Showing posts with label just sayin'.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label just sayin'.... Show all posts

Monday, 8 April 2013

Maggie's War

I do not have a strong opinion one way or the other on Margaret Thatcher or her legacy. You probably know as much or more about her than I do, especially if you've seen the movie.

If I were playing word association, the first thing that would come to my mind when you say "Margaret Thatcher" is "Falkland Islands". I remember nothing of how Thatcher governed her nation but the Falklands War made a big impression on me.

It was the first war I remember, and it was very exciting. Every evening Knowlton Nash would host a special edition of The National on CBC and give an update on the progress of the war, with maps and footage and stats. I was allowed to stay up and watch this because, I guess, it was a unique opportunity.

It ended up being more unique than one might have predicted at the time. I cannot think of a war since that was fought with the same honour, if you will, or gamesmanship. Every war since, that I recall at least, has involved dirty tactics or massive civilian casualties -- snipers shooting people in the streets, terrorists planting mines and IEDs, car bombs, unmanned drones, mortars fired recklessly into a city or neighboring country, combatants disguised as civilians, genocidal slaughters, etc.

War is always a terrible thing, but modern war is absolutely appalling

I guess this is why I look back almost fondly at the Falklands war. I don't wish to glamourize it or romanticize it, but it was a classic war. A traditional battle between two countries duking it out over a hunk of land. No other countries got involved. Nobody else got hurt. There was Country A (Argentina) claiming a group of islands as its own, and Country B (the UK) defending it's claim of those islands. And ... there was a clear winner.

Britain, with its sizable navy, had a smaller but crafty opponent to contend with. Argentina had fighters armed with French-made Exocet missiles that, when dropped from a jet, would race just above the surface of the water and blast a hole in the hull of the ship, if the ship's defenses failed to blow it out of the air first. The Brits lost the HMS Sheffield in this way. I can't imagine the stress of being on a ship with one of those missiles heading towards me.

In all there were 907 casualties, of which only 3 were civilian. That is 3 too many, but that ratio beats the hell out of any recent war you've seen or read about.

Watching the war on TV, I was certainly aware that people were dying and understood what that meant, but the sacrifice and suffering didn't really register. That's certainly part of it too. For me it was more like a game or my evening entertainment. I am now much more cognizant of the impacts that war can have because I'm older, I know people who have been there, but also because technology has brought the impacts in front of my face in high definition. Any given day you can turn on BBC or Al Jezeera or even The National and see video of dead bodies and devastated families in Syria or elsewhere.

Margaret Thatcher spoke later of the wrenching decision to go to war with Argentina. It was a difficult decision for her, but if you're unwilling to defend your land, even small islands populated mostly by sheep, then you've lost much of your legitimacy as a nation. It's as good a reason to go to war as I can think.

But the world has changed and I don't think we'll see another war like that again. There will be plenty of wars .. just none as simple and noble. Unless .. perhaps .. Denmark decides to lay claim to Hans Island.

Saturday, 2 February 2013

Phil Sheegl: The right man for the job

Time and again City of Winnipeg CAO Phil Sheegl proves to us that he's the right man for the job.

Some people mistake his genius for something else, but geniuses are often misunderstood. Phil is very much misunderstood.

The latest evidence of this came when it was recently made known that Phil was using a loading zone at city hall to park his Benz. The reaction was not positive, but only because people got distracted by the whole "authorized vehicles only" thing and missed the bigger picture. It is all explained here:

Sheegl decided to use the space full-time following the Civic Centre Parkade closure, as a way to minimize the number of parking spots the city had to find elsewhere.
If most people lost their parking spot, they would look for another parking spot. In fact, that's what everyone else at city hall did, often parking a several minute walk away. Not Phil.

Phil realized the inefficiency of spending time looking for another parking spot, not to mention the wasted time, effort and money of parking in a parkade a few blocks away. It is so much more efficient to park right at City Hall at a loading dock, and efficiency is what Phil is all about. It courses through his veins and pulses through his neurons.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com

Phil Sheegl is simply incapable of making inefficient choices. That is why he parks in the loading dock and we should be thankful because those are exactly the qualities we need at City Hall ... especially at a time when the infrastructure deficit is growing and tax increases are straining us all. Maybe the way one person parks will not make a big difference, but that's not the point. The point is that Phil's special parking spot is indicative of his ability to think outside the box and find solutions that save time and money, and I for one wouldn't have it any other way.

Plus ... though one car may not make a difference, if we all parked where ever the hell we wanted, think about how much efficient this city would be.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

2012 at the Peanut

Continuing the tradition, here's a wrap-up of the year for anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.ca ...

To summarize: productivity has fallen. I had 20 fewer blog posts in 2012 versus 2011. However, with the new management philosophy here at the Peanut we do more with less, and in spite of the drop in posts we had a 25% increase in traffic. As a result of meeting our targets for the year I have awarded myself a massive bonus, and the rest of the staff was given 256kb USB 1.0 flash drives for their efforts.

In media-related things, I went on CBC Radio in March to talk about golf courses.

I had some more blog posts printed in the Winnipeg Free Press: Donor fatigue, Water Park, Building trends, Dogs and suburbanites, System-bred criminals, and Mayoral pay. This past Sunday they also printed my post on #IdleNoMore in the dead-tree paper, but they did not put it on the internet. I suspect this is either because I posted a rant about fluff Free Press coverage the prior day, or because I called Terry Nelson a "grand standing buffoon" in the post. In hind sight that was probably unnecessary as I haven't heard a peep from him regarding Idle No More. (update: I've been told that it was only an oversight that it wasn't posted on the Freep web site.)

I was invited to a media night at IKEA prior to the official opening and got a glimpse of what it's like to be a journalist, with free-flowing champagne, smoked salmon on biscuits, special discounts and awesome gift-bags of swag!

And of course I was on Winnipeg Internet Pundits, this year more as a regular guest, taking to the airwaves approximately every four weeks.

New Winnipeg-ish blogs

The Power Of Words is written by former Winnipeg Police Sergeant James Jewell. James has written some outstanding posts with insight into the crime and the police service. Highly recommend you check this blog regularly.

