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We went to this event being held conjointly with the WestEnd Community Centre and the Coal Harbour Community Centre. While you immediately think of the former as having workshops like "Drag and You. Why it's not just for the Parade Route", and the and the latter having quick seminars like "Corporate Raiding : The Whys, Wherefores, and Whats In It For You", I can assure you, it was most decidely not like that. Mostly. This being the West Coast, the largest consumer of crystal for non-china dinette purposes (only the great corporate multinational usurp this most aura cleansing heaven material as such), as well as the largest producer of a weed that justifies a multi-billion dollar prevention and incarceration complex south of the border, the Coal Harbour Community Centre didn't have so much a Christmas Installation, as a Winter Solstice Event. It was, in fact, a Labyrinth made entirely of candles. It was something. One one hand, it made me th...

to wait for my literary composition correcting simians. Here is the first draft of my article for my work newsletter: Failure. What a word. A loaded word, fraught with fear and embarassment. Whether you are an over-achieving toddler, spawn of a wall-street shark and a botoxed new york fashion maven, trying to get into the very best kindergarten; or you are a mechanic working on say, a nuclear submarine; or even if you are a delightfully whimsical brain surgeon, plying your trade, the failure is a loaded word. We even avoid saying it. "Success challenged", "Otherly talented", "Adjusting modalities". Anything to avoid pronouncing it, like a last name that resembles an unmentionable body part. And yet, if history has taught us anything (even though CNN argues persuasively that it has not) it's that great sucesses are usually spawned from the most appalling failures. Take Winston Churchill. He had a little mishap called the Battle of Gallipoli, wh...

In a miniscule work newsletter, but still!! Here, for posterity, is one of the many emails, 'sealing the deal' if you will. Hi , I'm afraid I'm not one for meetings. It's not that I hate them -- well, ok, it's because I hate them. Well, not hate them, I'm simply deficient in committee skills and/or experience which is seriously hobbled by a lack of desire to increase said skills and/or experience. But thanks so much for the invite, as much as it struck fear into my very soul. Looking forward to writing an article for the Enrolling Stone (it won't be about commmittees, I promise (mostly)). Cheers! J

I'm working on a new novel. Because editing my first one can get me down. A lot. But so far, this new book is just a shit ton of dialogue. Just endless reams of it. I hope it's entertaining, I'm never really sure if it is. But dialogue seems to be the easiest, and sometimes, when I'm really really tired, the dialogue just seems to write itself. Metric tons of TV memories of stereotypical characaters chatting away. So it's more like transcribing, actually. The genre is still Fantasy, but a different sub genre. Because I felt humour fanatasy wasn't obscure enough and embarassing enough to talk about at cocktail parties (what is this? 1961? who goes to cocktail parties?). And I like a challenge. Writing in what are effectively dead genres is a bit of a downer. Very hard, as in impossible to find anyone who is writing in the same genre. Most folks who do fantasy that I've chatted with, are doing epic/high fantasy (think Lord of the Rings) or adolescent fantasy (...

What follows is an entirely fictional email. As the season approaches, we are all very excited about our upcoming Seasonal/Winter/Solstice/Kwanzaa/Hannukah Event! And by committee meeting and quorum vote, everyone is officially not-liable for calling it a Christmas Party! Please note a few things to keep in mind for this year's Winter Celebration: the new extended waivers are should be in your inboxes by now, please sign then and return them to the HR rep. Because of the high spirited nature of last year's party, GlobalNetWorkInterCorp will not be hosting the event. Instead, it will only be a highly coincidental grouping of all the staff from Shipping, Accounts Receivable, and Sales showing up at the same place, with drinks paid for by (again, coincidentally) your managers (managers, please fill out corresponding petty-cash requests (again, unrelated)). this is not a costume party, so can those of you who wore delightful Star Treks uniforms please keep those at home. the wait ...

Here is my reply to dawn's invite : WTH? Dave a vegan? He better be of the joking and such. Also, super funny evite! Almost as funny as the WoW Cosplay thing you tried ot invite us all to last christmas. Except that wasn't trying to be funny. However, it did manage to be so sad it was funny. I"m also shocked. SHOCKED that MC Hammer isn't pictured in a Hammer Card. I'm also pretty sure the phrase 'hammer' is featured in Top Gun. So you really have no excuse to have just a lame actual hammer covered in what looks to be fresh columbian white. I mean really. Heavy metal tools and blow, when has that even been a good idea (except in Scarface, that Tony, *guffaw*). In that vein, will devans be bringing us all crisp $1000 bills as is the custom for bank employees at Xmas?