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!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Dunnottar Sewer Surfin', Nine is Early Enough, Stop Fighting With Your Lady, and You'll Never Guess What Winnipeg Leads In (ManLinkWeek 41)

I hope you will humour me a bit of self-promotion, before we begin; it's been quite the interesting week or so. Seemingly everybody I know has already brought this up in person, but -- yes, I was in in the Free Press over the weekend, and yes, I had a really good time. Many thanks to David Sanderson for conceptualizing and hosting the event, and to the rest of the panel of experts as well.

That past weekend was a busy one for me, as I covered in this previous post; a lot of you probably don't check this site more than once a week (because, to be fair, my updates here as late have been about one a week), so I thought I'd take the time now to mention it. At the very least, this being a Manitoba feature, I figure that the following video is worthy of inclusion:



Let's see, what else? Ah, yes! I ran the soundboard for this week's Winnipeg Internet Pundits all by myself, like a big boy, without shattering the equipment or burning the studio down -- and those were my metrics of success (to give you some idea of my confidence going in), so, hey! Success.

And (and), I know I haven't really impressed this upon you lately, but I write weekly columns for Uptown. So if you haven't swung by there or picked a physical copy up lately, I wish to humbly suggest that you may find it worth your while do so.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME. Let's fire up some ManLinkWeek!

Manitoba Links Weekly: This Doesn't Look Like Anything, the Public Tap Dries Up, and Not-92.9 KICK Not-FM (ManLinkWeek 38)

I don't even know where this week has gone, man. Holiday Mondays are really discombobulating.

If you'd missed it, I put up some parade photographs from Canada Day in a tiny village over the weekend; they're very cute! You should check them out.

Also cute, and tangentially related to Canada Day: the Free Press put up a weekend gallery of cat pictures, if you're into that sort of thing, I mean. Are pictures of cats still popular on the internet? It's hard to keep track of this stuff.

On to ManLinkWeek!

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2011 in Review

Now, don't go thinking that I'm making a habit of this or anything, just because I happened to do this sort of thing last year and I happen to be doing it again this year. Entirely coincidental, I assure you!

The following had been intended for a live radio reading, one ultimately scuttled when the University of Manitoba Security Services wouldn't let me into the building. (It would seem that I am vastly more dangerous than I let on, or rather, more dangerous than I had hitherto been aware I was. The Most Dangerous Man in Winnipeg!) So I am afraid that the text version will, once again, have to suffice.

Yes, it's been a big year! It's also been a pretty terrible year. I do have a wee bit of positive personal news to report -- a rarity for me, this year -- but I can save it for the year oncoming; if I'm hoping for it to turn out well, the last thing I should want to do is get 2011 all over it.

But enough preamble! Let us mercifully put the past year behind us, and I do hope you will enjoy:

156 Lines About 26 Letters: Your Local 2011 in Review.

[---]

A is for Air Canada personnel,
who consider our downtown a circle of Hell
uninhabitable owing to its defacement
by (cough) "rural Manitobans" in "displacement".
Despite our best efforts, the airline, still nervous,
left almost as rudely as its usual service.

B is for Bedbugs, now widely freeloading,
and B is for Byfuglien drunkenly Boating.
B for the By-election all forgot here,
B for the Beethoven movie that shot here,
and B for the Beer you might get stabbed for buying;
nothing but Bad news in the B's, I'm implying.

C is for Christ the King School, which purported
to Crusade against fetuses being aborted
by offering school Credits for students to protest,
because Catholic guilt is what solves women's woes best.
In the ensuing outcry these plans were soon ceased,
Principal David Hood shortly after released.

D is for the former Discreet Boutique,
its exit uncharacteristically meek.
Panhandlers were blamed for its closure so speedy
(even by smut standards our downtown is seedy);
as Air Canada left, it joined the procession,
the better part of valour being discretion.

E is for Eadie's curse-laden intensity
and peculiar definition of density,
sounding F-sharps at his coworkers' gall
in approving a fourplex he liked not at all.
His message to progress, unflinching and hard:
"Not In My (foul language redacted) Backyard".

The aforementioned F had an awful year too;
a Fifty-man melee broke out at the Zoo.
Firebombs and Flooding ate up the whole summer,
Pat Martin's F-bombs rendered everything dumber,
Fort Richmond was declared the new Gaza Strip --
suffice it to say, F has been a bad trip.

G is for Garbage, subject to more fees
despite claims of maintaining a properties freeze;
our Mayor, who'd vowed to lock tax rates in place,
renamed this a "levy" to try and save face
but the upshot is still paying fifty bucks more,
for really the same services as before.

H is for Hours, less than a half dozen
between the implementation and discuzzin'
of Justin Swandel's morning fever-dream fares,
proving of "due diligence" that no one cares,
as it passed in Council by that afternoon --
twenty-five more cents for each transit ride soon.

I for Infrastructure, not up to code
with its hundred-year-old water pipes that explode
nor its one-fifth of roads marked as Poor and so grave
that the City declared they're too damaged to save.
Yes, our leaders gave up; you will, too, when I fill y'in
that our Infrastructure deficit's now four billion.

J is for Jets, our civic vindication;
fifteen years of obscurity and frustration
absolved in an instant, ignore though we might
that they're still just the Thrashers and still sort of bite.
Our feel-good story of the year, even still;
a .500 hockey team, soaked in goodwill.

K is for Keys to the City, and KISS;
them being together proves something's amiss
when the list for our civilian honour most high
is to, one, be famous, and, two, be nearby.
Shallow, yes, and small-time, but this too shall pass;
we're convinced leeching this fame will make us world-class.

L is for Leadership, or what's left of it;
two parties were forced to take that job and shove it.
Tory Hugh McFadyen resigned in disgrace,
having gained no ground after five years in the race,
and the Liberal Gerrard leaves his party in care
of, well, we don't know; nobody else is there.

M for "Manitoba Time", which was sent
around without explanation of what it meant --
then when the public universally panned it,
its ad wizards said we just don't understand it.
"The campaign will make it make sense", we were told,
an outcome that still remains yet to unfold.

N for the New annual record we've set,
38 homicides with time left over yet;
it's hard to pin down any one single cause
for this rampant disregard of homicide laws.
The comforting advice you're bound to hear stated
is, don't worry, mostly they're premeditated.