Fellow pundit Greg Gallinger has an eclectic little blog greg.g. Some posts are little more than photographs, while others are more extensive, like his post on leaving downtown. Due to the minimalist nature of the blog I can't even tell if it's new this year, but it's new to me, so .... 

Everybody knows Bryan Scott's photo-blog Winnipeg Love Hate, but Bryan also started a tumblr page this year cleverly called "Bryan Scott" that features fantastic photos of many other places in addition to Winnipeg.

With something like 68 posts in less than 3 months, and often lengthy ones at that, it's hard to keep up with WpgNewsReview. Arthur Mira does a lot of digging through 311 stats and other publicly available documents and provides some interesting insight in many of the posts. In others he may say things that you disagree with, like that thing about Theo Fluery which I won't mention again, but the blog is what it is. He doesn't try to be politically correct.

Twitter personality Stefanie Cutrona writes at stefspeaks. This blog is not affiliated by the Mafia.


Former Winnipeg Free Press journalist and newly minted Macleans magazine contributor Lindsey Wiebe started a tumblr page, which is primarily a photo-blog. We here at the Peanut wish Lindsey well in her new job in The Centre Of The Universe.

I'm sure there are more, but it didn't seem to be as active a year in the bloggosphere. If you know of any good new blogs by all means let me know.

Also, I should mention the Spectator Tribune -- a new Winnipeg-centric web publication, featuring former Free Press and Uptown writers, among others. Perhaps a glimpse at the future of journalism as mainstream papers slash their original content.

Top posts from the Peanut

Our most popular posts this year were*:

CMHR Part 1: Project Management

Waterpark: 7 reasons to say "no"

Put a steak in the Kane rumours

Firehall land swap absurdity

Moving the CP rail yards

*My Blogger stats conflict with my Google Analytics stats. As both are Google products this confuses me slightly. I don't trust either, but I went with the latter for this list.

Those were most popular in terms of hits. In our opinion, our best posts of the year were:

The Winnipeg golf course series:
Overview
Action Items Part I
Action Items Part II
Wrap Up

Confusion Corner redesigned and unconfused

... and of course ...

The Adventures of Johnny Oduya!

Top search terms

directions to vimy ridge
ray rybachuk - Boy, this guy has really pissed some people off ... like whoever created this blog. 
evander kane rumours
sam owns an acre of land on red river. the government dams the river. a lake forms behind the dam, covering sam's land. does the government owe sam anything? - I'm serious. This is a question on some stupid LSAT or FSAT or something, and every time I put this on my year-in-review post I move up the Google hit list. I now populate 3 of the top 15 Google hits for this question! How do I make it stop???? Next year, no matter what, I am NOT putting this in my year-end post.
cool helicopters - who doesn't love cool helicopters??

Quirky search terms

are you a peanut blog - Well yes and no. See, it's not about peanuts per se, but ... ah forget it...
boobs touch - Tell me more ...
do people who wear keeping it riel shirts know who he is - Good question. I ask the same thing about those Che Guevara shirts ..
draw a peanut fast - OK -------------------- >
fuck you montreal police - Ya, fuck you!
how about our crooked mayor in winnipeg???????? - Winnipeg small talk: "So ... how 'bout our crooked mayor?"
hugh mcfayden who is he and why pee in mouth - Only Hugh can answer that question.
leah hextall feet - ummm ...okay.
manitoba hydro good place for a terrorist attack - Hello, CSIS?
maths blog still model maths park model - .... what?
me to you bears - I don't even know where to go with this one.
rod black ruins figure skating - Rod Black ruins everything.
sin like a mother fucker in edc - Where is this edc place, and how do I get there?
the used condoms - New indy group?
what a fuckup - I'm a little bit insulted that this search found my blog.
we want beer protest - #EmptyNoMore
what does a yellow yield sign mean - I'm beginning to understand why drivers are so bad.
who are the hookers in edmonton what do they look like and what are their street names - It's good to do your research before you travel somewhere.

Have a great year everybody!

See also:
Slurpees and Murder - an A-Z poem.

Sunday, 4 November 2012

Glen Murray's web page

Glen Murray, Toronto Centre MPP and former mayor of Winnipeg, announced today that he's running for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in the wake of Dalton McGuinty's resignation.

We at the Peanut wish him luck in this new endeavor. He may very well make a decent Premier. I believe that had he stayed on longer as Winnipeg's mayor, we would be in a better place today than we currently are. He seemed like a credible guy and he had some vision, but unfortunately he didn't stick around to follow it through. Perhaps the higher office of leader of a provincial party / Premier will satisfy his ambitions.

Winning an election is about connecting with people, and to that end Murray is off to a bad start with his new web site: http://www.renewliberal.ca/.

The web site is terrible. His picture is blurry because it's a low-res photo blown up to a larger size; the logo looks like it was ripped off from Target; the website emphatically blinks every 10 seconds as it refreshes; but most of all the layout is awful.

The most common screen resolution of visitors to this blog, anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.ca, is 1280 x 800. This is what his web page looks like on that size of monitor:

Not only is the right side of the page cut off, even with a 1280 pixel wide screen, but all of the actual content of the web page is not visible. Even worse, on a traditional 1024 x 768 display you can't even see the DONATE and GET INVOLVED buttons. Literally all you see is the home page stamp in the top left corner and part of the giant banner.

That banner ... that banner is massive. Glen Murray's face alone consumes over 10% of the visible area on a 1024 x 768 display. If you've ever seen Glen in person you'll know that he does indeed have a big head. Physically. It's quite a large melon. However on a web site these are things you have control over.

Compounding the inefficiency of the web site is a vast amount of wasted space. A good web site will have a clean look and appear uncluttered, but this web site has gone to the extreme of making the welcome page almost entirely devoid of content.
To reiterate: the major problem here is that there is little to no actual content visible when a visitor arrives at the web page. The useful stuff -- Twitter feed, discussion links, news items, upcoming events, etc -- all occur 770 pixels down the page. When you add on the menu bar for the browser, the content starts at about 900 pixels. Perhaps as Premier, Glen will implement a government program to provide every computer user in Ontario with a giant monitor, but we can assume that today many people will be visiting this web site from laptops or desktops with modest monitors. If his visitors mirror those of this blog, 65% of them will not see a single link to any of the content mentioned above without scrolling down.

