WE NO HAZ UR BUKKIT DOOD!!!

It’s not all fun and games out there on the deep blue sea.

That’s CCTV footage of the giant cruise ship the Pacific Sun, being shaken up like a snow globe by the powers of wind and water or perhaps something a little more sinister. If you cruise around LiveLeak, Break, or YouTube you can find any number of videos entitled “DEADLY 20 FOOT WAVE” and so on, but really, a 20-foot wave is nothing. For devotees of Cthulhu such as my fine self, we don’t even notice anything under “Cyclopean” unless, that is, it’s non-Euclidean.

Non-Euclidean waves will always have a special place in my heart, as will the HPL geek who wrote this spell-checking program and included the word non-Euclidean therein.

If you’re a sea geek like me, you probably watched, though claimed not to enjoy The Perfect Storm, but of course you had the book years before. And from that book, you probably remember many terrifying oceanic factoids, such as the fact that waves far higher than the theoretically possible maximum of 150 feet are routinely spotted via satellite imaging, and that a rogue wave once blew out the pilothouse windows on the Queen Mary, and further you remember that the pilot house windows on the Queen Mary are – get this – 92 feet above the water line. The wave was so tall that, even at an altitude of 92 feet, it was sufficiently thick and powerful that it crushed steel-framed, reinforced glass.

So yeah, enjoy that cruise vacation.

They're actually saying Iä! Iä! Iä!

Grover paid his dues the old-fashioned way, starting as a shoeshine monster and making his way as a waiter/comedian on the mean streets of Queens, until the day he was talent-scouted by the youthful duo of Ernie and Bert, auditioned for a new television project of theirs, and his fortune was made. Big Bird lucked out and made it on his first audition, if you believe the official storyline; unofficially, it’s believed that his never-seen but well-connected (Bunbury-ish?) Granny Bird had something to do with getting the clueless yet appealing big lug such a high-profile gig.

Elmo? Well, we’ve discussed Elmo.

Oscar’s story is a little different, a little more universal, a little more … dare we say it? Tragic.

God, the PANDERING I do! I hope you people bloody well appreciate it; I’m allergic to cats! Just look at that terrifying little bastard; why, he’s just crouched there waiting till you pass out, whereupon he will gnaw upon your senseless body patiently, irrevocably, until he has consumed every morsel.

Sadly, this call could not be completed as dialed.

Mark Eskelsen, the Hot Tub Hobo

It seems Mark Eskelsen, a true aficionado of convivial outdoor bathing, free spirit, alfresco-dweller, and (at least mentally) time-traveller from reformed hippieville Beaverton, Oregon, is not a rock. Nor yet is he an island.

He is a loser.

From the New York Daily News (really, we’re getting our Cascadia news from NYC now? really, interwebs?):

The 45-year-old called 911 from his cell phone on Sunday morning and identified himself as the “sheriff of Washington County,” Beaverton police said. He then asked for medical attention, later admitting that he wasn’t the sheriff.

Eskelsen also said he had been in the hot tub for 10 hours and that his towels had gotten soaked.

“I just need a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it,” he told the 911 operator.

In fact, the police lied: the poor man actually called 411, as any right-thinking, cocoa-seeking hot tub hobo would do in a time of need. Can you imagine the conversation he and the friendly operator must have had? If not for the fact my readers are still recovering from my recent OD on YouTubes, I’d post the scene from 28 Days where Sandra Bullock’s character is driving around wasted in the stolen limo wearing her underwear and drunk-dialing 411 to find a wedding cake, right here. But I won’t.

The operator knew a true human emergency when s/he heard one, and handed off the unsuspecting hug-seeker to 911 emergency response, who promptly responded to our warm-hearted if pruney-toed protagonist’s cri de coeur by calling in the SWAT team to roust him from his roasty roost and put him on ice in the cooler.

And to think: all he wanted was a hug, a cup of cocoa with marshmallows, and some fresh towels. Really, when it comes right down to it, we are all Juan Mann, alone.

“…how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!… There can be no peace without hope.”

~ Albert Camus, 1948, The Plague (Trans. Stuart Gilbert), p. 262-263

Emo Luv

at least she was pleased the trike was a fixie

Did you ever see that brilliant Steve Martin movie The Jerk? Yeah, it needs a sequel.

and yes, I know I’m all about the YouTubes lately. Maybe on days I don’t get cc’d on 300 emails demanding replies I will have some words left for the blog.

