Category Archives: Vancouver

The Streaker Guy

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The Streaker Guy 

Date: Monday, November 11, 2002 2:31 AM

I was shopping at Sunrise Market, as I am wont to do when I need food, which is usually, so there I was on the outside around the corner, where the food is all marked with a red dot in some kind of ink that just can’t be good for you, to tell the cashier it is old and cheap. I imagine all the undotted peppers and cabbages on the inside look down on their dotty relations, but maybe they don’t, knowing that in the fullness of time they’ll either be chosen by some happy shopper, stolen by a junkie, or end up dotty themselves and so think: there but by the grace of God go I. Maybe. I mean it’s possible, right? Who the hell knows what broccoli thinks?

So there I am, looking at the zucchini of all things and comparing, because you don’t want to get stuck with a limp zucchini and even among the dotty ones there’s still a lot of choice. Just check out the bar at Dick’s on Dick’s at closing time. So I’m checking out the zucchini and someone runs past me at top speed and whips into the side door between the strawberries and the avocados, the one that leads to the meat. And I continue merrily and obliviously shopping along the side, strolling slowly until I reach an impasse: a Filipina, laughing her head off. Really, it looks like she will shake something loose that may be hard to put back on if she keeps it up.

“Did you see?”

“See what?”

“The NAKED GUY! AHAHAHAHAHAHA! He ran in there! HAHAHAHAHAHA! HEEHEEHEEHEE!” and so on.

“Naked guy?”

“Yes, hahahaha,” I think she finds my obliviousness even funnier than the naked guy. “He was all naked and he ran very quickly in the door.”

By this point even the grim and silent grizzled men who sweep up all day around the market are doubled up with their hands on their knees, whooping and hawing and having the time of their lives, or at least the last ten years.

At this point he returns.

THE RETURN OF THE NAKED GUY

Screams of laughter come from the front of the store, as he shoots out the front door and comes back along the side. We are special; we get two showings for the price of one. Well, it is the sale aisle.

As he runs past me he yells, “I’m the Streaker Guy!”

and who could argue with that?

Gawker o’ the North: Journalistic Scuttlebutt from Victoria

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Reporter reporting.via Kitsilano, James’s Up in Ontario blog, to be specific. Seems that old church/state separation idea doesn’t go over big with the bigwigs at the Times Colonist. Visit the site to read James’s take on it, along with the original article, plus the breaking news from Sean Holman.

A snippet from Up in Ontario:

Smith wrote a column raising questions about the value of visiting some well-established Victoria tourist destinations and suggested some alternate, free attractions. Tourism industry representatives sought and got a meeting with the Times Columnist publisher, Bob McKenzie, and a day later Smith was sacked.

Now, a commenter on Up in Ontario has objected, saying the story had no place being published at all, as it was an opinion piece. It may or may not have been slanted, but the Times Colonist is no stranger to slants and, as I pointed out, if the tourist attractions are overpriced, that in itself is news. If free attractions that are interesting are available, that, too, is news. And the decision about whether or not a story belongs in the paper rests with the editors, not the local business capos.

As was put very well by a journalism prof on Public Eye Online:

In an interview with Public Eye, associate professor Klaus Pohle, a specialist in media ethics and newspaper management at Carleton University‘s school of journalism, said it wasn’t surprising publisher Bob McKenzie declined to comment on the situation, explaining “I would be totally embarassed to admit” to cancelling such a contract just after meeting with “the vested interests in Victoria…It’s a terrible conflict. A terrible conflict. And it sends a terrible message – not only to the journalists at the paper but to the other media and the readers and the advertisers. It sends a message (to the advertisers) that I can interfere anytime. And that’s a very, very dangerous situation to be in.”

Sure Victoria is a small town, but it’s got at least two horses, and so is too big to be indulging in these Pottersville-type shenanigans, particularly in a CanWest Global publication. Or are they planning to take this strategy national?

I’m easily pleased

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Peppermint Patty 

I’m pleased, for example, by the fact that the gay couple who just walked by me at the Chinatown Night Market mistook…

Hang on, perhaps we need some background.

