By G.D. Maxwell
Klaatu. Barada. Nikto.
Always nice to have three or four words around you can count on to save the world from being "reduced to a burnt-out cinder." Of course, that’s really only possible when the world’s encapsulated in a two-reel, black-and-white movie like The Day the Earth Stood Still . In colour films, it takes at least four words… and two special effects.
I’m still waiting for Gort to return and make good on Klaatu’s threat, er, promise. There certainly aren’t any real signs of the people of Earth putting aside their petty squabbles and living in peace, harmony and happiness, three more words that could make things a whole lot better.
But what the heck, it is Pique’s 10 th birthday and you can borrow The Day the Earth Stood Still from the library – brand new DVD no less – so banish any negative thoughts about the Prince of Darkness being re-elected down south, not that those three things really have anything in common whatsoever. Party time. Queue up the sex, drugs and rock & roll, three more words, well four if you want to be literal, that made things a whole lot better.
So, what’s the big deal about turnin’ 10? Ask any nine year old. Double digits seem way cooler. There hasn’t been a kid who lived to 10 who didn’t think it was way, way better than being nine.
It’s also the odometer thing. The numbers are turning over, adding another digit. Next stop, the transition from 99 to 100. I don’t think it’s too disrespectful to say Pique will probably not celebrate 100. If it does, none of us will be here to have sex, take drugs or listen to rock & roll to mark the passage. But more likely than not, such quaint, antiquated things as words on paper will have long passed from the experience of mankind. We’ll either be into direct, networked communication with the massive computers that control EVERYTHING, communicate exclusively by advanced telepathy, or be back to dwelling in caves, scratching out a subsistence living and not believing stories about how Earth used to be roamed by giant machines called SUVs.
According to every English style sheet ever published – at least since the advent of movable type – you can start to use numerals once you hit 10. You have to spell out the words representing numbers below 10. I’ve never been sure why that is exactly. It’s not like even the slowest reader is going to mistake 7 for something other than six-plus-one or scratch her head wondering whether it shouldn’t really have been 77 or 777 or some other keystroke stutter. But every editor at every paper and magazine makes writers spell out one through nine and use numerals for everything from 10 to °, although most would rather you spell infinity than use that squiggly symbol.
It took a lot of pluck, or a severe mental disorder, to even think about starting up a paper 10 years ago. I think it was probably pluck… but those other things often take a number of years to really manifest themselves and there have been stories making the rounds of Pique’s newsroom. I wonder.
At any rate, it was a crapshoot. There seemed, at the time, to be a better than average chance we were entering a post-literate era. Between the deleterious effects of first Sesame Street and then music videos, whole generations were growing up with attention spans measured in fractions of seconds. The lethal combination of attention deficit disorder and self-esteem based schooling meant the fastest growing demographic in Whistler couldn’t sit still long enough to read a paper and think they knew it all already. Carumba!
Besides, the Other Paper had a lock on dishin’ out the news in Whistler, having been around for more than 20 years by that time. But having enjoyed monopoly status, it had, at least in the minds of some readers – and certainly in the minds of Bob and Kathy who had been its editor and publisher, respectively – gotten a little stale. Those things happen in the grind to get out a weekly paper.
That’s why this week’s Pique looks different than last week’s Pique. At least I’m hoping it does. If it doesn’t, this paragraph is going to seem even dumber than the stuff I usually write. I don’t know what’s different since no one with any real responsibility for how the paper looks is crazy enough to ask me for ideas. I’m pretty sure there’s a picture at the top of this column. I can assure you that was most definitely not my idea but now that Bob’s insisting on running a picture, I’ll do my best to give him an endless supply from which to choose. I’ll even give him some of me every once in awhile. If you don’t like ’em, blame him.
Contrary to what you believe – assuming you really believe anything – it’s not my 10 th anniversary at Pique. It took a whole year of sleepless nights, financial worries, tense arguments with the paper’s other founders and deep, probing bouts of self-doubt before Bob lost enough marbles to enlist me. It’s my ninth anniversary. I’m looking forward to my 10 th so I can use numerals and the little th my word processor automatically superscripts after them whenever possible.
Bob figured the second year would make or break Pique and asked me to write a column. It was the first time he’d "made over" the paper. The results scared him so much it’s taken him 8 – so sue me – years to try it again.
I am, all joking aside, in awe of what Bob and Kathy and all the boys and girls who’ve worked at Pique over the years have accomplished. Many more endeavours like this fail than succeed. But Pique’s succeeded beyond anything imaginable 10 years ago. It’s fat, sassy, financially healthy – just a guess on my part – and it’s attracting and retaining talented reporters, writers, salespeople and production wizards. Everything between the covers – covers too – was built with a lot of hard work, a bit of luck and a streak of cussed determination wide enough to drive on.
Some people have been upset along the way. Pique’s done things community papers don’t generally do – endorsed politicians, called others to task, exposed the soft underbelly of the resort experience, kept picking at scabs. We’ve been sued, threatened, congratulated, asked to quit – okay, I’ve been asked to quit – and called unchristian names.
With any luck, we’ll do it for another 10 years.
