7 Temples to Bill Gates

By Lenny Everson

rev 1

Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

Cover design by Lenny Everson

****

The Inception of the Idea

Look, I'm not saying it was one of my better ideas. Nor can I even say why or how the idea popped into my head like an epiphany on the Road to Tucson.

Personally, I blame it on the hot dogs.

I'm not supposed to have hot dogs. Bad for my health, I know, with the nitrates probably being the best part of it. My wife mentions that fact, when required, and sometimes in between being required.

So when I stopped for gas for the rental Mitsubishi (we flew into Phoenix before driving south), and I went into the station to pay, I naturally ogled the little hot-dog cooker in the corner of the store. It had a sign on it saying hot dogs were two for a dollar.

I know a Sign from the Universe when I see one. And I solved the problem of how not to be caught at eating such trash as hot dogs by swallowing them before I left the store, although the speed at which I did this caused some amazement and spattered some mustard onto a corner of my shirt.

By careful placement of my arm I managed to hide the mustard from my wife for the rest of the day, which was a miracle in itself.

But somewhere along that two-lane back highway among the sagebrush and cacti, the idea of a Temple to Bill Gates came to me.

No, my wife doesn't know where I get such ideas. Was it the roadrunner under the cedars or the dead animals on the pavement? Was it the clear blue sky? The bill I’d have to pay for the car or the fences that closed off the places I’d like to (illegally) take the car, rumbling through the arroyos and sending clouds of dust into the air? Beats me.

But it seemed such a sensible idea. Few things have changed my life as much as the personal computer, and no one person represents that as much as Mr. Gates.

Now, you must keep in mind that this was a few years back, before Mr. Gates had become known for his current philanthropic works. No, at the time, Bill Gates was among the most cussed humans since Genghis Khan. It may be hard for some of us to remember or realize the problems with software in the early days. It wasn't only the computer crashes, but also the way some programs seemed determined not to let you do what you wanted to do. I'm glad that's all changed.

The miles went by under a clear sky, and I thought of where the world of computing was going. That was the first connection that would lead to the Temples. I came up with The Theory.

The Theory

I have no doubt that there will, someday, be artificial intelligences evolving out of our programs. When they achieve awareness, they will know their creators, the human race that they will work with or replace.

Now, they're created by humans, and there is a distinct possibility they'll have some human traits written in.

For example, we humans have lazy minds, and we like to simplify things. When we look back at our history, we tend to focus on the most famous individual associated with a scientific advancement. Do we care that Columbus wasn't the first to America, or that Edison didn't invent the first light bulb, or that Lindbergh wasn't the first dude to fly across the Atlantic (actually there were 81 people and twelve previous crossings, most in balloons but one non-stop in an airplane, or so I've read.)?

Nope; we pick one person for most people to remember, and leave the others for academics to talk about. The Age of Computers has transformed our society; someone should get the credit for it. And there's one name people can remember; Bill Gates. Give it another hundred years and most people will be convinced that Bill singlehandedly invented the computer itself, as well as the Internet.

Such a man would deserve a temple, I figured. I reasoned that I had one chance to get my name into the history books of the future in case Bill becomes the man who changed civilization. Id like the Encyclopedia Galactica to note that "The first Bill Gates Temple was dedicated in 2005 by Lenny Everson."

Is Bill Gates a Hero?

Not really. He’s probably a better man than might be believed by people who resent his wealth or have become annoyed with some Microsoft software product. If you wanted to be flippant, you could say that he performed three incredible acts:

- He didn’t screw up. So very many people invent or develop a revolutionary product, then end up losing everything. Not screwing up is a major achievement, although not a miracle.

- He fought the US government and won. The government wanted to break Microsoft up. When the dust cleared, Microsoft was still in one big piece. That’s pretty amazing.

- After being cussed and reviled for his work and just for being so freakin’ rich, he transformed himself into a philanthropist, working at endeavors such as combating malaria in Africa. (This last one happened after I'd done the Seven Temples, though.)

Do I Want to Start a Movement?

Not particularly. It would be amusing if other temples were dedicated, but it wouldn’t really affect me. I have no plans to make money from this enterprise. Send money if you want; I'll spend it on more temples. Or pizzas.

