Remnants of Protagonize

Protagonize shut down June 3. My go-to site for collaborative writing since 2008.

I cannot quantify how wonderful it's been, being in the same virtual worldwide room with folks across all ages and abilities. My glass is most-always half-full. So, yes, that's as close as I'll come to mourning.

Protaggers filled Protagonize's closing hours with posts urging we keep in touch. Contact deets were exchanged, broadcast, like scribbled notes in bottles cast on the worldwide ocean.

Best solution when the ship's in trouble is to find another ship. And our own JSimmons did one better.

So Hi, all Protaggers who read this.

Some of us can be found here:
Remnants of Protagonize
http://protaglives.wikidot.com/

NaNoWriMo 2016...Ready

Title is self-explanatory :)

It's Woodbe Revisited for 2016.

Last Joe worked out so well last year. I'll be applying to Woodbe 2016 all I learned in 2015.

Spent the past half-hour housekeeping Blogger and NaNo.Updated here and there. Got my badge. Gotta have my badge. Gotta love badges.

And updated my NaNo email contact. WAS a Yahoo account, for years.

Outline is about ready. N minus 5 days.

Spring, Vancouver, 2015

A picture of Spring, early in Vancouver.

A reminder for so many still enduring winter that your Spring will soon come.

Vancouver Parks: Gone to the Kids

I'm glad to see civic minded parents are cleaning up after their kids.

However, City of Vancouver, clearly it is past time for a ridiculous response to the soon dire global plastic-baggy shortage. Install a flushing station.

Nay — a facility. A green edifice, naturally, sure to win architectural awards and pet-lover praise. A multi-stalled pet privy, with multiple white-jacketed attendants. Gleaming porcelain and gold fixtures. Knocking down some of the neighbouring affordable housing should accommodate such a public inconvenience (and pave the future way for re-zoning applicants still dreaming in their cribs).

Of course, that's simply too ridiculous for any city-planner accountant to ever crack a smirk over. I hope. I am smirking, yes.

But — cummon, COV — howzabout placing the fiscally more realistic separate bin, then? Flies will love it. Brown bin, I'd double-yes that. Its intended use plainly obvious by perceived colour alone. Signage, or threat of fine, or public-friendly pictogram would only be informative bin dressing. The City might spend less per bin in omitting such enforcement-hinting obviousness. So removing the need and its costs.

There. Done. No tirade. No rant. I close in Thanking these, my neighbours, who cared and did not add to the sidewalk minefields. Some people's kids...off leash...barking at all hours... .

"Mumma, can I have something I'm gonna like better than this?" ...Heard in toys dept.
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Wushu master strikes the dusty broom over the curb. Pupils due at 2:30.
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Wushu master pushes broom, dances like Gene Kelly round the shining floor.
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Somebody's granpa pushing his grocery buggy to the checkout. Chatting about "that Government" over his flip-phone.
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365: Days 3 > 16

365: Days 1 and 2

Remembered I'd heard about this Project365. I remembered while waiting, waiting on an after-hours project at work, waiting on my Saturday. Instead of away somewhere else doing something else.

Y'know...I snap pictures, gazillions of 'em. Why not do this? I can snap a picture every day for 365 days.

Be there any other rules, they don't pertain. This is only my project. I'll snap pix, post them when I can go online. I want to make yesterday's Day 1 the start of reminding me I might see so much more than where I happen to be.

Early Smilin'

I stayed up late Saturday night...early Sunday morn. Played a little Fallout 3. Then defined sections in Last Joe for a couple hours: what will fit where. I need a synopsis I can read in a minute. So I can stay on track. After, did a last bit of surfing the triple-w. Watched the Brits in Protag well into their day. Then updated anti-badstuff definitions for Malwarebytes and Avira, for their Sunday morning auto-scans after I go to bed. About 4 AM.

I stuck my head around the bedroom curtain for a last looksie outside my window, around at the world slumbering this grey last hour before dawn.

For once, no first birdsong from the green trees. A string of taxis hummed past along Marine Drive. Maybe headed downtown this early, bound for the convention center and whichever cruise ship might be docking, or departing. Or maybe those taxis were just going wherever taxis go at 4 AM. Maybe for breakfast. Or a group huddle.

Across the next alley a lowslung cat trotted, slunk in between parked cars.

