Writing:my brain :: potato chips:my backseat.

Wow. Three nights to go until NaNoWriMo, and I don't know what I'm writing yet.

I mean, I know the story: twelve chapters, each one about a person from a different province or territory, and they all visit Nunavut for their own reasons.

I've done the research: not as much as I'd like, obviously, but enough to be sure that this is what I want to write about.

I've developed the characters: some are named after video games, some are named after cities, some are named after my dreams, and one of them is named Tim.

But I still don't know what my novel is about. I haven't had that rush of insight that says, "Yes! This is what I want to say to the world, and the world needs to hear it!"

Mind you, this is nothing new. This happens every year, and that rush always comes at a different time. One year, it didn't come until the twenty-third of November. Another year, it came that July. There's a change that this year, it came in Pond Inlet. You might say that that's a place, not a time. Honestly, I'm not sure if either of those descriptions apply to my experience there. If I can put it in words, I guess I'll have my insight.

But I won't find that insight, if I don't try to put it into words. And that, as always, is what NaNoWriMo is all about.

And, in other news, a bell pepper rolled out of my grocery bag onto the floor of my car at a red light this evening. It took me ten minutes of searching to find it, and I came out with an extra bag of potato chips. (All Dressed, in case you're wondering.)

The scary part is, I wasn't planning for my car to get any cleaner before December...

My apologies to the car pool.

They're on to me.

It's the e-mail every employee at the Greenhouse dreads, and it showed up in my inbox this morning:

"Denton,

Do you have any other names besides Denton?

Thanks,

[Administration]"

Oh, NO. Was it the blog? Was it Facebook? Was it the message boards? Was it my compulsive lying? Was it that time I couldn't keep the secret any longer, and ran out into the woods, and whispered it into a hollow tree trunk?

Whatever it was, I had to maintain my dignity, and my honesty. The cover-up is worse than the crime, after all. And so, I submitted my full name, its variations (Dent, Dentman, Mr. Denton, Dent-o), my nicknames (Hawaii, Steeltrap, The Man With The Shirt, The Man With The Pants), and my alternate identities (Mercapto Markovnikov, Viatcheslav Dovjenko, Aquadeo Esquadat, Reco Armando House, and Greg Brown). Actually, that last one is just the name on my Safeway Club Card. What can I say? I panicked a little bit. I even listed my World of Warcraft character as Gzowski Morgnigngside, Gnome Adventurer. (I've never actually played World of Warcraft, but that doesn't mean I don't have it all worked out.)

A few hours later, I got my reply:

"Perhaps I asked the question poorly... I just wanted to know what name was on your passport for your personnel file.

Thanks, though.

[Administration]"

Apparently, I just gave myself a new nickname: The Man With The Names.

I can live with that. Even if it does make me the complete opposite of Clint Eastwood.

Is Canada your first or your last name?

At Tae Kwon Do today, the instructor pulled me aside while we were warming up. Here it comes, I thought. Punishment for whatever I must have done to embarrass the school.

"Denton?"

"Uh, yes, sir?"

"Your uniform's inside out."

...oops. On the bright side, if he let that slide, I must be in the clear. Rejoice!

And what better way to rejoice than sharing some trivia on Canadian history? Last week, I was discussing the difference between the People's Republic of China and the People's Democratic Republic of China. In turn, that got me curious about the "proper names" of countries. Germany is "The Federal Republic of Germany". Egypt is "The Arab Republic of Egypt". Australia is "The Commonwealth of Australia", and so on.

Mexico, however, is slightly interesting. It's the United States of Mexico. I mentioned that to a co-worker, and he told me that that's why British texts always refer to the "United States of America" in full. They don't want to cause any confusion, you see. For some reason, hearing that almost made my day.

What really did make my day, though, was Canada's official name. Are you ready for this?

"Canada".

That's it. No Commonwealth, Kingdom, Suzerainty, or Disputed Territory. Just "Canada". I love it. It's as if the G8 Summit was a meeting of the eight most powerful people in the country, and you were being introduced to them. "Here we have Sir Richard Rycroft, and Lord Autumnbrook of Chesterfield just walked in. W.E.B. Potemkin the third is at the piano... there's Doug, and behind him is Father Gilles Valdesilet of the..."

"Wait a second. Doug? Who's that?"

"What do you mean, who's that? That's Doug."

"Are you sure he should be here?"

"Pfft. Man, this thing could never happen without Doug, I mean... he's Doug!"

Like Doug, Canada is famous in a very specific way: it's Canada, and everybody knows Canada. (Even if Canada doesn't.) It's not the greatest birthright, but it's one I can live with.