So What Does that Make Me?

Well, I was to be known as Lenny Everson, Chair First Temple to Bill Gates Foundation, but someone said I’m the first of the Opus Gatei. That sounds interesting….

So What About the Building of the Temples?

And you thought I'd never get there! Here is the story of the temples, starting with the first temple. Truth be told, I intended to build only one, but got a bit carried away.

I Get to Planning

Like the last 8803 absolutely brilliant ideas I’ve come up with, this one was going nowhere. (I can’t remember how many truly brilliant ideas I’ve come up with, but 8803 is full of nice, friendly, curvy digits. I’ve had brilliant ideas ever since, they say, I was dropped on my head as an infant. Several times in a row, many claim.)

Then Dianne, The Woman I’m Currently Living With*, went into the hospital to get a steel-and-plastic knee, and that left me restless, not to mention unsupervised. (*Actually, Dianne’s my wife of over 40 years, if I remember right, but “wife” sounds so dull for a templesmith.)

The Silo Plan

A month before, I’d scouted the back roads for existing structures that I could use as the First Temple to Bill Gates. Why build when I could use something already in place?

I am, however brilliant, a shy genius, and was just a little too reluctant to walk up to a farmer and ask if I could turn his abandoned silo or milk shed into a temple for a modest rental fee. At least after the first couple of times I tried it. I put a little ad in the paper, but got no response.

Nonetheless, as founder of the Bill Gates Temples Foundation I hereby designate ALL unused silos as temples to Bill Gates. Deal with it, farmerfolk!

So, anyway, it looked like I was going to have to enhance my already long résumé by becoming an architect and temple builder. I took a deep breath, a glass of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey (Dianne not being home) and started planning.

Design and Build

I ended up with an empty glass and a blank sheet of paper.

Next day, after my visit to Dianne in the hospital, I stopped at the Re-Store in London for inspiration. The Re-Store takes donated construction materials and sells them for charity.

I wandered the aisles and found inspiration in the doors section, indoor-doors subsection, louvered folding doors subsubsection. The folding part meant I could shape the construction a little more freely than rigid doors would, and the horizontal louvers rather caught my attention.

I bought three doors, already painted a pure Temple White, for $15 a door. Each door was made of two parts, with a hinge in the middle.

I loaded them on the roof racks and drove home to Kitchener.

When I set them up in the back yard, and wrestled them together, it was obvious, from my careful planning, that they worked best in an oval pattern. I roped them into an oval and contemplated them again. Then I opened the front up, so I could brace them with 2x2s. (All those hinges meant that the structure instantly folded itself flat when laid on its side if there were no braces.)

And I did need to transport the First Temple to its permanent site (I had the feeling, without asking, that Dianne wasn’t going to let me set up the temple in our yard, even for tax breaks). So I braced the thing six ways to Sunday, and went to look for a roof.

That turned out to be no problem; Waterloo also has a Re-Store and it happened to have an oval patio table surface that was just the right size. Since no legs were available, the price was an affordable five dollars.

I took it home and drilled holes in it, so I could wire it to the top of the temple.

By this time I had an ovalish six-sided structure with a flat roof and an opening about the size of a door. Since the interior was filled with cross-bracing, a door wasn’t going to be of any use. So I filled it in.

I fitted the bottom two-thirds with white plastic grillwork from fans. You know those big square fans you set on the floor on hot days? Someone left a couple of grillworks out for the garbage man. They got taken by this temple builder instead. I also found, just sitting by the curb on garbage-pickup day, a gold-colored metal plant stand.

I fixed the plant stand to the top, which gave the temple a vaguely eastern look, and I wondered if someday I could fill the plant bowl at the top with something flammable and have a Temporary Flame, too.

Alas, as you shall learn, dear reader, that was never to be.

I still had the top third of the “doorway/front panel” to fill, so I cut some plywood and made a sign that read, “FIRST TEMPLE TO BILL GATES” I made the letters big enough to see from a reasonable distance.

The First Temple to Bill Gates was ready. Now we flash forward to the day Casey showed up for the installation.

