Category Archives: Vancouver

okay, so now I’m paranoid

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TIAThis Monday I found out that, while I was out in Surrey at the Conference, I had been used as a guinea pig in a bold and transformative experiment…

without my permission.

You can imagine how I feel about that.

You’d be wrong.

I can’t say I felt quite normal all weekend: for one thing, I was awake at seven-thirty or eight each morning. Or, okay, eight-twenty the day I accidentally switched my alarm ringer to “silent” (what the hell kinda option is that for an alarm, I ask you???). Still, there was coffee there and I managed to feed myself through a combination of cold, hard cash and making myself useful to the Board members, who plied me with oat cakes, fruit roll-ups, and a whopping big plate of mediocre buffet food on one glorious occasion.

Hey, at least the pasta salad is always a safe choice.

For another, I came down with the cold/flu bug that’s going around. So I was not quite feeling myself; still, it’s traditional that when the rains come so do the germs. I’ll get a hot water bottle and some advil and I’ll live.

I managed to struggle home and blog on Monday, whereupon I checked stats (I know: how unthinkable is that, eh? Me checking stats) and I found a whole raging snotload of hits from some WordPress official page called Trick or Treat.

I could not recall having posted to such a page, so I had no idea why 90-some-odd people were coming to my blog through a link there, so of course I figured I’d go and check it out.

I also noticed a simple comment: HA! from some guy named Andy. Turns out Andy is … hmmmm, if not exactly Mr. WordPress the way the dad was Mr. Brady, he’s one of the handful of wee Wordpressers; in other words, he’s living in the big house and closer to Mr. WordPress than Cousin Oliver: perhaps think of him as Greg. What weirds me out, though, is that he’s just left another comment: what has he done THIS TIME???

FYI: I’d like a small island in the South Pacific…

So here I am adding to my scrapbook collection of Inet superstars: Xeni down, Andy down, Scoble, you’re next!

But what does this mean? you’re probably asking, and not for the first or last time on this blog, let me tell you.

WordPress gave me a pressie: in fact, they gave me a promotion. I am now the proud owner of www.raincoaster.com, and this is it.

Yep, WordPress just up and gave me my own domain, which is more than years of Machiavellian efforts on my own behalf have been able to do, let me tell you.

The view is more beautiful now that it is mine.

sobering message for BC booze pros

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drooling drunk but not YET propositioning the lieutenant-governor of the province 

Now, I don’t know if you grew up in the Middle of Great Canadian Buttfuck Nowhere like most of us here did, but if you did, then I won’t need to explain to you the great Canadian principle and tradition of the bush bash.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with American politics, except that, in all likelihood, we did something like this when we invaded Washington in the War of 1812, and that should Dubya finally go down in flames, or up in a puff of fire and brimstone, it’ll be another fine excuse for such a celebration.

The bush bash is nothing more than a huge party, involving anywhere from about 15 TO 300 people: you all leave town at different times, by different routes (assuming your town has more than one road, not a given in some small towns) and rendezvous out in some farmer’s back 40. It is considered friendly-like, but not compulsory, to invite the farmer as well.

You bring beer.

There is a bonfire.

That’s it.

Once, my parents were out at one such bash (yes, respectable-ish middle-aged people go to these things, not just teenagers; the teenagers are all home playing video games and playing on MySpace) with the mayor and the head of the local RCMP detachment. At one point, some uniformed officers materialized and shamefacedly walked over to their boss to tell him that they’d be busting up the bush bash and arresting people, “in about twenty minutes, okay?”

Thoughtful of them; the place emptied faster than a can of Moosehead! No arrests were made: the raid found the bash mysteriously empty.

In any case, there comes to the raincoaster blog word that last year’s award dinner for the BC Liquor Distribution government agency was not exactly the picture of decorum. No indeed: it appears that the BC boozefloggers showed an entirely overenthusiastic dedication to the product, with one of the award-winners securing his place in mythology by being too drunk to walk up the short staircase to the podium.

He crawled it. Respect!

drunk crossing

…an unholy combination of circumstances developed at the province’s annual long service awards dinner at Government House that left many guests shuddering. The event turned into such a drunken horror show it took almost a full year of legal wrangling to resolve. The full story, recounted in a recently released arbitrator’s ruling, is a hair-raising tribute to Lt.-Gov. Iona Campagnolo‘s grace in the midst of chaos (and ability to keep a lid on the story of the Party Disaster of the Century).

With 25 years service to Her Majesty on his record, the janitor — let’s call him Party Boy — was given an invitation to the dinner. He checked into the Laurel Point Inn and had four ciders to relax, before attending the pre-reception reception, where he downed four rum and cokes, and two glasses of wine from the open bar. He had four more rum and cokes at Government House.

With 250 guests assembled, including every single one of his bosses from the deputy minister on down, the festivities began…

The lieutenant-governor was at her imperturbable best when she noted at one point during the carnival: “It’s always entertaining when liquor distribution branch employees are receiving awards.”

There must have been video, or otherwise how could anyone have remembered?

