If I don't post now, I never will.

Ahhhh! OK - my own fault for not posting lately. I have finally given in to the stacks of mail clamouring for my return to let you know just how freakin' wonderful things are! Big shout out to my returning fans from Utah, Debbie-boo and the Lady Heidi. Smokin' hot Mormon girls make for good friends...

First off, that Wi-Fi theft piece that I wrote in Ed Magazine was strung to the Calgary Herald. My mumsy-in-law was reading an article that had her thinking it sounded like me, and when she glanced at the byline - lo and behold! I'll collect a little more scratch for that one, and hope for the piece to show up all over the tentacles of the CanWest Global chain.

Pitching, pitching - the "massage parlour demystification" piece seems to be sinking slowly into the murk, since not a single lady from the industry will talk to me. I guess my PR background is showing, but I would have thought they would jump on an opportunity to clear away some of the misunderstandings. Ah, well. We'll see if I'm moving forward with two thirds of the piece: first-person perspective and legal questions.

As for Ed, my mirror fetishes piece was bumped to September 17th, but my editor tells me that she has some exceptional photos. Got a great interview with a U of A anthro prof (no thanks to the seriously deficient public relations staff at the U), and I think that one is going to fly. The next piece down the pipe is a bar guide for which I'm running two big articles and MAYBE the profile piece. But for now, let's keep it on the Q-T, OK?

I'm at the day job (on lunch - don't worry) alone today. The boss is at home because her kids don't go back to school until next week, and the graphic designer is getting inspected by the modern medical industry to see if her appendix needs attention. Poor thing was in pain all yesterday, but way too dedicated to say, "Screw this - something's wrong and I'm leaving."

And finally, my Dad and sister are up from Manitoba with my grandmother. (Unfortunately, Grammy Pat couldn't come along.) Maeryn is having so much fun with them, and I hope that my bride is getting a bit of a rest. I know I love it when family is totally into our daughter - it means we can sit and chat without running interference all the time.

This parenting thing gets easier as you go along, right? Right?

Your Forgotten English: "take a flourish"
To enjoy a woman in a hasty manner, to take a flyer... to enjoy a woman with her clothes on, or without going to bed.

I will state for the record that this was on my desk calendar of Forgotten English, and not in response to hot Mormon girls.

Studying Hiring Policies

It seems that the Canadian Department of Multiculturalism and Heritage recently announced that MediaWitch will receive a $1.6M grant to study the lack of transgendered feminist-lesbian wiccan role models in TV beer commercials. They claim to be systemically stigmatized when passed over by the beer ad and shampoo people.

Labatt and Molson state that it is not formal policy to exclude transgendered feminist-lesbian wiccans from their ads, but their employees are now being enrolled in sensitivity courses.

I have an opinion: perhaps the target market for Labatt products are not moved to make their buying decisions through visual imagery of transgendered feminist-lesbian wiccans? I'm not claiming that these individuals and fans of theirs do not buy beer (I'll avoid the obvious quip about shampoo).

However, I figure they represent about 0.0001% of the market dominated by individuals who are moved to buying decisions by seeing the "beautiful, shapely women, their large, gravity-defying breasts barely contained by teensy-weensie bikini tops, just having a great time jumping up and down" that they're objecting to. It's a cost-benefit analysis, not a denigration of a "lifestyle choice".

Bah.

Gleek was my Hero

The Super Friends rocked, and I discovered a site where each of the Super Friends and the Legions of Doom are analyzed in depth. Laugh-out-loud fun!

Moths on Toast, Please

So, someone told me I had a blog... I decided to cheap out and try making this a repository for things I find interesting online. That way, I don't feel that I have to write as much and my legions of fans stay entertained!

Or not. Like I care.

First and foremost, of course, is Tank Ball. This game totally rocks - a free, online game that you play against others. I'm going to kick your ass if you show up. Look for "tof," and I'm usually green unless there are too many of us.

Next is GorillaMask. There is a lot of misogyny, but plenty of funny as well. I try not to judge. Plus, without him I never would have found stuffonmycat.com. I don't think I have found a funnier collection of images than the first page or two. Don't keep going, though, because it's easy to OD on a one-trick pony.

As part of my research for the wi-fi theft article in Ed Magazine (August 13), I found a site that publishes detailed maps of Edmonton's unprotected wireless Internet locations. Wow. Detecting them is legal. Using them is not. You have been warned.

My plate is still uber-full, and I'm trying to keep the writing gigs coming. (For some reason, I seem to be approaching Where Edmonton and the Walrus...) I'm Vue-reviewing Padmanadi with the same family who came to the Goulash Restaurant, then I have DaDeO's and La Tapa to write for the web site contract. I'm putting the finishing touches on my Funeral Director Education piece for Vue, then I hurl out a VuePoint.

Somewhere, I'll grab time to work on my top-secret (but highly visual) Ed and Vue features. I'm hoping to spring them the same week, so that everybody in the entire city is reading my words during the first week of school BWAHAHAHAHA! My name will be a household word and an amusing anecdote. Young journalism students will be warned against doing "Thralls." Suh-weet.

Your "Forgotten English" and a reference back to the title of the entry:
In Why Not Eat Insects? (1885), Vincent Holt offered recipes for a wood lice sauce, whose flavour he said was "superior to shrimp."
"Collect a quantity of the finest wood-lice to be found - no difficult task, as they swarm under the bark of every tree - and drop them into boiling water. At the same time, put into a saucepan a quarter pound of fresh butter, a teaspoon of flour, a small glass of water, a little milk, some pepper and salt, and place it on the stove. As soon as the sauce is thick, put in the wood-lice. This is an excellent sauce for fish."
Other dishes included Slug Soup, Wasp Grubs Fried in the Comb, Cauliflowers Garnished with Caterpillars and Moths on Toast.

My scalp was crawling just typing that.