As for the content itself, I have to assume it will improve, but some initial thoughts are:

Twitter: this is NOT a Twitter feed from Glen Murray. It is a feed of tweets from Glen's RenewLiberal campaign twitter account, ensuring that nothing of interest will ever show up here. This ought to be a real-time feed of Glen's own tweets, and Glen should ensure that his tweets are not the usual boring drivel that most politicians are prone to. (More on my thoughts about this here.)

News: Here you will only find undescriptive links to policy statements by Glenn himself. These are not news items at all, and there is no information to grab the reader. Why not at least add a brief synopsis of the item? "Smart Government" is nothing more than a catch phrase. I'm not going to click on that. Sorry.

Upcoming Events: as of right now, the only event posted has already passed. Perhaps this should be renamed "Past Events" if they don't plan on being proactive with this.

Discussions: I'll cut him some slack on not having anything here yet, but it would have been a great idea to get a discussion ready for the launch of the web page. How likely am I to return if I see nothing there?

To summarize: I don't understand what they were thinking when they set this thing up. Premier hopeful Glen Murray will have a difficult time engaging voters if his web site is not the least bit engaging.

***
Glen's head actual web-site size:
warning: do not make this the last thing you see before you go to bed.

Tuesday, 30 October 2012

A Halloween Story

"Nice shot."

"Thanks Sandy. Probably the longest putt I sank all day. Oh hey ... I've been meaning to tell you ... thanks for hooking me up with that ranch in Glendale. We're staying there this weekend. It's exactly what we were looking for."

"Anytime buddy. It's the least I could do. Hey you've got something on your neck there..."

"Do I? Where .. OUCH! SHIT! What the hell was that?"

"I don't know. It looked like a shiny red beetle of some kind. Never seen anything like it before."

"Ya, well the damn thing bit me. Hurt like hell."

*****

"Yes Carla?"

"Mr. Sheegl is here to see you Sir."

"Oh right. Yes, let him in."

"Sammmy! How have you been?"

"Fine, Sheegs. Well you know, this crap isn't going away. I can't believe this fire hall shit has so much traction. Maybe if I keep giving out keys to the city people will get distracted and forget about this mess before the next election."

"I can take the fall for you Sam. You know .. GAAAAAK. KAACK. Uhmm. Ah, sorry about that. Ya, anyhow, I was saying ... Sandy just hooked me up with a sweet ranch in Phoenix. I should be spending more time down there anyhow. You know, maybe it's time .. GAAAAAK."

"Don't even think about it, Sheegs. I got a sneak peak at the report. Douglas will take 90% of the hit, or at least we can spin it that way. You're fine buddy. I can't do this without you. You know that."

"When does the report come out?"

"It goes to the PCS and then council in two weeks."

"Alright well keep me posted. GAAAAAAAAAAK. GAAAAK. Uhh.

"Christ, dude. That's a nasty cough."

"Ya, I think I'm getting pneumonia or something. This climate up here doesn't agree with me. I'm telling ya Sammy, I need to move to the ranch. GAAAK.

*****

"Hi, I'm Maralee Caruso and the top story tonight continues to be the as yet unidentified illness that is sweeping across the nation. Experts from the GAAAAK. Excuse me. Experts from the Canadian Centre for Disease Control are focusing on Winnipeg as the epicenter of the outbreak, where the disease has killed dozens of people including CAO for the City of Winnipeg, Phil Sheegl. It gets worse for city hall: CTV has now learned that the mayor Sam Katz and every councillor except Harvey Smith has been hospitalized with the illness, leaving Smith in charge of the day to day administration of the city.

People are being advised to stay at home if at all possible, and avoid air travel. Health agencies in Europe and Asia are on high alert and have issued travel warnings for all parts of Canada; and South Korea has once again banned beef exports from Canada."

*****

As Harvey Smith sat and pondered the turn of fate that left him as the last person alive on earth, the emotions ran through him like prune juice: guilt, grief, anger, frustration. Why did it spare him, of all people? Why did it happen at all? The silence of the city around him drove daggers into his heart.

It was a beautiful early-summer day by appearances, as a pungent breeze tussled the curtains of Harvey's apartment, conducting an elaborate dance of sunshine across the hardwood floors. A shiny red beetle flew in with the breeze and landed on his side table.

"Odd looking bug." He thought to himself, before killing it with his cane.



=====================================================
Tune into 101.5 FM Wednesday October 31 at 5:30 pm for a spooktacular Winnipeg Internet Pundits.

Sunday, 27 May 2012

The ticket to attracting better candidates

Have you ever voted in an election for the person you disliked the least? Does it seem sometimes that there are no good choices on the ballot?

In the last civic election I voted for a real estate agent because there was so little to choose from. The field was so bad that the incumbent won easily even though most people agree that he's doing a terrible job. In the last Manitoba provincial election your choices were somebody with no fiscal responsibility, and somebody else promising to be just as irresponsible. Only one person has stepped forth to vie for the leadership of the opposition party after the role was vacated after an embarrassing loss to a party that's running the province into the ground.

At every level of government voting rates are low and trending lower, because there are no inspiring candidates. Voting is an unpleasant task where you have to pinch your nose while checking the box.

While in a twitter conversation with Luc Lewandoski I came up with the best idea ever to resolve this conundrum: Give politicians free Jets tickets! They are a valuable commodity that is sure to attract quality candidates to the political arena. It is a perk that could perk up the field in any political race. The job may be thankless, and you may be scrutinized and criticized at every turn, but tickets to the hottest show in town help to make it all worth while.

The best part: it won't cost taxpayers a dime. Private corporations can provide all the tickets. All we need to do is encourage them. Let's send out the word to all the companies out there with Corporate boxes and season tickets: invite politicians to Jets games! Lots of them! ALL OF THEM!! If they all go to Jets games, then the playing field will still be level.

Let's implement this plan immediately.

Sunday, 11 March 2012

NIKON: we want to steal your memories

I bought a new Nikon S9100 recently. When you buy a Nikon you are invited to join their free photo sharing website My Picturetown, where you can share photos, and arrange them into galleries called photomoves.

