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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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!
One of the vehicles I drive regularly has a cassette player, so I often use it. Today's cassette was Severed Heads' Since the Accident, Nettwerk's late '80s version. The original version was released in 1983. At the time the music was still mainly tape loops and low end analog synths, with "vocal" content generally consisting of various found and manipulated voices, singing and otherwise. I suspect that despite apparent claims otherwise this album and the following City Slab Horror may have had some influence on the work of Richard James aka Aphex Twin et al.
PokerStars' Guiness World Record Tournament is still running as I write this, but I've been out for a good while. But I have nothing to complain about. I ended the tournament in 5971st place out of a field of 65000 and won 3 bucks. At the end of the first hour I thought I was soon to be done, but a series of successful hands got me back in the game and I was around to hit the money at 16250th place. My trick in these kind of things is always to be patient. I see too many people who have a bad hand or a series of bad hands proceeding to go on tilt, go all in with a marginal hand, and find themselves on the rail in short order. When I'm in a bad place I'd rather see as many hands as possible, even if it means I get blinded off, than try to play marginal hands in the hope I'll catch something.
It's rare for me to be involved in a potentially historic event. In fact I doubt I've ever been involved in one before. But Sunday may change that. PokerStars currently holds the Guiness World Record for biggest online poker tournament. 35000 players took part in a single tournament they held December 28, 2008. Now they intend to break that record, with the attempt taking place this Sunday at 14:10 Eastern Time. Along with direct entry for a mere buck they're holding lots of freerolls, each giving out 1000 tickets for the tournament. I took part in several today, and with some lucky cards I managed to make that top 1000, giving me a ticket for Sunday's attempt. Getting to the money will of course be very unlikely given the number of entrants, but it will definitely be fun to be part of that crowd. Hopefully such a huge tournament won't break their servers!
Yes, I'm verbose today. Not that I'm getting many visitors....
In the Sanyo tonight is Sailing the Seas of Cheese by those whimsical Bay area boys Primus. This was their major label debut on Interscope.
One thing the Sanyo MGR-710 lacks is a rewind control. The only way to speed through the cassette is fash foward. No doubt this omission was to save a few cents a unit and boost the profit margin.
From YouTube, a nice long live cut by Japanese group Yura Yura Teikoku. I don't have anything by them in my Japanese music collection, but I definitely like this piece.
I want a Malted Milk chocolate bar. I can't find one anywhere in Saskatoon. Looking at the Cadbury Canada page I'm beginning to suspect the bar has been discontinued. Oh Malted Milk, why hath the market foresaken thee? The bar had been around forever. I guess there are just too many choices on the market. Another bar I occasionally would eat that has disappeared in recent years is the Almond Mars.
Michael Jackson mania continues in the tabs, and I doubt it will let up anytime soon. But one example I saw today was especially eye rolling. The cover story for the latest National Examiner is Michael's autopsy, and the headlines include the claim he starved himself to death. Right below that was a headline that read "Lose 5 pounds this week on the lemonade diet." Rather a case of cognative dissonance there.
Last month I posted about that classic piece of audio playback tech, the cassette, and commented I wanted to listen to more of my collection. So here I sit, a Sanyo MGR-710 in my lap, listening to Mirage by the Meat Puppets. It's been a good long while since I listened to this one. Brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood have been back in action as the Meat Puppets over the last couple of years after Cris finally got past years of drug addiction and a 2003 incident that led to a two year jail sentence. Not a bad album at all, and I suspect the title cut, which opens the record, was inspired by the '80s version of King Crimson.
There are always surprises to be found on YouTube. One of these is the commerical above, a Molson Canadian ad from circa 1985. This ad, which features a cover version of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night," predates Nike controversial use of the original Beatles recording of "Revolution" in a TV ad by two years. I saw this ad numerous times during its run on Canadian TV and it stuck in my head, so it was interesting to stumble across it on YouTube after not literally seeing it for 24 some years.
Pop culture is often ephemeral, but TV commercials by their very nature are extreme examples of this. While a musician, novelist, or filmmaker hopes their work will be a hit and have a long life those who make commercials know that their works will in the majority of cases have a limited lifespan. Their life may be as short as a day or two, and in general most ads hang around only for a few weeks. There are of course campaigns with longer lifespans, but even in those cases they tend to alter gradually as time passes, and even the most successful will eventually outlive their usefulness. Eventually today's successful ad elements like Erin Esurance will join the Taco Bell chihuahua in the nostalgic memories of those who saw them.
Given this it's surprising to see such "ancient" material online. Things that people might be expected to want to experience again, like TV shows and music, have often been the subject of less than careful treatment. An example would be Doctor Who, for which some of the earliest episodes are no longer available because the BBC didn't bother to preserve them. Old commercials are even less likely to be preserved, since their intended goal has been accomplished and there is no real viewing audience that would be interested in acquiring them on DVD. So their appearance on YouTube is mere luck of the draw, the result of being captured when a TV show or movie was recorded for later viewing off TV. It's reasonable to assume that for many ads the only existing copies will be such happenstance archiving, especially those ads made locally or regionally. So don't be surprised if that Coke ad you really loved in 1989 isn't available online.
