems throughout the downtown Vancouver core, and growing out into the surrounding municipalities. (Where are the rest of the pillars in the "four pillars approach"?)

I sincerely hope the mainstream media discusses the broader, larger issues, and helps to educate people on the big picture, and doesn't just fan the flames of fear and discontent, which would just lead to NIMBYism.

The Greatest One-eyed Hero of Them All...

2007-08-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

...or "I yam what I yam, because he is what he is."

I've been going through my latest Popeye phase. I go through an infatuation with Popeye the Sailor every few years (similar to my recurring obsession with Devo).

Popeye the Sailor was introduced to readers of the Thimble Theatre newspaper comic back in 1929. His creator, E. C. Segar, is widely considered to be a master of the comic strip, influencing generations of later artists in mainstream and underground comics. (Wikipedia has some very informative articles on both Segar, and Popeye.)

I probably got my first images of Popeye from those low-quality "King Features" cartoons made in the 1960s - you know, the ones where the bad guy was named "Brutus" instead of "Bluto". They looked so cheaply made, and every episode had the exact same story arc: Popeye and Brutus would start off as buddies, Olive would entice each of them (like the spindly little siren that she is), and before you know it, Popeye and Brutus would be in a battle to the death to win her affections. Popeye would inevitably chomp down some spinach (how many cans of that crud did he have stuffed down his sailor shirt anyway?) clean Brutus' clock, and get a big smooch from Olive. That's the gist of most of the episodes I ever saw.

I think that most of my generation (boomers or before) probably got their introduction to the Sailor through his cartoon adventures. Of all of the cartoon series produced, the Fleischer Popeye cartoons from the '30s are the best Popeye cartoons ever made, and in fact are probably among the best cartoons ever made of their time. The Fleischer Brothers also made some incredible Superman cartoons back in the 1940s, placing two of pop culture's most popular characters under the roof of the same animation house.

I've read that back during his newspaper strip heyday, Popeye the Sailor was more popular than Superman. Maybe it was the Sailor's humanity and earthiness that appealed to reg'lar folks. To be honest, Popeye really was a superhero in his own right, being tough as hell and practically invulnerable to bullets himself.

In his first adventure in 1929 (a number of years before Superman appeared in the newspapers and almost ten years before Action Comics #1), Popeye easily withstood 16 bullets after rubbing the head of Bernice, the magical Whiffle Hen. His invulnerability was magical, but still pretty impressive. And after he started eating spinach on a regular basis in the '30s, forget about it - nobody could touch the guy. He routinely clobbered guys three times his size, in the boxing ring, in Rough House's Diner, and anywhere else for that matter. Bullets would just stick into his back causing him a mild irritation, which he compared to prickly heat. That's one tough swab.

But, aside from his fantastic abilikies and adventures, the Sailor also retained his good natured humanity. In the Segar newspaper strip back during the depression years, Popeye literally gave the clothes off his back (plus a thousands of dollars) to a destitute widow and a poor single mother who was clothed only in rags. Superman might be able to fly, move mountains and turn back time, but I never once saw him give up his cape to a homeless person. Superman usually flew above that sort of thing, while the Sailor waded right into it.

As a kid, I didn't know how old and influential Popeye was. When I was nine, I remember my Mum joking "I yam what I yam". I knew that it was something that Popeye said, and I knew that people quoted him for fun because they liked him. My Mum and Dad had enjoyed Popeye when they were kids back in the 30s and 40s, the same way I did in the 70s.

Popeye appealed to "the salts o' the ert'"; regular people (maybe blue collar more than white collar), because he didn't look down his nose to anybody. People could relate to him. No grown-ups I knew ever ran around quoting Superman. That would have been too silly.

Back in Segar's daily newspaper strip, Popeye was really quite a little roughneck, practicing diplomacy with his fisks on a regular basis. He was the image of the tough little one-eyed runt beating the hell out of the town bully, and thus endearing himself to the whole town. Back in his mid-30s newspaper strip, Popeye took weird risks too, like starting his own country and experimenting with radio propaganda to encourage immigration, or running a newspaper and beating up bullies in order to drum up new readers. Built with equal doses of slapstick humour and social commentary, it had a lot of messages for the grown-up reader, aimed at the perspective of the masses.

Beyond the original comics and cartoons...

For me, Robert Altman's 1980 movie "Popeye" with Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall was a very big event. It was a fun, silly and (IMHO) well-crafted musical movie in the slapstick genre, but with subtle symbolism and social themes which adults could appreciate without taking anything away from the kid appeal. In many ways, it stayed more true to the original newspaper strips than the Fleischer cartoons. The live-action movie really brought the world of Popeye to life for a new generation. The movie woke me up to the original incarnation of the Sailor as developed by Segar.

Underground cartoonists like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton were obviously influenced by Segar's work too. Just look at Olive Oyl walking. There's "Keep on Trucking" and "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" right there.

Popeye has certainly mellowed out a bit over the years, mostly in order to not give little kids the wrong messages. The fact is that the world can still be a hard and unfair place for both kids and adults, and Popeye presents different faces to appeal to different audiences. Kids see a funny looking, good-hearted guy who protects woman and children (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400743/). But, it also seems like tattoo lovers, bikers, sailors and rugged individualists can identify with Popeye as well. Today's adults can enjoy the tattooed little roughneck sailor who never gives up his independent streak (http://www.popeyestore.com/potchfoo.html).

Other Links About Popeye:

Freedom and Opportunity for the future: Fun and a bit scary...

2007-06-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my wife and I joined a sort of timeshare club called AviaWest. Instead of owning a piece of a particular property, and getting a window of a week or more scheduled in which to stay in the property, the membership fee earns you an annual allotment of points which can be used to pay for lodging at any of AviaWest's accommodations. They have a luxury high-rise hotel on Robson Street in Vancouver, an English-style B&B in Victoria and large nature-oriented resorts in Tofino and Parksville. You can also pick from thousands of resorts and hotels all over the world, through AviaWest's parent organization, RCI.

At best, we've only ever been able to afford one big holiday trip every few years. In between those, we may take smaller local trips around the lower mainland or be tourists in our own town by getting an off-season room at some classy local hotel.

Over the years, my wife and I have discussed a number of different retirement scenarios:

Sell our condo one day and buy or rent a high-rise in False Creek. Travel more often - at least one trip per year.
Get out of the city a bit and get a place somewhere on the island, near Nanaimo, Parksville or SaltSpring Island. Travel more often - at least one trip per year.
Stay put, pay out the mortgage, and live there for free. Travel more often - at least one trip per year.

All those scenarios share a common element: increased travel. I see travel as the only way to really learn about other places and to meet other people. I get so much information about other cultures and places from the media or entertainment, that I feel as if I've experienced them, but it's not true - just an impression.

So, it seems likely that this timeshare-like points membership thing is a good deal. It will save us money on travel expenses and motivate us to vacate more regularly. This is definitely the fun part. I still want to do some price comparisons of my own to see how soon this membership will pay for itself. It's basically like an investment, and I guess a long-term view is the best approach.

The only scary part (just a little scary, mind you, not much) is upfront membership cost. The membership fee and other one-time fees, total over $17,000. This is the one-time initial membership, plus first-month's maintenance fee and other things. The fact that this is a lifetime membership and that the annual renewal is comparatively very cheap, really softens the blow. I think taking our first trip or two and seeing the bills afterwards will definitely put my mind to rest too.

The ability to travel and see new places and meet new people is a luxury and a privilege that we're fortunate to be able to enjoy.

