Sports raincoaster

January 1st, 2007 at 3:38 am It s been that kind of a year. Here s to a better 2007!
I resolve to go out no more than once a week, unless I can afford it (sorry Sean and all at the ).

I resolve to get a nice, self-sufficient quantity of writing and editing clients. I resolve to make a deal for at least one book for an agency client this year. I resolve to work out so I can fit back into those damn jeans.

December 10th, 2006 at 4:10 am Let me know if this works; Gawd knows I tried for years unsuccessfully, but then I didn t have the benefit of these ! Stolen from .
Your parents will probably remember the time you begged for a hamster, and then after a few weeks it sat ignored on your bookshelf with a smelly cage.

You have to understand that having a horse isn’t all fun; sometimes it’s dirty, frustrating, and just plain hard work. Are you sure you want a horse?
Even if you are sure you want a horse you probably won’t be able to convince your parents overnight, or even in a week.

It may take months for them to decide to buy you a horse.
But don’t give up. Many people have to wait until they are in their 30’s, 40’s or even longer before they get their first horse.

Convincing your parents to let you have a horse may be a long term project. You may have to prove you are committed and you might have to make some compromises and sacrifices
And so on, all responsible-like. Not a word about getting blackmail photos or hiding their cigarettes.

But if these tips fail, try those two. In my experience you can get almost anything that way.
Well certainly didn t last long, did it?

Thanks to a nameless Denton staffer who obviously seeks to flout his/her overlord s will in all things, I have been reinstated as a Gawker commenter after y until I checked hotmail.
Next time , people.

Yes. There are those among you who know that I have lived in Winterpeg. Indeed, one of the earliest pictures of raincoaster and her sistren shows them standing atop of a snowbank.

This would not be remarkable, except that the snowbank was sufficiently tall that we were at the same height as the power lines. Verily, proximity to power has long since been superceeded by becoming the power itself.
Some additional perspective: Once I fell through the crust of snow on my shortcut home from school and nearly froze to death; I was in the middle of the field for several hours, in snow up to my armpits, unable to climb out, growing increasingly weak, and the sun had long since gone down, when the Avon Lady, a figure who looms in my memory and in legend as large and as benevolent as all the saints ever invented by those heathen Catholics, heard my plaintive yelps and rescued me.

Talk about generating brand loyalty; my mother doubled her orders from that day onward.
In any case, from via Fark comes sad news: it appears that the current occupants of Winterpeg are perhaps more Snowbirdian than Winterpeggian in inclination, and have winterfunked it.
They have cancelled the Polar Bear Swim; it s too damn cold.

Now, you d think, if you were as smart as you look, that they d know, from the fact that it s called a Polar Bear Swim, and the fact that it is held in Winnipeg, and the fact that it is, in fact and in actuality, held in DECEMBER, that it would be a mite frosty. Indeed, if you did figure thusly, you d be a helluva lot smarter than the students and faculty at the University of Manitoba who set this up, then bailed, despite the handy proximity of several special-occasion hot tubs, trucked in for the event.
While the fact that the temperature onsite is estimated to be -32 Celsius lends some credibility to the idea that these people can, in fact, think, still it must be said that you d figure anybody stupid/drunk enough to sign up for this gonad-shrivelling stunt must be stupid/drunk enough to go through with it.

Even without the chill factor I can see that they have no balls.
Many are the calamities which live in infamy long after the demise of the shortsighted individuals who perpetrated them. Such a nameless and forgotten , slinking desperately into the black fog of obscurity is to blame for one of Man s greatest losses, the unthinking extinction of the noble and magnificent Longhorse.

First immortalized in sculpture by the lost culture of the , the Longhorse could well be the eldest of humanity s allies in the struggle for civilization. Often carrying an entire family on its back, the Longhorse gave mobility to cultures which had too long been limited to the scope a man could walk in a day. Truly, the domestication and partnership of this wonderous animal was the spur to the spread of civilization itself; without the Longhorse, we might all be living in the delta of Mesopotamia, to this very day.

Through migration, conquest, crusade and exploration, the Longhorse accompanied humanity as it spread across the globe. These gentle giants supplied more than transportation: their milk nourished thousands of generations of children, its unique mineral content helping them grow strong bones, remarkably keen night vision, and an extremely sophisticated taste in music. Indeed, it has been hypothesized that the rise of disco and the career of Vanilla Ice would have been impossible, had present generations not come to maturity lacking this greatest of all dietary supplements.

The Longhorse successfully made the journey to the New World, thriving on the sweet grass of the prairies, but alas, the great herds of wild Longhorses that our ancestors knew, so vast that they sported names such as The Buckskin River, The Chestnut Forest, The Lake of Limos (the Limousine was a French breed of Longhorse) and The Ocean of Woodys, were destined for an unfortunate end.
It was in the great belching industrial cauldron that was Detroit of the early 20th Century that a man, a small man, a nameless man, a bureaucrat, proposed a plan that will live in infamy as long as racial memory and God grant. Realizing that the Longhorse was, at the time, the greatest threat to the newly-invented market for the motor car, this unnameable creature proposed a horrible bounty.

