First improv show

So that went pretty great. Nothing more to add.

Norway?

Apparently.

Hi Norway!

Here is your flag.

I have never been to you but I hear good things. Also that you are expensive. It's your oil wealth that does it.

Good work in the Olympics Norway.

Woah! Lillehammer hosted the Olympics and it's smaller than Owen Sound. That's nuts.

Here's a project for you Norway.

(Mum, don't look at the proposed project. You won't be impressed with your son)

Talk to Sweden and Finland and make a hilarious country that looks like a cock n' balls. Or just talk to Finland and stick with the skinny shaft.

Talk to you later Norway.

winter is over

I know there's a storm rolling in. And I know the sky is still grey. And I know February isn't over and neither are the Winter Olympics, but I just shaved off my beard, so winter is officially over.

Why change this handsome bastard? Boredom mostly.

But look at the results! You even get to choose your photo progression favourite. Two stages or three!!!

My only concern is Enzo started trimming my mustache. I think he was excited because the Juventus game was on. I think I preferred it with just a hint more bushiness. As D-Hammer said it looks like a cop-stache now. Oh well, that's what my genetic make-up is for. Grow hair grow!

And if you want to see what I look like in real life, without a bunch of poor edits breaking up my face, I don't have any ideas.

I don't do much these days

Not particularly inspired by anything. Except improv, but there's sadly not enough of that in a week.

Olympics are on.

Meh and Angry Meh would be my main emotional descriptors of late.

Got out of the house today, saw some kids throwing snowballs and that was pretty great. Two kids were on top of the slide and had a toboggan, or maybe just apiece of plastic, as defence. All the other kids were throwing snowballs at them. Everyone seemed pleased.

Then I found a chocolate museum. Then I bought groceries. Then I found a Winnipeg atlas at the Salvation Army store that is a consistent source for random maps and atlases.

Oh, and I also got a membership at the Trinity Community Centre. $40 for 3 months, what have I been waiting for? Holy smokes. And they have a pool!

I did this thing.

Inspiration from Toulouse, Sauveterre-du-Rouergue, Istanbul, some book with pictures of an Italian town (upstairs, too lazy to look) and other stuff.

Sorry about the glare. You're smart. You'll figure it out.

This is not an unvitation

Ever wondered what I'd look like doing stuff while you sat in a chair close by? Do you sometimes think you could do with listening to me talk about things that may or may not make sense?

I didn't think so.

BUT, if you want something to do on Friday at 8:30, you should go to That Friday Show! at the Bad Dog Theatre. It's pretty good, pay what you can as you exit, and best of all you can watch me perform in my first real improv show...EVER.

I might be good, I might be awful. You get to find out!

Please come! However - the unvitation part - don't feel obliged, by any means. I'll let you know when I have a show that I would be personally hurt were you not to attend. This is not that show.

Just bear in mind, if you want to be able to say you've seen every improv show I've ever done then you have to start this Friday.

Olympics

I used to be big into these things. Really big. I remember 1988, going with my mum to her hair appointment when I was home from school one day. While she was permed I coloured Calgary Olympic bears skating, sledding and skiing.

Mrs. Farrow and Mrs. Cole were intent on discussing Ben Johnson's Seoul in grade 2. I dutifully sat on the carpet.

Barcelona was Tewksbury, and Albertville was hockey disappointment. Or was that Lillehammer? They blur. Although I do remember, at some point, being pleased that an Olympics would begin arriving biennially.

During the Atlanta games in 1996 I hauled my family's black and white television into my room and set it on a stool so I could watch it from my bed. And I did. I would be awake for 9 and watch until 5 when CBC briefly paused sport so they could go to news and supper. Their supper break allowed me to hop on my bike and pedal furiously up Inglis Falls hill and out into the countryside. Sometimes when cars swooshed past I imagined them imagining me. Inspired by the Olympics they would think. Someday we'll see HIM on TV.

That was nice of them. But that wasn't my dream, I just wanted to feel less gross before going home for supper and more Olympics until I went to sleep at the end of the day's coverage at 2.

