UPTOWN Server Salvages: The Art of Nicholas Luchak

Surprise!

The companion piece to the previous post, this gallery contains all of the Nicholas Luchak artwork that I was fortunate enough to have alongside my UPTOWN columns from the end of April 2012 to the demise of the paper('s standalone format) just over a month ago.

These are pretty great, so be sure to take the time to admire each one properly. And if you see something in any of the images and think "that looks kind of like a penis", well, there's a reasonable chance that it is. (Think of it as a Son of Interflux touch, but with dicks instead of camels.) (Yes, I realize how badly I'm dating myself by saying that.)

UPTOWN Server Salvages: The Art of Chris Without the Hat

Hey, remember UPTOWN Magazine? Ahh, those were the days.

Though it's only been about five weeks since the untimely demise of UPTOWN's previous format, it really does seem like forever ago now. (Well, to me, at least; working two other positions simultaneously will do that to a guy.) Before the old website had disappeared and the new format -- coincidentally also the Free Press Thursday Tab's old format -- officially kicked in on the first day of November, I made sure to double back and save all of the artwork that had complemented-slash-redeemed my columns over the years.

(By 'the years', I should clarify, I mean December 2010 to October 2012; everything before that was wiped off the web in the site's switchover to the more Free-Press-ian template. Alas.)

City in Disguise, or: The Matrix of Leadership is Curiously Flamingo-Shaped

I had this particular random thought stick in my head as I drove home from yesterday's Winnipeg Internet Pundits show, and while I could -- and, potentially, should -- have just dumped it on Twitter as text and left it at that, I figured instead that I would sink my teeth into it here and shake away at it until I made sure it was good and dead.

Behold Our Majestic Double Rainbow, or: You'll Never Guess What Winnipeg Leads in (Seriously, Guess)

When I say Slurpees, you say Murder!

Slurpees!



...yeah, okay, so that never really works. But you've probably figured out where I'm going with this post, so let's get down to business.

There's a Place Called Downtown

The Downtown BIZ is an important and prominent local organization that does great work in the ongoing efforts to promote and improve Winnipeg's perenially troubled downtown core. That's good! It is also a duplicitous little creature, by nature, that blurts out misdirection and falsehoods even when the truth would be a more productive approach. That's bad.

Yes, this is going to be a very long and involved blog post, full of civic discourse and interesting pictures and a couple of outright lies. So before we begin, I think it's only proper that we establish some background to make sure everyone's up to speed.

Manitoba Markers Month: Mayor Steve Chew-Ya

Man, if my employment hadn't ran out, I can guarantee I wouldn't have put nearly as much effort into this one as I did.

In our final request of Manitoba Markers Month, international man of mystery C. Beresford Tipton asked for a simple but elegant idea: "Zombie Steve Juba". I'm pretty tuckered out from getting the final product complete, and I do hope the work shows in this one, so I'll try to keep the preamble brief.

Do you know the story of Bernie Wolfe? He feuded bitterly with then-Mayor Stephen Juba for at least a solid decade, helped to found a pro-business and centre-right political party (the Independent Citizens' Election Committee), and -- perhaps most notably -- served as the Deputy Mayor of Winnipeg under Juba from roughly 1973 or 1974 until Juba's departure in 1977.

Note that last bit, because it's the particularly funny part: Juba waited until literally the last moment to withdraw himself from the upcoming 1977 election, purely to dick over Wolfe's chances at setting up a campaign to succeed him. The ensuing scramble with both Juba and Wolfe out of the running ultimately meant that dark horse city councillor Robert A. Steen was elected Mayor, in a tight and completely ideologically confused contest.

Steen is best remembered today for dying in office within two years. They named a community centre and a bowling trophy after him. Juba, who died in 1993, is entirely unlikely to be forgotten; besides being the first and only Ukrainian-Canadian Mayor of Winnipeg, he also held the position longer (by far) than anybody else in city history.

And Wolfe? Bernie Wolfe is still alive somewhere, apparently, but he remains largely unknown even to the historically minded. No civic halls of fame, no Leo Mol busts -- even a spot in Jack Bumsted's Dictionary of Manitoba Biography eludes him thus far, although to be fair one of Bumsted's stated criteria for inclusion is that you have to be dead first.

Do you suppose he's the type to harbour a grudge? Man, I would be! If I make it to senior citizenship and I've still got outstanding vendettas, I plan to be giving stinkeyes and lighting fires and putting curses on dudes left and right. What good is retirement if you can't enjoy it? Something to look forward to, I say!

