“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
The late Kurt Vonnegut quoted by ellagood @ Gawker.
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
Category Archives: writing
got coffee?
Never enough, baby. Never enough. All these crazy-gorgeous images are by Irene Muller, btw; accept no substitutes.
Today I took my freshly-detoxed ass (and the rest of me, though that is smaller) up to The Drive to get some groceries, because I had some cash and, being newly committed to health and all (to the point of digging up my perhaps ten-year-old Sun Run Training Plan) and by the way, it is very challenging to blog and grind coffee in a manual grinder at the same time, I’ll have you know if you’re not smarter than me and figured out already that I need servants and if you are how about it then, eh? we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…
where was I? Ah yes, newly committed to health and looking for vegetables on the Drive, for lo, they may in sooth be somewhat fresher and vitaminier than those available on the red-dotted priced-to-move outside aisle of Sunrise Market where I usually shop and surely that marker isn’t good for you either.
So there I was.
Or rather, there I wasn’t. And why not, you ask, after we’ve come this far together? Eh?
Because I went for coffee.
At this point, those who live in or who are in recovery from living in Vancouver collapse in bemused stitches, for the Drive is nothing if not the home of Espresso in the West-o. It’s Italiantown. You can get kinds of dead, preserved pork and dried herbs and buffalo cheeses (although those are not as nice as advertised) there than can be found nowhere else in the city.
And it is perhaps a fifteen minute walk from my house.
I could have put my shoes on and been nursing a double latte in a nice china cup in less than the time it takes to work up a good blog post. But no, nothing is ever that simple for me.
I left the house not really because I was dying for chlorophyll in my diet, but rather because I was dying for caffeine in it.
I have a fresh pound of Gold Coast from my friend Jaime, and indeed had even ground up some thereof last night in anticipation of the pot I would brew and enjoy in the morning. But I was milkless, and as every right-thinking person knows, you cannot make a latte without milk. Those who are wrong-thinking can be easily identified in the lineup at Starbucks because they are the ones asking for a “decaf nonfat vanilla soymilk latte” with no foam because they think it’s fattening, and they should be confined to an institution for their own safety and the safety of the world at large, because you just know someone wound that tight is gonna snap one day and go all postal on the poor barista.
So obviously I could not stay at home. Cows don’t deliver anymore.
So off I went, to TrannieTown or rather more specifically to the Y-juncture of Powell and Cordova, where rests the only cafe of any latte-making nature round these parts still open after the social workers get off work at five, and lo it is indeed a *$ and a very nice one it is, too, with always a lineup of dog walkers at the drivethrough window.
But yeah, it’s in TrannieTown.
And lo, the Trannies of TrannieTown are spoiled, for they make a very nice double tall nonfat latte there, albeit a titch light in the hand, and they make it right quickly, too, which is important if you get paid by the act and not the hour. Which, as an allegedly-professional writer is supposed to be true of me as well, come to think of it.
So there I was.
And it was glorious. Bad coffee is just a caffeine injection system; good coffee is what God drinks when He thinks He has been particularly divine that week and deserves a reward.
Of course, what did I do once I’d trod the three or so miles up to the drive and bought FOUR heavy bags of lovely and health-nurturing groceries?
I stopped at Turks and got a half-pound of espresso and another coffee.
And it was, again, glorious. But it brings us right back to the whole needing-servants-thing, for verily it is near-impossible and really quite difficult to carry four heavy and swollen bags of vegetative matter and simultaneously drink a coffee, even if one has been clever and packed one’s adult sippy cup, ie expensive stainless steel thermal mug.
Alas, it must be confessed that it was drunk 1/4, but 3/4 of its silken richness now swims with the fishes, as I eventually gave up the heavyweight juggling act and poured it down a handy storm drain. A passing cop car slowed, visibly contemplating ticketing me for reintroducing liquids into the sewer system, but thankfully was called away to break up a fight, roust a junkie, or…
maybe they just decided it was too close to their coffee break.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Fame, Glory, Sex and Money through Blogging: what it takes to beat the squirrel babies
Fame. Glory. Sex. Money. You want it all. You want it now.
And you want to get it by blogging.
I hear you, baby. I know how you feel. I’m one of you.
I’m about to give you some bad news…
The Fame? That comes fast, as long as you define “fame” as “slightly known, in that they can kindasorta recognize my header but have no idea what I look like way, to people who already read blogs.” This is a smaller group than you currently imagine, and even your late-night entreaties of the retired longshoremen on the rail at your local watering hole are not likely to change it on a measurable scale.
