Guest Posting from Zoom

After some angst and developing stress symptoms, Our first Meta Contest Winner Zoom writes:

Dear ESIs,

I am pleased to submit my guest post to you, and I thank you for your patience. It helped that Aggie pointed out it could be short.

My post consists of a single link: Click here

I trust this satisfies my contractual obligations to the ESIs.

I wish you all the best with your future contests, which I will watch from a safe distance.

Sincerely,

Zoom

Google Poem: Fifteen Potential Books

1. I want to write a book about America. Because I love America
2. I want to write a book about how date night is great for your marriage
3. I want to write a book about the series on the Word program, that would give a history on each antique
4. I want to write a book about my experiences with clients who have been healed through massage
5. I want to write a book about my life to help girls out there that have been raped or been under sexual pressure
   
6. I want to write a book about her!
7. I want to write a book about the struggle I have gone through in the last 8 years trying to get businesses and ideas off the ground
8. I want to write a book about Multiple Sclerosis and its effects on the average person.
9. I want to write a book about teaching children about death and dying. It will be a book that parents and children can read together
10. I want to write a book about my life, not that my life is that meaningful, but there have been 32 bizarre incidents that have happened...
11. I want to write a book about my experiences - life before diagnosis, the hell of hospital treatment, life after etc.
12. I’ve been busy researching a book I want to write - a book about a poor woman living around 1910
13. ...when I got called by the "Today" show, I thought well, it's now or never if I want to write a book about the hobo journey
14. I want to write a book about what it was like to be a slave
    
15. I want to write a book about everything I don’t remember.

[*]

Aggie's perfect storm

Zoom needs a little time to pull her extra-special prize guest bloggage together, but watch this space. It's coming soon, and it's gonna be brilliant! In the meantime, to cover, I'll do what ESIs do best. No, not that. I mean metablogging.

It has become overwhelmingly needful to metablog our own Essex girl.

Evidence suggests Aggie has found that the road to new-age enlightenment is no easy thing, strewn as it is with a perfect storm of pitfalls. And bad hair days. Not to mention bent-to-broken metaphors. Poor thing is now so confused, she's laying off drinking and trying to reinvent herself as a common craft blogger...

What are the ethics, here? Aggie is one of us. I mean, I love her, and she is, like Mary Poppins, Practically Perfect in Every Way. Uh, but she remains in place as our next-best Muse. Better yet, she's not here to defend herself... and we need material. No honour among metabloggers. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, I was at Bank & Slater yesterday, nose to the ground, sniffin' opportunity, when I chanced to look up. And was struck with awe. I mean, the signage at this one corner has Aggie's enlightenment covered: martini lounge named for her favorite yoga position, strong coffee options, a hair salon to repair the unfortunate mullet experiment, and a relaxing day spa. The salon's name? Perfection. Nothing better than that.

And what about that constant, soothing flow of large American cars, huh?

Truly, when one seeks satori, the devil is in the distractions. Crafting? Aggie, we barely recognize you! Just ignore the proven fact that when anyone in a dysfunctional group tries to change for the better, other members will pressure her to return to old, familiar patterns, so they can avoid confronting their own dysfunctions. Instead, think about this, Ags: Lotus Martini Lounge!

The Meta Contest Winner

As was mentioned in the minutes of our last Emergency Meeting, the Elgin Street Irregulars met last week and selected a winner from among the entries to the Meta Contest.

We made a list and checked it twice with thorough discussion of the merits of each entry.

Tiana: choose a location in the city and people need to determine that place via your excruciatingly obscure clues and photos.

Lovely idea for a contest, we're good at excruciatingly obscure, but...

• maybe not so good at clues and photos.
  

A. & J.: Show off hidden gems of Ottawa. Nothing touristy, easily visible and it has to be in the downtown core. Something that only the locals would know about. A real hidden gem.

Lovely idea for a contest, but...

• It would be a fair amount of work; and
  
• We want to keep our gems hidden; look at how the Usual Spot has been wrecked by popularity.
  

Ted: I think you need to recruit a new regular to save your blog.