I was the winner for those games.

Somewhere along the lines I lost interest. When Nagano was happening I was in the midst of army training. I remember sitting up late in the Barrie Armouries to watch hockey before thinking better of it and crashing out on a cot. 4 hours of sleep is more than 2 hours of sleep after all.

Sydney was first year university. I Saw Simon Whitfield win gold from a Montreal hotel room. Later in the games I tried to stay up for a basketball game that was on in a residence common room. The girl I had a crush on was watching too, something I remember more than the game.

I even got to kiss her...

5 years later.

Salt Lake City was me in an empty house over reading week.

Athens, heh, that was me slipping into my girlfriend's house every afternoon (and morning?) while under-employed by the university's housing department.

Beijing was Beijing and honestly feels like 30 seconds ago. I must be getting old.

Now Vancouver. I always felt the Vancouver selection was made easier because of Toronto's repeated snubs, or maybe awareness of Olympic politicking has just jaded me. Not that Vancouver didn't deserve the games, and I'm sure they're ready to go, it just always felt rushed to me, a bit manic. And then with the economic collapse and all the snow melting...

Well, it's too bad they scheduled this right in the middle of an El Nino. Now we get the environmentally 'green' Olympics where we collect rainwater and heat buildings with sewage, but because the environment is green and not white we are bringing in snow via helicopter. It all feels funny.

I wrote a lot more about the Olympics, Canada and what the opening ceremonies and commercials on the television mean for both but I've left it all out. It was a bit too confusing and lacked anything but my brain as proof.

For the time being I'll just hope for the best; that the snow arrives, events run smoothly and Canada does well. I'm even pleased that they're mentioning periodic protests on the Olympic coverage, something that I wouldn't have been surprised if they had ignored entirely.

And if our big finale for lighting the Olympic flame is Wayne Gretzky riding in the back of a pick-up truck, at least we haven't lost our national sense of humour.

The King Mother

They call her the Queen Mother,

but she's really the mother of the current king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck,

and first wife of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck.

Two men who know how to wear a gho.

(Thanks for the pics friends!)

So really that makes her a Queen and mother, or Bhutan's King's Mother. The King Mother is a great title. Not in terms of who your son is though, I just mean, if you walked down the street and people were shouting, "Hey King Mother! What's going on?" that would be a pretty great thing to happen.

Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck is quite the lady. As should be expected from a lady who is the mother of one Dragon King (Druk Gyalpo) and the first wife of another. First wife because she and three other sisters are all married to the king as queens.

Also, she's a big Elvis fan.

Good ol' Bhutan. Did you know "India is 'intensifying military penetration' in Nepal and Bhutan...[because] the Himalayan Kingdoms have become theatres of conflict between military strategists from India and China?"

Well, believe it!

Also, India is encouraging Bhutan and Russia to get together on military matters. Makes sense when you think about it. Russia and India share a lot of concerns over a strong China, so they should team up. Moscow can so easily be distracted by Europe so it's good to have an ally out east keeping an eye on things.

And Bhutan? Well, like always they're going to play it smart and milk all sides like a a bunch of over-filled yak udders!

----

For those interested in who your fellow readers are, we continue to diversify and can now count Japan, France and Brazil amongst readers. I tell you, from Ajax to Islamabad and from Port Elgin to Belo Horizonte, with some Montbeliard and Hodogaya thrown in for good measure, we're doing just fine.

And while I still love the British Indian Ocean Territory, Nunavut's my new passion. It's a Canada thing I guess.

Or perhaps a narwhal thing.

Skip-Skip-Skip to my letterpress and poetry

So remember back when I made this?

Good times, right? Well, check this out.

Imagine all the pebbles and battle beasts I could store in those jobbies. Too many!

The photo is courtesy of The Sweetie Pie Press, and is taken in the workshops of the Trip Print Press. Self described "Practitioners of the black art, letterpress."

Scary!

And fantastic.

