Reflections on what went down in 2007, along with some hopeful anticipations for ‘08, will be forthcoming… as I actually sort them out myself. I suppose this 07/08 chronological divide also marks another chapter break in my personal narrative, as the change of calendar corresponds with a change of my semi-permanent geographic location – perhaps my most significant relocation of yet? Hmmm… such things to think about.

I think I’ll sleep on it.

these are my snow covered dreams

If this at all interests you, check it out. If not – nothing to see here, please move along.

My all-time favourite Yeats poem will probably forever be He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. (Early versions used the confusingly-named “Aedh” instead of “He”, but seriously – Aedh is just a terrible name.) The poem’s inclusion in a poignant scene from the awesome yet under-appreciated Christian Bale flick Equilibrium contributes heavily to its lasting appeal. But I was already a fan of the poem before seeing the film, which then made me enjoy Equilibrium even more for using it. It’s like a positive feedback loop of artistic appreciation.

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death is also a really great poem. Of course my undying fascination with aerial combat, especially from the “good ol’ days”, tends to bias my opinion on this. But it’s a particularly well-written piece of war poetry, ignoring notions of glory, honour, and hatred for the enemy. Instead it captures sentiments of flying for flight’s sake – of the soldier as fundamentally human, despite the absurdities of his temporary profession.

If I were a fighter pilot, I’d probably write this poem on my fuselage somewhere. Which might totally seem like a “bad luck charm”, but hey, I’m not Irish. I’m also not a fighter pilot… yet. :P

now it’s hardly simple, it’s just simply hard

Flames go a perfect 6-0 on their road trip, closing out with a solid 3-1 win over the Bluejackets.

Iginla is playing so amazing right now. Screens Leclaire to get the first goal, gets into a fight after being messed with, and then finishes off with yet another goal – 10 points in 4 games!

And Huselius is an awesome wingman, with another multi-point performance. These guys are lighting it up, night after night. And all on the road!

And how ’bout the Kipper eh? Some nice saves on the highlight real! Good to see the whole team coming together. Our PK was perfect tonight too.

Let’s just hope that some homecookin’ doesn’t spoil this magic. Flames play Dallas at the ‘Dome next, and you know it’s gonna be loud in the C of Red on Friday night. Woot!

this is what will be our glory

As long as the DS continues to be awesome, it’s not actually that hard to pick out what I’m going to give, haha. The only tough choice is deciding on the accompanying game. This year I decided to go with Animal Crossing: Wild World. Also, in celebration of my upcoming departure (and because, for whatever reason, the Alberta Children’s Hospital still isn’t participating :P), I sent my gift to Texas Children’s in Houston. May it go before me as an electronic ambassador of Canadian goodwill!

I love Child’s Play in both concept and implementation, and I hope this year will smash the 2006 record – because unlike a high score, these numbers aren’t just digits, but lives – sick kids who need something to smile about because, for whatever reason, they’re stuck in a hospital bed at Christmastime. Each additional zero appended to the end of the financial total represents innocent joy multiplied by a factor of ten. Now that’s what I call creative accounting.

Of course there are plenty of other good charities to donate your hard-earned money towards, some that definitely address more obvious and possibly even more noble causes. But hey, I like Child’s Play, and if you have some extra cash and feel like brightening the day of some infirm children, maybe go check it out. By now it’s probably too late for the gifts to make it to their destination in time for Christmas (especially for Canada), but hey, these kids are still gonna be stuck in the hospital the week after Christmas too.

inside this night I know it’s not too late

Heh, I really have very little artistic creativity or talent, but I do enjoy messing around with paintshop from time to time.

Basically all I do to create a banner is:

1. Find a cool wallpaper (usually some snazzy CG artwork), something that will look good with the blog style. This can be kinda hard, because although there’s a lot of amazing work out there, going through it all takes time. Plus you gotta find sites that are worthwhile starting points, because otherwise you’ll be slogging through endless pages of crap. And ya, I realize that I’m totally ripping off the person who made the wallpaper, but I consider it more of a homage than a theft. Although since I don’t bother attributing credit, it’s not like it does them any good…
2. Crop out a banner-sized rectangle, trying to pick a section that will look good with the rest of the page. For example, my Christmas banner has two trees, and my blog has two columns. The sidebar column is spanned by the left tree, and the right tree frames the outside edge of the main column. My banner also touches the top of the page, with no border or spacing above it, so by leaving out the tops of the trees the image makes sense. I’m definitely not a graphic artist or anything, but I think this works, non?
3. Add in the text layer, generally a title and some sort of tagline. Picking a tagline can actually require some thought too. Quotes or clever phrases are my favs. So I mess around with the text until I think it looks good, because different fonts/colours can have a major impact on the overall style of the banner. Also the placement of the text in the frame is pretty important – I’m a fan of leaving the title in the corner, usually a bottom corner. But you gotta make sure the text isn’t obscured by what’s in the image behind it, and likewise you shouldn’t really put text overlapping with something that stands out in the picture, but have it somewhere in a more boring region.
4. Toss in a few cheesy after-effects. After all, if you’re going to be using a cool photo editor, you might as well play around with the options. I’m sure if I bothered to upgrade to the latest version of paintshop or even tried photoshop that I’d find even more random stuff to try.

