Rapid Fire Sally
FYI, I recently celebrated a landmark birthday. Yes, that’s right – a few weeks back, I officially crossed the threshold into adulthood! I’m now 79 years old!
Basically an exact representation of what my birthday looked like
Obviously, I celebrated in a bunch of ways, including, but not limited to: enjoying some fuzzy Werther’s Originals from the pocket of my winter coat, yelling at neighbourhood kids to get off my lawn, and going to McDonald’s with Derjis, strictly for coffee, where we discussed our shared skepticism about the internet and young people today and the future. All in all, it was a good day.
But what was even more remarkable about this birthday was the year leading up to it. I made it my mission in those 12 months to take on pretty much everything that I’d ever wanted to do but been too afraid to try – and leading up that parade was taking an improv class.
Now, since we’re all such good friends, I’m going to give you kids the straight bull. No, I’m not going to jive you turkeys. While I talk all big when there are a million miles of internet tubes between us, in reality, I am a complete coward, suffering paralyzing anxiety over most normal everyday, social interactions. Normal human beings in normal human being places – banks, restaurants, buses - scare the living hell out of me – so you can imagine my reaction to human beings in an audience, staring glassy-eyed at me, because I am not funny.
So no messing around; I went to the pros. (more…)
Internet Usage Telegrams
We're going old school to regin in our Internet bill.
We got word that our most prolific commenter, Derjis, somehow convinced Shaw that he was a respectable citizen who should be invited to one of their few town hall meetings about usage-based billing (UBB). (Shaw is among the Internet providers considering usage-based billing. Rogers and Bell also want to charge more when you go over your monthly bandwidth cap.)
We said “Hey, let us know what happens at the meeting.” He did. But since he was pretty convinced UBB was still coming we decided to save our bandwidth for watching 80s movies on Netflix.
So we dusted off the edmontonian telegraph and asked Derjis to file his report from the nearest Western Union office. What follows is our first (but perhaps not our last) report by telegram*. (more…)
News Specific to One Person: Derjis
In an ongoing effort to provide the best coverage possible to the niche-iest (not to be confused with nietzsch-iest) audience, we are proud to present the first installment of a new series: News Specific to One Person.
In this segment, we offer a news item that will of specific interest to one person and one person only, and which may appear cryptic or possibly inconsequential to everyone else. It’s not funny now, but when your turn comes, man alive, it’ll be a humdinger.
Today’s person is Derjis.
Derjis, you may be interested to know that Meals on Wheels Edmonton is currently running a contest, inviting Edmonton teens to submit their original soup recipes for the chance to win $100 and the chance to be their chef for a day. Entries will be accepted until April 30th; details can be found here.
Long Live the Fork!
It’s time to sharpen up your forks, and dine at some of Edmonton’s original, local restaurants.
Fork Fest! – Summer 2010 – is on.
Many of Original Fare’s restaurants are offering special menus, some with special prices, to get you to try something outside of the chains. Give them a whirl, and let us know which one is the best local spot to grab dinner.
Thanks to our buddy Derjis for this photo, celebrating the pronged utensil.
Upon reflection, this also works well as a Monday event listing. Check out the restaurants you could be eating at tonight.
March 12 Edmonton Headlines
It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote on that dirty van. (Photo: Derjis)
Happy Friday to you, my little Edmonton.
As was widely, widely, widely expected, the Alberta government has backtracked on its royalty rate hike (though, they’ve sort of cut some slack over the last few years) and is trying to spur more oil and gas investment.
Guess what? If a company’s business is oil and gas I can pretty much guarantee they are going to be coming for your oil and gas. Especially since Alberta isn’t a dangerous, war-zone kind of place or a nationalized energy jurisdiction. Our resource eh…
I’ll just put this soapbox back in the closet and we can get on with things. There’s some opinion on this in the Journal and Sun links, below.
Oh, I should mention the big, breaking story today is happening in the west end. Stay tuned to Twitter for real-time updates on the shooting.
from the Edmonton Journal:
Cost of borrowing for City of Edmonton projects up to $46M
Edmonton mulls reserved LRT parking (I’ve about had enough of Edmonton’s newsrooms having city hall “mull” things. This is becoming overused.)
Calgary may share public transit money
Website under attack (Is Edmonton Stories a waste of your money?)
Will royalty cuts placate oilpatch?
Who’s driving the royalty bus?
Alberta economy trails national growth rate
Edmonton’s Union expands (Not an actual union, you union-busters.)
