Causes Conch Shell Might Donate to This Week

Pine Forest Cheerleading Camp - "the camp where the Booty Drop was born"

Wildlife Preservation Canada - working to save the Piping Plover, Swift Fox, Burrowing Owl and Spiny Softshell Turtle.

Spring Cleaning the Capital - Clean up public property or an area in your neighbourhood to help keep Ottawa clean, green and litter-free.

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation - to administer, preserve and provide information about Ingmar Bergman’s collected artistic works.

The Hank Williams Appreciation Society - Celebrating nine years on the internet please...

Dental Clinic for the Homeless - Extractions, fillings, cleaning, restorative, root canals. All of it.

Gimme an "E" .... "S" ... "I" ...

Coyote, the Research Director and I saw the Ottawa 67's implode the other night in a stunning loss to the Belleville Bulls. The hometown boys succumbed despite the best efforts of the enthusiastic 67's Ice Girls.

And it got me thinking: wouldn't it be totally inspiring to have my own personal squad of cheerleaders to follow me around and kick in whenever I need a little boost?

For example, I really don't enjoy flossing my teeth. But with those pom poms rustling and chipper voices ringing out (The IO's flossin' / Who's he bossin'? / Cavities! Cavities!) I could floss all morning long.

Or maybe I don't want to write that life-sucking memo my bosses need before lunch. But a peppy little cheer would put me over the top (The IO's at the keyboard / Typin' out words / Sendin' off a memo / To the pencil-necked nerds!)

I think this idea will catch on. Because the holidays may be long over. But we still need some good cheer.

Springifying

We coyotes are a nocturnal bunch. Comes with the genetic territory. When we're not howlin' at moons, we like runnin' under 'em. And it so happens that on my nocturnal perambulations, I've been seeing signs of spring returning to the centre of the city. Others note the seasonal birds chirping in the mornings. Bah. The little buggers wake me up, no matter how cheerful they sound. What I'm talkin' about is clean sidewalks and gutters.

As the city sleeps, the hired help is out sweeping sidewalks with pushbrooms and pressure-hosing them off, a winter's grim grime swept down the catchbasins in a single night.

As a four-legged type who eschews, (but sometimes, uh, chews) shoes, I appreciate this greatly. It means far fewer soggy cigarette butts squishing between my toes. Always a plus, in my books.

I also like the relative silence of this cleaning work. The plows that rush into the middle of the night after winter snowfalls are noisy damn things, given to loud, irritating roars and odd scraping and crashing noises that are hardly conducive to good napping.

Hand-held pushbrooms and water hoses beneath an early morning moon, on the other hand seem tolerably organic. After midnight, a city sounds quite different. The people who clean the streets during that time seem to respect this, and match quieter rhythms. The hum of traffic remains, but is greatly muted, and one can hear smaller sounds that rarely stand out after daylight. Like, say, the toenails of rather undomesticated dog types, splashing in puddles and romping on newly clean concrete...

Listen, and you can hear 'em...

Image: David Woodward, Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy

Monday: Eigga's Day to Blog

It was 4th Dwarf's idea that we would each blog one day of the week. However, he has gone and usurped my day with his dating issues. I met Coyote for coffee this afternoon and when I complained about this, he said, "Maybe he blogged just after midnight." That is still usurping my day, is it not?
Coyote and I had a lovely coffee and did some wonderful people/canine-watching. We saw:
-- a woman who looked straight out of an Ingmar Bergman film. The depression. The bun in her hair. Etc...
-- a very chic looking woman picking up the shit of her weiner dog.
-- a little girl in pink coat and pink rubber boots on her scooter in the rain.
-- a beautiful coyote-looking mutt who looked like he could be Coyote's cousin.

An example of 4D's luck with dating

Minutes: Emergency Meeting 20 March 2007

Venue: The Usual Spot
Present: Conch Shell, Fourth Dwarf, The Independent Observer, Coyote (guest: Painted Stick) Late with no excuse: Eigga
Absent with no excuse: The Chair
Emergency: The Usual
Called by and Minutes by: 4D

1. Agatha's new direction

4D: Introduces the topic, asks how people feel about Eigga's new direction.

Eigga: It's "Aye-ga", not "Eee-ga".

Coyote: Suggests that this pronunciation should be comfortable for the dwarf given his nautical leanings.

CS, PS, IO: Huh? What are you talking about?

Eigga: Explains to those who cannot be troubled to keep up to date on important goings-on about her name change and the journey she is on.

CS: So you're giving away all your stuff? or selling it?

4D looks eagerly for the answer.

Eigga: I'll be putting it in storage.

4D: You aren't really giving up your material possessions if they're in a storage locker.

Coyote: Sorry, dwarf, you're not getting her art.

[The remainder of the discussion revolves around what arrangements can be made for Eigga's feline companion. CS insists he has lost weight, all others insist that this is not the case, and that in fact what has happened is that Conchie's feline companion has become morbidly obese.]

