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Pic O’ The Day: Wojtek Kwiatkowski

Stolen from Bridlepath!

Stolen from Bridlepath

Planning is the key to potluck success

Married To The Sea

A Time for Atene!

Well folks, it’s been nearly a week since we had a dose of Ateneuousness, and we’ve just been served a brand-new video, steam still rising from its loops and whorls.

I, personally, want to see him do The Chairs with Barbie furniture. But one must be patient. Rome wasn’t YouTubed in a day.

Drupal Camp Vancouver, Fearless City Media, The Revolution Will Be Fabulous, and Homeless James Bond

The revolution will be fabulousHow’s that for a title?

First, we will explain each element in isolation.

No, first we will tell you what we’re going to tell you. Then we will tell you. Then we will tell you we’ve told you. I’ve been told that’s what to do.

Then, we will invoice you.

No, wait, that’s how it works in the corporatesphere, and the great part is, you get to bill for ALL of the above, plus the time you spend making shit up to talk about in the first place. But this is the Blogosphere, as differentiated from the Twittosphere. So, nobody is getting paid here.

Is this the point at which to mention that my canned Introduction to Social Media talk includes the song “Starfuckers, Incorporated?” Sure it is.

By the way, if I may be allowed to digress (and, since it is my own blog and raincoaster.com to boot it may truly be said that I am not only allowed to digress, but actually encouraged, nay, mandated to do so) and to name-drop as well (ditto, double) I would simply like to take this opportunity to mention that there is every indication and some considerable circumstantial evidence (moreso even than for the existence of fairies, of which we have written elsewhere at length) that this very website was visited by Trent Fucking Reznor. For realz.

Mai archaic telecommunication device. let me show you it

< / squealingfangirl >

Thank you. And now, back to our irregularly-scheduled blog post.

Drupal Camp Vancouver is nothing like Girl Guide Camp; for one thing the gender ratio is all wrong, and for another there are no s’mores. So, like, damn.

But once you get over that, it’s not so bad. First of all, it begins, as do all good things which don’t involve pubic lice, with a free drink ticket. In my case, because I am impecunious in the extreme and gifted with a sense of entitlement larger than the Grand Banks, it began with two, actually, because Dave is a self-declared old hippie and susceptible to the charms of a self-declared old goth such as myself, particularly if she’s heavy on the “just got through teaching blogging to the marginalized population of the Downtown Eastside” speil, which I am wont to do just about whenever I wont to, which is definitely when it will give me free drinks, which is something I always wont except possibly at breakfast and even then I might just wont to pour it into a handy Wellington boot and save it for later.

It IS the Downtown EastSide, yo.

Tomorrow it continues (remember Drupal Camp? It’s a blog post about Drupal Camp) with me volunteering. I have been assured/assurances have been made unto me that there is no reason to turn my world upside-down by presenting myself in, like, the morning. Thank god; I’d thought for a second they were going to be unreasonable or something. So for tomorrow the plan is that I will show up at some point and try to be more useful than annoying, although those of you who know me are aware that it tends to be a wash, whatever the amplitude or volume in question.

Burberry AK 47?

And after Drupal Camp packs up its Pug tents and its GPS-ess and stainless steel travel mugs for the day, I am to assist at Code Sprint, an event which I have neither witnessed nor participated in, but I am prepared to wear a festive hat and consume mint juleps and shoot the second-place finisher if that is what it takes.

Too soon?

Come and “jam” with fellow creatives, both technical and non-technical, from 6pm to 9pm. There’s activities for right and left brainers, er, themers and coders, alike! The plan is for coders to focus on methods for adding mobile content and themers to focus on the creation of a mobile-friendly black-on-white theme. Don’t worry about your skill level, everyone can participate.

The Fearless Media Project facilitates community participation in the creation of media and community dialogue on issues relevant to people in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver.

Which brings us to Fearless City Media. Which I told Scott I would link to once that bloody SEO-slaughtering splash page was ripped pixel by pixel out of the cyberverse and thrown into the deepest pit of Hell, but what the hell, I lied: sue me. Fearless City is what I do with my Thursday nights, manifesting the promise of equality and emancipation implicit in the Digital Revolution and bridging the Digital Divide by leading a blogging workshop for some of the most marginalized people in North America. I do this in the back room of an art gallery which works with artists suffering from mental illness or the aftereffects of abuse, in a neighborhood where, according to Statistics Canada, the average life expectancy is 33 years, lower than any nation on Earth.

What did you do Thursday night?

Yes, even I find me insufferable sometimes. Still. What did you?

Fearless City Media

The Mission

The purpose of the Fearless Media Project is to facilitate community participation in the creation of media and community dialogue on issues relevant to people in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver. This cultural initiative connects documented visions and practises with community priorities and goals. With oversight from the DTES Community Arts Network coordinating body (CANCore), Fearless functions as a portal to arts and culture in “the heart of the city.”

