You read that title and you think of hard-shelled insects hiding in the caraganas and making evenings more musical/annoying with their back legs. But that’s not the kind of cricket I had in mind.
Instead, here are a couple of photos of cricket players in Central Park, just south of Regina’s downtown. Long may they bowl.
And:
It may not be the National Day of Reason in Canada, but it’s still reasonable to celebrate the cerebrum and all the excellent things it’s capable of, from telling me when I’m hungry to… well, that’s about it for me. In keeping with Paul’s post that debunked the afterlife (depressing, because I need a place to put my stuff and I’m too cheap for a self-storage unit), here’s my hero SG Collins explaining why 1969 could not possibly have been faked. Note that he’s not claiming that we landed on the moon in 1969 – just that we didn’t have the technology to fake the footage back then. Really! It turns out that we could put a man on the moon, but we couldn’t fake an hour of guys jumping around the lunar surface.
I’ll leave you to ponder that one.
Hey folks. I did things on Friday night that were intimately related to the JUNO Awards.
Here’s Rah Rah in full rock star mode at the downtown JUNO Fest tent.
We are unbelievably lucky to have a band like Rah Rah in this city. A national awards show is nice, but I’d rather hear Rah Rah playing the living hell out of “Prairie Girl” than Michael Bublé dumping out a can of one-liners for a crowd of music industry members. Someone should send a nice appreciative card to Rah Rah. Or maybe a DVD box set of The Facts of Life.
I also managed to capture Two Hours Traffic from PEI. Are they really that small? No, they were just far away. Or were they?*
Saskatoon’s Foam Lake started out the evening. I didn’t get any pictures of the band, but I can report with full confidence that they played melodic guitar-driven pop with polish, flair and heavy beards.
Also, there was someone in the crowd I called Mr. Eyeballs. I put up his picture, but then I thought that he might object, whoever he is. So I took it down. In his place I give you Molly Ringwald singing and playing ukulele from the first season of The Facts of Life.
*Two Hours Traffic are an entirely regular-size band.
1. THEY EVEN TURN UP SLOWLY. A Brazilian family rediscovered their pet tortoise in the attic as they were cleaning out the space. The pet had gone missing in 1982. This is the greatest news story of all time.
2. SEVEN YEARS, FIVE BUCKS, 10 HOURS. ONE LAWSUIT. New York City cops arrested a seven year old boy, put him in handcuffs and detained him for 10 hours (police claim it was only half that time). But it’s completely justified, folks — the boy was accused of stealing five dollars from another child. Falsely, as it turns out. So it works out for everyone! Except for the traumatized child. And the infuriated parents. And the NYPD, which is being sued for $250 million. Also society.
3. CONGRATULATIONS, NEARLY EVERY ADULT I’VE EVER MET. YOU HAVE MORE MONEY THAN ZIMBABWE. How much money does the country of Zimbabwe currently have? According to the government, $217.00. Yup.
4. ISLAMISTS INEFFECTIVE. Apparently the recent attempt to burn the Ahmed Baba Institute only destroyed a small percentage of the more than 300,000 texts stored there. This is a pleasing instance of fanatics’ ineptitude with fire.
5. WHAT? Three Conservative MPs, including Saskatoon’s own Maurice Vellacott, have asked the RCMP in a letter to investigate abortions performed after 19 weeks as “possible homicides.” You get it? They put it in writing. And they didn’t clear it with Harper’s office. Vellacott sincerely believes that this will not embarrass the government. Because he is an idiot.
6. BEYONCE TEACHES US HOW TO LIVE. Beyoncé Knowles faced the media today over accusations that she had lip synced the Star Spangled Banner at Obama’s inauguration. And instead of offering denials or explanations, she pulled the mic from the stand and belted out the national anthem again. That’s how you be awesome.
Two of my favourite things — giant squid and the writing of Mark Dery — came together recently (or as Steve put it, “you like Mark Dery and everybody likes giant squid”). In this long but worthy read on Boing Boing, Dery contemplates the history, anatomy and environmental portent of the increasingly intimate relationship between humanity and crazy giant squid:
Bleached white by its preservative bath, the tentacle feels hard yet rubbery to the touch, like an overinflated bicycle tire—a bicycle tire studded with suckers the size of quarters, on stalks. Running my thumb around the inside of one, I feel the sawtoothed ring of chitin that gives the creature its fearsome grip. In life, its suckers leave proof of the fabled beast’s existence: ring-shaped scars on the hide of its archnemesis, the Sperm whale. A photo in a 1917 Smithsonian publication bears the poetic caption, “a piece of Sperm whale skin relating a battle with a giant squid, in sucker scar script.”