Mostly fantastic, because those are not just wondrous wall decorations, no sir. Solely a great place to store toys? NAY! (Although they could do that.) We are of course looking at a lovely set of type trays.

You know how you scroll through your word processor options and can make words look however you want? Well, in real world publishing each of those choices would mean an entirely different tray with a pile of each letter in a particular, coherent style (a font if you will) so you can say whatever it is you want to say and make it look nice too. And of course there are different sizes, so there's that to consider as well.

I may be mis-placing certain terms in the description but I'm hopeful the people that are wiser about these things will lodge their corrections in the comments section.

It's all pretty straightforward, but I'm still excited because this reminds me of the time I spent standing and staring at all the toys in the Black Creek Pioneer Village printing office prior to Christmas, fantasizing. And I'm pleased that such things still exist as viable entities in the real world. There's no reason they shouldn't but like a lot of stuff, until a functioning letterpress is shoved in my face, I don't think about it.

It all makes me want to get married, just for the invitations, or successful enough that I need business cards.

Hell, I'm just really jealous of their drafting table and gigantic rules. Everything is relative of course, and I'm calling them gigantic because I've just spent the last 30 minutes scratching and re-scratching the same, almost 3 mm twinned lines into my next drawing. 3 mm is too small, the margin for error on length and angles too big.

Mercy. I need a drafting table, or a bigger pieces of paper and a regular table would work too.

One day I might put words to paper, rather than just screen, but in the meantime here we are. So why not tack on a poem a poem to the post? It's my blog, so sure!

Here's one that's part of my spit it out while the spitting's good and call it poetry because you're still not totally sure what poetry is or what constitutes good poetry so you may as well show the world what you wrote and maybe the world will tell you it's all right or maybe the world will tell you it's complete crap but it'll be good either way because then you'll know someone read it poetry project.

This particular poem was belched upon the paper in a furious scramble of penmanship, followed by minimal editing. Hopefully said belching is something more than white noise.

-----

Backpack full of groceries

My arms are buzzing

below, above

everything there is to think of

a mash of tortured

black & white

in a world that's the grey clarity

of a nuclear powered mud storm

Malleable is an intention

but to

fight & struggle

against the brain

seems,

feels,

is

wrong & tiring

So much effort except when

walking & walking

and all the problems are there

but fine,

far off at the

destination & nothing

until it's reached.

Maps and architecture and cities and me and an artist named Alice

I'm never sure how I get onto things, but at some point I found myself on this blog, which led me to one Alice Aycock's website. I thought some of her stuff looked really neat, and not just because she is using a grey background on her page and an awesome orangey-yellow colour for her main title. I'm also excited because her work ties in, however tangentially, with some of my interests in art, urban form, architecture, etc. that I've been reading and thinking about of late. (All the pictures I show below are from her website, where you can find more of her work and lots more information.)

Her stuff is farther down but first...

I recently finished this:

That is a drawing of a city. It's pencil on paper and as you can see my efforts at going over the lines were more aggressive in some parts than in others. I think I might do a series of these, maybe start inking them.

In my map I've largely blocked in spaces in terms of grass, concrete or water. There is also just a bit of detail (roof lines and some differentiation for docks) in some of the 'built' blocks. I've added some colour below so you can see what I'm talking about

For the most part, the areas without colour are human structures of one form or another.

This blocking is similar to how a Toronto mapmaker dealt with the problem of describing a city in 2-D from above. Leaving most blocks as blocks and restricting built detail to the ghosting of large institutional footprints. No little lines for house roofs in this one.

But then I came across this image on Aycock's site. What would I do for a building with a hat on?

Low Building With Dirt Roof (For Mary), 1973

I never considered how green roofs or any rooftop park would play in a map until I saw this picture. The traditional top-down view for maps works because things are simplified, often with the notion of single land use. But when there's a significant built park in a city, even if it's high in the air, it needs to be acknowledged. People following a 2-D map and finding a building where they expected green space would be surprised, so there needs to be differentiation of some type, whether it is colour, shape, labeling or something else.

