Manitoba Links Weekly: REEFER MADNESS, Sage... Madness(?), Does This Mean I Shouldn't Bring a Samurai Sword to the Art Gallery, and Here's That Winnipeg Blog Compendium You've Been Waiting For (ManLinkWeek S02E17)

Ha, well, so much for my earlier plan! I wish I had a super-cool story about the very important and dramatic events that kept me from having this post out earlier, but the truth of it is just that the Olympic hockey is on way late at night (and onward through to morning!) so I'm on some very wonky sleep patterns. These are very important patriotic considerations! This'll just have to be a Sunday feature, I think, until all that gets sorted out. Please bear with me in the meantime.

So hello and welcome to a Manitoba Links Weekly! Brace yourselves for the week's worth of content, it's quite the flurry today.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits I opened the show by not working a telephone correctly, because I am the smartest there is. (Well, okay, in fairness -- it was actually a switch outside the studio that needed flipping, rather than anything to do with the phone machinery itself. But it took me a minute or two to properly diagnose that while still keeping it together on-air.) Once that got settled, though, it was a very good show! Rather a good show, and I hope that you will enjoy it.

Let's light up the ManLinkWeek!

Manitoba Links Weekly: The Province is Cutting CFS Funding Alongside the Phoenix Sinclair Report, and You'll Probably Need a Drink After Reading About It (ManLinkWeek S02E15)

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly!

It's been another big week, hasn't it? Another busy ol' week. Let me fill you in briefly on what I've been up to! When last we left off I was headed to the final Mondragon Party, set on braving the crowds --

Manitoba Links Weekly: A Whole Bunch of Food-Related Links This Week, But First Let's Note This Flooded Hospital and This Explosion (ManLinkWeek S02E14)

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links WeeklOH GOD--

      [via]

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2013 in Review

This is a thing that I do, sometimes. Once a year, say, give or take. This is a thing that happens.

You and yours have a safe and happy New Year's tonight, and I hope that you will enjoy:

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2013 in Review.

[---]

A is for Audit, the fire hall brief
that ended both a CAO and a Chief;
though its Arrival took a lengthy vacation,
it blew quite a hole in our Administration.
For how long they'd delayed in hopes we'd forgot it,
one really could not have asked more of the Audit.

B is for Blueprints, doctored when Bought;
in a vast web the home Buyers were caught
when the inspector claiming their plans certified
also went through his own company on the side.
When a conflict of interest inquiry was led,
the inspector in question retired instead.

C is for Centreport, swiftly improving--
just two more years 'til it maybe starts moving!
It straddles two RMs; the Province has banned
the City from simply annexing the land.
In striking a waste plan success was implied,
but they still can't run water on the Rosser side.

D for Delete, as a web owner might;
y'know that "Responsible Winnipeg" site?
A 'grassroots' lobby, council'd later decry it
when its ownership traced back to Katz and Russ Wyatt.
The site's now Deleted -- which is too bad, because
we'll never know what "Another Initiative" was.

E for Employees; the City has many,
but when asked for numbers we can't produce any.
Pressed for an official staffing amount,
Mike Ruta said it'd take two months to count.
Could be in the millions! Could be in the tens!
Awkward for the budgets on which this depen's.

F for Fringe Fest, where this year the plays
most Famously Featured some ass mayonnaise;
each year seems to bring more bizarre escalation
in the struggle for key word-of-mouth motivation.
When scoping out shows, 'tis usually best
to just smile and nod politely at the Fringe Fest.

G is for Gaming Centre; not a casino!
Oh, it may offer blackjack and roulette and Keno
but when First Nations wanted casinos, we'd stated
no more because Winnipeg's too saturated.
True North's 'Gaming Centre', though -- just the right fix!
It's not favouritism, it's just... linguistics.

H is for Harvey, the Smith everpresent,
delighting in making his peers' lives unpleasant
by impishly doling ward allowance treats,
by cheering Joe Chan and by renaming streets.
On t-shirts they print him, in pumpkins they carve he--
most lucky for folks trying to rhyme things with "Harvey".

I for Ignorance of do-gooder whites,
and Infidel Atheist awkward soundbytes;
an IG Field launch that clogged every road,
Inner-city centres left to implode
and that one burst of Swandel wisdom to live by:
"blah blah I me-me I, me-me I I."

J is for Jurors, twelve people in all
who were grabbed around lunchtime at Cityplace mall;
rare statutes allow for sheriffs to so trouble you,
should you be in line at that one A&W.
Only one was needed, so don't be unnerved;
this wasn't how Justice is usually served.

K is for Keyser, who chided the mayor
for bad politics and ethical beha'iour;
despite this, to depose him she found no basis,
largely 'cause Chan filed in all the wrong ways-es.
And with that decision she put down her foot,
rend'ring Joe Chan's case and budget Kaput.