1. HEY CHECK OUT THE DARK SATANIC MILLS. Researchers discovered 350 engraved plates by William Blake at The University of Manchester Library. Cool! The researchers also found several members of Happy Mondays sleeping in the cubicles on the fifth floor, but they left them alone.
2. PREPARE TO JUST GIVE UP AND LET THE TERRORISTS MAKE NESTS IN OUR HAIR. A man on a Qantas flight was asked to remove his shirt because the message was deemed potentially threatening and upsetting to other passengers. The threatening messeage, which should be instantly recognizable to Princess Bride fans, read “Hello my name is Inigo Montoya/ You killed my father/ Prepare to die.” He ended up not removing the shirt, but I think he should have at least said, “As you wish.”
3. LET’S GO MAKE A FILM AT THE EX. My favourite bit of news from this year’s Sundance Festival is the consternation surrounding a film called Escape From Tomorrow, which was filmed without permission at Disney World. The question is, will Disney sue? And on what basis, exactly? Remember when people claimed that smaller and more sophisticated tool would give creators more opportunities? Well, uh-oh.
4. THE PERILS OF BEING TOO SUCCESSFUL. Attiwapiskat chief Theresa Spence is not attending today’s events celebrating the end of her hunger strike because she’s still in hospital.
Have any plans today? Then keep scrolling, because Laura June’s extensive piece on the rise and fall of the arcade will have you wading through a swamp of nostalgia so vast that it may take days to reach the other side. If you’re too young to remember the glory days of arcades, you’ll probably be frightened and confused by the tales of dark rooms, greasy tokens and giant bleeping boxes overseen by sweaty men with aprons full of change. The most disturbing revelation: that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and creator of arcade smash Pong, also owns Chuck E. Cheese.
For Amusement Only: The Life and Death of the American Arcade
1. A BIT OF SENSE IN THE WHOLE ZERO DARK THIRTY DEBATE. Bringing some historical perspective and cogent thinking to the topic, Steve Coll’s piece in the New York Review of Books on the role of torture in Zero Dark Thirty is the best thing you’re going to read on the topic. Even if you haven’t and don’t intend to see the film, it’s still worth a read.
2. YOUR GUIDE TO ALL THINGS TE’O MANTI. So many strange and conflicting stories! Is Te’o Manti a victim of a cruel hoax? Is he the mastermind behind the vaporous Lennay Kuaka? Is Lennay Kuaka actually a real person? Is Manti is a young, closeted football player who went to absurd lengths to create (and kill off) an internet girlfriend? Let’s look at the evidence together and weep for humanity.
3. CLEAR! We’ve all known for a while just how awful Scientology is: how it fleeces the gullible out of their savings, runs a bizarre prison for disobedient members and cultivates an obnoxious religious argot based on abbreviations of words that don’t need abbreviating. But now it seems that cracks in its structure are widening. A long but fascinating read.
4. BREAKING, OBVIOUS, NEWS. IS THIS NEWS? As I write, Lance Armstrong is chewing his fingernails and telling Oprah Winfrey (and the rest of us) what we’ve known for some time: that his unprecedented string of victories happened with the aid of blood doping. Now Lance must be purified in the crucible of Oprah’s regard. Go Oprah! “Goprah.”
5. DID YOU KNOW THAT ‘DEAR ABBY’ AUTHOR PAULINE PHILLIPS APPEARED ON MR. ED IN 1964? The notion of a talking horse is unbelievably creepy. Can you imagine a horse’s mouth forming recognizable human speech? What would that voice sound like? Would it have a horsey accent? What would a horse even say, beyond the trivia of stable life? I mention this because Pauline Phillips has died at the age of 94, and she probably had some thoughts on horse speech. At the very least she’d know what the appropriate response would be to the presence of talking horses.
6. CAPITAL POINTE SOMETHING SOMETHING. The world’s most boring property development is located in Regina and it looks something is finally about to happen with that snow-covered lot where the Plains once stood. Actually, the news story is about how something hasn’t really happened yet, but with the filing of permits and approval of said filed permits, something could totally happen! Business!