I thought, why not? I could make use of a photo sharing website. While I usually disregard the legal mumbo-jumbo of signing up for products or services, I decided to give this one a look. Maybe it was this recent article about Pinterest that peaked my interest in legal terms of service.

Under a section called Intellectual Property I found this:

You hereby grant to Nikon a worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, full right and license to publish, copy, reproduce, modify, exhibit, perform, exploit, display, transmit, distribute, make derivative works of, license, include in compilations, and/or otherwise use User Content contained in any and all Photomovies, in any format and through any means, in any media now known or hereafter created, for any purpose whatsoever.
That is absolutely terrible. If you post a picture of your Grandma, Nikon can stick the head of a donkey on her and "exploit" her in ways not presently known to man, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

Are other photo sharing sites this bad? I may just have to continue using my personal web site to share photos. It's a bit of a pain, but I don't feel inclined to give away the rights to all of my photos at the moment.

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Put a steak in the Kane rumours

I first heard the rumour about three weeks ago. The story goes: Evander Kane was at Hy's Steakhouse with a group of people and tried to leave without paying the bill. When challenged by the waitress, he said something to the effect that he shouldn't have to pay because his presence there was a benefit to the restaurant.

I never mentioned this story before on social media because I had my doubts that it was true, and there was really no point in spreading a negative rumour anyhow. But then this happened:

Which led to this being written.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that the flashy-dressing young Kane did what the story says he did, but there are many other possibilities as well. Maybe there was a misunderstanding among the group about who was going to pay, and maybe Kane has a deadpan sense of humour and made a joke about not paying, even though he fully intended to. Maybe a waitress was just pissed about the tip she got, or maybe nothing happened at all and somebody with a bone to pick concocted the rumour out of thin air. Maybe he stopped at Co-op for a fill, and by word of mouth that turned into "stiffed a waitress on a bill."

You can't really blame Winnipeggers for believing that there's fire when they smell smoke. The rumours about the Jets coming back were obviously true, as were the rumours about IKEA coming and Tim being gay. (Inside joke. Please disregard if you don't know Tim.) However, whether it's true or not, we need to drop this whole thing ... as soon as I'm done writing this post.

If he didn't do it, then obviously it is wrong to imply that he might have. If he did do it, I am pretty sure he learned a lesson here and will not do it again.

Word gets around quickly in a small city like Winnipeg, and you just can't get away with that shit. Besides, he should get a second chance. He has a ton of potential, not just as a player but as an ambassador of the sport, and he's still very young. It is counter-productive in every way to anchor him to this story. It would also be unfortunate if the lesson that he took away from all this was that Winnipeggers are nasty and unforgiving.

That is all.

Yes, I am aware that this post may seem somewhat hypocritical.

By the way, if you haven't checked out my Oduya comic strip yet, click here.

Sunday, 1 January 2012

2011 blog in review

Although my number of blog posts dropped this year, party as a result of a career change and certain lifestyle adjustments, it has been a pretty good year for the Peanut.

Some of the highlights
:

This blog had a couple pieces published in the Winnipeg Free Press Sunday Xtra's regular Blog of the Week feature (and got one other mention courtesy of The Cold Cold Ground.)

I joined Twitter.

Campus radio talk show Winnipeg Internet Pundits continued to build momentum under the guidance of "Top 30 Under 30" starlet Tessa Vanderhart. Yours truly was invited on a couple of times to assault the air waves. That was fun. For me at least.

I have heard rumours and stories about bloggers getting free stuff, but sadly I was always left out of the party ... until this year. Finally all of my hard work paid off with a small amount of schwag, including some movie passes which I was able to share with readers through our first ever caption contest.

I did another interview, this time with Green Party leader James Beddome. I get very positive feedback on my interviews, but damn .. they're more work than you might think. I'll look to do one or two more in 2012, but with no major elections coming up I'll have to think of another excuse.

Best new blogs

Not only has my post count dwindled, but so has my available time to read blogs. That said, here are some new Winnipeg-area blogs that caught my eye in 2011:

The aforementioned Cold Cold Ground is a great new urban-issues blog.

Winnipeg Girl started Love Me, Love My Winnipeg bright and early in 2011, and since posted some excellent thoughts about life in the North End and Winnipeg in General.

The Winnipeg Rag Review has picked up momentum to the point of writing 25 posts in December!

Westerner doesn't post a lot at The Land of Ice and Grain, but when he does post it is usually well thought out and worth reading.

Little Grey Bird is a nice blog written by an ex-pat Nova Scotian, and I admire the clean aesthetically-pleasing look also.

The Manitoba provincial election inspired a new set of 'coloured rods' to spring up in the bloggosphere. Many were short lived, but The Purple Rod and Rod Rouge have stuck around. Congratulations, guys! (Girls?)

Top blog posts

A recent poll showed that most people consider the return of the Jets to be the biggest story of the year. My hit counts corroborate that, as my top 2 posts were both Jets-related:

Winnipeg's new NHL team unveiled: this was my world-wide exclusive unveiling of a prototype jersey for Winnipeg's new NHL team:

New Jets logo, tweaked: I critique the actual Jets logo and suggest a slightly different version.

Thoughts on Hydro CEO Brennan: this was a bit of a surprise, as it was a pretty unremarkable post in my opinion. Some people obviously found it interesting.

2011 Manitoba provincial election platform: here I unveiled my hypothetical election platform. I'm glad this one drew some eyeballs because I actually put a little bit of effort into it. In fact, I strongly recommend that potential Liberal and PC leadership candidates give this post another look as your respective parties attempt to regain relevancy. What you're doing is not working. You need new ideas.

Winnipeg radio: FM station correlation: this is my analysis of the overlap amongst Winnipeg's lame mainstream FM radio stations. Traffic was aided by a link from a music industry blog.


Those were my top new posts. There are some old ones that still get decent traffic. Top of the list is How to get to Vimy Ridge from 2008 which still draws hundreds of hits throughout the year. I think this is pretty cool, as any Canadian who is in that area of Europe ought to make the trip if they have time, and if I can help a little bit then awesome.

