pic o’ the day: The Bishop

Posted on July 25, 2009 by raincoaster

Not just because it’s a Polaroid (which I love, and which are always bouncing onto and off of the endangered list) and it’s beautiful, but also because the photographer is using the nom de shutter of Squidfingers. And you know how we love our tentacles and our squid. In fact, in our experience, only good things come of making the acquaintance of people with the word “squid” in their names. Why, it was HappySquid who invited us to the Bombay in Vangroover event, and when you combine squid with gin, you make raincoaster very, very happy.

Shaken AND stirred.

This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!

L’amour N’est Rien

Posted on July 25, 2009 by raincoaster

I could swear I’ve blogged this video before, but perhaps not. By this point in Blogathon, I’m doing a LOT of swearing, as you can imagine. Nearly halfway through and I’m four posts short. Time for some quickie YouTubes, methinks.

This one happens to be one of the most popular things on Twitter; every damn time I post it I get 300 new Followers, for reasons which will become obvious about the time Mylene Farmer here starts undoing the garter belt. Enjoy, and know that you can enjoy with a clear conscience, Farmer being somewhat renowned as a post-postfeminist in good standing (for details of which, click on her name and watch that video, Fuck them All).

Lyrics:

Love is nothing/ Mylene Farmer

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

This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!

The Story of My Life, as told by complete strangers at the New Yorker

Posted on July 25, 2009 by raincoaster

First, there’s this:

After a bit more blogging, I decided to become “internet famous”

And after awhile in the Internet Famous game, I decided to get a real life.

Boy, was I in for a rude surprise.

Notice how the lives are getting smaller and smaller as time goes on? Eventually, I will become a pixel.

But it will be a pixel in The New Yorker!

This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!

Operation Global Media Domination: The Proust Questionnaire Situation

Posted on July 25, 2009 by raincoaster

Yes, yet another self-referential blog post. After all, what else is there for me to talk about but…you know…me? I’m an expert on me. I know me backwards and forwards, inside and out (or at least I do since I saw that CAT scan) upside and down.

In Bizarro World, raincoaster falls asleep every night promptly at a reasonable hour, beside one of: Viggo Mortensen, Johnny Depp, Steve Jobs, James Tiberius Kirk, Henry V as played by Kenneth Branagh, Michael Lewis, or Sebastian Junger; the bed is stuffed with fluffy, fluffy Krugerrands, and the nightgown is carved from one solid, flawless diamond. Ah, for a life of ease!

In Bizarro World, raincoaster works for Vanity Fair, or rather VF publishes old blog posts of mine, with the YouTubes embedded right in the glossy pages using special technology developed just for me.

And, most importantly, in Bizarro World raincoaster is profiled by Vanity Fair.

The raincoaster Proust Questionnaire:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Uh, didn’t you READ the post?

2. What is your greatest fear?

Server problems. If a blog falls in the forest and nobody’s subscribed to the RSS feed…

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Modesty. I’ve almost completely succeeded in eradicating it, but not quite.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

An inability to recognize my awesomenosity

5. Which living person do you most admire?

Besides myself?

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Gin. My liver has a vested interest in keeping me poor and sober.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Fried. This getting up in the MORNING is for the birds. Right, birds wake up early. Birds eat worms. Therefore, getting up early sucks.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Getting up early, duh. Haven’t you been reading?

9. On what occasion do you lie?

When the truth would give a falsely modest impression of my awesomenosity. It just wouldn’t be fair.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

My tentacles will NOT stay combed.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Is Thatcher still alive? Bush? The guy who cancelled M.A.S.H.? WHY MUST THESE QUESTIONS BE SO HARD?

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

The ability to be Viggo Mortensen.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

The ability not to get between me and Viggo Mortensen.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Me, Myself and I would like you to define “overuse.”

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Again, I am forced to ask haven’t you been reading this?

16. When and where were you happiest?

Any day now.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

The ability to fake sincerity.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My socks. And if you were sitting beside me, you wouldn’t need to ask why.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Earning the good home-maker badge and the whatchamacallit, housewife emblem, in Girl Guides, thus proving once and for all that I can do ANYTHING.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

The vindictive joke of a malevolent god, that’s what me coming back would be. The fucker.

21. Where would you most like to live?

Olympus. Failing that, Not-Ucluelet.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

My self-possession, obviously!

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

No Followers.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

What are you hiring for, big fella?

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

Did you read this one?

26. What do you most value in your friends?

The ability to buy me drinks at the Heather.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

The ones who buy me drinks, and not just what they’re having.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

I’d say Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, but he’s not fictional.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Myself.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

See #27

31. What are your favorite names?

Robin, Anastasia, Skippy the Klingon

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Blogathons

33. What is your greatest regret?

Volunteering to do this blogathon without laying in an adequate supply of gin and/or z’s.

34. How would you like to die?

Vindicated. Stole that one from Fran Lebowitz, but how could I not?

35. What is your motto?

49 degrees latitude, 360 degrees attitude!

This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!

Putting the “OW” in “Power”

Posted on July 25, 2009 by raincoaster

At this point, slightly less than a third into Blogathon, I have more or less no idea what I’m going to do in terms of a post to go with that title, but let us not constrain ourselves with linear notions of time, space, logic, and readability, shall we?

I know! Power is, like, electricity, or rather electricity is a kind of power. Sure, it’s not the kind enjoyed by absolute monarchs or the tyrants of the ancient city-states, but it’s power nonetheless. And so I hereby declare this post to be about power.

Not that most of mine aren’t, in some way, shape or form. In fact, Operation Global Media Domination is one of the busiest categories on my blog, with 238 posts, soon to be 239. Do I hear 240?? Going once, going twice, come on people, you all know I’m going to run out of things to talk about besides myself, and what does that leave us, eh? That’s right. Operation Global Media Domination: going auto-meta. Set phasers for “backlink” and fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Addison DeWitt: [voiceover] Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night’s Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

Right, power. It’s a blog post about power.

Those of you who’ve been following the raincoaster sitch closely will know that (digital appearances to the contrary) OGMD HQ has been entirely without electricity for a period of approximately three months. Fortunately, this corresponds exactly with a period of remarkable good weather, and also with the period during which I have a hibachi, a cast-iron stove, and access to an office with a full kitchen 24/7. Essentially, I told Hydro I’d catch them later, when they weren’t asking $300 simply to reconnect the power. After ninety or so days they saw the light (so to speak) and There Was Light. And Heat. And Refrigeration.

Never try to tough it out and outlast raincoaster. I would have burned Canadian Tire flyers all winter to keep warm, if I’d had to.

This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!

	raincoaster on Goodbye, Robert Redford
	raincoaster on Goodbye, Robert Redford
	HL fotoeins on Goodbye, Robert Redford
	sfr on Goodbye, Robert Redford
	Vincent G on The Wolf Covid Briefing Bingo

Don't keep it to yourself!

Love is nothing/ Mylene Farmer

Don't keep it to yourself!

Don't keep it to yourself!

Don't keep it to yourself!

Don't keep it to yourself!