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Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Final Bow.

Time flies. It's been more than five years since stage magician Roy Horn of the magic duo Siegfried and Roy was badly injured when one of the duo's white tigers attacked him onstage. His injuries prompted the end of the pair's performing career. But now they're back for what is being called their final performance. It will be a brief 15 minute appearance tonight in Las Vegas at the Bellagio as part of a charity benefit for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, which is set to open this year.

Ironically the tiger attack was a weird example of life imitating art. A 1993 episode of The Simpsons featured two German magicians obviously intended to be a parody of S&R. Gunther and Ernst also have white tigers in their act, one of which attacks the pair after they taunt it one time too many.

20 Grand And Counting.

The hitcounter here has been slowly creeping up towards 20 thousand hits. But all it took is the right post to send it running past that point. Last night's post about the demise of scans_daily was what did the deed. Apparently it was a combination of making one of the first blog posts about the issue and the sheer number of people interested in the issue, as well as my post being linked to in a couple of blogs.

What normally generates hits here? Ironically of late it's been a post inspired by scans_daily, a speculation Stewie Griffin from Family Guy might be inspired by "Superman's baby." I also get frequent hits from a couple of posts related to one of my favourite cartoons, Undergrads, including pictures of the lovely Jesse from that series. On the other hands some stuff surprisingly doesn't generate hits, like the times I've mentioned Harry Potter. And one thing that was an utter failure was something I tried early on called the search engine attractor phrase, a post with a phrase in it I assumed would generate hits, which they never seemed to.

Traffic will no doubt soon drop here, but while you're visiting why not check out some of the blogs I link to? Specifically go visit A Bit More Detail, More Words, Deeper Hole, I Am a Child of Television, and Stupid Evil Bastard. Might as well spread the traffic around. Apologies to PZ Myers and Orac, but you guys probably don't need the traffic spike.

CBC Nostalgia.




I was looking at the webcomic Menage a 3(which maybe not safe for work if you look at the right panels) and noticed the shirt the male lead, Gary, was wearing. It's the old CBC logo from the '70s, sometimes refered to as the exploding pizza. Remembering the actual animated logo from television it was off to YouTube to hunt it up. And here it is for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Friday, February 27, 2009

scans_daily Gets Zapped.

I've mentioned the Livejournal scans_daily here several times. It's a place for presented comic book scans and commenting on the content, especially the frequent silliness of comics and the comics biz itself. But when I went to check out the latest entries tonight I got a screen stating the journal had been suspended. Apparently someone made a copyright complaint against it. Too bad, especially since a huge amount of commentary on comic books and the comics industry has probably been lost. Given that the comm has been running for years and has had posts from comic book insiders like writer Gail Simone it's surprising it would get the chop now. Did someone like DC head honcho Dan Didio finally get pissed off at being criticised so much? His counterpart at Marvel Joe Quesada? Artist Greg Land, a frequent target for his dubious practice of using tracings of porn actresses instead of actually drawing freehand? Guess we'll have to stay tuned to find out.

Gas In Saskatoon, February 27, 2009.

I'm pretty sure I heard cheering last week when I missed last Friday's gas price post. But surprise, here it is again. Gas in Saskatoon is currently 87.9 cents a litre.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Little Surprise.

With the revival of Beverly Hills, 90210 it was probably inevitable that its sister show Melrose Place would be considered for a similar treatment. Now it's happened, with the CW network announcing they're going to bring MP back as well. For many of us about the only interesting thing to watch for will be whether any of the original cast reprise their roles as Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth did on 90210. At the very least we won't be seeing Marcia Cross as a regular, since she's busy doing some show called Desperate Housewives you may have heard of.

I do wonder if we'll see some of the other '80s nighttime soaps revived. I seem to remember there was talk of a Dallas revival within the last couple of years. Maybe Linda Evans would be willing to do another go-around on a new version of Dynasty. How about Falcon Crest? The rights are probably cheap. And looking at the far future will we see the current versions of revived series as the basis for revivals say 20 years down the road? "Yeah, it's based on the 2010 version, not the 1986 version."

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Was It You?

