I Wanted One Last Project to Give This Site a Proper Sendoff, So I Wrote an Original Soundtrack Concept Album for a Manitoba-Themed Nintendo Game That Doesn't Exist

Hello there, friends! I'd hate to bury the lede too far down under my characteristic exposition, and the post title gives you the gist of the idea, so let's get straight to the important part: I'd been secretly writing an album off-and-on over the past year or so, and now that album is out.

Manitoba Circuit OST / マニトバラリーレース大冒険!! こんなに平らでいいのか?! OST
Pay-What-You-Want | hopechip.bandcamp.com
So that's pretty great. That's a pretty good feeling! The album is free to stream, and also free to download, though you are welcome to pay money for it if you find you enjoy it.

Manitoba Links Weekly: Hashtag Melnigeddon, Everyone Will Like Me Again If I Sue This Student Newspaper, Russ Wyatt is Sheegl-Shaming, and Here's a Stolen Skeleton Statue to Watch For (ManLinkWeek S02E16)

The Mr. Bones mascot skeleton statue has been kidnapped, and it is currently being held for ransom, and the ransom is a pizza. Winnipeg is a live-action cartoon. [ via ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! God, what a week.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we began the task of chipping away at the wall of newsworthy topics this week; I also played a couple of thematically-appropriate tunes during the hour, and I'm interested to know whether you the listener think they helped or hindered the flow of the show, so let me know by email or in the comments below what you made of it.

Manitoba Links Weekly: Here's That #laserpyramid Explanation and Image Gallery You Were Waiting For, Portage Places Plural (Portages Place?), Your Choices are the Reprehensible Party or the Incompetent Party, And I Wish Every Night Were Retro Night (ManLinkWeek S02E13)

I am a simple man, and I do not ask for much. Just Retro Night pricing, every night, everywhere. I would be so happy. [ via ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! It's been a heck of a week, hasn't it? Really seemed to fly right by.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we alternative-media types tackled the City's engrossingly terrible snow-clearing nightmare, the Province's precariously flimsy reasoning on both the Phoenix Sinclair and hospital-discharge taxi-ride files, and the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives' continued Wile E. Coyote act of running headfirst into rocks they've painted to look like tunnels. (Some of these stories are linked below as well, you'll know 'em when you see 'em.)

Onward to ManLinkWeek! More germanely, onward to LASERS:

Manitoba Links Weekly: I'm Cold (There There), Maybe 2014 Won't Suck, An Industrial-Looking Heart in the Sky, and Here's an Anthropomorphic Cartoon Lady-Perogy Praising Jesus (ManLinkWeek S02E11)

Thus far I've spent the New Year increasingly debilitated by a seasonal cold-flu-something -- sweats and chills and coughing fits and sapped strength and the whole kit-'n'-kaboodle -- and in my intermittent bouts of mild feverish delirium, there are times when I am forced to question whether something is real or imagined. You can imagine the trouble that I am having right now with this picture.

But no, it's real, and it's spectacular: CTV News producer Joe Olafson took this photograph at the corner of McPhillips & Aberdeen, and it really is quite the fascinating smorgasbord of intrinsically Winnipeggian character notes. [ via ]

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! For the coming of the new year and the passing of the old I'd written a year-end retrospective poem, as one does, as you do.

So welcome to the new year! Talking about the weather may not sound like the most exciting way to kick off the year's first ManLinkWeek, but oh, it's been a special kind of weather:

Slurpees and Murder Record Club: Unsurprisingly, Lots of Christ in the St. Mary's Academy Christmas Album (JUBILEE!)

Merry almost-Christmas, listeners, and welcome to the Slurpees and Murder Record Club!

Today's lost local Christmas album is vastly more traditional than our most recent installment; it's more in line with last year's Christmastime entry, though twenty years later and with the jump in recording equipment to match.

So get your stockings and your eggnog and your Christ-love if you're into that, because it's time for:

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: 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!

Slurpees and Murder Record Club: Ladies and Gentlemen, Prepare Yourselves for 92 CITI-FM's "Winnipeg's Rock 'N Roll Christmas, Volume II"

Happy holidays, you infidel atheists! Welcome to the Slurpees and Murder Record Club; as we draw closer to Christmas Day, I think it's important that we all collectively take the time to appreciate the seasonally appropriate output of local musicians past and present.