1. THE OSCAR NOMINEES HAVE BEEN UNLEASHED. It’s a warm morning in Regina (but cold and storms are coming), so in consideration of the balmy weather, the Academy of Important Flicks announced the nominees for the Oscar ceremonies. It’s the usual round of pious and portentous films (Life of Pi, Lincoln) with a couple of interesting choices thrown in (Django Unchained, Amour). More interesting by far is a consideration of the snubbed and ignored. Moonrise Kingdom? A writing nomination. The Master? Acting nominations only – not even a nod for the 70mm cinematography. And where the hell is Holy Motors in the foreign language category? What, did they only release twenty films in 2012? Screw those guys.
2. WAIT, YOU HAVE TO PAY A LICENSE TO OWN A TV IN THE UK? According to the TV Licensing Authority, there are still 13,000 black and white television sets in use in the UK. The number surprised me initially, but it turns out that annual television licenses are only a third of the price for black and white sets. Then again, we’re talking about a country where the biggest book distributor is set to be McDonalds.
3. I GUESS THEY DIDN’T POLL THAT FARMER WHO HATED “VOICE OF FIRE.” Canadian Heritage polled the Canadian public (that’s us!) on our engagement with the arts, and it turns out that, dudes, we are so super-engaged that we’re all like, “Go arts! Fund that shizzle! Let’s book it to a live performance now!” Because that’s how we roll, bro. The Harper Government is expected to roll up the results of the poll and cover it in cheese and a mild salsa verde.
4. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THE DEFENCE DEPARTMENT. Here’s a disheartening read about counterfeit Chinese electronics in Canada’s Hercules C-130J aircraft. Oh my God, you may be thinking, I’m glad that they discovered those fake electronics six months ago. Now they can get on with the business of replacing them with genuine parts. Ah hah hah, no. Apparently the government has no concerns, because the planes have been working just fine so far. Just fine! The fact that 27 per cent of the counterfeit chips failed in lab tests doesn’t bother them, I guess. In related news, we’ll be hiring soldiers from Matchbox for the foreseeable future. Minister MacKay is scheduled to conduct a recruiting drive from one of those vending machines at the grocery store. “I hope I get a few paratroopers,” Mr. MacKay said as he twisted the knob on the machine.
5. CHRONIC PREMATURE FEMALE ORGASM. Apparently it exists.
6. GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE DERANGED FREE WILLY FANS OUT THERE. A pack of killer whales, trapped for the last two days in pack ice off the coast of northern Quebec, is now free to go about its previous business. Of killing. Hey, they’re not called event planning whales.
1 THE FAMILIES OF THE DEAD DON’T WANT TO SEE A SCHWARZENEGGER FLICK OR WHATEVER, THANKS. After receiving criticism for not reaching out to the families of the victims of the Aurora murders, Cinemark invited family members to a “night of remembrance” followed by a movie screening on January 17. In other words, they’ve invited people to the same movie theatre where their relatives were gunned down only a few months back. The families are really, really not into it, even though the popcorn is probably free. I say probably.
2 HEY, PUT DOWN THAT REGIME TRANSITION PSYOPS PACKAGE UNLESS YER GONNA BUY IT. The National Intelligence Council has released Global Trends 2030, the latest installment in their periodic volume of realpolitik auguring. Among other predictions, they declare that the U.S. will become a “global security provider.” Which I think means that the country will become the equivalent of those skeevy spy tech and military surplus stores that peer out sullenly from strip malls on the outskirts of North American cities.
3 BLACKSTRAP. IT’S THE HILL OF GARBAGE THAT WILL HAUNT US FOREVER. Apparently, three developers are “vying” for the opportunity to pour money into Blackstrap and revive its fortunes as a recreation attraction. “Vying” seems like a really enthusiastic verb in this situation, but take it as you will. Of note in the story: the sentence “[Developer] Spink has started a Face-book page for the proposed ski hill.” Also on the social media menu: a Tweeter account and a Tumbular.
4 SCHOOL OFFICIALS PREVENT DOZENS OF PEOPLE FROM CLUTCHING CHEST, FALLING OVER, CRYING OUT “OW, YOU GOT ME.” In Maryland, a 6-year-old boy has been suspended for pointing his finger in the classic gun shape and saying “Pow.”