But, I digress. For your consideration, may I present the following:



See you tomorrow! Or Thursday at the latest! Whatever!

Manitoba Markers Month: Jets Fans Were Never Strangers to Disappointment Anyway (Plus, Red River College Appreciation)

To switch things up from the last post, I'll bust out the Manitoba Markers Month content first and then move to other concepts second. Keep things interesting, hopefully.

So! When I put out the call for marker subject matter, old friend (and personal outfitter) Nicholas Eckert requested "a desperate Winnipeg Jets fan" in keeping with the Bett-Mania going around the city at the time.

Heady times, those were! Despite the countless years now of dashed hopes and shattered dreams, Winnipeg hockey fans of all stripes lost their collective minds once again over an increasingly ridiculous series of unfounded rumours (Bettman is coming! Bettman is here! BETTMAN IS DRINKING AT MOXIE'S) until the whole sordid mess imploded on itself.

People searched high and low for any signs of his presence, for any sign of him in the airport or the arena or the eateries or the newsrooms -- but after a "scheduled" news conference failed to materialize and quashed the story yet again, there was much desperation and disappointment when it was firmly and decisively declared:



oh no little jets guy nooooooo :(

I had originally intended to draw this more quickly than I'd drawn the last couple of entries, but as you can clearly tell my good intentions didn't quite pan out. While I could blame it on the technical complexity -- there turns out to be a very good reason that people don't usually hand-letter custom fonts -- I will admit instead that my focus was somewhat compromised by my unceremonious return to unemployment.

Yes, dear friends, James Hope Howard is once again on the market! The job market, that is. (Well, and the singles market too, but that's not a particularly new development so it... what? Oh, sorry. Back to something you'd read.) My originally-three-month term position as a Librarian of Red River College has reached its conclusion, and I really must say that it was seven of the best months I've ever spent; few things are quite as professionally rewarding as the opportunity to do exactly what one has been hoping and training for, and I couldn't have had my first contract with a nicer organization.

I enjoyed a great deal of invaluable experience from a wide variety of angles -- coordinating an entire campus library, providing multiple forms of personal library service, delivering multiple full-length classroom presentations for up to fifty students at a time, leading a very successful marketing team, scheduling and deploying staff, diffusing crisis situations, personally evaluating and cultivating the entire reference collection of a major educational institution, so on and so forth -- but what really should be recognized as one of my personal career highlights is, of course, getting editorial control over the Word of the Day Board.







Yes, this is how you know that I'm moving up in the world, and I am nowhere near gracious enough to properly express my gratitude and appreciation to Red River College for the time I spent as its employee. Much obliged, RRC! Let me know if you need anything.

But, life goes on! I'm once again between jobs, or underemployed, or whatever the best applicable euphemism is, so I'll be scouring the papers and browsing the job sites and beating the bushes to see what (or, because I'm not ruling anything out, where) my next gainful employment will be. On the other hand, this does mean I have a lot more time on my hands at the moment, so with any luck my productivity for this very site should pick up a bit for the foreseeable future. I'd certainly hope so, at any rate!

So keep watching this space, true believers, and I'll do what I can to keep bringing you reasonably interesting content in a reasonably timely manner. And if you happen to run into anybody who mentions a pressing need for an accredited Librarian, hey, send 'em my way! This may seem a strange venue for personal promotion, but heck with it, it is a rough economy.

Manitoba Markers Month: Brandon Gets Its Wish (and, Please Rise for the Singing of...)

Yes, Manitoba Markers Month marches on here at Slurpees and Murder, but first things first.



Uptown Magazine! Nobody drowns and nobody dies!

It may seem like a long time ago now that the looming spectre of a national identity crisis darkened our great and proud land, but in fact it was just within the last couple of weeks that the debate about our national anthem rose to life and then immediately died again.

Manitoba Markers Month: Free, But at What Cost

Our first installment in our March special, on a topic requested by Sean Carney.

When I initially came up with the idea of doing a bunch of themed drawings for the month, it was to keep myself from resting on my laurels and to make sure that I would try something a little different. I think you'll agree with me when I say that the following definitely counts as 'different':



Ha ha ha ha, oh man, Free Press commenters. Bless your complete and perpetual collective lack of self-awareness!