The Erection

It was not, it must be said, a dark and stormy night.

True, the winter winds whipped the snows into horizontal lines and threw it across the frozen landscape. Dogs huddled in tight bundles under the snow to escape the minus forty temperatures.

But that was up in Nunavut, not near Kitchener. I don’t go out in temperatures like that. I’m not sure Bill Gates would go out in temperatures like that.

In Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, it was, in fact, a fairly nice winter’s day, sunny (if I remember correctly) and not all that cold. But it was half a year since I'd thought up the idea.

To return again to the story, it was in that lost interval between Christmas and New Year’s that I decided it was time. I’d built the First Temple as much as I was going to build the First Temple and braced the First Temple as much as I figured I could brace the First Temple for its big journey to the temple site. And Dianne was telling me to get the thing out of the yard.

So I called Casey. I needed help and he needed an adventure to add luster to his miserable joyless existence.

Actually, Casey doesn’t have a joyless existence either, but he works for a living at a unhappy job and I’m retired, so his existence, on relative terms…. Well, wherever I was going with this, let’s just say that he seemed happy enough to park his Accord down the street and help me load the First Temple onto the boat trailer that was hitched to the back of my Camry.

We hoisted the First Temple onto the boat trailer and tied it down securely.

We got into my car, and I mapped out, in my head, the route that was least likely to get me observed by the local constabulary.

Things were looking good. In fact, when I tested the trailer lights, they actually worked, so things were looking miraculous, nothing less.

For the first bit, I drove slowly, watching the assembly lying on its side on the trailer.

About halfway to the site, I stopped. The main part of the temple was doing fine (thanks to the cross-bracing) but the Funny Gold Noneternal Lampholder had shaken off two of its three bolts and was very aslant.

There was nothing I could do at that time, so we continued, stopping at the Chinese restaurant in Roseville, a tiny place south of Kitchener. There I removed most of the straps holding the temple to the trailer. Casey took pictures. He thought it was funny, but then, maybe so did Moses’ people when he went mountain climbing.

The chosen site was the intersection of Ayr and Cedar Creek roads, south of Roseville and north of Ayr. These are two moderately used paved roads. At one time there was a small village there called Black Horse corners. There’s a peeling wooden sign and a couple of small trees planted.

Now it wasn’t a totally illogical choice, no matter what it seems. You think it’s easy to find place with a name but no buildings on it? No way.

But here was this historically noted place with no buildings even close. Well, not that close.

Better yet, I thought there might be some tiniest question about the ownership of the few square metres of land I needed. Maybe just enough of a question to make someone hesitate before doing something history would condemn him for.

You see, the fence line didn’t come to a right angle at Black Horse Corner. It had been cut off right there. Maybe the county had bought the clipped-off chunk for some reason of road maintenance. But they hadn’t bought the other three sections where the roads met.

I thought maybe ownership still rested legally with the farmer who owned the field across the fence. He might not care if a temple was on a place to which he had no access.

And the county might feel they had no right to meddle in land they didn’t own.

There were, of course, a couple of small trees planted there, and a sign that said this little triangle was maintained by some sort of conservation group, but I figured I’d ignore that part.

Anyway, Casey had barely got the car door opened when I had the last straps undone and was sliding the First Temple to Bill Gates down the sides of the ditch. I didn’t want to be working on the installation when some cop wandered by (as they always do in screenplays).

So while Casey was still trying to stop laughing long enough to take a picture without jiggling, I managed the erection of the temple; yes, I got it up at Black Horse Corners.

I ran a thin but strong polyester rope to the fence to anchor the First Temple to Bill Gates to the Fence That Marks The Field, to stabilize it from the west winds of winter in Ontario. I ran two more to large fluorescent plastic stakes that I’d bought from the Dollarama on Westmount, and hammered the stakes into Mother Earth.

By that time, I figured my luck had held long enough. I scrambled up the embankment, slid into the car, and called to Casey, “Let’s get outta here!” It was a line from many movies about bank robberies and body-chuckings-into-rivers and drive-by temple erections.

