Can you tell I'm a writer? Let's test your knowledge of the writer's life.
I come into some money and I immediately go to:
A) the grocery store, for some much-needed foodstuffs
B) the bank machine, to pay off my bills
or
C) the bookstore for Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Masterpieces of Murder: The Best True Crime Writing from the Greatest Chroniclers of Murder, and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for an aggregate of 2104 pages; thence to the liquor store for a bottle of Jackson-Triggs 2004 Proprietor's Grand Reserve Sauvignon Blanc; and thence to a restaurant, albeit one where they ask if that's for here or to go. I'm feeling flush, so, throwing caution to the winds and carpeing diem for everything I'm worth, I ask for extra hot sauce and a beef, rather than vegetarian burrito.
Sometimes it's quite a long and winding road to the raincoaster blog, and I thought, as I'm too lazy to think of something more original, that we might just map an idea as it makes its way to a raincoaster post. And, frankly, there's nothing you can do to stop me.
Is there?
So this is the way it happened: raincoaster, feeling somewhat guilty at having taken nearly 35 hours this week off blogging to try a day job (the experiment appears not to have been a success) and sincerely desperate at watching the stats crawl into a well and begin plummeting to Satan's Doorstep, began Standard Operating Procedure 101, trawling the blogroll, looking for ideas to stealwhich to refer.
BoingBoing…nada. Sometimes they get on their copyright rants and sometimes they get on their cool nerdware rants and sometimes they get on their "Disney's Haunted Mansion is the greatest work of the human imagination in the history of civilization" and this seems to be one of all three of those sometimes. NEXT!
Defamer. Hmmm, the links aren't working. Cannot find server?It's a fucking Gawker Media server, you stupid Internet Explorer window; if Denton ever finds out you don't know where to locate a GAWKER MEDIA SERVER you'll never crunch bits in this blogosphere again.
PerezHilton is up. Good for him, he's been taking a lot of shit lately from abusive Britney fans.
It's a Definite Maybe is up. So to speak. As am I. So I read Jonathan's blog, and lo if it don't tell me sumpin' about why Gawker Media is down: it's a Russian spammer who has been targeted by the US. In exchange for being penalized, he's basically sent a denial of service attack to all of the customers of the company that turned him in, including Gawker Media and – get this – LiveJournal. So all Typepad, Movable Type, and Livejournal blogs are at risk today. Swell.
There are only two inviolate laws of the intra-web, and none of them involve talking about fight club. These are sacrosanct, immutable and will remain unchanged so long as humans are classed as homo sapiens…
(1) The internet is for porn.
(2) The internet allows people to be assholes. (Alternatively, the internet turns people into assholes, the internet encourages people to be assholes, the internet gives people reasons to be assholes, the internet is operated, used and promulgated solely by assholes.)
Those “other Web sites” mentioned in the article include Six Apart and the millions (literally) of blogs and sites it runs through TypePad and LiveJournal. Another, lesser, axiom of the intra-web is “You know someone with an LJ account.” Plenty of the blogs featured in my own links section are powered by TypePad and Movable Type.
And there you have how this got posted; the Blogicidal spammer is the story that made it to raincoaster.
But
The second of Jonathan's Internet Laws leads me to the next meaty post, which shall require much actual writing on my part and maybe even some thinking, so it could take some time!
I am going to explain to you, the world, and even Polly Toynbee, why the Internet is made up of assholes and why that's okay. And if you don't like it, you can just .
From Vancouver’s favorite street hooker advocate, ex-prostitute, ex-city council council candidate, ex-current-and-future madam, and ex-man, Jamie Lee Hamilton.
MEAT n MIX Hi All,
Just a reminder that next Friday May 26 is our Meat n Mix at the Lotus – 455 Abbott Street. As usual from 6-9pm.
Besides our meat draws, we will have Queen for a day. I have met a wonderful make-up artist named Sam, who is going to demonstrate to us all his hot make-up tips for the summer. We will draw a ticket for the lovely lady who will be Queen for a day as Sam and myself will do a complete make-up/transformation on stage. You will be ready to strut the night away after at one of your fav spots.
Since summer is approaching those new make-up colours need to be explored. Sam will have on hand his brand of Mac, Dior and Estee Lauder. I’ve already ordered a number of his products.
As usual, funds raised for Meat n Mix will go toward One-Woman NGO. Remember there is no charge to come to Meat n Mix. I really hope Colleen shows this time. If anyone has seen Colleen please tell her all work and no play does not make for Queen for a Day!