It took longer to get that done than I'd originally intended, but I hope you find it enjoyable nonetheless. On to the next challenge! And I have a column due to be published in this week's Uptown Magazine, so whether or not I actually get any drawing done you guys are guaranteed to hear from me within a few days because I am shameless and self-congratulatory. Hey, if it's good enough for second-wave Daffy Duck, it's good enough for me!

March is Manitoba Markers Month, or: Apparently Gary Bettman Owns a Cloaking Device

I know what you're thinking, and you're right: March already? When the hell did we get to March, and why is it already behaving like spring outside? It doesn't seem plausible, but sure enough -- it's March, and I have a little project in mind. But I'll get to that in a minute.

As I'd said, it's definitely been spring-like outside lately, and spring is the time when a young man's fancy turns to... completely implausible sports rumours.

The End is the Beginning is the End, or: Black and Blue and Gold All Over

Uptown Magazine! The snack that smiles back!

There are only two weeks left before we find ourselves in 2010, bidding farewell to another decade and then wondering just what the hell happened for everything to go wrong in the last ten years like that. But there's no point dwelling on it for too long, so just enjoy the moment and reflect on your own personal growth in the last decade -- then remember that we're all going to die because an essentially extinct civilization said so, which is the perfectly logical and irrefutable conclusion of my column this week. Hope you like sarcasm!

Speaking of sarcasm, and speaking of catastrophes -- ah, segues -- was anybody else disproportionately, perversely satisfied by the terrible day the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had yesterday? I don't mean to sound like I cherish schadenfreude above all else, but I usually do, so that's definitely how it's going to sound.

Slurpee Capital Football Team Finishes 7-11

Well, that was a stinker of a last stand.

Now, I know we're all looking forward to the post-season (not to be confused with "postseason", cue laugh track) hilarity of the fallout from this miserable, terrible, soul-crushing, playoff-killing stinkbomb of a performance. Certain sizeable segments of the fan population will call for Coach Kelly's head, Mister Congeniality himself will insist that they don't count because they aren't real fans, and he'll keep his job because so far we haven't even finished paying off the coach we had before him.

But don't automatically assume that this particular loss should be hanged on him! I used my high-ranking connections to procure a copy of the Blue Bombers' offensive playbook, and I think you'll agree that they executed it to the letter:



To be fair, he did complete one pass in the second half, which is still probably more than LeFors or Dinwiddie would have accomplished. Something to build optimism off of for next year, for you true-blue Bomber fans out there!

In all honesty, after watching that game, I'm actually sort of relieved that the season is mercifully over and we can move on with our lives. No more accusations from the Bombers staff that we just don't love the team enough, no more hilarious and terrible quarterback outings, no more Randy Turner columns about how much revenue the team is bleeding in ticket sales. (Now there's a tack of sympathy I didn't understand all year. What difference does the team's bottom line even make this season? Is there a magic dollar figure or a magic number of tickets sold, or unsold, that would result in the team not being owned wholesale by David Asper once his mall is built?)

At any rate -- see you next year, Blue Bombers! Maybe if we work together with the Manitoba Homecoming 2010 people we can throw a twentieth-anniversary party for our last Grey Cup.

A Few Things

Winnipeg urban planning: so close! And yet, so far.

My apologies for my sudden disappearance! Those of you who remember my previous work also remember that I'm prone to disappearances, but this one was more of a technologically induced series of exercises in frustration than anything else. Things I Have Learned:

1) Upgrading to Opera 10 (and its persnickety, seemingly arbitrary system of handling cookies) will ruin your every attempt to access Google Accounts, which in my case most notably means my Blogger/Blogspot access. I can get into my account just fine from other browsers, as you can probably tell because you are reading this right now, but I genuinely figured there must be another workaround for this that I was just missing. Then -- quite to my consternation! -- I lost all internet while I was trying to figure it out, meaning I also learned that

2) Sometimes network cables just straight up die from old age. And in arriving at that particular diagnosis, meticulously inspecting every necessary component of my beloved desktop computer along the way, I also concluded that

3) Network cards built right into the motherboard are a manufacturer's way of telling you that you definitely bought the wrong kind of motherboard. ffffffffffffffffff--

ANYWAY

So here I am, and my problems aren't exactly solved, but they're at least held at bay long enough for me to move on to other things. So let's burn it up!



Uptown Magazine! Oh, what a relief it is!

