In order to meet the minimum of one-post-per-day (on a monthly basis) I need to write twelve more posts after this one by the end of tomorrow.
It’s not inconceivable I could do this.
Could I do it without spamming a lot of one-liner nonsense? Quite possibly.
Could I do it without posting any cat images? Probably.
Could I do it with a dozen sober, substantive messages? Let’s not get crazy here.
Let me start by singing the praises of spring, which truly arrived today with sunny skies and unseasonably warm temperatures. I almost expected delightful cartoon birds to alight on my shoulders while fluffy cartoon bunnies hopped around my feet. I mean while outside. It would be kind of weird if that happened at my cubicle and if I’m going to have weird things happen I’ll take winning the Lotto 6/49 jackpot over the appearance of cartoon animals at my work desk.
Speaking of the 6/49, I actually matched four out of six numbers last week. That sounds impressive until you realize it’s only 66%, which in school is a mediocre grade. I won $43.70. I have not, as a result, taken early retirement.
On that still-not-rich note, here’s to 12 more posts in the next 25.5 hours. That’s less than one post every two hours. Easy peasy.
I find myself sitting at the computer. I am relaxed and at ease after a nice walk out on an early spring afternoon. I’m also a bit stinky because I walk like a hurricane and my deodorant apparently can’t keep up. My interview doppelganger will be called Dopple for short.
Dopple: Introduce yourself to the audience.
Me: I’m Creole Ned, just like it says in the title of this blog.
Dopple: Can you provide a brief summary for people averse to clicking links?
Me: It’s a random name I made up for a gaming lobby back in the early-ish days of the Internet. I don’t have a particular love for creole food, it just seemed like a funny title to go with a nerdy-sounding name like Ned. The combination is also pretty rare. There aren’t a lot of Creole Neds out there.
Dopple: Does that make you feel special?
Me: Not really.
Dopple: Tell me a little about this blog.
Me: I started this blog back in February 2005 because it seemed like an interesting way to collect my thoughts into a journal that could be read by anyone with an Internet connection. In retrospect I’m not sure it was a good idea but fortunately very few people actually read it.
Dopple: Does it bother you that you don’t get many hits or views or whatever they call it when someone looks at your site?
Me: Sometimes it bugs me a little, but the blog has no real focus, so there’s no “hook” to lure people back, like funny pictures, a serialized story or high-quality porn. I mean, 462 posts are about jogging. Jogging is not interesting to read about (though I try to spice things up by swallowing bugs and injuring myself when I run). Do you know how many hits the site got on March 19th? None! There are about five hundred billion people on the Internet and no one came to this site on March 19th, not even by accident. Sometimes it gets a little depressing but the blog gives me a place to write lists, so there’s that.
Dopple: Tell me about lists.
Me: I love lists. I bought all those Book of Lists books when I was a kid. I used to devour the Guinness Book of World Records, which was really just a giant set of lists. Lists are easy and fun, two of my favorite things. However, lists don’t make for good discussion, which is why I don’t like lists on forums.
Dopple: Go on.
Me: Someone starts a thread, “Name your ten favorite movies featuring blimps” and every post is just a list like this:
Black Sunday
Hindenburg
The Island at the Top of the World
Around the World in 80 Days
There’s no actual discussion, it’s all just lists. You might get someone disputing Around the World in 80 Days because they used balloons, not blimps, but that’s about it. By the way, The Island at the Top of the World is one of those bonkers early 70s movies that came out of Disney when they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It’s great. Or at least that’s the way my nine-year old self remembers it.
Dopple: Let’s talk about some of your other favorite things. What’s your favorite color?
Me: I used to say red but I’m partial to pink now, which is really just a lighter version of red. My favorite shade is probably deep pink, which has a solid sturdiness to it.
Dopple: Gay.
Me: Complete coincidence! Besides, assigning colors to gender or sexual orientation is dumb, so I’m doing my bit to help change that.
Dopple: That’s very progressive of you. What’s your favorite food?
Me: Anything with melted cheese on it.
Dopple: So liver with melted cheese?
Me: Yuck, no.
Dopple: So anything you like with melted cheese on it?
Me: Yes please.
Dopple: Who is your favorite author and why?
Me: This sounds lazy because he’s sold a trillion books, but Stephen King. Why? Because he writes so effortlessly. Even his bad stuff just rolls along. He doesn’t put up barriers, he invites the reader along for a ride. It may be a trip in a sedan along a quiet country road, it may be on a roller coaster that threatens to fly off the tracks on every corner. His characters breathe and feel real. He’s even managed a few good endings. I’ve almost forgiven him for It. Almost. But I also like a certain level of absurdity because in many ways I think life is absurd, and for that I find Douglas Adams scratched that itch. Then he died. David Wong (Jason Pargin) is pretty good at capturing an Americanized take on that absurdity, though.
