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This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle...
...who evidently found a deer head in the landfill.
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10th-Jul-2009 12:05 am - i'm trying to blog more just for you
slurpee2
I find this fascinating:

The buildings once used to depict the fictional Saskatchewan town of Dog River in the popular television comedy Corner Gas have fallen into a worrisome state of disrepair, says the mayor of Rouleau, where the series was filmed.
(...)
[Mayor] Kuhlmann said windows were covered with plywood boards, and untended grass had overgrown the areas around the buildings, including the primary set of the gas station and Ruby's Cafe.
(...)
"We're not in the tourism business," said Virginia Thompson, president of Verité Films. "We've been able to raise funds independently to be able to make [the old set] as attractive as possible for our fans, but we can't go beyond that."
(...)
Kuhlmann said he does not understand why people associated with the site and the program are not interested in its value as a tourist destination. The town itself does not have the capacity to develop the site, he said.
(...)
Kuhlmann is especially bothered because prior to the program ending, the town had been promised that even after the departure of the production, there would be a legacy for the locals. However, he could never get details on what that would be.
(...)
Thompson told CBC News that it would cost a minimum $250,000 to renovate the site to make it suitable for tourists.

I don't know why this article interested me so much. I watched the show on occasion. It was fine, but I wasn't a huge fan. I visited the sets twice, since they're only about a half-hour from here. I went once because I figured they'd be something to see, and once more because folks I know were going and hey, I like tagging along.

But with that having been said, I really can't figure out what they should do with the site. It's a shame to squander whatever value is there as a tourist attraction, but if the $250,000 cost to renovate the site is accurate, I have no idea how you'd even make your money back, much less pay for the ongoing upkeep. So much of the sets are outdoors, with -40 winters and +30 (well, we can dream) summers. That's going to do some damage to any external attraction. And how, exactly, do they propose to charge admission to drive down Main Street?

For that matter - and this is almost as sacrilegious in Saskatchewan as saying I don't care about the Roughriders - Corner Gas was just another TV show. Sure, it feels special to the people of Saskatchewan, especially those in Rouleau, but it didn't change the world. We're not talking about The Simpsons or M*A*S*H here. It ran for a half-dozen seasons. People generally liked it. Now it is gone. How much of a tourist attraction will the site be in, say, ten years? You could go to the Petro-Canada on Vic East and ask Dick Assman how much extra income some fleeting fame brings in... well, if that Petro-Canada was still in business.

I don't know what responsibility the production company has to the town. They should - because I get to make the decisions here - leave things how they found them, but I don't think they should be required to maintain the site in perpetuity. But "leave things how they found them" would, in this case, mean the demolition of the sets, and I don't think anyone's looking for that. I suppose they could take down the sets and move them to some kind of museum dedicated to the show, but you still run into the issue that I can't see it making the investment back, nor can I see it being interesting to people a few years from now. Plus, you wouldn't have the real sets and locations, just recreations thereof.

Still not sure why this interests me so. The lack of an easy answer?

In a related note, I think I hate every single person who comments on the CBC.ca news articles. It doesn't matter what they post; it's always awful. If not for the comments on YouTube videos, I'd think that the CBC site attracts the stupidest audience on Earth.
9th-Jul-2009 12:49 am - Coke goes with steak
slurpee2
I own steaks. Two steaks, actually. It wasn't intentional.

Today was my dad's birthday. I went to visit, bringing with me a present and one of those DQ ice cream pizzas. In return, he gave me two steaks. I didn't think we were trading, it being his birthday and all, but this is what happened.

My dad, you may recall, loves trying to feed me. He also doesn't like it when I get fat, and he doesn't seem to see any correlation between the two. Whatever; that's not really the point right now. I guess he bought some steaks for a charity meat drive, and so he had extra and offered some to me. Normally, I turn down his offers of take-home food - I do enough damage to myself while I am there - but he didn't seem all about these steaks, so I almost felt like I was doing him a favour.

And now I have two steaks. T-bones, frozen, fairly thin. No idea what to do with them. I have never cooked a steak in my life. I don't own a proper grill because I live in an apartment without a balcony. I do have a Foreman-type indoor grill, as well as an oven with a broiler. No broiling pan but that could be easily remedied. I don't really want to smoke out the apartment, though.

