Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

A war in Georgia is a little too much unsettling on what is a day that supposedly represents a movement toward world peace and mutually respectful competition. Wars also don’t improve air quality, although the Olympics are having a momentary positive effect if you don’t count the planes that took the athletes to compete, and the energy to make and transport the throw-away junk souvenirs.

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Also disappointing, but not really surprising is that Jim Prentice has again let Canadians down. When he’s not looking out for American businesses that want to sue children and dead people for downloading music, he’s defending Bell and Telus who want to charge you to get cell phone spam. This does fit with the Conservative trait of defending large businesses who want you to pay through the nose. Remember fees for using bank machines? Jack Layton was there for you, and Stephen Harper got a stern talking-to from the bankers.

Wednesday was not a good day to be a Roughrider fan, with Lancaster announcing he has cancer again, and Matt Dominguez confirming that his knee injury might end his spectacular, but injury plagued, career in the CFL.

The 6-0 Riders play a rematch against the Calgary Stampeders at 8:00 PM Saskatchewan time, tonight.

This parody of pro sports is pretty funny, especially since I’ve played this non(North American)-traditional sport for fun before.

Jesse and I went off to Buffalo Days on Saturday, arriving at a fashion show by mistake when we were intending to see Saskatchewan Express. I heard a young girl complaining to someone on a payphone that she too had made the same mix-up.

- Yes, all models in Saskatchewan are this old. I think I saw CTV’s Angel Blair just behind one of those lady’s legs.

- They are just dancing, and the people behind them are singing. Facial expressions are fun, aren’t they.

Jeff Richards did a passable magician act, although he was unable to complete it because a subject in the audience didn’t get a cue to yell out “STOP” so that we’d get to see the completion of a watch trick started earlier in the set. Or maybe he made a mistake, and didn’t give her the cue because he didn’t want to complete the trick? Who knows…

We also saw Colin Christopher, who was pretty entertaining, and working with a crowd melting in the sun, with too few seats to go around for the crowd. For 10 minutes after the show, his subjects were supposed to respond with “I slept with that guy” (or that guy “too” if they were talking to another subject) every time they heard his name.

- lead singer of TOADM

TOADM was professional, but I’m just not a big fan. Something about that much bass just makes me more angry than entertained. It’s like “look at us, we can use speakers to make your ear drums break, and your chest and head pound, but we can’t really sing!” I recognized several of their songs from The Wolf radio station, but if the concert wasn’t practically free, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with it.

I also saw someone there who stopped talking to me a couple months ago, after I told them I was concerned about them driving home after having 4 drinks in a night. Apparently that kind of a concern lends to my nature of being more negative than positive, and is a real buzz kill. I waved at them, but I didn’t see them wave back. It looks like they were enjoying the music and drinks a bit more than I was.

Anyway, Sunday rolls around now, and Weird Al Yankovic is just over 20 hours away! I wanna roll with the gangsters, although it’s apparent I’m too white and nerdy…

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Oh, go six-and-oh Riders! Woo! Beat Calgary barely today.
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The Saskatchewan Roughrider won their 5th in a row this season, making their best start to a season in modern history. I think even with the 3 costly injuries this week, we’ll pull together another win next week. It’s so impressive that we did this using 3 different quarterbacks.

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The SaskBlogs BBQ was yesterday, and the weather was perfect, defying the weatherman’s chance of thunderstorms. Unfortunately car trouble, ill family, the Rider game, and conflicting engagements all kept quite a few people away, so I’ll make a better effort next year to pick a date more people can make it. Monty from Canadian Money Advisor came out again, and several of my friends and family, and most of us got stuffed on hamburgers, hotdogs, noodle salad, chips, garden peas, and cookies.

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I watched “National Treasure 2″ [8/10] and the last hour of “Knight Rider” [5/10], and caught the odd first half of “Batman and Robin” [6/10] in the last weeks. When it’s not pouring rain, it’s been a very good time to get outside and enjoy the city, so blogging has naturally taken a bit of a back seat the last while.

Something Awful was cooked up, and it’s taking CBC’s HNIC contest by storm!

Vote for Hockey Scores here.
Join the group on Facebook.

Many sports blogs are covering this interesting development of an obvious joke that is going horribly wrong. Freeping does work.

Meanwhile serious contenders are going under appreciated.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without an antiquated Copyright Act that lets artists retain sole rights to their creation until well after their own death. If copyright expired after approximately 10 years, the well known HNIC theme would be in the public domain already, and the CBC could continue to use it.