L for the Liberal Leadership race,
marked by internal outrage and disgrace
that a fake Bob Axworthy Twitter should exist;
no one seemed to care, but it hurt, they insist.
When a parody Twitter is the most that folks know,
there's nowhere but up for your party to go.

M for Mayoral, a living Museum
of candidates crowding to make sure you see 'em.
Bowman, Fielding, Havixbeck, Orlikow,
Steeves, Wasylycia-Leis -- and still you know
even more names may yet emerge, in the event
the Mayor's polling stays around twenty percent.

N is for Ninety, our main airport Route,
a most fascinatingly ugly commute
but Nothing, the Commerce Chamber did resolve,
that seven million bucks of fence wouldn't solve!
Their Chamber Way, alas, was proposed in vain,
so we'll still have to see those two blocks of back lane.

O is for Overrun; it's bad advice
to promise a "Guaranteed Maximum Price"
when the claim's accuracy is sorely diminished
by learning the blueprints weren't yet one-third finished.
Our new police HQ still nowhere near done,
thus far it's an $80-million Overrun.

P for the Provincial tax, PST,
a wound self-inflicted by the NDP --
support for the hike perhaps partly impeded
when they couldn't commit to a reason it's needed.
The Public thus far has declared this as folly,
the worst Polling seen by the Party since Pawley.

Q for how Quietly city heads left;
a vanishing Taz left the townsfolk bereft.
We've still no straight answers why Douglas was fired,
or Sheegl paid $240K once "retired";
Winnipeg's elevated to an art
its conspicuous Quiet when top brass depart.

R for Ray Rybachuk, quite the newsmaker;
a Royal-Albert-restaurant-tantrum-taker,
Teasers-chainsawer and associate of hoods,
one day found mysteriously dead in the woods.
His legacy surely will gain second look
should we ever write an Elmore-Leonard-esque book.

S is for Specialty Plates; that's our jam!
With five this year alone, we've been going ham;
one for Goldeyes, one for Fish Futures too,
one that only added "Bienvenue",
one for Curlers, and one for old car buffs.
And look for more next year! These still ain't enuffs.

T is for Target; it's finally here!
That drive to the States always seemed so severe—-
but what's this? Our interest immediately depleted;
CANADIAN prices! Ugh, we feel cheated!
No, sir, this new Target just ain't our scene.
(But it's nice that you folks made this Zellers so clean.)

U is for UFC, Ultimate Fighting;
a pay-per-view coming seemed very exciting
in a place with such loose violence and fashion credos
that sweatpants with TapouT shirts count as tuxedos.
Fans packed the rafters, a full sellout draw,
for what might be the worst card the sport ever saw.

V is the Roman numeral for five
years since Brian Sinclair was last seen alive;
found dead waiting at HSC in '08,
a '13 inquest is an oddly long wait.
And only now they note -- well, isn't that weird! --
their security footage of his death's disappeared.

W, Water, the talk of the town
when the taps began pouring a rainbow of brown --
all hues, tints and shades, a full range of corrosion
from 'lightest of beiges' to 'fecal explosion'.
But if we want people to move here, perhaps
we should be able to offer clear water from taps.

X is the crossing-off of things departed,
a full list won't fit but here's one that I'd started:
Kelekis, Gio's, the Tallest Poppy too,
the Parkade, Arkadash, Boo at the Zoo,
Dalnavert, Paddlewheel, Paddlewheel Queen--
this goes on for twelve lines, but you get what I mean.

Y is for Years, as 140 we turned;
for commemoration the cityfolk Yearned
but our brave leadership instead welcomed the day
by stonewalling quietly 'til it went away.
By 150, perhaps, we might honour our name
with a swelling of pride and not a vague sense of shame.

And Z is for Zombie Walk, this year now laid
to rest if our governments weren't getting paid
for the trouble of people downtown, such a mess --
there's no greater curse in this town than success --
so the route held nary a Zombie in sight,
downtown quite ironically dead on that night.

[---]

Happy New Year, everyone!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Underwhelming Hockey at Discount Prices, I Think I Missed Dim Sum Day, Boot Scootin' Boogie for Keyboards and Drum Set, and I Don't Smoke But I Own a Cheeky Protest Contraband-Cigarettes Shirt Nonetheless (ManLinkWeek S02E08)

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! My word, time flies these days.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits -- ha, that episode title, though -- this week we went into surprising depth on local store and product gift-shopping recommendations, discussed the merits and drawbacks of the hypothetical Unicity II, and expanded on some particular points of the preliminary civic budget. Including this very fine local blog post, which I heartily recommend you check out. Good times!

Oh! Also earlier this week, I added the 92 CITI-FM compilation "Winnipeg's Rock 'N Roll Christmas, Volume II" to the Slurpees and Murder Record Club; it's a two-decade-old rarity well worth your investigation, so give it a spin or two.