5 WE’LL BE KEEPING OUR CRAPPY ISLANDS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, BUT THANKS FOR ASKING. UK PM David Cameron is committed to keeping the Falkland Islands out of the hands of those nasty Argentinians, despite a request from Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for the return of the territory. The request was sent exactly 180 years to the day after the British took it from Argentina. My advice to Argentina is to wait until Britain has become an decrepit ex-Empire with rapidly shrinking revenues and an increasingly weak grasp of its place in the world, and then just go and take those islands. So, next Tuesday.
6 GERARD DEPARDIEU, RUSSIA’S NEWEST CITIZEN. Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to French actor Gerard Depardieu, who is quitting his native country to avoid French taxes. Between this and Russia’s ban on adopting out Russian children to Americans, I think Putin is trying to recreate a model France for his own amusement somewhere in the heart of the country.
I have to say that I’m almost disappointed in the lack of obvious apocalypting today. Instead of fire, flame, flakes of flame, scorching chunks of rock hurtling from the sky, the very ceiling of the universe peeling away from the invulnerable firmament beneath, we’ve got a nice crisp cold day. Not too cold, mind you – just enough to brush your cheeks and let you know that Nature would still kill you if given half a chance.
The rest is indifference. Even the hoarfrost that’s been decorating our elms for the last week has finally dissolved in the wind, leaving only the indifferent boughs to offer a clump or two of snow. What kind of doomsday is it when no one makes the slightest effort? We can’t just end the world by ourselves, Universe. It takes a cosmos to shutter reality.
But then the news comes on, and you hear the NRA blast the media for making a big deal out of the mass murder of children. Plus there’s the continued popularity of Gangnam Style. And lest I forget, there are still people out there who call themselves oenophiles and don’t promptly throw themselves out the nearest window.
Most encouraging of all, though, is the spray of ice crystals circulating on cold currents, reminders of entropy sustained in a medium that slowly erodes our being, the acid substance of time itself, which consumes all of existence, layer by layer, until nothing is left but a corrosive emptiness. Bring it on, Mayans. We’ll be here with brandy and assorted snacks.
1 DON’T TALK TO THE RACISTS IF YOU VALUE YOUR JOB. Meteorologist Rhonda Lee was fired from her job at a Louisiana TV station after responding to someone who complained about her hair. Lee responded with an interesting, measured comment about hair and how it affects the lives of African-American women. It was informative, thought-provoking and respectful, but it violated company policy so they fired her.
2 BACTERIAL CULTURE MEETS CORPORATE CULTURE MEETS INTERNET CULTURE. Once upon a time, Loblaws sold YoPRO Yogurt Bars. Then they stopped selling YoPRO. And then they came out with a product that YoPRO creators Amanda House and Chris Delaney found suspiciously similar to their product. So they put a video up on YouTube, explaining their plight and embarrassing Loblaws mightily in the process. And lo, Galen Weston has granted them an audience.
3 THE GUARDIAN REALIZES THAT FACEBOOK SUCKS. In 2011, UK newspaper The Guardian launched an experiment in leveraging the power of social media to drive traffic to their site, creating a mini-version of their paper embedded in a Facebook page. It worked for a while, until they realized that they were beholden to Facebook’s capricious algorithms. They wised up and shut it down.
4 A EULOGY FOR OCCUPY, OR MAYBE AN AUTOPSY. Quinn Norton, aka everyone’s favourite journalist named Quinn, wrote an excellent analysis of the Occupy movement. Read it.
5 PROOF THAT PETITIONS WORK. A petition calling for construction of a real, honest-to-sithness Death Star has reached 25,000 signatures – which means that the White House must respond within 30 days. See, kids? Democracy works if you want it to.
6 WE GENEROUS FEW. Saskatchewan is the 3rd most generous province in Canada. Right behind Prince Edward Island! But we’re better than PEI in so many other ways, so don’t let this news trouble you.
Welcome to the poor man’s Six in the Morning! Which, I imagine, describes most of us.
1 BEIJING IS NOT KIDDING. You know that joke about Saskatchewan’s mountain removal project that people somehow think we haven’t heard one million times already? China intends to get rid of 700 pesky mountains which stand in the way of building a metropolis on the outskirts of Lanzhou, a northwestern city in Gansu province. So when people visit us from China and we crack that mountain joke, they’ll smile and nod politely. But inside they’ll be thinking, “Amateurs.”
