Operation Global Media Domination: the Divine Situation

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As I’ve mentioned elsewhere online, there is the very slight chance that this could go to my head:

raincoaster is a god. Hire her. Immediately.

In related news, I think I’ve sent out about 700 emails today from three different email addresses, plus Facebook invitations for another 500 or so, for two different events. Oh wait: THREE different events.

Event #1 is the Social Media Club of Vancouver’s Meet the Geek dinner this coming Tuesday which, if you’re in Vancouver, you really shouldn’t miss. It’s a custom menu in a private dining room underneath Blood Alley, to raise money to help finish the Downtown Eastside social media documentary With Glowing Hearts. The film-makers and some of the stars will be in attendance, as will some of Vancouver’s finest geeks, who will be happy to demystify the world of tech over a plate of good nosh. If you ask nicely, they might even give you a peek at their iPads.

Event #2 is The Shebeen Club’s Going Pro: Getting Real in the Writing World with Sylvia Taylor on Monday, the 27th (a week later than usual). This month, we’ll have a restaurant all to ourselves as we move to the Everything Cafe on Pender Street. Sylvia will talk about the issue of professionalism and approaching your literary career as a business, which is particularly necessary in an economic climate like ours.

Event #3 is raincoaster media’s full day Social Media for NonProfits workshop that I’m teaching with Wes Regan of Building Opportunities With Business. This is the one that helps me keep a roof over my head. Which one did I do last? That’s right.

In also-related news, today I was interviewed by Gillian Shaw of the Vancouver Sun about the Meet the Geek dinner and her post should be up tomorrow online and hopefully in the paper this Saturday, and tomorrow it’s going to be on Breakfast Television as well. So, now I just have two more blog posts to do and then I can go to bed.

Oh, one more thing: Eight people on four continents all send me this with “Saw it and thought of you” comments. Let no-one say I don’t have a strong brand identity.

After seeing the success of the Old Spice commercials the mighty and terrible Cthulhu decided to sell his own scented products. Great Old Spice body wash; stop thinking in only four dimensions.

Watch Out!

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Genuine Fake Watches
Image by orangejack via Flickr

I posted this in the technical support forum first, for reasons that probably have more to do with the fact that I’ve had three Martinis than any other ones, but where was I? Oh yes, stories about my mother’s time in Saudi Arabia are popular, as are Schadenfreude tales, so I thought you’d like this.

My mother was working in Saudi Arabia and got a boyfriend there, an American CIA agent whose day job was teaching battlefield communications and whose night job was running a private casino/brothel for blackmail purposes of the US government. She figured it out when all his paycheques came from the Pentagon, and I figured it out when I heard he’d been in prison on a 20-year sentence, was released when he agreed to serve in Vietnam, and that his CO in Saudi in the 80’s was (coincidentally?) also his CO in Vietnam. As for the blackmail, it went “hello, PrinceWhatever, we have photos. We would like the development contract for X province”.

Anyway they bought a fake marriage certificate from a Filipino forger who was, apparently, legendary in the days before desktop publishing and swung through Riyadh once a year (she briefly considered buying me a Harvard PhD but it was $500 and she cheaped out, which is why I still have to scramble for a living BUT I’M SO OVER THAT) and lived as a married couple. I met that guy’s son many years later in a small town in Indonesia, but that’s a tale for another time.

My mother brought Jerry From Alabama, her boyfriend, back to Vancouver to meet her daughters. Well, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree and we’re both very opinionated my sister and me. And while my sister isn’t a snob, I did get that gene, plus her share. My sister somehow got the “obliging” gene (and GOD knows where she got it from) so she adopted his accent instantly and he could NOT figure out why he liked her better than me, right from the start. But then, maybe he was just psychic.

So, we’re sitting at dinner with Jerry, and my mother has obviously told him I’m a snob (taking credit for her ,work? I dunno), and at some point something happens And. Dude looks me in the eye, takes off his watch, hands it to me (WTF?!) and says, “What do you think of that?”

I look at it. It’s a “Cartier” but the second hand ticks, it doesn’t sweep. I turn it over, and it has the classic beefy Cartier back.

I say, honestly, “That’s a really good fake.”

He collapses in mortification, and my mother collapses in laughter.

Goats eh?

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Know Your Goat, just, you know, not THAT WAY.

Know Your Goat, just, you know, not in THAT WAY

This is a totally, completely, utterly gross story and you will love it. You will curl into the fetal position and cup your hands protectively over your bits, but you will like this story.

It’s a true story. For once. It comes from my mother, who was in charge of medical records at the King Fahd Hospital in Riyadh in the 80’s.

