Walkies At Midnight.

Looking out the kitchen window at around midnight I saw someone out walking their dog. It struck me as kind of a weird time to be doing that. On the other hand it was a great big hairy dog, so I doubt the guy walking it had anything to worry about.

Did She Meet Lum?

Recently elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is a lucky man he's a Japanese politician. You couldn't reach the top political office in the US if your wife was open about her astral travels to Venus. Miyuki Hatoyama has also stated she knew Tom Cruise in a previous life when he was Japanese.

Lum, you ask? Read this.

They Forgot.

It seems the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees forgot what game they were playing tonight. A brawl broke out in the bottom of the 8th when Jorge Posada brushed Jesse Carlson as he came in to score a run. Guys, you were playing baseball, not hockey. Hockey is the game where time is wasted with silly fisticuffs.

Tenth.

Wow, hard to believe it's ten years already since the Moon was blown out of orbit. Well, it is if you live in a certain parallel universe. Once 1999 seemed so far away, and now it's ten years gone. Too bad we don't have the kind of space program portrayed in Space: 1999, minus the whole losing the Moon aspect.

Oddly enough September 13th also happens to be Barbara Bain's birthday. She turned 78 today. It would be interesting to know if Gerry Anderson chose the date for Breakaway before or after he hired her to play Helena Russell.

Gas In Saskatoon, September 11, 2009.

Summer vacation season is over, Labour Day long weekend has come and gone, and the price of gas is down. Gas in Saskatoon is currently 99.9 cents a litre.

Get Friendly.

Feeling down? There's a good chance this will cheer you up, especially if you're Canadian and remember CBC kid's programming of days gone by. No overactive running around or overly sweet pandering here. Interestingly it seems to me some of the dialogue here might actually have been improvised. Cool if true. Seriously, how can you not dig a pair of swinging cats like those?

23rds Not The Charm.

Last night City Council discussed the plans for renovating the troublesome 23rtd Street bus mall. Although no actual work has been done yet the project is expected to go over budget, and the councillors sent the current design proposal back to Saskatoon Transit for more work. They feel the proposed design isn't patron friendly enough, and doesn't consider the potential for housing businesses. But I have to wonder about Maurice Neault, whose idea is that the terminal building be put on stilts, 15 feet in the air, in an effort to create some sort of cool landmark. Does Neault actually use the buses? If he did he would see that many users of the system are seniors, mothers with young children, and the disabled. His "skyterminal" would therefore require elevators to allow access to these customers, who will not be likely to climb two storeys of stairs to access whatever public facilities might go in the terminal building. A street level terminal building is much more accessable and much more welcoming.

I'll also use this post to make a prediction. One of the ideas in the existing terminal plan is for some sort of coffee shop. It will not surprise me at all if this turns out to be a Tim Hortons. Currently the nearest Hortons to downtown is by Kelsey Institute on Idylwyld Drive. They have no outlet in downtown proper, and the bus mall would be an obvious location for them to build one.

Gas In Saskatoon, September 4, 2009.

Gas in Saskatoon is currently 101.9 cents a litre. The price of gas held steady for almost a month at 103.9 cents a litre before yesterday's drop. And this drop comes just before a holiday long weekend, which is commonly assumed to be an excuse for the price to go up.

Hey, Deviantart!

Fix your search engine already! I'm sure you've had several hundred complaints by now.

A Request For Brian Tallet.

Get rid of those sideburns. Seriously, they're fugly.

Words Versus Images.

I spotted this billboard on a bus this morning, and immediately noted what could be considered a problem. This is supposed to be encouragement for you to worship God. Yet the arrow on the "U turn allowed" sign points downwards, which can be taken to mean that "getting closer to God" is actually bad for you. Yes, that sign may be accurate to real life, but it belies the message they're trying to get across. It would be more appropriate, in more ways than one, if the arrow pointed upward instead.

For those of you not familiar with it the United Church is a uniquely Canadian church, founded from a merging of several Protestant groups in 1925. It is Canada's largest Protestant denomination, but how much longer that will be the case remains to be seen. The church has shed quite a few members over the years as its clergy and beliefs have become increasingly liberal, leading to more conservative members finding other places of worship.

Welcome To Saskatoon.

With fall classes about to start at the University of Saskatchewan, Kelsey Institute, and other schools in town there will be a lot of folks coming to live in Saskatoon for the first time. So hello to anyone of that description who might be reading this blog. I hope you find your stay here successful.

Better Late Than Never.

I really should have posted this last week when he was here. Oh well, here's a shot of Dudley during his yearly visit to Saskatoon. It's too bad I don't have some more lively shots of him that would reflect his behaviour around a crowd, but I never seem to end up with any.

Drain The Syrup.

Tuning around the shortwave bands tonight I listened off and on to Radio Japan in Japanese on 5960 khz between 0200 and 0300 UTC. The program was a music program, which should have been nice. Unfortunately most of what they played was treacly versions of Okinawan shima uta, including a version of Shoukichi Kina's classic "Hana." Schmaltzy strings are perhaps appropriate for some sorts of music, but Okinawan classics isn't one of them.

Tribute.

Les Paul's death yesterday at 94 has of course prompted numerous tributes. Some are in places you might not have expected, such as Jeph Jacques' webcomic Questionable Content. Of course this is because Jacques is a musician himself.

I first became aware of his death in a very appropriate place, the Saskatoon branch of Long and McQuade Music. I didn't strum any Les Paul guitars yesterday however.

Power.

This evening as part of the change I got for spending a twenty I received a ten dollar bill with the serial number pretext BTU. This struck me as very appropriate. BTU is short for British Thermal Unit, which is a measurement of energy. A bill is the monetary equivalent of a unit of energy. We use dollars to indicate the strength of the economy, the value of transactions, and so on, just as a BTU is used to measure the heating capacity of a heater, the cooling ability of an air conditioner and so on .

A Tip For Mark Steyn.

You could save yourself a lot of time and effort, yet make the same amount of money, if you just wrote "THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING TO GET US! WAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!" over and over again for many of your articles. After all that's all they really amount to.



Nativist arguments have had a boring consistency for two centuries or so, namely that the hated Other is going to outbreed "us." In the past it was the Irish and the French, today it's the Muslims and, in the US at least, Mexicans and other Latin Americans. I'm sure that people will be saying the same thing about whoever the "enemy" is 50 or 100 years from now.

Loud.

I just came back from having supper with my parents and aunt and uncle at the Saskatoon branch of Original Joe's Restaurant. We all liked our food, but the restaurant itself is loud. Very loud, which is kind of a turnoff for me. I wondered at one point if the waitresses end their shifts with ringing ears. Management seems to favour short skirts on their waitresses, as only one was wearing pants. It certainly looks a lot different from the Burger King it used to be.

Gas In Saskatoon, August 7, 2009.

Gas in Saskatoon is currently 103.9 cents a litre. Problems with an Alberta gas refinery may be the purported reason for the increase.

Reports Of My Demise...

Wait, has anyone actually seen any?

Yeah, I'm still around. I just haven't gotten around to posting anything for a bit. There will be a post tomorrow, so there will be at least two this month.

And by the way, birthers! Ha, made your search engine hit refer!