And if this post seems a little shorter than usual, it's because I've driven 2,200 kilometers across nine degrees of latitude in the past three days. Y'know, as one does. Release the ManLinkWeek!

Manitoba Links Weekly: When Everyone is Essential No One Will Be, December is Inevitably List Month, The Most Winnipeggian Present Imaginable, and Here are the Manitoba PCs Arguing for MORE SPECIALTY LICENCE PLATES (ManLinkWeek S02E07)

Earlier this week I compiled a field guide to Manitoba specialty licence plates, nine of which (NINE of which) have been released and promoted by the governing NDP within the last three years. That dropped on Tuesday; on Thursday, the official opposition Progressive Conservatives circulated a press release to argue that -- wait for it -- MANITOBA NEEDS ANOTHER SPECIALTY PLATE. The orange guys brag about nine specialty plates in three years, the blue guys complain it should be ten specialty plates in three years, and I want to light my ballot on fire. There's your provincial politics update. [ via ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits -- yes it was a full show this week, quiet you -- we discussed the City's preliminary budget, its controversial mandatory-unpaid-leave proposal for non-essential employees (more on that in a second), the continued wave of hypothetical Scott Fielding initiatives, and the death of the Montcalm Hotel so that condos may rise in its place. I have a long and fascinating story about working the front desk of a two-and-a-half-star hotel on Christmas Eve, but I'll save that one as its own special beast for some other time.

Right now, it's time for ManLinkWeek! First things first:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Brandon-Souris is the Single Most Important Place in the Country, SureFoot Doesn't Have to Take This Kind of Abuse From You, Oh My God the Hamilton Avenue Flying Pizza Website, and Here's Harvey Smith Beside a Harvey Smith T-Shirt (ManLinkWeek S02E05)

Yo dawg, I heard you like Harvey Smith, so we put a Harvey Smith by your Harvey Smith so you can watch Harvey Smith while you watch Harvey Smith. [ via ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we talked a seven-million-dollar-fence proposal (no, seriously), the Province's precarious spending-spree tendencies, and an audit call that was struck down and has subsequently become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Plus other topics! It was a good show, give it a listen.

Ah, but there's by-election business to attend to, isn't there? Prepare yourself for ManLinkWeek!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Greg the Type of Premier, Let's Go Save Some Legions, The Big Little Book of Winnipeg Jokes, and Arcade Fire are Positive Winnipeg is in Saskatchewan (ManLinkWeek S02E04)

I suppose it's up for debate whether or not this is better than Winnipeg being in Ontario, but the gaffe is that little extra bit more galling coming from other Canadians. I'd ask "what do they teach in Montreal schools these days?", but the answer is probably just Habs trivia and how to accept mob bribes. [h/t to Stereogum and, uh, pretty well everyone on Twitter that day ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! How're you doing, you look lovely.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we tackled the provincial throne speech, what it meant (or rather, probably didn't mean) for rapid transit, and the possibility of abolishing the Executive Policy Committee model. The show went well, and I think you'll dig it, so give it a whirl if you'd missed it.

Onward, to ManLinkWeek! Let's lead off with some fine throne-speech content released later in the week:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Thunderbolt-ly Kives, Nothing Went Well for the Police Service This Week, Maybe Don't Break Election Spending Rules One Day Into Your Mayoral Campaign, and Here's a Harvey Smith Pumpkin (ManLinkWeek S02E02)

You thought I was bluffing with that title, didn't you? You know me better than that, c'mon man. [ via; y'all should follow him, too ]

Good evening, everyone, and Happy Hallowe'en; welcome back to Manitoba Links Weekly! November might yet be just as dramatic as October was, so there's no time to waste; I'm bookending this week's installment with arts and culture, so let's jump right in.

Mailing It In: These are Seriously the Winnipeg and Manitoba Postcards Sold Here in 2013 (Plus: Giveaways!) (Warning: Very Image-Heavy)

You've seen me do this before, and you know how often it happens: I think of some idle curiosity offhand, it rattles around my brain for a week or two until it finally just clamps on, and then I have no choice but to pursue it.

Here's what I'd written on Twitter about a week and a half ago:

Y'know what we, as a city, have just never been very good at? Postcards. They just... they're not a strength of ours. flickr.com/photos/rondowl…

— James Hope Howard (@jameshopehoward) April 2, 2013

And they're not, man. I mean, look at that thing, click that and get a load of it. I kept poking around the related Flickr galleries that day in hopes of finding more dignified recent examples, but, well.

Why?I just, I don't... why.flickr.com/photos/adam79/… #why

— James Hope Howard (@jameshopehoward) April 2, 2013

Now, this ended up getting a bit of a discussion going, and some folks did insist that they'd seen better ones in the wild -- maybe not archived online, like these trainwrecks, but certainly better ones out there somewhere.