In my last post I'd linked to some suitably seasonal material curated as a Manitoba Music playlist, but what I am about to present to you -- what you are about to hear -- has largely escaped detection until now, and really for the past twenty years or so. An oddity, a rarity, a treasure lost to time; it just so happened that I rescued a copy from a thrift store earlier this year, and it further just so happened that it played in exquisitely fine quality. (Believe me, with cassettes, you can't assume anything.)

Behold as I beheld, friends:



THE LEGENDS ARE TRUE, IT'S REAL

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: It's a Bit Easier Being Green Than it Used to Be, I Hope a Weekly Provencher Facepalm Doesn't Have to Be a Thing, COOKIES, and Here's Brian Pallister Wishing All You Infidel Atheists Out There a Merry Christmas (ManLinkWeek S02E06)

I, uh... appreciate the... effort? I appreciate that you tried. You, uh, hey, you have a good one too.

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly!

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits was one-third-repeat and two-thirds-new, because it snowed on Wednesday and roads are impassable when y'all keep driving into each other. (I passed four -- four! -- accidents on my way to the University, including one that snarled Pembina southbound for the better part of forever. Manitoba has the nation's lowest rate of winter-tire use, just coincidentally.)

But! In the back two-thirds of said show we covered the fascinatingly close Brandon-Souris byelection and its wildly, historically inaccurate polling -- TWENTY-NINE POINTS LOL -- as well as the very, very exciting University of Winnipeg apartment-tower announcement. Hey, someone's gotta build them, and it's not like the U of W doesn't already have plenty of valuable experience building things around there.

Speaking of radio -- segue! -- remember the CKUW 95.9 mystery show that Scott Price and I had collaborated on earlier this month? We spent an hour on the airwaves gushing over some of our favourite bass performances, and I am pleased to report that the audio of that show is now mirrored here for your listening and downloading pleasure. (Also, I couldn't resist: to honour the death of Winamp, I've listed the ID3 genre as "Primus".)

This concludes our weekly radio preamble; commence the ManLinkWeek! Let's start with a quiet but noteworthy provincial exit:

Slurpees and Murder Record Club: She Will Love You and Leave You High and Dry (or, 1987 Just Was Not a Year for Lookin' Good)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Slurpees and Murder Record Club! Are you all set for the long weekend? Not yet, you ain't!

Get ready to kick it like it's 1987:

Internet on the Radio: Slurpees and Murder Record Club, a Winnipeg Cat Segment on CJOB, and Winnipeg Internet Pundits (Briefly) Returns This Week

Well, hello there, everyone! My apologies for the unintended two-week absence; it seems like the busyness of summer starts earlier and earlier every year, whether it actually feels like summer yet or not. (It's expected to rain today and right through to the end of the week, because of course it is.) But there's well over an hour's worth of content for you to enjoy in this post, so let's get rolling!

Slurpees and Murder Record Club: Happy Earth Day 1992

Happy Earth Day, one and all, and welcome once again to the Slurpees and Murder Record Club!

After the worst major news week in recent memory -- filled with tax hikes and shootings and bombings and explosions and poisoned letters and attempted train attacks and gah -- it's a nice change of pace to unwind with the annual day of save-the-planet rhetoric, which each year closely follows the annual day of hey-brah-what-if-weed-were-legal rhetoric.

So, in celebration of Earth Day, let us gather around and enjoy a now-twenty-one-year-old local compilation album. One that was also in celebration of Earth Day. Uh... mostly.

Feast your eyes and ears upon:

Slurpees and Murder Record Club: Someone Please Help Me Figure Out This 1984 Commemorative Pope-Themed Cassette

The title says it all, really, but -- hello and welcome back to the Slurpees and Murder Record Club!

Remember how the last installment of SMRC had at least given us something, anything, to work with in determining its origins? Well, PREPARE YOURSELVES:

A Big Weekend, in Pictures: Fireworks and a Parade in Oak Lake, the 28th Annual Brandon Folk Festival, a Moody Manitoba Morning, and Other Westman Shenanigans (56k Modems Beware)

Fair warning: there are about twenty megabytes' worth of pictures in this post. I realize that for most of us modern-day downloadin' folks that's barely a blip, like maybe three or four decently-encoded MP3s, but still. Fair warning!