Well, it certainly wasn't me. Last night's Lotto 6/49 draw was for what turned out to be a pot of 50.3 million dollars. In the end four different tickets won, three n Ontario and one in Quebec. Each winning ticket is worth $12,574,733. Curses, there goes my plan to buy eastern Saskatoon, erect a force field over it, and declare it the new country of Gueguenlandia. In reality my "wild schemes" if I won all that money didn't go much further than maybe playing an event or two in this year's World Series of Poker. I'd probably lose the money, but you can take that kind of hit when you have 50 mil. The 6/49 is now back to its base prize of 4 million, and no doubt a bunch of people who bought tickets for the last draw are back to claiming "lotteries are a tax on the poor," or something along those lines. Me, I'll readily admit I regularly buy a couple of Western 6/49 tickets a week. The prize may not be as big, but the odds of winning a prize period are better due to each ticket having two sets of 6 numbers. And it's only a buck, versus two bucks for its older brother.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A Too Late Makeover.

Its been a long time since I've seen a new Simpsons episode, so it was only via coming across this article that I found out that after all these years they've changed the opening sequence, although the theme remains the same. Frankly it seems kind of pointless to me. The Simpsons really should be done by now. A new opening just seems like someone we know who is in the late stages of life going out and spending a big pile of money for plastic surgery that will in no way hide the fact they're tired and worn out.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Traffic Boost.

While looking for blog reactions to the Vanguard-Triomphant collision I came across this blog. No doubt this model builder will find their hitcount going up quite a bit over the next few days.

Up From The Depths.

We've all heard the cliched phrases: The Silent Service. Run silent, run deep. But the reality is that every year or two an incident involving one of the submarines of the world's navies will make the news. The latest such incident is a "one in a million" collision between the HMS Vanguard of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, and the French Navy's Le Triomphant earlier this month. Both boats survived, but the Vanguard had to be towed back to port. What is sure to keep this story in the news a bit longer than some other collisions is that both boats were SSBNs, nuclear subs carrying nuclear armed ballistic missiles. These subs play the same role in the British and French navies as they do in those of the United States and Russia, the ultimate deterent against nuclear attack. Both subs carry a compliment of 16 submarine launched ballistic missiles, American made D5 Tridents on the Vanguard, French made M45s on Le Triomphant.

It's sobering to consider the destructive power a single one of these vessels carries. It's unclear how many warheads either sub carries on each of its missiles these days, but 3 is the general assumption for Vanguard. Therefore 6 missiles would be sufficient to hit every city in Canada with a population of 100 thousand people or more. And it is this firepower that is the rationale behind these subs, for it sends the message to any potential nuclear armed foe that any nuclear attack will result in the destruction of their country from a source they would be unable to detect in time to prevent retaliation, should they even have the capability to do so. Both nations keep one of these vessels at sea at all times.

SSBN's are designed to be as hard to detect as is practical, and this quite obviously played a role in the collision. Neither boat heard each other, and of course neither was supposed to know where the other was. The exact patrol routes for such subs are closely guarded secrets, since enemies not knowing where to hunt for them is part of their operational goal. So any sort of calls for somehow coordinating operations to prevent such a collision are likely to be ignored.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Oops.

I was going to make a post about this being Friday the 13th and my hope that any readers here don't fall for that silly superstition. But I guess I should have checked my post numbers. My gas price post from earlier in the day was post number 13 for 2009. So I should have made my Friday the 13th post in that one. Oh well, if some overly superstitious person does come here there will be one less reason for them to freak out.

Gas In Saskatoon, February 13, 2009.

This weekend is a long weekend in Saskatchewan, with Monday being Family Day. Is that why the price of gas went up this week even though the price of oil went down? Gas is currently 93.9 cents a litre in Saskatoon. There is a common perception that the price of gas goes up in advance of a holiday, and things like this aren't likely to change such perceptions.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

David Duke Won't Be Amused.

Just how stupid are the folks at PETA? Their latest harebrained protest idea was to protest the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York with people in Ku Klux Klan outfits. The protesters compared the American Kennel Club to the KKK, claiming promoting purebred dogs is the same as promoting racial purity in humans. If this kind of crap keeps it I'm going to have to assume that PETA is actually some sort of gigantic joke by its leadership, intended to see how stupid they can act before people finally stop taking them seriously and supporting them.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Who Comes Up With This Crap?

It's amazing some of the ridiculous products that people actually manage to get produced. Courtesy of a post on the House of Bad Fanfiction bulletin board we have the Wine Rack. Personally most of the beverages I want to drink taste better cold, not warmed up by some woman's breasts.