O is for Osborne, a neighbourhood changin';
like Santa's reindeer the big chains are arrangin'.
On, Subway! On, Safeway! On, Burger King, too!
On, Shoppers Drug Mart and A & W!
Of American Apparel as well it's composed --
but not Movie Village. That's about to be closed.

P is for Pipestone, out where they sell smokes
without collecting taxes -- a fine deal these folks
put together to provoke a Native rights scandal,
one thus far the province prefers not to handle.
Smokers seem unconcerned that the law has no part in
selling cigarettes at fourty bucks a carton.

Q is for Question, the one they'd been hopin'
to answer with "yes, 2013 we'll open" --
but government sources of funding have dried,
and the Holodomor still remains a divide.
So what is our Museum's opening range?
For now, 2014. (Subject to change.)

R is for Russ Wyatt's valiant crusade
when a store in his ward didn't have enough shade.
Yon evil Wal-Mart he rebuked when he said
that he'd counted their six trees, two of them dead.
So the next time you doubt Council's usefulness, please
think of how hard they work as they count all those trees.

S is for Signage, most often quite passive,
but one sign downtown was so bright and so massive
it hassled the neighbours and frightened the birds,
blotting out the sun with its brightly lit words
until City Hall ordered it be taken down --
though of course you will note that the sign's still aroun'.

T is for Terminals, both old and new,
though one left the other with nothing to do.
Such abandonment we were all shocked to discover
(somehow, since the Airports are next to each other)
and an alternate use we must now seek to find--
oh, wait, we can knock it down? Good! Never mind.

U is for Urine at sporting events,
brought up as a topic by some malcontents
forced to wait in lineups as washrooms were brimmin',
complaining of having "to line up like women".
So trough demands spent two days in our headlines,
as a helpful reminder that we're out of our min's.

V is for Violent crime, in which we lead --
it's nice to have something in which we succeed --
and while it may seem a most tempting mistake
to fret about a title we can't seem to shake,
no one else seems worried; it's well understood
that we now have a hockey team, so, hey, we're good.

W is for the Waste treatment plants,
and around a billion litres of pollu-tants
only partially treated when they were released
into rivers where flooding had only just ceased.
So, figuring what our reactions would be,
they spent a month keeping this in secrecy.

X is the mark that you make on a vote,
or you would if you did, but it's clear that you don't;
voter turnout decline has become so accurs-ed,
even Gail Asper rapping has failed to reverse it.
'Ere the tally of school trustee ballots be noted:
fourty-three thousand eligible, three thousand voted.

Y is for "Yurt"; no one knew what it meant
(it turned out it's some sort of exotic tent)
but then brave Occupiers brought social reform
by laying tents, then leaving for somewhere warm.
That camp now lays broken, its movement inert,
but we'll always hold fond memories of their Yurt.

And Z is for Zilch, which is to say none,
the number of Grey Cups we seem to have won
in two decades, despite our occasional prank
of reaching the big game and proceeding to tank.
The parade plans yet again we're forced to shelve,
not holding our breaths for this year twenty-twelve.

[---]

See you in the New Year!

Manitoba Links Weekly: You Must Believe that You're the Champion (ManLinkWeek 5)

I keep meaning to do posts other than these, but in the meantime, let's have ourselves another ManLinkWeek:

[CBC.ca: Winnipeg breaks homicide record with 35th death]
Welp, there it is, then. That's the kind of year it's been, around here, that we'd break the city's previous annual record for homicides by the midpoint of November.

Winnipeg may or may not be officially recrowned as the Murder Capital of Canada next year, owing to the measurement methodology employed on the subject by Statistics Canada, but the balance and the difference between homicide rate and homicide count kind of muddle the whole point. Thunder Bay was considered the Murder Capital for 2010 with a omicide rate of 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people, comparative to Winnipeg's rate of 2.8 homicides per 100,000 people, but the total homicide count in Thunder Bay last year was five. The current Murder Capital of Canada had as many homicides last year as Winnipeg had in one fire this year. It's not been a good year, around here.

My point is this: we like to make a big deal of the comparative numbers each year and each time they're released, but we should probably worry less about how Winnipeg measures nationally and worry more that our city has now recorded more homicides this year than in any other year, in history, ever.

[The View from Seven: Fixing “Under-Educated Manitoba” could help ensure that Jets, Ikea are here to stay]
And we're stupid. So, I mean, things could be going better.

An insightful piece of research and analysis from Kevin McDougald on the benefits of working smarter rather than working harder, which is a continued challenge for a province that has "traditionally been better at producing high school dropouts than scientists".

The article places a particular emphasis on the value of the sciences, but really, I don't think it will come as any particular revelation to the reader that a Science degree makes you vastly more employable and wealthy than an Arts degree will. You can't just get any old degree! I myself have a Double Honours Bachelor's in History and Political Studies and a Master's of Library and Information Science, and this unique combination of education and experience -- credentials earned by over half a decade of hard work, with knowledge and skills forged by years of toil and sacrifice under tens of thousands of dollars of debt -- has brought me what I have today: part-time night work at the Pembina Hotel beer vendor. Just... just go into the sciences, kids, just trust me on this one.

As bad as things may be, of course, there's always a bright side:

"In the 2006 census, we ranked 10th among the 13 provinces and territories in terms of the percentage of 25 to 64 year olds with post-secondary credentials in any form, whether it be a college diploma, university degree or a trades designation.

"Only Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nunavut ranked worse."

YEAHHHHH WE BEAT SASKATCHEWAN

HA HA HA HEY SASKABUSH WHAT UP

[The Masks We All Wear: Hackers Anonymous (SkullSpace)]
My doom-and-glooming aside, not all is lost on the regional brainpower front; newly-established local hackerspace SkullSpace Winnipeg celebrated its grand opening earlier this month, and this on-site report from CreComm student Justin Luschinski adds the helpful reminder that picking a lock in real life is far more complicated than Skyrim would have you believe.

There are people around town building fully-functional hovercrafts in their basements, and if you don't think that's awesome, I don't know what to tell you. (To borrow one of my favourite Tom Lehrer quotes: "it's people like that that remind you how little you've accomplished.")

[Sean Carney's Website: How about them Jets, Mr. Speaker?]
This Hansard excerpt isn't the first time that the provincial NDP have invoked our National Hockey League representation in the Legislature, but it is thus far the funniest. I also enjoy that the reaction of Speaker of the House Daryl Reid is basically just "yeah yeah, awright, you made your point, g'wan get out of here."

