So are PDFs for plain-text documents.

What I previously wrote about Steve Munro:

We visit Steve’s Web site for informed observations based on decades of experience and years of collected documents (and now, custom runs of TTC computer data). I have read his entire site and I value it.

Today, I (effortlessly) produced a valid-HTML version of his old article for The Idler, originally a PDF (tagged, no less).

In response, after letting off some steam and just before top-posting my original E-mail (unnecessary in Eudora), Steve lobs this bon mot:

I don’t give a damn whether you do a pass for Italics or anything else. Someday, when you make a useful contribution to a discussion rather than trying to one-up everybody in the room, I might pay attention to you.

In my own defence, at least I know (a) HTML, (b) type, and (c) that red hankies went out of style on the gay scene before I was even born.

Streetcars forever, Steve! The ghosts of the Spadina Expressway haunt us still.

Remember: His is the only blog the TTC reads.

These fit young lifeguards (civilian employees of the cops) actually inhabit this building every day.

And this is the first evidence I’ve ever seen.

(The girls were no-nonsense and the shirtless and/or tank-topped guys were characteristically dismissive in that manly swimmer-d00d manner. They make a point of being that way. These are guys who would never use the phrase “characteristically dismissive.”)

The fonts also say that American blacks are dolts and minstrels. Typography as racist stereotype. And all the while, you (also Steven Heller) thought the real problem was Neuland.

With the benefit of a month’s hindsight, it seems apparent that the event known as Nonfiction , in which selected writers appear onstage to dish on each other, is in no way a viable enterprise, even for a second outing.

Successful media types strip-mining their memories for anecdotes is an intrinsically self-limiting process. It’s a nonrenewable resource. Eventually the seven organizers – quite established themselves and visible “on the Facebook” – will run out of well-placed, career-enhancing acquaintances to call onstage, and those acquaintances will run out of stories. Another self-limiting factor is the composition of the audience – other established media types and wannabes. The former will reach its fill rather quickly; the latter won’t know half the names. (And where is the admission fee going, apart from the venue?)

There is, of course, the contradiction of holding an evening of anecdotes by journalists that does something no credible journalist would – impose off-the-record status by fiat. If a source tried to do that at the end of a phone interview (as a graphic designer for Loblaws did to me once when I was interviewing him about a chocolate-bar wrapper), you’d have a good laugh.

But even that kind of contradiction, which rather calls the organizers’ bona fides into question, would not be enough to run the ship aground. The Nonfiction organizers have put themselves in the position of poor villagers who, after a drought, are faced with consuming next year’s seed corn.

You can’t build an empire on war stories nobody else can retell. Gossip is about the present, not the past.

Russell eetcarstray yard, Leslieville. The repair bays hide in plain sight and glow like alien craft of a winter afternoon.

Is that real Helvetica or Swiss 721?

I know two extremely busy people with globetrotting habits, prominent reputations, and (in one case) an ego the size of a Big Top 747 and (in the other) a busines with eight-figure grosses. In my presence, both have sighed wistfully and looked away and muttered that they wished they could lead a balanced life like mine. I got the identical reaction from both, as though it came from some region in the base of the brain outside of conscious control.

I do have a nicely balanced life. I would like to have really thoroughly fixed-up teeth (I already go to the second-most-expensive dentist in the city, as I seem to be unusual neurologically), but that is about it as far as complaints go. Of course I’m behind on everything and I have not published enough and I never get enough done. Of course. But I’ve been like that for decades. I am now old enough to have been like a lot of things for decades.

Still, I find it difficult to avoid – what is the term? – “beating myself up” about money. My two friends mentioned above earn five or 900 times as much as I do. As I explained in my contribution to a book, nearly everyone I know has a nice solid income, even if they’re behind in their taxes, or are American (hence have to worry about getting sick), or have some other kind of expense they are putting off or afraid of. [continue with: ‘If becoming rich requires unironic use of the word “monetize,” count me out’ →]

A Kevin Steele Memorial Photo™, though without the contrast or dynamic range.

As it is summertime and the living is ostensibly easy, I thought it would be a nice diversion from this TTC malarkey to go on a TTC photo shoot. Contradictory? Quite. It would be nice if I had any idea at all how to relax.

On Monday, after my subway signage tour with Ed Keenan, I went absolutely crazy and used the hideous vending machine at Yonge & Bloor to buy a TTC weekly pass (expensive at $30). Suddenly I’ve got a fuzzbox and I’m gonna use it. I planned to enter and exit every station on the Sheppard line, but only after stopping off dans le Rosedale for a coffee and after visiting the North York Central Library to raid further back issues of Eye.

After a good double espresso served long without Leslieville-style argument, I found myself on the subway with a TTC supervisor nearby (identity withheld).

I had already been having a highly deterministic week, so I figured I really was seeing what I was seeing. Excuse me, I eventually asked them, are those a pile of signs for collector booths? And you are…? you are with…? was the neutrally delivered response. I’m Joe Clark, I said. I’m the one who’s been making the fuss about the signs. The supervisor knew me by name immediately. [continue with: In & out of Sheppard →]