See you on Friday May 26 in the Mix pub for Makeover Meat n Mix from 6-9pm.
PS all you guys need to attend as well cuz Sam will offer skin care advice for you. Cheers
Since I am officially the last to speak at the morning story meetings, you'd think I'd learn from the more experienced reporters. Particularly, you'd think I'd learn when to STFU.
We go around the table. Mike, what is your story pitch today? Mike pitches a story. A. Story.Cheryl, what is yours? Cheryl pitches a story. A. Story. Well, actually Cheryl is ambitious or something, and Cheryl pitches two. And Lorraine, what is your story pitch today? And at that point the caffeine hits my mouth if not my brain and I throw out three or four ideas and only really stop because the EIC is enthusiastically jumping on one of my ideas and explaining how it fits in perfectly with something he wants for the paper. So now, not only do I have the story that was supposed to be done yesterday to finish up, but I also have to write up the one I interviewed the fellow for yesterday, in between the office and the Shebeen Club; both of those were approved on Monday morning, but now, because of said bigmouthitis, I also now have three more perfectly good story ideas I'm expected to write up in the next, say, 18 hours.
And, of course, here I am blogging about it rather than writing them up.
re: Go Fug Yourself on Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone at the Oscars
re: Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding and sorry-ass life (note that when you google “Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding” our announcement is #1! My hit-whoredom is momentarily satisfied)
I Shudder Again more of that old gothic horror erotica. Same old same old.
Black Thorn, White Rose erotic retellings of fairy tales, although if you’d read the original French ones you wouldn’t need retellings, baby!
As references:
The Castle of Otranto, by Hugh Walpole. the first Gothic Novella (at least the first one not in German). Gets so caught up in the atmospheric effects of the flapping of raven’s wings in the graveyard and the eerie forboding of shadows in the candlelight that nothing actually ever happens. Like a great-looking date that can’t talk, a restaurant where the vibe is perfect and the food awful. Its chief virtue is that it’s just barely over 100 pages.
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, essentially the first supernatural horror novel in English, The Castle of Otranto being religious rather than supernatural in overtone and this divorcing the horror of the beings from their evil…ie they’re creepy, they’re deadly, but they’re not neccessarily from hell. Far better than TCOO anyway, and a quicker read.
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Great books, I’m sure, if I could ever get through them. Like chewing through a glacier made of Turkish Delight. Historically important, great works of art, exquisitely overwraught, and virtually indigestible. A beach read…if you’re headed to Gitmo.
The Loved Dead and Other Revisions (and other works) by HP Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.
Damn, forgot to tell my tale of the old boyfriend of mine who heard about how I was such a fan of “Lovecraft books” and asked to borrow them. A week later he returned them, with a puzzled expression. I asked if he hadn’t liked them and he replied: I thought they were gonna be how-to’s.
A Warning to the Curious by MR James. I put forth my theory that ghost stories are definitively English, while Gothic supernatural horror is particularly American…it was not well-received. Fools! again I say Fools! Ia! Shub Ni-ohfugedaboudit.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I state unequivocally that this, combined with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are the two novels which define my generation; this is not good news to anyone who’s read both books. I test my theory that I can recite the first line…The snow was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. I get about 70% right.
The New Gothic which includes such authors as Jeannette Winterston, whom we all agree is a genius. I quote her: Why have we submitted to a society which makes imagination a privilege when to each of us it comes as a birthright? Unfortunately, the book also includes Joyce Carol Oates, who is obviously paid by the word…and we descend into the crude, embittered remarks of literati who are not paid by the word at JCO’s rates.
Closed on Account of Rabies, articulating a theory that Poe died not of alcoholism but of rabies. The album is produced by the Genius Hal Willner and featuring Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, and Diamanda Galas reading Poe’s works
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads, which is a collection of songs about murder, either from the point of view of the victim or the point of view of the perpetrator. This plays while we are eating. Bon appetit!
Diamanda Galas: Defixiones/Will and Testament; you either love her or you don’t even recognize it’s music. I, personally, loved the part where she synched up the throbs in her screams with the flashing of the strobes, but that’s just me.
And the menu was: a glass of wine (amontillado was unfortunately not Irish enough for the Shebeen) and The Tell-Tale Artichoke Heart Pasta. Now aren’t you sorry you missed it?
immediately go to:
Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.
raincoaster 