[Winnipeg Free Press: Santa gets stuck in Winnipeg parade]
What Staff Writer declined to note in this story about the Santa Claus Parade failing to get Santa to The Forks properly is that... I don't think they've ever managed to get Santa to The Forks properly.

I know they couldn't pull it off in 2006, I'm told they couldn't pull it off in 2009, and I remember at least one other year having a mini-flurry of news stories after the fact about the lack of Santa in the Santa Claus parade by the time it got off Main. (Both of our major papers have since completely revamped their web architecture, so the hell if anyone knows where anything is any more.) But what can they do? The Santa at the end is the only Santa allowed in the parade, so he has to have a huge float to instill the necessary presence, but then they can never get it to fit under the bridge. Curse our antiquated civic infrastructure!

[Kijiji Winnipeg: Wanted: Winnipeg Sun - May 18, 1995]
Well, fortunately I carry two copies of that specific issue on my person at all times, so I'm sure I could--no, okay, seriously, what is this.

My favourite detail is the placement stressing that it has to be an "original", like all he can ever find on eBay are the reproductions and it just pisses him off every time. It's also fun to imagine the reasoning behind why it has to be that exact edition, including:

-- copy editor from 1995 still paranoid he left an 'r' off of 'embarrassment' on page six
-- cognitively unable to handle happiness for Jets' return; need depressing old headlines around to feel normal again
-- inherited complete collections of April and June 1995 Winnipeg Suns, and at that point you may as well just fill in the gaps
-- Black-o-rama Reggae Festival coverage especially well done that year
-- through elaborate series of wacky sitcom contrivances, accidentally spilled coffee on attractive neighbour's prized copy of May 18th, 1995 Winnipeg Sun while housesitting
-- contains fascinating article about this new information superhighway thing
-- wife was the Sun Girl for May 18th, 1995; intended divorce court strategy to "expose that bitch" about to backfire spectacularly
-- somebody wants that newspaper because that was the day they were born, and oh god i just realized how old i am jesus christ

[WITCHPOLICE: Time Travel: Various - Ska is Back in Town]
(cached version, if that link isn't working)
We'll close this out on a high note with this vintage little A1 Records compilation; it has a couple of fun tracks on it, but I am linking this almost solely for the free downloadable MP3 of Gregory Kraj's "Champion Reggae" because that song makes pretty well anything better.

"If you want to be a champion! You must believe that you're the champion!"

Next Tuesday, more ManLinkWeek!

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.

Merry Almost-Christmas to All

To You and Yours This Holiday Season from James Howard,
Winnipeg's Favourite Librarian-slash-Columnist-slash-Blogger:



Season's Greetings, one and all! I hope that this holiday season finds you well.

It certainly has been a busy 2009! I offer my congratulations to the city of Winnipeg on its twenty-nine homicides this year -- no more, and no less, than the number of homicides in 2008. In these turbulent times of uncertainty, this continued stability is a testament to the staying power and sticktoitiveness of our One Great City.

(If anybody should be murdered between now and the end of the year, I kindly request that our statisticians and news media agree to bankroll them for next year's tally.)

Slurpee Champions of the World again as well -- well played! It's good to know that our priorities are, as always, in order. Consider my hat off to all for their tireless efforts.

The year was a busy one for me, personally, as well. I completed my Master's degree this past August and returned to Winnipeg to find employment; owing to some insanely fortuitous timing, I landed a temporary full-time position within a week of my arrival. I owe Red River College a debt of gratitude, for offering the opportunity to a wildly untested commodity like me -- and I owe Uptown Magazine my gratitude, as well, for letting me carry on as a columnist during the full year that I wasn't even in the province.

But today is, as it turns out, something of a milestone for me; disbelieving phone conversations with two different levels of government this morning, and a previous provincial bursary that one only finds out about by winning it, have confirmed that my student loans are now officially paid off in full.

So I am, in short, tremendously lucky. I would pretend that the aforementioned triumphs have anything to do with talent or skill, but nope, mostly luck. So the year was a success in many ways -- besides me being single again, but that's really my own fault -- and with my Christmas shopping well behind me I look forward to an enchanting afternoon of public interaction tomorrow.

Tomorrow, as I'm sure you are all aware, is Christmas Eve; I will be working at the fine Library you see above until it closes at noon, and at that point I will be released into the downtown with time to kill and with no real pressing commitments on my hands. Those of you who know me well know that this combination can only end in hilarity, disaster, or both.

So! Tomorrow afternoon I intend to head on down to Portage Place, and just... hang out. Sip a coffee, take some holiday photos, and enjoy the zen-like schadenfreude (I know I use that word often, but in my defense I really enjoy it) of keeping my head while everyone else around me is losing theirs.

Perhaps I'll uncover the true meaning of Christmas! But, then, perhaps not.

So unless I get stabbed to death while I'm there (and I hope I don't; it would throw off the nice twenty-nine figure we earned this year), please feel free to check back in the next little while to find out what Portage Place looks like on the increasingly desperate afternoon of Christmas Eve.

And even if you don't, I'd nonetheless like to thank each and every one of you readers for every time you drop by and humour my efforts. This was a record month and a record year for traffic on this site, and I think that my writing skills might be better now than they've ever been before -- so it's probably all downhill from here. But my promise to you all is that I will do my utmost to remain, as you can tell from the enclosed photograph, one dead sexy beast of a man.

Happy Holidays to all!

Warm regards,


James Howard, Level 4 High Risk Blogger

Winnipeg Cat, By Popular Demand

Well! My regular traffic multiplied literally tenfold in the last couple of days, which was a little bizarre to watch. You could imagine my surprise to discover that people really, really liked the debut of Winnipeg Cat from a couple of weeks ago; it had debuted to almost complete silence at the time, of course, because nobody actually reads this blog under normal circumstances.

Winnipeg Cat Has a (Local) Flavour, or: James Howard Uses the Internet For Mischief

Greetings from my lunch break! How are you all doing? Good, good.

A whole week has elapsed between my last post and this one, which is really rather unacceptable, but when a lapse like this occurs you can usually assume that I am either A) tremendously busy, B) tremendously lazy, C) up to something sneaky, or D) all of the above. If none of the above apply, it is because I am dead.