Top search terms
(not including obvious ones like "anybody want a peanut" or "cherenkov")

leah hextall - I'll save you the trouble: I do not have nude pictures of Leah.
cool helicopters
find your fetish - in retrospect it was probably a mistake for me to publish the fetish post. That was a time when this blog was still trying to find itself.
phil sheegl - I'll save you the trouble: I do not have nude pictures of Phil.
how to get to vimy ridge

Honourable mention:
sam owns an acre of land on red river. the government dams the river. a lake forms behind the dam, covering sam's land. does the government owe sam anything? - I got 31 hits from this. Apparently this is a practice exam question for Applied Law in the U.S. I can just imagine the frustrated law students stumbling upon my blog. Sam Katz? Riverside Park Management? What is this? Sorry guys .. this is for the advanced course: How To Bilk Taxpayers Out Of Thousands Of Dollars.

Oddest search terms

The moment you have all been waiting for! A selection of this 2011's odd-ball search terms that somehow led to this blog.

boobs touch in bus - I'm listening ... tell me more.
buzz lightyear mulroney - Ha. Ya, they do kind of look the same, don't they?
did hugh mcfadyen rape girls - What??
hihiihhi - Hi!
jack motherfucking layton - Now now, don't Google angry.
safeway can burn in hell - My, what an angry readership I have. Do they even allow grocery stores in hell?
stephen hawking thingy - Oh, you mean gravitational singularities in space-time within the framework of general relativity? That thingy?
thank you universe anybody want a peanut? - Aw, shucks ...
why is winnipeg so poorly planned - insert your own quip here: __________


Other year end wrap-ups:
Slurpees and Murder - Alphabet Poem
One Man Committee - Looking back
The View from Seven - A few thoughts
Progressive Winnipeg's - Google searches.
Winnipeg .. One Great City - Good riddance
West End Dumplings Top Posts and Disappointing story of the year.

Thanks to all my visitors, and all the best in 2012!

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Brain Dump for Saturday, September 24

Thoughts ..

1) Geese
The Winnipeg Free Press article on goose overpopulation touched on several ways to deal with the problem, none of which are as good as my idea: There are millions of these 15-lb pea-brained menaces assaulting our city and country side ... and there are millions of people starving in Africa. It's time for a mass slaughter of geese so that they can be ground up and shipped to the Horn of Africa where they would provide desperately needed protein to little children with distended bellies and their skeletal mothers.

2) Rex Murphy
I completely disagree with Rex Murphy this time. He proposes that the NDP change their party voting structure to give Quebec greater say in the upcoming leadership race, saying that not doing so "is not a winning formula for the long run." Perhaps his bloated vocabulary has started invading grey matter normally reserved for logic, but the exact opposite is true: Changing a fundamental party rule to favour Quebec, where there is very little grass-roots support (as evidenced by the mere 1600 memberships province-wide), is "self defeating politics". The Quebec anomaly is no more than a flash in the pan, and if they tilt their rules to favour that province they will piss off their base everywhere else.

3) Garbage
What the heck am I supposed to do with my big plastic garbage can when I get my big plastic garbage cart? This is a serious question.

4) Coloured Rods
Another Rod has joined us in the local bloggosphere. Rouge Rod started posting a little over a month ago and has kept up a torrent pace since then. Rouge joins the original Black Rod, The Blue Rod, and The Purple Rod who hasn't posted much lately. The Orange Rod has closed up shop, and there was also a Red Rod that didn't make a very good go of it. You can understand my hesitation to accept new Rods, given some of the fly-by-night rodders in the past, but Rouge seems to be making a genuine effort, so good luck Rouge!

5)Vladimir Putin
Barack Obama needs a little Vladimir Putin in him. No .. that's not what I meant. Oh God, you guys are so immature.

6) Dinner tonight
Do you leave the cover off the roaster when you're cooking a Canada Goose? What do you think: rosemary, cracked pepper and thyme?

Friday, 12 August 2011

NewWinnipeg update

The NewWinnipeg forum is still dead, but a date has been set for the next and presumably last NW get-together:

Saturday, August 20 · 2:00pm - 5:00pm *NEW TIME*

The location is still TBD, but you can stay on top of it at this facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175747359160914


unrelated p.s. :

I was just cleaning up some old email and found this spam ->
Subject: Scotland acquired A of to Korean Tibetans
Body: When tilapia are raised in the tanks, they are able to eat algae, which naturally grows in the tanks when the tanks are properly fertilized.
Wove paper does not exhibit "laidlines", which are small regular lines left behind on paper when it was handmade in a mould made from rows of metal wires or bamboo.

Still the best spam I've gotten so far.

Thursday, 9 June 2011

An award for what now??

An award for the best parking lot strikes me as being the kind of thing that you would only find in Winnipeg.

The first "gold standard" award for parking lots will be awarded to FNP Parking, operators of the Portage Place underground parkade. - fp -
Seriously? A parking lot? Congratulations! You've done an outstanding job at being a flat empty space with lines!

Okay, so we'll give out an award for parking lots, but is this really the best parking lot that Winnipeg has to offer? I mean, it's not bad... I park there for work because of convenience, and it's often where I park for Moose games or concerts. They repaint the lines periodically and indoor parking with skywalk access to the arena for $5 is pretty good. But the best? Allow me to take you through my parking lot experience today:

Go through the door with the gold star for parking excellence:



See that the elevator is still busted after more than a week:


Go into the stairwell to take the stairs, passing the used condoms:


Watch out for the exposed electrical!


Wasn't that a great experience? At least the ticket paying machine is working now. So ... congratulations to FNP! Keep up the good work!

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Tear it down! (urban improvement through destruction)

If you read blogs -- and I have reason to believe you do -- you have probably read a great deal about urban density and the preservation of buildings downtown. There are dozens of posts on different blogs lamenting the destruction of certain buildings, or heralding the preservation and redevelopment of others. That is all great, but if you are sick and tired of the usual urban revival shit and crave something different for once, I bring to you:

Buildings that must be torn down
There are certain buildings that are just so ugly -- so disfiguring to the urban streetscape -- that they must be destroyed, even if it means replacing them with a gravel parking lot. (note: I was
going to do this post later in the spring when I had a chance to get out with my camera and snap some photos, but a recent event has prompted me to fast track it using Google streetview images...)

