Pic O’ the Day: The Flowers

please don't pick the flowers

This is a wicked-cool pic by my friend, the wicked-cool Gena Thompson. The backstory here, not that the image needs one, is that this was taken from a plot of land across the street from a car repair shop. Many years ago, one guy at the car repair shop though that plot of land should have some flowers on it, so he planted roses, and to this day the rose garden he planted has endured. It’s in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, where many would simply assume the flowers would be stripped, but year in and year out they endure, jammed between the repair shop and the railway yards, on a strip of grass no wider than a man can reach.

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what did you do today, raincoaster?

Shakespeare got to get paid

Today it isn’t so much what I’ve done as what I’m going to do; I’m going to give the keynote speech tonight at the AGM for the Federation of BC Writers. I’m also going to take the opportunity to pimp out my intensive, 10-week online Blogging for Writers course that starts next week, and my June 19th Social Media Self-Promotion for Writers half-day workshop.

Dud my nails for the occasion, too! Sparkly!

Posted an announcement about my new linkblogging service for celebrity/gossip or fashion blogs:

$100 a month gets you a list of links three times a week, minimum 10 links to different blogs. More links, or more frequently, more money, obviously. Every blog that buys into the monthly link service is automatically included in the links, of course, and the more blogs that buy the service the more powerful in terms of Googlejuice and visibility each link will be. Completely custom link lists are also available, but if I’m going to spend two hours looking for links already day in and day out, you’re gonna hafta make it worth my while. Send Viggo with cash.

I also blogged:

Dropped a couple of quite pointed comments, even for me:

  • On Gawker, about Starbucks watering down its high-class image:
    Starbucks hasn’t been dedicated to high-end coffee at the expense of market share for about…lemme count on my fingers…oops, have to take off my shoes and socks too… twelve years. I was working there at the time, and you could feel the “shareholder-driven focus” seep through the stores like the nauseating vapours from an open grave. They still have good coffee, but that’s only because they want to keep the people they hooked with it, like me. They also pander to people with terrible, soy-creme-mocha-chippichino taste, because they roam the cities and towns of this world like lumbering herds of calorie-addicted ATMs.
  • On Ann Hathaway’s loser boyfriend (not that one, the new one) ripping down part of a mural, perhaps because he thought it was a Banksy:
    I like to think that the idiots who tear down/paint over Banksy works spend an eternity in a unique circle of Hell where they are viciously butt-raped by LeRoy Neiman and Thomas Kinkade. [banksystreetart]

Answered about 20 questions in the Support forum.

Threw about 12 items on the Tumblr for possible later use.

Outlined the Vancouver Social Media Club event on the 27th, for which I hope not to be in town, actually, and emailed several places to arrange a venue. And roughed out the announcement, which cannot go out until I get the nod from the venue, UGH, even though the Straight deadline is tomorrow.

Applied to be a speaker at 140 Character Conference, a Twitter conference run by the very cool Jeff Pulver. My proposed topic is using Twitter to initiate offline action in your readers.

Took the exit survey from Northern Voice.

Grocery shopped like a fiend. The shelves at London Drugs will never be the same; seriously, if you’re flexible, buying food from drugstores in the middle of the night can save you shitloads, because they’ve always got SOMETHING they’re trying desperately to get rid of, less than half-price. I’m eating packaged, microwaveable Indian vegetarian meals and canned fish for the next three weeks, it would seem.

Realized the Shebeen Club is NEXT FREAKING MONDAY which means all the invites have to go out via social media tomorrow, and we’ll miss the papers. This is what I get for booking a speaker who promptly takes off for Malaysia. “Pull a topic out your ass” night it is then! Thank god it’s Zombie Awareness month.

Noted that my first post on Sami Salo’s testicles has 666 hits. Hmmm. Does that mean he’s cursed? Or that the devil loves to read interviews with social media gonads?