However! The correct answer, in this case, is D -- because I have alternated between being preoccupied and being so tired out of my mind that I fall asleep fully dressed with the lights on, but I've also been surreptitiously working away in my rare free time on a project of such importance (and potential entertainment) that it would have been improper to give it less than my full attention.

(Don't think that I hadn't noticed when both the Sun and the Free Press built off some of my stuff in the past week or two. I'm glad they liked it! And if it means that people start paying attention and coming up with ideas, so much the better; it's not like it was much of a big, carefully guarded secret that the area needs work.)

So what ill-advised madness and calamity am I up to this time, you might ask? Well, I'll walk you through the decision-making process I followed, so bear with me on this one.

Dial 'M' for... Misleading

Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but... man, it seems like I've been saying that a lot lately. Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but sometimes you offer some questionable conclusions.

I'm thinking specifically of your report yesterday, proclaiming -- I can only assume with true, diehard civic pride -- that Winnipeg successfully reclaimed its crown and walked tall as the Murder Capital of Canada in 2008.

Yeah! Woo! Party!

But, no, hang on a second here. Much as I adore our city's constant contendership for the Slurpee and Murder Capital crowns (because, admit it, it's nice to believe that we can win something), there's a lot about this declaration that I don't think I can fully endorse.

The first natural reaction is "why the hell are you guys reporting last year's statistics as news, it's like Halloween by now", but you have to play the cards you're dealt. It's attractive to suggest that Statistics Canada put out their Homicide in Canada 2008 report like it was a big deal, but the truth is that they just do crap like this for fun literally all the time. Every weekday they produce a whole bunch of news reports on various things that they were in no particular hurry to get done, a StatsCan function they like to call "The Daily" -- which is totally unreasonable, because what kind of 'daily' doesn't even publish on a Sunday? I know, right?

So, rather than treating it as any sort of major news story, Statistics Canada scheduled their big press release about last year's homicide statistics for the same release date as a report on railway carloading figures from a couple months ago, a study of the placement of hatchery chicks on farms, and a coast-to-coast headcount of pigs. You can see how important this is to them.

Late as the figures may seem, we get 'em when we get 'em, so that one's pretty much out of your hands. But then another, stranger question popped up: why is Winnipeg the "Murder Capital" if, according to Statistics Canada, the murder rate is highest in Abbotsford-Mission, BC?

The Winnipeg Sun took the uncharacteristically reserved tack of titling their article on the subject "Gang violence drives up homicide rates", but they're the Sun so who cares. The National Post offered no commentary and only put up the raw numbers, assumedly because everyone over there is too busy worrying about whether or not they'll still be employed on Monday. CBC News lists the ten largest cities as a sidebar but ignores them in the text proper, instead talking about provincial homicide rates and firearm use. And Global Winnipeg echoed the Free Press' "Murder Capital" declaration, but that's only because they just copied and pasted the Free Press article wholesale. Global, c'mon now. Honestly.

What's the deal? The deal is this: Statistics Canada grouped the areas studied by population, listing the cities larger than 500,000 people as one category and the cities between 100,000 and 500,000 as another. StatsCan gives no instructions or reasons to treat the categories as purposefully distinguished from one another out of any higher reason than organization, but members of our local media have apparently decided to run with the idea that the larger cities are the only ones worthy of being titled the Murder Capital.

So, "Winnipeg named 2008 murder capital", the Free Press (and Global) headline announces. Does this seem like a strange decision to anybody else? First, arbitrarily limiting the title of Murder Capital to "the country's 10 largest centres" not only discounts a lot of potential Murder Capitals, but discounts the majority of the nation's actual capitals. Second, it seems rather suspect to be announcing a city as the Murder Capital when it neither has the most murders by actual volume or by adjusted ratio. (If everyone starts rearranging the rules of the game to suit their own needs, it ultimately becomes another sales-dollars-versus-cups-sold kind of problem.) And, third, this seems like a lot of hoop-jumping to go through to declare Winnipeg the Murder Capital of Canada -- so why is it only our media outlets that are doing it? If everybody else in the country is content to give Abbotsford-Mission its time in the sun, why are we as a city trying to argue our way back to the top of a statistic that's not actually supposed to be considered a good thing?

So I can't say that I'm one-hundred per cent behind the reasoning applied here to declare us the Murder Capital. You know what, though? I'm still keeping it! I'm in total agreement with the outcome, but not with the way they arrived at it.

You see, Winnipeg is the Murder Capital of Canada; not because of any highfalutin' finagling with the relative population sizes, but because Abbotsford-Mission is two entirely different places and that is totally cheating. Abbotsford and Mission are two separate municipal entities with two separate governments, so treating them as a single statistical city is like talking about "Kitchener-Waterloo" or "Minneapolis-St. Paul" as individual places. It doesn't work like that, son! This ain't no handicap match! If somebody were compiling a list of places that "It's Worth The Trip To", do you think we'd get away with trying to sneak ourselves in as "Steinbach-Winnipeg"? Hell no we wouldn't!

So don't listen to any British Columbian con artists and their attempts to pull a fast one with regional mergers, folks; Winnipeg is once again the proud Murder Capital of Canada, and still the proud Slurpee Capital of the World, because that is just how we roll. Slurpees and Murder! Whoo! Good work, team!

Winnipeg Loves Slurpees and Murder (or, Kennewick Can Suck It)

lol see what i did there

It was another long day at work today, and I'll do my best to type this all up as quickly as I can; the Bomber game is on tonight and I feel obligated to watch it, if only to appease my inextinguishable appetite for schadenfreude. (Oh, man, they're so bad this year! It's awesome!) But I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention this pair of news stories, one from this week and one backlogged from last, because together they combine their powers like Wonder Twins to form the paired pillars of Manitoba society.

That's right! Despite initial media scares, our city still stands tall: we're number one for Slurpees! And we're number one for murder, to the surprise of absolutely nobody!

Slurpees and Murder! Whoo! Good work, team! (Especially you folks outside Winnipeg; 400,000 people uniting for 34 homicides? Now that's some dedication!)

Forget this 'Heart of the Continent' noise, no matter how awesome it is that people are still equating the phrase with a weatherman from fourty-five years ago -- we should just go ahead and write 'Slurpees and Murder' up on those welcome signs, both for the sake of truth in advertising and to humour my insatiable megalomania. ('Winnipeg: Life Sucks and Then You Die' is a perfectly acceptable substitute, especially if the signs keep the blue and gold colour scheme.)