It was most particularly not worth it because I had to give up my beloved cocktails; in fact, I believe I only consumed alcohol one day in the month of July and that was my birthday. In August I gave myself a few more “days off” and enjoyed some wine, but it must be said that in this, as in most things in life, Dean Martin had it right.

Listen to Dino; he KNOWS!

“I’d hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that’s as good as you’re going to feel all day.”

Well, exactly.

So, how does it feel to be a neo-teetotaler in Lotus Land, when one knows all the best bartenders and they all know it’s a Negroni, up, when you walk in the door unless it’s cold outside and then it’s probably Jack Daniels or if it’s been a very bad day, Champagne? Well, it doesn’t feel good. Have you ever been the only sober person at a blowout? That’s right: it feels like a bad dream. It feels, in fact, just as depicted in this incredible documentary, 28 Drinks Later.

And, lest we forget, here are some words of wisdom from Diogenes:

“What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.”

Find out what drunk celebrity you are at LiquidGeneration!

Is very weird and possibly even incorrect, as all my friends tell me that when I get drunk I actually get friendlier. The one time someone slipped me Roofies I went up and down the halls of my apartment building, knocking on doors and introducing myself with “it’s high time we said hi!” God, it was hilarious. Or so they tell me.

Oh god, not ANOTHER one!

No, it’s true: this is a plan to enable you to put “movie producer” on your business card, which will come in handy on a Friday at the clubs, if no-where else. Actually, it will count for something with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who will allow any actual credited producer to purchase a ticket to the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars.

Come to think of it, I’ve got a friend who’s always wanted to go. Hmmmm…

Allow me to introduce With Glowing Hearts, the motion picture:

So far, so awww, right? Yes, it’s an inspirational documentary, perhaps the least likely to be commercially successful genre of film in filmdom. How can you become a producer of this acclaimed-but-so-far-unreleased soon-to-be-classic? Easy; everybody knows there’s one way to become a producer.

You come up with the money.

In this case, you can come up with amounts as small as a Toonie:

Making a film costs money, and although we’ve done a great job at keeping our costs down there are certain expenses which are unavoidable. That’s why from now, until the middle of August, we’re running our Toonie and Tweet Torch Relay to help get us to the finish line and to get your name in the credits.  Starting with a minimum contribution of $2, “producers” can have their name published in a word cloud that will appear in the film’s credit roll and on this site. Increasing your contribution will increase the size of your name in the cloud.

All money collected will go directly towards costs related to finishing and distributing the film like insurance, music rights, and salaries for the great people who have been working on the film with us.  Just click on the Chip-In widget to the right and follow the instructions to use either your PayPal account or credit card, note that transactions are conducted in US dollars but will be converted to your local currency on your bill.  The name that is associated with your PayPal account is the same that will be used for the credits, if you would like a different name to appear in the credits please indicate that under “special instructions for vendor” on the “Review your payment” page.

Sure, it says mid-August, but if you ask nicely you’ll probably find there’s always room for more money (though perhaps it will need more zeros after the 2). Go on, haven’t you always wanted to be a Hollywood big shot? I hear Clooney is breaking up with his latest bimbette, so if you’re a brunette and you can get him good and drunk at the Vanity Fair afterparty, you’ve probably got a shot.

It's not the size, it's how you use it

From the Guardian:

Greenland: A ship melts an iceberg by spraying it with seawater near the Stena Forth oil drilling ship

Don’t worry, it happens to everyone.

that door had to be carted away and burnt later, for public safety reasons

Remember that old-timey singer Amy Winehouse, back when she was still alive?

Studio performance of Love is a Losing Game by Amy Winehouse

For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game

While I wish I’d never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand

Self professed… profound
Till the chips were down
…know you’re a gambling man
Love is a losing hand

Though I’d bet on blind
Love is a faith resign
Memories mar my mind
Love is a faith resign

Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

You know what else is a losing game? Trying to clean up the code in a popular page you copied bodily from Facebook because you are dutiful and political and committed to freedom of speech and think the world NEEDS an archive of the now-deleted Everybody Draw Mohammad Day page, and furthermore, you are doing it on a beautiful Friday Saturday (I have lost track of time GOD HAVE I BEEN HERE THAT LONG???) night while reading the posts and tweets of all my friends who are a block or two away, having a great time NOT editing Facebook code. And further to furthermore, not doing the workout I was supposed to get done four hours ago either, because I am here, madly editing this stupid, extraneous-div-filled code to appease the Google Gods, who have thrown this blog into the Ninth Circle of Google Hell since the start of May. I even pulled my best string, who yanked Matt Cutt‘s personal chain and got nothing better than When I search for ‘raincoaster’ that blog is the first hit, which proves it’s being indexed properly which is bullshit.

