Because I write a great many things which do not go anywhere. This is as good a place as any:

The Zyphoid Process
She punched him as hard as she could. He felt her fist land just below his ribs. It hurt like hell. He couldn’t breathe.

He felt her fist land, centred just below his ribs, right on that bone – the one whose name he could never remember, except that it started with a “z”. It hurt like hell and he remembered in first aid class how they were all told to be careful when doing the Heimlich manoeuvre. If you went too high, you could hit that bone which extends like a tab between the bottom of the ribs and starts with the letter “z”. You could hit that bone and break it off.

He could hear her crying. Turning around to leave. She was walking away.

He thought about the bone snapping off from the breastbone and floating around his chest. He tried to remember first aid class. Did it lacerate the heart, or puncture the lungs?

He thought about that sharp fragment of bone, severed and misplaced, floating about his chest. He thought about that jagged, errant satellite orbiting his vitals. What was that tickle in his chest?

He couldn’t breathe and he thought about a sharp fragment of bone floating around his chest and slicing open his heart.

By the time the pain subsided and he thought to open his eyes, the hallway was empty and she was half a block away.

The Cadre’s Poetry Spectacular is out on the newsstand, busy living up to its title.

Featuring a cover designed by silverorange’s Geoff Gibson, this issue of UPEI’s student newspaper is actually better than sliced bread. It features poets who run the gamut from first time bards to weathered veterans of the genre who have books of poetry under their proverbial belts.

Anyone wishing to get their greedy little paws on the Island’s finest print publication should visit the Robertson or Main buildings on campus. The Cadre is also available at finer coffeehouses and bookstores around Charlottetown.

I should also mention (in a breezy, offhand, devil-may-care fashion) that I will be The Cadre’s Editor-in-Chief next year. As such, I will soon be defaming people in print, as well as on the Internet.

Many thanks to media guru Dave Moses and fellow aovist Rob Fletcher for their submissions.

I can’t poke amusment out of that campaign, no matter how cheesy they appear to be, because the person creating those ads is unmistakably a genius. I say this because those commercials stick in your head for years.

I was also impressed by thier effort to make that anti-commercial with the skateboarders sitting on a fancy car going on about how stupid McCain commercials are and how much they love the mouth watering taste of pizza pockets. The second anticommercial just left me confused and hungry.

Now it seems McCain is using sex to sell thier frozen goods. It’s worse than a beer commercial. What’s the deal with that girl who looks like Elaine from Seinfeld? I was under the impression that the ladies preferred wine and fancy dinner to a lipsmackingly scrumptious McCain’s frozen pizza.

Maybe that’s why I’m 18 and still don’t have a wife and children.

IslandEdition.com’s latest editorial lashes out at the false courage of anonymous cowards in online communities. He sounds pissed off, but don’t let that cloud your reading of the article. I still think he’s right.

Frying up burgers like they was motherfuckers.
Yes. He do.

Check out “Canada Geese” from Gordon Downie’s solo album, “Coke Machine Glow.” The Tragically Hip meet Frank Black. Very nice. Yes.

“Liquid Layout”. I picked up the term a few years ago from a tutorial by Lance Arthur of Glassdog.com. Liquid layout describes a website with a variable width, depending on how big your browser window (and screen) is. For example, open CNN.com, close the annoying popup window that asks you what continent you are from (!?!), and then try stretching and squishing the size of your browser window. Notice how the content of the site stays the same width regardless of the browser width. Now try Search.com. Notice how the content stretches and squishes to fit your window without introducing a horizontal scroll bar.

Who cares? Very few people, apparently. I do. A good liquid layout ensures a good visual experience for users on a wide variety of screen sizes. It’s harder to do for the designer and involves some sacrifices and limitations, but some of the best design comes from within strict constraints.

Imagine a print designer who claimed that to truly see his masterpiece coffee table book at its best you had to look at it in natural light and with 20/20 eyesight.

“Colors look a little washed out and the type is small.”
“Fluorescents won’t do. I designed it to be seen in the light of nature. Maybe you need glasses.”
“Fuck you.”

Expecting someone to change their computer configuration (particularly screen size) is like expecting people to buy a new car to go to the drive-in. Rather than clinging desperately to control of each and every pixel with white knuckles, web designers should embrace the openness of the web.

For those web developers who struggle with browser incompatibilities and nested tables for the perfect liquid layout, I appreciate it (for what it’s worth). Below are a few examples of fine liquid layouts I’ve come across. If you know of a good liquid layout let me know (steven@actsofvolition.com).

• Blogger.com – One of the best I’ve seen. Designed by Derek Powazek of Powazek.com (currently a k10k news contributor).
   
• Amazon.com – Kings of the useable web. Their related products features are frighteningly effective. One of the few major sites that still works at a 640 by 480 resolution.
   
• Search.com – One of Cnet’s few remaining liquid layouts (along with Cnet.com). R.I.P. Gamecenter.com and the formerly liquid News.com.
   
• Sapient – Monster web shop. Creativity and originality on an assembly line (they must use macs). Nicely liquid pages, although they start quite wide (defeating the purpose somewhat).
   
• Slashdot – Ugly but distinctive. Coders must think designing with white space is like writing inefficient code.
   
• Send me more: steven@actsofvolition.com

I was idly looking up information on my old pal Woody Harrelson the other day, and I was saddened to see the lack of love on the site which bears his name.

You see, I met Woody on an Air Canada flight from Winnipeg to Montreal. I bumped into him so I said, “Excuse me”. To which he responded, “Sorry!”.

A Natural Born Killer just apologized to me. LARRY FLYNT apologized to me!

I digress.

This amazingly humble man deserves a nicer site. I wanted to know more about the man who can’t jump because of the pigment in his skin. I was sadly disappointed to only learn about his education and his birthday.

This is fucking weak guys, fucking weak. Let’s show some genuine respect and love for the hand that feeds us films of side-splitting hilarity.

You people make me sick.

I was on Microsoft’s netmeeting last night during the vanishing hour. I started to chat with somebody claiming to be a 22/f cheerleader/nursing student. I saved a capture of this so-called nursing student. Crazy nuts.

I like the sleepy mornings; the sleepy afternoons. When your eyelids are difficult sandbags to lift. When the only things your senses understand is a familiar tired warmth, and that somewhere nearby there is coffee.