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Hat tip to Red Tory

I woke up on Saturday with a pain in my neck. More accurately, my throat (just one side of it) was making me wince each time I swallowed. After somehow managing to fall back to sleep for some extra shuteye, I woke again with the same problem. A trip to the doctor was looking likely, since my throat started to decide to rebel more than a week and a half ago.

I was still determined to do other chores today too, so after being distracted by writing a new blog entry for Sunday, I gathered up recycling materials, loaded up the car, and went first to Dutch Cycle. There I was expecting to find a Presta valve to Schreader valve stem adapter, since the tire they provided me with had the more unusual Presta style valve. One of the staff there explained how to fill a Presta by twisting the top, attaching the adapter, and then closing the Presta valve when done. There was no charge [free] for the cap or adapter they gave me — they’ll get me “for double next time” (wink). So I left there with a fuzzy happy feeling of accomplishment.

I filled my car with gas (which has dropped by about 6¢/L recently) at Regina Cabs [$39.95], and drove to SARCAN where I got rid of most of my car load. The staff mentioned that Crown Shred takes non-deposit plastic containers. At this point the skies opened up and buckets of rain started falling. I jumped back into my car, out of the SARCAN like a lightening bolt. I picked up just over $3 at SARCAN, which wasn’t even close to the $50+ the three people in front of me got, despite the discretionary $50 limit.

I had plenty of time to make it to CAA in order to pick up some $8 movie vouchers [$32]. And then I got a very quick appointment (both in wait time, and visit time) with a doctor at the South Albert Clinic. Ten minutes later I had a prescription for my throat infection [$16] and was ready to stuff my paper recycling into the blue bin in the adjacent Golden Mile Mall parking lot. The rain had other ideas.

I stopped my car next to a white doctor’s car in reserved parking, where the bin was facing the parking spots. I had two boxes to unload and hopped out of the car, popping the trunk as I did, into the rain. I scurried to the back seat door, and grabbed the first bag and ran to the bin. On my way back I saw the trunk wasn’t open, so I went in a hurry to the driver door to open it and pop the trunk again. It was locked.

I checked my pocket for the car key, remembering that I left it in the ignition. I pulled out my house key from my pocket, cursing its uselessness, and simultaneously tried opening the other doors. They too were all locked. I started to wonder if I should walk home in the pouring rain (25 minute walk) when I looked over and saw another white car beside the one I was trying to open. My keys were in the other white car, and the door to that one (my car) was still unlocked. Oops, I’d walked back to the wrong car from the bin. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that a troll on SaskLibertyTrain called me “Saskatchewan’s dumbest blogger“.

Now I’m going to watch the Riders mop up the Montreal Alouettes. Unfortunately the game is only on TSN, so a non-cable subscriber like me has to have friends and family who value TV a little more highly than I do.

I went to the Canada Day party in Regina with Patty, on Tuesday. We bumped into many friends while there, and took in the fireworks from south of the Broad St. bridge. Ballsy from the Wolf 104.9 said the fireworks cost $20,000 for this year’s show.

Parking in the Center of the Arts lot seemed like a good idea, until we tried to get out the south exit, and it took about 15 minutes. I turned right instead of left, to help the line behind us, but the bridge was clogged yet so it was just a big jam every direction, except possibly Hillsdale. Beware the left-turners at the Center of the Arts, at the uncontrolled intersection.

-smoke sundog at sunset

Some of the bands included a Bon Jovi tribute, Foxx Worthee (two women from the 620 talent contest, I think Colin Lovequist said), The Rabid Whole (a techno alt-rock group from Regina), and several others we missed while eating and wandering the park around the Legislature. The sound quality was good for a lot of the show, but inexplicably at some points the sound was cranked to [more] painful levels. I had my ear plugs handy so I hardly noticed.

- Foxx Worthee

The program was running late, and the stage manager tried to give the hook to TRW, but the beer garden crowd begged for another song, and got it. Patty picked up a t-shirt and CD in a combo deal, and got the CD signed.

On Wednesday I played soccer with friends, and fortunately took a ball with me. I’m able to lift my legs on Thursday, so I’m slowly getting into better shape. I think the impression of the soccer ball on my chest has faded away completely too. No one got a face-ball, so it was a good night with bearable mosquito hordes. Trevor found a quarter on the field - it was probably his anyway.

-Saskatchewan: Where you can’t go wrong when taking sunset photos.

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My garden is coming along well, most of my peas are up and thriving, the tomatoes are still alive and one has blossoms, and the peppers are doing great too. There are more potatoes up, including the ones playing catch-up that were planted just about two weeks ago. Radishes, dill, beans, and beats are doing great. There will be some things to eat by next week I predict - I could probably dig into the radishes on my balcony already, but I was thinking of letting one go to seed and try eating a radish pod.