The Fat Angel

Three years ago on Bryan Scott's blog I typed: "Actually, wouldn't mind seeing the Fat Angel dynamited, and a new Blue Note Cafe built in it's place. That would be awesome." Well,
sometime in the last 24 hours the tractors moved in, and by the time I
passed it on my way to work this morning it was nothing but rubble.

Sure, the building was over 100 years old. Sure, it was once a classic blues bar. None of that matters because the building was a also disaster. Worn pale yellow paint covered the steel facade, the door was boarded up, and there was tattered parcel paper covering the mess that was left inside when the Fat Angel ran screaming from the rat infested shit hole. That could all be cleaned up, but it's a little harder to clean up the giant cracks in the exterior walls and the structural problems made apparent by the fact the building had a noticible horizontal bend in it.

Nobody was ever going to lease this building again. The building died. Period. We have to move on.

The APTN building

What kind of a demented architect would design a building with blue plastic panels on the side and a giant windowless ribbed concrete wall facing the street? I have seriously considered getting my pilot's license for the sole purpose of flying an airplane into this hideous building.

The plastic panels are tacky, but if that were the only crime I could live with that, just as I can live with the 4Play sports bar building a block away or the Newport building across the street. However, when you take a tacky building and add an industrial concrete front with no windows except on the bottom and top floors, you get something that is so ridiculously fugly that it should be evacuated immediately and imploded.

If that weren't bad enough, the current tenant grafted on a huge TV screen that juts out from the wall as though it was impaled from the back by a giant chisel. A TV screen which, by the way, either shows nothing but the APTN logo, or programing that is completely useless to somebody walking down the street.

Now, there will probably be architecture geeks who would say "oh, but this building is such a great example of mid-century brutalist modernism" or some crap like that, but you know what? I don't care. It's a disgrace and should be bombed without further ado.


Surprisingly, those are the only two buildings that I want destroyed at the moment, and one has already happened! If I think of any others, I'll post a follow-up. What buildings do you think should be wrecking-balled out of existence? Any suggestions?

***

So what becomes of the Fat Angel? The Blue Note was almost before my time, but I do recall being in it once or twice. I caught the tail end of it's life after I moved to Winnipeg, and although it's not as historic as I originally thought, it would be awesome to see it rebuilt. The neon sign is still kicking around somewhere .. apparently at the Manitoba Museum.

source: flikr

The location is an interesting one: sandwiched between the ancient Winnipeg Hotel and a twin pair of similarly old three story brick buildings, one of which houses the Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club. (By the way, Bryan, I hope they got your permission for using that picture on their web site.) I hope that whatever gets built here is better suited to it's neighbours than the old building was.

... That's if something new gets built. There's no guarantee. The location has it's drawbacks too: one being located next to the Winnipeg Hotel, with it's riffraff-ish clientele. Another being next to a vacant building on the other side. Not exactly a hot spot for money spenders; however transit access is good. There is always the threat that it could turn into a vacant lot or a "temporary" parking lot. Like Main street needs more parking lots.

This spot isn't the only concern, but the vacant building to the north as well. I can't remember the last time I saw somebody walking into that place. Is it doomed to a future of demolition by neglect? Could it be revived with the help of TIFs? Would it be an acceptable compromise to allow the Fat Angel space to be used as a parking lot if it meant saving the brick building to the north?

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself a little here. The main thing is that the Fat Angel eye sore is gone. Hoo-rah.

Monday, 31 January 2011

Oranges

When I bring an orange to work, it is invariably still sitting on my desk at 4:00. It's around that time when I start getting hungry again, and I look around and all I have left to eat is this damn orange. Ugg. Okay ... I guess I'll have the orange. Unless .... I go out and buy a chocolate bar! Yeah! That might hit the spot! No ... I'll eat the orange.


I actually like the taste of oranges. I like orange liqueur, orange candies, orange everything. But oranges are never the first thing I reach for. They're more like a food of last resort, and I think that's because they're just too much work.

Mandarin oranges are the exception. They still taste good -- especially the oxymoronic Japanese mandarins -- but they are easy to eat too. I know ... about this time you're thinking to yourself: is he really doing an entire post on oranges? There is some sort of backward reference to the NDP in here, right? Nope ... nope ... this here is a post about oranges. Anyhow, like I was saying before you interrupted me: mandarin oranges are my fave mainly because they're easy to peel. If you're careful, you can take off the whole peel off in one piece, and you can run around the house with it showing everybody how talented you are. I guarantee that your esteem will grow among all who witness your achievement.


But then there are the other oranges. I don't know if they're navel oranges or what, but you know the ones I'm talking about. They are about the size and weight of a shot put, but about half that is the 1cm thick peel that encases the actual edible part.* Getting that fibrous orange armour off is no small task: First you have to pick away at it for about five minutes with your finger nail to get it started. I recommend letting the nail on your index finger grow out for at least two weeks before attempting to do this. The other alternative is to make a cut in it with a pocket knife. Then as you continue to pick at it, it's a little bit like unearthing a dinosaur bone. The peel comes off only in small chunks, often with parts of the inside flesh attached to it. It's a painstaking process, but eventually you end up with a pile of peel chunks on the table and the actual inside orange that you were looking for.

Finally! I can eat! Alright, I'll just pull apart these orange wedges here and ... *SQUIRRRRT*. God damnit! I just washed that!

Sure, once you get to the inside it is indeed very tasty, but getting there is just too much of an ordeal for what it is. I mean, you shouldn't have to shower after eating a fruit. You would figure that with all our technology and experience with plant breeding and genetic engineering, the scientists could develop non-mandarin oranges that were easy to peel and pull apart.


*the whole orange is in fact edible. I know this because I used to work with somebody who actually liked eating the peel, and they never got sick and died, therefore it must be edible.