Fearless functions as a community arts initiative that prioritizes an inclusive process and involvement of people in media making. Context is central; this media is situated in more public, accessible and resonant places, geared to a specific audience and a specific time. Fearless is reflective of and responsive to the DTES community.

Fearless fosters engagement with the community by giving voice to the experiences of local people and amplifying their stories. The community-building dynamic happens in many ways: by providing access to resources and training people in media production; by bringing people together to address community issues and explore the rich culture of the Downtown Eastside; and by cultivating understanding through listening and dialogue.

And this video right here is what I tried (and failed…maybe Code Sprint will fix this?) to post on my Fearless City blog: The Adventures of Homeless James Bond, which I stole from The Homeless Guy, an American blogger who’s been blogging since before raincoaster was a twinkle in Cthulhu’s third eye, posting from libraries and public computers all over his hometown.

The revolution is coming. And it will be Fabulous.

Class War in Blood Alley? And what happens to the losers?

Louis Vuitton Electric Chair

Louis Vuitton Dumpster

Attention Scientists!

Married To The Sea

FYI much the same can be said of NASCAR fans, hipsters, Republicans, Big Macs, and other lower forms of life.

Coffee is Evil!

I worked at Starbucks for seven years. I know what I’m talking about here.

Yet, as I may have mentioned, every time I tried to make latte art, it just turned out looking like a vagina.

animal

Where are they now?

Ever gotten the whimsical notion to look up your old boyfriends, just to see who or what they finally ended up doing? Well, I’ve learned to resist those urges. Look what I found going under an assumed name…but read the copy closely, there is NO mistaking those characteristic traits, not to mention that profile.

Mount Tiki Soki

a thousand words…all of them four-letter

So, what are YOU wearing to Jenna’s shotgun wedding this Saturday? For some reason, this picture just reminded me of that…

Putin and George

from Fark

The Cans Festival

I love the Brits; not only do they apparently think I should rule their blogosphere (I humbly accept), but they’re also in many ways quite simply batshit insane. One of the manifestations of this unfortunate, though amusing-to-watch, characteristic is their irrational fondness for so-called “Festivals.”

They appear to define the word “Festival” as “any occasion during which city dwellers come in contact with both actual dirt and other people wearing same, particularly on their faces,” and most particularly if it cost a month’s salary and someone is screaming at them through an expensive sound system during a downpour.

Trust Banksy to be more clever than your run of the mill Festivationator: he’s organized a Festival in a tunnel.

Behold The Cans Festival (via Walking Turcot Yards):

The Cans Festival, under Waterloo Station

Some people are calling it the greatest stencil art show that has ever taken place in a tunnel underneath Waterloo station. It was visited by 28,544 people and 623 of them painted on the walls.

mind control

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emo washing powder commercial!

Grass stains? Dirt? Ring around the collar?

End it all with EMO!

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Operation Global Media Domination: the UK situation

TIA Yay!I am not quite sure how this came to pass, but according to Wikio I am now the 300th most powerful blog in the UK.

Pity I’m not IN the UK.

Maybe I should send flowers to Boriswatch? Important jobs for all my bloggy Limey friends!

What a Louse!

God hates sea monkeys. No, he does

A tragic tale of a true louse.

Or not, as you shall see.

I was tempted, almost to the point of madness, to steal Bug Girl’s title; let’s face it, when you’re looking for eye-catching, it’s hard to beat

Sea Monkeys in Your Pants!”

It really is.

How does this sad tale start? Where will it end? When do the Sea Monkeyscome in, and do they really look like those crowned, pink people in the cartoons?

It starts, as all great tales do, with a random email about pubic lice, and it ends…probably tragically, with Raid aerosols at dawn in the Quadrant. And they are supposed to come in the mail, but they don’t.

Unless…are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes: MATANGO!

It starts with my friend Bug Girl, who is an entomologist, getting an email from a stranger asking about the latest fad: “Love Lice,” pubic lice you keep in your underwear as living love tokens and pets.

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

My boyfriend is all excited about the love lice, pubic hair animal things and wants us to get them. I’m not sure this is such a good idea.

Speaking as an impartial and (possibly) somewhat callous bystander, I think it’s a SWELL idea. I think all exceptionally stupid people should send their money in to this website and purchase recreational blood-sucking vermin for their nether regions. If nothing else, it will mean that pointless marketing meetings will be shorter, as everyone there but me will have difficulty sitting still longer than five minutes. I am highly in favour of this. If the intellectually impaired refuse to remain in their designated containment sites (malls, character-based amusement parks, LiveJournal, and in front of the television) the very least they can do is visibly distinguish themselves from normal people by a scabbing rash and unrestrained genital scratching.

In a perfect manifestation of my thesis that everything has a fansite, there is (naturally) a site devoted to this peculiar aberration, Lovebugz.net, and surprise, surprise, it will, for a small price, make these crawling, blood-sucking escutcheons upon the family jewels available by mail order.