Palm Sketch: June 20, 2007

2007-06-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

Man reading at Starbucks, June 20, 2007.

This sketch was done on a Palm Treo PDA.

Fortunate to have a diversity of friends...

2007-05-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy, social week...

This week, I reconnected with some old friends...

Visited my friends Azlim and Shahiroz, who'd invited me to see Chahar Bagh, an Ismaili art and cultural exhibition, at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown.

I first met Azlim back around 1989, through a local computer club. We were both young guys energized by the possibilities of technology and keen to learn and apply it to further personal spiritual or artistic goals.

At Chahar Bagh, I felt enlivened by the singing of the youth choir, and fascinated by the examples of "cultural pluralism" in painting, photography and sculpture. This brief exposure to some of the philosophy and values of the Vancouver Shia Ismaili community impressed me greatly.

Had dinner with Patti and Riki, the mother and sister of Bob Bagnell.

They are two lovely ladies who are "fighting the good fight" on behalf of their son and brother, Robert Wayne Bagnell. They were attending the Coroner's Inquest into Bob's death in 2004 in an incident involving the Vancouver Police Department and the use of Taser guns.

I first met Bob sometime around 2001, when he would hang out in front of my local 7-11, drawing pictures and being a character. Bob was a good guy. His mother and sister are living examples of his dedicated and loving family.

Had dinner with my friend Ricardo and his lovely wife Yukari.

Talking with them about their relationship and family/cultural backgrounds reminded me of the backgrounds of my wife and I, and also reminded me of how much I appreciate living in a relatively free and multicultural city.

I first met Ricardo in 2002, when he came from Mexico to work for my employer as our network technician. Ricardo is a sincere and genuine person who treats himself and those around him with respect and dignity.

I have some family and a few other friends, both old and more recent, with whom I need to reconnect. It sure feels good to do it...

Coffee with Riki and Patti, Part 2

2007-05-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

Bob's Mum, Riki Bagnell, and his sister, Patti Gillman, were in Vancouver to attend the second part of the inquest into Bob's unfortunate death three years ago. It seems mind-boggling that it has taken three years to get this far with the inquest into Bob's death.

Fighting the Fight...

In spite of their sad personal loss and suffering, they have continued to advocate not only for their own interests, but on behalf of current and future victims:

They want to see Amnesty International's recommendation come to pass: A moratorium on Taser use pending independent research into the risks associated with Taser use, and for
They called for funding for families of Taser victims, so they can afford to pay a lawyer to represent their interests at an inquest.

In May 2007, The official Coroner's Inquest into the death of Robert Wayne Bagnell finished. Although the proceedings of the inquest are closed, there seems to me to be little closure on the issue in concrete terms.

In a May 25, 2007 Vancouver Sun article titled "No recommendations from Taser death inquiry", it said:

The five-man jury concluded Robert Wayne Bagnell died on June 23, 2004 of a "restraint-associated cardiac arrest" due to acute cocaine intoxication and psychosis.

But that's not the whole story.
Here's a synopsis of events from Cameron Ward, the lawyer for the Bagnell family:

"Robert Bagnell, 44, died on June 23, 2004. Two days later, Vancouver police contacted his next of kin to tell them that Robert had died of a probable cocaine overdose. A month later, Mr. Bagnell’s family learned for the first time from media reports that Vancouver police had used a Taser gun on him. Chief Jamie Graham defended the late disclosure, saying that he had waited for toxicology results before going public with new information. (Despite numerous requests, the family still has not received any toxicology reports). Then on August 17, 2004, the Vancouver Police Department held another news conference to announce that their members used the Taser in order to rescue Mr. Bagnell from a fire in his rooming house. (The Bagnell family has since learned that the “fire” was a minor electrical fault on the first floor, and likely not a threat to anyone on the fifth floor, where Mr. Bagnell was)."

"...the VPD acknowledged that [Bagnell] was not a threat to anyone and that he was not involved in the commission of a crime when they sent an ERT (SWAT) team into the washroom Robert was in. The police said Bagnell was shocked with 50,000 volts so they could "rescue" him from a "fire" in his building. Although the family doubts these claims, they have been unable to obtain copies of police or autopsy reports and they have been unable to get an inquest scheduled."

So, in my mind, the questions to ask are:

Why didn't the Vancouver Police tell the Bagnell family that Tasers were involved in Bob's death? Although the VPD did notify the family of Bob's death two days afterwards, the cause given was 'cocaine overdose'. Why did his mother and sister have to learn about the Taser connection through the media 30 days after his death? (Read more...)
One of the Taser guns used by VPD ERT members in the incident put out over twice as much electricity as it was supposed to. The other Taser gun tested put out of eighty five times it's specified energy! Are there any safety standards in place for Taser guns? (Read more...)
The jury at the coroner's inquest classified the death as an accident and was "unable to agree on any recommendations". Really?

So, who ends up being accountable for these issues? Who's going to stand up? Neither the Vancouver Police nor the Taser manufacturer seem to be taking responsibility, at least from what I've heard and seen in the media.

Being the Light...

Again, it was my great joy to meet with Riki and Patti, Bob Bagnell's family , for the second time, on May 24th.

We met for a dinner in Metrotown Mall on the day before they flew home back east. We talked about the inquest of course, which had taken a long eight months to finally resume.

They again praised the tireless efforts made by their lawyer, Cameron Ward, and we griped about the reluctance of corporate minds to stand up and admit to mistakes.

Although we agreed that the media seems to have a one-week memory span, Patti did have words of praise for Irwin Loy of 24 Hours (Vancouver), who reported on their inquest proceedings during each day.

If anything, this whole experience has been a lesson in overkill.

If what I've heard is correct:

Back in 2004, there were over a dozen members of the Vancouver Police Emergency Reponse Team on hand at the Columbia Hotel, all to extract one occupant (Bob).
Bob Bagnell was tasered by a Police Officer who outweighed him by approximately 100 pounds. How much force was needed? How much was enough?
Taser International and the VPD both had Lawyers present to protect their interests, versus the two women with their one lawyer.

All of that could easily be mistaken for overkill, I think.

From what I can see, in spite of everything, Riki and Patti have not given up on their concerns over Taser (mis)use, and continue to fight the fight, and light the light.

(Patti, keep on going! Write a book about this or something. I think you've still got a lot more that you want to say.)

Mothers Day 2007

2007-05-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Me and my wife are sitting in the cafe at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria.

A woman is sitting across the aisle from me, looking out the window at the sunny, windy day outside.

Her hair is full and wavy, almost pure white. Her figure and flowery blouse remind me of something my mother once wore. Mum had some of those crazy 70s-patterned blouses.

Somewhere, in some alternate universe, my Mum is sitting in a quiet cafe, enjoying a drink and watching the sunny, windy day outside.

Second Life: My New Life in Pixels, Part 5

2007-05-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Law and Order in a Virtual Society, or "Whose Second Life is it Anyway?"

After a few of weeks in Second Life, I have learned about the vast number and variety of residents and locales. There are millions of potential inhabitants (although maybe only about 25,000 or so are actually online at any given time).

Environments and public spaces in SL vary from benign, empty and pastoral garden spaces, to raucous, busy urban malls where the sheer density of avatars brings out the best and worst in online behaviour. If you want to sit alone in an empty Japanese-style temple surrounded by gold dragons, you can do that. If you want to be in a frenetic mob of rejects from a superhero novel creating spontaneous pyrotechnic displays, you can do that too.