So, Slurpees, then. Let's go over that recent pandemonium, shall we? It might not be timely, but damn if I won't try to make it definitive.

The uproar over the title of World Slurpee Capital initially erupted during the Folk Festival (which was pretty inconsiderate of it) when news originally broke that Winnipeg might well have lost its lone positive defining characteristic hold on a previously unshakeable global crown. Outrage, mourning and bewildered remarks of "wait where the hell is Kennewick" ruled the land for the rest of the day, and on into the next, until 7-Eleven spokespersons both in Canada and the United States hastily emerged to reconfirm Winnipeg's championship and then pretend that two otherwise unrelated cities hadn't just flipped out on each other over some sugar water.

(Interestingly, 7-Eleven also announced that Kennewick wasn't even the yearly Slurpee leader in the United States; they insisted that the number one Slurpee market in America is, was, and remains Detroit. This can be considered further proof that Detroit and Winnipeg are far more similar than either city would care to admit -- except for the part where Detroit sports teams win championships, but I'm pretty sure that I've beaten that horse straight into the ground already.)

Now, you all know me, so you all know that this is usually where I'd go for the cheap heat and write something like "Kennewick are a bunch of jerks". And I still might, if need be! But careful observation reveals that the whole sordid mess is the handiwork of a single man, an isolated mastermind toiling towards his grand scheme with an almost supervillain-level fanaticism.

Don Marriotto, a former tax-law attorney of 20 years and the franchiser of the lone 7-Eleven in Kennewick, WA, is the linchpin of the whole narrative. Knocked into a giant vat of Slurpee chemicals during a burglary attempt, he -- no, sorry, that's not right. Let me try that again.

July of 2005 saw Don Marriotto purchase the single 7-Eleven store in Kennewick, and like any astute store owner he took note of which items sold best -- in this case, Slurpees, and thousands of them. He spent the next year and a half unsuccessfully angling to have 7-Eleven send him more Slurpee machines, and each time he did the head offices told him that his store had to move more product to justify the upgrade.

Not to be denied, he began plotting and planning; if more product movement they wanted, more product movement they would get! He began to make deals -- buy three and get one free, buy two and get one free, buy item and get coupon, buy this and get that, try some of the doughnuts we carry for some reason, so on and so forth -- until headquarters finally caved and sent him extra Slurpee machines.

Yes, he thought to himself, his plans for global domination coming ever more steadily into focus. Knowing that his rapid rise up the sales charts was making him something of a local celebrity, he took his quest for glory to its logical conclusion: he consulted the worldwide records, went "wait where the hell is Winnipeg" and set out to make his store the top Slurpee seller in the world.

Soon enough, his "Kennewick Slurpee Factory" went twelve straight months as the leading store -- July 2007 to July 2008, which you may want to mark down as a plot point for later -- and when 7-Eleven Day 2008 (July 11th, for the one or two of you who hadn't picked up on that yet) rolled around, he stood tall amidst his single-store empire and proclaimed himself the Slurpee King. Look on his celebratory multicoloured banners, ye mighty, and despair!

He made appearances in local media, then in international media, and then in comments sections of Winnipeg entertainment blogs for what could only be considered nefarious and inexplicable reasons. Not a gracious winner, by anybody's standards -- but in these heady days of victory, he could do little else but boast!

He had scraped, he had slaved, he had bartered and begged, but finally it had all paid off -- glory had finally come, and glory was all his! Kennewick, Washington... Slurpee Capital of the World!

And then the corporate heads swooped in and took it all away from him.

An understandable reaction, of course, from a big-business perspective; corporate sense would dictate that it's far more important to pacify a ravenous longtime market of 650,000 people than it is to herald a ravenous newfound market of 65,000 people. So the 7-Eleven officials retconned their previous coverage and awarded the 2008 title to Winnipeg, just as they'd done with the past eight before it, because -- boom! Plot point! -- the 2008 rankings were based on cup sales from January 2007 to December 2007.

They say a little piece of Don Marriotto died, that day.

Winnipeg is safe for another year, one annual win closer to the almost unfathomable decade mark, and our tiny wisps of bizarrely misplaced civic pride continue to float in the breeze. But you know what? That guy worked his ass off to earn his almost-title, and he used some pretty heavy firepower to do it -- free t-shirt giveaways, free Slurpee giveaways, promotional blitzes, design contests, and twelve different flavors at any given time. And next month they're bumping it up to eighteen flavours! Eighteen! Jesus!

Given the information available, it seems almost impossible for Winnipeg to survive another year as Slurpee champion. The 2008 crown was based on 2007 numbers, and Marriotto only started his marketing blitz in the summer of last year -- so given a full year of his t-shirts and contests and giveaways versus a full year of our nothing, the safe bet is a Fist of the North Star proclamation that we're already dead and don't know it yet.

If we do earn that tenth consecutive season title, somehow, then we still have one final ultimate rudo-heel move at our disposal -- hold a press conference, accept the title, and retire from the official competition "to give everyone else a fair chance". (Scott Fielding, take notes! This is important!) And if we don't win, well, the onus wasn't on us purchasers to begin with; the blame should be laid where it would belong, and that's with the complacent Winnipeg franchisers who never so much as put up a fight.

Where are our free t-shirts? Our two-for-one Slurpees? Our logo design contests and eighteen different flavours and drinks named after luchadores? The most that any of us have ever received for our continued championship-level patronage is a staggeringly gaudy bumper sticker, and bumper stickers just don't cut it any more in our modern era of competition. 7-Eleven owners, who among you will stand up to combat this threat? Who among you will emerge as our civic saviour, handing out freebies and discounts and deals to the masses?

You might accuse me of angling shamelessly for free stuff, and because I am from Winnipeg you can rest assured that I totally am. But should we fall, don't let me hear you say that I hadn't warned you!

Slurpees! Serious business!





Oh, of course. You're wondering where I pulled half of that Don Marriotto information from, aren't you? If you'd thought that I was making most of this up, I wouldn't have doubted your cynicism for a second.

But rest assured that, like any good historian, I've based my research on primary sources -- and the primary source that best explains Don Marriotto is his declaration of his modus operandi, posted under the name CougarDon (what) on a 7-Eleven Franchise Owners Google Group.

"I am known in town as the Slurpee King."

