five things you don’t know about me

Well, you probably already know I grumble about being tagged (and I even got tagged by a total stranger; no offence, dude, but not biting) but since this is engtech and it’s short and I’m also starved for blog fodder, being offline as I am, I shall do my best with it.

Five things you don’t know about me:

  1. I used to be a professional groom in a hunting stable. Foxes, not moose. Although it must be admitted that when I was exercising the horses I saw several moose and only one fox.
  2. I was the all-time toboggan champeen when I was a kid. I could go farther, I could go faster, I could jump it, do tricks, you name it. Still can.
  3. I’m a pretty good pitcher, but I am awesome at bat, and although I serve underhanded at volleyball I am still pretty much unreturnable. But I pretty much quit playing team sports when puberty hit and they said the boys could play baseball and hockey but the girls could only play softball and ringette.
  4. I have always wanted to root around and find Brother Twelve’s lost gold. Some day I’ll get myself a couple of clear weeks in the summer and hit the archives and the salvage supply store and go all Indiana Jones.
  5. I was a worldbeater as a Girl Guide. I had 53 badges, 7 emblems and 2 cords. But I barely made it through Brownies for whatever reason. Maybe I just knew at a young age that I looked better in blue.
  6. bonus item: as of Friday, I’m a redhead.

pic o’ the day: snowglobe warning

Snow Globe Warning!

This is sheer brilliance! Unfortunately, as Gawker reports, it’s not an actual sign but an ad, an ad which Entertainment Weekly refuses to run, thus endangering at least 50% of Hollywood over the holiday season. I wonder how long before some wag at Whistler puts these up just for the hell of it?

Snowglobes: no laughing matter! Betcha anything Canadian Tire will be stocking Therma-Curves before the winter is out.

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who has rolled away the stone?

Ah, that would be telling! Like I said, Gawker, use a silver bullet next time.

the Ayn Rand Christmas Special

Christmas Shrugged, and you would too!Wow, looks like it’s Tory Day here on the ol’ raincoaster blog. Take a snapshot; these don’t come around too often. Mostly we’re all about the nude hot-tubbing with Rage Against the Machine, making blood sacrifices to Cthulhu, and sharing pot brownies with the United Slackers of Anarchy.

We certainly are being far more inclusive than it was ever our intention to be this Yuletide season. Sure, we’ve posted Christmas on Acid, but hey, I live in Vancouver; like this pandering to the druggies is anything unusual. The Charlie Brown Kwanzaa was a bit of a stretch, it’s admitted, but if you’re gonna be un-PC, I say be un-PC all the way and damn the torpedos of all races, creeds, and colourways. Boymongoose’s Bollywood 12 Days of Christmas has a rockin’ beat that I couldn’t pass up, and the same can be said (in its own delicate Coward-ly way) for Hanukkah in Santa Monica. As for the 12 isms of Christmas, who doesn’t have a spare Nihilist or Surrealist in their circle who feels all too marginalized at this time of year?

So here I am, holding my nose and posting the synopsis for the Ayn Rand Selfish Christmas Special, from the 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time, which I found via Master Cowfish.

Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts — and therefore Christmas — possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as “anti-life.”

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a Tory takes the 86-seater limousine

Chauffeur...I recognize this joke even in German

Heartlessly stolen from Iain Dale‘s site, which is normally not nearly salacious enough for the likes of me. I gather I’m only tolerated there because people are just waiting breathlessly for me and Verity to get into some kind of idiological catfight to the death. T’would be unmissable indeed, but I think we’re both too smart for that.

In any case, here’s the story, emphasis mine. To pare even a word from this telling is sacrilege, but copyright is copyright, alas; it is in its way a perfect little fable of modern right-wing urbanity. Click the link above for the original.

I am delighted to see that at least some traditions don’t change in the good old Tory Party. I think it was Lord Curzon who was introduced to the delights of public transport in the 1920s for the first time…as he paid his fare he said to the driver of the Number 24, “now, take me to 23 Eaton Square, there’s a good chap.

Following in this fine tradition the resplendent Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash also got on a Number 24 this week and proceeded to ask the driver to wait a couple of minutes for some friends who were having difficulty with the ticket machine outside the Garrick Theatre. My witness to the ensuing events tells me that Mr Cash became more than a little exasperated when the driver of the bus explained that he most certainly could not do as requested and closed the doors. Cash stood in the way but the doors were too strong for him. “I demand you stop this bus now,” spluttered the hapless parliamentarian, but to no avail…

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