When I first joined SL, I was quite surprised by the sense of hedonism and the lack of structure that some of the residents seemed to enjoy. Generally, I consider SL to be a surrealist's wonderland and truly, one of the largest ongoing costume parties in the world today. I call it a costume party because in it's essence, unlike online role playing games, SL does not require it's participants to take on a particular game-play sort of role, or pursue or contribute to any pre-set goals. SL is more like an empty, undefined environment that, over time, becomes structured by it's inhabitants, according to their own needs. In fact, according to Linden Labs, much of the content in Second Life today has been created by it's residents.

Inhabitants Shaping Their Environment: One Early Experiment

Back in the early '70s, before the beginning of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group created a simple interactive kinetic sculpture/installation comprised of a terrarium of gerbils and tiny metallic-covered boxes. A robotic arm positioned over the gerbil cage would occasionally reach in and change ("adjust" or "correct") the position of a box. The gerbils had their own needs, and would move boxes on their own to create little living spaces or simply as a consequence of their natural movement and activities. The robotic arm was, I guess, metaphorically, like the "hand of the creator". I suppose the whole piece was an experiment in the interactions between two systems in a shared environment. (This experimental environment was described in Stewart Brand's excellent 1987 book The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT)

We've come a long way from the gerbil cage. Each of SL's regions requires it's own dedicated server. As of March 2007, Linden was running about 2000 servers located all over the United States, with plans to be able to scale up to handle something like 100 times the user activity they are handling today. So, Second Life is quite a massive virtual space.

Still, I think the existence of SL poses the same kind of question posed by Negroponte's gerbil cage experiment: With the ability to dynamically change and define their environment, what will the environment's residents decide to do?

The Culture and Ethics in Second Life

Unlike the simple walls of the gerbil cage, in SL, the boundaries and controls of the environment - what it will and will not let it's residents do - are multi-layered and can be rather complex.

The physics of the world (usually) include gravity, solidity, acceleration and visibility (e.g. atmospheric effects like fog or turbidity).

Ethics and morality however, are defined by a list of rules. There is good, social behaviour and bad, anti-social behaviour in SL, just like anywhere else.

Second Life has it's own stated set of Community Standards, which advise in a nutshell:

In public, "PG" rated areas, public nudity of residents is frowned upon. Billboards advise new residents to not walk around naked.
No intolerance, harassment or assault permitted to other users
Indecency is relative to the stated rating in each SL region. Some areas are rated "PG", so have different standards than areas that are rated "Mature" or "Adult"

Negative Feedback, or How the System Controls Itself Socially or Ethically

Officially, Linden instructs residents to use the in-world "Report Abuse" feature to complain about the behaviour or actions of another resident.

Unofficially, I have also discovered that groups of residents have formed their own voluntary law enforcement associations - self-appointed cops on patrol - in order to discourage unacceptable or anti-social behaviour. They wear cop uniforms and have some kind of weaponry or powers that allow them to control (or subdue) misbehaving residents. I found this fascinating.

In one of my first visits to Orientation Island (a popular PG hang-out for SL residents), I saw a cop, introduced myself and asked him about his role in SL.

Me: "So, are you Linden staff? Are you authorized or sanctioned by Linden?"
Cop: "We organized ourselves."
Me: "So how do you enforce? Do you have weapons or something?"
Cop: "Yes. We have weapons."
Me: "So, you can arrest people?"
Cop: "You want to be a cop?"
Me: "Nope - I'm just curious. Never met a cop in here before."

Suddenly, a red biplane flew down low next to the crowd. The cop ran over to the shouted to the pilot not to fly so close to the onlookers. After a few moments, the cop returned.

Me: "So, you guys just decided to become cops?"
Cop: "Sure, It's Second Life."

A third resident, standing 10 yards away, pipes into the conversation:

3rd Res: "Second Life doesn't need cops. If you have a problem with someone, just report it to the staff."
Cop: "F*ck that. Some people are animals. We're cops! It's Second Life!"
Me: "As long as people are being helpful and constructive, it's all good to me."
3rd Res: "You can play cop if you want to, but Second Life doesn't need cops."
Cop: "I have to go. There's a shooting."
Me: "A shooting!? Can residents get injured here?"
Cop: "Some areas have games with guns. Some users don't respect where they can and can't use them."

I found this exchange fascinating. I don't think there's any concept of mortality in Second Life - you cannot die per se - but there is a concept of right and wrong, and punishment. According to the SL Police Blotter, users who have broken the rules have been penalized with temporary suspension of privileges to enter SL - like 2 or 3 days, but usually, many small penalties consist of a warning.

A number of social, economic and cultural issues and problems have arisen in Second Life which seem similar to the kinds issues arising in small countries in "Real Life". In SL, residents have broken the law and some have tried to test the social or ethical frameworks of their world.

In 2006, residents of 400 regions voted to ban certain types of false or exploitive behaviour by commercial business residents.

The Linden Dollar-based virtual economy of SL has suffered from hyperinflation, and the complexion of SL has also changed as a result of active commercial exploitation of SL as a marketing and revenue generating space. To me, these are all direct evidences of how this virtual society is evolving and how it's residents are expressing their needs and are testing the boundaries of it's existence.

Just so you don't think I'm taking this whole thing too seriously, Second Life was parodied brilliantly by Vancouver blogger Darren Barefoot.

Second Life: My New Life in Pixels, Part 4

2007-04-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

On my fourth visit to SL, things go not quite as planned. On an innocent visit to Porn Island to grab some pictures of the Hot Dog Stand, I was the victim of a sneak-up er, "yoga session".

On this visit to SL, some kind of bug caused me to be rendered as a female in a skin tight version of my regular "Male Furry" Fox costume. I didn't want to be a chick, but apparently, SL had made up it's own mind.

I visited a grassy area and clicked "Sit Here" on a coloured dot, and found myself doing this pose. I guessed it was some sort of Yoga or stretching exercise.

I hit "Print Screen" pasted the pic into Photoshop, and began cropping it to fit in this blog.

After a few minutes, I flipped back to the Second Life screen, and discovered that another avatar had come up behind me on the blanket, and was, er, participating in the exercise with my avatar. Completely uninvited, I must add.

No words passed between us, and while nothing was actually happening per se, I felt this was inappropriate, so after taking a moment or two to collect my thoughts, I flew way up in the air, above the scene of the sordid encounter. He watched me fly away.

In Second Life, you can talk to people, or you can shout at them. I shouted "I'm a guy!"

A system error, combined with a minor error in judgement on my part (e.g. sort of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) resulted in a bizarre, slightly uncomfortable moment in SL.

I felt dirty.

Standing out in the rain for a bit, seemed to make me feel better.

Second Life: My New Life in Pixels, Part 3

2007-04-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

On my third visit to SL, I did a search for "porno island" - and found it.

Strolling down what resembled a carnival midway, with little booths on either side, I did see a lot of barren, lifeless little huts - mini shops, advertising a variety of online adult services - all completely bereft of customers, except for me.

Walking down the midway, I saw what was on sale at many of the little kiosks: genitalia. In SL, avatars are born naked and without genitalia, kind of like a Barbie doll, or G.I. Joe.

As a pre-teen, my favourite action figure was the curiously-named "Big Jim", who had permanently attached swim trunks which, while intended to de-sexualize him, actually amped up the curiosity factor on account of Big Jim's big bulge. But I digress. In SL, you have nothing down there - not even a "Made in Japan" stamp on your butt.

