Don Versus Donations.

Saturday and Sunday saw the latest edition of a long running Saskatchewan tradition. It was Telemiracle time again. The 33rd edition of the highly successful telethon generated 3.8 million dollars in pledges. But what was the cover story in this morning's edition of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix? Sunday night's Eagles concert, the first of three for Saskatoon. Three whole pages were devoted to the concert. Telemiracle? A single two column article on page A7. You really have to wonder about the editorial priorities of the paper when a major charity event and Saskatchewan tradition plays second fiddle to a concert by a group that isn't doing anything new or important. The cynical part of me wonders if this lack of coverage today had anything to do with Telemiracle broadcasting on CTV stations in Saskatchewan, while the Star Phoenix is owned by TV broadcaster Canwest/Global.

Here Yesterday, Gone Today.

As I've mentioned before if you find something on YouTube you want to watch don't hesistate. Yesterday seeing some '50s pop singers on TV led me to looking for info on an episode from the '70s Quinn Martin Productions TV series Cannon, "The Quasar Kill." Much to my surprise I actually found the complete episode on YouTube and proceeded to watch it. But between 6 PM Saskatoon time and now the person who put the episode up pulled it. Too bad for you, as I was going to post a link to it so you could watch it also. The episode itself features Frank Cannon, played by the late William Conrad, being called in by an old friend to investigate the death of a scientist apparently killed by a message from outer space. As with so much of what Hollywood put out then and continues to put out the episode really should have a giant "lasers don't work that way" tag attached to it, as the way the laser kills the victim makes no sense, and frankly I'm not sure how the laser is being used to communicate with space in the first place.

Gas In Saskatoon, March 6, 2009.

Another week, another price increase. Gas is now 92.9 cents a litre in Saskatoon. I would imagine it will creep up some more as we get closer to Easter no matter what direction the price of oil takes.

"Erica's Word."

Another fun find from YouTube. "Erica's Word" was a 1985 single from San Francisco's Game Theory, a group led by Scott Miller. Miller's taste in lyrics tended to run towards clever wordplay, and I especially like the lines "Make believe and pretend/I remember when they served the same end." The highpoint of the group's career was 1987's Lolita Nation, a double album of new wave/powerpop meets postmodernism lyrics meets collage and cutup. Unfortunately the group wasn't able to capitalise on it when their followup Two Steps From the Middle Ages came out just before their label at the time, Enigma, went bankrupt, followed by the departure of guitarist/vocalist Donette Thayer and an injury that prevented drummer Gil Ray from touring with the band. The group never really recovered, but Lolita Nation has become sort of a cult classic, no doubt helped along by the fact that CDs of the album are apparently almost as rare as hen's teeth and have been known to sell for considerable sums, as the album has remained, as the late great Clyde Gilmour might say, "in cutout bin limbo." I really need to dig out my LP copy and give it a spin one of these days.

It's interesting to compare Game Theory's fate with another band that released a double album in that period, Sonic Youth. While Game Theory got the short end of the stick Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation played a key role in getting the band signed by Geffen, leading them to become the most successful group to come out of the New York underground scene of the 1980s. Like Game Theory Sonic Youth were signed to Enigma, although unlike Game Theory they had another outlet for their album, England's Blast First.

Under New Management.

If you're a former employee of US electronics retailer Circuit City this isn't going to make you happy. It was announced today that Canadian telecom company Bell will be buying Circuit City's Source by Circuit City stores in Canada. These were Radio Shack stores until Circuit City acquired them in 2004, the name change coming due to legal moves by Radio Shack in the US. As Circuit City closed up its American operations at the start of 2009 the majority of the Source stores, some 750 outlets across Canada, continued to operate.

Quick Response.

It doesn't take long for fans to start producing fanfiction. Joss Whedon's new series Dollhouse has only aired 3 episodes, yet there is already a section at Fanfiction.net for the series with 25 entries. And not surprisingly there is already crossover fic for it, such as this example I spotted at the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer crossover site Twisting the Hellmouth. After all the lead on Dollhouse is Eliza Dushku, who played Faith on Buffy. No doubt if Sarah Michelle Gellar ever goes back to TV whatever she stars in will be quickly crossed over as well. Personally I'd be leery about writing fanfiction this early for a TV series. There's a strong chance whatever you write will be contradicted in short order by subsequent episodes.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.