Last Thursday saw my most recent column published here, and it's a rip-snorter of a good read if I do say so myself. Politicians, am I right, guys?

Speaking of politicians -- word came down the pike a couple of days back that Premier hopeful Andrew Swan was formally dropping out of the three-man race to become Gary Doer's inevitably less popular replacement. Tom Brodbeck, man of class as always, berated Swan at length for his decision in yesterday's paper, because if there's one thing that nobody likes it's a man who has a reasonable understanding of his comparative chances in a popularity contest and rationally decides to let the matter drop. Brodbeck busted out "lame", "spineless", "gutless", "wimpy", and "quitter" twice in describing Swan and his exit; I'll grant that I'm not particularly fond of the guy myself either, but damn, bro, ease up a little.

Of course, having said all that, I did draw this to amuse myself earlier today--



--and it's funny how I hadn't realized, until I tried to draw him, how much he reminds me of Egon from Ghostbusters. But you can see how I'm opposed to his policies, rather than directly antagonistic and hostile to the man himself, and clearly this unbecoming self-restraint is why Brodbeck gets a daily newspaper column and shmucks like me are relegated to the internet. Man, I gotta start practicing some personal attacks!

But, anyway. Good to be back!

Tom Lukiwski, Pre- and Post-Crisis

A couple of days ago, few if any Canadians outside of Saskatchewan had any idea who Tom Lukiwski is. Bet he misses those days!

It's rare in our day and age to see important or influencial people get themselves into trouble with video footage that predates YouTube, isn't it? Of course, it didn't stay offline for long; you can see the snippet clip that sparked the media frenzy here, with a sarcastic slideshow on either end of the clip because this is the internet, or go here to watch the full twenty-five minutes (!) of footage.

(Dirt under their fingern... the hell does that even mean?)

There are people trying to downplay the video by pointing out that the remarks in question were made seventeen years ago, but come on now -- seventeen years ago means he was fourty years old at the time, and fourty is a hell of an age to not know better by.

Now, I'd happened to come across my good drawing pencils in the basement the other day -- so that's where they were! -- and when you see a man making that big a mental error while wearing that brazen a moustache, well, you can't not draw it:



Ha ha, man, that moustache. I can't possibly do that thing justice.

The opposition is calling for Lukiwski's head, of course -- both because that's what you'd expect them to do given the circumstances and because it worked last time. And the Conservatives are insisting that they have no intention of jettisoning or punishing him, likely because reducing their seat count in their minority government is not on their to-do list. So we the audience will probably be hearing about this one for a while yet, which I'm sure is just what we were all looking forward to.

(And Brad Wall, now the Premier of Saskatchewan, is on the same videotape mocking then-Premier Roy Romanow with what is ostensibly a Ukrainian accent; Romanow is still a pretty well-respected dude, and Saskatchewan has a few Ukrainians in it, so you can imagine how the next provincial election over there is going to be nothing but good times.)

I couldn't help but laugh a little at a quick tidbit from this coverage:

"Lukiwski was first elected in 2004. The previous MP for that riding, Larry Spencer, was suspended from the Canadian Alliance caucus after he told a reporter he would support a law to outlaw homosexuality.

When he ran for office, Lukiwski criticized Spencer for those remarks."

Man, that poor riding! Sorry, Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre! Better luck next time!

In conclusion, if you are in politics you should probably not get drunk and make fun of homosexuals in front of a video camera. Write this down somewhere! It's probably a good lesson to remember.

Behold the Amazing Internet: Fred, Alanis and Jack

Man, remember back in the day before the YouTube phenomenon when we all had to watch television? I know! Geez!

(As a prescript: if anybody has any trouble viewing the embedded video files here, let me know. It is not an exact science.)

In our modern world of direct-download audience impatience, we as a culture of consumers can pick and choose exactly what we want to view -- even if what we are viewing is not, specifically, a good idea.

Such as, say, offhand, just as an example, the beloved cartoon icons of our collective childhoods selling us all cigarettes.



God, that's just masterfully insidious, isn't it?

People complain today about the cynically crass commercialization of youth-aimed media, with toy tie-ins and movie deals and the inevitable terrible video games -- but that is because people today are sissies. You hear me, squeamish parents? Sissies! The lot of you!

Make no mistake, there were some pretty awful messages in the cartoons I grew up with (during my fourth year of university I wrote a political studies paper on the overt and covert ideological content of the major animated films of the 1980s; yes, really) -- but at no point in my young life did I see Optimus Prime turn to Bumblebee and blurt out "Winston is the one-filter cigarette that delivers flavour twenty times a pack!"