And if I decided to take on a utopian mapping project (I quake even at the thought) I would need to consider the mixed land use that might be taking place on a very fine scale. Methinks I need to start drawing on bigger sheets of paper. More to follow on this theme, no doubt.

"The City of Walls", Isometric, 1978
The Garden of Scripts (Villandry), 1986

Maze, 1972

Walled Trench/Earth Platform/Center Pit, 1975

A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels, 1975

Project for a Circular Building with Narrow Ledges for Walking, 1976

I like these pieces because they are able to experiment with ideas of structure and architecture, without being concerned with eventual tenants. It's like she gets to play more freely with the signs and signifiers (pardon my weakness in semiotics) of architecture because she's building in farmers' fields. I'm sure she still takes human form into account, but unlike a 'proper' architect she has fewer restrictions. An architect must consider daily human use and if they don't think about how people will live in their built spaces, said spaces stand a good chance of failing.

Looking through the site, I'm definitely a bigger fan of her earlier work. She seems to focus more on architecture and structure than in her later stuff. Starting in the 80s her work begins to take on a more sculptural and decorative air. By decorative I mean there is less concern with function (as vague as it might be) and more with aesthetics. Her sculptures are still fantastic and full of use, it's just that the architecture that remains as a theme in some pieces is often more abstract and less obvious.

I'm always wary of venturing opinions on realms foreign to me (at least in writing, when speaking I venture insupportable opinions on things I know nothing about all the time). I worry I lack the vocabulary to express my notions accurately. Oh well. No offence intended anyone!

Functional and Fantasy Stair and Cyclone Fragment, 1996

And I'm not saying her sculpture is bad. Just that I like the themes she's exploring in her earlier work more.

If someone knows what I'm talking about, feel free to tell me.

Also, everyone should look at the artist's site. There are so many cool things there, even a machine that makes the world! In the meantime, play on this...

The Game of Flyers, 1980

Note at the bottom (that is here): I did an experiment and didn't promote the previous post. The results of the experiment tells me no one has looked at it. If you're interested, it's there and it's about food!

Ruminations on the brunch industry, etc.

The Hoof Cafe is right around the corner and it took a while for me to get there, although it has now been open for a few months. Lawyer is the expert on this sort of thing, and by that I mean food of the refined variety, so I thought to invite him out to Friday brunch but he was being a silly at work. I suggested he work hard later and come for brunch with me at 11, but no dice. He wanted to sit inefficiently at work all day, perhaps getting something done between spurts of his true passion, internet conversation.

Fancy was kind enough to join me instead (after he had already provided me with a morning's camera lesson, what a guy!).

The Hoof (as I like to call it as of now) has a menu thrown up on a blackboard daily, depending upon what's on hand. Fancy chose the ever popular toast and jam option, which given the establishment featured goat butter (made with the milk of really smart goats), some fresh blueberry party jam and toast that I assume was harvested from the surfaces of asteroids as they ripped into the earth's atmosphere and burst into flame. Quality place.

Fancy has been on a bit of a blueberry kick of late, so the jam was very appropriate.

I on the other hand thought it time to be a big deal, so I threw down for the the rabbit and buckwheat pancakes. That would be buckwheat pancakes, topped with feta, tiny bacons, blueberries, syrup and of course rabbit.

(I stole this picture)

There was also some unidentified green sweet things on the plate. Delicious unidentified green sweet things.

The following is me reviewing food:

(something that I would be better at if I had asked the undoubtedly knowledgeable server some questions such as, "Hey, those green sweet things in the corner of the plate, what are those things?", and possessed a wider food vocabulary in terms of both preparation and presentation.)

My brunch was pretty good. And by that I mean, I don't eat a lot of buckwheat pancakes, let alone pancakes of any kind supported by the aforementioned accoutrements, so it was delicious! Lot's of tiny flavours to swirl around my plate, mixing and matching, picking and choosing different combinations. This is the best way to eat because each bite becomes something of a distinct and unique puzzle. There are no correct solutions to said puzzles, just a whack of experimentation.