As you'll see shortly, there is a lot more in this post than I was actually expecting to see when I left town Thursday evening. Longtime readers will recall that my father lives out in Oak Lake, off the highway between Virden and Brandon, and Oak Lake is generally not an overly busy destination.

As an example, here's what the hustle and bustle of downtown looked like when we went out the next day:





Not your fancy Virden city-living, to be sure, and Oak Lake residents like it just fine that way. Let me (re)introduce you to a couple of them, not because they're crucial to the story, but because they're adorable:

Manitoba Links Weekly: Brandon Crime as Fringe Play, Grass as Redevelopment, Deep-Fried Pizza Pops as the Lede, and Online Reader Comments... on Paper? (ManLinkWeek 40)

Your eyes do not deceive you; what you see here is blurry cellphone footage, taken yesterday in the wild ("the wild" in this case being the Maryland Tim Hortons between Portage and Broadway), of an online reader-comments section grabbing a pen and forcibly crossing itself over into the print edition. Behold -- the future of publishing!

Now, before we launch into this week's cornucopia of content: I didn't want to devote a full segment below to them, because they've already appeared many a time in this feature already, but holy shit, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I split my time tonight between typing this post out and watching them lose again, so they're still on my mind right now, but from the way their year is shaping up so far I can see that I'm going to need to pace myself. So let's say instead that I'll, uh... I'll let you know if they win. (And you'll note that's an 'if'.)

On to ManLinkWeek!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Summer is Here and Everything is Happening (ManLinkWeek 39)

Hello and welcome to another vaguely-weekly installment of everybody's at least second favourite local link bonanza; it's time for ManLinkWeek!

My apologies for the delay on this post; my week, thus far, has been a maddening one. Those of you who follow me on Twitter are aware of my ongoing... escapades with Visions Electronics, and how I had thought that would make for an interesting blog post when the whole affair was over. Well, as of this writing, the whole affair is not over -- don't even get me started, right now, just don't -- and this is time that I am not getting back.

Anyway, it turns out that simmering frustration, thirty-five-Celsius weather, and the skin-scalding gusts of a five-year-old desktop computer make for a potently poor writing environment when combined. So, heck with it! The last few ManLinkWeeks have steadily skyrocketed into hashtag-longreads territory, and on days like these you should be aiming to minimize your computer time (or maximize its efficiency, whichever) and get outside sooner.

Thusly, please find a crop of links below; the repeat Slurpee championship is an honourary mention, although after thirteen straight years of it I'm not sure what discussion topics remain unmined.

The Brent Bellamy piece on the James Avenue Pumping Station is an honourary mention as well, having been featured in a segment of this week's WIPs; you should definitely add it to the reading list below if you have the time.

WHO AM I KIDDING NOBODY HAS TIME FOR ANYTHING

LET'S GO, GO GO GO GO

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!

Manitoba Links Weekly: Can We Build It? No, We Canalta (ManLinkWeek 31)

yeah I'm stealing my own jokes, what up

Hello and welcome to ManLinkWeek for the week of Tuesday, May 15th! I've put this segment off until the day after, as I sometimes tend to do lately, but who could blame me? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and poorly-handled civic files are dying sudden miserable deaths.

Manitoba Links Weekly: Speculative Fanfiction for Unnamed Carrot Mascot (ManLinkWeek 24)

Yo, ManLinkWeek, we in there. It's another jam-packed week, but let's get the absolute most important business out of the way first:

[cnib.ca: CNIB Manitoba is pleased to introduce the newest member of our family!]
Remember a couple of years back when the town of Melita put up a giant banana statue, and then everybody had the chance to try and name the banana? Well, this year we all have the chance to name a carrot.

The carrot is significantly smaller -- mascot-sized rather than statue-sized -- and does not come with its own professional wrestling championship belt, but what it lacks in unexplained wrestling paraphernalia it makes up for in pure early-'90s pizzazz: