Blogging as Writer’s Practice: June 26th

cross-posted from The Shebeen Club

The Shebeen, yo

 For immediate release:

What: The Shebeen Club: Blogging as Writer’s Practice
When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown
Why: Learn the rewards blogging can bring to a writer’s daily practice
Who: Contact lorraine.murphy at gmail.com for more information
How(much)? $15 includes presentation and dinner

Blogging is the most powerful self-publishing tool ever invented; not only is it free and accessible, but it’s easy. Even the least technical can master it quickly. Learn the many powerful ways that blogging can reinforce and encourage your writing every day. Whether you’re working on a book, writing poetry, or working in multimedia, a blog can encourage your creative process and help you spread the word of your own genius!

This is a nontechnical introduction to blogging practices and benefits, not a how-to-blog course.

Your admission includes a dinner of fabulous bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus one glass of pop, wine or beer, not to mention excellent company!

Bio: Lorraine Murphy is a Vancouver blogger, writer, and editor. She has been blogging for many years, both professionally and personally, and her flagship blog, www.raincoaster.com, is ranked in the top 18,000 blogs in the world. She also maintains The Shebeen Club Blog and running through rain, for students of her course Blogging to Personal Growth. Ms Murphy is the author of Terminal City: Vancouver’s Missing Women and a former Small Business Columnist at Business in Vancouver newspaper and Occupational Pursuit magazine.

Lorraine Murphy and Lori Dunn are the co-founders of the Shebeen Club.

7-7:30: meet and mingle
7:30-8: listen and learn
8-whenever: Blogger versus WordPress GoogleJuice Splashdown.

R.I.P. T.Paul Ste Marie

TPaul memorial skullTpaulT. Paul is a legend in Vancouver, and the city is smaller, damper, darker, and far less colour-saturated without him.

Last year, when he had an aneurysm, the Shebeen Club hosted a benefit for him which raised the altogether life-altering sum of $100, but he just said thanks, it’ll buy groceries, it’s the thought that counts. He was a true gentleman and lowlife of the finest kind, and I cannot do better to honour his memory than to steal the words of his friend Napalm Dragon from T. Paul‘s own website:

On Thursday, May 31st, the Iconic T. Paul Ste Marie passed away at the age of 41.

He leaves behind a legendary struggle to make the most of life, while embracing and fostering the creative spirit of anyone who dared take themselves seriously. He was a friend to the emergent Artist, and a mentor to many. He opened doors, and he will be missed.

If you knew of him, you liked him.

If you knew him personally, it was a rare glimpse into a Man who persevered though monumental struggles, to find his place and create his own success. “I Can’t” did not exist in his vocabulary.

T. Paul Ste Marie, was best known for many things.
Among them:
•       Opening the doors for many emerging and eccentric musicians and
performers
•       Pioneering the contemporary Slam Poetry Scene
•       Managing and Promoting some of our most beloved performers of the
Vancouver Underground and Sub-Cultural Community
•       Being a slick hipster and Cigar Box Artist
•       and taken anyone who dared take themselves seriously… Serious.
•       He was a mentor to many.
•       He gave Vancouver spice and Savoir Faire.
•       and for those of us who LOVE burlesque, he was there in the
renaissance.
He lived his life on stage, struggling in private.
He will be gravely missed and remembered by anyone that met him, and
all of us he fostered.
We owe much credit to him, he lived the life of legends and made the
most of what he had.
——-
The next drink is in his name.
For those of us that want to say our peace, and share in remembering
him, there will be a tribute. (and what a party that will be)
Good bye T. Paul,
Safe journeys (where ever that is).

To you I tip my hat in honor of your fine and Passionate Invocation….

INVOCATION

We need

PASSION
to put words into context
to formulate a pretext worthy
of our cut-and -paste verbalaching to be heard
thunderclap blurred
quake-shake that thundering word herd
to
play those changes
that rearrange us
rain down rhythmic rhyme-time
jazz-jazz-jazzy clime
axe teases
in the licks chaotic
brrrrap-bap-bap-0-matic
PASSION
bring on the axiomatic
round sound midnight drumroll fury-
ocity
velocity
squeeze beat angel wings
’til they sing sweet
drink the bebop sax
the wing drip wax
of them that flew too close to the sun
fillin’ holy souls and tongues
with the ever changin’
always in the now
manic minds eye milkmaid
leading the tongue tied
to the teat that paid the fare
with their jailtime press
and their pain was not in vain
they were paving the wagon train ruts with gluts
of tarry thick ideas
fresh with bloodsweat extract
doin’ that literal literary lowstick limbo
into the next generation
of word play sensation-
alists
like us
thinkin’ ’bout
what to say
and how to say it
that beat in rhyme
and time to play it
We need
PASSION
to bask in extremes
to set our wet absurdist dreams
in flight
through tarpaper night satellite kite crowded skies
where our white noise pen toys
spin spiderweb thin
sinewy monkey limbs
limberly groping at new poetical chins
our fingers licks spittle
thick with ripe hype glory
pricks the juice-blown words
tasting flying syllables
invisible chords tying them
to howling celestial forms
storm voices that are
politic / lunatic / heretic
our kinetic kites collide
in starry night skies
with leaky loud electric pens

ur ecclectic process begins
where it never left off
sound richness
rhythmic hitches
content stitches
together
pop-pop-poppinn’ a hole
in the whole of time
art serving purpose
continues expansion
in the Universe of Rhyme
We need
PASSION
to invoke the everyday
everyman
tin pan alley trashcan huckster scam
slam sing-song banter
that is simple
sinful
with those blam blam blam gunshot phrases
that glazed ham
canned heat
edge of your seat
repartee
because we learned from those who told it
who origami folded visions

selling passers by
wordy purple fishes
from their oceans of sand
We’ve got to
EXPAND
on this vocabulary
form a mental constabulary
arresting ignorance at hand
because knowledge
IS
power
the sting bee in the flower
that pollinates and seeds
with concepts overgrowing
the weeds of conformity
building bridges of wisdom
over the dull beige schism
torn by sitcom mentally
and wisdom culminates awaiting cultivation
by our visual cortex
spiritual vortex whirling
helix twirling out
the answers to our prayers
and the spoken word blares
from invocation
to creation
occurring within
the process
of lookin’ for words to say.
AND SOME DAYS THEY SPLIT ATOMS
AND SOME DAYS THEY KICK STONES

today they find our voice.

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dating for dominatrixes

catwoman, nine lives
or is that “dominatrices”? Yes, technically it probably is, but the things we do when we’re dumbing down our blog for the sex trollers, eh?

So I was at a party some but not too many years back and I got into conversation, as one does. Now, this party was held by my friend Hermione, who is stylish, sharp, artistic, not a half bad writer, and, most importantly for party purposes, possessed of a wide and colourful variety of friends attained through the exploits conducted during her wide and colourful past. Not that her present is colourless, but relative to the bad old days it’s at least somewhat beiged-out in acceptable Canadian fashion.

One of her friends is a pretty well-known fetish designer, and it was this woman with whom I was chatting. She was much more interesting than the two Gaysian pretty boys who were friends of friends or said they were and who dosed my drink with roofies and sat around watching and giggling all night. Apparently I’m lots of fun when I’m wasted on the stuff, but how would I know if I hadn’t asked the person I woke up next to the afternoon after? Eh? How I located those long-lost earrings in the state I was in I will never know, nor why the furry scarf seemed like the thing to wear to bed. Nor do I wish to know, quite frankly, but I do wish I’d had some of the stuff around to dose myself with when I lost my lovely winter hat, as the superhuman accessory-location ability it apparently confers on me would draw me to the sadly-missed article like Greek playboys to LA celebutwats.

But enough of me: you want to hear what happened when Felicia hooked up with the fellow she met online. What happened was this:

She was in need of a little company, and being busy growing her own company single-handed, she didn’t exactly have the time to make the scene at Sin City every goddam night, even presuming Sin City was on every night, which it is, but only if you exclude 29 days out of every 30 or so, and that would be a very peculiar way to count indeed.

So she looked for love online.

Now, if you’re a fetishist of any experience you already know there’s quite the online community for just about any particular peculiarity, including but not limited to the look-but-don’t-touch underage Gothic Lolitas and the touch-but-don’t-look blackout scene. My own particular favorite example was one Yavanna told me about: a site on EZboard dedicated to restrictive Victorian clothing. This couple had set a webcam up in their dining room and living room and they’d come home from work, change into restrictive collars, ties, bustles, hobble skirts, etc, and then cook and eat dinner and watch tv and do all the other dull, everyday things that people do in their mufti, only they were doing it in these Petticoat Junction outfits, for money.

