Mike Jourard’s Home Page

Home of Mike Jourard

According to Net Digits® , more than people have tracked mud through my home since March 8, 1996.

Navigation Hints

I've given it about a minute's thought, and I decided that I'm not going to try to put this Home Page into any kind of organization. This decision was made for several reasons, the primary one being that my Life isn't in any kind of organization, so why should I expect the web page about my Life to be any different. The secondary reason was that I felt it would be a bit anal, as in retentive, to put this page in any kind of organization, and quite frankly, I feel that “Life is just to short to be taken seriously.”
So if you want to find out what I've changed, relax, take a stroll through the page, and look for the cute, little NEW!

symbols scattered semi-randomly throughout.
Oh, and if for some reason you absolutely must make some kind of comment, then please feel free to send me an e-mail note. And I will feel equally free to reply, or to completely ignore your existence. So there.

Nifty Things I've Done!

I've always been a creative-type person. Mrs. Pordham, my Grade One teacher could see that. “Mike has required some persuasion this term but excellence has prevailed,” she wrote on my report card. “He is very much an individual but I have enjoyed that very quality.”

For more that 10 years now, since 1984, I've been publishing a newsletter for my friends. Links to The Jourardian Web Edition can be found on the Badinage Publications Home Page (just in case you didn't notice it while you were there). There were direct links on this page, but I felt it was a needless duplication of effort.

For the past couple of months, I've been going through boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes (well, you get the idea...) of papers and stuff that I've accumulated during my life. Most of it was junk— I can't count the number of blue boxes I filled— but I found some really good stuff, too.

Things like “The Story of Morning Glory and The Bunny,” something I wrote to try to convince Dianne to be my girlfriend. (It didn't work.)

I also found some paintings I did in Grade 9 Art Class. I didn't think much of them at the time, but now that I look at them 20 years later, I think they are kind of cool. I scanned them, and turned them into Windows Wallpaper .BMP files.

My Mom and Dad have been making wine for the past year. They have made a Burgundy, which wasn't bad. I'm not a big red wine drinker anyway. The Riesling is a nice sweet white wine, but I think it needs to mature a little still. I have a bottle of their Zinfandel Blush in my fridge, but I'm saving it for when I go over to Pat's to see his new daughter, Katie Matilda.

My Life in Pictures

Here's a picture of me and my siblings. I finally got the scanner to deliver pictures that are the right size for the screen. Actually, this one is too small. I guess I'll just have to try again until I get it right! My brother turned 40 this year, so in a later today (as of this writing), I'll be going over to his house for a surprise birthday party. It should be a lot of fun.

If you are wondering what I look like, here's a picture of me. Please note that I am including a picture of me not because I have any delusions that you might want to see what I look like, but because Amy wanted to see it. "The question of the hour is, where is your homepage, and can I see? can I see? and do you have a pic of _your_self there yet?"

Here's one of me at a very early age. And one of me in a fluid of a different kind!

I'm slowly accumulating (that is, scanning) more pictures of me. They aren't in colour, but I've only got a 256-grey hand held scanner. It's better than nothing, ain't it? Being a photographer, I spend more time behind the camera than in front.

Favorite Links

Now it seems that every home page has to have a list of favorite links, places the author has found and thinks are “way kool!” But most of the time, I have found Home pages like that are pretty boring. I like a little more excitement in my life.

For example, this Home Page was originally dedicated to Amy Wegner, who for a while was my Electronic Girlfriend at Iowa State. We started corresponding over the Internet in February, 1995, when she replied to an advertisement I had placed in alt.tv.animaniacs.

I refer to Amy as my "girlfriend" because we used to write long, long letters to each other. There were many Saturday afternoons I would spend three or four hours composing a letter to Amy. I've been on real dates that didn't last as long. We kept in touch for about six months, and then just drifted apart. The last I'd heard, Amy was in Houston training astronauts.

Because of Amy, I started hanging out in the alt.gothic newsgroup. It's kind of difficult to describe just what the goths, or goffs as they sometimes call themselves (particularly the perkies!), are all about, especially since they seem to argue about it amongst themselves! That's a good thing, because one of the things I like about them, aside from helping to get my brain in gear again, is that they don't like to have labels stuck on them. Maybe they'll start a thread called "Let's tell Mikey what the goffs are, in one paragraph or less" and I'll be able to put it here so you'll know.

I think I fit in with the goths because I/we share some of the same attitudes toward Life and Society. Some of my old poetry and writing has a goth feel to it. The more stuff I dig up, the more I seem to fit in with them. Of course, now I'm going to have to start a Goth Page.

I recently discovered that I may be highly allergic to cats! Mind you this is nothing new, since I tested positive to one or two of the cat things when I had allergy tests done back in high school. It just never really affected me too much until now. Damn! I happen to love those furry little pussies!
On the other hand, I may, in fact, not be allergic to cats. When I visited my sister in May, her cats did not bother me at all. Perhaps it was a new food allergy?

Anyway, I've got my birds to keep me company. And if you like birds, you might want to check out Toronto's Peregrine Falcon Watch. I don't have the technology for a Budgie-Cam, so this will have to do.

If you are looking for some really nifty images, most with a science fiction theme, I recommend you check out Brian P. Bullock's Gallery, where the following two images came from:

I hope Brian will forgive me if I have violated any copyrights by taking copies of his files and keeping them here. The reason I did that is so you can still see what I am talking about even if Brian changes his web site, or takes these images out of the gallery.

Of course, if it is images you are interested, let me steer you to my own collection of images. These photos have been taken by me over the years, scanned and saved in Windows Wallpaper .BMP format. I find that to be the most practical format to use. And now I've added some of my paintings to the collection.

This web page is maintained by Mike Jourard using HTML Notepad from cranial software. The Web-Counter service is provided by Net Digits®. (This page was initialized using WEB Wizard Version 1.1 during a one-day seminar at Sheridan College, Brampton, in September, 1995.)
Last modified on May 16, 2003, with only a few changes from the way it was on December 2, 1996. Copyright © 1996,2000,2003 by Badinage Publications. All rights reserved.