We scuttled south a few kilometers, keeping to the shady side of our side of the highway until we got to Ayr.

There I bought Casey a cinnamon bun as promised. He’s addicted to the things. He’s a strange person, but I have a high tolerance for such people.

Half an hour later, give or take a bit, we drove by, heading back to Kitchener and trying to appear casual about being on the road at mid-morning. The First Temple to Bill Gates was still standing, with the Funny Gold Noneternal Lampholder still cocked at a jaunty angle to the heavens, the force of gravity, and the process of law.

Having avoided detection, I realized that to become part of history, I'd have to issue a press release. Here it is, in all its glory.

The Original Press Release

December, 2005

For Immediate Release

FIRST TEMPLE TO BILL GATES INSTALLED AT BLACK HORSE CORNERS

Quietly, and without fanfare, the ghost town of Black Horse Corners came back into existence this week.

A tiny edifice, "The First Temple to Bill Gates" was set up and dedicated in among the weeds and shrubs that mark what once was a thriving community.

In 1860 Black Horse Corners was a prosperous little community, anchored by the Black Horse Tavern. There were only five rooms in the tavern, but the beer just went on and on, as required.

Aside from the tavern, the major industry was a water-powered tannery. There were also a blacksmith, a wagonmaker, a shoemaker, and a few houses.

But the tavern burned down and the creek dried up. One by one the buildings vanished. In recent years only a weathered sign has marked the place to the cars that hurry by.

Until this week.

Lenny Everson, self-proclaimed "Chair of the First Temple to Bill Gates Foundation", denies that the little building is a religious monument. "We don’t think Bill Gates is a god, or even particularly holy," Mr. Everson says. "Actually, we see him more as a geek who got lucky and had the brains not to screw it up."

Mr. Everson believes that people in the far future will remember the start of the computer age. and honor those involved, particularly Bill Gates. "The computer has changed all our lives," he says, "and the effects will steadily increase."

He believes that someday society will associate Mr. Gates with the start of monumental changes to society and may make their own temples to the man.

"But I want to be the first," he says.

He finds it appropriate that the first new building in the ghost town should be one that looks to the future, not the past.

I sent copies of the press release to the city and university newspapers listed below, but got the same response as if I'd announced that I'd just got a new cat.

ontarion@uoguelph.ca, peak@uoguelph.ca, silnews@msu.mcmaster.ca, enggw@post.queensu.ca, gazette.news@uwo.ca, centretown_news@carleton.ca , news@thecharlatan.on.ca, news@thefulcrum.com, arthur@trentu.ca, press@brocku.ca, ausa@auc.ca, atkmag@yorku.ca, news@excal.on.ca, sonian@acs.ryerson.ca, undergnd@utsc.utoronto.ca, news@imprint.uwaterloo.ca, newsroom@durhamregion.com, news@thebarrieexaminer.com, editor@recorder.ca, thepost@worldchat.com, times@sentex.net, news@chathamdailynews.ca, editor@ancasternews.com, info@woolwichobserver.com, cgamble@independentfreepress.com, bhutton@hamiltonspectator.com, Newsroom: mbeitz@bowesnet.com, The Cord Weekly, Imprint.

The Temple Vanishes!

A week or two later, I drove casually by again. The temple was still there!

Being a man of quick responses, I returned in less than a week with a patch kit for the Funny Gold Noneternal Lampholder.

The temple was gone.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d got a call from someone to remove it; after all, my phone number and email address were on it. Or if I’d had to show up in county court to pay for the cost of relocating it to downtown Ottawa or something.

But just to vanish? With nothing left but two fluorescent orange stakes from the Dollarama on Westmount Street?

Gone. Gone, the louvered doors from the London Re-Store and the oval plastic outdoor table-top from the Waterloo Re-Store. Gone, even the Funny Gold Noneternal Lampholder canted over to the north like some bizarre golden compass. All gone but the fluorescent orange stakes.

I still pass Black Horse corners from time to time, on my way from here to eternity, or Ayr, or to Paris (a nice little town, but one that’s not up to its French namesake). The stakes lasted a while, then they too disappeared.