Not the greatest supervillain name, but one that would definitely motivate a man to stay out of prison.

Didn't expect to read all this today, did you? Ha! That's why they pay me the big bucks! And by 'they', I mean 'nobody will'!

There were harsh words and hurt feelings all around in this whole kerfuffle, but the most important thing to remember is that we're not all that different; after all is said and done, Kennewick folk are just like you and me. To wit, emphasis added:

"During busy hours, customers keep flowing in. But because there are so many, they can get stuck in line. One of those customers Saturday was Brian Paxton of Kennewick. He meandered through the flavors like a true connoisseur, trying to find the right combination.

"It's hot dude, (the Slurpees) are refreshing," the 27-year-old said. "It's nice, something different. And it's a great hangover remedy."

"After a couple minutes of weighing his options, he went with a "Rambo" -- most of the flavors mixed together -- in a Simpsons cup. His friend Dylan Wickenhauser had to get two, one for him and a perfect Piña Colada for his girlfriend."

Bless your heart, 27-year-old Brian Paxton of Kennewick, Washington. You're good people.

You'd Better Call N-40 or I Swear I Will Kill You

Evgeni Malkin is quite obviously injured. I don't know why his team keeps letting him play shifts of a minute or longer when he's literally moving at half his regular speed. The media is currently playing it up right now as a mental or motivational thing, but come on, you can practically see time slowing down for him every time he tries to lift his legs.

Anyway! Enough on that for now. This is a post about Winnipeg! (Which means it's definitely not a post about the NHL.)

What do you think of when you think of Winnipeg? (You in the back that said 'the Jets', kindly pipe down for now.) What is Winnipeg known for, what does Winnipeg tend to lead the nation or the world in? Slurpees, murder, arson, car theft, hydro consumption, child poverty, days of sunshine (the 'Sunny Manitoba' slogan died over thirty years ago, but the sun apparently didn't get the memo about that) -- and now, bingo. Bingo Capital of Canada!

(Which of you jokesters filed this on Digg?)

This is it, folks! It's all uphill from here. This, no doubt, this above all else is what will finally install a sense of pride in the citizens of our fine metropolis. When the news broke that'd we'd made it and we'd staked our claim to fame, people went nuts! From Perimeter to Perimeter grandmothers and gangsters alike rushed right to their computers, practically tripping over themselves in their haste to proudly proclaim themselves as denizens of THA BINGO CAP.

(Bingo-peg? Bing-ipeg? The, uh... Assini-bingo River?)

Start printing the t-shirts! Start spreading the word! I'm sure the crowds at the Tim Horton's or the Robin's (Ro-bingo's Donuts?) will let out whoops of glee when the good word finally hits the Coffee News, in between a story about a couragous dog and a joke about a man who loves golf.

I've always been more into games of skill than games of chance, myself, so bingo never really appealed to me; by the time I was old enough to use a bingo blotter responsibly instead of blotting everything in range, I'd already found other activities I enjoyed more. Incidentally, if anybody out there wants to play chess, let me know; I'm not really that great at it, but damn if I don't love playing it! And if I can gleam hours of enjoyment from setting up complicated knight traps and then throwing my rooks away like an idiot, I don't see why other folks can't go out and have fun buying thirty grids of squares and only ever getting six numbers total.

You can see from the articles linked above that analysts and commentators have their own theories about our city's bingo fanaticism; they cite Winnipeg's strong Ukranian heritage, its Catholic roots and its prohibitively brutal winters as possible factors. You know what, though? I'm pretty sure that they're all overthinking the matter, and the simpler truth is that we're all just a bunch of people who love the shit out of some bingo.

Say goodbye to "One Great City!" the next time you're driving in; soon enough we'll have the new signs printed and planted. "Winnipeg: A Free Space for Everybody!" I don't know about you, but I'm stoked!

Son of the Return of This is How People Find Me

It's been a good couple of months since I last went through my site info and looked around at the search strings that lure in accidental visitors from far and wide; I can only assume that most of these people invariably left disappointed. I'm a pretty versatile dude, but really I wouldn't know where to even begin with some of these.

To wit:

-- pay to murder you
-- mpi not getting rebates
-- when will i get my insurance rebate from mpi?
-- ryan dinwiddie pictures
-- winnipeg jets paint hockey sticks
-- suggest nhl teams who will be in the quarter final
-- louis the lightning bug lyrics
-- baby fights for kissy the song
-- baby baby hesitate what song is that?
-- something made of wool sheep
-- free press jumble winnipeg
-- why is voter turnout in manitoba so low
-- winnipeg sticker graffiti
-- unicity & pirate
-- where's mcnally robinson in polo park
-- homemade bumper camera
-- white wine slurpee
-- chiropractor who did a lot of heavy thinking
-- bubble tea the moment winnipeg, manitoba
-- mattress dancer winnipeg
-- indoor heated poo sign
-- winnipeg service happy ending
-- wrestlers died watching horror movie
-- cheap cottage cheese in winnipeg

And, most importantly:

-- kern hill furniture nintendo ds

I can only sit and stare in stunned wonder at this collection of words, because taken together they form one of the greatest suggestions I've ever heard.



Kern-Hill Ganbaru!! Come On Down DS has to be the most magnificent gaming masterpiece that we will never get to play. I know nothing at all about programming or Nintendo DS homebrewing or much of anything really -- but if I did, I'm sure that this game above all others would be my crowning achievement. Alas! Alas. I'll have to think of something else.

It's a Very Good Name

Greetings, Winnipeg Free Press readers! My name is James Howard, and I run a halfway decent blog with an interesting name.

No doubt many of you arrived here after reading Bartley Kives' column for today; I only found out about it at work this morning when my mother phoned, read me the first sentence, then asked "Slurpees and Murder... that is you, right?"

It's good to be recognized.

Go me! I'm in the broadsheet! Well, I mean, I'm not in the paper -- it doesn't mention my name or anything, so my bragging options are kind of limited -- but my blog was alluded to in passing, and that was certainly a pleasant surprise.

I'm even mentioned in the same breath as some particularly outstanding luminaries of the field; granted, that breath is spent explaining that I'm boring and puerile when compared to them, but hey. I'm not mad at that, that's a reasonable assessment. These are trained professionals I'm being contrasted against here, legitimate journalists and politicians, so they know what they're doing and they're very good at it. And after all, there only were four sites mentioned by name; I'm pretty accustomed to getting fourth place, so I figure I'll take it.

