Follow Friday Comes Early

A bit of administrative business, if I may.

"Follow Friday" -- commonly #followfriday or #ff -- is that hashtagged Twitter concept that never quite works correctly because people cram their remaining 130-odd characters full of seemingly random names with no explanatory notes, and then you just walk away from Twitter entirely for the day because the majority of your feed is underlined blue gibberish. But the idea is a sound one, the intention being to twig readers and passersby to new, noteworthy, and/or high-quality sources of content.

You will note in the sidebar to your right (which is also my right, in the medium of text, but never mind that) that a most handy blog list does its best to keep tabs on local blogger activity and indicate when new content arrives. But a few of those entries are starting to look a little long in the tooth, over there, and I'm sure that in the meantime a lot of neat new blogs have risen up and established themselves as points of interest.

The more astute of you will already have noted that Follow Friday is intended for, well, Fridays. But I am nothing if not a rebellious sort! A... rebellious sort who coincidentally already has his posts of the day planned out for tomorrow and for Friday, but who needs something to talk about in the meantime. Look, you take your rebellions where you can get them, I mean you can't just--

ANYWAY

tl;dr My blogroll is rapidly aging and forever incomplete, and I can handle that first issue myself, but the second issue is one that works better as a team project. So! Gandering as we are at said blog list, what noteworthy upstarts am I missing? Which consistently excellent Manitoban bloggers have you readers recently taken to following, and who deserves more credit than they've been getting? Drop me some recommendations! Help a Brother Out!

Still in the Minors with a Hat of Olde

Our story begins -- or, at least, I became aware that it had begun -- on the evening of December 11th, 2010. Another wintry Saturday night with hockey on the television as the main attraction, usually the case once the evening lows start hitting thirty below. Without windchill. (Enjoy summer while it's here, guys. I get it, there are bugs. Quit complaining.)

The latter half of CBC's weekly doubleheader that evening was a game in Vancouver, with the Tampa Bay Lightning playing a rare out-of-conference game against the Canucks. And what should I see during the third period, what confounding visual should grace my eyes but this:



Neil Young wearing a Manitoba Moose hat.

Neil Young wearing a Manitoba Moose hat?

Wednesday is the Winnipeg Internet Pundits UMFM Open House Show

Bloggers, locals, fameseekers -- lend me your ears!

As part of UMFM's continuing Open House to show off its revamped (and very nice!) studios, the Winnipeg Internet Pundits show is throwing open its proverbial doors as well to any local writers who might care to drop by. Three minutes of airtime will be awarded to any blogger who drops by during the show; there will also be ample opportunity to kick around and chime in during the rest of the broadcast, and I am reasonably certain that there will also be beer afterwards at the neighbouring Degrees.

Not a bad deal, right? So come on down! Winnipeg Internet Pundits and the UMFM open house, this Wednesday from 5:00 to 6:00 PM, with the blogging equivalent of the Bat-Signal lit up above the studio. (Christian suggests that I may be shirtless during the broadcast, but he's just joshin' around; anybody who knows me is well aware that I am far more likely to be pantsless.) Even if you aren't a blogger or won't have time to drop by, be sure to listen in; I suspect that this ought to be quite the entertaining broadcast.

So be ready for Winnipeg Internet Pundits! If this isn't Manitoba's sexiest political panel, I don't know what is!

Please Remove Your Hats and Rise for Our Eventual Civic Anthem

My daily posting thus far has kind of been nightly posting instead, but Daily Post Month continues regardless! Which is good, because we're five days in, and if I had already managed to screw that up I would just walk right off the internet and never be seen again.

Anyway -- hey, you know what I think would be fun to write? An anthem.

I've always been a sucker for national anthems and flags, as I'm sure has become obvious every time I've written anything about the Olympics. ("That flag has an AK-47 on it? AWESOME") Every anthem and every flag has its own historical connotations and interesting stories, and fascinations like these probably explain pretty well why History was one of my undergraduate majors. And I've always thought it's interesting that flags are just all over the place -- from the biggest nation to the tiniest little podunk town -- but anthems, with certain exceptions, really only occur at the federal level.

Help a Brother Out!: I Clicked a Square and the Smiley Face Guy Turned His Eyes into Xes Like He's Dead, Does That Mean I Win, Did I Beat the Game

You are about to be privy to one of my many shameful and potentially compromising secrets, one of the psychological scars and mental torments that eats away at my very soul each and every day to irreparably wound my interpersonal relations with all around me. I share this with you in the utmost confidence, on the internet, and I hope dearly that somebody can help to ease the continual disgrace and dismay that such a failing incurs on my person each day I walk this earth.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Help a Brother Out!

You know Minesweeper, that abstract minefield-simulator video game that has come standard with every Windows release since 1992?



How in the fuck do you play this game?