Okay, so this hasn’t been the easiest two or three years of my life. I turned 43, not much cause for celebration under any circumstances. Undiagnosed illnesses are highly inconvenient, not just because it is, under the circumstances, just as impossible to get on disability as it is to hold down a full-time job. The fact that Investor’s Group gave my father’s life savings to someone who is not a legal heir, and that I am on the hook for the whole amount if I can’t get it from them, is another energy drain. Let us not speak of the Orwellian Nightmare that is the Ministry, nor the box o’ delights that the foodbank has been known to provide from time to time (their beef stew “helps build healthy coats” according to the label).

And I got fat.

All very annoying, and not designed to have me looking my best, particularly tonight, as last night I put in a wad of deep conditioner and didn’t bother to rinse it out, thinking instead that if it worked well in five minutes it’ll totally kick ass if I leave it in for 24 hours. As well, I have finally tired of packing a caboose of this magnitude around everywhere I go and so tonight, hair frozen in greasy curls and all, I went out and got some good, old-fashioned exercise. Hey, it’s Vancouver, I figured. Everybody looks like an extra on Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

So I was not looking my very best.

And as I passed the gay couple on my way to get the $1.50 hotdog at the Market, one of them, apparently mistaking me for a junkie because of my loopily exhausted walk and personal fashion sense (still wearing the fragrant and ratty T and pants I’d gone skating in), turned to his partner and whispered, “That poor girl.”

I practically skipped home.

He called me a “girl!” I still qualify!

 

Operation Global Media Domination: What I did after my summer vacation

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Threat Down

No, Steve, the threat is back up, because raincoaster can once again say:

I have the power!!!

Let us just say that today, I pitted the Ministry against BCHydro and discovered, much to my surprise, that there is an agency out there even more Orwellian and arrogant than the Ministry. Actually, the Ministry worker was, herself, quite surprised. But all is well and good and resulted in my having power restored to my apartment within an hour of the discussions.

I have discovered it works much better when you say “I require electricity to power my computer, so that I may complete my jobsearch,” compared to, say, swearing at them, like I did back in February.

I didn’t actually mean to swear at them. I meant, instead, to swear about them, but didn’t realize the phone hadn’t quite hung up yet.

Never trust the phone company, either. They are all in this together.

Because she didn’t enjoy being sworn at, and because she is an inhuman cow with the shrivelled, worm-eaten heart of a female Charles Dexter Ward,Charles Dexter Ward don't look so good the worker back in February paid the hydro bill, but structured it as a loan, with repayments. She deducted 75% of my monthly cheque for each of the next three months, leaving me significantly less than $65 from which to buy food and pay my $65 per month hydro bill, and making the current situation inevitable. As she well knew.

In any case, it’s delightful to be sitting under electric light, checking emails and doing, it must be said, a bit of jobsearching and quite a lot of blogging. It’s about bloody time!

Oh yes. The reason I decided to let the hydro go for a month rather than beg for a crisis grant to pay it immediately was that I know they charge $65 to reconnect the power. I pay $65 per month for power (when I can, that is). So I did the math (I’m not the world’s greatest mathematician, but even I can see the relationship there) and decided that with two coal oil lamps, a hibachi, and an extension cord to the hall in the wee hours, I could limp along till August. Hell, if I could survive till September that way, I’d be ahead. I even looked into windmill power, since I have a huge, windswept patio and don’t mind chopping up a few too-curious ravens and shithawks from time to time.

Hydro calmly informed the worker and me that they would continue to bill me $65 per month, whether I was disconnected or not, and that the non-usage would be taken into account the next time they averaged to find out my monthly power consumption and set the bill. So even if I were to go off-the-grid entirely, I would owe $65 per month to hydro, decreasing in the future in an infinite series that never, note this, actually reaches zero.

I will owe BC Hydro money for the rest of my life. Money, power, they really are the same thing; I just didn’t realize the poetry that went into large bureaucracies.

In its demented way, it is elegant.

No High IQs here

Apparently, the Co-op didn’t receive the cheque for my monthly housing charges, and they have decided (unlike last time, when they simply immediately issued an eviction notice) to send me a note, dated the 7th, and informing me that they are charging me five dollars a day retroactive to the 1st until they get the money. I delegated that as well as the Hydro issue to my staff at the Ministry office, who promptly phoned the Co-op and demanded that they come down to the Ministry and fill out several forms, and also that they shove their five dollars a day up their asses.

OrwellWell, not in so many words, but you get the drift.

Life lesson: Not swearing beats out swearing when you want someone to help you. Who knew?

