Charlotte Gill | author site & blog

October 27, 2006

Just close your eyes and pretend you're a G8 nation

This blew me away this morning when it popped up by accident in a Google Alert. Flattened me in my seat, I tell you. You can purchase personal carbon credits to offset your airline travel. Someone will plant trees for you in a foreign forest so you can fly with abandon. Where can I meet the genius who invented this? Yo, treeplanters: pick up your jaws, now, and get in line behind me.

October 26, 2006

Cover your eyes, lovies!

Holy asshats--two posts in one day? This one is worth it, I promise. Some good old-fashioned shit-slagging that you usually hear about third-hand from a few provinces away. Craig Davidson of recent prize-fight-book-launch fame calls Michael Holmes a "douchebag," a "waste of skin," and a "jackass." In print. (From Q & Q).

I haven't been to shuffleboard in awhile, but it might be good tonight

The Gal changes Chong's Wikipedia entry to read:

His second book Neil Young Nation (2005), a non-fiction work, traces the steps of Neil Young's 1970 trip across Canada and the United States. New York Times Book Review of compared the book to "watching an endless home movie in which a not very close friend visits all the houses he grew up in."[2]

Chong works extensively as a freelance journalist, and was a researcher for the book The Lady and the Panda (2005) by Vicki Constantine Croke.

A practitioner of the martial art form of Tae Bo, Kevin Chong had a minor role in the film Bloodsport 2[3]

Chong lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is an accomplished show dog handler.

Chong retaliates by assembling this twisted and ornate joke-page at myspace on Steve's behalf. This is the e-flyer I received this morning in my inbox. It was blogged by the Ninjas this morning, so national distribution, I'm guessing?

If I'm not mistaken, this photo of Steve was taken at the bachelor party of Lee Henderson, who left this message on the new unicorn page: "I know too much. I wish I was dead."

You guys are freaks. And you have way too much time on your hands.

October 25, 2006

Leave it to a German to state the obvious but unsaid

Sometimes, after reading the morning news in North America, it seems like nothing happened overnight in that other hemisphere. That's the great thing about Al Jazeera--something's always happening.

"We rightly criticise that in most Islamic states, the role of religion for society and the character of the rule of law are not clearly separated," he added.

"But we fail to recognize that in the USA, the Christian fundamentalists and their interpretation of the Bible have similar tendencies".

Oh yeah, that's the former German Chancellor talking about our friendly neighbourhood God-botherer, G.W.

October 22, 2006

Stitch 'n bitch is for pussies

Jill, my neighbour, Lush maven and radical arts-and-crafter, alerted me to presence of this website today while cross-stitching a pillowslip on my kitchen couch. She had just finished dressing down the man of the house regarding his Commercial Drive coffee choices. I think it must be a pretty good generation to be a woman.

October 19, 2006

The dog ate my literary response

I stumbled upon this website called 91 Ways to Respond to a Book--I can't tell you what I Googled to get there. Oh all right, it was "literary fortune cookie." I don't feel so bad revealing that to those who spend time trawling this site while at work. You people who surf during prime productivity hours, if you look up the word "blog," you get an illustration of a guy in a tie hunched over a desk and a clock on the wall that reads 2:15.

91 Ways is this curious pedagogical tool for secondary school teachers, designed to enliven the good old book report, and to disguise the fact that public school English text selections are porridgey and boring. Kids, don't let them fool you--there's plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll out there between the covers. Why else would adults read?

Check out these activities:

13.CONVERT A BOOK INTO A PUPPET SHOW. Make simple puppets (stick puppets, finger puppets, paper bag puppets, and so on) or complex puppets (marionettes) and present the story or an exciting scene from it.

Or my personal fave, voodoo dolls:

20.MAKE A SOAP OR PARAFFIN CARVING ABOUT AN EVENT OR PERSON IN A BOOK. These are inexpensive materials and soft enough so there is little danger from the tools used for carving.

For some reason I keep seeing the erection-prone Tyrone Slothrop done in a bar of Ivory.

87.BE A LITERARY AGENT. Pretend you are a literary agent representing the author of your book. Write to Harry Decision, editor of young adult fiction at Bantam Books, explaining why you feel he should publish your author's book.

37.PITCH A SALES TALK FOR A BOOK. Give everyone in the class tokens, play money, or straw votes. After the sales talk, take bids to get the most for the book.

These last two made my toes curl up in my slippers.

October 17, 2006

If someone had slapped me with the future when I was twelve, I never would have believed it

Check yourself out at Geolocator. In another couple of years, expect to see a real-time satellite video of yourself in the cone of light from your desk lamp, surfing away, wiping microwave popcorn grease idly down the thigh of your pajama bottoms.