The one problem with the dish (and really, it's not a problem considering where I was eating) was the amount of food. As Lawyer said - when I talked to him, still online after I got back from brunch (see, he could have come with me if he'd wanted to) - it's not the place you go looking for giant portions. Although he wasn't explicit, I'm pretty sure Lawyer was really offended that I had besmirched the Black Hoof's good name with such a boorish suggestion, that portion sizes were too small. He didn't say it, but definitely vibed that I was dirt and deserved to have my eye spat into. Or maybe he just meant it literally when he wrote "There's a Grand Slam at Denny's for that," (contemptuously).

Whatever the case, the pancakes were about yay wide (yay = 5 inches) and there were three of them. I was wondering why they couldn't make the pancakes larger, because I figured the cost of extra buckwheat couldn't be that much more (and I guess I was sorta hungry). But then I realized, it isn't about the pancakes at all. You grow the pancakes and the proportions and aesthetics of the plate are all off. You'd need more rabbit, cheese, etc. and therein lies the cost of the dish. Bacons that small and thinly sliced don't come cheap!

Next time I go I will either buy another dish (at $14 for what I ate, not likely until I'm awesome rich) or just make sure I eat beforehand. A banana for instance.

(one of these)

I've always been more of a delicious and filling meal sort of fellow. Maybe someday I'll stop worrying about filling and move delicious toward scrumptious on the gradient of meal descriptors, but I have a strange feeling that all this may be tied to income somehow.

And to extend the post a bit more and add some context for both my hunger and desire to eat out I will take it back to before the beginning; I was up at 9 after sleeping at 3. I was in bed before then, exhausted, but couldn't sleep due to life buzzing. You know that stuff? In my case it was a result of Bad Dog Theatre, or more specifically Mouthmoney, and more importantly The Jam!

The Jam! is a chance to get up on stage and do improv things in front of real live people who are not in your class. And it was GREAT! I was nervy beforehand, but while on stage I heard a few laughs in response to things I did and really what more can you hope for? Big Ben and DuffMart (the latter nickname is already on the docket for a change) from my class were there and they were fantastic as well.

We chatted about our victories and failures in a lonely Tim Horton's on the Danforth late into the night, hence home late and remaining in an amped state. (I'd tell you more about my day because I also went to preloved's sample sale and bought an atlas, but that smells like a wholly different post.)

the things I do

The idea was simple: volunteer a few hours at the Daily Bread Food Bank. Christmas is the time they receive the most donations so they have Public Food Sorts to help clear the backlog.

Food sorting on this scale is one of those activities that on the surface seems like it might be a bit dull, but once you're doing it, is actually fun. Tearing into donation bags, boxes, etc., categorizing the contents, packing a box and putting it on a trolley. Once the trolley is full all the boxes get barcodes and digitally scanned before being taken back to the warehouse. It's satisfying like Tetris is satisfying. And Tetris is satisfying.

After a morning of such excitement I could have taken the TTC home, but instead chose to walk. Daily Bread is on Islington and according to the internet it's a 10km walk home, but I inevitably meandered, doubled back a few times and made my stroll oh so much longer.

First step, walk away from the city!

Stupid? You ask. Nay! I say. How else am I going to get a good look at the GO/VIA rail yards?

That's the city, way over there.Fun fact: Canadian trains are multi-dimensional!

I didn't have any specific goals on my walk, just see some of the city I hadn't seen before, and walk along the waterfront for a time. Success on both fronts.

There's that city I live in.

I took a lot of skyline pictures. It's a view that takes in a lot at once, similar to my interest in birds-eye views or aerial photography, or maps even. Skyline shots that have a long, uninterrupted foreground (over water in this case) are like a sideways map or something.

There's one thing about photography (many things actually) that I haven't figured out. I see the city before me, humanity's hubris writ large, I see the sky and the water's changing tones, but I still don't know how to capture it. In my mind that's one of photography's unique abilities, to take an instant and hold it forever so that anyone who looks at the picture subsequently has at least an idea of what it might have been like. I get some of that in these, but not all that I want

I was really trying to treat the walk as one I would take in a foreign city, allowing myself amazement at every turn, paying attention to oddities and unique moments. But, I have to tell you, waiting for that water to splash into frame for the picture above damn near froze my fingers off.

