Category Archives: writing

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Two Christmas Stories

Darwin and Charlie Brown

Darwin and Charlie Brown

It’s a Christmas Tradition on the ol’ raincoaster blog to re-post this, the greatest Christmas story ever told (sorry, Jesus!): A Christmas Story, by Sarban. It is long, but if I can spend several hours typing it in, you can take an hour or less to read it. I recommend accompanying it with a bottle of Zubrowka and a box of Kleenex.

A Christmas Story
By Sarban (John W. Wall)

I will tell you a Christmas story. I will tell it as Alexander Andreievitch Masseyev told it me in his little house outside the walls of Jedda years ago one hot, damp Christmas Eve….

For our second selection, we have the entirely awesome Simon Callow reading one of Charles Dickins’ non-cloying stories, “The Christmas Tree,” a marvellous, metaphorical memoir. I’ve stolen this one from the Guardian.

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Operation Global Media Domination: the Kylie Chronicles

Every now and then someone suggests to me that my life would be better if it were more normal. If I spent less time on Twitter. If I had a “real” job. If I were more of a generalist, and focused less on WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and hackers. Maybe do some fashion blogging, try out some AdSense. You know, normal stuff, stuff that is not so…badass.

Keep Calm and FUCK YOU WITH A CHAINSAW!

Keep Calm and FUCK YOU WITH A CHAINSAW!

How about: No?

I know you all mean well, but since when has “normal” ever been normal for me?

So there I was the other day, hanging out on Twitter and watching my timeline, which has become much bloodier than anything you’ll see on CNN lately (since I weeded out all the “social media gurus” and “marketing inspiration artistes”), and I saw something amazing and, without waiting for an editor to assign it I went ahead and Storified it, which is basically putting the tweets in order so that they form a story. Alas, as I mentioned earlier, I can’t embed it here in any form that will work, but I can link to it and to the full story I put on the website and I can tell you that there is more on this story coming Monday. And maybe more after that, if Kylie will talk to me.

And how does this heartwarming story of Anonymous and others coming to the rescue of a suicidal teen come into Operation Global Media Domination? With a hell of a bang, that’s how.

57,000 upvotes on reddit

105,606 views of the Storify

44,000 views on Jezebel

110,000 reads over the past two days

2,600 Facebook likes and shares

508 tweets

77 G+1′s

76 notes on Tumblr

covered in the Province

And even four comments.

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Contemporary Journalism 101: The Twitter Stalk

Please hold for Hashtag John Doe

Please hold for Hashtag John Doe

You might think it’s easy being a reporter these days, what with newspapers being so high on the hog and all. Well, kid, you’d be wrong.

It’s a dirty business, being a reporter, and don’t call me a “hack” if you don’t want a shiner that you can read a pulp novel by.

We do things. Things we can’t talk about. Things normal people would not know how to understand. It’s better that we just keep these depraved little rituals to ourselves, but you know me: can’t keep a secret. That’s why I got into this business: so people would pay me not to keep things to myself.

Things like this.

Background: State Representative Dan Gordon of Rhode Island is Anonymous’s least and best favorite State Representative, alternately promoting and trolling them. And he promised me an interview. Many. Many. Many times.

So. It comes to this.

Hey, I never said it was pretty, boys and girls.

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GPOY: Rage Faces Edition

Keep Calm and FUCK YOU WITH A CHAINSAW!

Keep Calm and FUCK YOU WITH A CHAINSAW!

Sure is Monday, ain’t it?

Takes a fair bit to put me off my writing stride when I’ve got so much good material, but today had ALL of it, in bucketloads. Still, I can gloat about my TrapWire article being as far as I can tell the first in North America outside of @UpdateBen’s brilliant Storify, which you should definitely read. I got 24 Reddits. Hooboy, am I ever flattered! However, thanks to huge pickup by Anonymous (thanks, guys!) it got 428 tweets and 166 Facebook shares and likes, so Operation Global Media Domination is doing well, at least. I just wish I’d written the followup instead of us just syndicating the article from That Other Site. Still, if I can find something to FOI (and surely there must be something) I can go for it. The question is, will the bosses pay for my time rooting through the emails?

Then I hung around online for two hours I should have been working out or at least getting my butt off these cheapo Waves chairs that are gonna make some chiropractor rich just as soon as I can afford one, only to find out Ecuador can’t make up its fucking mind. DON’T THESE PEOPLE KNOW I HAVE DEADLINES???

Julian Assange, if this comes down when I’m afk I will never forgive you.

And me all out of gin. This week can only get better, right?

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