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Thursday, February 5, 2026

Shhhh! Digital Media Presents: Grand Tapestry of Moments 03 - The Interview






Stories

Chapters
  1. Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change


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I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."

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The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado! 

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Wikipedia
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Shhhh! Digital Media
Brian Joseph Johns


Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Grand Tapestry Of Moments 03

The Interview

by Brian Joseph Johns



Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change

- Pick up dry cleaning from Suds and Duds

- Lipstick and mascara from Glamorology

- Pesto for my pasta salad

- Meeting with Avner! Don't let him push you around!



Elsa pushed her way through the doors from the elevator foyer and into the reception area of News All Over Media, which of course was a subsidiary of All Over Global Media, who also owned other media subsidiaries such as Read All Over Media, Seen All Over Media and Heard All Over Media. Media All Over was their byline, though more recently and importantly, largely in part thanks to the global adoption of the internet, the web, mobile devices and the recent arrival of AI, they were quickly approaching the point at which they'd soon be all over, as in done.


The reception area itself was built during the company's renaissance. A marble desk, situated near a marble fountain complete with water-born plants and foliage, all of which was either dying or dead by this point, and scattered throughout the walls a variety of prints of award winning photographs shot by All Over Media photogs over the years, each housed in frames of masterpiece artisanship, and each of which was accumulating dust and cobwebs as they slowly faded into the obscurity of irrelevance and budgetary constraints.


Elsa's heels clicked as she stepped from the carpeted foyer of the elevator and into the marble floored reception area, drawing the attention of a man seated in the waiting area who over the top of his mobile phone, admired Elsa's gams as she passed him, the light fragrance of her perfume trailing the stale air behind her. She felt his eyes upon her, a fact that was more often the rule rather than the exception, for she was as much so a delight to the eye as she was a delight in her written word.


She checked the marble desk for dust before leaning against.


"Any messages Marlene?" asked Elsa of the receptionist.


"No, but Avner is in his office. He told me to remind you about your eleven o'clock with him," Marlene flared her brows at Elsa from behind her glasses.


"Alright. Thanks," Elsa responded, turning to get a quick look at the man admiring her before she continued beyond reception and into the offices.


"Morning Elsa," Patty waved to her as she passed the writer's cubicles of the dailies staff.


"How are you?" Elsa smiled to Patty, barely stopping for her.


"Good. One of my articles from last month just broke the two million mark," Patty smiled as she swiveled in her chair, a cup of coffee in her hand.


"Oh? Good for you. It won't be long before I have a new neighbour," Elsa smiled as she continued on past the cubicles and towards the offices and the door to her own.


The door was closed, though she'd often left it open in the event that the cleaning staff might eventually get to it. She reached for the door handle and turned, finding the door to be locked.


"That's strange. Maybe Avner locked it by mistake," Elsa remarked to herself, continuing on towards the coffee room.


"How's Elsa today?" asked Dan, a husky bearded family man in his late forties who was one of the copy editors.


"Good. You wouldn't happen to know why my office is locked, would you?" asked Elsa, brushing her long black hair around her ear as she asked him.


He blushed ever so slightly.


"I don't know. I only work here. Did you ask the big guy?" Dan responded, slightly flustered.


"I haven't been in to see him yet. Should I be worried?" she batted her eyelashes at him ever so slightly.


"You? Noooo. You could tame a pack a wolves, Elsa. Its budget time and you know how he gets..." Dan skirted the topic carefully, backing away towards the hall.


"What happened to the sweetner?" asked Elsa, searching the empty cupboards for coffee supplies.


"I think that Margie in HR got the last one. I'll see you later, Elsa," Dan turned and made his escape into the hall, leaving Elsa as she continued her search for sweetner.


She eventually found a package of sugar in the back of one of the drawers, under the cutlery holder. She opened and poured it into her coffee, stirred it and then continued down the hall towards Avner's door.


When she arrived, the door was open and Avner was wearing his bifocals and doing his emails. As she tapped on his door, he turned to face her, brushing his hand through his greying hair and removing his glasses and revealing a pair of cold blue eyes. He placed his glasses on the desk beside his keyboard, where they sat magnifying the bleached finish from the salt of his mouse hand, of the oak desk upon which they sat.


"There you are. Why don't you close the door and have a seat?" requested Avner of her.


"You want me to close the door...? Isn't it nicer opened...?" Elsa responded, already having forgotten her personal note to herself from earlier in the same morning.