Although I'm kind of wishing I had, now. That would have been pretty funny.



And if you thought that was the most amusingly bizarre pop-culture monstrocity you were going to see on YouTube today -- ha! Never underestimate the internet in its ability to produce ideas and concepts you would never in your life have expected.

For example: if there were one thing I was never expecting to write, and if there were one thing you were never expecting to read, it would have been "Alanis Morissette has released a full piano ballad cover of the Black Eyed Peas' 'My Humps' with accompanying video".

BUT



This is the best thing Alanis Morissette has ever done, and I say this even as a former aficionado of You Can't Do That On Television. (Boy, was that show title decades ahead of its time.) Nobody's been in any hurry to pay attention to Morissette for quite a while now, especially after mainstream overexposure mercilessly murdered Jagged Little Pill (just as it murdered every popular album of the mid 1990s -- you know I'm right).

But if there's one way to rocket into my good books, it's definitely by taking on My Humps. And that video is deadpan perfect, no question. It's no surprise that the former Nickelodeon ensemble player has excellent comedic timing, and as far as I'm concerned the "you don't want no drama" segment launches the video straight into brilliance.

Speaking of brilliant! (I love segues.)

I've been a longtime enthusiast of You Don't Know Jack, the gameshow-inspired videogame series that specifically aims to be both intelligent and hilariously insulting; I have many fond memories of my father, my siblings and I wasting hours and hours each night playing the PlayStation version until we were all convinced everybody else had memorized the questions and we hadn't. These are my fondest memories of time spent in Brandon; that is because it is Brandon. But I digress.

You can imagine what my initial reaction was when I learned that they've been putting out free, brand new 7-question episodes each Monday since the beginning of March. The writing is spot-on as always, the presentation is almost perfect (the flash hangs up a bit in the second episode, especially on my rickety old computer -- but these are free beta versions, so oh well), and Tom Gottlieb reprises his role as voiceover host Cookie -- which is important, as anybody familiar with the two PlayStation versions of YDKJ knows.

Behold the Amazing Internet! Eat it, television! If it weren't for hockey, politics and Jeopardy, you'd be dead to me!

Mercifully, The Workforce Beckons

Through the same placement agency that gave me my last job, I've been hooked up today with some new employment. It was quite the conversation with my contact at the agency when she phoned this afternoon; she was all like "wait you mean nobody's phoned you in like a month" and I was all "uh no actually they haven't" and she was all "oh man whoops" and -- anyway, I'm employed again! Whoo!

It'll be part-time, and it'll be extremely temporary (spanning an estimated thirteen working days), but I'll gladly take it. Point A, I need money -- I like to think this is a good motivation for finding work -- and, point B, after nearly a month of unemployment I am in severe need of some good reasons to get out of the house.

A stretch of several weeks off can do strange things to a man; by this point, my time is not exactly a precious commodity. Besides finding a job, my personal highlights for today were going out to Dairy Queen for a banana split, remembering how to play Leonard Cohen's "Ain't No Cure for Love" on the guitar, and then late in the evening catching a particularly good episode of Babar on television. Babar!

(Remind me some other time to dedicate a whole post to Babar, because god damn. Babar was a lot more enjoyable before I knew anything about the legacies of African colonialism; I'm so glad I studied history and political studies so that I can never be happy about anything ever again.)

(Also -- remind me some other time to learn how to play the Babar theme. Just to mess with people's heads when they can immediately recognize the tune but not immediately place it.)

And just to really hammer home how little I've been up to lately, the more of this guy you start seeing --



-- the more you know you really aren't accomplishing anything productive at all any more.

After one game, for reasons I still haven't figured out, I sat back and for the very first time beheld the colour scheme on this dude.

Between this guy and Babar, what is it with kings and green suits? Where in the world would technicolour vomit be considered a regal arrangement? How cocky is this guy that he can smirk while wearing that combination of colours? Are his bright plumage and shows of confidence intended to attract a mate? If so, are there inherent cultural misunderstandings because he is required to find a queen of a different colour?

Then, finally -- what would happen if I tried to draw him?



(The King of Freecell is a jerk, I have decided.)

I start work at the new job on Wednesday afternoon. That'll be good for me.