Dopple: Do you read a lot?
Me: I’m not a fast reader but with my longish commute I manage around 32-36 books a year. I mostly read trash.
Dopple: Why do you read trash?
Me: Because I want, above all else, to be entertained. I’m not averse to learning about the human condition, man’s inhumanity to man and all that, but wrap it up in something that’s enjoyable to plow through. Plus I have always had a fondness for things like Bigfoot, UFOs, conspiracy theories and so on.
Dopple: Do you believe in all that nutty stuff?
Me: No. The conspiracy theory stuff, in particular, fascinates me because it shows how otherwise sane people can be led to believe ridiculous things. Look up “chemtrails” or “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams.” I’ll wait here.
Dopple: I’ll look them up later. What about Bigfoot?
Me: I think Bigfoot or something like it could be real. Woods are scary. And then there’s the ocean. We hardly know what’s going on way down there at points that are deeper than Mt. Everest is high. Sure, maybe it’s just a bunch of blind glow-in-the-dark shrimp, but it could also be The Great Old Ones biding their time before wiping us out, for all we know.
Dopple: Let’s shift gears a bit. Tell me about your hobbies.
Me: I like to draw. Well, I used to.
Dopple: Why did you stop?
Me: I’m not very good at it.
Dopple: Practice makes perfect!
Me: Lazy.
Dopple: I know you have a Wacom tablet…
Me: It’s gathering dust. I mean that literally. I found it the other day while looking for something. Caked with dust. This place is very dusty.
Dopple: You used to draw a lot as a kid.
Me: Yes, I did a lot of drawing through my teens and twenties. I made comics like The Ever Continuing Saga of the Round Balls, Bablee Duck, Angry Carrot and so on. I started scrawling with pencil crayons and ballpoint pens (tip: not the best tool for drawing), then moved to a Koalapad on a Commodore 64 and eventually a Wacom Bamboo tablet on PC. The tablets always felt awkward, like I was drawing by remote control. I can see why tablets with built-in screens like the Cintiq are popular with artists, even if most artists can’t actually afford them.
Dopple: You see the iPad Pro and it tempts you, doesn’t it?
Me: Maybe. Yes. Yes, it does. But I’m looking at something like $1500 to doodle for half an hour and then give up forever. It’s not a good investment. And I already have a Surface Pro 3 with pen. I’ve tried doodling on that and it didn’t take.
Dopple: But the iPad Pro is so much sexier…
Me: I’m not listening! This interview is over!
Dopple: Aw, come on, just a few more questions. We haven’t even talked about your writing or sexual preferences.
Me: Ho ho.
Dopple: So tell me about–
Me: Two more questions. Then I have to do something important, like check my garrison in World of Warcraft.
Dopple: That doesn’t sound important.
Me: Don’t judge me.
Dopple: Can we continue this interview later, then?
Me: I will permit that, yes.
Dopple: Very generous of you.
Me: I’m a generous guy, as you know.
Dopple: What’s the most private thing you’re willing to admit?
Me: Isn’t that a profile question from OK Cupid?
Dopple: Yes.
Me: It’s a dumb question.
Dopple: Indulge me.
Me: I wear socks when having sex.
Dopple: Ew.
Me: You asked.
Dopple: All the time?
Me: Is that the second question?
Dopple: No. How about this: Is the Apple Watch worth it?
Me: Not really. But I would hate to forget to put it on.
Dopple: How seemingly contradictory!
Me: That’s my motto.
That’s all we have time for today. Check out the second part of the interview where we learn more about growing up in Duncan, writing, singing and UFOs.
Today is the first day of spring (2016 edition). As such I have a few requests to make of Mother Nature regarding this season of growth and renewal:
Mild temperatures.
Plenty of sun.
Only enough rain to keep things green and prevent drought. NO MORE.
No major earthquakes. No one wants the Big One, right?
No major freak storms. These will probably happen, anyway.
#3 has already been a bust as today it rained buckets. Well, it rained rain, but the amount was copious. We’re set for the rest of the month, I’m pretty sure. NO MORE.
On the plus side, no major earthquakes or storms today, either, so I’m calling the first day of spring a draw.
I am mostly posting this to help force that animated cat image down the page so it’s no longer the first thing I immediately see when the site loads. I mean, it’s funny and all but it’s also kind of weird and more importantly, testimony to my complete inability to write anything, even lousy things, over the past week or so.