Well, it was possible, of course, that I might be wrong; I have been wrong before. Perhaps the local postcards have improved dramatically since I had last checked a physical store; indeed, perhaps each of our postcards are now world-class works of modern art! The days of embarrassing, sometimes cringeworthy photos and colours and fonts could very well be a thing of the distant past, the industry having advanced to a new and higher standard of grace and refinement.

Oh boy!

So curiosity, as it always does, eventually got the better of me, and off I set to discover what our fair city and fair province have for postcard offerings these days. The Forks is an indisputable tourist destination in Winnipeg -- very likely the indisputable tourist destination in Winnipeg, at least for now in our pre-CMHR era -- and thusly that seemed the best place to begin.



So here we are on the first floor of The Forks, and here is where my earlier bout of postcard-related optimism goes THBPPTH.

Ask James Anything Month: Hopefully Worth the Wait

Whoof, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry, everyone! This March has been the most curiously busy of all the Marches I can remember -- which is, by now, getting to be quite a lot of Marches -- so my best of intentions on timely updates took something of a torpedoing.

Well, no sense in dwelling on it! Ask James Anything Month continues to roll, so let's gear up and dive back in.

cherenkov asks:

"Should I buy a motorbike or a snow blower?"

It depends on how much shovellin' area you're dealing with, I'd say, but unless your lawn falls somewhere between 'reasonable' and 'teeny' -- or unless you're really keen on shovelling, like you've worked it into your exercise regimen or something -- I'd lean towards the snow blower. A motorbike would be grand fun, I'm sure, but snowblowing season greatly outweighs motorbiking season around here, and the latter tends to drag obnoxiously into the former -- especially so in a year like the one we're having right now.

In fair weather, prepare for foul, as the saying goes. Thomas Fuller! Quotable dude, that guy.

Anonymous, 2013-03-11 03:45 asks:

"Hey James! Can you tell us... Who (or rather how) talk-bubbles were invented. Y'know, comicbooks & dialogue.
I'm a James too! "

Well met, fellow James! Thank you for your question.

From looking into it, I can tell you the how, but I can't tell you the who. There are recorded, surviving uses of the speech bubble -- and its earlier incarnations of speech banderoles or speech scrolls -- dating back to the fifteenth century (!), if not earlier, and as they get closer to the present day you can see the original scroll-shaped format (which made sense in the day, back when people read from scrolls, y'know) widen out to the bubble we accept as convention today.

That said, we live in an era defined by its unparalleled technological ease and its theoretically infinite access to information, and we (can't even handle attribution now. So -- as much as I may wish it were otherwise -- it seems overwhelmingly likely that the original funnypage innovators of centuries past, the first people to say "yeah but what if we rounded it off more like this", are forever lost to time.

On a comics-related side note: I only learned, like, maybe a week ago that the scribblings and strings of symbols used to indicate-but-replace profanity in a speech bubble -- I identify them primarily with Captain Bluebeard and Q*Bert, but I'm sure you have your own defining examples as well -- have a formal technical name, 'grawlixes'. The term was coined by Mort Walker, the original creator of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois (and those two properties share a combined universe, incidentally; I always love stuff like that), who wrote a satirical reference manual about comic illustration effects that was then used as a legitimate textbook anyway because the world works in mysterious ways.

I'm'a need to buy this for myself sometime soon, is what I am getting at. Hooray for comics!

Anonymous, 2013-03-11 11:11 asks:

"When you say "the Liberals are drifting dangerously close to Calgary Flames territory," do you mean they are dangerously close to being "Red Hot"?



Enjoy!"

. . . what

whaaaaaat

My goodness, that's... yes. That's something! That is most certainly a thing.

I'd never seen that particular video before, but it occurs to me now that each and every major hockey franchise must have at least one video like this lurking around. Right? Some terrible, wonderful, awful, amazing, probably cheesy, usually hilariously-dated promotional footage or music lurking around in their annals. (What, what's so funn--no, no, two Ns. Annals. C'mon, guys.)

So perhaps, similar to SBNation editor Jon Bois' recent bracket of March Madness predictions based on correspondingly-named warships, perhaps for this year's Playoffs (and they're coming fast!) I should try basing my annual prognostications on which franchises have the funniest promo footage behind them.

Having said that, the Flames probably aren't going to make the Playoffs this year, so it's just as well that we all watched that video now. RYEHD HAWT, RYEEEHD HAWT, RYEEEHHHD HAAAWWWT

Anonymous, 2013-03-11 11:15 asks:

"Don't you think, though, that if you had the most beautiful woman in the world draped off you, it would open all kinds of doors and opportunities for you? Tons of other beautiful women would be throwing themselves at you because if you go for it with them, it validates their lofty self-esteem. You'd likely travel the world for free, and never have to pay for a drink again. Bunch of other advantages if you really think about it.

