Category Archives: Gonzo

Should I register “rollercoaster” as well?

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well what the fuck WAS that?

well what the fuck WAS that?

Ever had one of those days that starts out like that and then goes…well…like this?

That’s right, bitches.

Problems! Solved!

mostly.

Problem 1) Transportation to Vancouver so I can honour my commitments to speak at and participate in Social Media Week and Social Media for Government in Victoria.

Solution 1) Hotel_Goddess, a woman who has never met me, who lives in another city from me, and who doesn’t even know my real name, promptly put her airmiles together and made a reservation for me. Now this is a religion that pays off: I am a convert! From now on, I’ll stop worshipping Cthluhu and start worshipping Hotel_Goddess, because what the hell has worshipping Cthulhu ever got me? I’ve yet to be eaten first or, really, at all recently, but there…I’ve said too much.

Problem 2) Homelessness which I think we can all agree is a helluva problem, particularly with it frosting over every night already (yes, really). Solved in bipartite mode by my friend Nancy until Monday, stowing me away in her mother’s basement (maybe Mom won’t notice? I dunno, she’s pretty sharp!) and by friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-chef-running-a-pullled-pork-truck-in-Osoyoos(and if you see him say hi from me) to whom I was introduced by email and who has a cabin which isn’t currently occupied and whose current house-sitter has other things to keep him busy for the next few weeks and maybe forever. So this cabin needs someone sitting in it, and it might as well be me. So, from Monday I am going to be sitting in a rustic two bedroom cabin/trailer/Rube Goldberg agglomeration with a view, a deck, a wood stove for heat, a gas stove for cooking, a big screen tv, and in a very funky, desirable neighborhood that’s walking distance to downtown. Like, four blocks. If the next couple of weeks work out, I might get to stay there when the owner goes up north to cater at a college, which would mean I pay for utilities and taxes and such, but no rent.

u totes jelly bro

u totes jelly bro

Oh yes, did I mention two bedrooms? One for me and one for Julian, until I coax him into getting over his crippling shyness.

Problem 3) Vancouver rent doubled from $340 to $760 or thereabouts.

Solution 3) Emailed the woman in charge of admin at Kellett and had her fax my ROE to the co-op. Did this before the last post went up, by the way. Doing it afterwards may have been less productive, knowmasayin’? Photographed my last pay stub detailing last day paid and how much I earned in all of August ($288 for the curious) and sent the digital files to the co-op. Was almost punchy enough to hit Flickr Uploader by rote, but managed to stop myself in time. It ain’t art. Then I forwarded to them the receipt from Paypal for my blogging payment for the posts I made in July. $300 US equating, after Paypal fees and the exchange rate, to about $288, sound familiar?

Co-op re-evaluated my housing charges in record time, thank GOD, and now I have to pay only the $340.

Problem 4) Unemployment=No Money. And no, I’m not eligible for BC welfare or, it seems, welfare up here either. Yay, mobility! Anyhoodle, even when one saves $400 on rent and gets another place for free, one cannot eat air. And one cannot purchase non-air foodstuffs up here for anything like spare change. A week’s groceries from Sunrise Market would cost me $12; the equivalent here (if I could even GET the equivalent here) is more like $45.

Solution 4) A very nice person on Twitter who wishes to remain anonymous because it’s a business account and they don’t want it to seem like they’re looking for publicity ALTHOUGH THEY TOTALLY DESERVE IT FOR THIS AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE sent me $250 via Paypal. This is, as with Hotel_Goddess, someone who’s never met me in person and doesn’t even know my real name. They just like the way I roll, have benefited from social media in the past, and want to pay it forward. And another friend who’s starting her own blog sent me $200 for a blogging lesson, so I can at least pay my Vancouver rent if I put the two of those together. Might even get some gruel!

If I can manage to switch my flight to the 13th instead of the 9th, I might even be able to run a workshop here at the Aurora Conference Centre. I’ve been talking with Chef Pierre and a workshop series is very doable, but I’ve missed the deadline to get an ad in to the paper in time to have a workshop before the 9th, so I have to check out the flight change tomorrow. A full workshop would mean I could pay all my arrears to the co-op and then some, and be sure of having enough money to get back up here and do another workshop. And so on. Gotta get that flight switched (might be another $100 or so) and then pick a date!

Oh, and I’m going to be speaking briefly at the Rotary North meeting this coming Thursday at the Top Knight, so if you want to meet the now-happy wanderer in person, turn up. But don’t get between me and the mic; I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.

Moral of the story: When in trouble, whine. Copiously. On every social media platform available to you.

C'mon, get HAPPY!

C'mon, get HAPPY!

When Worlds Collide!!!

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Emma Watson and Cameron Adams/Hermione Granger and Himmione Grainghim

Emma Watson and Cameron Adams/Hermione Granger and Himmione Grainghim

via Gawker

This right here? This is the streams crossing. This is the polarity reversing back on itself and swallowing its own tail. This, my friends and stalkers, is the moment for which the celebrity-internet culture was made. Even if it did mortify one of them into deleting his Twitter account (after tweeting a no-doubt-heartfelt “Awkward!“).