I miss Lucifer Pepsi. Now *that* was a name.

If there's one thing I dislike about scientific work, it's the fact that the samples:

a) are all similar,
b) have to be organised, and
c) don't lend themselves to creativity.

Now, I can understand the logic behind not naming a sample of pond water "Skippy Periwinkle". But this violates logic of a different sort:

C:\Program Files\Applications\Program\Data\Archives\LC\Samples\08\02\05\080205\080205-01.

Yes, yes, yes. It's the first sample of 05 Feb, 2008. I GET IT, already. Never mind the fact that if you actually open up the data, the date is recorded in the instrument parameters. Never mind the fact that if you view the file properties in Windows, you'll see that it was created on 05 Feb, 2008.

This isn't just the Greenhouse, either -- it's endemic to most laboratories in some form or another. I've been living with this well-organised mess for the last ten years, and it's never going to get any better until I own a lab of my own.

At which point, I'm going to rename the entire calendar, out of sheer spite.

Jabkinder Surprise.

Applying for a passport online is a wee bit onerous, but no more than any other government registration process. It does, however, reward your patience about halfway through with this wonderful non sequitur:



For the record, "Jabkinder" returns no results in a Canada Yellow Pages search. In fact, the only result for a "Jabkinder" Google search returns only the screenshot you see above. None of which makes any sense, considering that Jabkinder is an awesome name. The next novel I write? I guarantee you, there will be someone named Jabkinder in it, and it will be their only name.

In fact... let's take this one step further. I propose that Jabkinder become the term used to describe a one-word name.

"Logan? Is that your first or your last name?"

"It's a jabkinder."

"Ah. Very good, then, sir."

I don't know if anyone else thinks this is necessary... but Mr. Denton has quite a bit invested in this idea.

Madonna, Prince, and me.

Last week at Taekwon-do (you know, I'm still not sure how many words that is), I'd tested for my yellow stripe -- the cutest little belt of them all, the first baby step on the long journey to being a non-beginner. Once you've gotten the instructor's approval to test for it, you essentially have to disgrace the entire school -- and then laugh about it -- in order to fail the test.

So, it wasn't to any great surprise that all three novices who tested that week were awarded their yellow stripes this week.

"Mr. Edwards, please step forward."

There was a bow, a handshake, a certificate, a photograph, some polite applause, and another bow. Voilà -- a yellow stripe.

"Ms. Miller, please step forward."

The same thing again. The instructor still had one more certificate in his hand, but this time, he paused for a second before speaking.

"...Denton, please step forward."

It's an interesting aspect of my last name: It looks simple enough that people don't initially worry about mispronouncing it, but once they take a careful look, they realise they have no idea what that vowel dipthong is supposed to be.

Obviously, I was delighted by that turn of events. I know there are better names in this world (see: Colleen Clinkenbeard), but "Mr. Denton" ranks high enough on that list for me.

I think I'll wear my "Mr. Denton" hat tomorrow, to celebrate.

No, what he said was, "to bluff".

There's something aggravating about the anime series "Full Metal Alchemist". While watching it, one can almost envision the checklist its production committee used. The logic is sadly common: "If we do everything that other popular shows do, we'll have a popular show!" Arrgh... that's not the aggravating part, though. What really gets me is that despite this, it's actually quite a good show. Alas! My smug sense of superiority, deflated by crazy fight sequences and puppies! Anyway, as I tend to do with good shows, I watched through the credits, trying to file some of the more significant names for later reference.

And that's when I fell in love.

I suppose it's not surprising that I'd swoon over a voice actress, given the fact that I once collapsed at the Edmonton Auto Show because of the Kia showroom announcer. But this one's different. You see, in addition to having a great voice, her name is Colleen Clinkenbeard.

COLLEEN CLINKENBEARD!

Is it possible not to love someone with that name? Even better is the thought that it might just be an alias, to avoid paying union dues in the strange underworld of North American dub studios. Did she come up with that name herself? My heart, it contracts rhythmically at the very notion.

This completely makes up for the auto show fiasco.

Zebra Boy's Revenge.

I was thinking a bit more about MJ's new moniker, and I really hope it works for him this time, because he's had no luck with such things lately.

First, there were our phone numbers. As the cryptographically inclined are wont to do, we started looking for the words we could spell out. His numbers all had ones in them, making any of his words sound like second-banana AOL screennames. I, on the other hand, could read my phone number as LAW-BERT, LAY-BEST, or JAVA-DRUG (if you tolerate the superfluous final digit).