So in Porn Island, female avatars can purchase the vagina or their choice, and males can buy the dick of their dreams. Oh, and you can buy some kick-ass gold chains and other bling there too, because in addition to having a big fake, snap-on wiener, you're apparently expected to dress like Mr. T on spring break.

Speaking of wieners, I found an Oscar Meyer hot dog cart, and got myself a large hot dog. I discovered later on that this hot dog could talk, as it proceeded to tell me how tasty it was. My avatar just kept on eating the thing, while I watched in fascination. I had been hoping for a corn dog, not a porn dog, but remembering where I bought it, I considered myself lucky that all it did was talk dirty to me.

I decided that, except for the genitalia kiosks and talking tube steaks, Porn Island reminded me a lot of the Richmond Night Market.

The main structure on Porn Island seems to be the triple-X night club, a black two level structure that was also deserted when I walked in. Downstairs was all about the dance floor, disco atmosphere and the bar. Upstairs, as I began to expect, was a series of small private rooms. Each room was windowless and devoid of furniture or decoration except for a single chair, bed or clump of pillows. In each case, the furniture had a couple of small spheres - hotspots of a sort - that were labelled for a man or a women. Right-clicking on a hotspot and selecting the 'Sit Here' menu option placed me in whatever position was programmed into that spot. So, all by myself, I was on top, I was underneath, pumping and humping the empty air. Now, my avatar resembles a 5 foot tall Fox wearing baggy plaid pants and a party hat, so my pre-scripted auto-erotic (?) contortions looked completely ridiculous and did nothing for me. Sex, if you could call it that, is stupid in Second Life.

I capped of my session on Porn Island by laying on a nearby beach listening to a digital sample of a crashing surf, eating my talking hot dog, and enjoying the colour gradation of a lovely fake sunset.

Second Life: My New Life in Pixels, Part 2

2007-04-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

On my second visit to Second Life, I began to notice the wide diversity of shapes sizes colours and species of fellow inhabitants: Winged, fiery, ghoulish, punkish, cute, normal, and in a few cases, large, hairy and stark naked.

Nudity seems to be frowned upon generally in SL - at least in the places I've visited. Billboards ask citizens to stay clothed. It's nice to know some things are just like the real world.

I suspect that SL probably has a nudist habitat or a "porno land" where nudity is a hard and fast requirement, but I have not yet found seen it in SL.

So, I just ended up doing the same thing in Second Life what I usually end up doing in Real Life:

Check out this guy's less-than-thrilled first visit to Second Life. Maybe he was the naked lard-butt that I saw walking and flying around Help Island...?

Second Life: My New Life in Pixels, Part 1

2007-04-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

After hearing about it on Daily Show and on the web, I decided to join the online community known as "Second Life".

Second Life (also called "SL") is a virtual world in which apparently millions (!) of online citizens live virtual lives, interacting with each other in a variety of 3D landscapes. I think that some citizens even buy "real estate", build "homes" and run "businesses". I placed quotes around those words because, like the characters, objects and effects in The Matrix, none of those things have any reality in the physical world. At least I don't think they do.

Second Life is a 3D simulation that offers a great escape: an alternate existence in a virtual world using a custom-designed character ("Avatar"). Second Life could be considered a form of social networking, but with significant differences: In social networks like LinkedIn, you can sort of see who you are networked with. You can often read their names and who their contacts are.

In Second Life, you will likely run into other citizens, but unless you chat with them (or interact in some other way), they might just ignore you or act in some slightly anti-social way. You know - like hanging out at the mall or any other public space. I think that in SL, you probably get out what you put in.

After signing up, I picked my character and name. I was born into my Second Life as a cartooney, fox-like character named 'Earnest Oh'. Initially, simply wandering around the world, admiring the scenery and inspecting nearby objects was enough to keep me interested. I also spent a few fruitless moments trying to talk to a rat on the street in front of me. Someone must have created the rats and bits of garbage on the streets, but who, and why?

Looking around me, I began to notice the rats on the street, graffiti and something that resembled trash on the ground. Why did my first corner of town have to resemble a ghetto?

After reading some instructional signs, I drove an abandoned car around the block a couple of times, and then headed out to explore the rest of the world.

I learned that in Second Life is comprised of various islands and regions. Some regions are rated PG and some are rated Adult. The run-down little city block I had been exploring was actually part of a tutorial island on which I was beginning my new existence in pixels. There are multiple such newcomers tutorial islands in Second Life, and many other regions to explore once you're ready.

Characters can "talk" to each other by text chat, and you can see their chatting on the screen when you're close enough - rather like overhearing a spoken conversation. Soon enough, I did "hear" two women characters talking about me as I watched them for a moment ("He must be new", etc). Surprisingly, I hadn't expected even this natural sort of human behaviour in SL.

Palm Sketch: Starbuck's Afternoon

2007-04-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Girl at Starbucks, April 14, 2007.

This sketch was done on a Palm Treo PDA.

Palm Sketch: Sylvester's Head

2007-04-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

The back of Sylvester's head, April 2007.

This sketch was done on a Palm Treo PDA.

Running with Scissors

2007-03-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

"Running with Scissors" is an amazing, crazy film about an amazing young man named Augusten Burroughs, who grows up surrounded by crazy people in crazy circumstances.

Augusten is played with great directness and sincerity by Joseph Cross.

As a young teen, we see Augusten survive the apathy of an alcoholic, absentee father and the delusions of his self-absorbed, implosive (and possibly manic-depressive?) mother, a struggling and frustrated writer.

As an adult, Burroughs turned his heart breaking and witty observations into a novel and then a feature film. In the film, Annette Benning is mesmerizing and somewhat haunting as Augusten's mother, Deirdre. I watched with a mixture of shock and sympathy as she started out as an egocentric, frustrated writer, certain that the publishing world would soon discover her artistic genius, to a defiant and fragile single parent who jettisons Augusten, adopting him out to the quack psychiatrist who has her on a bathroom cupboard full of prescription drugs.

I felt Augusten's love and sympathy for her, as well as his fear and uncertainty - the trap of loving someone who's erratic moods and unpredictable circumstances continually affects your life.

Augusten says it all when he tells himself that he wished that his life had structure and rules, "because without that, every day is a surprise".

Profile of Augusten Burroughs - Washington Post

Palm Sketch: Granville Island Cafe

2007-03-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

Seen at the Blue Parrot Cafe, Graville Island, Vancouver, BC.

This sketch was done on a Palm Treo PDA.

Does music connect us through Time?

2007-03-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

What is it worth that I know a song that my parents or grandparents knew?

Whether or not there's any real purpose or reward in such a moment of sentimentality, I still have it. It is little bit of obsessive curiousity that my heart and mind goes into whenever a piece of music or drama arouses old memories. Some tune or other blows a little air across a few old embers, bringing out fresh feelings, and it's always a little bit of surprise just how much they resonate like new each time, just for a moment.

Miles Davis plays "Autumn Leaves", and as I listen to his bop-jazz rendition, I hear someone's voice in my head, saying "That was your Grandmother's favourite song". "Sam", my mother's mother, liked music but I doubt that bop jazz played by a heroin-addicted jazz musician would have been Sam's cup of tea. I think she'd have been into Benny Goodman or The Mills Brothers.

Music and drama can underscore moments, they can draw people together. People usually sing when they're happy. Driving to Safeway one weekend a long time ago, my Dad and I sang along to "Dream" by the Everly Brothers. On their 13th anniversary, my Mum and Dad sang "You are my Sunshine" while Mum played the ukelele. My sister and I still remember that song. She sang it to her daughters, and my wife and I have sung it together too.