2 SOUTH MIAMI ISN’T KIDDING EITHER. We can all stop grousing about the perpetual nonsense zone known as Regina, because South Miami politics are plain old weird.
3 PIZZA HUT IS KIDDING. SORT OF. As the result of a Facebook contest, Pizza Hut Canada overlapped its mouth with its money and actually produced “Eau de Pizza Hut” perfume, which is supposed to smell like fresh pizza. 110 bottles of the scent are available to gruesomely masochistic contest winners.
4 REMEMBER THEM. Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznik, Maryse Leclair, Annie St.-Arneault, Michèle Richard, Maryse Laganière, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, and Annie Turcotte. They were killed for being women.
I don’t have much time to write a blog post, but the idea of Vince Vaughan and Glenn Beck teaming up for anything is kind of bizarre. Go to the link! I’ll explain on the way.
In related news: I’m such a picky writer that I must have edited the above sentences six or seven times. And chances are good that I’ll give it a few more passes after I hit ‘publish.’ And Steve wonders why I never make my deadlines.
1 BECAUSE THERE’S NO TIME LIKE 365 DAYS IN ADVANCE. The 2013 Grey Cup is happening in Regina on November 24, 2013, probably in the afternoon. So naturally the first party is happening tonight at the Agribition Building. Let’s get this party something something.
2 IT’S TRAYVON MARTIN’S TIME, WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT. In a convenience store parking lot in sunny Florida, 45-year old Michael David Dunn got irked over a group of African-American teens playing loud music. So he shot at their car eight or nine times, hitting and killing 17-year old Jordan Davis in the whole shooting-at-unarmed-teens process. The man’s lawyer insists that “Mr. Dunn acted very responsibly,” which I think is stretching the definition of the word, seeing as he fled the county.
3 NEVER MIND THEN. Rider Strong, the actor who played the troubled Shawn Hunter on the late ’90s coming-of-age sitcom Boy Meets World, is not interested in reprising his role for the proposed follow-up series Girl Meets World. I was hoping that the reboot would be shot-for-shot reenactment of the original series with the gender roles reversed, but it turns out to be a revisiting of the BMW universe, with central couple Cory and Topanga all grown up and contending with a presumably feisty daughter. They should bring Rider Strong back in, though, because in an article for Bullet he displayed an amazing grasp of what made his character work. And then there’s stuff like this:
“I treat him well. He gets plenty of food and water. He even has a window, a small square that lets him see passing feet—and dogs, if they’re short enough. He tells me he loves that window. For him, it’s like a television, looking out at real people, with real-people problems.
“He’s fascinated by how unstructured our lives are, how we drift from one moment to the next, free from the constraints of narrative, the pain of lurching endlessly from crisis to resolution. He covets your formless mood. Your un-episodic joys. The way you catch yourself off-guard. The way you wander, slowly, in and out of love. How you can go back, and revise the story of who you are, because there’s no DVD box set. The way no one wants to know your ending.”
4 I GUARANTEE YOU THAT NO ONE IN SYRIA IS READING THIS ARTICLE. Why? Because Syria is off the Internet. Also, prairie dog has never gotten traction in the Syrian market.
1 BUT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY DO IT ANYWAY. A study of 1,000 pregnant Malaysian women has not shown a correlation between “acts of coitus” and early onset of labour. So you can all stop having sex to nudge your future along, and do it because sex is usually better than whatever’s on television right now.
Hold on, I’m going to verify that last assertion. Oh, there’s an episode of 30 Rock on. Can I get back to you guys in a half hour?
2 GAYS Y U BE SO GAY? The Alberta School Boards Association has soundly rejected a proposal intended to prevent discrimination against gay staff and students. One alternative solution, according to trustee Dale Scheffick, is for children to “hide their gayness.” Look, straight kids, I know how hard it is to be straight in today’s effeminate world — after all, you’re just minding your own business, and suddenly this gay kid comes along flaunting his gayness and special gay rights all over you! — but when you grow up, you’ll discover that the homosexual-liberal elite who control everything will look favourably on you if you treat gays nicely. They’ll give you a special iron-on patch that you can use to get all the good jobs and hot babes and so on.
3 NOW TO PLAN MY ENEMY’S VACATION A group of curious Australian scientists took a trip to visit Sandy Island, a small body of land in the Coral Sea, only to discover that it’s not there. They found lots of water, though. Apparently the island has been appearing on maps for years, including Google Maps. No word on whether they discovered, as Pip did in Moby Dick, “God’s foot on the treadle.” Pip goes overboard and descends into madness from contemplating the vast loneliness of the firmament, you see.