There, two paragraphs of text should help. I could also pad this post out even more by inserting a picture…say, an animated cat image…
This is a uniquely 21st century headline, though the actual news item is probably not unique. It may not surprise you, either, that the unfortunate incident happened to an American. It’s my favorite news headline so far this year:
It’s the first day of March, I’m ready for spring. Instead it’s soggy and cold outside (admittedly it would be even worse if it was cold and soggy inside). I do not approve.
If this situation has not changed by March 20 (spring equinox) I will be cross. Cross, I say.
My history with the Oscars goes something like this:
watched live, would make up “voting ballots” with a friend and put a lot of thought into who/what I thought might win and who/what I thought should win
watched live, dropped the whole ballot thing
watched live or if unable due to work/blimp accident/etc. would record and watch later
recorded to watch later
recorded and watched a few highlights
recorded then never watched
stopped recording
I can’t say why I lost interest, exactly, but I did. However, I do stay apprised of who and what gets nominated and then wins, so here’s my shallow, uninformed analysis of last night’s winners:
The We Can’t Give You Important Oscars So You Get All the Technical Awards: Mad Mad: Fury Road (won 6 Oscars, all for things like sound recording)
Important Movie We Can Give An Oscar To And Feel Good About: Spotlight (about investigative reporting on naughty priests)
The He’s Been Nominated Enough, Give Him An Oscar, Especially Since There’s No Decent Mimic Performances This Year Award: Leonardo DiCaprio
The We Can Give An Oscar to Pixar This Year Award: Inside Out (this wouldn’t have happened if The Good Dinosaur had been their only 2015 release)
We Love Directors Who Make Very Stylish Movies Award: Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant (it would have won Best Picture, too, except Important always trumps Stylish, see above)
The Skyfall Effect Award: Giving the Best Song Oscar to the terrible “Writing’s on the Wall” because it’s from a Bond movie and Skyfall had an awesome song, so this one must be awesome, too, right?
The I Don’t Know These People Awards (impressively given to three of four acting nominees this year): Best Actress (Brie Larson) and Best Supporting Actress (Alicia Vikander), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Rylance)
The Better Give Him an Oscar Before It’s Too Late Award: Ennio Morricone (87), who won for his score for The Hateful Eight. He had five previous nominations, going back to 1979.
The What Did We Do Wrong Award: To the Oscar telecast itself, scoring its lowest viewership since 2008.
With the recent addition of Family Day in February, we’ve got statutory holidays in pretty much every month:
January: New Year’s Day
February: Family Day
March: Easter
April: um, sometimes Easter is here instead of March
May: Victoria Day
June: ???
July: Canada Day
August: BC Day
September: Labor Day
October: Thanksgiving
November: Remembrance Day
December: Christmas
What we need is a new holiday for June to help smooth over the gap between Victoria Day and Canada Day. Let’s take a look at how the holidays currently break down:
Honoring the country/province/monarchy: 3
Being grateful for what we have/what others have sacrificed: 2
Religious: 2
Honoring workers: 1
What the hell, let’s just slap a holiday in here: 1
Honoring family: 1
The clear favorite is a holiday honoring some kind of government. This is perhaps not surprising since it’s the government that gets to make the holidays. We already have holidays for the country, province and the Queen. That means we’d probably have to go macro (the world) or micro (the city). City Day probably wouldn’t fly so let’s go with World Day. It sounds grand, almost important. We can say it’s all about remembering how we’re all in this together.
But if that doesn’t fly, we need a backup. Adding more religious holidays would be too controversial, even if Christmas is just a bunch of gift-giving and crass commercialism, and just as many people associate Easter with a magical bunny that delivers candy eggs as they do the resurrection of the son of God. So religion is out.
Family and workers have holidays so it’s highly unlikely another could be squeezed in. Honoring/remembering is also covered adequately with Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day. This really only leaves the “What the hell, let’s slap a holiday in here” category, currently represented by New Year’s Day (come on, what makes the first day of the calendar so important it requires an official holiday? As discussed in the previous post, our calendar doesn’t even work properly).
June is the month in which summer begins, so maybe we could do Summer Day. Except that’s kind of lame. No one would buy that.
Maybe it could be a celebration of some group everyone likes or even loves. Like babies. Baby Day. Except that comes a bit close to Family Day, so probably a no-go. Most people like doctors. Doctor Day. It even has some nice alliteration. On the other hand, a lot of people view doctors as overpaid rich folk that also happen to cure sickness and save lives, so there may not be enough of a groundswell to support Doctor Day.
We need something that all Canadians love and cherish. Framing it that way, the choice is obvious: Hockey Day.
But Hockey Day in June makes no sense, even if the Stanley Cup Playoffs absurdly drag into that month.