So ya, that’s pretty much it. If I was actually cool, I’d be able to actually make my own starting image. But alas, the entirety of the hereditary artistic ability in my family went to my brother, leaving me with a genetic deficiency in that area. I’m still holding out that, by the laws of the universe, this was balanced out by me receiving the entirety of some other genealogical gift… although my latest attempts at telekinesis still, as always, prove futile.

the only reason I have left is you

Twin hat tricks don’t happen very often, but Iggy and Juice had the Midas touch, and Phaneuf chipped in with a career-best 5 helpers.

Kipper has been taking a lot of flak lately, and this last game probably won’t dull that criticism. I guess that’s the weird dichotomy of the Flames – for a few seasons we had our “identity” as gritty-if-goal-challenged stonewallers, a group of defensively-minded hard-hitters backstopped by the best goalie in the game, the kind of team who would gladly take a payout of 2-1 victories straight to the playoff bank. Then we had the whole crazy road team / home team thing going on, a mystery that still defies modern scientific explanation. And now, as of tonight, we have the 4th best goals-for in the West but also the 3rd worst goals-against. So… we’re suddenly an offensively strong team.

I guess the ever-changing names both on the ice and behind the bench are largely responsible for the fluctuating team dynamics. But really, I don’t care how the Flames win (as long as they don’t turn into something like the dirty Flyers or the Devils-of-old) so long as they can win. We got a 3 road game winning streak going right now, which is pretty good (even if Chicago and Florida were involved). And hey, the NW race is a super-close 5 point spread from first to worst. So if the Flames can have a better December than we did November, maybe we’ll actually head into 2008 above the playoff cutoff line.

Looking at the rest of our monthly schedule, I think Calgary can pull at least 2 wins in our remaining 3 games on this current roadtrip (’Canes, Blues, Jackets), then best at least one of Dallas and NJ at home. Wrap up the year with a home-and-home sweep sandwich over the ‘Nucks (with a solid Saddledome thrashing of Anaheim in the middle), and Flames fans will definitely have a cheerful ringing in of the New Year.

turn the light out say goodnight

Despite being an obvious master of rhyme and rhythm, a wizard of verse and vision, the thing with Kipling’s poetry is that, well, it often seems rather racist. And sexist. And chauvinistic. Not to mention religiously, politically, and culturally intolerant.

So why would I even want to admit that I appreciate such works, let alone share them? Certainly I don’t want to associate myself with such deplorable qualities?

Well, I’ve always read his works through a filter of postmodern irony, finding poems like The White Man’s Burden and The Female of the Species to be sarcastic jibes intended to offend the easily-offended for the sake of conveying some deeper truth, as though Kipling was playing to his times (when being white, male, English, and rich pretty much meant you were “the shit”) and using the prejudices of his readers to his poetic advantage.

However, further reflection raises the possibility that Kipling was perhaps less ironic than I originally expected. He uses fairly harsh language sometimes, and he definitely drops rhymes that, if not intended to be sarcastic, can only be highly-offensive to modern readers. Then again, he also deeply understands and eloquently conveys the poignant realities of life in an Empire held together as much by a racist sense of English entitlement as anything.

But I guess that’s the literary controversy that’ll never really be settled. Was Kipling a “racist”, a “chauvinist”? According to his own age… probably not. I’d say he was actually highly enlightened. But according to our time… yeah, he probably was. But then again, how many rich, white English dudes circa 1900 would pass that test? How many of any demographic group a century ago wouldn’t be considered highly-prejudiced according to our modern standards?

That’s the problem with writing – it immortalizes your words. We can judge Kipling now by a set of cultural values he probably never anticipated, and thus didn’t write for. An author has to know his audience, and Kipling knew his. And we weren’t it.

All that being said, I guess some things never change :P…

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Oh, and as for the whole “military imperialism” thing, that part of his poetry I actually enjoy – it’s like highbrow fantasy, a throwback to an age where men were men, and killed each other with savage regularity to prove it. Of course Kipling underlines his war poetry with bitter tragedy and frames it in the context of brutal slaughter, even if there’s often a shine of glory around the edges.

Anyhow, check it out. No matter what you think of him, Kipling is certainly a scribe for the ages.

“[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognized as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with.”
–Douglas Kerr

another day, another drama

The “_”will be filled by a different letter for each post, for a total of 26. i.e. “The A Word”, etc.

Ostensibly, the cleverness comes from playing on the euphemisms for certain notable letters, like say “B” for example. I’m not actually going to write a post on the b word, but instead any other b word. It’s basically a self-invitation to write a set of short essays on random topics, and tie it all together with only an alphabetic pretense.

Doing this in the expected, sing-song order is too restricting of my already-limited creative output, so I’m just going to do this in whatever order and at whatever pace I feel like. I hope it turns out alright…

is it winter there?

The gist is that you and some random other person out there “on the interblag” get paired up to tag a series of images in a time-limited (2 min.) matching scenario. And you get points for being good at it! It actually kinda feels like playing a game, and you feel yourself mentally willing your mysterious partner in image-tagging to grok those images the same as you.

“Noo, it’s obviously a flowchart you fool! Not ‘circles’! Type ‘flowchart’, we only have 5 seconds left! Flooowchaaart!”

So ya, as a game, it’s not really that fun. It gets old pretty quick. But as an idea for assigning metadata to images, it’s brilliant. I can definitely see how all these matched sets of user-gathered tags can improve image searching. Kudos to Google for another great concept!

take what forbes figured then figure more