And then I pre-posted for the next three days, and then I learned about email newsletter software code tracking.
And I was going to do a post based on this:
because I had an uncle whose name was, in fact, Clifford Smith, and who was, in fact, a horse logger. That’s not a guy who cuts down horses to make logs out of them (there’d be hardly any money in that) it’s a guy who cuts down trees to make logs out of them and has his horses drag the logs to the sawmill. Uncle Clifford had about 400 acres and he farmed it for 50 years and it was pretty much solidly forested the whole time, and yet he earned a good living, thanks to the climate and geography and whims of the gods which had blessed his land with an abundance of trees which, when turned into logs, turned into more expensive logs than other trees: trees like Black Walnut.
He’d hitch up his horses (Suffolk Punch, I think; they were quite small for draft horses) when he got an order for a certain kind of wood, and he’d go out and cut down the tree and hitch the horses to it and pull it back and there you go, a month’s worth of groceries paid for.
But because I don’t have time, I’m not going to tell you about Uncle Clifford now.
I know I’m posting this up everywhere I possibly can (except perhaps at Lolebrity.net) but it deserves repeating. Quite an exclusive gathering this will be.
From a bright-eyed Friday, September 4th through to a groggy, shaken Tuesday the 8th morning, we’ll be closeting ourselves away in a secluded BC resort doing nothing but writing. The goal: to create a novel from start to finish in three straight days.
Every year the 3 Day Novel Contest comes around, and every year, something gets in the way. The purpose of this retreat is to ensure that over those three caffeine and stress-packed days, you have nothing else to do but write. And maybe slam some energy drinks.
a resort within an easy ferry ride/drive of Vancouver
Town/City:
Beautiful BC
Phone:
778-235-0592 but email instead, PLEASE
Email:
lorraine.murphy at gmail.com
Meals, shelter, companionship and isolation as you choose: all are included in the price. We’re still in negotiations, but at this point it looks like the four days (checkout 11am Tuesday) will run us about $500, including your 3 Day Novel Contest registration fee of $50.
There is an absolute maximum of 20 attendees, so express your interest sooner rather than later.
Obviously, we’ve yet to lock all the deets down, so consider this a preliminary announcement and we’ll consider your ATTENDING/MAYBE/NOPE RSVP to be equally tentative until everything is ready for launch. We’ll contact everyone then with the official registration link, where you’ll be able to make your reservation via debit, paypal, or credit card. For now, just drop a comment or email to let us know you’re interested and we’ll keep you informed.
Oh, and by the way, we’re not officially affiliated with the 3 Day Novel Contest, we’re just big fans who’ve been thinking about doing this for years.
Encouraging hints are emerging, leading those who’ve enjoyed his fine words even as we’ve missed his fine mind for, say, the last seven or eight years, to hope that the message might yet match the medium in terms of quality. And we are all about the terms of quality, yo. One of the earliest expressions of senility in retreat came in the form of this remarkable video and article:
Christopher Hitchens Gets Waterboarded
From http://www.vf.com. How does it feel to be “aggressively interrogated”? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. Related: “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” from the August 2008 issue
Interview conducted by David Rose and filmed by Arya Surowidjojo.
Note the opening remarks: I don’t know what Hitchens did to piss Graydon Carter off, but Toby Young is lucky he got out of there when he did, from the looks of things.
So, why did getting waterboarded so suddenly turn Hitch‘s mind from self-centered, cranky mush, to something closer to a source of intellectual insight? It’s complicated, but I have an idea.
Actually, that generally goes without saying, doesn’t it? Both parts of that sentence.
So, the idea is this: as we all know, Hitchens is infamously immoderate of appetite(s). Since pre-puberty his brain has been stewed in a tepid chemical bath of scotch, tar, nicotine, preservatives, unmentionables, Red Dye #’s 1 through 642, and whatever it is that middle-class dealers cut their drugs with. Naturally, as time went on the effects got worse, culminating in the interminable Route 66 piece aforementioned, not to mention the neaderthal reactionarianism and spittle-flecked defensiveness that have marked/marred his work ever since.
Through the (admittedly rather drastic, but hey, we’ve got to be realists in this world today, amIrite?) use of the latest in waterboarding technology, thanks to one short session, the patient’s brain is already showing signs of improvement. We at the ol’ raincoaster blog believe this to be the result of nothing less than the cleansing flushing action of a pure water near-drowning, a remarkably successful (and inexpensive) way to restore the brain itself to youth and beauty.
Waterboarding. The Cranial Neti Pot of the Future.
Were we making the terrorists smarter and younger all this time? I see a future for battle-scarred veterans; no longer dependent on a sadly-depleted GI Bill or consigned to a gloomy and inadequate Veteran’s Hospital, nor shunted to the streets, they can now use the skills they developed across the oceans in the millions of American day spas. Spa visits will never be the same.
cross-posted from BOTH raincoastermedia.com and Facebook, because our domain name at the Shebeen Club blog is currently in limbo, and cannot be fixed for a few days.
Building on last month’s successful meeting re-examining the existing publishing model, we’ve lined up renegade publisher and artist Robert Chaplin of independent publisher Library Editions to give us his take on end-running the Old Boy’s Network.
On Monday May 18th at the Shebeen Club Royal Canadian Academician Robert Chaplin will discuss publication and treasure, vis a vis the extinction of codex in the electronic age.
The importance of perfect rhyme and meter with respect to the mainstream absorption of hip hop.
Robert Chaplin was born under a lucky star and has fed pancakes to WhiskeyJacks.
Mr Chaplin will be launching his fourth Library Edition trade hardcover ‘Brussels Sprouts & Unicorns’ Thursday May 21st at Walrus, 18th & Cambie.
Who: Robert Chaplin and the Shebeen Club
What: our monthly meeting
When: 6-9pm Monday, May 18th
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 210 Carrall Street in Vancouver
Deets: $15 includes dinner and a drink, so what are you waiting for?
I’ve been all over the web lately, mostly in 140-character chunks, which is much easier to handle than full blog posts when you are being a digital nomad. I really DO need to sit down for a good straight eight hours at home and just bully through the internet without looking up, although with no power in my apartment that is not currently possible, particularly as my too-clever-for-his-own-good building manager has disabled both the electrical outlets in the hallway near my apartment. He musta seen me run the extension cord from there the last time this happened…
And Hydro wants an amount greater than the total amount owing as a reconnection fee, to which I say; it’s warm outside, I’ve got a wide selection of nearby cafes with free wireless, and a potbellied stove with plenty of wood, so, like, nyah-nyeah.
And while the blog network for which I am paid to write is no longer down completely, it’s developed some peculiarities which make posting to it somewhat more like playing the lottery than like actual professional, you know, work. On the one blog my posts vanish entirely, while on the other they appear, “disappearing’ my co-blogger’s latest three posts and adding her comments to my post.
Overcoming all odds, including how odd it was to hold a meeting in the ONLY spot in all of the West End without functional wifi, I did manage about three or four thousand words yesterday, on the Shebeen Club and Twitter, liveblogging and live-tweeting the surprisingly-interesting Annual General Meeting of the Federation of BC Writers. And then I came home, thought about trotting out to the courtyard where there IS free wifi but also no power, and went to bed instead.
raincoaster 