and for Week Five, we present:

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Story of my life, really

Story of my life, really

Week Five’s plan, in case you’re wondering, is mastering that whole Getting Out of the House thang. Which really means I’ve gotta finish that Bastille Day post about Le Chef Pierre and Le Frolic, because I’ve been too guilt-wracked over not getting it done to actually show up there since. And apparently he is as big an Armagnac aficionado as I am, so this could get expensive.

By the way, The Frolic is also the title of a really seriously creepy story by John Ligotti, one of the most underappreciated authors in the English language. And now, apparently, also an independent film. Which has nothing to do with anything, but is a fact. Or series of facts. So.

Anyway, it’s a fact that I can’t stay here another weekend listening to the rad patio party the people up the hill have every Friday and Saturday without going fucking insane. I realized in Week Two that it was entirely possible to piss your life away going to work, coming home, and doing nothing else but eating, sleeping, and reading Google+. That, however, is not the life I left Vancouver to find.

Operation Global Media Domination: The Google+ Situation

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well in fact I AM a big deal on Google+

well in fact I AM a big deal on Google+

You know how we hate to toot our own horn around these parts, but this must be said: apparently I’m kind of a big deal on Google+

which is really rather amusing, considering I’ve been banned twice in two days and am still banned. Nonetheless, here’s what my stats look like today:

ReferrerView

sGoogle168

google.co.uk50

google.ca17

google.com.au8

StumbleUpon8

google.com.br8

gawker.com8

google.ro7

google.nl6

google.no4

Meaning that even though I can’t do my usual self-promotional link-dropping, and all my existing droppings have been mopped up from the Goog, other people are spreading my droppings all over the horizon. It’s kinda like Farmville, only I WIN!

And as to why I’ve been banned twice, that’s easy. I’m raincoaster, right? Over five million blog readers have encountered me as raincoaster, so when I started up in G+ I started as “rain coaster.” Now, I wasn’t stupid; the rules clearly say you MUST identify yourself by your real name, so I opened the account not from raincoaster at gmail dot com but from real.name at gmail dot com, and in the space provided for “other names” I put Real Name. I mean, why would you HAVE that space if you weren’t allowed to have more than one name, right? Or as this very wise person put it:

I actually got clipped by Google a week ago due to using the name CZ Unit. Which was interesting, since they asked me to use the name I am commonly known by.

I had to explain over the course of a week that my friends know me as CZ, family knows me as CZ, people in real life know me as CZ. I even asked my friends “What name pops into your mind when you think about me”? “What name do you call me when you see me across a room”

In both cases (and others) the results were unanimous: CZ. Even the person who turned me in used to call me CZ back in 1987 (yes, I have the NextMail with voice attachment

I had to point them to my LJ (cz-unit), something I have been keeping since 2002. 3,000 posts; probably not a sock puppet.

I had to have my friends send emails of support and they were even having notarized letters signed on my behalf saying that they knew me as CZ and only as CZ.

And I had to scan in a copy of my lunch bag as evidence that yes: My wife even writes “CZ’s Lunch” on my bag. What more positive, tangible ID would one need?

All of this brings up two points: First is who defines a person? Is it your parents? Your Job? The Government? Google? Your friends? You?

Second is just how wise is it to outsource your friend support network? I was on G+ for a week when I got clipped, and I still have my LJ as a backup. How about people who don’t have that? What are they going to do when their network vanishes due to upsetting the provider?

Very interesting stuff. I wrote about it on my LJ, it has been an interesting experience. But it does help me to answer the age old question:

“Who Am I?”

That’s a very, very wise post. My own experience was a little less profound, since I’m used to dealing with this question All the Damn Time.