I can remember the theme song to "The Avengers" or "Are You Being Served?" - two TV shows that my Mum's father liked to watch on PBS. We all watched those together as a family. Without Poppy's influence - maybe his wish to have a family around him - perhaps we wouldn't have had that family time. Dad was too proud, and often a bit of a loner. He didn't tend to draw people around him that way. Living like that makes those moments of connections all the more rare and beloved.

It's like I need something to connect myself to these people - to have something, anything in common with them. I want to have a sense of connection with this family. "We all like music" or "we all sang that song together" - something like that.

Today, I get the same feelings when I hear those songs - like a time capsule has been opened in my mind, and there they all are inside, sitting and waiting for me to join them.

Thinking about Addiction and Personal Suffering

2007-03-10T20:42:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about addiction today. On March 8th, it was the 12th anniversary of my Mother's death. She is the biggest example of addiction that I've had in my life.

Through my Mum, I saw some of the results of addiction:

the selfishness,
the loss of interest in or sympathy for family or friends,
the guilt, denial and defensiveness,
the aftermath from the loss and betrayal of self.

If there are behaviours or contributing factors common in addiction, I can only guess at them. I am a layman, with just my own experiences with family to refer to.

I suppose I must include things like gambling, internet use, and anything else that people might do to extremes, which could hurt themselves or those around them. It does sound from my tone that I'm hesitant to acknowledge these vices as addictions - maybe that's my own ignorance at work. Perhaps compulsions is a more accurate term.

I do believe that substance addiction doesn't start or develop in a vacuum - there are always other people involved, encouraging or enabling the process. Each family member or friend who is involved in the addict's life may have to ask themselves what they can do to help.

Underneath it all, in each of us, is the issue of personal angst and suffering.

Buddhists see suffering as a fact of life, and encourage people to first accept it, and then to develop personal and practical methods to transform and transcend it. Words like enlightenment and nirvana tend to seem too fantastic for some people, but basically, Buddha was teaching inner understanding as a basis for happier living. His form of self-help therapy was first laid down in India over 2500 years ago.

Some people blame society for their addiction (my friends got me into it, drugs and booze are all around me - I thought it was normal /okay /expected of me). At the end of the day, we each must take some measure of personal responsibility for our health, both physical and mental, and for how our life and our behaviour affects those around us.

All the same, everyone has a time when they need to ask someone for help. We're all connected, so helping someone else is like helping yourself.

Personal Programming, Personal Conditioning: I See 1002 Everywhere.

2007-01-11T22:29:00.000-08:00

Some people see the face of Jesus in a tree trunk, or Nixon in a potato, or maybe they see their destiny in the fiction of L. Ron Hubbard.

Me, I happen to see the number 1002. Everywhere.

I'm not into numerology and usually don't assign any symbolic or spiritual significance to numbers. I did want to have a lucky number back when I was a kid. Seven is the classic one, but for a personal number, I always thought four was more elemental - maybe because it's that much closer to one, the smallest whole number.

Anyway, I digress. Long story short: four is dead to me now. But I can't help seeing 1002 everywhere I look. Most of the time, it's 10:02 on a clock face - any clock face. I just look, and BAM - there it is.

Occasionally, I'll see a 10:03 or a 10:04, and once there was an 11:20 (I don't know what that was about), but these little faux pas have happened only ten or fifteen times in the past dozen years. Considering that 10:02 can be seen only twice within the 1440 minutes in each day, or up to 730 times within the 525,600 minutes in each year, it seems to me that statistically, observing that exact minute that often must put this little phenomenon somewhere outside the limits of dumb luck or random chance. (In fact, there's a 1 in 720 chance of it happening, if I were to see it each time twice per day.)

(Perhaps to be more accurate about the odds of this, I'd need to factor in an average of how many times per day I tend to look at the time. I think that would be hard.)

But none of this really answers the question: Why the hell have I been noticing 10:02 or 1002 in the world around me for the past dozen years?

Thanks for asking. Here are a few theories I have come up with:

Clairvoyant dreams about which episodes of Friends and Simpsons would be on TV tomorrow no longer satisfied me. I subconsciously wanted more mystery and quirkiness in my life.
(Likelihood: Possible.)
The number has personal symbolic significance.
(Likelihood: Getting Warmer.)
I am so susceptible to suggestion that I have actually programmed myself to notice this particular number everywhere possible.
(Likelihood: Ding ding ding! We have a winner!)

Yeah, yeah, okay. But... Why?

In the process of writing about my younger years growing up (see http://truelife.ejohnlove.com), I have enjoyed reliving memories of the times when me and my Mum, Dad and sister lived with my maternal grandfather, Ernest Huntley Clarke ("Poppy"), in his home in Victoria, BC. His address was 1002 Cook Street. Actually, the way I hear it is " Ten Oh Two Cook Street". Ten o'Two. Ten-o-too...

Maybe this is a way of my brain being conditioned to not forget a small piece of him. Every time I see that number, I do think of good ol' Poppy.

My wife is correct when she says it's kind of weird. But it's kind of cool too.

Wishing you a merry, er, everything...

2006-12-03T22:30:00.000-08:00

Xmas is a time of mixed emotions. Most years, my cynicism is initially raised in early November by the sight of red, white and green decorations and the sound of xmas tunes played inside all the shops. It often starts that way, with my gut telling me that the once again, hungry money-makers are trying to get me into the spirit too damned early. (Canadian retailers have nothing in November to tide them over, since our Thanksgiving happens in October, not November. Thus, they want the Xmas sales frenzy to start just a little bit earlier than south of the border.)

By now, about a week into December, personal things start to seep into my brain, like the happiness of past christmases with family and friends. With these memories and expectations in mind, a personal xmas response starts to stick to my brain like a new, wet snowfall: the warm, selfish enjoyment of fatty foods like egg nog and mincemeat tarts, the anticipation of sharing food, laughter and gifts with friends and family, and the morose internal pledge to avoid depressing thoughts and let past personal holiday letdowns (or in some cases, disasters) rest on the sidelines for a little while.

Finally, for me as the next week or two bring me closer to X-Day, there's the surrender to the reality of shopping. Every year I dread the start of Xmas shopping in crowded malls. And yet, every year I end up enjoying the sense of accomplishment and in imagining the happy reactions of my recipients. "This is just perfect for her! He'll totally love that!"

It's the same way with cards and seasonal emails and letters: the list of recipients looks long, but during the act of giving each little letter, card or email, it becomes effortless, warm, real, fun, constructive and happy.

I think it happens when your head is focused on others' happiness and gratification, instead of your own.

I'm not a Christian, although that religion and it's words and songs are uncontrollably steeped in my culture. As kids, when my sister Kim and I had sort of stopped believing in Santa, my Dad tried to inflect the season with his own version of secular Christmas spirituality, telling us that Santa Claus was the "spirit of Christmas". Dad didn't go much deeper than that, but I have since decided for myself what that "spirit" means: mostly, the ideas of giving, sharing and creating happiness.

No single belief system has the last word on compassion or morality, but with or without an organized religion or philosophy, we can all make a moment or give some money or some comfort to someone who needs it. It's got to be personal, have personal meaning or resonance, or else it's just a hollow habit that won't mean anything at all. Look outside yourself and your own needs and rehumanize yourself.