Monday, 17 January 2011

Thoughts from the past week


The dance of the yellow machines


Hearing about the snow-clearing problems in New York and London may give you a new appreciation for the efficiency of the snow clearers here in Winnipeg. I was caught behind a small fleet of loaders this past weekend as they made their way through suburbia cleaning up the intersections. They each pick their intersection or back-alley or driveway, scooping away the snow with their twenty-thousand pound machines, mindful of the impatient drivers like me trying to squeeze past them. They do their thing, leap-frogging each other up the street, and before you know it they're gone.

They ought to be good, of course. They do it enough. But unless you are unfortunate enough to get caught behind a convoy of graders on a long stretch of road, the daunting task of clearing the city of snow gets accomplished without a whole lot of inconvenience to anyone. Here's to the big yellow machines.

***
Two tier hydro

You may have read that there is a move afoot to force Hydro to provide different rates for poor people. I think this is a great idea. For too long elected and accountable officials have held a strangle-hold on social policy. Having to explain your policies to the taxpayers is really quite onerous. It's unreasonable, when you think about it. I mean, suppose you as an MLA or Premier wanted to engineer a social policy that, to the majority of voters, seems ill-advised. You simply can't do it because the pleebs might vote you out of office. Why not offload policy implementation to crown-corporations and unaccountable arms-length organizations, via government controlled boards? That way you can execute your vision without having to worry about answering to the common folk.

We should have thought of this a long time ago. Imagine the perfectly regulated paradise we would be living in if we could utilize all of these other avenues to implement policy rather than having to plan for everything in the government budget and explain it to the voters.

***
Max style

Max Poulin's number is being retired by the Winnipeg Goldeyes. There is no more deserving person than Max, who was been a such a key part of the organization for so long. In minor league ball, you really have to appreciate it when a talented individual like this stays with the club for so long. Too often a club such as the Goldeyes cannot retain talent and character long enough to really form an identity with the fans, but Max was certainly an exception.

Not only was Max a good ball player, but the guy's got some style too:

source: ChrisD

He looks like he was yanked straight out of 1925. I could never pull off that look. It's a good example of how each person has their own individual look that works for them. I still haven't found my "look". I hope to God it doesn't involve cross-dressing because I really don't want to do that.

***
Speaking of looking good...


Have a good week, all.

Monday, 22 November 2010

For sale: svchost.exe virus. Excellent condition!

Blogging is a little bit like working out. It's hard to get to the gym, but after a couple of workouts you can feel it in your muscles and it makes you want to go back and work out some more. With blogging, you get the feedback from the hits and the comments and so on, and it makes you want to post more. But when you fall out of it, you kinda lose that motivation a little bit. Or at least I do. Maybe it's a post-civic election slump. Post electoral depression. It's been a week since I've posted .. which isn't much .. but I've already lost that blogging mojo.

Work got in the way last week, as well as viruses. Computer viruses. Nasty ones. Ones that my virus program can't clean and that keep coming back like that damned cat.

They're sneaky little devils. They take on the same names as legitimate windows executables: svchost.exe, shell.exe, dwm.exe, etc.. except they locate themselves in the application data of your windows profile, and other places they're not supposed to be. You can delete them, but then seconds later they're back. My Trend Micro would usually block them, but that meant a warning box was popping up literally every 3 or 4 seconds saying that something was blocked, and then another window would pop up saying svchost.exe failed to initialize.

That's annoying.

I would run my virus scan, and it did catch and quarantine a few of them, but not all. And it can't clean the quarantined files either. I tired manually deleting the bad files from safe mode, but that works for all of 18 nanoseconds. I tried running Spybot Serach & Destroy, but it mostly finds bad cookies and that sort of thing. It might have helped a little. Then I ran the CCleaner registry cleaner in the hope of cleaning whatever registry entries were causing these stupid little things to keep coming back. Then I tried Combofix. Then I tried running Trend Micro from safe mode.

Then I rebooted and I still had the Goddamned viruses.

Then I turned to the internet. Not very helpful. A bunch of sites try to get you to buy their phony product with phony reviews ("I downloaded it and now everything is perfect!") when the program you're downloading is probably loaded with more viruses than a refugee ship from Burma. There are also some sites that tell you to clean them manually by deleting autorun.ini and other files from your System32 directory, and then going into Regedit and deleting a bunch of lines in there.

Uhm. No. You first.

I finally got rid of them (I think ... mostly ...) using an internet scanner from Trend Micro called Housecall. Seemed to work well. Which makes me wonder why the Trend Micro program on my computer that I pay for can't do the same thing.

So that was my weekend. Thanks for humouring me, as I attempt to get back into the blogging groove by sharing my problems with the world.

Friday, 12 November 2010

Alternative Media: sign in the little box

The alternative media is under attack. First Marginalized Action Dinosaur was threatened with a lawsuit and shut down by his ISP, then Waverley West and Beyond abruptly vanished after writing about apparent conflicts of interest, and finally the irreverent Marty Gold and his Great Canadian Talk Show were kneecapped by CreComm Radio Inc. Who got to you CreComm? WHO GOT TO YOU???

But Anybody Want A Peanut? will not be intimidated. We will not back down, damn the consequences. We will continue to expose the injustice and corruption in the world; and explore the issues that the MSM will not. Issues like: why are the signature strips on credit cards so small?

I mean, seriously. I get this new credit card in the mail the other day, and the first thing you're supposed to do is sign it, but all they give you is this tiny little box that's less than half an inch tall.


Who has a signature like that? I certainly don't. I'm not going to show you my signature, but it's about the same size and shape as this:
which does not fit well in the box:

In order to get it to fit, I have to carefully micro-size it so much that doesn't even look like my signature anymore. To make matters worse, the hard little strip almost repels the ink from my ball-point pen so all I end up with is a tiny thin faded little scribble that doesn't resemble at all the bold and assertive scribble that is my real signature. And that's on day 1. By day 300 I have already had to re-sign my credit card so many times that all you can see is a smeared multi-colour strip of abstract line art.

I can't be the only one. I know that Michelle Wie's autograph is similar in shape to mine, but what about back in the days when people used to write their entire names in their signatures. They must have had a hard time dealing with these shallow boxes too. But where can I find some old signatures ... Hmmm... How about the Declaration of Independence? What if the Founding Fathers had credit cards?

