Headlines Expected to Inform, or: James Howard Complains About the Smallest Things

Consider this an interlude between Part I and Part II of our ongoing series; we'll return to James Howard Closes Out November after these brief messages.

Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but -- I'm not repeating myself, am I? Okay, good -- Winnipeg Free Press, you know I love you, but it would be nice if you would stick to certain English language conventions when you're writing the headlines for your stories.

I don't mean to pick on you guys! You're still the best daily (or mostly-daily) paper we have in the city, and you can take that as you will. (And it's not like there's really much point in doing a string of posts about the Sun, unless I would repost Brodbeck's column or the Sunshine Girl every day and add a perfunctory "YEAHHHH WHAT-EV-ERRRRR" after them.) But you folks at the Free Press, like folks at most newspapers, usually only tend to use certain turns of phrase in a certain way, so if all of a sudden you use them differently it really causes a lot of mental dischord for us gentle readers.

Here are seven unaltered headlines from the Winnipeg Free Press, in chronological order; six of them are used to describe something in the future, and one is used to describe something in the past. Read each one in turn, and see if your brain picks out the interloper on your first readthrough.









See what I mean? See what I mean?

That sequence again, in helpful animated .GIF format:



I'm not trying to cause a stink, and I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy the word "walloping", but I really would appreciate it in the future if you guys didn't just nonchalantly screw with our understanding of time. You couldn't have written "feared for life"? Or "had life threatened"? The way that headline was written, it had me expecting and anticipating an upcoming scheduled event in which an ex-gangster would be put to death via a ferocious, ferocious walloping -- and honestly I'm actually a little disappointed now, since that isn't the case. Here you guys had my hopes up and everything, like maybe this was the next step of Project DIVIDE -- but, no. Dang.

In conclusion: "expected to" is very important to our future, and I am very disappointed in you.

Now, with that exciting interlude out of the way, we can move on to Part II of our continuing series; it can be expected to (see how that works) show up in the next couple of days. And by that point we'll already be a week deep into December, but hey, I've got to strike while the iron's still... lukewarm!

James Howard Clears Out November, Part I

Is it seriously December? It can't be December, that's ridiculous. It was minus one yesterday! And there's barely even snow on the ground; hell, it's only snowed twice so far all season, and only half of one snowfall stuck!

Fine, fine. Let's go on the assumption that it's December. Since it's been about a week again since I last dropped in, let's just hammer away at some backlog today; better start clearing out the In bin if we're going to get a fresh start to the next decade.

Is it seriously going to be 2010 next month? fffffffffffffffFFFFFFFF--

ANYWAY

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.

The Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade, Saturday, November 14th, 2009

A retrospective! That's super-secret blogger code for "it was three or four days ago", but let's not dwell on semantics. These recaps usually tend to serve mainly as historical documents, anyway, as I am constantly reminded by the bizarrely high traffic on my Video Games Live review alone.

Yes, this past Saturday saw the centennial edition of the Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade -- technically the "Power Smart / JCI Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade", but no way am I typing that out any more than I need to. So, for the sake of reasonable brevity -- because I took a lot of pictures, narrowed it down to still a lot of pictures, and then took forever trying to write something for everything -- I'd like to give you folks a nice short-form summary of some high- and lowlights of the event.

Santa Claus Parade Post Pending

After much deliberation, yes, I indeed went to this year's Santa Claus Parade. Sorry, fight-game enthusiasts! I figured I would go with the least expensive option that also minimized my capacity for complete and total personal failure, and anybody who has seen me attempt to play a video game in the last few months understands immediately how useless I would have been.

Plus they threw candy! Candy is pretty great.

So I took in the Parade and its after-parade Forks festivities, including fireworks (woo!), and I intend to have a lovely post about it sometime tomorrow evening-ish. In the meantime, because I'm also pretty terrible at photography, I've been deleting countless dozens of photographs that came out like this--



--and trying to figure out what the hell I'm even looking at, like my camera was just tripping balls the whole night and nobody told me.

Regardless! A good time was had by... most... and I'll tell you about the good bits, the bad bits, and the complete and total mysteries once I've cobbled together some shots that aren't completely terrible.

[Monday Edit: Ha ha, nope, still working on it. What the hell, it's late anyway, may as well make it one for the ages. Here's hoping for tomorrow night!]