Seriously, I gotta get me a scam like that. Wonder if there’s a *looks down* overall and thermal undershirt and sneakers fetish market? Mebbe not.

So, Felicia went online, looking for love. Lust, actually. Felicia is a smart girl and she knows that asking Bill Gates to supply your soulmate when his own mother had to tell him to pop the question from her deathbed is somewhat unrealistic. But boy, can he connect you with the vast, horny multitudes for cheap, meaningless hookups, as countless VPs of various Microsoft customers can probably attest. Oh wait: those ones got the expensive LA hookers. My mistake.

And what did Felicia find there? She found a man who wanted to be abused. Oh, not branded, not the whole bloodplay thing. He just wanted a woman who’d make him feel like a complete doormat for a few hours now and again. And if there is one thing Felicia is good at (my friends and I, we have so much in common) it’s making a man feel like a doormat, particularly when he is asking for it.

So she emailed him. When you’re the dom, there’s no sense waiting for him to make the first move, right? Right. And he emailed back eagerly. And this went back and forth for awhile until she and he came to an agreement that he would show up at her apartment at a certain date and time and that she would do whatever she liked with him.

And he showed up, quivering with eagerness, and she led him to the hall closet, handcuffed him to the rail, closed the door, and then she turned around, took off the leather, put on jeans, a t-shirt and an apron, and cleaned her apartment.

She let him out the next morning and he could not wait to see her again!

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mine is bigger than yours, Australia

and don’t even start with me, Texas!

Canadian oysters

BC oysters are gargantuan, breathtakingly muscled city-levelling monstrosities from which even Godzilla would flee in terror, tail tucked neatly between giant dinosaurian legs. You don’t mess with our oysters. Our oysters can kick your oysters’ ass.

Especially once I tell them that YOUR oysters need Viagra.

I then turned to my partners and said “boys – we are going to feed our oysters Viagra and other minerals and vitamins that help with erection dysfunction”. They of course thought I was kidding… within the week we had our web sites, business names and a patent pending application lodged.

We then began the process of feeding oysters the Viagra and other minerals etc in glass and stainless steel tanks.

All I can say is that eating a dozen of these Sydney Rock Hard Oysters® sure as heck works!

What? It’s not really for the oysters at all? Well then, who could the Viagra be for? Hello, Australia? Hello?

Funny, everything’s gone quiet on their end. Maybe I intimidated them?

geoduck

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United Nations invites Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby to Geneva

Dave EbyUN agency invites Pivot lawyer to Geneva

David Eby to present on homelessness and Olympics

May 31, 2007

Vancouver – A United Nations-funded housing rights agency has invited Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby to Geneva to make a presentation on the impacts of the 2010 Olympic Games on Vancouver’s most marginalized residents.

Eby’s presentation to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in mid June will be part of a larger workshop presenting final results from COHRE’s two-year study of the housing rights impact of international events, with a specific focus on the Olympic Games.

“I am honoured that this internationally recognized research agency has chosen Pivot to present on homelessness and the Games,” said Eby. “I will do my best to provide this international audience with a comprehensive report on Vancouver’s progress, or lack of progress on these issues.”

Eby has spent the last two years with Pivot studying the state of low-income housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood. In 2006, he was co-lead author of Cracks in the Foundation, Pivot’s comprehensive study of housing issues facing low-income residents in Vancouver. In 2007, he was an editor of the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition’s Interim Report Card and is a member of the Board of that organization. Experts from the UN High Commission on Human Rights and UN-HABITAT are also scheduled to present.

“Given Vancouver’s experience with Expo ’86, I would have thought our governments would be more concerned,” said Eby, “but with just over two and a half years to go before the games, the affordable housing legacy promised in the bid process has yet to appear and through Civil City our city council is poised to harass and displace Vancouver’s most vulnerable citizens.”

Stops at the World Health Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS are on Eby’s itinerary.

—–

The results of the COHRE study are announced June 14 and Mr. Eby is speaking on June 14 and 15.

For more information contact:

David Eby – Pivot Legal Society – (778) 865-7997

———————-

About Pivot Legal Society
Pivot’s mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.

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