The dealio is special bred pubic crab louses from Japan (not the same as homeless people’s variety of lice exactly). First, they DON’T BITE, they just live off dead skin cells and such in your bush. Really, you’re cleaner with them there than without them.
Second, these babies are HUGE!!! Well, huge compared to regular lice. And they just live happily in your underwear.
It’s so COOL! They grow, and have families.
You can feel em living and crawling around. It’s like having personal Sea monkeys in your pants.

Except, not really. As Bug Girl points out, there are no pubic crab louses, Japanese or otherwise, that do not live off the blood of their hosts. It’s not like having Sea Monkeys in your pants; it’s like having tiny vampire bats.

o hai, there might be a market for this in Gothdom, come to think of it. A tweak here, a re-edit there, a new black background, a couple of Vampire Lestat quotes, some red serif text and HEY PRESTO! Instant millionaire-maker.

Except the Goths I know don’t wear any underpants. Would that be a problem?

Bug Girl has cleared up the misinformation on her blog, coincidentally giving my soon-to-launch VampireBugsInYourPants.com its first independent testimonial.

Given the infinite ability of humans to get off on just about anything, I’ll grant that someone could fetishize having pubic lice (Phthirus pubis for those who want the taxonomic details). And it does have it’s own fetish name: pthirophilia…

…the idea promoted on LoveBugz that you can “easily” get rid of crabs is not correct. Additionally, the LoveBugz site suggests using Kerosene, which is about the worst thing you can possibly do (especially if you have open sores from the bites!).

Again, I have to disagree. The idea that hundreds of fad-driven dopes are pouring volatile, corrosive liquids into their seething, vermin-infested gotchies and onto open wounds delights me no small amount. I may have to take five for a giggle break here, and don’t pretend you don’t need one as well.

But wait! There’s MORE! Much, much more…Click past the jump to read it, including scanning electron microscopy of zombie mushroom vampire lice!

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Read More »

quiz: which gay childhood icon are you?

I’m kind of bummed I didn’t get Peppermint Patty, but then without baseball questions how could you? Still, Daphne is a dip; Velma could do much better any night at Lick.


You Are the Very Gay Velma!


She might not even realize it…

But Velma is all about Daphne… not Fred!

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how to make a Dirty Martini REALLY dirty

Married To The Sea

Another from Married to the Sea.

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the slip: trent reznor puts out for his fans

sir prize buttsecks from NIN!

source

Trent Reznor knows what I like in a man, and he is ready and willing to give it to me: free stuff! Yes, the (apparently fearless) head of Nine Inch Nails has decided to stop pussyfooting around and put out for me; that is, to put out one whole album, free.

Like, “This ain’t no Radiohead sort of “free” either.” Free.

And he’s making it available for YOU YES YOU to download now. Okay, yeah, so maybe he spreads it around a little; he’s a rock god, what do you expect? Just remember to surf safe, boiz and grrrlz.

Download it now!

Go on, push his button. You know you want to.

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Ninja Tea Party

Source here is lost to the mists of time. Whoever it is, he did an amazing job of catching the notoriously elusive ninjas in a rare moment of relaxation.

Ninja Tea Party

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer

You must contain yourself when watching this video, which I stole from Gawker, but only up to the point at which you see the shadow of the fedora. At that point, you may begin screaming uncontrollably or muttering “drat that Jones! I’ll foil him yet,” as you prefer. Behold the greatness which is Doctor Henry Jones, Junior

Did I mention I still have that hat, the coolest in all creation, which I bought on the last day Woodwards was open? Yes, an official Indiana Jones hat from Stetson, I think it was, though the original was Herbie Jones, which I of course and naturally cannot afford; the information printed inside has long since been worn away and the hat has become battered, faded and stained in propa Indy manner. It was once splashed by an Orca on the rocks near Not-Ucluelet. This is what you call adventure cred, my friends. My hat has more than most actual people.

Indiana Jones hat, the real thing

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Quiz: the personality test at 35,000 feet

Pretty good, except for the fact that I can’t take a picture to save my life. I’m a natural-born Art Director, though: never short of opinions and willing to become screamy at a moment’s notice.


Your Personality at 35,000 Says…


Deep down, you prefer spending time alone to spending time with others. You enjoy thinking more than talking.You are good with your place in the world. You are confident and comfortable with who you are.Your gift is having a good eye. You take amazing picture and have the natural talent for most visual arts.

You are inspired by what is unknown. You are drawn to the exotic.

It’s very easy for you to feel happy. You can find peace with any situation.

 

How to Get Banned from Disneyland

Pretty simple, when you think about it. Look again: that isn’t really Disneyland, but those are really breasts.

Banned from Disneyland

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the Unbearable Lightness of Sunday Afternoon

So it’s Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining (for once), the birds are singing, all my work is done for the week, and I can’t think of a single damn thing to do. Not one.

So here is a YouTube of Brian Atene philosophizing about prunes, CS Lewis, and social media. It takes awhile to get to the payoff, but it’s there, trust me.

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