To show off the power of his latest invention, had pitted the contraption against two draft horses in a pulling contest, and the iron horse won. The sinister proposal which the bureaucrat put forth was nothing short of pure evil marketing genius: he suggested the first trade-in.
Two Longhorses could be exchanged for one of the new mechanical devices, called a Deux Chevaux Longues, or a Douche-o for short.

A mania gripped the nation as formerly humble, working-class people blithely traded away their truest allies in a mad rush for mere fashionable machinery. The unfortunate castoffs were ground up and turned into luncheon meat. Within two decades, there was not a Longhorse left in the Northern Hemisphere, and only rumours and the bitter wind of memory on the great Pampas.

Recently, has featured the archival collection of esteemed Longhorse photographer , from which we bring you these glorious images. Sadly, without so much as DNA from which to work, it is doubtful that even the greatest minds of science will be able to resurrect Man s greatest partner and the bearer and consort of history, the noble Longhorse.
Donations in the Longhorse s memory may be made to the raincoaster fund, care of the blogmistress.

See email for complete details, some restrictions may apply, only you can prevent forest fires.
November 27th, 2006 at 4:53 am from the archive, but it could have been written tonight for that matter.
As I slump here in front of my blue, glowing screen, coughing like Tuberculosis Mary, occasionally wiping mysterious dots of liquid off the monitor (even though they sure are purty with the little rainbows around the edges) and with, apparently, no lining left in my throat at all, I remember the good old days.

Like last month.When I could still get outside and go for a skate. Sometimes I encounter something that gives me faith in civilization, and the Vancouver Seawall is one of those things.

Other times I stare out at crowds and think just look at them all walking on their hind legs like that but that s a story for another day. Like I said, the Seawall I like. Especially now that I can get to it within five minutes, three if the lights are right.

One of the best things about living on the Downtown EastSide is the fine sense of proportion developed by the cops. It s technically illegal to rollerblade down a major road, or ANY sidewalk, let alone skate down Main Street itself right past the Cop Shop and Court House with an off-leash collie trucking along the sidewalk, pacing you. Once I was spotted by a total keener of a cop who gave me a disgusted look and signaled me over to the sidewalk, no doubt to give me a thick sheaf of tickets, so I thought, as I often do, let s see if showing off will do us any good.

I skated slowly over and as I did I said to the dog, Lady, left side, and the dog obediently went to the left side of the sidewalk. I said, Lady, right side, and the dog obediently got up and went to the right side of the sidewalk. I said, Lady, middle, and the dog went to the middle of the sidewalk and stood there looking up at the cop with her big innocent brown eyes.

I refer to the collie, you understand. The cop gave me an even more disgusted look and waved us away. Face it, your run of the mill Border Collie is probably smarter than Jamie Graham.

 Not to mention they have bigger fish to fry in this neighborhood.From my house you can get to Waterfront Road easily, and follow that under Canada Place till it joins up with the new part of the Seawall, between there and Stanley Park. There s half a dead rat on the road right beside Crab Park, but it s flat enough you can skate right over it.

Or you can go the other way, onto the old Indy track and join up with the Seawall at Science World; that s nice, because then you can go the south route to Granville Island or head to Stanley Park again from the other side, only instead of passing through pancaked, dried rats you get to go through Yaletown. I for one always enjoy the sight of mountain bikes that cost more than a year s housing and get a cheap laugh out of Porche SUV s, especially when used to ferry a 95 pound woman. Some jokes stay funny, you know what I m telling you?

Once, I was skating through Yaletown by the playing fields, skiing a little bit on the downhills and getting a great bang out of the experience now that I was pretty good, feeling all Malibu Barbie in my pink flowered Pucci-style Victoria s Secret Miracle Bikini, and I passed a couple of guys skating the other way. They turned and stared. One said to the other, Now you see why this is better than ice skating?

November 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm Seriously, who died? I went past the cop shop and all the flags are at half-mast.
The blogosphere reports nothing.

The CBC reports nothing.
Are they  or something?
Of course, I m one to talk.

I use my manuals to even out my wobbly desk.
That blithe disregard of indispensable training materials bears not at all on my ability to produce such items, should you be in a hiring mood, by the way. I have, in fact, produced a procedures manual for an authorized Honda dealer and service shop, so I feel the pain of the poor sod who poured the sweat of his brow and the expense account of his employer into the production of the manual for the exquisite Lotus Elise which you see here.

I handed them the tire tools and opened the Owner s Manual to the jacking instructions so they would be clear. We went over all the instructions and they assured me I was in good hands.