2. Weight Pulling

4D introduces the topic. CS and IO look sheepish.

Coyote: I've been reluctant to post because no-one else has been posting.

4D: That is lame.

Coyote: Well, I was the last one to post.

4D: Oh, all right.

Eigga: I got my own thing going on.

Others: Oh, right, your solo project. [Various supportive comments are made about Eigga's blog.]

4D: What if we were each assigned a day of the week to put up a posting. There's five of us, seven days. (actually, there are 6 ESIs) If it's not your day and you want to post something, that's fine. If it is your day and you don't post, well so be it, but we know who to point the finger at.

Coyote and IO nod.

Conch Shell: I like that idea.

Eigga: I don't know...

4D: So, the people who hardly ever blog are in favour, but the one person here who puts up a posting nearly every day isn't sure?

Eigga: But that's different. [Various supportive comments are made about Eigga's blog.]

While a rambling discussion takes place in which various members demonstrate their placement on the Attention Deficit spectrum, 4D canvases the group about which days they would want if we tried this system. In between discussing an ESI university and Conchie's upcoming voyages, the following assignments are made or requested.

Saturday - ???
Sunday - Fourth Dwarf
Monday - Eigga
Tuesday - Coyote
Wednesday - Independent Observer
Thursday - Conch Shell
Friday - the Chair

4D: This works nicely, I like that the Chair has "the hammer" so he can bring it all home at the end of the work-week. [4D explains the curling reference and a general discussion takes place of what it would be like if curling metaphors replaced football metaphors in politics. Example: so-and-so was dropped from the cabinet because he just couldn't get his rocks in the house.]

3. Harmony disses the Usual Spot

4D: Asks if the group should take an official position on Harmony suggesting the Usual Spot has gone downhill. [4D does not even bother to note that it was a groundless accusation, completely without foundation.]

Coyote: I don't think her blog has much street cred.

4D notes the remark, others express surprise that Coyote would be so blunt, Coyote dissembles that he really meant that he suspected her readership is low. A consensus arises to let it go.

4. Other Business

CS: Juniper has moved, its location is up for rent. Right next to the new GCTC location. We could take over the lease. We just need somebody to man it.

ESIs look around the table to see if anyone feels like "manning" a restaurant. Nobody volunteers.

Eigga: I like the idea of an ESI university.

CS: There has to be some way we can make money with blogging.

4D suggests putting ads on the blog. IO suggests he would find this distasteful. Eigga suggests that the topic would require a whole other meeting.

CS: I just went to the dentist for the first time in six years. No cavities and no tartar.

4D expresses his surprise as he flosses every day and sees his dentist every six months yet still has tartar.

CS: Do you use an electric toothbrush?

4D admits he does not. Coyote and others extoll the glories of electric toothbrushes. CS then describes a procedure her dentist suggested for replacing grey tooth enamel that creeped out the entire group.

Eigga: I like the idea of an ESI university.

The others finally agree that it is a brilliant idea.

Coyote: If you were involved with this school wouldn't that cause an ethical problem with your current employer?

Eigga: Ethics, shmethics.

IO: We should all teach something unrelated to our skills.

CS: So you wouldn't teach astronomy?

IO: Right. I could maybe teach terrorist skills.

IO withdraws this suggestion after others suggest it would be a bad idea to put a "terrorist skills" class in the course calendar.

4D suggests he'd like to see computer games where players learn so much while playing them that they could receive academic credit.

Coyote: Should we be accredited or non-accredited?

There is general consensus that being accredited would be too much trouble.

4D: Should we be something other than a "university"? Like maybe an "academy".

The others agree that it would be better to be an academy, institute or something else, with institute having the strongest support. No decision is reached on whether it should be IESI or ESII.

Not long after, the ESIs part, noting an intelligently-cute couple playing travel scrabble in the corner.

An ESI contest: Name the Bridge!

The Rideau Canal pedestrian bridge has been open since September but still has no name.

Sure, there have been at least a couple of ideas: The Corktown Bridge, in honour of the Irish workers who helped build the Rideau Canal, and the Nelson Mandela Bridge, a tip of the tuque to the inspirational South African who visited our fair ville in 1990. But neither name seems ready to be uttered in the same breath as Arts Tower, Beavertail or Gloucester Sunrise.

Well, we can remedy this situation by soliciting suggestions. Let's come up with a worthy shortlist of proposed monikers. Then, at a future Emergency Meeting, we'll settle on one we can submit to the City of Ottawa for consideration.

Let the naming begin ...

*ickey *ouse = The Antichrist

When I was wee kit back west, dog's years ago, my littermates and I used to enjoy gambolling in the buffalo grass out back of the local drive-in movie thee-ay-ter. Especially of a warm Saturday evening when there was no full moon anyway. Through the barbed wire, we could see all sortsa interesting things up on the silver screen. I liked the 'toons best... some would say I still do...