Overhead, grey broken clouds were washed in white. As if the sun's glow had already found them from over the edge of the Earth. I saw blue sky. And no stars peering down.

Had the stars, or anyone, peered my way, they'd have seen me in the window smiling.

Butterfly and Moon

You know those shots you wish you'd snapped with your camera? The unexpected happening in your everyday. The strange. The wonderful. But maybe it happens too quickly. You figure it wouldn't have turned out. Or tell yourself some other reason, which stops you even trying. I do that, all the time.

Not this time, though. I saw a little passing something on my walk home after staring a while at my old brown river. Butterfly and the moon. I glimpsed the little life fluttering past the edge of my eye, high enough there was sun and blue around him. And the crescent moon up there.

I've got pretty good reflexes. Gamer's reflexes, I'll call 'em. I swung round the camera. Took the shot. Really from the hip. Because it'd be gone in another blink. Naturally, it's not in focus. But then I wasn't after poster perfect.

Les Amants - Les Rita Mitsouko

I'm gonna do this differently tonight. Rather than think about what to blog, I'll just do it.

It's not any special occasion, the why I'm online tonight. Which of course means I ain't writin' tonight. I'm using up some more of my mobile highspeed bandwidth is the why. Wind mobile is billing me 39.20 Canadian buckaroos a month for a decent 10 gigs of worldwide access. A decent rate in Canada, anyway. I'm cresting almost 8 gigs-worth enjoyed for May this moment.

I've surfed and watched lots. Youtube. Exotic food shows. Science and art stuff. Concerts. News, not in excess. Downloaded more interesting podcasts than I have time to listen to. It's been better than tv, I kid you not.

After I hit post here, I'll be finishing this eve ghosting around the web for delicatessan pictures. A screensaver's worth of delectables. For inspiring me when I'm more awake and working on Last Joe.

It's an evening such as this when I almost believe I can dance. Round and round.

2 single-slice pizza boxes. Kokanee 24-pack empty. 7-11 slurpee cup, brain freeze warning, 1/2" of cola left. Crime scene litter
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Hummingbird. Never seen one perched. Only buzzin' by. As if they're born flying, only land when time for dying. At the river.
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Advanced polling's on for the BC provincial election. Voter's card and proof of ID. Mark yer ballot. Done in five minutes.
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Pink Slip

So. Here's a pic of the pink snow I wrote about on Protag last week.

I'd started writing it as a kinda mental window opener. I'm not saying this right. My brain needed fresh air, after way too much of my Saturday last Saturday ended up used up doing the annual obligatory tax return.

Actually started writing what I wrote so I'd have something-anything at long last for a blog, for this here blog. But then it dawned on me the readership I have originated over on Protag. The blog isn't pulling the cart. Protag is.  

Let's just say this is me getting out and giving my little helping push.

Cactus Club Cauldron 2013

They re-lit Vancouver's Olympic cauldron last Wednesday night. Symbol of the 2010 winter games. Two weeks of Let's Party, promises, some kinda shiny legacy.

The cauldron's been re-lit since, for a succession of Canada Days. A civic to-do or two.

"The Olympic Cauldron will be lit on special occasions to celebrate major achievements and events." Says so on the accompanying plaque.

Last week they re-lit it for the grand opening of a Cactus Club restaurant. $5000 bucks for four hours. Plus the 5 percent administrative fee.

Sadly, it seems no IOC rep officiated. Busy, probably. Well, there's Sochi and Rio to make-over, now London's done.

You can read about it here.

From the comments after the story, I get the distinct feeling a mob of folks are still a mite peeved they weren't invited to the party.

Owed to Spring

Chucked out three versions I might've blogged here before this fourth.

First was too spiky. It's the end of another workweek. I haven't felt like bloggin' in...forever. Spiky wasn't a surprise.

Second was too purply. Too poetical. Edging over the knife-edge brim toward the precipice o' bottomless artistickal obscurity and black turtle-neckedness. I happen to know I'm quite unexpectedly sexy in black, but holding the requisite pensive expression only makes me look constipated, really.

Third was too much about the writing. About Last Joe, and me merrily plotting away just about all of it since NaNoWriMo. But me feeling good about it being Friday and I'd snapped a buncha cherry blossom pics was no good reason to go so far off topic.

Really, this is only about cherry coming into bloom along certain warmer sides of some Vancouver streets. And I've survived another winter to see the stuff.

Just Wanna Celebrate