Saturday, December 23, 2006

X-mas Virus Infects the Art Center

It was a wild and stormy pre-Xmas afternoon and all through the Art Center, the mice were frothy-mouthed and singing. Reality gulped. Normality stood aghast. Something was afoot in the once-haloed halls, something unspeakable and non-free-beerlike.

Yes, Virginia ... the X-mas Virus is not an urban myth. It drips from the fearful boughs of every livingroom-size pine tree; it crawls through the madness of the December onslaught of Mall Fever; it uncoils in the overloaded stomachs of yuletide eating binges.

It makes people crazy.

It shrouds the pristine innocence of the wonderful folk at the UNB Art Center with antlers and elf hats and garlands and wine. These once innocent wonderful Art Center folk were merrily aligning art events when suddenly they were infected by the X-mas Virus and ...

They were last seen dangling from the rear of a flying sleigh driven by a madman in a red suit.

It spread through the woefully serious wonderful Art Center folk, infecting them with hats and personal ornamentation and unusual behavior.

Those who escaped the guy in the red suit were found in a punch bowl, their bodies swollen with mulled wine, their eyes replaced by blinking lights.

But somehow, they emanated an aura of peace and goodwill toward all people, everywhere, of every kith and kin, blinking eyes or not.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Finding a Clue in the IT Industry

For those who haven’t figured it out, Team Player is a true story based on my personal experiences in the IT industry over the last 20 plus years and about 10 years into the future. Things get confused in the IT industry.

One of the companies I worked for was FirstClass Systems, which later became LearnStream. At its height, LSI employed anywhere from 175 to 185 people, and hundreds came and went since it opened its doors in 1993 in the basement of the Incutech Building on the UNB campus.

Initially, there were seven of us. We had no desks, no computers, and pretty much no clue about what we would be doing. After a while, we had desks and computers, but still no clue about what we were doing. For me, this continued for seven and a half years in quality assurance, documentation writing, instructional design, marketing and sales … all without a clue.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t alone.

So … there we all were the other day … years later … whole lifetimes apart … still looking for a clue.

Here’s what a horde of IT workers looking for a clue looks like …

This is what IT workers look like from the other side, sensing that, perhaps on this side there may be a clue …

These IT workers thought they found a clue … but it turned out to be just another complicated restaurant menu with no documented ordering process. These people starved for lack of a useable user menu.

These are the two gorgeous women sitting across the table from me, completely enthralled by my manly tales of effective development procedures and quality process management.

These are the two gorgeous women sitting across from me pointing out another gorgeous woman who they are certain would love to hear my manly tales about cascading style sheets and Open Source domination of the world, neither of which I know anything about.

Here’s the three gorgeous women sitting across from me after stuffing me into a beer glass and realizing that this was about as close to having a clue as anyone in the industry was ever going to get.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

A Minute for Mystery

Ever wanted to murder somebody, but didn't want to go to jail? Ever wanted to pull the perfect robbery, but not want people with guns shooting bullets at you during the high speed getaway? Now's your chance to dodge the hangman's noose and the hot lead, while murdering and robbing all you want.

This January I'll be giving a workshop on mystery writing called A Minute for Mystery ... mostly because we'll be writing a lot of minute mysteries. We'll cover creating characters that people actually care about, plotting the perfect crime, how to plant clues, how to create settings that give readers the creeps, and how to write a minute mystery. We'll also touch briefly on the various sub-genres of mystery fiction, such as whodunits, hard-boiled detective, and adventure mysteries.

This is not a course on how to spell and punctuate. We'll look briefly at some online resources for that stuff. This workshop will focus on writing mysteries and will force you to take those ideas you've had kicking around in the back of your head and put them down on paper, on the computer screen, or on huge slabs of bristol board.

The first session will meet at Memorial Hall on the UNB Campus. After that we'll meet here ...

... and, as needed, we'll meet at various locations throughout the city ... places where you might see sleazy people doing sleazy things in the underbelly of civilized society ... things like ... murder.

For more information, go to the UNB College of Extended Learning and scroll down to A Minute for Mystery.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Cassie Mae Hayes' 17th Birthday – In Cyberspace

Here’s Cassie Mae Hayes from The War Bug the night before her 17th birthday. Cassie is, of course, a virtual life form and lives in cyberspace. It’s not a bad place. This is where she works, igottahelluvacoffeeforyou.com with her VR friends Lessing, Ionesco and Nin.

Their favorite cyberbat Sartre is hovering over me, about to shit on my head while I’m taking their picture. They’re happy to see Sartre about to shit on my head. They’re waiting for Sartre to shit on my head. They can hardly contain their mirth waiting for their favorite cybserbat Sartre to shit on my head.

Cyberspace … always doomed to reflect reality.

This is the day of Cassie’s 17th birthday.

She’s still at igottahelluvacoffeeforyou.com. They just made her Princess LaLa. Anything’s possible in cyberspace. Beside her are her cyberworkmates AnnieAttitude and igoTADog, holding her pet cybergazelle, who, through a few lines of faulty code, thinks he’s a dog. They’re all waiting for Sartre to shit on my head again.

Cassie Mae thanks the 1,989,101,217 VR and for-real people who dropped by to see her at work, leaving 10,000 double chocolate cakes, 44 meat pies, 111 mocking birds, 202 marching bands, 2,772 free Snoop Dawg tickets (2,773 of them counterfeit), and 369,963 email birthday cards with pictures of cats. Anything’s possible in cyberspace.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Boppin’ to the Beat at GroundBeat

Ear to ground, feet to beat … the first GroundBeat Performance Series at UNB was a cool swing into Groovesville with Johnny-o and myself pompositing upon the pillars of Mem Hell grinding out mots array into the red swollen night.