I got complimented plenty, right? Clever title aside, my blog was described as... sobering, and... 'encapsulates the notion' no wait I think he's talking about the title again there... unconscionable?

Er.

Whatever! It's got an awesome name, that's the important thing. Thanks for the mention, Bartley Kives!

Way to Accomplish Nothing, You Guys

Okay, first off, the most important news story of the day is yet another homicide; it wasn't initially labelled a homicide, but when someone turns up overnight on a North End street dead from multiple bullet wounds there are only so many conclusions to be drawn.

(I guess now I'm further behind on the YouTube cataloguing than ever, no thanks to my recent dental surgery swelling my face up to the point of being both unrecognizeable and incomprehensible. If I typed right now the way I've been talking the last week, the third letter of every word would be an F whether I wanted it there or not.)

But while that was the most important story around here, it wasn't technically the biggest. No, sir! For those of you out there who enjoy completely ineffectual announcements, today was definitely a big news day for you!

Alert the media and gather the children; today marked Stephen Harper making a (rare) appearance in Winnipeg, coming from on high to rescue us from the unseemly rash of vehicular lawlessness that torments our city. The major local news outlets were abuzz, their Developing Story and News Update icons blazing bright on their websites: an announcement to be made! Harper expected to address car theft! 2:00 PM this afternoon, be there or be square!

So Harper strides in this afternoon to address the city, a veritable dangerzone ravaged by car theft and underage joyriders, and proudly proclaims that the federal government is combating auto theft by cracking down on... organized crime rings and illegal-parts exporters.

I'm... sorry. What?

No, no -- I'm sure it's a terrific legal advancement, and I'm sure it'll be very warmly received in cities that actually have commercial crime rings or auto-part black markets or oceans to ship things across. But why in the stone hell would you come to Winnipeg to make this announcement?

Gentle readers, perhaps you had heard about this story: in the span of a few hours across late Friday night and early Saturday morning, a pair of underage car thieves attempted to steal twelve (!!) cars out in Portage La Prairie and succeeded in stealing and driving three of them. The police reports indicate that one of the three stolen cars ended up at the bottom of the Assiniboine River, which I guess must be how they were planning to ship it overseas for parts. Since twelve cars is about how many Portage has (har!) and they've all since been accounted for, it's a safe bet that none of these cars were stolen for the purpose of tampering with their VINs and scrapping them for spare bumpers. And those kids that rammed a cop car with a stolen truck? They weren't ramming it; the plan was just to bump it, to scare the cops out of it, and then continue lightly nudging it all the way out to British Columbia so they could get it onto the boat to Hong Kong or wherever the hell these parts are supposedly going.

So, acknowledging Manitoba's 'frustration' with its current situation, what did Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveil as his initiative to counteract the ongoing outbreak of underage car theft that continues to plague Manitoba? Showing the tremendous leadership and vision that places him among the upper echelons of our nation's leaders past and present, he... he, uh... he passively blamed the Youth Criminal Justice Act like everybody else does, claiming that he could do more to help if somebody could just amend that gosh-darn restricting YCJA one of these days.

I feel safer already!

Gary Doer was on hand, and the Free Press has him on record as having 'welcomed the new initiatives', but this can't possibly have been the kind of changes he asked for back in September. Unless he led Katz, Chomiak, McFadyen, Gerrard, Burgess and the rest of his posse into Harper's office that day and demanded that Harper amend the current legal penalties of international parts trafficking, I can't really imagine what Doer was being so supportive about today. Of course, he did have to be there -- the Premier couldn't not show up when the Prime Minister is in town -- but it had to be tough to pretend that this was anything even passingly helpful for the province.

Speaking of the provincial government and ineffectual announcements -- god I love segues like that -- today the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission was busy with its own underwhelming advancements ("Letting people buy two drinks at once and letting minors into beverage rooms will improve safety!"), and the local justice system wasn't accomplishing much either ("Oh, wait, whoops -- we, uh, arrested the wrong guy. Is that okay?").

On a side note, I love the disparity between headlines when the different news outlets report the same story. Free Press headline: "Liquor act changes target safety". Sun headline: "Provincial government introduces new liquor laws". CJOB headline: "More drinks"! Ha! Ah, you crazy funsters.

To the ineffectual sports news! With the Senators down two games to none and heading into Game Three tonight with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sens Nation (to the extent that such a thing even exists; remember how well that went last year) was buzzing with the big news reports that Daniel Alfredsson could return to the lineup tonight and lead his team past its current woes.

Like everything else this year, you can imagine how this went for them; the game's over now, and Ottawa got shellacked again. Alfredsson had no points on a total of four shots, the Senators are down three games to none, and Martin Gerber has given up four goals every game. That's not meant to be taken as the average, although technically it is correct; I mean Gerber literally gave up four goals in Game One, four goals in Game Two and four goals in Game Three. I'll admit that I'm a Ray Emery booster through and through, but even I can't wait to see how people will try and blame Ray Emery for this one.

"He planted seeds of doubt and madness in Gerber's head that ultimately led to his undoing! It was like Othello, but backwards. I'm serious!"

So, yeah. To sum up, quite the news day today. I sure hope tomorrow's half as interesting!

Grinderman - I Don't Need You (To Set Me Free) (Grinderman, 2007)
[buy | site | info | myspace]

Oh, That's Not Good

A triple homicide? Really? Jesus, that's nasty.

There hasn't been a triple homicide in Winnipeg since, what, 1996; since that one was quite obviously gang related, the current media conjecture holds that this is gang violence as well. It shouldn't take too long for the cops to gather information about the attack, since there were at least five other people in the house at the time, so we'll hear about what happened soon enough.

I've been meaning to do another SMHV for a while now, to get caught up, but I'd been debating whether or not to count the fourth homicide; it was initially designated and announced as a murder, but a week or so later it turned out to have been two teens stealing a pellet gun from a garage and then playing with it until one of them accidentally shot the other one in the head. It was unintentional, so it wasn't a murder, but it was still a homicide so I eventually figured that I'd include it -- and since then other sources have included it in their tallies as well, so there it is.

Yesterday there had been six homicides in 2008 and today there have been nine, not counting vehicular manslaughter (strange that nobody counts those; I seem to recall reading that it has different legal connotations or something). And the last five homicides have all been in the past two weeks, which doesn't bode particularly well for the coming spring.

