New Feature: Pick of the Day

Big ego-head that I am, I'm going to start a new daily feature on the blog. The thing happening in Regina the next day (that I know of, anyway) that I'd most like to do. It's not that I'm necessarily going to do it (although sometimes I might) just that it's what I would do if the right combination of time, energy, money and availability was there. Tomorrow, for example, the thing I' d most like to do is see Deep Dark Woods and Little Miss Higgins at the Exchange. Great alt-country double-bill.

Snakes On The Plains

Autumn is the season when our slithery friends the snakes wriggle home to their hibernaculms for cozy, winter-long snoozing. If you've ever seen a garter snake den this time of year you'll know it's a spectacular sight: thousands of the squiggly funsters undulating willy-nilly around their winter homes and just being generally big-eyed, benevolent and goddamn cute. (Don't argue with me, you know it's true.)

In the spirit of this most serpenty season, today's Globe and Mail has an article on a seniors' complex in Inwood, Manitoba (about an hour north of Winnipeg) that's been completely overrun by our noodle-bodied amigos:

At Inwood Manor, a Manitoba Housing complex 80 kilometres north of Winnipeg, residents have been finding the reptiles in the strangest places this month. “Yesterday I found one curled up in my clothes,” said 84-year-old Shirley Thiessen. “I said to him, ‘You don't pay rent' and picked him up and tossed him outside.”

But the cold-blooded free-loaders keep coming – in such droves that the local MLA, Conservative Ralph Eichler, raised the issue in the legislature Wednesday.

You can read Patrick White's article--which also contains the gruesome description of an elderly snake murderer's grisly deeds--here (The Globe And Mail).

To conclude, yay snakes!

This post is dedicated to Markian Saray, who coined the term "funsters" for snakes. God bless you, good sir. Wherever you are.

Global Wake-up Call

On the eve of a UN General Assembly session on climate change the latest film by Franny Armstrong (McLibel) and John Battsek (One Day in September) will receive its premiere at over 700 locations worldwide as part of the Global Climate Wakeup Call. Set in 2055, The Age of Stupid is an animated docu-drama starring Peter Postlewaite as a elderly man living in a devastated world who, while watching archival footage from our own age, ponders why we failed to stop climate change when we had the chance. A Regina screening is being held at the University of Regina's Research and Innovation Theatre Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. For more info contact 585-5210.

Plans are also in the works for a flash mob demo at the university's Riddell Centre over the lunch hour on Sept. 21. So be on the lookout for that.

Six In The Morning

1 FORMER TORY MP WHO ATTACKED NDP FOR BEING SOFT ON MARIJUANA ARRESTED FOR DRUNK DRIVING AND COCAINE POSSESSION Rahim Jaffer, former MP for Edmonton-Strathcona, will face charges for booze and blow. Fortunately for Jaffer, being a smooth-talking bullshit-peddling hypocrite jackass is legal in this country. (Toronto Star)

2 LIBERAL LEADER GRANDSTANDS OVER AWFUL BODY-BAG FAUX PAS Michael Ignatieff demands apolgies after Manitoba First Nations communities got shipments of body bags instead of swine flu vaccine. (Globe And Mail)

3 YET CONSERVATIVE SUPPORT INCREASES Oh, whatever (CBC). I'm curious--do people like the Conservatives for their drug hypocrisy? Do they like the homophobia? What about the religious and/or right-wing extremism? Is it their militarism? Their anti-environmentalism? Their anarchy-like passion for small governments and unfettered free markets? Their hateful rhetoric? Their simpleminded tough on crime crap? Their general fact-aversion? Actually, nevermind. I'm going to stand over here and talk to the 65 per cent of Canada that isn't fucked in the head.

4 I AGREE WITH BRAD WALL Saskatchewan's premier says nuclear power might be too expensive for Saskatchewan. (StarPhoenix)

5 UNITED STATES DITCHES EUROPE ANTI-MISSILES U.S. President Obama has scrapped the dumb-ass, waste of money that wouldn't work anyway Bush-era program, good. (Guardian)

6 R.I.P., MARY Mary Travers, one-third of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, has died. (CBC). Sucks. You'll need a video, here you go.