I figured that this is something that I should learn at some point, and I may as well practice on free meat.

Any suggestions?

In other news, why is it so hard to find one individual single-serving sized bag of Bits & Bites around here? I went to four stores which I am kind of embarrassed to admit. I don't want a big bag because I would just eat it all and that is not cool. Not after the ice cream pizza and all the caramel corn at my dad's place earlier, anyway.

I really just like the Shreddies from Bits & Bites. Pretzels are pretzels and they're fine, and the cheese crackers are fine, but the seasoned Shreddies are the whole show. Forget Diamond Shreddies, they need to sell boxes of the Bits & Bites Shreddies.

The Cheerios, if you were wondering, are... unwelcome.
26th-Jun-2009 02:10 pm - i summarized the entire internet
slurpee2
(obligatory joke about the lack of recent news; ironic because of several recent celebrity deaths all happening within a very short timespan)

(obligatory reference to the Farrah Fawcett poster)

(obligatory story about getting the Thriller cassette; trying to moonwalk; wanting the red jacket with all the zippers)

(obligatory joke about Michael Jackson returning as a zombie as he did in the Thriller video)

(obligatory tasteless joke about Michael Jackson molesting young boys)

(obligatory laughing at my own jokes in the style of Phil Hartman's impression of Ed McMahon, just to tie all the celebrity deaths together)

(obligatory "Too soon?")

(OPTIONAL wrestling fan bonus: joke about Ed McMahon made to sound as though it was Vince McMahon who died; bonus points for mentioning the exploding limousine and/or the collapsing Raw set)
slurpee2
I turned off the Twitter posts. Will try to get a Twitter widget in here sometime soon. Haven't had time to look into it - still been working late.

Made it home a little after 11:00 tonight, but I did go home long enough to eat a sandwich and watch an episode of Good Eats before heading back in. 

I have nothing else to say so here's a new song I like.

22nd-Jun-2009 09:48 am - the usual not-an-update update
slurpee2
And here I break the monotony of Twitter posts.

Let me ask you something about the Twitter posts. Do you care? Aaron is the only person who ever seems to comment on them. I know that a bunch of you are on Twitter already, and many of those who aren't on Twitter are still on Facebook, and my Twitter feed automatically updates my Facebook status. I am wondering if posting them here too isn't overkill. It's not like you can't bookmark http://twitter.com/jameskalyn if you want. You don't even have to join Twitter to do so.

Maybe the best thing would be to shoehorn one of those Twitter widgets into the site somewhere so you could see my most recent updates while leaving the main blog uncluttered for the entries that never seem to come.

Went to a small-town wedding last weekend. I was an usher. I think I told you this. Did very little ushering, though. Instead, I went to the bar (for bags of ice, you see) (also to meet the town drunk) (also to meet the cat that keeps mice out of the bar). For a while, my job was to sit in a chair and smile at people. I also did some stupid dances very badly. Brad is surprisingly nimble and I cannot compare, not that I ever really considered his potential nimbleness before.

My suit doesn't fit well. I have to get skinnier before the next wedding. I can always buy new jeans or new shirts or whatever the situation calls for, but buying a whole new suit would be the ultimate admission of failure and also it would be really expensive. Gotta get on that.

Spent this past week in Saskatoon. Work has been nutty all year, and some more big projects came in - and my Saskatoon counterpart took the entire month of June off. So I wound up getting home at around 1:30 on Tuesday night, 11:30 on Wednesday night... then we got an extension. That always irritates me. Set your deadlines and stick to them, and we'll respond if we can and not if we cannot. You do me no favours by extending the deadline after all the planning and scheduling (and work) has been done. This was a common occurrence in school and I hated it then, too. I plan my project to fit the deadline and then the deadline is extended at the last minute, allowing all the screw-ups to finish "on time."

Not that there aren't worse problems to have. I'm just saying.

As of Monday morning, I'm still in Saskatoon. Tried going home last night but got stormed on. Once I found the line of cars going 60 (in a 110 zone) with their hazards on, I decided that I didn't need to go home that badly and turned around. Will head back today sometime.

Really, my life has been all kinds of boring lately. I haven't been doing much, and what I have been doing, you don't care about. Of course, I've been over this with every post recently. I need a change. Got a few irons in the fire, but we'll see if anything develops here.
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