Don’t believe me? Here is my stats graph:

Is it any wonder I'm so fucking CRANKY?????

Now, having gone through ismyblogworking.com and Quantcast and the W3 Validator, Feed Validator,  Google Webmaster Tools and (the much more decipherable) Yahoo Site Explorer, I have found my blog is riddled with a metric snotload of code errors and, since I, myself, don’t write in code unless someone is holding a gun to my head AND there are sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads circling my desk, I didn’t put there. Right?

Anyhoodle, it appeared to even my inexperienced eye that code that looked like div /div div /div /form div div div div /h5 and so on was somewhat problematic, and so I sat down to eliminate said code, line by painful line. For two point seven five hours I sifted code, exercising my Delete button and my Backspace ruthlessly (have you seen Ruth lately, by the way? I’ve been Ruthless for months now) and when I looked at the sidebar I saw that I had successfully cleansed less than one-tenth of the code.

At that point I ruthlessly (seriously, where IS that bitch?) exercised the Move To Trash key, and I hope Lindsay Lohan is happy with the present I sent her.

Now I’m off to sacrifice a unicorn to the Google Gods.

Who knew Lady Gaga = Voldemort?

Wish me luck. On the plus side, I think this may be a good omen:

Mad Scientist

Though your chief goals are the somewhat contradictory aims to rule, and then destroy, the planet Earth, you have a strong grasp of the scientific principles of blowing up things (Explodology). Good luck and please have mercy.

Take the quiz on BuzzFeed.com

Well, this seems pretty dead-on.

I mean Bar None, which is a nice bar in Yaletown and surprisingly unsnooty, although that’s probably just because it’s too dark to see if they should snub you and also because I know the right people. But the bar is not what I mean, unless you’re speaking with a broad Eastern accent, in which case yes, it is.

I mean this:

I don't remember reading this part in the Cthulhu Mythos

That is a BC Black Bear totally pwning a servant of Great Cthulhu. These bears are normally peaceful creatures, doglike, even timid:

They enjoy nothing better than playing on the trampoline, relaxing in a hammock, or enjoying a pic-a-nik basket with pals.

The workers couldn't wait for their turn at the Bouncy Castle!

but when they are protecting their territory, hunting for food, or taking care of those they consider family, they can be ruthless. The so-called Red Devil Squid in the top picture must surely have gotten too close to one of the cubs, or possibly attempted to make off with the bear’s particular crop of salmon.

Now, from deepest, darkest Christina Lake, British Columbia comes word of a new kind of bear.

Not that kind.

This kind.

They'll pry the machete from my cold dead paws

It seems a local farmer had developed a close relationship with some 13 neighborhood black bears, to the extent of feeding them, handling them, taming them, and really, everything that can still be mentioned on the evening news short of folding, spindling, and mutilating them. The bears, in turn, acted as guardians for the farm, which was a farm which required guardianship, what with it growing 2300 plants of the finest BC Bud, a crop worth enough loonies and toonies to keep the bears in dog food and the farmer in Gucci for many a year.

Amusingly, unless I’m misremembering the name, this farmer would be the selfsame Justin who used to be the assistant manager at one of the billions of Starbucks at which I worked; in this case, the one at Main and 14th. I heard him on the phone once in the back room, saying to person or persons (or ursines) unknown, “No, it’s perfect. Jimmy’s father is overseas for a few years and has to rent out his land. It’s surrounded on four sides by corn farms, and corn is, like, TALL. The neighbors aren’t nosy at all, and the only access is a private dirt road. It’s PERFECT, I’m TELLING YOU!” and then he looked at me funny, as if I was eavesdropping or something, and said, “I’ll call you back.” He quit shortly after that…to become a farmer.

He was a very, very smart boy.

Anyway, not only did this farm eventually get busted, guard bears or no guard bears (they were probably on a pizza and dorito run, if I know stoners) but while the arresting officers were figuring out what to do with the semi-tame bears, BC bear fanciers (more than you’d think, unless you’d been to the Pumpjack on a Friday night) got themselves together to petition for the freedom of the bears, who face the death penalty for … being bears that eat whatever’s put in front of them.

Doesn't he look terrified?

They don’t appear to constitute a terrible threat to the public safety, what with chasing thrown sticks and all:

“They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

That said, you apparently don’t come between a bear and his favorite crop.