So I note with more than passing interest that Montreal's Musée des Beaux Arts has joined France's Musées Nationaux to mount a new exhibition tracing the artistic sources of an icon of American pop culture who had a name very much like, ummmm, Dalt Wisney. For anybody with ADD issues, sorry, you can go sleep now. Here's where us coyotes veer off into semi-obscure paw sucking re: a point or two of copyright wierdness:

Good 'ol Unca Scroo... er, Dalt. The Musée's catalogue for this opus states that:

"the exhibition establishes for the first time a parallel between the original drawings of The *alt *isney Studio and the works of Western – and sometimes other – art that inspired them, from the Gothic Middle Ages to Surrealism. The art of Gustave Doré, Daumier, the German Romantic painters, Symbolists and English Pre-Raphaelites, as well as Early Flemish painters and Expressionist film, profoundly influenced the *isney Studios’ productions."

Inspired? Yesterday, local Petfinder arts maven Paul Gessell played a little journalistic peek-a-boo with this idea in the paper's Arts Sekshun, saying the exhibition curator calls Wisney 'essentially an image recycler'. Then he makes a passing reference to a 'human precursor of Photoshop'. Finally he quotes the museum catalogue stating baldly that Wisney 'plagiarized' any number of drawings for his 'toons.

Yup, Dalt swiped - liberally - from pretty much anyone & everyone. All public domain. Yet nobody seems to have stated the obvious, outrageous irony here: that not so long ago, Wisney Corp led the lobbying charge to extend American copyright protection by, oh, two decades. Didn't want its iconic rodent -- or any of its, ummm, intellectual property -- to enter the public domain. Ever. In fact, the current Wisney business model may be among the world's most rabid defenders of its 'own' recycled public-domain images, calling down the Legal Gods of Copyright on just about any piddley-ass infringer you can think of.

Why? Duh! Ka-chinnnggggg! Yet strangely, Wisney hates the idea of paying copyright to others that might wish to work similar scams.

This wholesale swiping, willy-nilly, from the public domain, then copyrighting the ass offa it offends my well-tuned sense of canine fairness. I rather think actual artists should be free to swipe iconography and play with it too, not just businesses with tonsabux for lobbyists & legal hounds.

And it all leads me toward the sad but inevitable conclusion that based on the evidence, perhaps the iconic rodent with the f(r)iendly smile and all his 'toon buddies have, in the hands of a buncha hellbound latter-day beancounters, been twisted into not just the Wicked Stepmother of Copyright, but the Antichrist.

It's no longer about the art, baby. If it ever was.

Image: David Goodger's Graphics, under a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. For us coyotes, the ironies just keep pilin' up....

Regarding Emergency Meetings

1. Something Disturbing at the Usual Spot

I saw something disturbing at the usual spot. First, in the north booth, two people were talking with a laptop computer on the table. It was closed, but out of its case, so they must have used it for something. Perhaps viewing architectural drawings or some other creative project, I thought.

But later, at two tables on the north wall there was a group of four young men who would have looked in place at the tavern the Hobbits stopped at the night after they left the Shire. These young men had two open laptops and were clearly using them to access the internet.

"Are they instant messaging each other?" asked my companion.

"I hope not," I replied. Just then, Lisa came by with my Pepsi. "Lisa, are those guys on the internet."

"Yeah," she said, "somehow you can get it here."

"But you guys aren't providing it, right?"

"Oh, no!" She looked horrified at the idea.

____________________________________________

2. Convenor Responsibility

From the Berkun Blog:

If you called the meeting, do your %*?@?! job. Everyone claims they know about facilitation, but few do it. If you called the meeting, it’s your job to

1. Get there on time;
2. Write a bullet list agenda on the wall;
3. Manage the conversation so no one hogs the floor and the right people get a voice at the right time; and
4. Make sure side issues get delegated out of the room.

If you don’t do all 4, any meeting problems are your fault.

____________________________________________

3. Emergency Meeting

I would suggest an emergency meeting to discuss these issues, but I'm not sure Lisa would appreciate me writing on the wall and we all know how close I am to getting barred all the time.

Finding a New Muse

It's clear that I'm not cutting it as the Stand-in Muse. I've done what I could, but clearly it's not working out. The Intimacy Challenge was a failure. My content lately has been as dull as dishwater. The pressure of being the stand-in muse has really been too much for me.
It seems the likelihood of the 5th Muse's return is slim to none.
I have a few suggestions of people and ideas for the new Muse position:
1) Conch Shell: Many have complained that she hasn't pulled her weight on this metablog. Maybe she has been waiting for the moment to be asked to be the New Muse.
2) Megan: This lovely young woman knows how to get intimate -- if intimacy is what you want.
3) Heather Armstrong: She's famous, so maybe we'd become famous by association.
4) A male blogger: Maybe our focus on finding a female muse has blinded us to some of the Ottawa, postmodern boy bloggers out there who are working through relationship issues, intimacy, and life's struggles.