After taking these pictures is when I found the goose head.

I don't know where the rest of him was, but the head looked fresh. I wandered off from here and walked a good 500m before thinking, HEY! I can use that goose head. After a brief internal debate I returned to hide it. I'll come back in June or July and hopefully my hastily constructed stone crypt will have done it's job. Keeping the goose's bones in one place, while allowing the buggy bugs to eat away all the flesh!

My taxidermically imagined creature is coming together, slowly but surely. I now have the turtle shell, two groundhog skulls (only one partial lower jaw) and hopefully soon this goose head and neck. That's a lot of heads so I'll need to think long and hard on how to use them. Two or three heads is always possible, but maybe some groundhog fangs in a goose's mouth would be fun. Geese have a wicked serrated edge along their beak, like so many little teeth, but no fangs. Vampires are big right now, so a fanged goose will probably be a hit with the kids.

When I doubled back for the goose it meant I had to recross a beach that was either reclaimed land or had been a dumping area for construction work or both. There were worn bricks strewn about and although I'd resisted the first time through, the second time... Well, I loaded up my backpack and regretted my decision for the rest of the walk.

You can hardly blame me though, they're pretty fun bricks.

Yet another example of what we lose when everything is made at a few big factories. No more small brick makers each with their distinct molds and palette drawn from the earth around them. Judging from the wear on some of these, quality standards might have varied a fair bit as well.

As you might expect, they are building condos along the waterfront. According to this picture, they provide the ultimate lifestyle for everyone!!! White and Nude!!! No wait, the ladies look like they're wearing bras or bikini tops. Still, this must be a swingers' community.

Just a piece of advice to any home buyer...consider the sun at different points of the day. Unless shadows mean nothing to you. In which case, just live in a hole.

I think there must have been some swimming pavilions or something here in decades past. I know some of the communities a bit further on (Mimico, etc.) originally were the summer getaways for Toronto's well to do. but judging by the cement pillars on the shoreline a lot of the space in between might have been taken up at some point.

That or there's an ancient civilization no one has been telling me about.

And one more thing condo developers. Just because you build a row of stupid buildings that all look stupid in their own unique way, doesn't mean you've created a diversity of style.

It still looks stupid.

Aesthetic opinions are great because there's no need to support them, or they are awful because you can't convince someone without a clue to change their mind.

Is anyone else really into that dead grass shade of brown you get when the temperature is below freezing but there's no snow on the ground? I think it's great (not all the time...maybe just when the sun's out).

Shortly after this the walking and the bricks and the not having eaten started to get to me and it became more one step after the other than glorying in the afternoon sun. By the time I stumbled my way through Parkdale and along Queen I was feeling a bit loopy. Fortunately we were having a communal potluck that night and delicious food was in abundance.

Feel free to send me suggestions for future walks and/or what I should do with my bricks. I left lots on the beach, so think big!

Nothing to say here

I just wanted to say a couple of things here.

Thing number one:

I mentioned this the other day, but I actually saw my blog on an RSS feed today and it looks like NOT GOOD!

Ew.

Fancy pants formatting goes into each and every carefully crafted blog post. Your mother's text-photo-text-photo blog, with one stacked atop the other, this is not.

You lose context through an RSS aggregator.

I shudder to think what some of my triple set of photos look like. I'm thinking right now of my pseudo-toon post of a few weeks past, where the pursuit of an 80s model Buick was captured in the dimming light of a winter, Grey County sky. How does that look on RSS? I'm going to find out.

Be back soon...

Well, the pictures are still arrayed across the screen but they spread farther than they appear in my version. Also, the colours aren't there. The visual experience the blog provides is lost as both text and pictures float on a white background.