Canadians also generally love maple syrup, poutine, moose, beavers, snow and being nice, at least as far as most Americans think (those who realize Canada is not actually part of the US, that is). Unfortunately, these are all too weak to put forth as official holidays.
Well, I give up. I say we just declare some Monday or Friday in June as statutory holiday and it can be whatever anyone wants it to be. We’ll call it National Holiday Day. There, done.
Every four years we get a bonus day at the end of February because our calendar sucks and this is the best we can do to make it work.
Since this has no real impact on anyone or anything other than serving as a reminder that there’s some kind of Olympics that year (the summer games in Rio this year, a place currently best known for the Zika virus and some of the world’s most polluted water–have fun, athletes!) it seems like a reasonable solution. And it lets people born on the 29th pretend to age in quasi-dog years. “I got my driver’s license when I was four years old, that’s right.”
I’ve finally added a few more posts to the little “Posts I Like” thing over to the right (or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile device). These are posts that I find amusing/terrifying or somehow worth noting. Of note is the brief, tragic “Learning to Swim” saga.
In 2015 I read 36 books and one short story. Actually, I read a lot of short stories but only one that was purchased standalone (“In the Tall Grass”).
I once again saved a tree by reading 100% digitally, primarily via a Kobo H20 ereader, an iPad mini (which unceremoniously died midway through the year) and my iPad Air (which did not unceremoniously die but is used primarily for reading in bed, as it’s a bit too big for me to enjoy carrying around for book reading). The iPad reading was done via the Marvin ereader app. Kobo and Amazon’s Kindle apps are both seriously lacking in features vs. their ereader counterparts, possibly to drive sales of said ereaders.
I reviewed the majority of books on Goodreads and the reviews break down as follows on their one to four star scale (Goodreads does not allow half stars):
Five stars: 1
Four stars: 15
Three stars: 8
Two stars: 2
One star: 1
For the most part I enjoyed the books I read last year, with 23 of 27 reviewed netting at least three stars. Even the pair of two-star novels (Swan Song and The Gate at Lake Drive) both had their strengths and I don’t regret reading them.
The five-star was a re-read, Stephen King’s On Writing. As I wrote in my review, it’s the seamless fusion of writing primer and memoir that lifts this book from being very good to great.
The one-star review is for The Store, Bentley Little’s semi-satirical take on a Walmart-like store chain that takes over small towns for nefarious and profitable purposes. I’d never read Little before and have no idea how representative The Store is of his style, but it left me unwilling to investigate any of his numerous other The _____ books. The utter banality and formulaic writing made this the most eye-rolling read of 2015 (Swan Song would be the runner-up, see my review for a few examples).
I’ve settled into a bit of a pattern with my book-reading over the past few years, with my selections falling into these groups:
a couple of Stephen King novels, typically a mix of a current title and an older one or two I haven’t read. I read five this year, so I went a bit King-crazy. I have no regrets. I say that even having read Dreamcatcher.
a couple of science fiction, fantasy or horror classics dating back to the 19th or early-to-mid 20th centuries. Only two this year: Lord of the Flies and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
a smattering of current novels or books spanning my usual interests: science fiction, horror, weird stuff (UFOs, etc.). This was the bulk of my reading.
books by established authors that were on sale. These are usually old or lesser-known titles, like Arthur C. Clarke’s (excellent) The City and the Stars, an outrageously ambitious first novel.
a handful of books by new authors (or at least new to me) that were on sale, typically published by small presses or self-published. I’m always hoping that I’ll find a new author to follow but usually end up either disappointed or ambivalent. The best of these was probably Sarah Lotz’s The Three.
a few re-reads. I re-read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency again and did not regret it.
And now here are a few of my 2015 Reading Awards:
Favorite book of 2015: Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel) Favorite re-read of 2015: On Writing (Stephen King) Most depressing book of 2015: Idiot America (Charles P. Pierce) Best Stephen King book I read in 2015 (not counting On Writing): From a Buick 8 (yes, you heard me–the story is simple but is strangely charming) Most disappointing classic: Swan Song (Robert McCammon). I don’t understand why this book is rated so highly. It’s not bad, it’s just very average. I would say I’m a picky reader but I love enough junk to know that’s not true. The “Well, that was…interesting” Award: Given the Circumstances (Brad Vance). I figured it was time to read a gay romance. For the first half of the book the two main characters dance around each other (they are massive/studly NFL and MLB players, of course) then when they finally have sex it’s rendered in enough detail to qualify as a medical dissertation. It felt weird (that’s what he said). It was essentially story story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story fin. Maybe all romances are written this way and I never knew because I’d never read any. Now I know and well, it was interesting.