And so friends, in that spirit, regardless of who you are or what you believe, take your own moment to reflect on your good fortune and then do something nice to improve the fortune of someone else.

Speak low, darling, speak low

2006-10-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

A quiet moment sitting in Starbucks
listening to Billie Holiday sing "Speak Low" by Kurt Weill.

Finally, a moment of time together -
Time to contemplate things and time to keep
each other company while we work on individual tasks.

Separate thought processes, but bodies and hearts still together.

Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart, too soon
Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon
Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief
We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon

Radio-Canada reports on Bagnell Taser case...

2006-10-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

On the October 17, 2006 edition of "The National", CBC aired a very good report on the Robert Bagnell taser case. Produced by Radio-Canada, it was well-rounded and touched on many of the social, legal and ethical aspects.

It began with a brief portrait of Bob and the effect of his loss on his family, delivered by his sister, Patti Gillman. Patti told how she and her Mother had learned about Bob's death, and how the fact that a taser was involved as not released by the Vancouver Police Department until 30 days later. The VPD's position was that the Taser gun did not play a role Bob's death, and this remains their position today.

Taser Int'l has conducted many scientific reports into the safety of their products, branding them as "non-lethal weapons", classified as such by the U.S. Department of Defense. The non-lethal aspect of the Taser is strongly promoted by the company, who consider its use to be reducing deaths and saving lives. Apparently, many of the studies commissioned by Taser were done by companies paid by Taser, or using data provided by Taser.

John Webster, of the University of Wisconsin, told the reporter that he believed that Tasers could deliver lethal results, if the victim has low body fat and is shocked close to the heart. An independent research team at the University of Toronto showed that the consumption of cocaine or a very high level of fear, combined with an electric discharge, could also cause cardiac arrhythmias.

The Radio-Canada report followed with a tour of the taser facility, focusing on Mr. Steve Tuttle, Vice President of Taser International. Taser's high-tech facility was emphasized as we saw the V.P. pull a taser gun out of his holster and shoot a test target numerous times. You could easily regard this sequence at Taser International as a genuine, straight-forward and factual description of the products and business of this Arizona-based company. But using "Mission Impossible" music in the background and referring to the company's headquarters as looking like "something out of a James Bond movie" might hint at a dark sense of humour on the part of Radio Canada reporter, as if someone were trying to point out that the glorification of technology should be viewed with a little suspicion.

Understandably, Taser wants to cultivate an image of corporate success and of product reliability. Being named in lawsuits and dealing with past reports about the potential lethality of Taser products has certainly had a negative effect on the company's image and stock price.

Even with his rocket-powered backpack and gadget-laden cars, James Bond sometimes still had to get his hands dirty in his job (read an early James Bond novel like Casino Royale for example). But realistic or not, that angle wouldn't sell very many Walter PPKs now would it?

Link to the Radio-Canada companion article (en Français)

In English, translated mechanically by Babelfish.altavista.com

Bagnell Family Sues Vancouver Police and Taser Int'l over Death

Taser Controversy Refuses to Die (BBC)

Last greetings on the streets...

2006-09-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

Walking up Beatty street towards SkyTrain, the sun was out, but it was still raining a little - you know that weird combination of sunlight and rain. I saw a nice bright rainbow coming up over the downtown East side, and it made me feel good, like that kind of magic, happy feeling I'd felt seeing a rainbow as a kid.

At Stadium Station, I saw Curtis James, a guy I've known on the street for a few years, and who lost almost all his toes to frostbite last winter. I recently switched jobs, which meant that I wouldn't be working downtown anymore. I told Curtis that I would soon be leaving the area, and that I probably wouldn't see him again.

He said "I dunno. I get around town, you know" and smiled.

"Well, it's out in Burnaby, so I dunno..."

"Well, maybe you'll help one of my brothers then. You're doing God's work, my friend. You really are."

"Thank you. Enjoy the rainbow" I said to him, feeling grateful for such a gracious personal remark. After the past few years, it had only been pocket change, but the weekly chit chats and little conversations about hope and the kindness of strangers had added up to something too.

"There's two of 'em."

"What?" Damned if Curtis wasn't right. There was a second rainbow, right next to the first one. I was really glad that he could notice something nice like that.

Coffee with Riki and Patti, Part 1

2006-09-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

I had the great joy to meet some of Bob Bagnell's family in person for the first time yesterday.

Bob's sister Patti and his Mum Riki are in Vancouver to attend the Coroner's Inquest into Bob's death. We met at a Starbucks near the office tower where the Coroner's Court is located.

Knowing Bob briefly (but significantly to me) as I did, and having advocated for him in personal and social terms, I've grown to identify with these two ladies, and feel immense sympathy for their loss. I have also felt frustration at the delays and complications that have been imposed upon them while they look for answers and more information.

To me, they've expressed their gratitude for my attempts to promote a sympathetic and human image of their dear "Bobby". In simple terms, through our email exchanges and few phone calls, we've extended our hearts and minds to each other, with Bob as the glue. I suspect Bob might like that very much.

I think we fairly glowed at each other, meeting in person for the first time. They are both such lovely ladies; living reflections of a part of Bob that I had caught glimpses of here and there: humour, sincerity and a plain-spoken heartfulness. Bob has a warm and loving family, and they are still fighting for him today.

We swapped stories for about an hour and a half, many about Bob and how he was as a young kid, and how he decided to go his own way in life and explore his own road.

We talked about their son's love of art and drawing, and of his inner imagery, sometimes dark, sometimes colourful, and always passionately his own way.

We talked about Bob's struggle with addictions, and the people he'd come to know at the Dr. Peter Centre, where he was days away from having his paintings put up in an art exhibition. We talked about the people and programs at the Broadway Church, where Bob had found emotional and spiritual support as he tried to bolster himself and set his life back on the rails.

Riki said that her son Bobby had become "the poster child" for the whole Taser issue. Riki and Patti also could not say enough in praise of their lawyer Cameron Ward, referring to him as "a Wizard". He is obviously a tireless champion of their cause.

The following was reposted (without permission) from the web site of Cameron Ward, solicitor for the Bagnell family in this matter:

Bagnell Inquest adjourned amid controversy
September 14, 2006

Coroner Stephen Fonseca today adjourned the coroner's inquest into the death of Robert Bagnell and ordered a ban on publication or distribution of a letter dated September 14, 2005 from Victoria Chief Constable Paul Battershill to B.C. Police Complaint Commissioner Dirk Ryneveld and Vancouver Chief Constable Jamie Graham.

Yesterday, the coroner's jury heard that the two Tasers used on Bagnell were tested by Intertek ETL Semko and that one of them generated 30.42 joules/pulse of energy in conditions designed to simulate contact with human skin. This is 84.5 times greater than the manufacturer's specification of 0.36 joules/pulse. The author of the report was scheduled to testify today.

Robert Bagnell died June 23, 2004. On July 25, 2004, VPD Detective Faora advised his mother that he died of a drug overdose. On July 23, 2004, after the body had been cremated and the ashes delivered to the family, the VPD issued a media release advising the public of the death and stating that Bagnell had been "Tasered" and had died in police custody. On August 16, 2004, VPD Deputy Chief LePard issued a follow-up media release stating that the Taser was used to rescue Bagnell from a fire in the building.