4 GET YER CHEMO HERE. NO, NOT YOU. A refugee who was diagnosed with cancer after coming to Canada has been denied treatment by the federal government. This compassion-lite response is the result of changes announced last spring to to the interim federal health program, which provides temporary health coverage for refugees and other groups not normally covered under provincial health programs. The changes are apparently designed to make sure that no scheming refugee takes advantage of the federal government’s generosity.
Fortunately for the refugee, the province is stepping up to cover the cost of treatment while they “continue discussions” with the feds. Yes, good luck with that. I’m certain that the feds weren’t counting on this kind of response from the provinces all along.
5 ISRAEL FINDS OUT ABOUT THAT LABOUR ONSET STUDY. Israel began pulling troops out of Gaza today, withdrawing from full-scale penetration, probably when they realized that an actual sustained incursion would not give birth to a lasting victory. Unsurprisingly, both sides are claiming that they came out on top — although if you’re going by strict arithmetic, Israel killed a lot more people. I mean, they went to town on the bodies of men, women, children — you name it, they killed it. Mind you, Hamas tried launching rockets into Jerusalem, but most were “knocked out of the sky” by Israel’s anti-missile system.
6 AND FINALLY, the parade of fakery, manipulation and dodgy editing known as The Bachelor Canada ended, as the dullest man in the country selected a suitable mate for inflicting his square-jawed spawn on a world too weak to resist. Her name is Bianka. Good luck, you crazy kids!
On Friday night, while everyone else who writes for prairie dog was going to see Metric and Stars play at the Brandt Centre, I stayed in, ate trail mix and played video games. But that night I dreamed that I ended up at the concert at the last moment.
My sister bought me a ticket because her fiancee had dumped her and taken up with a young woman in Paris, and she was feeling insecure and in need of cheering up. It was a lot of back story, mostly cribbed from a Meg Ryan movie, and pretty much unnecessary. I don’t even have a sister. And if I did, she wouldn’t look like The Architect from The Matrix Reloaded.
In the dream we took a cab to the Brandt Centre. It looked suspiciously like my junior high gymnasium. I presented my ticket to the person at the door, who turned out to be Emily Haines, the band’s lead singer. She was dressed as a crossing guard.
“Hi Ms. Haines. Here’s my ticket,” I said.
“I’m so glad you could make it, Aidan. All 167.4 cm of you,” she said. She took the ticket, which was about the size of my Honours thesis, and ripped it in half with one clean motion.
“It’s no big deal, Ms. Haines. I only live 1.8 miles away.”
“You mean 2.9 km.”
“Oh yeah. Hey, I’ve been wondering if barometers are cool. Should I get a barometer for my home office? I want that ironic nautical look the kids are into these days.”
Emily smiled and reached out to pat my shoulder. “Only you can discover the answer to that, Aidan. Look into your heart. It has an approximate mass of 250-300 g.”
She kept patting my shoulder, and I realized that she was using a dried chicken’s foot to do it. I woke screaming.
At least they played Black Sheep. I love that song.
1 IN THE FUTURE, YOUR WARTIME OBITUARY WILL BE 140 CHARACTERS. The Israeli Defense Forces are keeping up with the times by live-tweeting their assault on Gaza and keeping the world apprised with quotable sound-bites (“Ahmed Jabari. Eliminated.”) and video footage. I don’t know which side you’re rooting for in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the thought of death and blood and fire and loss being reduced to a blip of data on a social networking site… is unappetizing. On the other hand, it clears up the “fog of war” quite nicely. Twitter itself has been silent on the matter.
2 THE MITT WHO WOULD BE KING. American Hispanics react unfavourably to Mitt Romney’s leaked post-election call with donors, in which he claimed that Obama had courted the “ethnic vote” (ie. the American vote) with “gifts.” Gifts such as health care. It says something when a presidential candidate views the most basic social policies of an industrialized nation as largesse.
3 A LITTLE SOMETHING FROM BURMA. The government of Myanmar has ordered the release of 452 prisoners just days before a visit from Barack Obama. There’s no word on whether any of the pardoned are political prisoners, which comes as a disappointment to human rights groups.