A new recruit might indeed save our blog. It could be like Rock Star: Supernova or the Search for the Next [Pussycat] Doll and the contestants could be given tasks that would generate blog postings for weeks and weeks (example: This week we want a photo-shopped image including elements from a 60s TV show and Stéphane Dion's shadow cabinet), but...

• We're probably not ready for a new member[*]; and
  
• We don't really want to be like Rock Star: Supernova; we'd rather be like the Ed Sullivan Show.
  

Harmony: I was thinking of hidden gems too. But I know a couple that aren't exactly in the core (though not outside the green belt either!). Could we expand it to include a larger area?

Sorry. We're the Elgin Street Irregulars. We are not suburban people.

zoom: [Entry #1] ... how about a treasure hunt? You hide something wonderful somewhere in the city and offer a series of daily clues (photographic and/or textual) to its whereabouts. The Citizen did this decades ago - they hid a gold bar...

A lovely idea for a contest, but...

• We haven't got a gold bar to give away; and
  
• It's been done.
  

zoom: [Entry #2] You could even have a pre-contest contest in which people could enter their suggestions for prizes.

Congratulations Zoom! This is the perfect suggestion for our next contest because it:

• Is easy;
• Lets us stall a while longer before coming up with a real contest; and
• Perfectly captures the self-referential nature of this blog.
  

A big thank you to all entrants. We regret that there could only be one winner. None of you are losers. (Except in the sense that you did not win, and therefore technically, you lost.)

Details on the Meta-Prize Contest will be posted on the weekend.

Field Report from Audrey

Earlier today, the lovely Audrey sent this report from Venice to update us on the progress she and the Independent Observer are making on their Italian research mission.

8:30 a.m. The IO woke with a start and saw it was too early to get up. He channel-surfed through CNN, Sky News, BBC World Service, ten Italian stations, one French station, and one German station. 'Street Legal' was on in Italian. Another Canadian drama was on the French channel, with subtitles en francais.

9:30 a.m. Breakfast in the elaborately frescoed dining room with Audrey. The IO tried to ignore the insistent American tourist who kept badgering the Japanese waitress: 'Two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos...' The IO ate a croissant with jam, two slices of ham, two pieces of Swiss cheese, a bowl of tinned peaches and fruiti di bosco yogurt. He yearned for fresh fruit. Although he was longing for a coffee, he delayed ordering his caffè Americano because of the irritating American tourist.

A gondolier sailed past the window singing O sole mio and the IO turned to the window and focussed his camera on the party of tourists in the boat. One of the tourists, a cute brunette, focussed her camera on him.

10:30 a.m. Leaving the hotel for a day of sightseeing, the IO says hello ('ciao!') to the comely receptionist, and wondered yet again if she was really Italian (she seemed to speak perfect Italian), or if she was Austrian, German or Swiss. Or Swiss-German? She was fair with freckles... He thought about asking her where she was from but Audrey's beckoning kept him on his path to the front door.

11:30 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. The IO was kept busy with tourist activities: the John Singer Sargent exhibition of Venetian paintings (marvellous!), shopping with Audrey (Her frequent plea: 'Sorry, sorry , sorry, but could we just look in this shoe store...'), a tour of the Doge's Palace, a walk along the canals, making mini-movies of pigeons in Piazza San Marco with Audrey.

8:30 p.m. Audrey asks 'Is that your friend?' The IO turns to see. A glamorous blonde floats across the Piazza San Marco in a long white skirt with a tight, light-pink blouse. It is the friend the IO is to meet. She embraces the IO and extends her hand to Audrey. All the men nearby are envious. The IO decides that it will be an interesting evening...

11:30 p.m. All have finished dinner. They are walking along the street, near the Rialto Bridge. The glamorous blonde is looking for a café that she remembers from the week before, when she was out with her classmates. Audrey is looking dejected - she is footsore and tired of drinking. She does not love wine as the others do. Plus, she is the third wheel! The IO does not notice that the glamorous blonde wants to be out and about, to have fun, to be seen, to be admired. His repeated requests to stop at quiet bars or to sit at quaint piers are rejected. However, when it is time to go home, he gallantly escorts the glamorous blonde to her boat, and then across the canal to the island where she has an apartment. He kisses her goodbye, on the cheeks. He returns to the hotel by vaporetto.

Venice has blindsided this reporter with her beauty.