"We're going to be talking for a bit. Could you. Please?" he took the liberty of using the "P" word despite not having really meant it.


Elsa turned and reluctantly closed the door, then placing her coffee on Avner's desk. She took the seat poised before him and crossed her legs to make herself comfortable.


"Elsa...?" Avner began his lecture, starting with her name and following it with a long pause, though her patience didn't last as much so as it never had.


"Before we start, is this related to why my office door is locked?" she asked him, suddenly recalling her message to herself from earlier that morning.


"Elsa, we're no longer the be all, end all source of news and information. We no longer have a monopoly on the medium. It used to be print. Then radio. Then television. There was nothing else, and you know as well as I do, when there's only one place telling the story, that's the place from which you're going to get the story. Guaranteed readership. Guaranteed listeners. Guaranteed viewers. Advertising revenue, because that's what this is all about. Without advertising revenue, we're done..." Avner explained to her, leaning back in his chair as he fondly recalled the old days.


"...but the people don't come for the advertising. They come for the content. The writing. My writing," Elsa reminded him confidently.


"In the old days Elsa, they very much did, but we're no longer living in the old days. We brought them with us for as long as we could, burning through our assets to cover our costs without meeting change head on. The internet snuck up on us. Mobile devices. All of it, the channel of a new generation who are tech-savvy and way beyond us. You know how it is, the bigger the ship, the slower the port-side turn. Corporate sent the budget this morning. We're losing two floors this year, and another four next year, but we aren't losing staff as long as the staff are pulling their weight," Avner said to Elsa, looking down the end of his nose at her.


"Are you saying that I lost my office because I'm not pulling my weight?" she became agitated with his insinuation.


"No. I'm saying that you lost your office, because I didn't want you to lose your job!" he responded to her.


"What about my awards? What about my readership? My readers are loyal, you know. I put our monthly magazines on the map. We sell subscriptions because of my writing!" Elsa reminded him once again.


"You don't understand Elsa. We're ceasing all print operations effective by the end of this month. We're looking at all print media, including your monthly columns as part of our online strategy. You're now competing with writers working our dailies, but you have the advantage of having established columns which we're adapting to our new format as weeklies. The three magazines that you used to headline, will each become a weekly. Your columns? You're going to have to produce four times as many per month, that's twelve columns per month, and all for the same money as the three a month you used to do. That's what its going to require for you to adapt to this new economic model..." Avner leaned forward in his chair this time, using his hands to help him make his point.


"Three per week? Are you kidding me? That's how long it takes to do the research for one column, let alone the copy! And without an office? The answer is no!" Elsa responded, raising her voice.


"Would you let me finish?!" Avner raised his voice, but not his tone.


"Fine!" Elsa folded her arms across her chest, and began dangling her right heel nervously as she waited for him to explain.


"We're assigning you a writer. You're going to be working with someone else. Patty. She's going to take your rough copy and take it to the final draft. You won't have an office. You'll be working outside of the offices, doing research and real journalism work. You'll put your copy together, updating Patty on a daily basis before the end of the day, and she's going to put it together into the final draft. She'll be credited as a co-writer/copy editor, but the columns will still hold your name and full credit as the writer slash journalist. You're losing the office, but you're getting something that is going help us revitalize our hold on the media market, and more importantly, revitalize you. Elsa, you and Patty are very different people. Patty should have a job in the office anchored to her desk in the cubicle, where she thrives as a writer, but you? I want you to lose the desk, and gain something more. You're going to have to live it, and she's going to have to write it," Avner lowered his voice only slightly, though his words become more encouraging, perhaps even sounding somewhat like those of a concerned mentor.


When he'd mentioned that she'd be outside of the office, her imagination began to explore the possibilities. At first she quickly shot them down, each one of them, thinking only in terms of the written words she needed to produce, rather than gathering the elements of the story for her column and where that might take her. As her subconscious fought a war over the possibilities and fears over how it might change her career, her mind once again arrived at the question of money.


"I want more money," Elsa said to Avner confidently.


"You're not getting it. However, I'm authorized to give you a monthly budget to cover some of your expenses. A portion of your fuel costs. Your vehicle insurance. Your phone bill. You won't be getting an increase, either this year or next, having your expenses covered works out to about the same as a standard increase. Prove it to us that you're still the draw of readership that we depend upon, and we'll reward you. That's the best you're going to get right now. So can I write this up?" asked Avner of Elsa, who sat in contemplation for a moment before giving him an answer.


