Somewhere about October 2003, I stopped filing. Every month I’d pay my bills, and I’d pile the paid bills along with invoices, tax receipts, and the other leftovers of everyday business life in a big “to be filed” pile on my desk.

But the “to be filed” day never came.

The business was audited by Revenue Canada. I went to San Francisco. Then Boston. Then Montreal. Then Boston again. Did a lot of work. Created a lot of web pages. Even went to the beach once.

But the filing never happened.

Eventually the “to be filed” pile grew into two, then three “to be filed” piles. On the floor. Hidden in the closet.

Finally the potential energy of the growing piles grew overwhelming: something had to be done.

So today I fueled up with an Iced Cowpuccino from COWS, gritted my teeth, and went on a file-a-thon.

As I type this, it’s 10:50 p.m. on Sunday night. And the piles are gone.

Wow.

From Wayne Thibodeau at The Guardian, via my friend Ann, comes a pointer to the National Writers’ Symposium 2004, being held in Charlottetown on Oct. 23 and 24.

There’s an impressive roster of speakers, including the following name writers you’ll probably recognize:

• Scott Taylor
• Linden MacIntyre
• Scott Russell
• Ira Basen
• David Weale

Wayne says “The three-day event is designed specifically for journalists but is open to anyone interested in devoting some time to the magical skill at the heart of all effective communications, the craft of writing.”

And while we’re slinging video: the best burgers in town (with apologies to Rob for keeping the dream alive).

Remember the days, not so long ago, when our local phone company was actually a local phone company. Take a look at this old commercial. It seems inconceivable, at a time when Aliant’s claim to fame is being “an innovator and pacesetter in the sector” that the lyrics of their jingle once contained the words “in a place where there are friends you trust and neighbours who care” and “sharing the all the pride we feel in living here.”

On paper the idea of having a giant 70-mile long yard sale through the hills and valleys of Southern Kings County is laudable: you get a whole bunch of people out and about on a nice fall day, spending a little bit of money, eating in restaurants, buying gasoline and generally giving a boot to the local economy now that the tourists, by and large, have gone home.

The only problem is that the entire operation is based on the collected unwanted mechandise of the residents of Southern Kings County. And that, friends, is not a pretty picture.

Our informal survey of the sale route, starting just outside of Hazelbrook and driving although through Wood Islands, Murray Harbour, Murray River, and then looping up through Caledonia did, however reveal a lot about what’s not hot in consumer products this year.

Hot air popcorn makers. Fondue sets. Small microwave ovens. Kitchen sinks. Stuffed Disney toys. Typewriters. Clock radios. Bread makers. VHS videotapes. Music from the 1980s on CD. And copies of everything Danielle Steel has ever had published.

There was oodles and oodles of all that.

Along with endless, endless piles of clothes, chairs without seats, dead-looking plants. And even remnants of the Phentex revolution (wherein science found a wool that was cheaper, synthetic, and felt like cardboard and entranced knitting aunts from coast to coast).

The successful yard sale is based on the “your else’s junk is someone else’s treasure” principle. And when the 70-mile yard sale started seven years ago, there may indeed have been some treasure to be found on the tables. But what was on offer today wasn’t just “the stuff that people didn’t want any more” but also “the stuff that people didn’t want any more after they spent 6 years selling the good stuff they didn’t want any more.”

There were little bits of treasure here and there — our friend G. found some resaleable old books and a couple of good door handles in Vernon Bridge; Oliver and I found a box filled with Lego, toy trucks and a headless Barbie for $3 in Wood Islands. And the sausages and perogies at Phil’s Organic Garlic were second to none. Oliver, of course, is a mostly uncritical consumer at age four: anything that’s bright and colourful and/or branded by Disney or Henson meets his approval; he had lots of fun, punctuated by a brief tantrum as it came time to leave each waystation to prepare for the next.

And the day was beautiful. The people were nice. And Southern Kings is Prince Edward Island’s undiscovered jewel (the view from Phil’s place was worth the entire trip). And maybe that’s the secret of the event: it’s not really about the stuff at all, it’s simply a good excuse to go out for a Saturday drive in one of the most beautiful places on earth, see some people you know, and scarf down a pungent sausage or two.

A backslash looks like this: \. A slash, also known — albeit rarely — as a slant or oblique stroke or simply stroke looks like this: /.

There are no backslashes in web addresses (technical note: okay, maybe sometimes, but so effectively never as to be never).

All of the “strokes” or “slashes” in a web address are just regular old slashes, not backslashes.

So you read something like http://www.almanac.com like this: h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot almanac dot com.

In conventional everyday normal person world, the only time you’ll have cause to use the word backslash is when you’re using the MS-DOS command line, and need to refer to a directory. In MS-DOS, directory names use the backslash. So you read C:\fred as c colon backslash fred.

When you read web addresses, though, ditch the back and embrace the slash.

Side note: newspapers, especially small local ones, have an annoying habit of reproducing web addresses with backslashes. They should stop this.

My friend, let’s call him Mango, is one of those hip young Christian types. He’s got no problems saying — with sincerity — “I’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as My Personal Saviour,” he volunteers in the local church youth group, and he believes.

At lunch on Monday, Mango, our mutual friend Sly (also a pseudonym) and I had a rollicking good conversation about Jesus, God, belief and the like. Mango and Sly shored up the “God is Good, God is Great” front, while I took the “you realize you guys are all deluded, don’t you?” tack.

In an clever but subversive effort to bring me into the flock, Mango sent me a link to RealLivePreacher.com, a blog the genesis of which is explained here; an excerpt:

This hospital gig was just the kick in the ass I needed.

You see, people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done.

Hell no. People want you to get down and dirty with them. They want to call down angels and the powers of the Almighty. THEY ARE DYING and the whole world should stop.

I threw myself into it. I prayed holding hands and cradling heads. I prayed with children and old men. I prayed with a man who lost his tongue to cancer. I lent him mine. I prayed my ass off. I had 50 variations of every prayer you could imagine, one hell of a repertoire.

That’s compelling stuff, and the blog that goes with it similarly interesting and well-written.

I’m not ready to start drinking the holy water (you do drink it, don’t you?), but it is does make me realize that closing my eyes entirely to the hardcore Christ types might mean that a lot of wheat is getting thrown out with the chaff.

So, Mango, you can consider yourself to have executed the Lord’s work today.

Next week at lunch I’ll return the favour when we discuss my Bolshevik heritage.

Despite my tortured relationship with our local phone company over the years, I gotta say it’s good to have Aliant employees back in the saddle again: calls to customer service are getting answered on the first ring, and the people who answer those calls actually know what they’re talking about. Guess we don’t know what we got ‘til it was gone. Welcome back.