Satirical anti-grizzly campaign launched in Alberta (Who doesn’t want to throw chainsaws and ATVs at bears?)
Katz’s fortune slips: Forbes Magazine (How surreal must it be to lose $100-million and not even really have to change anything?)
from the Edmonton Sun:
Parents voice concernd over possible school closure
from Metro Edmonton:
Fighters bringing mayhem to city (This just makes me think of the movie Kickboxer. The first one, not its sub-par sequels.)
from 630CHED/iNews880:
Capital Region plan gets provincial approval (Now, let’s all just get along.)
Candle light vigil at the ‘Ledge
Time to test your smoke alarm (It’s Sparky!)
from CBC Edmonton:
Seniors protest MacEwan pool closure
from CTV Edmonton:
Baby Isaiah taken off life-support, passes away in Edmonton hospital (When I was putting together the headlines yesterday I saw that a court appearance about Isaiah’s life-support was canceled. Something told me his parents wouldn’t have stopped the fight without a big reason…)
The Valley Zoo has another death on its hands. This time it’s a dead addax (think Antelope) at the zoo. This is the second animal to pass this year. But since this one isn’t cute like a meerkat we don’t know if it even had a name.
Wow, today kind of had a bunch of depressing news. Sorry to be such a downer.
So, how about I try to lighten the mood with a little self-promotion.
Snow
Here are a couple of snowy, rooftop, shots from Derjis. I can only guess that he was running around rooftops because of his dual love of photography and parkour.
seinfeil – CityTV screenfail
It seems that a couple of our regular contributors/friends/enemies were watching CityTV this morning and saw the same mistake.
Thanks to Janine and Derjis for sending this on over. Spelling errors are always fun.
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Bonus points to Janine for the second error.
Good Morning, Starshine(s)!
G’morning, team. We just received this from our good friend @Derjis:
Hey guys, don’t know if you were up at 6am this morning, but if you weren’t, you missed a crazy sunrise; the whole eastern half of the sky was lit up in brilliant orange and pink.
That is crazy, Sir! It is obviously incredibly beautiful, but if I can just go ahead and ruin a really nice moment – it also kind of looks like the first phase of nuclear armeggedon. That’s the mushroom cloud, exploding on the horizon. Save yourself, Derjis!!!
Discussion: Sonic Bunyon…? Arg.
By Derjis Sprongfeld
Sorry about the title; that was weak even by my traditionally low standards…
It’s early Tuesday morning, and I’m feeling under the weather. My hips are still hurting from all the rain we had last week, and my kidneys haven’t been the same since Jan Reimer was forced out of office…
AAAaaaanyway, I’m just curious what kind of music the kids are listening to these days. My ‘Moody Blues’ 8-tracks are starting to wear out, and have been thinking about taking the plunge and moving onto cassettes (technology marches on!). Is there anything good I should be listening to? I haven’t really heard anything that’s grabbed me since the new Joel Plaskett, Mos Def and F***ed Up albums (in my day, they would have been called ‘Holy Jumpin’ed Up’). I’ve been making my way through the Mercury Prize nominees, but have been a little disappointed. The Horrors are ok, and Glasvegas & Friendly Fires are soooOOOooo last year.
But what about locally? Why do I never hear anything about you kids and your Edmonton music bands? Which local acts have you been putting on your cassette mixtapes?
Edmonton Just Got A Whole Lot More Cars-Driving-In-A-Circle
By Derjis Sprongfeld (@Derjis/Bereits Design)
So, the Edmonton Indy rolls into town this weekend (get it? ‘rolls’? cars? you get it.). Three days of non-stop, world class racing action! Not really my thing, but I can see how other people might get into it. It’s fast. You’re outside. There’s beer. I’m not here to judge! Millions of people like NASCAR, and Indy racing is head and shoulders above NASCAR.
But holy cow, is the Indy LOUD! If you’re headed out this weekend, make sure you bring earplugs. And your butterscotch candies. And your walker. And your thermos of Ovaltine (because of how old people wear earplugs whenever they leave the house because the world today is a loud and scary place).
The cars fired up at 8 a.m.this morning, just as I was leaving for work. I live just north of downtown, maybe 10-12 blocks away from the airport, and work on Jasper Ave and 102 Street. I could still hear them by the time I made it to work. According to my trusty Google Maps, the noise traveled almost FOUR KILOMETERS. Arg. No sleeping in for me this weekend.
Are any of you headed out to the Indy? You’ll be paying for it one way or the other , so you might as well get something out of it…
That’s your Indy, Edmonton!