The strange tale of some B.C. black bears that were caught guarding a marijuana grow-op has gotten stranger, after someone stole the confiscated pot from the RCMP and tried to protect it with a stash of stolen dynamite…

On Thursday, RCMP obtained a search warrant for a nearby property in Greenwood, where they found a stash of about 10 kilograms of marijuana stolen from the lockup, including a small amount from the Christina Lake bust.

The officers also found a grenade, a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, and two loaded rifles.

Of even greater concern to police was the stash of about 19 sticks of dynamite they found rigged with homemade fuses, according to Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.

Well, that IS a matter of great concern. Everybody knows bears are slackers when it comes to safely handling explosives.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Robert Weller: Bears Could Be Destroyed Over Marijuana Crop (huffingtonpost.com)
• Jason Priestly Rallies Support For Pot-Protecting Bears (ecorazzi.com)
• Wildlife officials wait as bear petition builds (cbc.ca)
• Summoning Cthulhu With a Care Bear Stare from Wrathofzombie’s Blog ” Role-playing (wrathofzombie.wordpress.com)

Don’t we all, buddy. Don’t we all. 13,800+ unread messages and counting.

Sew What are you saying?

Oh, sure, maybe he’s not a Muslin, but American President Barack Obama is a man with a shady past. Just check out his autobiography; whole MONTHS of his childhood are unaccounted-for. Well, we here at the ol’ raincoaster blog have dug deep, connected every connection, and yanked every chain in our unceasing hunt for The Troof! and now, here it is: video proof of Barack Obama‘s lifelong loyalty to perhaps the greatest enemy Peace on Earth has ever faced:

Marvin the Martian.

Elvis is the King of the Kings of Rock and Roll

Well, he is the King in Sweden anyway, which shows you just how desperate they must be. Here’s a charming, if bizarre (or is that BECAUSE bizarre) video of him performing Elvis Presley‘s A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action on Swedish television.

It is heartening, is it not, to realize that, even in the complete absence of musical or dancing talent and equipped with nothing more than a Master’s degree in chemical engineering, one can claw one’s way to the very top of Swedish variety showdom and become the butt of jokes worldwide.

Weird Al couldn't believe his luck on PlentyofFish

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dolph’s battle against stereotypes (mirror.co.uk)
• Elvis Fans Impersonate The King (cbsnews.com)
• The Elvis Enigma (online.wsj.com)

If you clicked to play the video, then how it contributed to my sudden popularity will come as no surprise, for it is nothing less than a striptease in which the chanteuse gets her kit, as they say, if not her rocks, entirely off. For those of you who did NOT click to play the video, we’ll wait while you rush back to do that.

It’s not the first time we’ve featured the Divine Miss MF around these parts (nor even, it seems, the first time we’ve posted this video, although the other version is down). What elevates this from mere cheesecake to feminine empowerment? It’s a fine line, and Farmer walks right up to it, puts her toe across and then snaps it back in a Fosse-like flourish. To me, what elevates it is, as always with Farmer, the lyrics; she is happy to play on her looks, which she knows are exquisite, and use her body as honey to draw the audience in so it’s at least minute 3:20 before they realize they’ve been listening to a song about how women don’t need to be trapped by the old fairy tales of chivalric, perfect love, or the new ones of political correctness. They’re both cages: one gilded, one woven of hemp, and she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to say she’ll have nothing to do with either of them. She is free to say what she wants, free from the need to apologize for it.

Contrast and compare avec: Vanessa Paradis:

And the lyrics: L’amour N’est Rien

Obsessed with the worst

And not very verbose

The least of my sighs

Turn metaphysical

I have in my heaven

Tons of stars

Hanging on my wings

And down falls the angel Gabriel

Obsessed with the worst

A little too physical

The desire to quiver

Is pharaonic

Fed up with asceticism

My life is wrapped in darkness

For me without the tongue

Wihtout sex I get weak

Love is nothing

When it’s politically correct

You like one another

You don’t even know

when you hurt them

Love is nothing

When everything is sexually correct

You get bored

You yell for it to stop

Life is nothing

When it’s lukewarm

It consumes itself

and shakes your blood

In cigarette ashes

Life is good

It’s made of honey

When it’s acid with dynamite

Those who love me, follow me

Obsessed with the worst

And not very verbose

The least of my sighs

Turn metaphysical

I have in my head

Tons of pirouettes

The leap of the angel

Doesn’t seem strange to me

Obsessed with the worst

And not very verbose

To share my laughs

Rather plutonic

I have in my sphere

A greenhouse effect

My blood’s boiling

I’m seething about everything