Vancouver’s Monthly Literary Gathering. My baby. No open mic, no hand-holding, no American beer.
From Lois Peterson‘s Surreywriters list. Note that this is not paid writing work, which is, of course, how I came to hear about it:
On Sunday the Province will lanch the Sunday Serial Thriller, a 12-part mini-novel set in Vancouver.
The first and last chapters will be written by Daniel Kalla, with the the other chapters contributed by Province readers. Prizes to be won include a trip to Mexico.
Complete details, and the first instalment, appears in the Sunday Province.
Sort of like the Readers Digest version, but way more eruditer.
NYer Haiku via Gawker.
New Yorker Haiku
September 18, 2006
Annals of Economics: Mind Games
By John CassidyEconomists want
To scan your brain, find why you
Aren’t more rational.Reflections: In the Waiting Room
By David SedarisForget learning French:
In Paris, “d’accord” means
Random fun (sans clothes)!Profiles: The Wanderer
By David RemnickNow ex-Prez, Clinton
Working to save Africa
As Friend of Bill (Gates).Fiction: Something That Needs Nothing
By Miranda JulyGirl, not one she wants?
A wig and a peep-show gig
Might work for a spell.On Television: Her Debut
By Tad FriendCouric as anchor:
So much likability,
No time left for news.A Critic At Large: War and Remembrance
By Ian BurumaGrass’s great memoir:
Boy lost in heroic myths.
(Is the man as well?)Books: Hugger-Mugger
By John UpdikeCongo schemes, despair
From le Carre. No closure
In Ward Just’s dark tale.The Current Cinema: Inescapable Pasts
By David Denby“The Black Dahlia”
Is choked of life. “The Ground Truth”:
Feel Iraq vets’ shock.
Got this via Fark. I’m not sure what it means, and my University education compels me to take the next hour to diagram it out, then write an essay where the number of pages of essay > the number of words in the sentence. That way, I’m guaranteed an “A;” only the really conscientious profs add “may be over-reading it” under the grade, and I try not to hang out with conscientious people, as it harshes my mellow.
The sentence o’ the day, from Wikipedia via Fark:
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“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically valid sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It was featured in Steven Pinker‘s 1994 book The Language Instinct, but is known to have been around before February 1992 when it was posted to Linguist List by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.[1]
Sentences of this type, although not in such a refined form, have been known for a long time. A classical example is a proverb “Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you”.
Also with bonus Boris!
For immediate release: post/forward at will!
Who: The Shebeen Club presents kc dyer, author of the Eagle Glen Trilogy
What: Making the Most of a Writers’ Conference!
When: 7-10 pm Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
Meet & Mingle 7:00-8
Listen & Learn 8-8:30
Trililoquizing and behaving like Young Adults 8:30-10
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall
Why: Because we’ve got the Word on the Street, Surrey International Writers’ Conference, Vancouver Writers’ and Readers’ Festival, and Jewish Book Festival all coming up in the next six weeks!
Because if there’s a writer in this hemisphere that knows how to get the most out of a conference, it is kc dyer. She works a lunch table full of strangers like nobody else!
It seems but yesterday she was a dewy-eyed newbie accepting the Special Achievement Award at the SIWC, and now she’s seized absolute control as next year’s coordinator. Since that distant day, she’s found time to run the SIWC’s (huge) annual writing competition as well as become an integral part of the North Vancouver literary community. Somehow, she’s also managed to complete her acclaimed Eagle Glen trilogy for young adults, develop teaching materials for the books, and begin a fourth novel. Her books are: SHADES OF RED, SECRET OF LIGHT & SEEDS OF TIME, all published by The Dundurn Group.
How (much)? $15 before September 16, $20 thereafter, includes your choice of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus a glass of beer or wine; networking over food is a key conference skill!
Reservations and media inquiries: lorraine.murphyatgmaildotcom
Bio: kc dyer (www.kcdyer.com) was born in Calgary, and after a peripatetic decade or two now lives with her children (and other animals) north of Vancouver, British Columbia, where she works as a freelance writer. kc is the author of a number of books for young adults that are published in North America and the UK. Having a secret fondness for inducing nausea in teens, she can often be found sharing some of the greatest grotesque moments in history with large groups of high school students. Unable to see the folly of her ways, she continues to write and most days can be found sitting at her desk, staring out the window and trying to think of the perfect word.
Well this is odd. Sometime in the last 72 hours someone (no idea who) labelled my blog as porn, using the handy-dandy WordPress “Label this blog Adult” feature. Someone on the forum told me this is supposed to flag it for review and, if the blog is indeed found to be porn, it’s taken off search engine updates, dropped from the “Next Blog” “Tag Surfer” “Blog of the day” “Top Posts” and “Latest Posts” rolls, and the blogger can no longer post comments, which I found out when I tried to inform whatsername with the Starbucks iced coffee coupon that it is, in fact, legit.
Well, now I have reason to believe that the instant someone tags the fucker with “Porn” it sticks, and only an appeal will get it out of the gutter and back into the starry sky.
So that’s what happened. Sometime last night it dawned on me that my hits were half, count ’em, half what they should normally be, and that for some reason my posts weren’t showing up where they should.
And this does not take me to my happy place.
I posted a question in the forum and sent in a Support Contact Form, as one is supposed to do. About six hours later (in fairness, it WAS the middle of the night) I get an email from Barry saying sorry, we checked your blog, it’s fine, it had been “porned” and it’s not, so you’re good to go.
Surely, I thought, surely that would have given me some kind of period of immunity, like a vaccination.
Silly me.
“Referrers” is a stat table that lists the links that people have come to your blog through, and how many came through each. For today so far, mine looks like this:
| Referrer | Views |
|---|---|
| wordpress.com/tag/porn | 11 |
| wordpress.com/tag/porn/7 | 8 |
| colddesert.blogspot.com | 5 |
| topix.net/who/cloris-leachman | 4 |
| wordpress.com/tag/porn/6 | 3 |
Yes, someone has gone through 8 or more pages of Porn tags on WordPress, looking for mine. No doubt thinking if s/he can whine “oh but she has 22 posts tagged “porn” it’s an open and shut case. Well it’s not, because I have never posted porn on this blog and I defy anyone to say it’s not PG-13. Particularly since Photobucket took down my pictures of large public sculptures; okay, so the Boris Vallejo was a bit edgy. Believe me, I’m well aware of those boundaries, having dealt with that issue for several years.
Let’s take a look at some of the blog entries tagged “Porn” on the ol’ raincoaster blog, shall we? Because we know you like to look at porn.
BoingBoing on TWAT, which reproduced a BoingBoing post of a RyanAir ad about people (small, distant, probably Irish people) taking their clothes off at an airport.
Operation Global Media Domination: The Rear View, in which we discover I’ve been linked to by both LibertyForum and Nastyfuckingporn.com, a link blog.
If Men Wrote Advice Columns, a joke column I found on Fark.
Beaver Shots. The ever-popular. Beavers swimming in the Okanagan.
Check into the Paris Hilton, an SNL skit starring guess who? Dirty puns, nothing more.
Ah yes, the infamous Marketing Tips for Hookers, an original piece of humour blogging from the Downtown EastSide, featuring stories that were just too funny to go in my book.
The Shebeen Club: Book Banning, Free Speech, and Mein Kampf. How ironic.
Had a minor heartflip an hour ago when it appeared I’d been re-porned, but Barry now tells me that’s not the case and probably would advise me to take two asprin and get a life, if he weren’t such a polite lad, but he is, and he can’t help it.
UPDATE: all my comments, including the ones on this very blog, are now being labelled Spam and held for approval. Swellerific.
raincoaster 