What’s the real difference between Canada and the US?
It comes down to kittehs, people. It comes down to kittehs.
From Cute With Chris via NagOnTheLake
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Category Archives: Canada
The Greatest (and Grossest) Workplace Safety Video of All Time!
Ohhhhhh, we know some bloggers who’ll be so jealous! But no, we at the ol’ raincoaster blog got it first!!!
via Deadspin
If you think it’s too gross to be shown on tv, just realize that this PSA aired during Hockey Night in Canada; anyone who watches that is totally jaded, violence-wise already.
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Pamela Anderson: the exSQUIDit corpse
Ever wondered what she really looks like, without all the Photoshop? Gallery of the Absurd already knows…click onward to view at own risk. Continue reading
Stumblin’ in
And then there are the things you stumble across when you’re walking down the street, minding, very much, your own business, and which do not seem, at the time, to be the kind of thing you should be overhearing, nor even, it must be admitted, the kind of thing that should be said in the first place; but then, you don’t know if the speaker is in the first place or, come to that, the place of last resort. And so…
What do you say when you come around a corner and literally bump into a hooker working said corner, and it’s someone you went to school with? “Gee, I’d-a thought the firedancing skillz would have kept you at the novelty escort level”???
And what do you say when you show up at the spa for your pampering session and the receptionist is someone you worked years ago with who’s got a brand-new set of apparently quite expensive bazongas? “You’re looking…fuller”???
And, of course, if it’s someone randomly wandering down Robson Street, chatting into a cellphone, with whom one has no previous acquaintance, one simply pretends one didn’t hear it, yet takes notes, as all good Canadians do…
“Anything. Get me anything. Anything but sleep, because I’ve had enough of that…”
or the storefront in Smith’s Falls, Ontario: Bridal Affairs. I mean, I just don’t wanna know. It’s like asking for trouble.
I mentioned to my friend MistressCowfish that I recognized most of the dogs on the Downtown Eastside, but hardly any of the people, to which she responded with what can only be described as a bark of laughter in the Sirius Black mode, and the retort: “of course! It’s perfectly polite to stare at a dog!” Quite so.
When I went to Indonesia I learned to say hello to the people, who were friendly, and ignore the dogs, which were touchy and feral. On the Downtown EastSide, it’s the other way around.
Boot to the Head
So, I’ve told you about the time my mother tried to sell me to a Saudi prince. And I’ve told you about the time I ended up shopping with a CIA agent and buying a vampire carved from human bone from the oldest nun in the Spice Islands. And I’ve told you about the time I had coffee with a serial killer. And dinner with the guy who was stalking me. And the red truck at sunset on the dock at Not-Ucluelet.
Yeah, that’s pretty much all of my A-list material. Since I gave the room-and-boarder collie back to her owner, things have been much quieter around home, as I don’t get out so much. Not much happens in my apartment, alas.
Ah.
I didn’t tell you about the car chase. Car chase #1: there have been a number of them in the ‘hood recently.
Car Chase #1 started somewhere out east of here, towards the suburban wilds (tames) of Burnaby. A car, probably stolen, definitely caught the attention of certain officers of the VPD, probably for activities of a nefarious nature if not for simply the state of having been stolen. The details are lost to history. And said nefariating sedan (it’s always an oversized Yank sedan, in these car chases. Nobody ever leads the cops on a high-speed chase in a Pacer or a VW van or a puce Vespa) led the cops upon your basic high speed chase through the Downtown EastSide, whipping through the dark star of Railtown and up to the Main Street Viaduct, down at the foot of Vancouver, indeed, the boot heel, Stanley Park being the seasonally-appropriate squared pirate toe, and beyond, up Alexander at, have I mentioned, high speeds, speeds which made negotiating the, it must be admitted, rather broad, bendy, unchallenging corner at Maple Tree Square an apparent impossibility.
Never steal more car than you can handle.
Hydroplaning on the picturesquely rain-slick cobblestones, said sedan skidded straight into Ye Olde Westerne Boote Shoppe, the OK Boot Corral, narrowly missing the larger than life-size statue of Gassy Jack, presiding spirit of the place who, it appears, is the patron saint (if not the god) of avoiding being hit by a careening Caddy. Being of width as well as length and speed, the Cadillac took out the entire narrow storefront when it nosedived into the shop with admirable precision, crushing wooden cowboy and all (we are quite egalitarian up in Canuckistan, y’all, and our storefronts feature at least as many wooden Cowboys as Indians) and completely sparing Six Acres restaurant and drinketeria next door, sheltered as it was behind the beneficent ass of the aforementioned Gassy Jack.
All I cared about was, it missed the Irish Heather. My local is safe!
Seeing no immediate method of egress which didn’t include walking right past the cops who’d pulled up immediately behind him, and apparently not feeling quite up for that, the Caddypilot considered his options, which included taking the back door into the barred and gated Gaoler’s Mews (not frivolously named; they used to hold the public hangings here, and the bars are still on the window of the Irish Heather from back when it was the jail; as one of the bartenders said, “I always knew I’d end up in jail, but at least you can get beer in this one”) and decided that indiscretion was the better part of valour.
He hid under the counter.
All of which is to say: slightly damaged Western boots are probably on sale in Gastown this week.
raincoaster 