This is what it looks like, according to FranH on Flickr. They may only have a couple of hours of sunlight, but that’s two more than we’re getting in Vancouver right now. I STILL regret not seeing any competitive tea boiling when I was up there (what? WHAT? It’s a THING, I’m telling you).
The Greedy Eagle Casino Grand Opening by IndigFlygirl
We at the ol’ raincoaster blog salute our First Nations brothers and sisters of the West Village Band of Zuccotti Indians as they proudly reclaim their ancestral territory.
And promptly put a casino on it.
“Hit me!”
“No, that comes later.”
This may be the funniest, least PC thing I’ve ever posted. Should be good for at least one flamewar with some White Liberal Guilt-Having Vegan. Hey, don’t blame me, blame the 1491′s! Blaming the Natives: we should have perfected it by now!
This was two house-sits ago, out in what I called Buttfuck Nowhere, which it is if you don’t have a car, and I don’t. Also known as New Newfoundland, for the influx of Newfies: such an influx that the local grocery store carries big white plastic pails of “beef navels”. Those are actual beef navels, not some kind of seagoing bovine, because it’s a popular food in Newfoundland, or so I surmise from the fact that the bucket has a map of such on the label. I found a recipe for beef navel pastrami, but otherwise I’m not sure what you do with them.
While I was out there, housesitting at a far too nice place on a perfectly ordinary road surrounded by condos, Walmarts, and Tim Hortonses in all directions, I decided to take the garbage out. In the middle of the night. Well, normally who cares, right? Only on my way back from the dumpster I saw something move under a car, something doggish-size, and being from Vancouver and used to raccoon and skunks and coyotes and such, I just made growling “giddoudahear” kind of noises and something shot off into the brush.
A lynx.
I knew a woman from William’s Lake who used to go out hunting grizzly bears in the woods, just her and her two bear dogs (the kind they tell the white people are extinct, but aren’t). The only thing in the wilderness that scared her was the lynx: apparently they’re just as crazy and aggressive as wolverines, and will attack pretty much anything.
So yeah. Even taking out the garbage can be a bit of an adventure up here.
"The only cures I have for the ills of life are to move constantly north and to sleep. But you run out of north and you wake up." ~ Bukowski—
Bukowski Quotes (@bukquotes) August 19, 2011
Big words, coming from a man who lived in Los Angeles most of his adult life.
It's bad news when the Bartender cries
So yesterday I decided I’d been good (god knows why I decided that, but I can be somewhat arbitrary at times) and deserved a treat, and so I took myself to the local filling station, an agreeably-but-not-intimidatingly casual place named after a species of plant which did not, in fact, exist on the premises.
Unless it was hiding, and after what happened, who could blame it?
The waitress was attentive, and sweet, and barely old enough to be out that late on a school night. She asked me what I would like to drink, and I thought about what not-too-exotic-but-still-tasty items might be available in the subarctic regions and said, “Do you have Johnny Walker Black?”
She looked at me with alarm.
“Rum?” she asked.
“…Scotch,” I replied, probably just as startled as she had been. She’d apparently never heard of this exotic tipple. I might as well have asked for a Connecticut Bullfrog, Andover style.
She toddled off to whisper to the bartender. No doubt she thought it was something that was kept under the bar, in case of the po-po.
She came back smiling, and saying Yes, Yes, we have this ‘Johnny Walker Black’ stuff! or words to that effect. So I ordered a double.
“With Pepsi?”
And so concludes our Slice of Life in the Knife for this evening. The following I post here because it is perhaps the finest ten minutes of a bartending god as you will ever witness in your entire life, unless you buy the film The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and watch the whole thing repeatedly, as is your right. Or would be, if you hadn’t downloaded the damn thing from Bittorrent, eh?
and, for the complete opposite, here:
Did that guy actually get paid for this?
(via Whisky2.0)