In unrelated news: I discover that, apparently, Tina Arena herself has linked to my post of her video Now I Can Dance, and this, combined with the abuse Metro has been heaping upon me, has pushed the blog to within 500 of Technorati‘s top 100,000 blogs. Out of 45 million, that’s not so bad for a blog that only started on the last day of February this year.

If I could only get a flamewar going, I’d be in great shape. Meantime, I have stolen from the Generator Blog the PageBoost utility, which has come up with the following:

Review of raincoaster; 49 degrees latitude, 360 degrees attitude!

“I just saw https://raincoaster.wordpress.com. If only the W3C would have a superb page like that. The URL has 32 characters. That’s just the right size. There are 84,571 characters in the HTML source, which is a high-quality length for Opera users. The page contains 397 links, a balanced amount.
(…)
The color scheme is impressive. Delicate and exclusive. Seeing raincoaster; 49 degrees latitude, 360 degrees attitude! , I’m simply out of words. What a cool page! I find it appropriate http://www.wordpress.com put up a link to this page. It must have taken a decade to design the page. Thumbs up. Of course, I expected the creator to achieve only the best. The code is very professional.
This page makes it all seem so easy.”
— Susan Walker, Net Events

Marketing Tips for Hookers

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Friday, September 20, 2002
Please note this is from the Archives. Fat Girl has moved on from Fat Girl Corner.

Pirate Boo-tay!1) Specialize.

Remember, anyone can do a hand job, but it takes that certain something to do it in a pirate costume.

I used to know a woman who weighed maybe 95 pounds and looked about twelve; she worked Richards Street, before it was all organized crime, and she worked it dressed as Charlie Chaplin. She was very busy, right up until the day they killed her.

An editor I used to write for passed Richards every day on his way to work. One chilly Christmas season he passed a hooker wearing the tiniest of red microminis with a red bikini top and red bolero jacket, open in the front, even if it was trimmed with white fur. She had over-the-knee black satin boots and a Santa hat as well. This was too much, even for Canadian resolve, he just couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t lower his eyes and pretend not to see her.

The wall came down.

“Aren’t you freezing?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she replied gaily. “I’m never out here very long. ‘Scuse me.” And with that she got into yet another car.

There is a corner near my house, by the old Golden Buddha Fat Girl's Fatter collegueMonastery, that is the Fat Girl Corner. Sometimes it is Pregnant Girl Corner, because the easiest way for a junkie to get fat is to get pregnant, as they do not generally eat. But sometimes Pregant Girl and her friend, Pregnant Other Girl, are not there and it’s just Fat Girl or Fat Woman Who Is Too Old To Be Doing This, Really. But all the chubby chasers know where to go for what they’re looking for. Which brings us to:

Reach out and touch someone! In that way!2) Consistency.

Consistency is so important in branding. I’m not saying you need a logo, but if you work the corner of Hastings and Princess I don’t want to see you on Powell and Jackson, it’s just wrong. Your clients need to know where to find you and you can’t run a business like that from a laptop at Starbucks (they’d throw you out).

3) It’s a People Business, People!

I was on my way home from a business meeting in Gastown recently when I came across a Honduran hooker helping a wizened old drunk stand up. He really needed the help; I helped her. As we were struggling with the limp scareraven another hooker came up. Lean and tall, about seventeen with red, punky hair and ornamental piercings, her arms and legs were swinging that wide arc that tells you she’s flying on an invisible plane, and the sidewalk was going back and forth under her feet. She joined in the effort, grabbing the poor old fellow by the collar of his black suit with maybe a bit of his neck, too, and hoisting for all she was worth, about twenty-five bucks on a Friday night.

We got him upright, and I started to fasten his arms around the lamppost. The Honduran took one look at the newcomer and sidled away, as I should have. The new girl started screaming at me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”It's PEOPLE!!!

“Well, I…”

“I mean what the FUCK are you doing? I mean, look at you, girl! Look at you!”

I guess she didn’t care for my preppy Esprit separates.

“Get out of here! I mean, look at you!”

By that point the old man had gotten his arms wrapped securely around the lamppost and was going nowhere, so I let go and walked away.

“Hey, you can’t just leave me with him! Where are you going?”

“You need to work on your people skills, honey,” I said, over my shoulder.

Remember, it’s a People Business.

Welcome to friendly Hooker!