Finally you lose the text's specific formatting when not reading directly from the blog. The text interacts with the images, laid out in specific patterns or sometimes actually pointing at an image. My comment about Bhutan's king being handsome was accompanied by a row of arrows pointing at his enormous and obvious photo. In a reader, the arrows point at the row of text above, suggesting profanities or a loss for words? I'm not sure, but certainly nothing of the intended absurdity.

I'm not telling you how to surf the internet, just trying to make your online life better.

-----

Thing number two:

People from the following countries read my blog:

Canada

United States

Great Britain

Okay, that makes sense I know people in all these places.

Singapore

Sure! Someone has only come by once, but they stayed for 10 minutes or so. I hope they had fun.

Bhutan

I already knew that.

Malaysia

Hey, I've been there!

India

...okay?

Saudi Arabia

Pakistan

Ummm...

I don't really know how the internet works and all the visits from that final clumping only occurred once and lasted exactly no time (that would be 0'00"), but this is pretty great. I'm hoping to get Angola and at least one of the 'Stans (fingers crossed for Uzbekistan) in the next week.

But really, if I could get someone from the British Indian Ocean Territory

I would be a very happy man.

post 100!!! (and Bhutan)

100 posts!

Fortunately the 100th post also holds exciting and mysterious news.

Reading the final poem of the 7 days series, I'm sure you all saw the final line in the second stanza and said, wuh?

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is of course the King of Bhutan. Or more specifically, the Druk Gyalpo, the Dragon King of Bhutan.

He is this handsome. ^^^^^^^^^^(look up)^^^^^^^^^^

Nice one Dragon King!

He's your standard, almost 30 year old-educated in America and Britain-bringing democracy to his kingdom for the first time sort of king. And he's from the same kingdom that brought us the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a measure of well-being.

Top notch stuff.

And he's single ladies.

When he went to Thailand to visit King Bhumibol Adulyadej he caused a sensation amongst his legion of female Thai admirers. There was even a mild scandal when a picture of 'Prince Charming' and a mysterious lady appeared online. Exciting stuff.

But, as per usual, there's a point to all this that I'm not discussing.

Lately I've been keeping track of where blog visitors are coming from. Yesterday, after posting the poem with the King's name BOOM! Someone from Bhutan just happened to stroll by. They were on my site for all of 0.00 seconds but they still registered as a visitor.

Here are the possibilities:

---The visitor was a person from Bhutan who accidentally found his way to the blog and scooted out quickly when he realized it wasn't what he was looking for.

OR OR OR

---The visitor was a government computer/civil servant that searches for new references to "Bhutan", "Druk Gyalpo", "Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck", etc. Any terms to track the King and nation's reputation internationally. Likely, they disappeared so quickly because they were planting some sort of tracking device and as soon as I post this new thing they will be alerted and be able to read it.

I feel this is the beginning of something big.

Here is how I see the situation progressing:

I will blog more and more about the Kingdom of Bhutan, generating more interest about the country and (EVEN) more interest about the blog. Eventually, after an appropriate amount of time to build up tension and excitement in the reading public we will blow off the feud. Most likely this will take the form of the Kingdom of Bhutan providing me with an all-expenses-paid trip to their glorious mountain domain. I will stay there for a month (or more), seeing the country, tasting the food, smelling the smells and blogging the whole way.

I don't know what the equivalent coverage from this blogged one month trip would cost Bhutan in advertising dollars, but its A LOT.

In the end, we'll both be winners!

I'm very confident this is going to happen. Not only does the above just make good web marketing sense, but my friend Kristin was just in Bhutan and I am looking at a postcard she sent me. RIGHT NOW!

Now you are too. What a great mask!

The lady fist pumping and saying "YEES!" is not Bhutanese.

Bhutan!

Here is a picture that accomplishes a great many things. There is map of Asia in the background showing where Bhutan is (in yellow). The picture also reveals the philatelic glory of the kingdom.

A Cessna 195 from 1949. Yes please!

Your picture (aka YOU!!! - or in this case Kristin) on a legal stamp? Too cool. (I added the shades, fyi)

In conclusion: Come on Bhutan, what do you say?