Recent News Roundup: Pour Him Over Ice Cream for a Nice Parfait

Have you been keeping track of what's going on in our fine world? You're probably up to speed on the big local stuff -- youth crime still rampant, downtown still dangerous, Jets still gone, so on and so forth -- so I'll run through a few items of interest beyond the top city stories. Wouldn't want you to miss anything!

First off, if you hadn't noticed this in yesterday's papers, I feel the need to note it now. The top of page B1 of yesterday's Winnipeg Free Press is an article about a Unicity Taxi driver, one who was suspended after sexually assaulting two young women. And the top of page B2 of yesterday's Winnipeg Free Press... is an article about an entirely different Unicity Taxi driver, one who was suspended after getting completely plastered and then plowing his cab right through the front wall of a living room in Maples.

What are the odds that two separate stories about Unicity drivers doing remarkably poorly at their jobs would top the first and second pages of the local section? Well, I used to work overnight shifts at a hotel with an attached bar -- so from my experience, I would say the odds are pretty good. My biggest surprise about any of this is that the top of page B3 wasn't an article about somebody dying of a brain clot after listening to Unicity's absolutely vomitous hold muzak for seemingly forever.

If you are considering phoning a cab at two in the morning on any given night, my advice is don't. Hitch a ride, walk, form a makeshift skateboard out of wood and beer cans, nap for four hours until the buses start running again (Winnipeg Transit's nonexistent overnight service really is a shameful reflection on our city) -- because you know what? These options will still be faster and cheaper than the countless minutes of terrible music and the glacier-slow car response time involved with getting home via taxi. Wait times of up to an hour were not uncommon with Unicity when I called to specifically request a cab for the manager each night, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about here.

I hope that proposed airport shuttle idea goes through. I really do. Just to stick it to 'em.

But anyway! All that is yesterday's news, literally and figuratively. What all is buzzing around the news world today?

Well, this in particular caught my eye:



Oh, well, okay. Never underestimate the power of the human mind to concoct the worst possible rationalizations of failure.

"We find ourselves in third place for the first time in generations; this was our party's worst electoral showing since Trudeau was in power. What happened?"
"The, uh... the emergence of a third and equally competitive party in a provincial sphere desperate for change, combined with a salient general wane in support for the separatist movement?"
"What th--of course not! We are in third place because our leader likes men!"

So, if you were wondering, Andre Boisclair isn't Premier today entirely because he is an open homosexual -- just like Bob Rae isn't Liberal leader today entirely because his wife is Jewish. Remember: in Canadian politics, defeat is always taken personally!

Speaking of Liberal leaders. As any particular given news outlet will have mentioned by now, current Liberal leader (and, I continue to suspect, human Muppet) Stephane Dion fired off this line yesterday:

"I gave Canada Clarity; Stephen Harper gave Canada Flaherty."

Ba-zing. Jesus Christ. I want to know who wrote that for him so I can send that person flowers, or cigars, or something. What's the proper token of appreciation for excellent zingers? Is it a hug? I will hug you, unidentified speech writer!

See, this is why I love Canadian politics; most of the time you can kick back and pay attention entirely for entertainment value! Dion thinks he's hot right now because he got one rhyme in -- but he'll have nowhere to run when Ed Broadbent challenges him to a rap battle!

WHO'S BACK ED IS BACK



I couldn't resist. I'm sorry.

And that wasn't even the news item that inspired me to post today! No, after all of that, what finally got me started today was three paragraphs tucked quietly away in the depths of the paper.



Yes, seriously.

The artist is in the right and the organized religion knee-jerk reaction is in the wrong, of course, but that's not why I bring this up.

I glimpsed this, with amusement, very early this morning; right from the second the headline hit my eyeballs, a particular song started up in my head. That song kept going for the next several hours -- playing and looping and repeating itself -- until I gave up, plunked down with a borrowed electric guitar, and finally learned how to play it.

And if there was one song I would never have expected to lead into with a timely news item, it would have been:

Tom Waits - Chocolate Jesus [buy]

Just to bring this post around full circle -- I put on literally hundreds of CDs during my tenure at that overnight hotel job I had mentioned, and through all of that only three artists I was listening to were ever recognized by a passerby, guest or fellow staff member. One of those artists was Tom Waits. So you can rest assured that Tom Waits brings people together; if there were one man walking the planet right now that could handle the responsibility of being a prophet, I should hope it would be him.

It's a great big crazy world out there, folks! Try not to let it kill you!