Thanks for your replies, this has been fun!"

Thank you, anonymous inquirer!

I'm not saying that I don't see the theoretical strategy behind the second of those two options in the previous post; perhaps if I were a more suave -- suaver? -- holy hell it is 'suaver' -- perhaps if I were a suaver operator and a more singleminded social climber and a less monogamous sort, then yes, using a woman to pick up other women might seem more strategically viable.

Those modifiers taken together, however -- not to put too fine a point on it -- kind of add up to some pretty serious sociopathy, and even taking those into account for the original hypothetical decision I definitely still prefer the "passionate but top-secret romance" angle of Door Number One against whatever this Neil-Gaiman-American-Gods-two-man-con bullshit is that we got going on here.

"Mmmm."
"Mmm--m--wait."
"What?"
"Well--I mean, this is nice, but--what about [name of hypothetical beautiful woman in scenario]?"
"Huh? Oh! Oh, no no, it's fine."
"She's fine with you cheating on her?"
"It's not cheating, it--okay, that sounds really bad. I mean, no, it's just, it's not 'cheating' because I'm not actually allowed to sleep with her."
"...what?"
"I, uh--well, see, the rules of the deal--"
"The deal?"
"--were that I can't do anything with her, but I can use her to pick up women like you."
"...what the fuck."
"No, I mea--okay. I swear that sounded less predatory in my head."
"Really?"
"...No."



Someone back me up on this -- 'suaver' doesn't even sound like a word, does it? Say it aloud. 'Suaver'. 'Suaver'! Ridiculous.

YWGer asks:

"As many of us know, there are a diverse range of comments following online articles, most notably on the websites of CBC Manitoba, the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Winnipeg Sun.

Some people are of the opinion that for an online comment to be valid, it must be mature, moderate, politically correct, and written with passable grammar and spelling. In short, online comments should be dismissed outright if they do not meet these standards and branded as that of 'crazy internet trolls.'

Other people contend that while some comments raise eyebrows given the views advocated, the people who post such opinions nonetheless represent a notable subsection of the Winnipeg and Manitoba population. In essence, to truly have a finger on the pulse of the city and province, one must recognize that these non-PC opinions are shared by many and could also give us a sense of upcoming shifts in public opinion. In short, these opinions are therefore valid and serve a useful purpose.

It seems that the former is often espoused by professional journalists & columnists (and many 'established' bloggers who play Twitter footsie with them). Whereas the latter seems to be championed by a smaller few columnists and the online commenters themselves.

James, what is your opinion on this matter?"

Hmm! Hmm. All right, let me try and unpack this one for a moment or two.

I'm not entirely convinced that the quality of commentary can be expressed on a straight line like this, with "socially acceptable and well-written" at one end and "socially unacceptable and poorly-written" on the other; I think you'd need, at the very least, a quadrant graph -- X-axis for opinion palatability, Y-axis for language mechanics -- to begin fleshing out the whole picture of the online-comment universe.

Although then you'd also need separate graphs for named commenters and anonymous commenters, or at least separate colours for the data points of each, but then of course this particular approach also risks conflating subjective analysis with objective analys--aaaaaand, see, now, here I go again.

Okay. Let me start over. The problem as I see it with dividing all online comments into 'valid' and 'invalid' based on the successful ticking of four arbitrary checkboxes is that, relative subjectivity of each box aside, it turns that particular avenue of public discussion into a pass-fail approach rather than a grading approach.

Grading comments and commenters, I can roll with; take a gander at a given thread and you'll find you're able to (again, subjectively) stratify respondents into letter tiers pretty darn effectively. Comments that hit all of the criteria get an A, and comments that hit none of them get an F (or just deleted, y'know, depending), sure, but you have to allow for the inevitable existence of B, C and D comments as well.

Then -- again, subjectively -- one has to decide for oneself how each of the four criteria should be weighed. Are they equal? Is one box more important to check than another? Is a moderate with unspectacular spelling and grammar considered better than, worse than, or equal to a radical with excellent language skills? Is a poorly-argued comment that you happen to agree with considered better than, worse than, or equal to a well-argued comment that you disagree with vehemently?

Then, also -- who gets to make all of these decisions on everyone's behalf? And what steps does that person or group then have to take to properly counterbalance the editorial slant (not to say bias!) of their site? And even then, if one begins to consider how standards will differ across competing outle--aaaaaand, see, now, here I go again.

Okay. Dang. I fear this one may be a smidgen too complicated to tackle in a compilation post; I may have to come back to this idea, after the gimmicked month is over. Still, good topic, though! I'm glad you pitched that one.

Moving on!

