Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Today was another convocation ceremony for the University of Regina.

It was the front page story on the Leader-Post. I attended, and before I even got inside, Mike asked if I was going to put it on my blog. I told him no, sincerely, but changed my mind, partly due to him asking. So if he was hoping to persuade me not to for some reason, he had the opposite effect. In any case the honourary doctor, violinist Eduard Minevich, was an entertaining speaker and played the violin at the end of his talk, so it was all good.

The jokes about the KGB, his wife telling him to speed up, and his family all being doctors so he might as well open a private clinic, were good fun. His message that you can be world famous and make a career (even in arts!) right here in Regina, was a good one for people to hear. He was invited to play for Putin not long ago, and was found in Regina and invited east to the event.

I put my iPod into one of my ears for the last row of graduates and closing talk by someone. I finally heard the episode of the Murray Wood Show where Stephen Glauser picked up the trivia prize for the most right answers. One of the answers was “marijuana”!

I also ran into another of Saskatchewan’s fine bloggers, and his look was priceless when I suggested I could send him the video of him walking across the stage. Needless to say I won’t be posting the video on my blog, but I bet you could guess who it is I’m talking about. There were quite a few other people I knew doing the hood-carry-shuffle, about a dozen, which isn’t surprising since I’ve worked, or lived with either them, or their siblings.

Anyway, it feels like it is Saturday night for some reason. Maybe that’s because I was just out having fun at Mosaic (the annual cultural pavilion festival in the city).

I ran into several friends at different pavilions throughout the city. It’s a good idea to take the bus, because parking at the Ex is $5 a night. The adult passport is just $12 (up from 10 last year) and includes bus fare on the Mosaic routes.

The UofR is filling the President’s job, after Jim Tompkins held the post following a hasty departure from the previous president.

Vianne Timmons comes by way of Prince Edward Island.

The Carillon is the student paper at the University of Regina. In the back of the paper every week, they have a really fun “declassified ad” section also known as “5 lines free” for students and the university community. In the last few months the “declass” has been overrun by spammy ads for “Swiss product”, “700% growth”, doors, soup, and you name it. After I complained in a free ad of my own, an editor responded by saying that these spams were paying to appear.

Anyway, I figured I should plug a newly starting non-profit co-op in Regina, and 3 weeks ago I submitted the Regina Car Share Cooperative’s website address: reginacarshare.blogspot.com . The Carillon published it… wrong. Regina Car Share turned into Regina CARE Share. This type of mistake was nothing new to me. As a student years ago I used to submit my university web site address almost weekly, and of the about 20 times I tried to have it published, perhaps only 5 of them were completely successful. They spelled the URL wrong every other time, and it was NOT my printing that confused them (I have excellent printing, and I should know, I passed grade 2. Staff at the Carillon on the other hand…).

Still, maybe I shouldn’t pick on what is mostly a volunteer paper. These people are still learning the basics of journalism, like fact checking, spelling, and not repeatedly screwing up ads for your readers / contributors / potential paying sponsors. I could understand if it happened once. I could maybe even forgive twice. But more than a dozen times over the years? Good golly, that’s some poopy typing/reading/spelling on their part! It hasn’t always been the same person doing the data entry either. What’s the problem? I’ve honestly considered it’s a conspiracy against me, that’s how bad it is. What else could explain it?

Why am I ranting now when this happened weeks ago? Well, I tried to have it published correctly in the paper after the first typo was printed. I submitted it just before the deadline, and sat in the paper’s office, putting my bag on a table while I wrote out my cheeky second attempt. A Carillon contributor then carelessly tossed my bag off the table to make hurried room for some newly arrived pizza boxes, and didn’t look at me while I suggested he could have asked me to move my bag more carefully than he had. Maybe talking back is why they MISPRINTED THE URL AGAIN! They left out a letter in “blogspot”.

When I saw that I just started laughing. What else could I do? Oh, I know — submit it a 3rd time! The third time’s the charm, and that’s what I said right in my submission to the paper, with the URL, and a request to “please” not misspell it again. They didn’t misspell it the 3rd time. They just included a period right after the URL, so newbies to the web still won’t type it in properly if they do it literally. Ugh. Ugh. Sigh.

The Carillon tried to redeem itself (indirectly) by providing a funny insert called “The Gopher” (a poke at the free left wing Prairie Dog also distributed on campus). Yet the Prairie Dog has always spelled my URLs that I give them, properly. I wonder why that is…

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For those curious diners out there, don’t bother trying a tomato, lettuce, blue cheese sandwich, and drinking grape-cranberry juice with it. The sandwich is great because the salty cheese is just right for the tomato. But the salt and pungent taste goes very badly with the flavourful juice, and the combination ends up tasting like barf. And not this stuff either (but that must taste bad too).

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The Internet is “poop”.

–
Hat tip to Hugh Mcguire

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And we’ll close off this random poop with some pop music that is hard to get out of your head.

March has had a flood of interesting guests at the UofR. Seymour Hersh is the latest, and is in town on Wednesday.

He’s a favourite guest of Jon Stewart.

SPR Rethinking Productivity Speaker Series
Social Policy Research Unit (SPR)
Faculty of Social Work
University of Regina
__________________________________

Seymour Hersh
Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Now:
Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
7:30 pm
Education Auditorium, University of Regina
Presentation and parking in Lots 14 and 15M are free

Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, DC. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. His work first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 1983 book, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, won him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book prize in biography. [...]

For further information, please call SPR at 585-4117.

Social Policy Research Unit
Faculty of Social Work
464 Education Building
University of Regina
Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Tel: (306) 585-4117

Yesterday, completely by accident, I observed 3.14… pi day with a tasty piece of saskatoon pie with ice cream at lunch. I think I should also note that yesterday, being exactly 1 month after Valentines Day, has also acquired a popular ‘off colour’ nickname among those people who would not fit well into Victorian society. I’ll leave you to investigate March 14 further in the Urban Dictionary.

I ended up eating out twice, when I went to supper with my parents. Upon leaving the restaurant the Lincoln that we parked next to had a man putting a straightened clothes hanger poking through the door gap. His son had locked the door without taking the keys out of the ignition. He’d done this before apparently. He was headed to the same play we were headed to and figured CAA wouldn’t arrive in time. I asked him if it was his worst nightmare to be caught slim-jimming a car in broad daylight in the middle of Regina. Another couple hassled him a little too as they left the restaurant and walked by to their car.

The Importance of Being Earnest was the play I saw, and it was done very well. It wasn’t as funny as I thought it might be, but many of the characters and actors were very good. I’d seen one of them before in the Alice Nocturne at the Globe. Afterward they presented an award to an alumnus of the UofR, but the speeches were much too long for a surprise captive audience. The actress who had won was from Stoughton, SK originally, and has appeared on This is Wonderland, Soulpepper theatre in Toronto, and MVP (now canceled I’ve heard).

One of the actresses from the show looked just like Cheri Oteri from Saturday Night Live when she did her vapid Victorian stare. The makeup must have been good too, because some of these 20-somethings played convincing old people.

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And today is the Ides of March. Ides means 15th of the month, if my memory works. Perhaps it just means middle? Anyway, there are Ides of any month, not just March. Traditionally this day is a day to be wary wary careful if hunting wabbits. Also some dude named Julius (seriously) was offed by another dude named Brutus. You too, Brutus, eh? Strangely enough, this Julicide was made famous (again) in a play.