Bitched endlessly on Twitter about the two drunken hipster chicks who sat in our doorway so they could loudly conduct a “private” conversation. If it had been more interesting than “Oh my god I totally don’t wanna be your friend when you’re like this! I’m not like this? I mean, I’m like this now, but I’m totally not, like, LIKE this, you know?” I’d have liveblogged it. Must. Get. Webcam. “ZOMBIE HIPSTERS OF VANGROOVER” sure to be a Youtube smash!

Neglected (once again) to blog the fantastic Bombay Sapphire event I went to Monday. Oh well, so far I’ve posted it on Twitter 12 times and that’s 12×5500 readers, so I’m sure they’re okay with me taking my sweet time.

Somewhere in all this I went for an hour-long walk around my neighborhood, which is always a rewarding experience, particularly when I run into the kitten I rescued on Christmas Eve a few years ago, all grown up and haughty. And get to chat with the cute guy who works at Union Market. Suddenly, yeah, I LOVE talking about the weather.

Decided on the spur of the moment to do the Shebeen Club press release right now…see ya l8r!

Sami Salo’s injured testicle Speaks!

Sami Salo is down, but his Twitter stats are up

OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW!

Yes, Sami Salo’s not-quite-ruptured-but-seriously-slapshotted testicle has spoken. And to me, no less! Now get your ass over to TheCelebrityIndustrialComplex at TrueSlant and read the article in which I quiz Sami Salo’s ball! It’s the first time I’ve ever interviewed a celebrity testicle. Hell, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen balls that speak for themselves!

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Pull the other one: ORBIS Pull for Sight

As god is my witness, I thought airplanes could fly. Next Saturday, we’ll learn otherwise, as Vancouver International Airport hosts an old-skool plane pull-off for charity.
plane pull Pictures, Images and Photos
The charity is Orbis, and they’re all about the airplanes since they have one of their own:

The ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital circles the globe to train eye care professionals and treat underserved patients in developing countries. Here are the Flying Eye Hospital destinations for 2010, as well as previous years’ destinations.
Niamey, Niger
Kaduna, Nigeria
Kampala, Uganda
Dalian, China
Chengdu, China
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Surabaya, Indonesia
Da Nang, Vietnam

I know some of the people who’ll be pulling next weekend: each team commits to raising a minimum of $1000 for the charity. Interested? Get 19 of your friends together, raise some money, and show up Saturday to pull a full-size FedEx plane 12 feet. The winning team is the one who pulls it the fastest (magnets in your shorts might seem like a good idea, but would probably result in an involuntary de-pantsing).

Here are the key deets:

When, Where and What Time is the Plane Pull?
The ORBIS Pull for Sight 2010 will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia. There is ample free parking on the FedEx Apron grounds. The event area opens at 10:00am with the actual pulls occurring between 10:30am and 12:30 pm. The event will take place rain or shine.

Date: Saturday, May 15, 2010
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Location: Vancouver International Airport – FedEx Apron
Address: 3151 Aylmer Road, Richmond, BC V7B 1L5

How much is it?
There is NO registration fee. Each team MUST raise a minimum $1,000. All donations are entitled to a tax receipt. (E.g. For a team of 20 members, each member only has to raise $50!)

Why participate?
All money raised through the ORBIS Pull for Sight 2010 will go towards supporting ORBIS’s Kids Sight program that will benefit blind and visually impaired children throughout the developing world.

Here is the pledge form! And may the best team win!

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There but for the grace of god…

If moses were Canadian

It’s true: if Moses were Canadian, this would be what the Exodus from Michigan would have looked like.

Pic from this awesome roundup of Russian winter ice pix found via this Japanese blog.

And it reminds me of my music nerd friend Stephen. No matter what music nerd story you have, he can one-up it. No, trust me, he can. I don’t care about your “the time I slept with Mick Jagger” story; thousands of people can say the same (perhaps even tens of thousands?). He can top it with the “time Elvis Costello played an acoustic set in my flat.” He’s from London, and he has many friends who still haven’t left the small ville they called home way back when. Many of them are music nerds as well, and to them he was, one day, attempting to explain the difference between the Canadian music scene and the British music scene. He finally said, “This year, I’ve bought not one but two albums featuring songs where horses go through the ice.”

That about sums it up, no?

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