Sometimes it’s vengeful dames and whiskey sours. Welcome to my world:
Stolen from Gawker, which is quite the Kids in the Hall fanclub this weekend.
PS: Kids in the Hall were formed in 1984. Oh, GOD I’m old.
Category Archives: writing
NIN NIGHT
Well, my friends, once again the day’s work has been cleared away, the snarky comments have been left on various blogs that had it coming, the forum troll has been ratted out, and it’s finally time for me to do my own blogging.
At three in the morning.
Given that I have a meeting in about six hours for which I need to be at least presentable-esque if not actually, you know, showered and properly dressed (I mean, it’s like one or the other; what do you people want from me?) it’s not going to be an epic evening of blogging chez raincoaster, I can tell you.
What I can also tell you is that tonight Nine Inch Nails released a single for free download. It’s called Discipline, it’s very catchy, it’s not their most profound work, I found it via the RadReport, it will not play on anything other than Windows Media Player (remix it? Dude, I can’t even open it on decent software! What next, Realplayer?) and I started a new link challenge based on it.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot is a link challenge? you ask if not in so many or those specific words.
A link challenge is this:
Look, have you ever had a boring job? I have one now. I mean, it would be sort of fun, if yes, kind of soul-killing, if my computer would stop crashing in the middle of it. But as it is, the suspense given to the whole operation does the exact opposite of what suspense does in movies: it takes all the fun out. “If I open a tab on Mollygood, is that gonna bring the whole thing down?” These are the thoughts which fill my hours. Makes me feel like hitting a tab of something else, and opening a can of something else besides.
Where was I? Oh yes, still on painkillers.
A link challenge is this: I, along with several others in the seamy underbelly of gossip blogs, get paid to make link posts, posts which consist of nothing other than links to other blogs. It’s the circle jerk manifested, and one of the reasons Google gave us all a big write-down if we got too many links from the same places. I guess Sergey and Other Guy don’t want us to inbreed or something.
But link blogging, for all that it requires much reading (or skimming) of gossip blogs, is not exactly a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporania. It’s a grind. And so the undisciplined mind, not that we’ve seen any around these parts, begins to look for ways to toy with it.
This approach is not recommended for hardware installations, even though I found that both a coffee bag clip and a Nike cross-trainer were indispensable in putting together my latest computer system. But of that we shall not speak…
So, we found some ways to toy with it. Seth started it, with his Three Word Links. I took up the challenge.
I took it down to two. EG:
Bar raised (Defamer)
Hammer dropped (AgentBedhead)
Lohan smashed (CrazyDaysAndNights)
Rick, rolled (Guardian)
Rowling potty? (Celebitchy)
Hunk drunk (ASocialitesLife)
Seth returned the volley, garnering some complaints in the process. I don’t have to worry about such things; nobody reads my links!
-
I think I would prefer headlines the somewhat suggest what I’ll be reading about, instead of clicking on half of the ones I don’t really want to read.
-
@dluvvly: Just wait til no-word week! You’ll be clicking blind at thin air!
-
@Seth: Defamer has a mime troupe? (PS: Ever seen Alexei Sayle’s bit about mime? Brilliant.)
-
@Seth: Webdings, baby.
Aaaaaand the following Monday I came back with a One-Word link post. Somewhat obscure, bloodless, yes, but technically impressive in its own way, rather like a Russian ice dancing routine. Technorati doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the links say anyway.
Supprtd! (Defamer)
Suckaz! (Valleywag)
Accurst! (Gawker)
Dichotomous! (AgentBedhead)
Saviour! (Celebitchy)
Accident! (CrazyDaysAndNights)
Soap-On-A-Rope! (CelebritySmack)
Faceplant! (DListed)
Pooh! (Cityrag)
Duddy! (TheBlemish)
JagermICEter! (SeriouslyOMGWTF)
And so on…Thank GOD for alt text, that’s all I have to say about that.
Where do we go from there? Particularly as I have a highly unspectacular collection of webdings and clipart?
We go to LINK ALERT NIN.
Yes, every link is the title of a Nine Inch Nails song. Who says I can’t declare it an international holiday if I damn well feel like it? It is now nearly 3:30 in the morning and there have to be some compensations, dammit!
Katie Holmes vs Victoria Beckham: pretty hate machines (Defamer)
With teeth: Hillary Duff’s veneers (CelebrityCosmeticSurgery)
Why does James Frey get all the love in the literary world? (AgentBedhead)
Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend is something Ashley Olsen can never have (CelebritySmack)
That’s what Richie Sambora gets (for driving drunk) (CelebrityDirt)
You know what you are, Paris Hilton? (CelebWarship)
Help me, I am in fashion hell (CandyKirby)
Happiness in slavery available to Ashton Kutcher at my house any time! (DailyStab)
Sanctified: yes, Beyonce and Jay-Z are married (ImNotObsessed)
Natalie Portman down in it, not quite down with it (WebstersIsMyBitch)
So far, one comment, positive.
