In case you missed it, Jon Lord, the legendary keyboardist for Deep Purple, passed away yesterday. The 71-year-old was a vital organ in the Purple ensemble, having pioneered the use of the Hammond in rock music. But when you Google his name, right beneath his Wikipedia page and official website, jonlord.org, is another official domain name, jonlord.ca–only this one has nothing to do with Deep Purple.
As it turns out, the Canadian Jon Lord is a Calgary businessman and politican looking to win the Conservative nomination for Calgary Centre after Lee Richardson stepped down. A former alderman and MLA, he also failed in his bid to become mayor–finishing in a distant sixth place with just 0.4 per cent of the vote, and also failed to secure his riding’s nomination in the last provincial election, which was won by the eventual PC Candidate, Christine Cusanelli. But that’s not to say he’s a complete failure. According to his bio (scroll down for it), he’s a “long-term member” of MENSA, that organization for people with genius-level IQs, a provincial judo silver-medalist who’s “also studied street-fighting and knife and sword techniques” and the long-time owner of Casablanca Video in Marda Loop. He also looks awfully cute and cuddly in a cowboy hat:
“Vote for me, or the puppy gets it!”
That said, for all his accomplishments, web design is definitely not his forte. His, ugly, primitive Web 1.0 site features a distracting dissected picture of the Calgary sideline split by a grey background with a variety of text shapes and sizes (I’m pretty sure he uses Comic Sans for some quotes, even!), not to mention a logo that looks like it’s straight from 1972. The pages are far too content heavy, and if you actually bother to scroll through all that text, you’ll find that while the initial paragraphs mention Calgary Centre, he talks about an awful lot that isn’t federal jurisdiction in his mission statement, and still mentions how he’d be a great candidate for mayor. Guess even he couldn’t go through all that text to make the updates!
Mind you, if he hasn’t put any effort into jazzing up his site, it may be because he’s not considered a top candidate for the nomination. This iPolitics article, which actually quotes Lord quite, erm, liberally, suggests that it could be a two-horse race between ex-journalist Joan Crockatt and current alderman John Mar–though I’m sure Lord’s campaign might’ve gotten a small boost from all those Deep Purple fans curious about the Canadian site with all the Calgary-related keywords. 