PSA: 30 for 30 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation

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I’m posting this for Raj, as he’s one of the 30, making the rest each only one of the 29 left over. Not that I’m elitist at all, now that I’ve gotten my charming mug into the social columns…of course, I was wearing a mask. Hmmm, good thing for my ego I don’t believe in causality.

30 for 30 – A Benefit for Make a Wish Foundation

Vancouver’s top 30 business leaders unite the evening of Thursday, October 19th, 2006 to raise funds for Make A Wish foundation.
DATE:  Thursday, October 19th, 2006
VIP Reception: 5:30PM
Main Event: 7:00PM
LOCATION: Rocky Mountaineer Station, 1755 Cottrell Street (close to Terminal and Main), Vancouver
PRICE: $40, VIP $75

You are invited to attend an evening of great food and great entertainment – all to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of BC.

Help us achieve our goal of granting 30 wishes for 30 children with life threatening illnesses.  Join 1,000 of your fellow Vancouverites as we celebrate the power of a wish at the Rocky Mountaineer Railway Station on October 19th, 2006. 

Tickets can be obtained by email at ticketsatthirtyforthirtydotorg, phone at 604-897-8478, or visit us on the web at www.thirtyforthirty.org.

Tell your friends and co-workers, and together we’ll make Thirty for Thirty one of the most successful fundraisers in the history of Make-A-Wish BC.

30 4 30

PSA: Empress Hotel to close: City to play along

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Sound familiar? It should by now, but it’s going to get a damn site more familiar as we approach the Olympic construction deadlines.

From the Pivot Newswire:

October 18, 2006

Empress Hotel’s new owner plans to shutter it

Employees of the Empress Hotel, a landmark low-income rental building in the DTES, are reporting that the new owner of the hotel has told them they are fired, and that he intends to evict all of the tenants within three months. The Empress Hotel has 74 rooms available to Vancouver’s poorest residents.

“He told me that my job was over, and that he was giving all of the tenants three-month eviction notices,” said Charles Humble, an employee and resident of the hotel.

The new owner has apparently applied for a business license to continue operating the hotel as a low-income rental building; however, the story being told to employees of the building is a different one.

“This is just like the American Hotel,” said David Eby, lawyer with Pivot Legal Society. “The owner says one thing to city hall, and a different thing to the rest of the world. The American is now closed because the City refused to look beneath the surface or act when everybody else was telling them that the building was going to close. The same thing must not happen with the Empress.”

This week is Homelessness Awareness Week, an ironic twist on the recent news coming out of the Empress Hotel. In addition, on Thursday a motion is coming before city council to ban the conversion of low-income housing in the DTES to other uses.

“When these 76 rooms close, which is clearly the owner’s intention, those people who live in the Empress and have lived there for years and years will be living on Vancouver’s streets,” says Kim Kerr of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association. “The residents of the DTES are tired of their housing being closed while council waits for funding that is never going to come. Council must act to protect this housing from conversion immediately.”

The 74 rooms in the hotel represent more than 1/3 of all of the 175 wet/cold weather shelter beds opening for this winter in Vancouver. Current vacancy rates for housing available to people on welfare is near 0, as reported in Pivot’s recent report on housing in the DTES “Cracks in the Foundation” which found only two rooms available in the entire city for people at the current welfare shelter rate.

For more information contact:

Kim Kerr – DERA – (604)785-0009

Charles Humble – Resident and employee of the Empress – Room 701

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

-30-

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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.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Pivot Newswire, just send a note with that subject line to newswireatpivotlegaldotorg.

smells fishy…

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 Martha Stewart Living Behind Bars

You know the old joke: what do you call an open can of tuna at a lesbian’s housewarming?

Potpourri.

I know it’s a bad joke, but they’re my specialty. Which brings me to today’s post about not Squid, but Shrimp. Shrimpy the Shoplifter, to be specific. You know he’s gonna have a great time in prison standing still while all the men sniff his pants. Gotta be a dream come true for some guys, eh?

Giant Food Store employees watched as a customer slipped three bags of frozen shrimp into his baggy pants.

A few minutes later, as two managers at the West Market Street store struggled in the parking lot with the man they suspected was the thief, police said, two of the bags plopped onto the ground.

Then, the thief pulled out a hypodermic syringe from his pocket and threatened the managers with it, police said.

They didn’t take the bait…

And I thought my jokes were bad! Apparently the cops fished out the one bag of shrimp that stuck in the pants (to what??? I ask) and I’d guess it’s even money whether or not they all went back onsale.

There’s a booster ’round these parts that specializes in meat. He steals packages of meat from the grocery stores and sells them in some of the dive bars in the neighborhood; he’s quite well-known and people make appointments and pre-orders and drive in from the suburbs in their SUVs to buy the meat that’s been stolen and stored in this junkie’s pants all day, before being plopped out on a table at, say, the Balmoral, the American, or the Savoy.

Martha would never buy her meat that way, people! A free-range junkie thief is still a junkie thief, and his pants do not meet Foodsafe standards for meat storage units.

No wonder I don’t go to these people’s dinner parties!

Guess who's coming to dinner? Martha!