Markers Equal Fun

I bought some folders from Staples recently.

(I needed folders. What can I tell you? Sometimes a brother just needs some folders.)

Of course these things never go smoothly, I initially grabbed legal size, what I needed was letter size, back and forth to the store and back so on and so forth. I assure you this isn't the important part of the story.

No, the important part of the story was the collection of bins in the middle of the store, offering 50% off the lowest ticketed prices of any items therein. Anybody who knows me knows that I am incredibly cheap I'm a typical Winnipegger, which is to say I am incredibly cheap I like bargains, so I couldn't help but abandon my folder quest for a couple minutes and see what I could see.

What I found therein was something I would never have expected to find in a bargain bin, because I would have never expected such a thing would actually exist.

Behold as I beheld, including the double-take I took to confirm what I had just read:



Yes. Crayola Multicultural Markers.

Multicultural. Markers.

Would anybody out there like to form a New Wave band? If I do not form a New Wave band titled the Multicultural Markers immediately, I'm going to feel that I am doing the world a terrible disservice. (I'm not kidding about this. I can play bass or guitar while singing vocals simultaneously, and I would look devestatingly sexy in a Devo hat. Somebody take me up on this.)

Now, my first reaction upon seeing these was "Holy what--what have they done? Have we as a civilization finally taken the idea of political correctness too far?"; my second reaction was "Wait, never mind, these are awesome. I must have these". I'll admit to knee-jerk initial reactions about the continued spread of cynical lipservice diversity and tolerance -- let's be honest with ourselves, being able to draw other races does not spontaneously eradicate racism -- but really, now, we've needed these damn things for years. The ubiquitous 'flesh' colour of years past never actually looked like anybody, and we as a civilization can finally draw Asian people that aren't the same colour as Tweety. Progress is progress!

The eight multicultural colours included are 'beige', 'tan', 'golden beige', 'bronze', 'tawny', 'terra-cotta', 'mahogany' and 'sierra'. Why, imagine the fun kids can have just sitting around and figuring out which euphemism refers to them!

"I'm mahogany!"
"I'm bronze!"
"I'm, uh... tan."
"I don't want to be 'tawny'! 'Tawny' sounds like a girl's name!"

And imagine the fun parents will have when their kid comes home covered in marker, either because he's pretending to be from another culture or because 'tawny' sounds like a girl's name -- which, now that I think about it, leads us to the next topic of interest. Note the part where they're labelled as 'washable'; certainly Crayola wants you to note that part, because the packaging mentions this no less than five times on the packaging. What would you think 'washable' implies? Well, you may want to consult this li'l box on the back:



Turns out 'washable' is limited to skin and most (most) items of clothing, which makes them... functionally indistinguishable from regular markers in this regard. One day some poor mother is going to find out the hard way that her definition of 'washable' and Crayola's definition of 'washable' are miles apart when she comes home and finds out her walls have become multicultural in her absense.

"Washability you can trust! / Une lavalilite fiable!" Right. My ass. Next they'll tell us the nontoxic certification means it won't poison owls.

That aside! Having mentioned part of the back of the marker package, I now concede that the back of the package was what finally sold me on buying these. (Granted they only cost $1.48 plus taxes after it was all said and done, but I can be a remarkably hard sell sometimes.) Have a look at their suggested use for the markers:



Okay, that's kind of corny. But it looks like fun, doesn't it? It does!

Kind of odd that they specifically suggest brown paper bags, though -- what with brown paper bags being most commonly used to transport alcohol and pornography. If children are growing up in a home with a free and ample supply of brown paper bags, those children probably have a lot more to worry about than whether or not they have the right colour marker for drawing a Mexican dude.

But, hey, whatever ingredients are necessary for fun, right? Right! And fortunately I had a brown paper bag handy at home (...shut up), so I got right to work drawing the cave drawings I'd want to see -- the sort of lasting archeological discoveries that future generations could really appreciate in evaluating the status of our world to date.

Meaning I laughed and doodled a tiny cartoon Gary Doer.



(It's actually spelled 'McFadyen'; when pressed on this, however, cartoon Gary Doer dismissed the practice of spelling an opponent's name correctly as 'an amateur move'. He's got me there!)

