7-17: felony fun for the whole family!

You’ll shoot your eye out with that!

Seven to seventeen!

Let’s all celebrate the birth of the Babby Jebus with happy volleys from our brand new weapons! Maybe we’ll make CNN  like those trigger-happy Middle Easterners!

Actually, I’m relatively sure that even in Canada you don’t get 7-17 for anything less than manslaughter, though, and possession of a bb gun would be more like “laughed out of the legion” when it comes to punishment. Okay, so I’m still bitter I never got one of these…

add to del.icio.us :: Add to Blinkslist :: add to furl :: Digg it :: add to ma.gnolia :: Stumble It! :: add to simpy :: seed the vine :: :: :: TailRank

The Shebeen Club: Perspectives on Storytelling

Shebeen bar, yo 

cross-posted from The Shebeen Club

 

What: The Shebeen Club: Perspectives on Storytelling

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown

Why: Herald the arrival of Spring with Canada’s top storyteller, Nan Gregory

Who: Contact lorraine.murphy at gmail dot com for more information

How(much)? $15 includes presentation and dinner

  

Once upon a time…it was a dark and stormy night…let me tell you a story…it all began…

with Nan Gregory.

One of the original Shebeeners from back in the Jurassic period, Nan is not just one of Canada’s best storytellers, she’s also the woman who gave the Shebeen Club its name. We are delighted to welcome her back as our featured presenter in a very special evening of stories and conversation about writing, hypertext, the colonization of the imagination, and the importance (or not) of plot.

Your admission includes a dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus one glass of pop, wine or beer.

Bio: Nan Gregory has been a professional storyteller for over 20 years. She tells myths and legends, folk tales and fairy tales, tales from history and tales from her own life for audiences of all ages. She tells in libraries, schools, theatres, conferences-and, one winter, from the back of a horse drawn sleigh. She has been a featured teller at storytelling festivals including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, Nagoya, Japan, and Palmerston, New Zealand.

She is the author of three picture books. How Smudge Came won the Sheila Egoff Award for best children’s book for 1996 in British Columbia and the 1996 Mr. Christie’s Award for best Canadian children’s book for seven years and under. Wild Girl and Gran was given the 2000 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for text. Amber Waiting (2002) was named to the ALA’s Booklist Best for 2003. Her first novel, for ages 8 to 12, entitled I’ll Sing You One-O was published in August, 2006.

7-7:30: meet and mingle
7:30-8: listen and learn
8-whenever: a cage match between Jack from the Beanstalk and Jack Sprat. 

add to del.icio.us :: Add to Blinkslist :: add to furl :: Digg it :: add to ma.gnolia :: Stumble It! :: add to simpy :: seed the vine :: :: :: TailRank

Closer: hawt emosex on the accordion plus a quiz!

Closer. Here boy, here boy! 

Yes, I think if a beer hall band had an orgy with Nine Inch Nails, then in the afterglow they sat down and collaborated on a tune (as they most definitely would, you’d think, eh?) it would definitely sound something along the likes of this.

And so, without further ado, the ol’ raincoaster blog presents Creaking Planks (featuring Rowan Lipkovits on the squeezebox) covering the immortal NIN tune, Closer.

[sorry, for whatever reason Odeo is making you sit through three and a half minutes of silence first, perhaps for Trent Reznor‘s artistic vision?]

  Which Nine Inch Nails Song Are You? (Awesome pictures)  

You’re “Big Man with a Gun”! [ed.note: I AM?] You’re violent, angry, and have a matching lust for blood and pleasure. You want to–well–shoot someone with your fucking gun! [ed.note: I DO? Fuck that: I just want to have them rounded up and kept in compounds away from me, that’s all] But hey, maybe you’re just misunderstood…
Take this quiz!

add to del.icio.us :: Add to Blinkslist :: add to furl :: Digg it :: add to ma.gnolia :: Stumble It! :: add to simpy :: seed the vine :: :: :: TailRank

Operation Global Media Domination: the confessional

TIAJesus, I hope I spelled that right. I am only genetically Catholic, after all. No doubt The Sister, who rode our Catholicest of the Catholic family name all the way to a very senior job in the Catholic school system (which, of course, neither of us attended although we did go to Baptist day camp), will correct me.

After she asks her secretary how to spell it.

In any case, I have a confession to make. I have taken you for granted. And judging by the hits yesterday, you didn’t seem to mind.

I think acetominophen is antithecal to blogging, or at least on two extra strength tylenol I wasn’t feeling very fresh, so I just didn’t post. Now, this may seem odd, given that what I usually post is just the online equivalent of shoving the newspaper under some handy person’s nose and saying, “check this out!” but nonetheless, one must be in the mood, in the zone, or in the groove, to blog effectively.

I took one look at the stats and said to myself the Britney pervs will keep this thing afloat overnight if I flake out, and so they did, all 1200 of them looking for the elusive porn tape. Guess what, guys? It’s not her. Now you can get on with the rest of your so-called lives.

You’re welcome.

So, I jammed the Axe Gang dance moves up there and went to bed, sulking and wisfully thumbing through all the workouts in Self and Shape that I cannot, in this shape, actually do. Gawd knows what I did to my left ankle right now, but it’s quite clear that I am being singled out for punishment in this life, as we finally have perfectly clear, crisp days that are perfect for rollerblading, and the T-factor has not yet become suffocating, although I did scare a bunch of oblivious Iranians and one tiny Hong Kong realtor wheeling and dealing on a cellphone when I zoomed between them. They’re just lucky I swerved rather than treating them like vertical speed bumps. I did pat the realtor on her shoulder, and she looked quite surprised. Perhaps she thought I was after her jacket?

In unrelated news, I spent the day cooped up and the energy had to go somewhere, somewhere that didn’t involve the feet, so I washed all the mold and lichens off the wall of my patio, revealing the pink stucco that lurks beneath. I also cleaned up most of the crap on the patio and looked wisfully at the iron potbellied stove that Carinthia gave me, but dismissed the idea of starting a fire, for fear my neighbors would smell smoke and become alarmed.

Then my upstairs neighbor threw his trash over the balcony and onto my patio.

The fire is lovely. 

stormy weather

slug, common or garden or ceiling 

So…it finally stopped raining.

And I have been waiting patiently for an hour as a…

slug…

makes its slow, patient way across my ceiling, occasionally looping downward on a connecting wall, although never down enough for me to take up arms, or at least stubby brooms, against it, then suctioning its painful, Sir Edmund Hilarious way back up, out of reach.

If it lets go and falls on my clean laundry, I think I may just have to kill myself.

Still, I guess it’s a step up from last year, when I had to pick mushrooms out of the carpet in my living room. I love my apartment: if I stay here long enough, eventually I’ll be able to farm salmon in the bathroom.

add to del.icio.us :: Add to Blinkslist :: add to furl :: Digg it :: add to ma.gnolia :: Stumble It! :: add to simpy :: seed the vine :: :: :: TailRank