Category Archives: Travel

September Shebeen Club: Making the Most of a Writers’ Conference

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kc dyerFor 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.

the liquor freedom indicator: bellwether of liberty

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Is that a gun in your pocket...oh, it is. 

I think we can abolish CSIS, MI6 and the CIA now. We have the Liquor Freedom Indicator to take and transmit the temperature of any geopolitical hotspots.

Imagine the savings: total cost = the bar tab for a double Johnny Walker Black on the rocks in a bar in the capital of each nation. Compare that to an estimated $30 billion for the CIA alone, $200 million for CSIS, and £776 million for MI6. Hmmm…

I shall get to work on the travel grant application immediately.

Americans need to know who their friends are and now. That’s been a tall order since long before Archie Bunker wondered what trick Nixon had up his sleeve pretending to make peace with the ChiComs. Our own State Department is standing proof that you can spend seven years at Georgetown, ace the Foreign Service Exam, and still not know your Assyrians from your asshole.

Today, the world’s a ball of confusion, right? War Churchill by Karshin Iraq, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Timor, Somalia, Gaza, Backwaterstan, and Toledo. The quickly shifting sands of foreign relations have increased the complexity of the U.S.’s ties, alliances, and uneasy truces from “merely knotty” to “what the hell are we doing?” If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, are asymmetrical, urban, guerrilla conflicts with non-state actors God’s way of making geography irrelevant?

Average Americans consistently demonstrate no understanding of expected return, octane ratings, and what the hell their legislators voted for last session. They’re never going to get ahead of the foreign policy learning curve unless someone can simplify the process. That’s why I try to distill all analysis of a foreign country’s structure, culture, and prospects for success down to booze.

So without further ado, I give you the liquor freedom indicator.

There follows an dryly exhaustive analysis of Pakistan, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Northern Lebanon, Southern Lebanon, and Iraq. So to speak.

Still no word on Salt Lake City.

keep walking, Lebanon

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Maybe you’ve heard of the rather edgy marketing that Johnny Walker is doing in Beirut; mind you, marketing whiskey in Beirut is always an edgy business, and I speak as the progeny of a woman who lived with a guy who made a moderate fortune importing Johnny Walker Black into Saudi Arabia. And taking blackmail photos of the Saudis in his casino for the CIA, but that’s neither here nor there.

Although it’s not as edgy as marketing it in Salt Lake City, come to think of it.

Their actual sign:

keep walking

And the suggested new, rather more specific design, from Animal New York, via Gawker:

Seriously, seriously. Walk faster.

tackiest 9/11 tributes

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It’s a toss-up between the WTC Memorial Luggage Tags and the slideshow by Italian Vogue which puts the Fash in Fascist. Both via Gawker.

Zulkey, in a roundup of the very worst 9/11 souvenirs (scrunchies???) nominates these luggage tags:

Because people especially need to be reminded at the airport about the World Trade Center.

WTC Luggage Tags. Oh yeah, what an upper!

But I think outdoing even that in the Tasteless scale is the Italian Vogue photofeature called State of Emergency echoing the infamous Abu Ghraib images, but replacing the unphotogenic tortured Iraquis with models in the latest from Gucci, D&G, and Versace. Thank you so very much for that. Even the normally unphasable Gawker choked on this one:

In a seamlessly perfect melding of 9/11 paranoia and Fashion Week zeitgeist, may we present this slideshow in Vogue Italia. Entitled “State of Emergency,” the Steven Meisel pictorial mostly features models getting harshly abused by uniformed security thugs. Each shot is more jaw-dropping than the last (be sure to note the nicely animated boot crushing the larynx of the lady in red). Scans may be viewed here if you can’t see the slideshow. Sure, there are a few pics of the models (now indoctrinated?) undergoing weapons training, but really. At least now you’ll know all the hottest couture for getting reamed across the hood of a police cruiser.

Those Italians, always joking around, eh?

the T factor: goatses

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Baphomet, yo

Today in Stupid Tourist News, we present the case of the moronic Swiss driver in Eastern Ontario (BBC, please note proper capitalization), whose defence, when pulled over for speeding, was simply that he was carried away by the sheer joy of being able to drive where there were no goats.

And who among us has not felt that joy? Can we blame the poor man? Are we without hearts, without souls?

I say verily we are, for we will laugh at him.

via the BBC.

‘Goat-free roads made me speed’ 
 
Police said goats had not been reported on eastern Ontario‘s roads

A Swiss man caught speeding on a Canadian highway has blamed his actions on the absence of goats on the roads.
The man was caught driving at 161 km/h (100mph) in a 100 km/h (60mph) zone.

A traffic officer’s notes said the Swiss driver had said he was taking advantage “of the ability to go faster without risking hitting a goat”.

Canadian police spokesman Joel Doiron said he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario in his 20 years of service.

“Nobody’s ever used the lack of goats here as an excuse for speeding,” Mr Doiron told the AFP news agency.

“I’ve never been to Switzerland, but I guess there must be a lot of goats there,” he said.

The driver was ordered to pay a fine of C$360 ($330; £175) for speeding.

The below image is NOT representative of Eastern Ontario, although apparently it somewhat resembles Zurich.

Goatses? Must be Switzerland