Assorted Nonsense

Maybe even twice.

I will be good at it again. When the novel’s done. Nowadays I find any spare writing time I find, I apply it directly to the novel. I’m so close to the end I can smell it. And you can bet the writing in the novel is much better than in the previous sentence.

Well, a bit better.

I’m on page 284 of the final draft. About 78 pages to go. It seems doable. I’ve already done 284 pages, haven’t I? 78 should be a breeze.

And yet somehow it still feels daunting. A part of me can’t believe I’ll ever finish it. I cannot IMAGINE how I will feel when I finish the thing, when I write that last word, do that last tweak. I know the thought of starting another novel will feel enormously daunting. It will have taken so long to finish this one! And yet start the next one I will.

It is slightly depressing that it has taken so long. I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that I’m writing this novel for pure personal satisfaction, for my own personal enjoyment, along with an enormous amount of money when I sell it (a little optimism there).

I must console myself with the fact that even though it will have taken me so long to finish this novel while others have been infinitely more prolific, while this novel may not be anywhere near as good as those of other, more prolific authors, while this one may never be published or acclaimed or even finished…

…I still make a mean barbecued salmon.

Remind me to post the recipe someday.

Although many of you might have considered my previous post a stupifying bore, and far be it from me to blame you, I actually found it quite interesting. And not for the reason that you might think.

I found it interesting because I had to make a decision in the course of writing it. I came up with a line that made me laugh, and then had to decide whether to use the line. As I was making the decision I was acutely aware of the presence of my mother looking over my shoulder, and of the good opinions of all my clean living, clean thinking friends, all three of them.

No I don’t live with my mother, although I’m sure such an arrangement would be most pleasant and result in a good deal less cooking on my part. But she does on occasion read my blog and I value her good opinion of me.

If you read over the previous post I’m sure you’ll quickly note which line I’m thinking about. Maybe you don’t find it particularly funny, but when I thought of it I chuckled. Wrote it down. And promptly deleted it and replaced it with something infinitely more boring.

And then I erased that and put the line back.

Robertson Davies has said (or it has been said of him) that he couldn’t write worth a damn until his parents passed on. I don’t want my parents to pass on, I’m all for immortality for the both of them, but I’d love to be able to write like Robertson Davies. His writing was tame before the death of his parents (I believe, not having read his entire oevre), and it was only with their passing that he no longer felt their benign yet nevertheless judgmental presence.

So it was that I felt the need to grow up and allow myself to indulge in one fairly inocuous if crude expression for the sake of a minor chuckle.

Robertson Davies, look out!

Not.

1. Can be read in a single sitting.

2. May or may not constitute part of a fence

3. Stimulates the intellect and/or funnybone or, failing that, the sphincter

4. Bears little resemblance to this one

Warning!

From here on in this blog may contain a great deal more nonsense than it has in the past.  I will be placing less pressure on myself to craft the perfect post in favour of simply crafting ”a” post.  You’re probably thinking “Holy Cow, how can the future quality of this blog be even less than it has been in the past?”

All I can say is, you have been warned.

So after being absent from blogging for some time my stats have plummeted to a low of about eighty hits a day.  Of course, that’s probably mostly incidental traffic, spiderbots and whatnot.  I’m going to try for a post at least once every couple of days, see if I can’t get the numbers back up to a healthy eighty-six or eighty-seven hits a day.  Surely I have that many relatives willing to watch me make a fool of myself on the internet.

(And with the aforementioned assertion Joe abruptly stopped writing.) 

The hiatus is officially lifted.

Unfortunately, my vacation is almost at an end as well.

Rarely have I needed a vacation so badly.  Fortunately, this one was everything I needed it to be.

Except longer.  But I’m not complaining. 

Perhaps I’ll blog about the vacation soon.  Perhaps I’ll blog about a lot of things.  Not sure exactly what I’ll blog about.  But I can tell you this:

I will blog.

Just…

…not so much today.

Too sunny out.

See ya’ll. 

Yes, I am succumbing to the temptation to blog again… but I have an excellent reason (and a caveat). First, the caveat: I will not blog about the CBC. From this day forward, if I continue to blog, it will be a personal blog with no connection to my dayjob.

It’s just safer that way.

And now: on with why I’m breaking my silence.

Last night, on behalf of SF Canada, I presented the SF Canada Lifetime Achievement Award to Phyllis Gotlieb. And it was great!