Well, for starters, John Hancock's signature was almost 5 inches long, so even if the entire back of the card was a signature strip he would have been screwed. But let's suppose he shrank it down to 50% it's original size ...


Still doesn't fit. Ben Franklin's signature didn't fit either. Evidently there was no time in history when people had signatures that fit on the signature strip of a credit card. So why so small? Who is responsible for this?

You would think something that affects so many people would get some attention from the media professionals, but I guess they're too busy covering the "stories of the day" like murders and elections. There is obviously some kind of cartel that is controlling the signature strip industry, but who is it, and what is their evil goal?

It is appalling the lack of attention that this travesty has garnered by the so-called journalists in the media. I guess they're too "important" (or too lazy) to get to the bottom of this, so once again it's up to the alternative media to figure it out. If I end up disappearing overnight, you'll know what happened.

anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.com: taking on the issues that the Mainstream Media fears to touch.

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Milk drink, booze: Can you tell difference?

A Peanut exclusive:

Heinz Canada, makers of what they boast is the fourth most popular baby formula in the country, launched Boobie Cream Liquor in Manitoba a few weeks ago. The packaging is similar enough to a real boob to raise red flags about whether these alcoholic products should be available at all. Critics say there's a good chance babies could mistake the alcoholic version for the real one.

Andrew Murie, chief executive officer of MADD Canada, said Heinz is essentially disguising alcohol as a baby formula in a beverage that will appeal to infants, boys in particular.

"It's an easy way to consume alcohol because it tastes more like breast milk than traditional alcohol tastes. Long before coolers came along, it was a learning experience how to drink alcohol because it didn't taste very good," he said. "These are products you have to watch very carefully. They can give you a bad experience. If you're not an experienced drinker then whoomp, all of a sudden you're really drunk and bad things can happen," he said.

The director of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba has similar worries. "We would definitely be concerned about it from a baby's perspective, for sure," said Laura Goossen.

She said while the alcoholic beverage is not available for sale where minors can shop, and also babies don't have credit cards, a child may see the tittie-shaped container laying around and start suckling on it.

"There's always a concern about messaging. If you make something look like a tasty boobie, is there an inadvertent message that the (alcoholic) drink is good for you, too?" she said.

Cherenkov, from Anybody Want A Peanut, disagrees, saying "what happened to personal responsibility? A mother should make sure that the only boob a baby suckles on is her own. To what degree is this nanny state going to restrict the things that we can buy or do, in an attempt to legislate away common sense and responsibility?"

Heinz did not respond to repeated requests for comment, except to say that Boobie Cream Liquor has "come of the gate really nicely," capturing six per cent of the cream liqueur category in a very short period.

related

Friday, 4 June 2010

Why I hate Safeway, part II

Long time readers of this blog may remember a post from two years ago called Why I hate Safeway. Of the many reasons, one was:

I can't buy 2 bloody pounds of ground beef!! Here are my choices for ground beef: 560 grams or 1.14 kg. What the fuck?? Every recipe on the planet calls for an even pound of ground beef. ONE pound. Not 1 1/3. Not 2 1/2. Of course the beef is also packed in a giant shrink-wrapped styrofoam container to maximize the environmental destruction coefficient of the product.
Even the recipe on their own packaging calls for one pound of meat, fer Christ's sake:


Well, I was desperate for ground beef the other day and didn't have time to go anywhere else, so I ended up in the Dangerway meat department. The meat guy (I won't call him a butcher because I think the meat is actually butchered in a factory in Ontario) was out stocking the ground beef, so I had to ask him: "Why don't you package the meat in one pound increments?"

His answer: when they moved to larger containers, one pound of ground beef looked too small, so they made a decision to add more beef so the containers would look fuller.

Really? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard (while shopping at Safeway.) Why not just buy smaller containers? I can just imagine the conversation in the Safeway board room:

Director of meat: Uh, hey ... we have a little problem with our ground beef packaging ...

VP of marketing: What do you mean?

Director of meat: You know that retarded kid that we hired to fill our "special needs" quota? Ya, well ... I thought it might be kinda fun to put him in charge of reordering our meat trays, and, uh ...

VP of marketing: You did what???

Director of meat: Well, I just though he would bang on some keys and have fun, but somehow he ended up locking us into a 30 year contract with the Giant Styrofoam Tray Company. Our 1 lb meat trays are big enough to hold 5 lbs of meat. What do we do?

VP of marketing: Jesus Christ, Ben. This is a bigger screw-up than the time you ordered grain-fed chicken from Canada instead of factory chicken from Mexico. I guess we only have one choice: put more meat in the package so it looks fuller.

Director of meat: But won't people eat more than they need and get fatter?

VP of marketing: Well yeah, but the fatter they are the more they'll eat, right? Plus we'll also sell more. It's a win-win! Boy am I smart ...

*****

I've been a little busy lately, by the way. I had the above post mostly done already and just threw it out there to let you know I'm still alive. Will be back next week. In the mean time, BBQ yourself some extra large burgers and enjoy the weekend.

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

The Peanut apologizes to it's readers.

The bitterness of my last post seems at odds with my actual mentality these days. We've had four straight weeks of sunny warm spring weather in a month when we usually get hammered by at least one "Colorado low" that buries us in snow and dashes our hopes of an early start to summer. But this year we actually did get an early start to summer. I feel happy and glad, like I have sunshine in a bag, and yet I write an unnecessary post about Colleen Simard and her psychopathic ways. Do I care if Colleen is speeding around the west end with one hand on the steering wheel, and waving a cell phone in the air with the other, as she leans out the window screaming obscenities at another car?* No. Not really. Why did I even read her column if I was in such a good mood? I don't know.

Granted, that last post has been far from the most egregious example of poor judgment displayed by this blog over the past two and some years, but the weather wasn't as nice those other years. I don't have an excuse this time. So with that in mind, I will try to be more positive. There are still certain issues that I may rant about, but I will only do so if I think the issue is of actual importance.

Wait ... what's that little tingle that I feel in my brain? It feels like .. it .. may .. be .. another rant about Upper Fort Garry. No. I must fight it. It's too nice outside to start on that.

Uh oh..


* if she was in fact driving. One of you guys at the Free Press should ask her, just for clarification.

 
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