Tasers are a controversial electrical weapon linked to the deaths of at least 215 people in Canada and the U.S.
Bagnell inquest continues
September 7, 2006

The five man jury at the coroner's inquest into the death of Robert Bagnell has heard that VPD homicide investigators did not interview any of the 12 VPD members who were at the scene when Bagnell died. Instead, after "decompressing", the police officers submitted brief written accounts later. The four ERT members who were in physical contact with Bagnell when he stopped breathing delivered their statements to investigators on July 9, 2004, seventeen days after the incident.

The deceased's mother Riki Bagnell testified that she learned Tasers had been used on her son about a month after his death, from TV news accounts. She said she asked the investigator why the police didn't just leave her son alone to calm down and his response was "That's a good question, Mrs. Bagnell". A few weeks later the VPD held a news conference to explain they Tasered Bagnell to rescue him from a fire in the building.

The VPD media accounts of the death are archived at www.vancouver.ca.

The Province of British Columbia allows police departments to investigate their own members in cases of serious injury and death despite recommendations of a coroner's jury in January 2004 that such investigations be done independently.

It's too easy for people to hear phrases like "drug user" or "cocaine" and place a human being into a negative or dehumanizing frame of reference. There are lots of people like Bob Bagnell in the downtown/Yaletown area, and I have had the pleasure to meet and know some of them a little bit during my daily commutes. They all seem to be struggling with something or other, but without enjoying the same tools and resources that many of the rest of us consider essential.

People are complex and contradictory, and cannot be reduced to a sound bite. I knew Bob Bagnell on and off for about a year or so, and saw a slightly messed up guy who was also an artist. He was struggling with his own problems, yet had a friendly nature and a sense of humour about life. He lived downtown, yet was one of the people in my residential East Van neighbourhood.

I saw the evidence of Bob trying to pull himself up into a clean, drug-free, more spiritual way of living. He was still HIV positive and apparently had some form of cancer. He had a lot of strikes against him, but with the help of people and various agencies or programs that cared about him, he'd gotten free of heroin and then methadone, and had begun seeking counselling and spiritual support. He had been actively involved in putting himself on a better, more hopeful path. If you or anyone you've known has struggled with an addiction, drugs, alcohol, or even tobacco, you must know that it can be difficult to stay clean. It can be a daily challenge. I'm certain Bob fought with that same thing, and that it was not easy for him. He was on the right path, except for his final fall from grace and his tragic, violent end.

Read more about Robert Wayne Bagnell here if you are curious: http://robertbagnell.ejohnlove.com

Dalai Lama: Dialogues in Vancouver, September 2006

2006-09-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

World peace must develop out of inner peace.
- Dalai Lama

On Saturday September 9 2006, His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet spoke to 12,000 people at GM Place in Vancouver, BC. The title of his talk was "Cultivating Happiness.
The Dalai Lama is the only person for whom I would personally use the word "role model" - someone whose words, examples and actions have inspired me on a personal level.

My wife and I were seated in the top-most row of the upper level of the stadium - right up in the "nose bleeds", but the large-screen monitors made it very easy to see everything happening down below. The event began with performances by a Vancouver-based Tibetan Children's Choir, a group of kids ranging in age from 5 to 14, who had learned traditional Tibetan songs, dance and musical instruments. For me, the highlight of this performance was the duet of a 5 year old boy singing, accompanied by a 10 year old boy playing an eight-stringed instrument that looked like a bass guitar. At one point, the older boy played a kind of guitar solo, plucking his strings for all he was worth. His obvious joy and proud, almost swaggering body language showed on the big screen for all to see, and the crowd roared and applauded his performance with the loudest cheers of the event.

Next, Emcee Kevin Newman announced Vancouver's Mayor, a federal minister and His Holiness. He was then told that they were delayed. After telling some stories and joking with the patient crowd of 12,000, there was a few minutes' pause while the organizers deliberated on bringing out the Tibetan children's choir again.

Then, quietly from the other side of the stadium, we all heard the murmur of a familiar song. It got louder and more definite, and swept around to my wife and me like a gentle wave. The entire audience in GM Place had begun gently singing the Canadian national anthem. It was a lovely and moving moment of spontaneity.

Not long after, everyone finally arrived on stage. Author and organizer, Victor Chan, a long-time friend of the Dalai Lama and a Director of the Vancouver-based Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, spoke of the way his life was personally transformed by meeting the Tibet leader 30 years ago. Mr. Chan wrote an excellent book entitled The Wisdom of Forgiveness.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan spoke warmly of his private meeting with the Dalai Lama, and of the singular honour bestowed upon our city to be the first and only one to have an education centre named after the Tibetan leader. The Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education is due to open in Vancouver in 2009.

While he personally might be genuine in his respect and admiration for the Tibetan leader, I believe that Mayor Sam Sullivan's office also has a vested interest in cultivating stronger trading and tourism relations with China. The Vancouver Mayor's office has been criticized publicly for asking Falun Gong members to remove a makeshift shelter and protest signs from in front of the Chinese Consulate. The speculation was that this was an attempt to appease Chinese government officials. It must be a real challenge for a politician to balance trade, politics and ethics where China is concerned.

Federal Immigration Minister Monte Solberg took the stage, and told us that the Canadian Parliament has unanimously voted to sign a motion granting His Holiness with honourary Canadian citizenship, and that this honour had only been granted two times previously in our history. Kevin Newman the Emcee, joked that any Canadian would attest to how difficult it is to get members of our Parliament to agree about anything.

At the federal level, China and Canada have long had differences over Tibet. Recently, China has made slightly threatening remarks in response to the Harper government's unanimous decision to grant honourary citizenship to the Dalai Lama.

The presentation at GM Place, and indeed the tone of the Dalai Lama's entire visit, was very non-political and not limited to one particular culture or nationality. Nobody mentioned the ongoing Tibetan crisis, or the new Chinese railway which will help move tourists and Chinese citizens into Tibet faster than ever before. The rail cars were built by Montreal-based Bombardier.

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of millions of Tibetans, a recipient of the nobel peace prize and and an internationally recognized promoter of peace and non-violence. By his own admission, he is a simple Buddhist monk. He spoke in general terms about achieving peace of mind by exercising compassion and kindness in daily life. Praying for peace is a nice idea but achieves nothing without concrete action, he stressed. Referring to Muslim Terrorists, he reminded us that the actions of a minority of "mischievous" people claiming to act in the name of a religion should not spoil the image of that religion for everyone else. He also said that since 9/11, he has become the unofficial spokesman for persecuted and victimized Muslims everywhere.

On this trip, his primary mission seems to have been to open dialogue with citizens about the benefits of peace, love and compassion and to raise awareness for the new centre which will bear his name. Vancouver was chosen because of it's combination of Eastern and Western influences; a multicultural makeup, which includes Chinese and Tibetan. So we may hope this will be the right place to open educational dialogues and learn to live together and work for peace.

The Dalai Lama's 2006 visit to Vancouver, BC.

Dalai Lama to build education centre

Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education

The return of John and his little PC...

2006-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

After what seemed like an eternity (2 or 3 weeks), my pc is finally back to normal, or better.

While I do work with computers every day, I don't care much for the "bleeding edge" of the technology. I tend to keep using computers long past their expiry date, long after they have acquired that stale aura - the aura that PC gamers and Best Buy salespeople recognize as the sour stench of the undead pc.

Soon after I upgraded from my old Tungsten W to a new Treo 650, I discovered that the Treo's desktop software would not run under Windows 98 (yes, I was also clinging tenaciously to that outdated operating system, reluctant to change or rebuild the system which have served me well since September of 2000, when I bought it at London Drugs in Kerrisdale. Basically, I don't do the whole change thing often or very well).

