Category Archives: Travel

Vancouver Unicorn Chaser

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Yes, that’s twice in a week we’ve had a Unicorn Chaser, but after dealing with all the drama lately (including an indigenous Canadian assassin, apparently sent by the anti-Julia Allisonites) I think we need one.

As some of you may know, I’m still stuck up in P-town, that cosmopolitan megalopolis of the Interior, and am stubbornly going to remain here until I can get a free ride home. The way my luck’s been running, if I tried to catch a plane I’d be groped by some cranky TSA droid and let fly at him, at which point I’d be sentenced to life in prison for castration without anaesthetic, and if I tried to take Greyhound they’d seat me next to an escaped mental patient from Winnipeg with a knife and anger management issues. And I know way too much about serial killers to hitchhike or take the Craigslist route. If, knowing as many people as I do, I can’t get a free ride, nobody can, and then we’ll know the Recession has hit rock-bottom.

So, here are some lovely pictures of the burb to which I am trying to return: Vangroover, home of the Canucks and the Canadians, and where Marc Emery was once named Businessman of the Year.

Vancouver False Creek at Dusk

Vancouver False Creek at Dusk by akameus

All together now: It’s a small world after all… Actually, every neighborhood in Vancouver is a small world, almost entirely independent of its neighbors. There’s one block on Cambie that is deeply hipster, and has been since before we knew what to call those people, but only the pub across the street is hipster, while every other storefront/bar/restaurant on that side of the block is pure DTES. Even though it’s technically DTWS. And then you turn the corner and it’s something else again. Forget the lack of freeways; it’s this “Islands in the Stream” quality that is most discombobulating for tourists. You can see them along East Hastings, looking puzzled and somewhat frightened as they frantically page through their maps muttering “gaztown, gaztown, czhinatown…” and if I’m well-dressed I try to help them. If I’m not, I just walk on by on the general principle that if someone DTES-looking approached them and began to speak, they’d probably break into a run and then god only knows where they’d end up.

Which brings me to this:

Gastown sign in the Diamond

Gastown sign in the Diamond

Even though the Diamond (which is a delightful place, moreso because it’s hidden, and don’t try the veal: try the Vietnamese sub) sells $12 drinks and is constantly full of models and photographers, it’s still on the Downtown Eastside, and I can only ascribe that horrendous mistake on a very expensive sign to the desire to Keep it real, yo.

The Towlift of Tiny Town Unicorn Chaser Links

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Yes, it’s still Wednesday, at least in my world (isn’t it ALL my world?) even though it’s 2:25am “on Thursday,” because I woke up on Wednesday and haven’t gone to bed yet, so there. See? Perfectly logical.

 

And if it’s Wednesday, what does that mean, boys and girls? That’s right, it’s Hump Day Unicorn Chaser Time! So today we present your delightful visual, auditory, and mental refreshment as a lovely picture:

coffee with the unicorn unicorn chaser

coffee with the unicorn unicorn chaser

There, doesn’t that feel better? Now your eyeballs and mind are all refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the week. Remember, today is the first blog entry of the rest of your digital footprint, or something like that.

[ Yeah, this “raincoaster blogging sober” thing sucks. Don’t think you’re the only one who noticed it. ]

As if that weren’t enough, here is the cutest little tilt-shift video you’ve ever seen. Whistler, BC, normally looks something like Toy Town, although not as much as Silver Star does. This is what Silver Star looks like:

 

Silver Star is not exactly "Badass"

Silver Star is not exactly "Badass"

Seriously, it looks Just Like That. This is what Whistler looks like:

 

And yes, Whistler looks just like this. Also, I hear there are ski runs somewhere around.

And yes, Whistler looks just like this. Also, I hear there are ski runs somewhere around.

So, really, you paid for ONE Unicorn Chaser and if you’re a unicorn, architecture, or ski buff, you’re getting like four of them in this post, so don’t forget to hit the tip jar on your way out.

If your sphincters are still in a knot from the Monday-Humpday grind, we have that video I was talking about earlier. Now, have you seen a lot of skiing/snowboarding/surfing videos? Sure, it’s technically an “extreme” sport, but it’s a sport. Taking place in nature. Without mechanical engines. And sounding nothing at all like the Cobalt at 3 in the morning.

Skiing/snowboarding/surfing videos do not recognize this fact. They endeavour, in fact, to cover it up by every means known to cheap-ass extreme sport video producers, which is a bag of tricks that comes down to, essentially, picking the least-untalented person featured in the video and letting his neo-post-apocalyptic-metal-country-punk band do the soundtrack. For free.

And overpriced at twice that.

You doubt me? Watch one of these puppies. And then watch it again, with the sound turned off. Better my way, eh? Everything is.