The first time I was banned, there was no notification at all, and if someone hadn’t posted the direct link to the appeal process in the help forum, I wouldn’t have been able to ask for my account back. Google deleted that helpful forum post, by the way. Why, if they don’t want to be evil? It asked for links to places I was mentioned as “raincoaster,” and they had to be along the lines of registered accounts at Google-owned sites like YouTube or media mentions, that kinda thing. I gave them this list (stalkers, here’s your dream material!):

http://facebook.com/raincoaster
http://www.linkedin.com/in/raincoaster
https://twitter.com/#!/raincoaster
http://www.flickr.com/people/raincoaster/
http://www.facebook.com/raincoastermedia
http://empireavenue.com/RAINCOASTER
http://www.wordcampvictoria.ca/2010/04/featured-speaker-raincoaster/
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/profile/raincoaster
http://www.peerindex.net/raincoaster
http://ahamedia.ca/category/raincoaster-media/
http://gawker.com/people/raincoaster5/
http://1st.shortyawards.com/category/raincoaster
http://trueslant.com/people/raincoaster/
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol4_3/v4-3-article70-raincoaster.html
http://www.surveymagnet.com/2011/01/lolebrity-interview/

raincoaster is a god

http://www.mainwriter.com/2010/02/09/questions-over-lunch-with-lorraine-murphy-raincoaster/
http://lanyrd.com/2011/northern-voice/speakers/

Vancouver Blogger Profile: Lorraine Murphy

http://emmerogers.com/tag/raincoaster/
http://carocat.co.uk/2009/08/14/twitlight-who-are-you-raincoaster/

 

Is that enough, Google??? IS IT??? For god’s sake, the LinkedIn and Facebook vanity links are “raincoaster.”

Google emailed me after I filled in the form to tell me that changing my name from “rain coaster” to what I had on my LinkedIn Profile would be acceptable. My LinkedIn profile says “Real (raincoaster) Name,” so that’s what I did (subbing in quotation marks for parenthesis). Last night, they suspended my account AGAIN.

I guess something like 20 links is still not enough?

When are they gonna suspend Xeni Jardin, who also isn’t using her birth name?

And, as women are disproportionate users of pseudonyms (for “what are you wearing, baby” issues), this has become a gender issue. Yeah, I know it’s old skool and boring to call out sexism, but even if that was not the intention, that has been the result.

Don’t be evil. Bitches.

Servicey Sunday!

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Southeast Asian Sea Life: Memorize and BE PREPARED

Southeast Asian Sea Life: Memorize and BE PREPARED

I hope that clears up any confusion about spotting the mimic octopus in the wild. Simply put: you can’t.

If you wonder, on occasion, why this blog is quite so tentactular, think about this; the Mimic Octopus was discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi. In 1997 I was swimming in the ocean off the coast of Sulawesi and THESE THINGS WERE DOWN THERE, probably looking like other things or like no things at all but they were DOWN THERE THE WHOLE TIME BEING STEALTHY AND WE DIDN’T KNOW IT.

Goddam.

Seriously, this is why I don’t swim anymore. Who needs aliens when we have cephalopods?

A Woman, A Plan

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A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan

I haven’t been here long, and I’m finding it a HUGE adjustment (not big: HUGE, all caps, yo) so being as organized and productive as I am I decided to do One Thing Per Week, no more.

Week One: reserved for being sick. Alas, I was sick as a dog, and that being a dog that was really sick, and not to mention waking up in the middle of the night and having heart attack after heart attack seeing the light in the sky and thinking I’d slept in. I gather from work sleeping in is not such a big deal that they tell you to pack your knives and go back to the decadent, sleeping-inner, southlands from whence you came, but I’d rather not find out first-hand, if you know what I mean.

Week Two: reserved for freaking out and drinking. If you’ve ever freaked out, I don’t think I need to explain this to you. Drinking up here is different from drinking down in Vangroover; you’re much less likely to run into, say, Ryan Gosling, and much more likely to run into, say, an elder woman who tries to tell you in a language you’ve never heard before that you’re gonna get hit by a car if you don’t stop typing away on your iPod while walking down the street. And who could disagree? But it’s not exactly partying at Bar None on Raj’s tab. Speaking of which, if you’ve never done it, this is what it looks like:

Week Three: reserved for exercising and getting out of the apartment. With mixed success; in part, this was inspired by the fact that the door to work was locked on Monday and I had no other options than to toddle to the art department next door, do as much as I could on my iPhone, and then go for a stroll. Actually started the Sun Run training plan, so Go Me and all that uplifty shit. I managed to pick the least interesting road on which to run, and ended up in some Trailer Park Boys netherland that caused even DTES me to turn around and leave, lest someone try to hook me up with their Uncle Daddy.