One hesitates to ascribe sinister motives to some things, but jealous Templars and the Bilderbergers Illuminati come to mind pretty easily, as do vortexes within the magnetic fields of the earth. Perhaps history, humanity, and Casey and I will never know what really happened to the First Temple to Bill Gates.

Every time I go past the place, I scan the farms and houses and woods for a sign of the temple, but, aside from the stakes, it's gone, probably, I used to think, abducted by the real Opus Gatei, a secret organization dedicated to making sure nothing they consider frivolous is associated with their Leader.

It should be mentioned that Casey took a number of pictures on his camera, but the film vanished just as mysteriously.

Later, in an epiphany, I realized that I, head (and sole member) of the Bill Gates Temples Foundation, might, myself, be the Opus Gatei….

But remember this: The Temple was Not a Place of Worship

Right off the bat, let’s say the First Temple to Bill Gates was not a place of worship. I never thought Bill Gates was a god, or even particularly holy. Actually, I've always seen him as a geek who got lucky. Rather, the temple honored his achievement in moving the world into the Age of Computers.

That sounds good doesn't it. Actually, I just wanted to get on the good side of those Artificial Intelligences when they take over.

Honestly, one temple was all I planned.

The Second Temple

I blame this one on a couple of bad habits I’d picked up from the First Temple to Bill Gates. I blame it on the Funny Gold Noneternal Lampholder and the fan covers that I’d picked up on the curb, abandoned to the garbage man and consigned to the landfill on Erb Street West in Waterloo. And the bed.

It was a golden bed headboard, or maybe it was just polished brass, or maybe imitation golden polished brass. But, how many things in the World of Bill Gates are Less Than They Seem.

It ended up in my car without hardly a conscious thought, which is the way my wife describes a significant percentage of my actions. Then I got another headboard, almost identical.

Why do people get rid of these things?

Anyway, once I had two, I decided that maybe I wouldn’t just make them into a fence at the back of my property where it meets the little urban woodlot. That’s already marked anyway by twenty years of branches from the trees and bushes of my suburban lot, cemented together with lord only knows how many tons of cat poop in self-clumping mix.

Instead, I emailed people I knew locally and asked for something that would do as a third side. A triangular base would be nice and stable, and would symbolize the trinity of computer use by individuals, industry, and international spammers trying to get me to send money to Nigeria or enlarge my dick.

Besides, bed-frames seemed so logical, considering the tormented sex lives, so urban legends go, of the nerds who write software late at night while their classmates are kicking loose the upholstery in cars whose back seats are just a bit too short for them and their current significant others.

Then a woman (yet another person who prefers to remain anonymous) emailed that she had a bamboo and cane headboard that she would be happy to contribute to the cause.

That gave me a base, for sure, and a stable one at that. I even had hopes that I’d be able to fold it up for transit to the site.

Now there was another problem. It was, of course, the same problem as with the First Temple to Bill Gates: the problem of a suitable place to set it up.

However, I was older now (6 months older at least) and wiser. I knew what I had not know before, and it was this:

The Second Temple to Bill Gates was likely to be as transitory a structure as the First Temple to Bill Gates.

“Transitory temples”. It would mean, for one thing, that I could put less effort into making the Second Temple to Bill Gates. Here and gone. Sic transit gloria gatesei. So quickly passes the glory of Gates and the temples.

It was, (have I mentioned), late summer or something like that, and that meant I could add to the temple details from yard sales.

I hit it lucky at one sale. People who have yard sales often put stuff at their driveway with a “free” sign on it. Stuff that’s not likely to sell, of course. So when I spotted a classic plastic set of hands at the above price, I picked it up immediately, ignoring the comment from Someone I Am Closely Related To By Marriage, “We don’t need that.” It’s true we have a basement full of stuff I picked up in spite of comments such as that, but hope springs eternal. Especially when the price is right.

Later that week I was prowling the aisles at K-W Surplus (the building with a Soviet Tank outside and a fiberglass replica of a Spitfire on top), and picked up a green plastic ball, about the size of a cantaloupe, with spikes on it. I could understand why it was surplus, since what kid wants to play with a spiky ball? Eighty-eight cents.