On a related topic, it drives me nuts when people who escape from prison are described as “escapees.” As Irish author Flann O’Brien once said, it implies that prison jumped up and ran away from the prisoners.
4 SLOW YOUR ROLL, REGINA. Everyone knows that Regina has been growing at unprecedented rate over the last five years, with new buildings going up, new neighbourhoods emerging from swamps and the chime of many languages freshening the air. Statistician Doug Elliott would like to remind us that we’re in “the middle of the pack” compared to eight other Canadian cities. The leader of said pack? Some city to the north of us that’s all lousy with bridges.
5 FIVE HOURS OF ENERGY. A LIFETIME IN THE GRAVE? The snazzy little caffeine drink known as 5-Hour Energy has been linked to 13 deaths in the United States. Also linked to: heart attacks, convulsions, and one spontaneous abortion. Don’t worry, you can still buy it in Canada.
6 SNOW NEWS. I love stories about the difficulty of snow removal in Regina. That’s when you learn that roads have categories and the city has graders and cars were designed to litter the streets and spin their wheels uselessly in snow-slick gutters. Eventually we’re going to have to install giant fans in the sky to blow all the snow over to Moose Jaw.
Apparently there’s a storm blowing in? Stay inside tonight, folks. Hug your reptiles tight.
1 HALF A LOAF. The petition to force a public vote on the stadium failed to meet its mark of 20,000 signatures, coming up with a still-impressive 9,899 names. Unfortunately that number doesn’t lend itself to any good jokes. Do we have any funny mathematicians in the audience? Even a chartered accountant will do in this situation.
2 AND POLLS ARE POSSESSED BY TOTAL BULL. A recent poll revealed that 68% of Republicans surveyed believe in demonic possession. As in, “Yes, trans-dimensional avatars of evil dispatched from a realm of eternal punishment like to show up and clop around inside your mind, Mr. Pollster.” What worries me more is that 49% of Democrats and 55% of Independent/Other believe in demonic possession as well.
3 JUDGES NEED LULZ TOO. Down in the dark mystery that we call America, 32-year-old Shena Hardin was arrested for driving on the sidewalk to get around a school bus. The judge fined her $250 and ordered her to wear a sign that says ‘IDIOT.’
4 BUT IF THE CAT HAD WORKED AT WAL-MART FOR TWO WEEKS, HE’D BE OUT OF HERE. Good news on the serval cat front: Jagger, the exotic cat that the government was going to eject from the province, has been granted a temporary reprieve “while regulations surrounding his breed are reviewed.” Meanwhile, no one will comment on those two Nigerian students.
BONUS BIT: The Leader-Post took a story about Creative Kids and turned it into a story about PotashCorp. Carry on.
1. DRIVE. DRIVE NOW. Because gas prices in Regina are falling, falling, falling to … $1.24 per litre? My god, you’d think we had to haul this stuff out of the ground or something.
2. THAT’LL LEARN ‘EM. THAT’LL LEARN ‘EM ALL THE WAY BACK TO NIGERIA. For too long we homeland-born Canadians have suffered the brunt of foreign students coming to the U of R and working for two weeks at Wal-mart. Think of all the hickory sticks we could be stuffing our faces with those wages! Think of all the interest payments we could me making on that HDTV we got from Visions last year! My home entertainment enjoyment is being eroded by those two Nigerian scofflaws. Fortunately, Federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has my back on this one. He won’t overturn the deportation decision levied earlier this year against the two women.
3. AND THAT’S HOW YOU CHANGE THE SASK PARTY’S MIND. As part of a Canada-wide protest, Ghosts of the Arts drew 35-40 people to the Legislative Building on Tuesday night. “Some people dressed up in sheets and said nothing at all after dark? Let’s triple arts funding!” Premier Brad Wall definitely did not say.
4. PUSSY RIOT 2: THE PUSSINATION. Polish heavy metal singer Adam Darski could face up to two years in a prison for ripping up a Bible on stage in 2007. The crime? “Offending Catholic sensibilities.”
5. EXXON MOBIL: MAKING LESS, EARNING MORE. Even though Exxon Mobil’s production declined by 7.5 per cent in the most recent quarter, its profits have “topped expectations.” Good for you, you plucky underdog.
6. MEANWHILE IN THE UK. A hedgehog got trapped in an empty bag of chips and a three and a half hour rescue effort ensued.
