Category Archives: Generation X

you can never step into the same River Street twice

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Rollin' down the River Street

Behold the magnificence which is Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan’s River Street.

Often has it been said that Canadians are too literal-minded; most particularly often it has been said to my face, although there’s nothing about my face in particular or in whole which is literal-minded, and indeed quite often the parts migrate at will or vanish altogether and I’ll end up all ears, ferinstance.

Quite embarrassing, especially when they see me writing down everything they say.

But that is neither here nor there. And it’s certainly not in Moose Jaw, which is not all that far from everyone’s favorite Canadian place name: Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump.

So…have you been to Moose Jaw? Have you seen it? It’s not Paris, let me tell you. So, when the city fathers/mothers/foster parents put their heads together and wanted to do something uniquely Moose Jawian, they quite naturally phoned Germany and brought over artist Edgar Muller and his team to turn River Street into a painting of a river, reportedly the world’s largest 3-dimensional painting.

How proud they must be, eh?

So they not only paved Paradise: they gravened themselves an image of it and now walk all over it.

X-Wing Explosion: the hidden story

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Although the government has tried their best to cover up what really happened at the launch of the homemade X-Wing fighter, we here at the ol’ raincoaster blog have sourced exclusive footage which demonstrates conclusively that this was not the innocent accident we’re all supposed to believe it was.

Ask yourself: who gains by this deception? The answer, of course, is obvious.

Sir Richard Branson, Billionaire, Butt-Flasher: the video

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So the deal is this: Sir Richard “Hottie” Branson, the closest thing England has to an attractive man, was going to rapell down the side of the Fantasy Tower at the Palms in Vegas, to publicise the new Virgin Airways flight from San Fran to Vegas. Things went about as smoothly as you’d expect, once you knew it would pop up here: ie, things got grossly out of hand, resulting in Sir Richard banging the side of the building repeatedly (whether or not it was his type we have been unable to determine; and oh, WHY must it be a mere building: Richard, call me) and also in his splitting his pants up the backside, revealing some dusky grey tighty greyeys, much to onlookers’ amusement.

Stephen and the Case of the Second Most Expensive Frisbees Ever Invented

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So Stephen (you remember Stephen?) he was once even younger, and when he was younger he was, as is the way, more junior, and he wasn’t a restaurant manager at all but instead a busboy on the Princess Something, a Canadian Pacific cruise ship/ferry crossbreed cruising between Victoria and Seattle.

And CP, they had standards. In fact, they could be said to have standards the way the SS could be said to have been strict-ish. And one of their standards was that, by the time they docked in Seattle, every piece of cutlery and every piece of china aboard would have been washed and dried to perfection, regardless of time pressures, or staff would be fired.

And it always was.

And many were the evenings, pulling into port, that Stephen spent at the stern of the ship, gleefully tossing aft the plates that they didn’t have the extra 15 minutes to wash. Puget Sound is lined with CP china and silver flatware, should you ever feel like taking a diving vacation.

Friends

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Ya gotta have friends.

What would you do for unsuspecting victims without them? I mean, really.

So there I am, staying with my friend James. He is a lovely man. A kind man. A thoughtful man.

So thoughtful, indeed, that during the entirety of my visit with him he has arranged that all his scheduled appointments take place between the hours of 9am and noon, knowing well that I shall be (and, indeed, was) dead to the world during this time.

A kind, thoughtful man.

And so today, it was with a sense of shock that I endured the following exchange.

Now, I’m not the sylph I was at twenty-one, ’tis true. Nor yet the Amazon I was at thirty-six, when I ran the Marathon (4:33:09, quite respectable thankyouverymuch). Yet, I am 25 pounds lighter than I was in January and have the ability to take off the jeans I got then, which were skin tight, without actually going to the trouble of unzipping them.

Still.

We were getting ready to leave the house. James wished, as a thoughtful friend, to facilitate my ability to take coffee along with me, although it must be said that this could have been purely selfish in motivation, me being much easier to get along with when I have caffeine to put in my system and a beverage to occupy my mouth instead of talking.

So he suggested I pour the hearty mug of Anniversary Blend I had in my hands into a travel mug and we could hit the road. The problem is, he did so using the following wording:

“Here’s an old chubby. It’s perfect for you.”