The Analyst asks:

"Where does The Winnipeg RAG Review sit within YWGger's dichotomy? After all, it's prone to bashing racist, insane wingnuts, but does so in more in a rough edged, conversationally intolerant manner that might equally offend those with more genteel sensibilities. "



It's... it's not my dichotomy, man. I think you'd have to ask him about it yourself. (And, no, before you ask, I also can't tell you if he's a secret racist.)

And, finally:

Anonymous, 2013-03-15 12:12 asks:

"The most important question of our time: can a slurpy kill a fetus?"

research to this point remains incomplete and inconclusive regarding the potential effects of slurpy on babby

more science is needed



And, on that note -- thank you for reading this most recent installment of Ask James Anything Month! At my current output speed, we've got at least one more round of it before the month is through, so go ahead and Ask James Anything!

Fun With Data, Because People are Insane: A Look at the Site's 2012 Search Engine Hits

All of the following are complete and unedited search result strings; this is how people found me.

Yes, the end of the year previous and the beginning of the next meant a full calendar's worth of data to dig through, an opportunity that I dove into with gusto just as soon as it was available. This was not, however, a task that would lend itself to extended attention and prompt resolution; as you will discover shortly, prolonged exposure to the specifics of the Internet's interests and appetites is... an unwise decision, psychically.

Oh, it starts off reasonably enough:

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2012 in Review

Happy New Year!

You'd thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you? I nearly had! Not going to lie, I nearly had. But when I've done a thing one year and then done it again the year after, it does seem reasonable that I come back for a third kick at it.

So let us celebrate the arrival of the year 2013 by making good and sure that 2012 is dead and buried behind us, in a little segment that I like to call:

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2012 in Review.

[---]

A is for Arizona, where deals are made
that look shady despite the state having no shade;
be it mayors, CAOs or Shindico spouses
trading one-dollar companies or one-million houses,
our civic elites go down there to decide them
then make matters worse here by trying to hide them.

B is for Boulevards, also for Bravery
in fighting the City's -- cough -- modern-day slavery;
a Boulevard is a lawn's city-owned neighbour,
the mowing of which one man declared slave labour.
On this he thought himself a valiant crusader,
setting a court date for roughly a year later.

C is for Cellphone Tickets, on this list
because one such Cellphone turned out not to exist;
though the elderly man plead his case, the Police
doubled down on their claim in an odd press release.
When the Crown later stayed the case, leaving it dead,
the Police began chewing out the Crown instead.

D is for Douglas, the Fire Chief Reid,
with whom Shindico quite cheerfully agreed
to swap prime City lands for some cloverleaf crag;
"A deal is a deal", the Chief Douglas did brag.
In the scandals and audits ensuing since then,
Chief Douglas has never been heard from again.

E is for Emterra garbage collection,
delayed across any particular section
of the City by days, and by weeks in some spots
despite "final deadlines" (and of those there were lots).
City Hall won't disclose what fines had to be sent,
our collection remaining an Emterrassment.

F for the Free Press, the local broadsheet
booting many of its younger staff onto the street,
canning most everyone hired from '06 on down
and then killing the standalone weekly Uptown.
The Freep survives, for now, but it's less than inspiring
when the paper of record is exclusively Firing.

G for Golf Services, drumming up fear
when declared to be losing $1-million a year;
City Hall wanted courses marked for private sale,
which right from the get-go seemed destined to fail.
Public pressure led Council to back down from that call,
and an audit then said to keep them after all.

H is for Hellhole, or so said one 'star' --
the punchline of Rob Lowe walking into a bar
and finding no NBA on Grand Forks TV,
rekindling an old 'Peg insecurity
when any half-famous person says not to go
to our 'Hellhole' / 'Earth's rectum' / 'Communist Buffalo'.

I for IKEA, because, let's be hones',
you'd think the Second Coming had been upon us
to judge by the media coverage amounts,
which earned media fifteen-percent discounts.
The Sinclair Inquiry, or Idle No More?
Never mind that -- here's a furniture store!

J is for Joe Mack, Bombers GM,
impossibly still so after seeing them
have a terrible, horrible, very bad season,
with Mack being popularly held the reason
his handpicked group bombed out again and again --
52-0, 44-3, 42-10.

K is for Kapyong, but don't get excited;
the land's still a long way from being decided.
The courts ruled, at least, that First Nations deserve
consultation; some then feared an "urban reserve",
because there are still locals whose misguided passions
elicit some real ugly Kneejerk reactions.

L for the Lockout, which downtown still faces;
Langside suffered stabbings, shootings, arson cases;
the Lo Pub shut down to no small hipster fuss,
LaPolice found himself under the bus,
and the Liberals continued to disappear.
If it started with L, well, it had a bad year.

M is for Money, not that we have any;
governmental promises, sure, there've been many,
but our City's been stealthily unfreezing tax
and our Province's fiscal willpower's so lax
that its targets all had to be pushed two years back --
so Money, for now, we'll continue to lack.