I managed to get the award to the Merrill Collection in one piece, we
had quite a fair turnout, Lorna Toolis and her gang at the Merrill Collection had the whole place set up wonderfully with a terrific assortment of goodies. Robert Charles Wilson was there, along with Peter Halasz, Allan Weiss, and Fergus Heywood and Hilary Doyle from the CBC (oops, there I go mentioning the CBC) and many others whose names escape me at the moment.

I spent the better part of my commutes this week trying to figure out
what to say upon presenting the award. Here’s what I came up with
(more or less):

***
Everyone here knows Phyllis Gotlieb. You know her work; perhaps
you’re fortunate enough to know her personally. You might know that
she was born Phyllis Fay Bloom right here in Toronto, and that she was
educated in Toronto as well. I don’t have to tell you that she’s
written many fine novels, poems, short stories, and that her work
spans many decades and genres — that it is an outstanding body of
work. You already know that.

Did you know that she’s written radio plays too? Of course you did.

Phyllis is a founding member of SF Canada. Indeed, she is one of the
founders of contemporary Canadian science fiction. She has been and
continues to be a role model and mentor to many of us who consider her
a part of our extended family. In her groundbreaking career Phyllis
has been an editor, she’s been nominated for a Governor General’s
Award, and she’s even had an award named after one of her novels: The
Sunburst Award. And the award we’re presenting today isn’t her first
award – her novel A Judgment of Dragons, published by Berkley, won the Canadian Science Fiction Award in 1981.

You are no doubt familiar with the sheer scope of Phyllis’s work: with
her elegant prose, the gritty reality of her fictional worlds, and the
vibrant, sometimes tragic characters inhabiting those worlds. Such
work has made her a towering figure in Canadian literature, a pioneer
in Canadian science fiction. But her reputation transcends our
borders – her work is respected the world over.

It’s one thing to be accomplished. It’s quite another to be as
accomplished as Phyllis is and remain so darned friendly. As a
recipient of her generosity and warmth — one of many recipients, I
know – I am happy to attest not only to Phyllis’s towering
achievements as an artist, but also to her enduring humility.

All of which is more than enough reason to present our very own Grande
Dame of Science Fiction with this honour here tonight. Phyllis, on
behalf of SF Canada, I am thrilled to present you with the first ever
SF Canada Lifetime Achievement Award, along with my sincere
congratulations.
***

It’s not genius, but it’s sincere. Congratulations again, Phyllis.

Joe (making no promises when another post might appear…)

…resist temptation… to blog… again…

I was going to post this on April 1st but I figured no one would believe me…

So I’m posting it today.

Gonna put Assorted Nonsense on hiatus for awhile.  I’ve really enjoyed blogging these last few years but my free time is kind of drying up.  I find I can’t put the time into my posts that I used to be able to.   The free time I do have for writing I’d like to put toward my fiction.  My novel is at two hundred and seven pages and counting; I need to spend more time on it, get the darned thing done.

There are other reasons as well.  For those who might be inclined to wonder, allow me to state categorically that I have not been instructed to shut down this blog by anyone.  I’m doing it of my own free will.  (That is, if you believe that any of us truly possess free will, which I wonder.)

I am doing it partially because recently I have found blogging to be a tad dangerous.  It’s all too easy to hurt peoples’ feelings.  I have been guilty of this on at least one post.  Recently I found myself riding an elevator with a friend at work and I found it a tad chilly in said elevator.  I wondered why.  Until I remembered something I’d written in the blog recently that hadn’t been intended to offend and yet was, in retrospect, undeniably offensive.  I have stricken the offensive lines from the record and someday I will find the courage to apologize in person.

It sucks to find out that as much as we strive to emulate Ghandi or the Dalai Lama we remain much closer in spirit to Harlan Ellison, whose caustic wit I admire but whom I do not care to emulate in a public forum.  So on hiatus we go, partially to remove that particular temptation, partially to free up more time for writing, partially because blogging has simply run its course for me.

Never say never, though.  I may pick it up again when I finish the novel.

In the meantime, so long folks.  Thanks for hanging around.  I remain accessible by email; you’ll find my address at the top.  I’m leaving the blog online; I may add some fiction and essays to the sidebar from time to time.

Who knows?  Maybe I’ll get out more.

Enable your comments sections, folks.   

That’s right, starting right now and for the next twenty-four hours it’s Frances Mai-Ling and Whimsical Brainpan Appreciation Day here on Assorted Nonsense. Because these two (along with a handful of others) have been the greatest supporters of this site. If I haven’t made it clear in the past, let me make it perfectly clear right now that even if Frances and Whim never comment again on any post on this blog they have already won themselves a secure place in the heart of this blogger.Thanks Frances and Whim! Everybody go check out their sites now and give them an honoured place in your blogroll. Um, please.