So, in order to use my Treo and other USB stuff like my MP3 player with my PC, I had to bite the bullet and upgrade to Windows 2000. Of course, this isn't a real big deal except that I hadn't done it before, and didn't want to be kept away from my various online obsessions for very long. There never seems to be enough time in the evenings to do "maintenance" on my beloved old tool (or my PC), but after backing up everything I could think of to CD, and with the help and advice of more knowledgeable friends (thanks Victor - www.lccsonline.com), the deed was finally done.

Now, my beloved Treo (nicknamed "The Precious") can talk to my somewhat senior-citizen computer, which has now received a new face and a new lease on life. My hands feel like they are finally untied. Is that weird? One normally doesn't need a hand to gaze lovingly into their own navel. :)

Related Past Posts:
http://ejohnlove.blogspot.com/2004/05/ah-sweet-smell-of-success-or-my-pc-is.html
http://ejohnlove.blogspot.com/2004/03/woman-removes-windowstm-finds-herself.html

White Whiskers - a sad old man?

2006-08-20T14:26:00.001-07:00

After a few days without a shave, I can see white whiskers sparkling on my cheeks. Truth be known, at 45, I'm grey as an old man. My temples are pure white, Reed Richards style, and I'm more salt than pepper across the top of my head too. My chest hair is going white. WTF. When I was a kid, I felt more mature than my years, felt more mature than my friends, and longed for the day when I could be my own independent person, and have my own life.

I get my hair coloured by a pro every month of so, and the only painting I do anymore is to apply "Just for Men" to my beard. Only my hairdresser (bless her) knows for sure.

It's funny how white whiskers on my own face kind of spook me. I just want to scrape them off. It's been a couple of days since I last shaved, and much longer since I dyed my hair or beard.

The white hairs make me think of my Dad. All my life he'd been silver-haired. I remember being a little boy, and getting "whisker burns" from him when I'd kiss him goodnight. I'd lean in to kiss him on the cheek, and he'd suddenly, sneakily scrub his rough face into mine and say "whisker burn", and we'd both laugh.

At other times, his unshaven white whiskers would signal that the weekend had come, or some other time when his appearance didn't matter to him so much, or if he'd been drinking or just didn't give a damn.

Sometimes those white whiskers were a hint that he wasn't at his best, that perhaps I should be careful or cautious around him - that maybe he'd be angry, drunk, or lose his temper or maybe he'd be feeling sad or regretful. It usually made me a bit uneasy whenever he'd let himself go in little ways like that. Now I understand that it can't be easy to carry an emotional burden or an addiction with nobody your own age to unload on.

Grey and white are the colours of old age, and reminders of the finiteness of life, and of my genetic heritage (my Mum went grey early in life as well). For each of us, the clock is ticking.

I'm not overly obsessed with my looks or appearance, and I don't have a ginormous ego or anything, but I will adjust my image, and try to keep some aspects of my persona - little secrets - under my control. Then, when I'm ready to look like an old man, like my old man, I will let it happen...

Bagnell Family Sues Vancouver Police and Taser Int'l over Death

2006-06-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

Jun 22, 2006: Family of Robert Wayne Bagnell sues Taser Int'l, Vancouver Police Chief and other VPD officers for gross negligence in death of Robert Wayne Bagnell.

"Taser International Inc, the maker of the X26 Tasers used on Bagnell, is named in the lawsuit, along with the Vancouver Police Department, police Chief Jamie Graham and five other Vancouver police officers.

"The statement of claim, filed Thursday, said two police officers repeatedly shot Robert Wayne Bagnell, who was unarmed and represented no threat to anyone, with two weapons manufactured by the defendant Taser International.

"The lawsuit accuses the police department of unlawful acts and gross negligence for failing to train its officer in the use of the Taser."

A Tribute to Robert Wayne Bagnell - Links to Related Pages

Coroner’s Inquest into the Death of Mr. Robert Bagnell Scheduled for September 2006

2006-06-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Republished from A Tribute to Robert Wayne Bagnell:

Jun 05, 2006: Coroner’s Inquest into the Death of Mr. Robert Bagnell Scheduled for September 2006

"VANCOUVER – The British Columbia Coroners Service will conduct a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Mr. Robert Bagnell. Mr. Bagnell died while police were attempting to remove him from a common bathroom in a hotel at 1390 Granville Street, in Vancouver, on June 23, 2004.

The inquest will be held at the Coroners Court in Burnaby commencing at 0930 hours on September 5, 2006, and is expected to last several days.

This inquest will allow for the public presentation of all relevant evidence relating to Mr. Bagnell’s death. Coroner Stephen Fonseca and a five-person jury will hear evidence from subpoenaed witnesses in order to determine the facts surrounding the death. The jury will have the opportunity to make recommendations aimed at preventing deaths under similar circumstances in the future.

Contact: Stephen Fonseca Coroner
Office of the Chief Coroner
604 660-7753"

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

2006-05-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of the upcoming movie, I've read "Da Vinci Code".

If the book or movie get people thinking about their spiritual beliefs and spur open and reasonable discussions about it, then I think it can be quite useful. Certainly the Christian church is smart enough to leverage pop culture to fill seats on Sunday or in their Alpha courses. "Passion of the Christ" was extremely useful to them for that, although I expect that "The Da Vinci Code" won't be quite as useful, since its story is complicated and multi-layered and not of a kind that is easy to refocus into a positive message for Christian beliefs. Brown's book essentially makes the Catholic Church the big bad guy, responsible for completely re-spinning Christ to suit their own needs.)

There is a lot of criticism of Brown's novel. I have recently read a book (one of the "Rough Guide" series) that flatly denies the claims of Pierre Plantard and says that all of his "Priory of Sion" evidence is fake. Indeed, Mr. Plantard (who passed away in 2000) seems to have very little credibility, and likely no connection whatsoever to the fabled Meringovian royal bloodline, counter to his claims and manufactured documents, much of which influenced the research of Leigh and Baigent in their 1983 book, Holy Bood Holy Grail. Their book was in fact a major inspiration for Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code".

The possibility of Jesus Christ being a mortal - a human - leader, is appealing and makes total sense to me. I've never been much on mysticism or things like life after death. However, human history proves we have a fascination with the supernatureal - with the idea of beings with powers and levels of existence greater than our own. Like children, we may look for their to be a greater authority to guide us or lead into our future. Our sense of "faith" tells some of us that this must exist, and that we can touch it and depend upon it. As an individual, I have never felt this way. I see that humans lead other humans around, for a variety of selfless or selfish reasons. My experience says that the mysterious is just something we couldn't explain when we saw it. To me, it does not mean that it can never be expained or cannot be understood by humans.

The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" also wrote a book about the discovery, interpretation and politics linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Generally, I agree with their (and other researchers') claims that biblical revisions have occurred throughout history to suit the political/social needs of various rulers or of the Christian Church.

For what it's worth, I think "A History of God" by former Nun Karen Armstrong, is also an *excellent* overview of the historical development of "God" as interpreted by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

"Batman: Year 100" by Paul Pope and Jose Villarubia

2006-04-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

I have been reviewing Paul Pope's excellent series, "Batman: Year 100". These are published on PopMatters.com

Batman: Year 100 #1 of 4 - PopMatters Comic Book Review

Batman: Year 100 #2 of 4 - PopMatters Comic Book Review

Batman: Year 100 #3 of 4 - PopMatters Comic Book Review

Batman: Year 100 #4 of 4 - PopMatters Comic Book Review