This is a picture of fresh-faced ingenue Emma Watson and her perky gay pornalike, Cameron Adams, who played Himmione Grainghim in the extremely NSFchirruns Whorry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Balls.

SFW no, but amusing, yes. Yes, yes, YES!

From commenter JamesFromCambridge comes this positively magical trailer.

And I’m spent! If you’re not, toddle over to that comments section on Gawker for the biggest damn roundup of filthy Potter puns this side of Repressed Housewife Fanficdom!

Or you could just click past the jump and read some more gossip, if you’ve got the endurance! Once more into the breeches!

Continue reading →

GPOY

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Steampunk Stainless Steel Cthulhu is my spirit animal

Steampunk Stainless Steel Cthulhu is my spirit animal

Okay, technically this is a GPOYSA, gratuitous photo of your spirit animal. I think finally, after a lengthy search with candidates as impressive (and bizarre) as Sexually Oblivious Rhino, Courage Wolf, Greek Riot Dog, the raven, and a carnival Carousel, we finally have a winner.

Unless…

Yes. Yes. Looking over all 4178 posts and an estimated 1,044,500 words here on the ol’ raincoaster blog, it seems we have a strong rival to the Stainless Steel Squid here: the Oxford Comma.

The Oxford, Comma

The Oxford, Comma

From TheDailyWhat:

Who gives a f*ck about an Oxford comma? Not Oxford University’s branding style guide, which instructs its readers thus:

As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’.

It should be noted that an exception has been made for sentences where an Oxford comma would “assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity,” such as when “one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’.”

So, that clears that right up, then. What, Ever. Any fool can SEE I am in love with this thing. SAVE THE OXFORD, COMMA! I’m a sucker for lost causes.

Help me out here, people.

Riot Dog will see your Caturday and raise you

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Hell.

Riot Dog will take a bite out of the IMF

Riot Dog will take a bite out of the IMF

Did you even know that the Greeks have a kind of tradition of riot dogs? How awesome is that? On the other hand, a necessary precondition for a tradition of riot dogs is a tradition of riotry, which is not so awesome when it extends decades in each direction with no end in sight until both sides run out of money for ammunition.

via YourAnonNews and proof that Riot Dog is my spirit animal. He’s as as fluid of iteration as any “official member” of Anonymous, his yellow coat and floppy ears own his V for Vendetta mask and vastly more prevalent among the canine population than masks of any sort, really, which would look sort of silly; ubiquity confers effective immortality; you’ve gotta admit, that’s pretty intelligent for someone who isn’t even a border collie. Now all you cat people? Can just curl into a fetal ball and wait for someone to open a can for you, like always. Play them off, Keyboard Cat.

Numa Numa Unicorn Chaser

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Spock is logical awesome. The internet, on the other hand, is Illogical Awesome.

Spock is logical awesome. He runs a digital media marketing agency in Soho. The internet, on the other hand, is Illogical Awesome.

You can’t tell me kids can’t tell quality when they see it. They may not know why they’re reacting, but they can’t help themselves.

Same as you.

“I don’t think they’ve added the word to the dictionary to describe this.”

Actually, maybe they have, kid. Could be this one,

“Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness. ”
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.”
— Robert M. Pirsig

or maybe this one,

The precise value of the Golden Ratio is expressed mathematically as the never-ending and never-repeating number 1.6180339887…., a number that can go on indefinitely. Because of its infinite capacity, the Golden Ratio cannot be expressed as a whole number or as a fraction; it is therefore considered an irrational number. Greek mathematician Hippasus of Metapontum has been credited with the distinction of discovering this irrational basis of the Divine Proportion.

According to tradition, his discovery shocked the Pythagoreans whose world view is based on the integrity of whole numbers and their ratios, an integrity that has been extended beyond numbers to the harmonic progression of notes in musical scales and the cosmic harmony of the spheres.

or maybe it’s something else. But it’s something.

Also: what is it with the boys in the red shirts? They sure don’t last long as ensigns on Star Trek, but they obviously have their heads screwed on right; they’re the smartest ones on the video. And someone needs to switch that little girl in the splashy dress to decaf, stat!

Care for a flashback, Interwebs? The Original Numa Numa, with an estimated 700,000, 000 hits and counting.

Also, the next time some agency drone says, “We can make you a viral video” think about this. Think about the randomness, thing about the abandonment, the Gonzo, think about the passion that existed just in that one moment, just in that one take, and to which nearly three-quarters of a billion people have responded. And then ask yourself why this agency drone thinks they can do that for you, and then realize that he is knowingly lying to you.

Virality happens, and it happens for certain reasons, but some of those reasons are not adequately explained in a course on digital marketing, are they?