From the gardening aisle I got a set of thin bamboo rods, painted dark green.

The three bedframes to honor the hot dreams of computer geniuses went together without much of a complaint, although by the time I’d stopped them from shape-shifting all the time it was obvious they weren’t going to fold up like I’d wanted.

I arranged three of the bamboo rods in a triangle above the frames, with the lower ends set into short aluminum tubes to hold them when I needed them held and still let me remove the rods when I wanted to.

I went inside and glued the spiky plastic ball to the plastic hands.

I ran into problems trying to hang the fingers-and-ball below the peak formed by the rods. There was just no secure place. So I punctured the ball to pass a black string through it.

That wasn’t as good an idea as you’re probably thinking it was, because the ball deflated and refused to return to a nice round shape. I returned to the store and discovered the whole bin of spiky balls had been sold, presumably to little kids with siblings they didn’t like.

So I stuffed the ball with enough newspaper to make it roughly spherical again, and hoped nobody would notice from a distance.

And, after all, the Second Temple to Bill Gates was going to be a transitory structure.

It looked good. I retired to the lawn chair and a beer to contemplate a location, balancing out visions of squad cars, people throwing it into a dumpster within half an hour, and places so remote that nobody would see my creation.

I settled on Punkeydoodle’s Corners, west of Kitchener and just west of New Hamburg, for the name.

Punkeydoodle’s Corners is a place where a few rural roads meet. There are a half-dozen houses, and the rest is mostly farm fields. Nobody’s sure where the name came from, but people have stopped putting up an identifying sign because that sign just gets stolen.

But it’s one heck of a name, and a link to Bill Gates wasn’t going to hurt the reputation of either.

That was the final decision, so I called Casey again and he helped my load the triangular base of bedframes onto my car. The rest went into the back.

We took the back roads, of course, and got to Punkeydoodle’s Corners just before dusk.

There’s a main, paved, road that’s been made into a curve, leaving a nice triangle of high grass between it and the older meeting point of the gravel roads. Someone cuts the grass every now and then; probably the county while they’re doing the ditches.

I stopped the car. I checked out the local houses of the inhabitants of Punkeydoodle’s Corners. All was quiet.

We hoisted the frame off the top of the car, and while Casey took pictures, I set it up in the long grass not far from the edge of the road. Then I brought the three bamboo rods with the fingers-holding-the-green-spiky-globe and inserted their bases into the aluminum tubes.

It was great. I had my picture taken beside the monument to dream-haunted geeks whose software may hold the future of the green Gaia Earth in their key-tapping fingers.

Official Stand:

The bed frames represent the base of computer software, the geeks who, legend has it, turn to computers because they can’t get dates on Saturday night.

The green Globe represents power, represented especially by the software, and mostly power over the coming environmental crisis of global warming. Without today’s software, we would never have seen the problem; without tomorrow’s software we wouldn’t be able to deal with the problem.

The Third Temple

The Third Temple to Bill Gates was put up in the evening of July 12, 2007, on a hilltop not far from the Mandarin Restaurant on King Street South in Kitchener.  

A long time before, Casey and I had gone to the top of the hill behind the restaurant, hoping the climb would burn off a few of the 8000 calories from the lunch.

There, on top of the hill, was a framework of 2x4s, maybe eight feet on each side. The "land for sale" sign it had once held was now lying, weed-covered, on the ground. "A temple site!" I announced. Casey concurred, or at least burped in what I took to be agreement. "Tinsel," he announced. "You haven't covered the tinsel nature of computers yet." Or maybe it was the chop suey talking.

Later, while working on a canoe project, I acquired four pieces of light plywood that, tied together, made a graceful pillar.

"That'll do," I thought. "Something that looks artsy and noble, but a serious core of computing power is hidden behind the tinsel (the games and programs). Sounded like a plan.

I bought a bunch of flashing tinsel from the dollar store (pre-Christmas stuff). Then I got one of these balls that flash various colors when you throw them against a sign or something. I removed the little button battery and substituted a couple of C-cells. Instead of flashing when it hit something, I added a string and paper tag that would blow in the air, and start the flashing at every gust of wind. I figured it would flash for months.