Never. Forget. That.

So where was I? Oh yes, about to show you the video. This is the antidote to all those snow videos that sound as if they were scored by just laying electric guitars end to end across the floor of a mosh pit and recording the noise hobnailed boots make when they do the pogo on them. It’s that gimmicky tilt-shift photography that people who don’t know how to make street scenes interesting always use instead of learning how to take inherently interesting shots, but in this case it IS interesting, well-done, and entirely, 1000% awesome.

Viewing full-screen would be kind of ironic, but then if you were a hipster, wouldn’t you be Googling for “instagram” and not “Tilt shift?”

And now, in case you STILL can’t face Thursday, here are your gossip links:

Anger Management, with Kirk and Spock (raincoaster)

Why Gnott? Because it’s a CRAZY IDEA, DUDE! (ManoloFood)

Makeover vs Makeover (Ayyyy)

The literary world got Snooki’d (AgentBedhead)

Happy Feet, live (BusyBeeBlogger)

Messing with The Great American Novel is F—– up! (CelebDirtyLaundry)

JayLor broke up (CelebritySmack)

Cheeto-Rama! (CityRag)

Video proof Goopy CAN TOO sing (DListed)

Vanity Fair ran out of dead women to cover (GossipTeen)

Josh Groban’s new single is amazing (HaveUHeard)

Britney wants butt hair? (INeedMyFix)

Britney rocks the “chemo headband” look (PoorBritney)

She’s in, she’s out, she’s in, she’s out, she’s a Lohan (PopBytes)

Selah.

 

The Motto of the Republic of Ireland

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You say Potato, I say Revolution!

You say Potato, I say Revolution!

 

Yes, that is the official motto of the Republic of Ireland, translated from the Gaelic. Very few people know that.

Playing with the Stones

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Lithophone
Image by raymond_zoller via Flickr

Bear with me, because I’m going to be tinkering. This entire post is going to be tinkering with the audio player at WordPress and seeing if I can get the Telephone Your Blog thingy to accept mp3’s, which would be a nifty trick indeedy. So, like I said, bear with me.

First attempt: Bog standard WP audioplayer with hotlinked mp3 from the Guardian’s piece on lithophones, computer-enhanced xylophones made out of the stones of the Lake District. This would be, I suppose, that upon which the Druids rocked out.

Okie dokey, it appears the Guardian podcasts allow hotlinking. Booya!

Now on to test the Telephone Your Blog thingy with a downloaded and uploaded via telephone mp3; the same one, because yea, I am very lazy.

So now, I have to save the mp3 to my hard drive, then I open Skype because the office phone won’t make a long-distance call and I still don’t have a cellphone and wouldn’t use the minutes on it for this even if I did, and I dial the number and punch in the code (how does one do that on Skype? Guess I’ll find out) and then I somehow play the mp3 into the headset which would be much easier with a proper mic and not just the headphones propped up against a hardcover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince so the mic hovers around one of the speakers. At least, I THINK that’s the speaker; it might be an air vent or, more likely for Eve here (that’s my computer) an inlet to allow the gin in on those rare occasions it doesn’t make it from the glass into my mouth with the precision one hopes, but has no right to expect, it would after two already and where was I? Right, Harry Potter and the Lithophones of the Lakes. I’d better bring up an mp3 player, too, hadn’t I? I’ll take a flyer on Windows Media Player, because Zune and iTunes kill the speed on this computer. Wish me luck; did I say that already?

Oh, I’m gonna fart. PAUSE. Oh, it wants to tell me something. Apparently xvidcore.dll cannot be found. Well, that’s great, because I wasn’t looking for it in the first place.

Okay, so here’s what happened. I got Skype to open, and got it to call the blog. Then I input my code and started jabbering, which you can hear above. It appears that as soon as I took my earphone jack out of the computer and double-clicked the mp3 to play it, Skype crashed. That’s probably because, instead of Windows Media Player, which I had open and wanted to play it on, the darn thing opened Zune, which is huge and baroque and always kills things on my computer and causes the fan to go into classic silent-film-worthy conippification fits. So. Must find small, slick, non-interferesome mp3 player OR load the puppy into something I can play on the stereo while running Skype on the computer.

The life of a worker-arounder is not a restful one.

Oh, and then I had to go in and steal the telephoned/Skyped mp3 from the standalone post it automatically made called Audio Post and put it here. And now I think I’m going to go off and read Harry Potter and ponder some more.

Unicorn Chaser: “I want to go to there” edition

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Presented without comment:

I want to go to there

I want to go to there. Are you listening, God?

I dunno how your week went, but as far as I’m concerned T.G.I.Fucking.F.