Saudi males who are not married are not supposed to notice they have penises. Seriously, they’re supposed to just pretend it doesn’t exist. So when a Saudi male who was not married was admitted the the hospital where my mother worked and the diagnosis was “ruptured penis” naturally all the typists in medical records were DYING to know how it happened. They were all Westerners and somewhat starved for scandalous sex gossip of this type, or even the sight of a penis, if only in their minds’s eyes.

What made it even more bizarre and in-your-face was, the doctors told him he needed some exercise and so every day he would get out of his room and go for a s…l…o…w… walk up the hallway. Down the hallway. Up the hallway. Down the hallway. With a determined look on his face and his legs bowed as if he were riding a Percheron.

My mother was not a shy woman. She was not what you could ever have called retiring. Or bashful.

So, one day she saw the doctor in charge of that patient in the hallway and walked up to him and said, “Doctor So-and-So, my typists can’t even concentrate to do their jobs, they are so distracted by this. How did it happen?”

He was used to my mother. He knew those western women were crazy and my mother was the craziest of all of them and, thus, not to be trifled with.

He looked up the hall. He looked down the hall. He looked up the hall. He looked down the hall. He leaned in and whispered, “The goat bolted.”

Operation Global Media Domination: The Dogfight Situation

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Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Long, long ago, on June 25, 2006 in fact, I uploaded my first video to YouTube. Then what happened? Then, I basically ignored it for four years.

That video has now had 824,393 views.

I’m impressed, to say the least: my other videos average less than 100 views, and that’s even if I put them in my blogs. And god knows, I can’t take credit for how well this has done Mind you, I got this one while it was very fresh (it’s not original, by any means, but it is public domain). I was cruising around Fark, as I have been wont to do whenever I wont for diversion and there it was. “P47 guncamera footage from WWII, recently declassified” and I clicked, saw that it was just what it claimed to be and amazing footage, saw additionally that only a few people had watched the video so far, downloaded that puppy without hesitation, and uploaded it to YouTube.

So, basically: it was fresh, it was fascinating, and it was named what it was about: WWII Dogfights in Colour. I put it in: Category: News & Politics. Tags: War, Planes, WWII, Dogfight.

Since then, I’ve had a Brazilian television show ask me if they could use it (I passed along the contact deets for the original uploading and if I still had them I’d add them to the Notes) and just got an offer from an LA music company of cash money to add their music as a soundtrack. Very cool, and actually quite smart of them. As long as the song they want to add isn’t all “Go Nazis” or whatever, I see no reason not to say yes.

You’re no doubt curious to see the video, so I shall not make you wait any longer. It’s silent, but it’s deadly.

And don’t neglect the comments; there’s an interesting and quite intelligent discussion of air strategy. I’m proud that my video has broken the trend for YouTube comments of unspeakable stupidity.

Avatars of Feminine Power: Bad Role Models

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Endora was the shizznit and don't you even TRY to say different or I'll turn you into a newt. A special-needs newt

Endora was the shizznit and don't you even TRY to say different or I'll turn you into a newt. A special-needs newt

One of an ongoing series featuring Angie Dickinson, Suzanne Pleshette, Catherine Deneuve, Catwoman, Britney Spears, Mylene Farmer, Vanessa Paradis, an Iraqi police woman in training, Rembrandt’s Pallas Athena, Barbie, and now, Endora from Bewitched.

I always wanted to grow up to be her, and I think I may have finally succeeded. Now to get my hands on that wardrobe!

Pucci Galore!

What I like about her is…seriously, everything. I even dyed my hair red for a couple of years! She takes no prisoners, takes no shit, takes names and kicks ass, and she was right: her daughter married a total dork. Derwood was a feeb. I’m sorry, all you Derwoods or Darvins or Dickwads or Whatevers out there, but you’re just not good enough and it would be cruel to let you go through life in a fog of self-delusion, correct?

Endora would NEVER stoop to psychoactives. Other than Martinis, of course

Endora would NEVER stoop to psychoactives. Other than Martinis, of course

Do you know the Sedona Method? Its aim is to give insecure, dweebish people a feeling of accomplishment. Regardless of whether or not they have, in fact, accomplished anything.

You can see why Endora and I would have a problem with that, yes? [clue for Derwoods: say Yes]

So, from Endora I have taken my vociferous contempt for the inferior, my belief that if one is magical enough one can get away with anything, and my taste for earrings of true splendiferositude.

Endora enjoys Champagne mainly on the plane over Spain

Endora enjoys Champagne mainly on the plane over Spain

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Endora and me: can we help it if we're fabulous?

Endora and me: can we help it if we're fabulous?