Winnipeg is a dangerous city, some neighbourhoods more than others, so keep your wits about you out there. I live in one of the deep-red zones on that map, but I'm not too worried; mine is one of the safer high-crime areas. It's an important distinction! Keeps our morale up.



[Next Morning Add-On Edit:]

I wish I were as classy as the Winnipeg Sun.



If your top story on a given day is a gang-related triple homicide, is following that with the headline "Weather whacks 'Toba" really that great an idea? Were the staff genuinely unaware that the two headlines would be run side-by-side, or is it just standard editorial policy to tie the weather blurb into the top story whether it's a good idea or not? I don't understand these decisions sometimes.

The Revenge of This is How People Find Me

I'm going over the various Spirited Energy-related news reports from the past week with a mixture of open disdain and awed outrage; within the next few hours I should have a handy recap up for you folks.

In the meantime! A routine check of the ol' hit counter has once again left me with bouts of helpless giggling. Through some sort of trickery or tomfoolery, unsuspecting internet folk were led here for:

-- goose behavior
-- football game that's on now
-- james howard, san diego chargers
-- core strength liuhe quan
-- it's a lovely day for a murder
-- winnipeg police mascot cuffs the dog
-- ugly buildings winnipeg
-- gary larson the dam bursts
-- parappa fan fiction
-- unicity cab winnipeg
-- make zombie noise
-- burton cummings mean spirited
-- kern-hill sucks
-- moses mayes sucks
-- citytv sucks winnipeg
-- i hate the new jersey devils
-- stephane dion grover muppet
-- slurpee come on baby come and give me a kiss

Dude, are you... uh... are you coming on to my Slurpee? I know I said you could have some, but come on. No tongue. That's gross.

Matter of Fact, It's the Only Dance in Cuba

Well, that's that taken care of! A couple of days ago, I had mentioned my difficulty in locating and securing decent free file hosting; it appears I've now found some, and I can operate as such without subjecting my readership to pop-under ads and general slipshoddiness.

So, huzzah! Less hassle involved in music posts! How to commemorate the occasion? How to try out the new host? How, how, how. How to--

Why, of course! Today is Sunday, February 24th, 2008. You remember what that means, right? It means that today marks the final day of Fidel Castro's fourty-nine-year reign as Cuban head of state. Fourty-nine years! Fidel Castro has been in power longer than Barack Obama or Stephen Harper have been alive. Love him or hate him, you know this is important; when a dude spends half a century doing anything on the world stage, much less running a nation, it's going to be notable when he finally retires.

It is popularly reported that Castro is believed to have survived at least 600 (not a typo; six hundred) assassination attempts since his ascension to power in 1959; that works out to 12.24 a year, or roughly one assassination attempt per month (with an extra one thrown in every leap year) for the last five decades. Fourty-nine years of gunshots, explosives, poison pills, gimmicked pens, contaminated wetsuits, booby-trapped mollusks and exploding cigars -- no, I'm not kidding about these -- and after all of that he retires to go home and die peacefully in his sleep someday. What a world!

Today is historic, and with this movement into history comes a shift in popular culture; from this point onward, every reference made to Fidel Castro's Cuba is now outdated and behind the times. Books, magazines, newspapers, comics, movies, television shows -- they weren't outdated yesterday, but by tomorrow they'll be as anachronistic as calling Russia 'the Soviet Union' or calling downtown Winnipeg 'safe'.

So, with that in mind, here are a few songs that just aren't going to mean what they used to any more:

Jay Chevalier and His House Rockers - Castro Rock (Castro Rock, 1960)
[buy compilation | site | bio]

Lord Invader & His Calypso Group - Fidel Castro (Calypso Travels, 1959)
[buy | bio | info | via]

The Skatalites - Fidel Castro (Foundation Ska, 1997)
[buy | site | info | myspace]

Urge Overkill - Sister Havana (Saturation, 1993)
[buy | site | info | myspace | music video -- hoo boy the nineties did not age well]

MP3 posts, you guys! It's good to be doing these again.

I should get working on the next installment of Slurpees and Murder Home Video, but I'll have to think of a topic first; a Homicide Watch doesn't really make sense when there've been no homicides lately. (Although that has not been for lack of effort; the local news has been pretty damn weird over this past month.) Well, we'll see what I come up with.

Slurpees and Murder Home Video: Numbers One, Two and Three (Homicide Watch 2K8)

Behold!



The second video arrives; perhaps not as quickly as I would have originally planned, but informative and up to date nonetheless.

(If you're curious: the Greisman article mentioned above.)

As you can probably tell for yourselves, brightness levels are hell to keep consistent when the sun is rising outside your window -- and I did briefly consider trying to toil endlessly with the video settings and various filters to compensate, but ultimately said nuts to that and just rolled with it. I figured, hell, if the production values are up a bit wonky on this one, big deal; as amusing as the idea would be, I doubt somehow that YouTube keeps a dude on staff specifically to wear a monacle and sputter indignantly at anything with diminished video quality. (He'd be long dead of exhaustion by now. It's YouTube.)

Slurpees and Murder Home Video! Yes!

The Return of This is How People Find Me

You've seen me do this before, albeit not for a few months.

So let me sate your curiosity! Or at least my own!

I've already mentioned these--

-- yahoo interruption of service
-- gary doer speechwriter
-- xs cargo mp3s
-- kate pierson eyeware
-- why slurpees are so good

--but I hadn't mentioned these others, which are just as entertaining to me. No, folks, I'm probably not what you're thinking of when you're after:

-- fyxx explosion
-- kyle wellwood party
-- ross mcgowan centreventure cellphone
-- murder gary larson
-- zombie polo park
-- the greatest thing whatever happened in wwe.com
-- eyebrow piercing pembina hwy
-- 7-eleven strange things mp3 blog
-- lyrics slurpee -ben -lee -kottonmouth -amey -donnas
-- investors group annoying
-- manitoba provincial stuff
-- on election day, i stay home. voting is meaningless george carlin
-- kern hill furniture hours
-- lost husky story winnipeg free press
-- manitoba spirited energy what font?

...that's a good question, actually. Damn, now I wanna know that!

And I already know Google doesn't have the answer, since the search led someone here -- so I may have to raid various word processors and font sites, if the idea sticks with me. Man, the fun I could have with that typeset!