Daddy-o.

On the other hand, I never could talk that way … and I used to hang with the beats (my brother and I … way back when Yorkville was cool and all the world was a soap box), but Johnny-o’s soul was marinated in the 50s, stewed in the 60s and spewed in the 70s … and he read from the Cheap Red Wine Manifesto.

They made me read with the whole hall horizontal.

I read Driving to the End of the World … my angry young statement on the nature of packing things you don't want into cars that turn into chariots.

Matte Robinson was forced to read with his ass horizontal and the rest of his body vertical.

Jeannine Gallant was forced to read as a 37 foot tall shower statue.

Chris was compelled with the task of calming her with Ode to Inna Godda Da Vida in G Minor for Clarinet. He was successful until he stopped playing … at which point he was trampled to death. At which point he played the rap version of Strangers in the Night for the rest of the night. In A Major.

Andrew Titus prayed in spontaneous BeBop for Chris’s soul. Chris ascended to Beatitude. Andrew was swallowed by howling smoke. He reappeared later and was busted by security for leaving the scene of the scene.

Meanwhile, in the gallery, Joe Blades continued to write into the night somewhere in Serbia unmindful of the knowledge that his office had been moved from his home on York Street and deposited in Mem Hell.

The GroundBeat Performance Series are presented by the UNB Arts Center and the College of Extended Learning. Here’s the folks who made the Beat Night happen … The HepCats (Emily Carter, Mandy MacLean and Shannon Mann), the Tune Pushers (Gonzo & the Key of Z Choir, P. Lockhart, A. Titus, M. Nason, I. MacGregor, J. Gallant, M. Robinson, M. Winchester and C. Giles) and the Crazy Cats (Jacqueline, Joyce, Mike, Marie, Lori, and Noa). The next GroundBeat is January 23 … Rap Night!

BTW, all but the first and last pictures were taken by Lori Morse.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Of Rip Tides and Sharks and Great Weather and Beach Babes and I Wanna Go Back

Recently, the company I work for sent me to Miami for a conference. It was the first time I’ve ever been that far south in the Western Hemisphere. It was November … cold and snowy time where I live. And dark and not smelling of fresh cut grass, not even of fallen leaves rotting into mulch. They sent me to Miami. Miami Beach. Miami in the sun. Miami with the clear blue water and the smell of fresh cut grass and the feel of palm trees ready to drop coconuts on your head while tiny lizards scamper around their roots.

Miami with beaches laden with bikinis, like ..

Miami with the clear blue water …

We’d been up since three in the morning to catch the plane from The Edge of the World to Toronto and then to Miami. Karina and Meaghan hit the sack for a while before going for dinner, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep with palm trees around me for the first time in my life … and tiny lizards scampering about my feet. I changed into my running gear and headed for the boardwalk and a 10 kilometer run past spectacular beachfront, beautiful hotels, hot babes in skimpy running stuff and feral kittens searching for victims.

It was paradise in spite of what Carl Hiaasen had to say in Paradise Screwed (although, it probably would have been even better if he had been wrong).

After my run, I went for a swim. And guess what? I had the water all to myself. I was the only person in the water for as far as I could see to the left and to the right. I figured the folks there were maybe a bit on the wuss side in the face of a few high winds and a little bit of surf, so I swam out into the Atlantic scoffing with my elegant swim gait, in total ignorance of the meaning behind the blue and red flags on the beach.

Blue flags: The ocean will carry you out to sea and dump you somewhere far, far from shore.

Red flags: Something in the water will eat you.

I guess there’s something about stupidity that will protect your ass. It’s helped me stay alive … more times than I can count on my fingers … and toes … and all the stars in the sky. Let’s take another look at the beach …

If you’re going to be carried off, eaten or mugged … make it something from the beach.

Nuff’ said. Now onto the reason I was in Miami. The convention. It was for speech language pathologists and audiologists. I was there because the company I work for has created a program to help families of children with autism. It’s called AutismPro.

After Karina and Meaghan got some sleep and I escaped being washed out to sea and eaten by sharks, we went to the convention center and set up the booth. Here’s Karina and Meaghan.

Notice how awake they are. They were full of sleep. I was full of running and escaping death. I had X's in my eyes. They had sparkles. The only thing that made this picture happen was the automaticness of the camera. The photographer was unconscious. At the moment this picture was taken, Karina said, “I think Biff is unconscious. Should we kick him?”

Meaghan: “I think we should wait till he is horizontal to the conference floor. Then we should kick him many times.”

Karina: “I need to practice my drop kick. Do you think he’ll say ouch? I like realism in my workouts.”

Meaghan: “Et moi aussi. You kick high, I’ll kick low.”

Biff: “Ouch!”

Later that day, Biff’s friends, the cacti … ate Meaghan.

Karina is still in hiding.

This is the hotel we didn’t stay in …

This is the hotel we did stay in ….

It’s called the Ocean Spray. It’s in Miami, right by the beach. Need I say more?

This was the view from my room …

It’s in Miami, right by the beach. Need I say more?

These are the babes on the beach by the Ocean Spray Hotel in Miami … in the sun … on the beach … in Miami …

Need I say more?