Manitoba Links Weekly: We Should Send Thunder Bay a Nice Card, Diabetes as Plot Resolution, More Fights Than Points, and Here is Burton Cummings Performing His "The 8 Days of Christmas" (ManLinkWeek S02E09)

The soulfulness in each and every delivery of "Five pounds of hash~!" makes my heart grow three sizes. And that camerawork! I'm so glad that we live in a world where this exists.

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! We've almost made it all the way through 2013; I'd say "let's enjoy it while it lasts", but this year turned vicious on me in every imaginable way, so honestly let's just kill it as quickly as we can.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we had some fun with that new Tourism Manitoba slogan -- and some fun flag-related follow-up discussion! -- as well as some looking back on top stories of 2013 and looking forward to top stories of 2014. Oh, and some music! That's a thing I've learned how to do on the soundboard now, swap on the fly from music to talk, it was pretty rad. Fine seasonal discussion, fine seasonal music -- a fine show all around, well worth your ear.

Anyway! No time to waste. ManLinkWeek!

[ The Daily (Statistics Canada): Homicide in Canada, 2012 ]
[ Winnipeg Free Press: Manitoba's homicide rate highest among provinces ]
[ Global Winnipeg: Manitoba posts worst 2012 provincial homicide rate, Winnipeg 2nd city ]
[ Winnipeg Sun: Murdertoba crowned again as 2012 homicide data released ]
Good news, everyone: the homicide rate in Thunder Bay makes the homicide rates here look not too bad! What a serene and peacef--no no no don't look at the other data, never mind the rest of Canada, just look at us and at Thunder Bay and back.

Bless your hearts, Thunder Bay, you're the only ones keeping us here in Winnipeg away from even worse headlines. ("Among the provinces", of course, which is where most people set their scope; I think we all just sort of mutually understand that a discussion of the territories would draw out some really uncomfortable national dialogue.) You really came through for us this year! Well, last year, I mean, but y'know how statistical reporting is. You guys like fruitcake? We'll send you guys a fruitcake.

[ Open Letters to Louis Riel: Fulfilling the Winnipeg Dream: Letter to Santa: Please pick up my Garbage, because the city won't ]
Oh. Okay, so, uhh -- Thunder Bay? We... we need a favour.

I know that sounds really bad, you already did us a solid on the murders thing -- you know we appreciate it, we're not ungrateful, we're really not -- but could you... could you also just... maybe screw up collecting garbage? It'd be just for a while, it'd really help us out, it's just, we need to not be alone on this. When things become issues here, they kinda never really stop being issues, so anything you could do would really help.

Just for a little while, just switch to ignoring garbage. And brown tap water. We'd really appreciate if you c--no, too far. Sorry. No, you're right, that's on me, that's asking too much. Forget I'd said that.

Y'know, though, there must be something that can lift Winnipeg's spiri--

[ Winnipeg Free Press: Bug man Stuart still around ]
OH MY GOD HE'S ALIVE, HE'S STILL IN TOWN

(writes 'TAZ STUART' on a piece of paper, marks an 'X' beside it, throws it at computer screen)

DID IT WORK, IS HE MAYOR YET

[ Around This Town: MPI: increasing more than your premiums ]
Oof, that graph. Well, oof, the whole thing, really. But oof, that graph.

While we're into the provincial file, I know I'm about to drop a lot of reading on you, but I can assure you that the surprise left-field reveal at the end makes following the whole saga more than worth your while:

[ Brandon Sun: Unanswered questions: When did Manitoba premier know his minister was untruthful? ]
[ Global Winnipeg: Selinger knew "early on" his minister misled ]
[ Winnipeg Free Press: Lie contributed to Melnick being removed from cabinet ]
[ Winnipeg Sun: Tories calling for suspension of Christine Melnick over rally lies ]
[ Brandon Sun: Manitoba political system means truth may not be known in Melnick affair: Expert ]
[ CBC Manitoba: Former NDP minister breaks silence over lie to legislature ]
[ Winnipeg Cat: December 21st, 2013 ]
Well. So. That's a twist ending. I hadn't realized that Christine Melnick's doctor is M. Night Shyamalan.

@MartinforMorris she waited for ombudsman's report to be made public, waited for media to find and highlight the 'mistruth', rejects intvus

— Steve Lambert (@stevelambertwpg) December 20, 2013

Well, hey, now, hold on--we should make sure, before we go too far with this, to note in fairness that obfuscation is also a very common side effect of diabetes. Back me up on this, diabetics! It's not as common as completely forgetting major rallying efforts you'd personally ordered be carried out by your staff -- just the ol' diabetes-amnesia again, the diabesia -- but certainly very common. Right? Absolutely.

Really, if any blame were to be laid here -- which there cannot be, of course, because diabetes, but were there any -- it would have to be laid on the ombudsman; here he was, the risk factors and telltale signs staring him dead in the face for eighteen months, and he never once thought to suggest to Melnick that she get checked out. Shame, Mel Holley! Boo, hiss!

Aaaaaand that's your provincial politics update. Moving on now to sports history:

[ Curtis Walker's Blog: Moose Flashback: "We’re Not Marketing Fighting" ]
Spoiler alert: they were marketing fighting.

There're plenty of fun pre-AHL Moose tidbits and recollections in this post, but my favourite is the gloriously illustrative knowledge that "[d]uring their five seasons in the IHL, the Moose had more fights than points in the standings". That's some good trivia! I learned something today.

(In a related side note, I'd completely forgotten how... purple the team's original logo and jerseys were. You really don't see dark purple on forest green altogether often, for what are probably entirely obvious reasons.)

And, finally, turning now to Manitoban arts and cultural history:

[ Bill & Sue-On Hillman: Hillman Music CDs ]
[ Bill & Sue-On Hillman: Album Gallery ]
Oh my god look at all of this free music. We could probably also spend a while admiring the design of this site, fascinating artifact of web architecture that it is, but really your first step should just be to jump right in and start clicking any song that sounds interesting or fun. Full songs! Albums' and albums' worth of full-length, artist-released material.

And while you're listening to hours and hours of free vintage Westman psych-country-folk-rock, take the time as well to read a Brandon Now profile of the pair here because basically everything about them is fascinating. They also have a book available, and you can order physical copies of their CDs at the first of the two pile-of-free-music links above. SO MUCH MUSIC.

(I'd played "Blue Shallow River", "Blues 'Round My Door" and "In Sadness" on a Slurpees and Murder Record Club episode of WIPs this summer, but I can't seem to track down where the archived podcast went. Alas.)

Thank you for reading ManLinkWeek! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours, and I'll see you 'round here again real soon.