While I’m on the subject of blogging, somebody noted the other day that Assorted Nonsense has pretty much been the Best Of Assorted Nonsense these days. It’s true, I have been indulging in a lot of reposts, and the reason for this is twofold: one, I’m getting everything back online that was lost in the immolation of the original Assorted Nonsense, and two, I haven’t had a lot of time for original posts these days between my day job, my family, my novel, and story editing Canadia.

And if you’ll forgive me veering wildly from one subject to another, speaking of Canadia, congratulations to my good friend Matt Watts, the writer and star of Canadia, on his ACTRA nomination for Best Voice Actor for his work on the pilot of Canadia which we did together what seems like years ago. Way to go Matt!Now everyone go celebrate both Matt’s nomination and the first annual Frances Mai-ling and Whimsical Brainpan Day.

Found a great little plug-in for automatically updating WordPress… I’ve used it once so far and it worked flawlessly.  No more sleepless nights wondering if you’re going to mess up your blog updating it!

Congratulations to Keith Dsouza for coming up with it… thanks Keith!

Okay, enough of this not blogging.

From October 1st, 2005, here’s a post from my old CBC Workerbee blog to help tide us over:

The Fine Print

 

In an effort to save some much needed money, my wife decided to cancel her gym membership. The timing was right; the membership was for eighteen months, which ended at the beginning of September. We assumed that it would simply expire. Just to be sure, my wife asked me to check the Mastercard statement online to make sure that no more payments were coming out.

Payments were still coming out.

I got out the contract and noticed a clause we had overlooked. It said that the membership would not expire unless we contacted the gym (which, for the sake of this discussion, I shall simply refer to as BODY BOOMERS).

Fine. We phoned the gym (BODY BOOMERS, in case you were wondering) and they said that we had to stop by and tell them in person. My wife was annoyed, but she agreed. So later that afternoon we stopped by to tell them in person. I waited in the car with the kids while she went into the gym (which, as you might recall, I’ve decided for the purposes of this discussion simply to refer to as BODY BOOMERS.)

About two minutes later my normally quite reasonable wife came storming back to the car in what I believe is technically referred to as an “apoplectic fit.” “You deal with them,” she said, presumably to me, as opposed to one of the kids.

So I went in to deal with them. Thinking, we’re gonna get this sorted out right away, and not give a cent more to this… this BODY BOOMERS than we have to, especially what with me being locked out of my job and all. A woman was at the counter talking to this big, hairy looking character, both of them sporting name tags, and they didn’t look especially unfriendly, so I launched right in. “Look, I just want to get this settled right away, what do we have to do, is there some kind a form to fill out? ‘Cause we’d like to sign it right now.”

The woman said, quite reasonably, “There’s no form for your wife to fill out right now. First she has to provide us with two months notice, then she has to make an appointment, then she has to come in, swallow a live wildebeest whole with the entire club looking on, and then, if she’s lucky, and we’re in a really really really good mood, then maybe, MAYBE we’ll stop charging your Mastercard our ridiculously overpriced fees.” (WARNING: the preceding dialogue may have contained some slightly fabricated elements.)

“Look,” I said, in my best Clint Eastwood, which on a good day sounds rather more like a really good Don Knotts: “Just give me the damn form.”

“Hey, don’t get upset at us, pal,” the hairy guy said, quite reasonably. “We’re just employees here. And anyway, the whole wildebeest thing is right here in the contract, plain as day.”

“Where?” I asked.

He got out a super duper high falutin’ electron microscope thingie and we took a really good look at the contract. And right there, sure enough, in a perfectly legible font really quite a bit larger than several subatomic particles put together, I spied the offensive clause. No doubt about it, my wife and I were sunk.

“That’s… open to interpretation,” I huffed, and stormed out.

“What if they get collection agencies after us? It could get really nasty,” my wife told me later, after I informed her of my nefarious plan just to cancel the Mastercard and let the chips fall where they may.

“Hmm,” I said, after which I informed her of my revised plan, which consisted mainly of her giving BODY BOOMERS several months notice, making appointments with BODY BOOMERS representatives, and quite possibly swallowing whole a certain kind of antelope hailing from the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem of Tanzania (sometimes known as a “gnu”).

Moral of the story: I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, except to say that it involves fine print and gnus (sometimes known as “Wildebeests”).