Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Kate of SmallDeadAnimals.com is taking some photoshopping of her image in a good enough way that she’s encouraging other photoshoppers to take their crack at her.

“…An idea so utterly groundbreaking in its originality that it deserves to be stolen!”

In support, I’m stealing her idea, and letting you photoshop me. You see, I’d much rather look at a mangled photo of me, because I know I can identify with the subject of the photo. I also hope this starts a new internets meme, where a truck of bloggers dump their photos into the internets tubes and plug everything up for the weekend so we stop getting spam when the tubes become filled.

With a long weekend coming up, and lots of you sitting at your keyboards looking for something to do while the blogosphere slows to a crawl [because the Main Stream Media trots out the Canadian Idol], it’s a perfect time for a contest. Here are the rules:

1, Download the original and use it to create your own photoshop of “Saskboy” (or SaskBoy, CSB, that kid from Saskatchewan, or Computer_Saskboy).
2. Save your work in jpg format. Keep the size down under 100 kb.
3. Image must be work safe.
4. Email your entry (max. 3) as an attachment, or post it in this thread.
5. Indicate whether your credit should be your real name, a link to your blog, or fake name.
6. Contest closes 12:01 PDT Thursday, September 7 2006 [So all Canadians have a chance, even those wacky left coasters]. I extended the finish date in honour of the impeding defeat of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The winner of my contest will be judged by me and my fish Comet. You can post at any time in this thread, you don’t have to wait until the contest closes. It’s fair game to steal someone’s work, but you’ll lose points for originality, and adding humour by building on something might not be enough for the win. Good luck!

Virtual Saskatchewan - Nature’s Itinerary

While doing a search for Saskatchewan bloggers, I encountered an article on Virtual Sask. that was written by a relative of mine. He’s a great story teller, and you can really taste the mud and sinking feeling of being stuck when you read this one.

In other Saskatoon relative news, here’s the old press release regarding an interesting archaeological find made by a cousin while she was digging in the Middle East.

Watch the video on YouTube

Below is the transcript of the video appeal to help my crippled fish Comet.

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The Make a Fish foundation encourages you to help my poor crippled pet goldfish - Comet. He’s been in a wheelchair after a tragic boating accident claimed his ability to walk underwater. Comet’s dream is to win me a new fridge, and you can help Comet accomplish his goal by placing your vote now on abandonedstuff.com

Hurry, you only have until September 3rd 2006. Do it for Comet!

Please Vote for my Ugly Fridge. (Half way down the 4th column.)

Q. In 1944, Saskatchewan got their first one of these.

A. I was on the highway so I couldn’t call in, but in any case I wouldn’t have guessed it. Some people tried war brides, credit unions, telephones [bad guess], and first socialist government [CCF, but wasn’t the answer they wanted]. The first oil well for the province was first drilled in 1944, and to this day we can’t get the Conservative Prime Minister to agree that we deserve the same resource-deal that Alberta gets. Well, he agrees when he’s campaigning, but the radio reporters just couldn’t get him to say that plainly today when he was visiting the province. I liked Murray Wood’s comment that he hopes Oscar on Corner Gas is chewing a strip off the PM (during his cameo appearance this season) for being slow to let Saskatchewan keep the (oil) resource money that is constitutionally ours.

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I went up to Rose Valley today through Foam Lake, where I saw the destroyed elevators from a massive blaze in early August. The 310 highway north of Foam Lake has been utterly destroyed and I will not use it again, because it’s half converted to rough gravel/pavement. There’s one way to kill off tourism to Fishing Lake…

If you had to name a space hero, who would come to mind? I’d say Armstrong would top the list. The thing is, he’s the space hero of the last generation. These days you’re about as likely to hear someone suggest Tom Hanks for his roll in the Appolo 13 movie. We need a more ambitious and active space program if we’re to inspire a lasting desire to explore space in our youth.

Here’s my comment for the Champblog on CBC:

Being in my mid twenties, humans have not even been on the moon during my lifetime. The most fantastic thing I remember about the space program were the explosions of two shuttles, the Hubble telescope repair on IMAX, the Mars rovers on the Internet, and seeing the ISS fly overhead. Those are hardly events to get the average young person interested in space exploration. We need something more daring, and we need to get back onto the moon before everyone who was alive for the first time, is too old and gone to offer their advice.

1337hax0r writes about Bush’s potential election slushfund courtesy of the Canadian softwood lumber deal. Hopefully the media notices the coincidence in timing as well.

I’m not ready for my country to lose the softwood lumber money due to us from illegal trade fines imposed on our lumber industry. Time and again Canada was winning settlements laid out in NAFTA, yet Prime Minister Harper folded and gave the American presidency money? Something smells like an Avro Arrow scandal.

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And speaking of the main stream media barely noticing a scandal, here’s a shocker from the States.  A whistleblower has used YouTube concerning Lockheed Martin’s scam that damaged American security at some of the highest levels. After many attempts to inform Homeland security, he had to resort to broadcasting the news himself.

Thanks to Slashdot and Washingtonpost for featuring his story. I can’t believe Canada entrusted our 2006 Census data to these Lockheed Martin screwups.

Please Vote for my Ugly Fridge

It’s in the 15th row, and right now I’m in about 5th place. You can vote as often as Saskpower allows you to.

Photo of Cold Yeller

If I end the week with the most votes, I will have a 1 in 16 chance of winning a newer fridge. I’m hoping to harness the power of the Internets, because it is like a bunch of tubes where people can vote for my fridge. It’s not like a truck that delivers fridges, but more like tubes. My office sent a fridge yesterday, and the Internets was so backed up, that I just got it today!*

I’ve written about this Saskpower contest before. I plan on making a documentary about my ugly fridge, and featuring it on YouTube before the week is through. Tell your environmentally aware friends about my horribly old and ugly fridge. If I win, I will hold a new-fridge naming contest on my blog.

The H.A.S. has been putting tobacco lobby money to use in the province of Sask. in a fight against the province wide [minus First Nations reserves] ban on smoking in public buildings. They’ve claimed among other things that they lost business and money due to the ban. While I admit some small bars have lost business they won’t likely regain until smoking indoors becomes a widely accepted taboo for most smokers, there have been people like me going to restaruants and public places more now that we can breathe when we get there.

Lance has found the early stats from this past year, showing that Saskatchewan eating establishments gained money in a big way without taking urban or rural factors into account. It would appear that the smoking ban hasn’t hurt business in even the short term of one year, so I expect the Association to stop wasting time fighting, and instead deal with the smoke-free cleaner future. Maybe if the eating establishment is willing to designate itself a safe-injection-inhalation site, then I’d be in favour of giving them the option of letting people smoke inside. Just so long as customers are aware they are entering a building with junkies. But until then, my lungs and thousands of new customers are happy to fill the void of people incapable of keeping it in their packs until they get outdoors after eating.