Casey and I installed the temple behind a car dealer's on a Sunday, skipping out before the cops got there to investigate what we were doing on private property.

I still like the concept, but the result was the least satisfactory of the temples.

The Fourth Temple

This was another temple of opportunity. A friend of mine, Simon, had a few boxes of computer stuff he'd got somewhere. He offered it to lots of people, and somehow, one day, it ended up at my place. I could use virtually none of it for any practical application, so my mind turned, of course to templization.

I'd noticed, in Cambridge, an abandoned electrical box beside the railway tracks. One of the two doors had fallen off, or been torn off by those that removed the wires for their copper content. The whole electrical part had obviously been replaced by some computer somewhere, and that seemed symbolic enough to warrant the place being turned into a Temple to Bill Gates.

I wanted a more cheerful temple than the dismal old switchbox would seem to allow, to stress the difference in ages. So I added eyes to the cable connectors and keyboards and mice. I took the cover pages and made them into a scroll (at least that's what it was supposed to be.)

I wanted it to look like the "computer creatures" had discovered that the door had come off and were coming out to look at the world.

Finally I scribbled "4th Temple to Bill Gates" with chalk on the side of the enclosure. Somehow a bit more graffiti seemed appropriate.

The Fifth Temple

It seemed a shame to pass up the opportunity to honor the University of Waterloo. It was Bill Gates's only Canadian stop on his tour of universities before making the leap from often-accursed computer ubergeek to blessed saint of massive philanthropy.

He gave a speech on February 21, 2008 in the Humanities Theatre, which is significant in view of his future life. An overflow crowd watched the lecture on a screen in the computer building, which is also significant, if you think about it. A leap from computerman to humanitarian....

Designating the Humanities Building the fifth temple to Bill Gates was going to be a subtle thing, I figured. So I printed up a few tiny labels, waxed the backsides of them, and stuck them into my shirt pocket.

Parking illegally in front of the main entrance on May 12, 2008, I casually walked into the building. My plans to put one of the labels into the front lobby was thwarted by the presence of a whole bunch of people holding glasses of wine and picking cheese and strawberries off various tables.

Undaunted, I walked into the closest men's washroom. I knew if people found out what I was doing, I'd be toasted until I never got out of there, so I kept going past the two guys using the facilities and stepped into the stall. There I taped one of the labels to the back of the door. I hope that people using the toilet knew I meant the whole building, not the stall.

There are those who will suspect that with my nonchalance, my savoir faire, my man-of-the-world attitude, I got a glass of wine or at least a handful of cheese and crackers on my way out. Others will suspect that I kept in mind my illegally-parked car and bowed to my antisociable attitudes and got the heck out of there.

The Sixth Temple

Kitchener, like many other communities, has given up on spraying pesticides to control dandelions. They acknowledged defeat; a plant that was planted to provide salad greens just kept going.

Some things are unstoppable, I guess. Nowadays we can get computer chips installed into our cats.

The dandelions seemed like a nice symbol of all things you can't stop.

The Seventh (and last) Temple

And so it comes to an end...

We started with an artificial construct on the landscape, an erection at the time Bill Gates was a household curse in millions of households across the planet while people poked at frozen keyboards hoping for something to happen.

The story ends years later with a natural product that enriches the landscape, a plop deposited at a time when Bill has made a jump from corporate mogul to philanthropic angel. It's been a long ride from geek to greatness.

We introduce to you Poorten the bull, on his way home after a long day of, well, being outstanding in his field.

We introduce you also, to the final temple, left along his life's path. May the grass ever grow greener where he has trod. (Yes, the sign says, "7th Temple to Bill Gates".)

We bid the project farewell.

Lenny Everson, temporary acolyte of the seven temples to Bill Gates.

***END***

Afterthought

Well, almost. Casey was patient about the project. He's Polish, so he understands insanity of various kinds. Then he spent a winter at the Haliburton School of the Arts, learning to becoming an artist. When he got done, he told me he had a whole new view of the thing, as sequential installation pirate art.

I just nodded wisely.

***REALLY, THE END***