"Give me the cheque for my car insurance today, and we've got a deal," Elsa responded with neither a smile nor a frown.


Avner pulled a cheque  book from the top drawer of his desk, and quickly filled it out, leaving the amount blank and then handing it to her before signing it.


She filled in the numbers and returned it to him, at which point he signed it and returned it to her.


"Before you sign your new contract with us, from this point forward, we'll be choosing the topics of your columns..." Avner barely had finished his sentence before Elsa jumped on her verbally.


"No way! That's not the way I work!" she was ready to rip up the cheque before Avner responded.


"Corporate is using a market research firm as part of their guidelines for ensuring our share of the media market, and a guaranteed target audience for advertisers. Without that, we don't have advertisers. We'd be relying on internet click-throughs, which pay pennies compared to ad campaign deals and brand sponsorship. If you're going to leave and throw away everything you've built here, then you should know that any other media conglomerate that decides to pick you up, will require the same thing. If you won't do it for us, then you'll be doing it for someone else and for much less money," Avner explained the rules of the new media game to her, and she pursed her lips in frustration before folding the cheque and putting it in her purse.


"Where do I sign, and what's my first assignment?" she asked Avner.


"Glad to have you on board again, Elsa. Sign on the dotted line," Avner slid her contract across the desk after having retrieved it from a folder in the bottom drawer of his desk.


"We're doing an issue two weeks from now on the topic of modern spirituality. Now given the data of your previous readership, we've decided to give you a column dedicated to some of the more esoteric and controversial people associated with these new movements. You're going to be interviewing a fellow by the name of Proto-Humanus. He's the sole clerical representative of a largely unknown philosophy. Yet, for some reason, this guy has a large dedicated readership online, despite never having given public talks relating to his Proto-Humanus spiritual philosophy," Avner explained to her.


"So you're trying to lure his followers for the advertising revenue and throwing me to the wolves to achieve this?" confirmed Elsa.


"I'm not. Corporate is, but it does make sense. These online followers of his obviously read. They're consumers too, so why not? I can't say that I envy you because balancing between appeasing them, and every other competing philosophy is not going to be an easy task, but its one that I'm sure you'll be able to handle," Avner paused and smiled at her.


"Avner. I'm thirty-nine. I'm on the front doorstep of forty. I'm once divorced. I have no children, and the only thing I have to look forward to is writing columns about facial scrubs, cleansers and moisturizers, which I was hoping I would already have been doing by this point in my life. And now you're throwing me into a whirlwind which is most certainly there for young graduate writers starting out, rather than a woman whose egg will soon expire, leaving nothing in her future but anti-aging creams, ointments and the occasional vaginal fantasy club book of the month to look forward to..." Elsa spoke firmly, though her voice wavered slightly as if she was on the brink of tears.


"Elsa my dear. Take the opportunity and run with it. Insofar as the other woman stuff goes, why don't you talk about it with Patty?" Avner suggested to her, most certainly purposefully insensitively.


Elsa stood from her chair, placing Avner's pen back on his desk. She then turned and opened the door and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her without saying another word to him.


She then walked down the hall, towards the cubicles and over to where Patty was seated.


"So, did he say anything about my new office? The one neighbouring yours?" Patty asked Elsa.


Elsa's eyes grew narrow for a moment, before she once again regained her composure.


"Alright. I guess you already know that we're working together. I'm going to be getting setup with this new arrangement for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, I'll call you with an update, and by the evening I should have the first bit of material for the first draft. Any questions?" asked Elsa of Patty.


"So are we going to like, go for the whole mysterious side to this? You know, like a conspiracy? Or are we going to cover it like a spiritual tourist?" Patty asked Elsa, whose expression betrayed any dignity to Patty's question, instead averting it entirely.


"We'll talk about that tomorrow. I've got a real busy day ahead of me," Elsa turned to leave as Patty responded.


"Alright partner. BFN," Patty replied with a smile, leaving Elsa to wonder what that meant.


When Elsa arrived in the parking garage at her car, she got in and pulled her favourite not pad from her pocket and wrote herself a note:


- Tub of Hagen-Dazs from Lakeshore Market

- Curl up with flannel blanket, Hagen-Dazs and have a good cry



Coming soon...

Written by Brian Joseph Johns


Credits and attribution:


Thank you both the Deepai.org and Photopea.com, without whom the title art would not have been possible.

Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Deepai.org, Google AI Studio, Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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