Week Four: is reserved for regularizing the blogging schedule, which is ironic as the Manolo, my blogging boss, has suggested I take August entirely off. Oh well.

Tag, I’m It

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banksy is a little tatty

banksy is a little tatty

It’s like climbing into the Wayback Machine and hitting “Random,” doing another of these. I haven’t done a tag/meme/questionnaire like this in literally years, and became somewhat notorious for getting tagged and giving a world-weary shrug and a heartfelt, “I’m so sorry. I’ve made it a policy not to do these; I just get so many requests, you see” which, I’m sure, earned me quite a tongue-lashing once I was good and out of earshot, and truly it was no more than I deserved.

An Internet Celebrity is the servant of her commenters, after all.

But I’m pressed for time lately, I just returned from a 60 minute walk/jog and I have my link rounups to do and then have to wake up and go to work again in 7 hours, so what the hell: it’s an easy post!

Thanks(?) to TeamOyeniyi for tagging me.

Most Beautiful Post

Then vs Now: the Decline and Fall from an Equine Perspective which is a little meditation on the way in which humanity expresses itself in the way it sees animals. And the ways in which that has NOT improved since the Romantic Era.

I remember at one Northern Voice party, everyone was invited to stand up and read out their best posts. I couldn’t read my best post, because I believe there are only 17 original-to-me words in the whole thing, counting the alt text. If your best post can be read aloud and not lose anything, you’re not blogging: you’re writing radio scripts. Later, one of the organizers said I should have stood up and said that instead.

Most Popular Post

Hmmm, depends how you analyze this. The Mummified Fairy post has over two thousand comments. The Fart Tax post was named “Best of the Web” by the Guardian in January of 2007 (it wasn’t an annual award, it was just “what’s cool today” but GOD DOESN’T IT SOUND FANTASTIC?). My About Page is the most popular thing this week, for no known reason. For a long time I was #6 on Google if you searched for Beaver Shots (mother would be SO proud). Banksy Strikes Again got more hits than any other post ever in one day: 22,000.

Most Helpful Post

Helpful. “Helpful.” I’m not quite sure what this word means, but if education is helpful I guess you could say I schooled the Albanians in the comments thread here: Review O’ The Day: AA Gill on Barnes Grill.

A Post whose success surprised me

The Banksy in Birmingham post. Whodathunk something about transgressive street art would oust Britney Spears Sex Tape as the #1 post on my blog?

Most Controversial Post

Hmm, depends if you’re Albanian or not. The only two times I got requests from lawyers to take something down were a request to remove someone’s name and address in my mirror of the LA Fitness shooter’s diary, and in a post called UK News: How to Get Away With Blowing Up Three Cars in a Huge Fireball Without Being Suspected of Terrorism. Since the fireball apparently never happened, nor the explosion, and there was no point leaving an innocent man’s name up there to draw hatred and death threats, I complied with the requests to remove the name and although I didn’t remove the second post, I did update it and make a new one explaining what really happened.

A Post that Didn’t get the Attention I felt it deserved

Ekranoplan: World’s Strangest Airplane. Okay, not everyone’s into aeroporn, but this thing is AMAZING and it was kept a complete secret until the space program found this enormous, mysterious thing that moved…but it couldn’t be a plane…but it was enormous…but how? Why? How long had these things been around? How did they move? What were they FOR?

Post I’m Most Proud Of

Date with a Devil: my account of meeting serial killer Willy Pickton. I’ve come under relentless pressure not to tell this story, from all kinds of people you’d think should support me, and I’m proud not to have been silenced. I have the right to testify to what happened to me, and if you or metafilter doesn’t like it, well, no wonder you’re Forever Alone.

Tagging Five

Oh god. Virtually anyone I tag will have tagged me at some point and been turned down. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, start your Schadenfreude. I tag TedMorrison,  MomFog, NedHepburn, NecroticHijinks, and the Manolo.