If you want to be famous to politicians’ research staffers, WoW-playing slackers, or sysadmins, however, you’ve got it made.
The Glory? See above, plus your mother will be proud of you once you spend three consecutive holidays explaining to her what blogging is and showing her how to put YOUR blog in HER email signature. Unless you’re a porn blogger, and then we don’t want to know about your relationship with your mother.
The Sex? You mean with other people? What would I know about that? Ask the porn bloggers if you must.
The Money?Ah, the money. Now we come to it; you figured that if you stuck Adsense on your cat blog that you could just sit back and watch the millions roll in, didn’t you? You’ve taken a couple of overpriced SEO seminars and can’t understand why you aren’t able to quit your day job just yet.
In point of fact, there are three ways to earn six figures from blogging.
Of these three, we at the ol’ raincoaster blog favour #3, for lo, we are in truth and in fact not Robert Scoble and yea verily we can hardly understand what engtech says half the time (and could only get a six-figure job if you left out the decimal entirely), so that leaves only one option.
Fortunately, the Magnanimous Manolo has laid out a simple yet superfantastic planenabling you to scale the heights of the six-figure-blogo-strato-sphere. Or, as he puts it, “to beat the squirrel babies.”
You may think, Mr. Arturo G. Bloggerman, that your grand mission is to enlighten the unwashed masses, to whom you declaim the unpleasant truth from your exalted perch at declaimingloudly.blogspot.com. But in the point of fact, if the unwashed masses do not find your loud declamations entertaining they will quickly move down the street to the Cuteoverload to look at the pictures of the squirrel babies.
So, what must you do to compete with the squirrel babies?
Read the rest of the articleto learn the superfantastic surefire secret to six-figure success!
(sorry, been reading a lot of marketing faff lately)
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
worst date ever
from the Archive. This won me a nice little book prize from Two Dollar Radio, which is frankly the only glory this Vancouverite has ever gotten out of the Manhattan literary establishment, aside from the glories of Gawker commenter status.
I should have known it was going to be a long night when he asked me if I minded going out “after rush hour, when the bus fare goes down.”
He was tall. He was handsome. He was fit. He was educated, intelligent, in law school.
He was in love with Rebecca.
How do I know this? He told me. At length.
In the restaurant, he insisted on ordering a particular dessert wine with the main course. Bewildered, I wondered if it was some new foodie fad. No, he said, it was because it was called “Sweet Rebecca,” and that was his ex-girlfriend’s name.
She dropped him. She was cruel, and sweet, and had hair like golden silk, or so I was informed. When not explaining how perfect she had been, he spent many a long, silent moment staring into the glass and murmuring “Sweet Rebecca.”
At one point he pulled out a ten-dollar bill and showed me the family resemblance to John A. MacDonald, to which I could only reply, “Yes, one of Canada’s truly great alcoholics.” It was a little too late to impress me by then. And he’d drunk most of the wine, although I could have used a Martini or four, myself.
On the way home, he borrowed bus fare; I never intended to see him again, however decorative he may have been, but at a dollar seventy-five to get rid of him it was a steal. On the long, no, endless ride home, he had one more golden memory for me. Halfway home, he slowly removed his ski gloves and proceeded, methodically, to pick his nose.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Office Worker’s Anthem
I was at a writing conference a couple of years ago and the keynote speaker said something that absolutely rocked me to the very core of my being…and I hope it will rock you, too.
It was Susan Musgrave, at the Surrey International Writer’s Conference. She was talking about when she was a teenager, and she was thinking about giving up on school. Well, you just know how that went over with the Principal. He called her into his office and he went up one side of her and down the other with the whole raging authority figure trip (because at that point nobody had heard of Susan Musgrave and, indeed, she had not yet become Susan Musgrave, per se) and among the many and varied things he had to say, he said this:
If you don’t finish school, young lady, the only job you’ll be fit for is a prostitute!
And, telling the story, she said, Well I knew that wasn’t an option for me, because I hate working with other people.
and who among us cannot feel that deep in the core of our being, eh?
She went on to say, “Have you ever met someone who worked with other people? They all hate it; the only things they complain about are all the other people in the office!”
and suddenly, writing alone by the glow of a midnight monitor doesn’t seem so bad.
In memory of that moment of realization, and in memorium of many an Orwellian moment in my own office experience, we present Mister Montgomery Burns of The Simpsons, performing what’s sure to become the office worker’s anthem: Look at All These Idiots! Lyrics over the jump…
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: Continue reading
raincoaster 