N is for Noontime outside Kelvin High,
when a twenty-kid drug brawl fired up right outsi'e.
The fray of knives, BB guns, bats and steel bars
sent the kids off in ambulances and cop cars --
so if you've aspirations of being a thug,
please note that cocaine is a hell of a drug.

O for Ontario, a neighbouring land,
as hard as folks may find that to understand;
neither Rob Ford nor CBS This Morning know
that Winnipeg isn't in Ontario --
though, perhaps, if it were a more common mistake,
we'd have fewer problems drawing from their Shoal Lake.

P is for Prayer, because if we Pray
there's a chance that the city's crime might go away.
Police Chief remarks this had seemed to conclude,
although chances are good they had been misconstrued;
the reaction was one he might like to forget,
especially since he hadn't started yet.

Q is for Quarantined, all shut and boarded,
far easier than fixing the problems reported
with public facilities like Sherbook Pool
or the Civic Parkade (it's still closed, huh? That's cool);
seems we've begun treating repairs as disease,
which will mean far more Quarantines coming than these.

R for Rapid Transit, finally here
after decades of wait and delays quite severe;
your city in fast-forward! What a thrill!
Maybe four kilometres long, yes, but still --
a faster four K you will surely not find,
as rejoining Pembina will quickly remind.

S for the Speedway plant down in St. B,
zoned only to store wiper fluid, you see --
so you can imagine everyone's surprise
when a gigantic fireball lit up the skies,
methanol bursting into smoke and flame
as Speedway and the City took turns laying blame.

T is for Tickets to go see the Jets,
the finest political entitleme'ts
one could possibly get, used on various days
by no fewer than thirteen of our MLAs --
and in arena photos, front row of the place,
was Andrew Swan making a Grumpy Cat face.

U is for Unfinished, such is the state
of most major projects (many already late);
"on time and on budget" our PSB's not,
the Upper Fort tried to be a parking lot,
the Museum's gone silent, nary a sound,
and we had to reuse our old Stadium ground.

V is for Vi Ann, and for (Movie) Village,
flattened in the continued corporate pillage
of everything people thought made the zone good --
made, indeed, "Canada's Best Neighbourhood" --
and the next bout of fear and frustration to face
is the curious case of Papa George's space.

W for Waterpark -- gee, how'd you guess?
T'was the worst of all worlds, but a glorious mess
when the huffy withdrawl of its corporate backing
and City Council's widespread public shellacking
established a trend that has yet to reverse,
City Hall affairs getting only steadily worse.

X for X-Acto, just one of the knives
Winnipeggers use to ruin each others' lives;
it was knife crime on which Harvey Smith raised a racket,
but Police insist they can't possibly track it
so it remains bundled under 'violent crime',
which we happen to lead in most of the time.

Y is for "Yeah, whatever, okay";
it wasn't a "Yes" and it wasn't a "Yay"
but the provincial Tories' big leadership race
only yielded one guy, now the de facto face
of their party. The faithful tried acting excited,
but it played more like "Yeah, well... I guess that's decided."

And Z is for Zellers, the once-mighty beast
which will soon be completely extinct and deceased;
not glamorous, perhaps, not a brand of renown,
but it's one of the very last grocers downtown
and we'll need something planned for the rest of that Bay
before we get too distracted by Tar-jay.

[---]

Happy New Year, one and all! May the best of our yesterdays be the worst of our tomorrows, and all that.

Please be sure to tune into a very special episode of Winnipeg Internet Pundits this evening, and I'll catch you back around here later.

"Winnipeg: One Extreme City", the Surrealistic Adventure That Will Become Your World

I've been hinting here and there at something that I've been working on for a while now, something strange and undiscovered and all but forgotten even to the vast shared intelligence of the internet, and now -- with the oddly relevant reemergence of one of its key players -- the time has come to share it with you.

So come, friends, gather around, and behold as I beheld:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Are You Ready for Some Curling (ManLinkWeek 51)

Good evening; I'd meant to put this post up quite a while earlier than this, but found myself needing to put it off a bit. Because of reasons. Reasons that, for the sake of expedience, I will save for the next post.

Which means -- batten down the hatches, it's ManLinkWeek! And our first stop in the week-and-a-half-ish-that-was:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Summer is Over and Everything is Terrible (ManLinkWeek 49)

It's been that kind of a September for everyone, I'm afraid. [via]

I think we'll have to save the adventures of our dear beloved Mayor for another post entirely; for one thing, a list of his recent pitfalls and pratfalls is more than enough content to fill an entire ManLinkWeek segment by itself, and for another thing, we as a city can't go two or three days around here right now without something else making the list. ("He bought a what? From who? Ha ha, okay, but seriously. That's not real, is it?")

