Charlotte Gill | author site & blog

April 20, 2006

Easter-time guilty pleasures, in retrospect

Nothing goes better with chocolatey bunnies, Marshmallow Peeps and a hangover than photos of Mariah Carey in Chewbacca boots and Chloe Sevigny in a sweatshort jumpsuit plus Roman sandals. Go Fug Yourself.

April 15, 2006

Industrial-strength gloating

At Bivouac the morning commute is a journey with many legs. Last week involved trucks, a barge, a boat, a helicopter. At the end of the day we do it all again in reverse, except for those lucky suckas who get to avoid the multi-stage return voyage by flying back to the heli-base with the pilot. Usually I'm one of the poor bastards frowning into the sunset as the Jet Ranger disappears over the horizon. Not this time. ~~Here's the video. I'll keep it up until my puny traffic quota gets overwhelmed.~~ Sorry, the video turned into a pumpkin.

April 14, 2006

Upon realizing one is the less-funny sibling

My sister Susannah lives in London and works as a parliamentary reporter. This is us aboard a BritRail commuter train this past Christmas. She's the one on the right.

If you've been reading this site for awhile you know that Susannah keeps a blog, too. Here's an excerpt from the latest entry, which is titled, "sorry, no hot sex girl photos here: a craigslist-style meditation":

Dear Unknown Kuwaiti Civil Servant,

I notice that you've been visiting my blog quite often recently. StatCounter has a nifty function called "Came From" which shows the referring pages and IP addresses of nearly everyone who visits my blog, and you've come up three times in the past week. The first time you visited was on April 5, when you were searching for "hot sex photos". You didn't stay long -- I guess my photos of historic London pubs and primroses didn't entice you -- but I was pleased to see that you were back twice today looking for "hot ladies photos", and that you stayed a whole 13 seconds before navigating away, presumably in search of actual porn.

I advise you not to read the rest if you're currently in any sort of micro-managed employment situation. Really, you may have to slip under your desk and breathe into a paper bag for awhile.

Last week, Knight Inlet

Somebody elected them, though I assure you it wasn't me

I'm not at work today because snow came dumping down in fat, bumblebee flakes on our commute this morning. Yep, it's April. Also, I recall being rained upon perhaps three times since February. And yep, it's a rainforest around here. Noticeably strange patterns weatherwise, along with this weirdness yesterday (courtesy of the Ninjas). Environment Canada scientist-turned-author Mark Tushingham gets squelched on the promotional tour of his novel, Hotter Than Hell:

It is set in the not-too-distant future when global warming has made many parts of the world too hot to live in and has prompted a war between Canada and the U.S. over water resources.

Tushingham was scheduled to speak in Ottawa about his book and the science underpinning it. But an order from Ambrose's office stopped him.

Apparently there is some worry that the Canadian reading public is not able to distinguish the difference between the meanings of the words "fiction" and "non-fiction."

BTW, Stephen Harper opposes the Kyoto protocol. In this photo, our environment minister looks ~~like she might unravel holographically, revealling Arnold Schwarzenegger underneath~~ deeply concerned.

April 13, 2006

More Holberg photos

April 11, 2006

Holberg in March

April 10, 2006

I beg your pardon, have you seen my mind?

Today was my day off. I had a mini-panic attack in the morning, surfing up on this BBC headline: "Black youth's arrest sparks riots in South London." In Brixton, where my sister lives. I had the phone in my hand and was halfway through dialing my mother before I noticed: it happened today in 1981. I was ten at the time and thought some day I'd grow up to be someone who wore a collared shirt to work.

In my experience manual labour has the same effect on the brain as chronic weedsmoking. I guess it's pretty self-explanatory why no one really ever writes about this phenomenon. Lately I've caught myself using "fucking" as prefix, suffix and infix. (Eg. Q: "How's it going in there?" A: "Crap-fucking-tastic.")

Until effects subside, photos must suffice. I'll try to post some every day as long as long as this wireless connection holds out.

Me in slash and salal