I liked how it turned out, so I kept going with Hugh McFadyen:



And because I'm all about equal coverage and fairness of opportunity here at Slurpees and Murder, Liberal leader Jon Gerrard gets his time in the sun:



So all in all, I'm pretty pleased with my purchase. These recent experiences have led me to conclude that I'll never become so old or jaded that sitting down and puttering around with markers ceases to be fun.

If you happen to be near the Staples on Pembina, the one just north of Bishop Grandin, and you don't mind dropping $1.48 plus taxes for some quality entertainment, I definitely recommend you pick these bad boys up! I put to you the incontrovertible equation of "Markers = Fun", and it's lucky for everybody involved that I am not a tenured professor or this would be on a test later!

I Find Them Most Aggravating

Well. Good evening. Happy New Year! I trust you enjoyed yourself.

Last I'd written, I was ready and waiting to leave my previous job; I had thought to myself that this upcoming period of unemployment would last anywhere from a couple weeks up to a month. Newfound freedom! Plenty of time to chill out! Visit some family, do some writing, catch up on some reading and some neat video games, maybe see my roommates again every once in a while -- me time! Yeah!

The unemployment lasted three days.

Yeah, whee. I left my former employment at midnight on December 30th, then it went 31st, 1st, 2nd, hired. Stupid current desperate economy! Why I oughtta.

Three days is a lot less downtime than you'd think. I got to visit with my cat --



-- and I found time to draw a picture, just to see if my meager artistic talents had died from prolonged inactivity yet.



And then suddenly, here I am, working again. I got a job through Pinnacle Placement working for Investors Group, which means that I work way up in the Tower of Song in the NewPort Centre and that's all the information I'm allowed to give you without getting canned.

The view's nice from up there.



But you didn't hear that from me.

Anyway! In the bewildering and painful transition from working overnight shifts to working genuine business days, I haven't found much time to do much else but work and sleep. It wasn't until yesterday that I got around to skimming the piled newspapers of days previous, and it didn't take long at all before I regretted ever learning how to read.

Have a look at this, and see what you make of it. On page A3 of the Sunday, January 7th Winnipeg Free Press:



Let that all sink in for a second.

Yes, folks, Fred Brick of Brick's Fine Furniture deigns to tell you that "this generation", meaning anybody young enough to grasp video games (and by that he means anybody capable of following a ball around a screen), is specifically out to ruin television and radio for him. "I find them most aggravating and I'm not alone!"

Negative blanket statements about entire segments of the population are big business!

I find myself completely unclear on how this is supposed to draw people into his establishment. ('Mind-boggling annoying promos', indeed.)

"I, too," a crotchety senior citizen must theoretically be exclaiming somewhere, "am incapable of understanding Pong! I loathe the younger generation with their Atari games and their properly proofread advertising! GOD I NEED TO BUY A BEDROOM AND DINING SET SO BAD RIGHT NOW" and then off they go, rushing as fast as they can, to The Brick by mistake because old people are notoriously bad at reading the very small print lining the bottom of advertisements.

My question to you, Fred Brick, of Brick's Fine Furniture -- how the stone hell did you land prominent editorial space on page three? Is it seriously as simple as buying advertising room and writing in whatever incomprehensible nonsense you feel like? And, more importantly, how can I get in on this?

I mean, man! Clearly I've been going about this all wrong. The ticket to securing steady mainstream exposure for the fruit of your intellectual labour isn't won by a balanced approach to complex issues, an eye for a captivating story, a love of the written word, or the hard-earned respect of your audience and peers -- all you need is influence in the business community and a fat wad of cash!

Well, folks, just you wait! One day, I'll have that coveted spot on the opening pages of our venerable and respected city paper -- and there'll be nobody to stop me from delivering the hard-hitting journalism and carefully-phrased editorial wisdom that Winnipeg deserves! A sneak peek:



I can tell you're all as excited as I am.

Junkhouse - Be Someone [buy the Best Of album; original album seemingly unavailable online]
Clearlake - Good Clean Fun [buy]
Daniel Lanois - Power of One [buy]
Guided By Voices - Hold On Hope [buy]
Peter Mulvey - The Trouble with Poets [buy]

Stay tuned, gentle readers and true believers! I said I'd be writing more often, and I'm deranged enough to try and stick to my word!

I Drew a Picture

This one's for you, Debbie the Polar Bear!



As you might expect, this is exactly the same way I reacted when I found out earlier tonight that Sam Katz has been re-elected with a depressingly vast majority of the vote.

And that the voter turnout was a measly 38%.

Thpbppbt.