Denton 1, MJ 0.

Then, license plates. Mine starts with GPU: nothing fancy, but it could mean Golf PUtter, Gas PUmp, Grand PUbah, or Graphics Processing Unit. I can live with that.
His starts with YPF. I thought long and hard about this one, but I could only come up with one thing: Jigglypuff.

Denton 2, MJ 0.

Finally, our office extensions. Spelling out those four digits, he gets... something with a bunch of ones again. Myself? JEDI.

Denton 3, MJ 0.

At this point, we stopped playing this game. So, like I said, I hope he likes MJ -- it's sort of his consolation prize.

Well, that's all for now. Once again, I'm off on the open road. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Maybe it's because I'm from Moose Jaw.

You know, there's so much that's just magically right with "Banditos" by The Refreshments, that it honestly doesn't matter what the rest of the album is like. Especially when that album is called "Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy". I could hate puppies more easily than I could hate that album title.

Anyway, today was a good day at work, chiefly because we finally resolved a long-standing issue. You see, the greenhouse has two people named Michael. This is bad enough in relation to the thirteen Michaels I already know, but what's even worse is that neither Michael will accept being addressed by their last names. I had asked about middle names already, with unenthusiastic results. However, inspiration struck over the lunch hour.

"Your middle name starts with a J, right?"

"Yeah... so?"

"Well, that's perfect, then! M.J.!"

"MJ?" His voice was drenched in sarcasm. "As in, Oh-I-love-you-Spider-Man?"

"No, it could be Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson... it's already confirmed as Michael-friendly!" He still wasn't buying it. "Besides," I pressed, "don't you love Spider-Man?"

His uncomfortable silence was as confirmational as it was entertaining. Also, it marks the first time I've actually been grateful that English doesn't have more than one word for "love".

MJ it is. I love it.

Incidentally, I'll be in the wilds of British Columbia this weekend. Wish me luck, and I'll see you Sunday.

The Iron Chef.

I almost forgot to mention the awesome Christmas present that my brother got me: an iron skillet. I can cross #15 off the list now, just by making an omelette! This thing is great... at least, it will be, once I use it.

You see, I did a foolish thing -- I told people that I got one. Instantly, I was overwhelmed by culinary experts ready to caution me on the proper care and handling of a skillet: Don't use water/use water, don't use soap/use soap, don't use salt/use salt... and yet, throughout all of these meticulous directions I received, everybody summed it up by then saying, "basically, just leave it alone." In conclusion, I figure that if I recognise that it's a big slab of iron, and treat it accordingly, it should be fine.

And a fine skillet it is. I haven't made a single breakfast with it yet, but I've already been swinging it around like it was a Wiimote, honing my combat cooking skills for any would-be intruders. In fact, I almost decided to give it a name, like all proper weapons, except that its handle was about an inch too short.

Actually... that's perfect.

No, it's not Zubaz.

I received a request to see the shirt I was wearing I was called a "zebra boy", and it got me thinking... but before I start philosophising, here's the shirt.

  No modelling, though; just the pattern. It's not that I'm not vain (I blog, don't I?), but I'm getting ready to drive to Edmonton tomorrow -- and at 1:00 in the morning, I just don't have the inclination to pretty up for the camera.

It's a nice shirt, by the way. Sturdy, dries quickly, irons well... a true winner in the Shirt-of-the-Day roster. I bought it for $15 from a street vendor on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, and I wore it home. It wasn't until I took it off that evening that I realised it had dragons on it -- always a plus.

But dragons and zebras aren't the same thing. Sure, there are vertical stripes, but aren't zebras supposed to be a little less colourful?

Of course, there's an exception to every rule. Voilà! I never expected our Section Head to have a sweet tooth, but there you have it -- incontrovertible evidence. Oh, and according to the all-knowing Internet, the zebra's name is "Yipes". I'm not sure if that's better or worse than "Zebra Boy."

I find the whole incident fascinating, simply because I've always believed that names have power. True, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but the word is what connects our mind to the outside world. Perhaps a rose without a name would never be more than a generic wildflower.

And nowhere is that more felt than in names given to us. In Capoeira, you're given an apellido by your mestre. In Deaf culture, names are special signs only given out by people in the Deaf culture. And even though I've used the handle "Aquadeo" for eight years, it'll always have the caveat of being chosen by me, and that always irks me just a little. It's why I'm content to risk my public identity on the Internet, and sign this blog as "Denton" instead.

Then again, maybe people who were named "Denton" by their parents fixate on these things more than others.