We shall see if Seth takes up the challenge: I have no idea how he feels about rage-emo. As for AgentBedhead, I think I know a fellow sucker for Trent when I see one. I sent the invite. Time will tell. Even if no-one takes me up on it, it’s okay.
I’ve still got my poetry.
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
Pulp Fiction, by William Shakespeare
Okay, so now we’re up to (I think) five worthwhile things on LiveJournal. This just might be the greatest of them all: nothing less than Quentin Tarantino‘s genre-busting post-intellectual masterpiece Pulp Fiction
And he would have, you know. Everybody knows what playwrights will do for money.
From Metaquotes:
ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.
J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.
: : : : : : : : : : :
Shebeen Club: Gonzo Vancouver
The Shebeen Club: Gonzo Vancouver!
When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Where: the Shebeen, 7 Gaoler’s Mews, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street, Vancouver BC
How Much: $15 includes dinner: limited to 40
What: mingling, door prizes, eating, drinking, fornicating!
Who: Heather Watson (Civixen), Gonzo Journalist and founding columnist at Terminal City
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Well, we probably won’t have that, but we will have a great introduction to indigenous Vancouver Gonzo journalism with the hyperkinetic and internationally infamous Heather Watson, alias Civixen (http://www.civixen.com/ and http://cvxn.tumblr.com). Coming at you straight down the Mojo Wire at 95 miles per hour, it’ll be an evening of raw, uncut literary power. Bare-knuckling her way up the ladder from the wide open frontier of the Wild West to the mean streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Heather has seen it all, done most of it, and has a damn hell solid alibi for everything else.
Bio: Heather Watson created the satirical op/ed column “Civixen,” which became a source of enjoyment and irritation for political bright lights and dim bulbs alike (including the current mayor) in the four years it ran in two local alternative newspapers. Besides a brief tenure as editor-in-chief of the 30,000-circulation Gonzo-inspired Terminal City (now sadly defunct), Heather Watson also presented a popular seminar on Gonzo Journalism at the request of the Western arm of the Canadian University Press in 2006. She is a published poet, a produced playwright and her essay “Vancouver Today” is featured in the Time Out Guide to Vancouver. In addition to a few years at Vancouver’s éminence grise of independent bookstores, Duthie Books, some of her more surreal side jobs have included voice-over and motion capture for a video game and six years spent hand modeling toys from Star Wars figures to Barbies in dozens of TV commercials.
Meet and Mingle 7-7:30
Listen and Learn 7:30-8
Drown Sorrows and Vow to Buck the System 8-9 or, really, the rest of your life.
blog fodder made easy: how to write epics!
We’ve all been there: When you open the Write Post page, the void looks also into you.
Here is the quick and dirty version of how to feed your blog on a majah scale: with EPICS! Who doesn’t like epics? They’re epic! Epically epic!
First: you need a setting. Rip one off from an existing epic and call it une hommage. We’ve got Biblical
I’ve got The Book of Murder
Now you’ll need characters, several of them. Just try to write an epic without any character! We call that a Livejournal.
‘Nuff said.
Now, if you get both the characters and the setting from the same epic, what you’ve got is a retelling (we call it “retelling” or “reworking of the archetype,” we do not call it a “ripoff” for that makes our lawyers quite defensive and we just can’t deal with that right now). And we’re not writing How To Write A Retelling here, are we? We’re talking about writing a brand-new epic! So you’ve got to steal your setting and your characters from, and this is the key, different epics, or even one epic and one Symbolist poem or one epic and an old radio drama or something. That could be good. They had the best hair on those old radio dramas.
If you still can’t find any characters you like, we recommend stealing them from this handy-dandy Characters for an Epic Tale chart from Tom Gauld (via Edenborough).
As for plot, just use one of these ready-made plot generators. Don’t say we never did nuthin for ya.
- romance plot generator
- Steven Seagal movie plot generator, and what is a Steven Seagal movie if not epic? Eh?
- Dan Brown plot generator for those who aspire to best-sellerdom
- Late night cable movie generator
- villainous plot generator
- plot twist generator
- the utterly random plot generator, which I swear the gods are using on my life right this moment
If you find your well running dry even so, just have a man come through the door with a gun OR add bo stick wielding flying cephalopod ninjas. Everyone loves the big squids! After that, who cares how you wind it up as long as the hero ends up with the girl and the villain escapes to cause sequels another day?
And, most importantly, it is a truth universally acknowledged that in the online world, every epic blog post must contain a direct link to http://raincoaster.com.
: : : : : : : : : : :
raincoaster 