As for me, I'd obviously hoped to have this blog post up earlier than this, but the last half of this month has been a whirlwind -- partially from taking on a short-term second position, and partially from preparing to take off to Regina this weekend. That's right! By the time you read this I'll have traversed the highway to hell Saskatchewan's capital city, six- or seven-odd hours yonder thataway. And why am I, with my brother and a buddy in tow, going out there? For a video games tournament. I recognize that this sounds like an insane thing to spend thirteen-ish hours of weekend on the highway for, but A) their guys have driven out to support our guys before, so we want to show their first event some love, and B) you always knew I was crazy.

So let's do this! ManLink...ThirdofaMonth...ish oh screw it whatever Activate!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Family Night Games, As Many As Twelve, and BANK (ManLinkWeek 48)

Well, my good intentions of putting out two episodes last week didn't quite pan out, but I have a perfectly reasonable claim to extenuating circumstances: Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Double Dragon Neon dropped last week, on the same day, and I am not made of stone. Consequently, and compounding the problem, every time I sit down at the computer now I get nothing done because I'm busy listening to this:



/waits five seconds, hits repeat again

If you like fighting games and/or oldschool beat-'em-ups, I highly recommend checking out the two games mentioned above; if you don't like those genres, that's cool too, but you should at least check out their soundtracks.

You're probably assuming that my opening video game ramblings are an aside completely unrelated to this past week(-ish)'s local content, right? Wrong! Insert coin to ManLinkWeek:

MACKSTOPPER: A Project to Support the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Football Club

Timed Release Rewards Project
by James Hope Howard
Winnipeg, MB      Community-Owned Sports

Manitoba Links Weekly: Downtown Problems, Gleaming the Cube, and Augh Let's Just Get This One Run Already (ManLinkWeek 45)

Well, long time no see! As I'm sure you noticed, alas, I'm a few days off the weekly pace with this installment; the end of summer is as frenetic a time as any you'll find around here, so yes, I'll admit to being a bit behind. If you're wondering why something very recent isn't included here, it's probably because I'm saving it for next week's -- for this week's -- no, hang on, I'll get this -- I'm saving it for the next ManLinkWeek.

Unless, of course, you were thinking about recent Blue Bomber developments. (You can't spell "Winnipeg Blue Bombers football" without "LOL, BOMBERS BEING AWFUL".) That's going to be its own post, and trust me, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a doozy. First things first, though, of course.

And, before we begin, one helpful summer tip for those of you -- I realize this is a very small subset of Winnipeg readers -- for those of you who enjoy Slurpees: here's how to prevent brain freeze. Yeah, they put a robot on Mars and everything, but here's some science we can use for a change!

ManLinkWeek -- Hajime~!

Manitoba Links Weekly: We've Hit Peak Summer, Imagine Being Able to Buy Poutine and Beer Simultaneously, and Hey I Bet the Guy Who Didn't Fully Read or Understand His Own Anti-Crime Bill Would Make a Really Great Judge (ManLinkWeek 44)

And welcome back! This is a Friday feature now, maybe? I don't even know any more. Summers, man! Summers are TOO BUSY, a point that I shall elaborate upon shortly. But first, preamble:

-- I have a column in this week's Uptown Magazine; I have a column in every week's Uptown Magazine, but not always with a central idea as fundamentally awesome as the one I'm pitching this week. So have a look!
-- I successfully defended my Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown championship against all comers last weekend, which is great, because it means I don't have to update that bio paragraph on the right again. (There's quite a bit of livestream footage from the weekend-long event, if you're into that sort of thing.)
-- My poor sad old laptop overheats so quickly now that it occasionally just gives up and dies with a loud popping noise, which is... slightly unnerving to experience, and has not sped my ever-glacial writing pace up any. So I'm increasingly in the market to finally pick up a new computer, and coincidentally -- after a long stretch of the game appearing to be PC-only -- SimCity 5 will be on the Mac after all. Hmm.
-- And, in more encouraging news -- I had the good fortune of being able to attend the beginning of the Joey Elliott Era live, last night, and he won. So, hey! That's pretty cool. (You've never seen a city so energized about its 2-and-5 football team as we are about ours.)
-- BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME
-- If, for some reason, you don't happen to follow the hashtag #banished on Twitter, you missed Mike McIntyre's coverage of quite the day in court earlier this week. I don't want to spoil it for you, just get in there and experience it for yourself. (Remember: start reading from the bottom.)
-- And speaking of Twitter, here are the details on a beer swag giveaway, so have at that too while you're at it. If you're on the Twitter, I mean. You Facebook types can ignore the whole thing and get back to your busy day of watching people you don't remember very well complain about how Facebook's changing.

(I'm nearing the point now where my preamble is a full post in itself, a rather convincing sign that I need to think about retooling this feature soon.)

All right! Get ready to stare at your calendar in befuddlement, because it's time for ManLinkWeek!