Pick of the Day: Ice & Fire Carnival

After hibernating for a year, this festival, which is designed to reconcile Reginans to the fact that they live in a winter city, returns for a fifth go-round. Previous carnivals have been held in and around Victoria Park (pictured is a snow sculpture from a prior festival. This one will be held today and tomorrow at the Rider Practice Field just west of Mosaic Stadium beginning at 1 p.m. on both days and lasting until around 6 p.m. It coincides with the weekend the Olympic torch is scheduled to hit town, so the theme this year is World Snow Games. Carnival highlights include a snow sculpture show with contributions from established and emerging Saskatchewan artists curated by the Dunlop Gallery's Catherne Livingstone, along with a teepee, storytelling, outdoor tango dancing, a beaver hut, sleigh rides and more. For more info, you can check out New Dance Horizon's website at: http://www.newdancehorizons.ca/ Other participating organizations include Neutral Ground, Saskewewak, the City of Regina and Great Excursions Travel.

Also tonight, the Pink Floyd Experience -- not the real one, of course, but the tribute version -- is at Casino Regina Lounge. And where did the incredibly influential British art-rock band get its name? Apparently, it was the brainchild of Syd Barrett, and was derrived from the names of two favourite blues musicians that he had in his record collection -- Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Murray Dobbin Nails It

The most excellent journalist, author and activist who should be in prairie dog more often--oh for a 40-page weekly magazine!--has a terrific big-picture look at Stephen Harper's malignant proroguerry up on his blog. It's recommended reading. Check it out.

Friday Afternoon Kitty!

Christmas may be over, but I'm pretty sure Ukrainian Christmas was just yesterday or something. And so, here is a very informative video the art of cat-wrapping (my apologies for the unnecessary speech bubbles in the video):



Personally, I think the video is extra cute due to the cat's apparent ancientness. But then, I have a soft spot in my heart for bony old cats with dusty, unkempt fur.

Hey, it's not their fault they can't contort during cleaning anymore!

Six In The Morning

1 BANKRUPTCY 2: THE FALL OF THE POST Can-West just put its newspapers into bankruptcy (CBC/Canadian Press). Before, they'd been mostly weathering the storm. I imagine this means no National Post tomorrow. I also hope my friends at the Leader-Post will be okay. (No, that's not sarcasm.)

2 WILL TILLMAN GO? One unnamed rumour-mongerer says yes. (Leader-Post)

3 PILING ON THE PRIME MINISTER The politician prairie dog has been warning everybody about since he took over the leadership of the Alliance party is getting blasted by political writers and respectible publications. Yesterday Vanda posted a link to this story in the Economist. The Guardian's been running columns on Harper's suspension of parliament. And there's this today, in the Globe and Mail. Harper is bad news--yet only 53 per cent of Canadians think it was wrong of him to suspend parliament. (Toronto Star). Ridiculous! He's the worst Canadian politician I've seen--far worse than Mulroney, who if nothing else at least has a pleasing William Shatneresque charisma (yeah, I have a man-crush on Shatner. Don't think too poorly of me.) Harper's party must be blocked from power. Wake up, my little sheeplings, we have work to do.

4 IT'S COLD OUT, SO CLIMATE CHANGE ISN'T HAPPENING Here's the problem with that argument. (The Guardian).

5 WE BANNED HIM FIRST, EGYPT! CHEW ON THAT! Contorversial British MP George Galloway has been deported from Egypt after he tried to deliver "aid and supplies" to the Palestineans. (Guardian) You may recall Galloway being barred from Canada last March (Dog Blog). Meanwhile, George W."I start bogus wars that kill hundreds of thousand of people" Bush is of course still allowed to enter both Canada and Egypt.

6 INSUFFERABLE BOOMER TO REPLACE HIP GEN X-ER IN SOON TO BE CRAPPY LATE-NIGHT TALK SHOW TIMESPOT? Well, this is just spiffy. (New York Times) NBC should've stuck it out. Whatever. I think CBS should hire Conan O'Brien away from his current lame-ass, stupid, old-fashioned network. Here's more on that. (Salon)

Pick of the Day: Parallel Worlds--The Pacific

Born in London, and a long-time resident of Spain, Denys Blacker has been in Regina the last couple of weeks preparing for a solo performance at Neutral Ground (1822 Scarth St.) that is scheduled to start around 8:30 p.m. I spoke with Blacker at the gallery on Thursday afternoon. She said Parallel Worlds --The Pacific is the third in a series of five planned performances by her that explore the boundary between the physical self and the broader reality of Earth and the natural environment that surrounds us.

"I started doing drawings a little over two years ago," Blacker says. "The first four performances relate to the four oceans, while the fifth will feature a view of the world from the Antarctic. I looked at old maps and satellite images. I got hooked on the Times' Atlas because I was brought up on it. It's strange how much it influences you."

The first performance on the Arctic was done in France, while the second on the Atlantic was done in Spain. The final two, dealing with the Indian Ocean and the Antarctic, have yet to be scheduled. "With the early maps, I'm interested in how people were able to imagine these images without having the tools we do today, and how accurate those maps are," says Blacker. "Even from the 6th century, there's well-defined coastlines and interesting interpretations about how countries are laid out."

With modern satellite imagery, conversely, Blacker is interested in the perspective of Earth as viewed and measured from space. "I layer meaning in the work. I have very personal meanings that I may find through my everyday maps of life. My personal journey. And then I look at more universal things, and try to understand a little bit how we're living on this planet, and how we're altering it."

"In the past, we had a feeling of being rooted in the Earth. When we become detached from it, what happens? The images we're fed from the satellites, often they're computer manipulated. There's cloud cover, so they take out the clouds. Then these use hundreds of images to construct this perfect view of the world."

In ancient times, people used stories to guide them on their journeys, and relied on familiar natural landmarks. Crude maps followed that allowed people with little personal connection to an area to find their way. Now, we have satellite maps and GPS systems that allow us to locate ourselves and measure things with extreme precision. On one hand, this enhances our ability to survive all the curveballs like storms and droughts that nature is constantly throwing at us. But once created, the maps also assist us in our seemingly eternal quest to control and dominate nature.

Following Blacker's performance, there's a reception that also serves as a kick-off for the Ice & Fire Carnival which will be held on the Rider Practice Field Jan. 9-10. While in Regina, Blacker's been working with students at Balfour Collegiate to create capes similar to the one she'll be wearing in her performance. During the carnival, the students will participate in a dance/procession. To get you thinking about what you'll see in the next few days here's video of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs performing their song "Maps" (YouTube)

Also on tap tonight is an opening reception for Michele Provost's new show Selling Out at the Dunlop Gallery at 7:30 p.m. Look for a review in the Jan. 14 issue of prairie dog, along with a blog post at some point. And if you're looking to do something after the two art events, local rocker Chad Kichula is playing with Black Drink Crier (Cam Wensel) at O'Hanlon's Pub.

We're Officially An International Embarrassment...

The Economist has caught wind of Stephen Harper's call to prorogue parliament, and thinks we're a bunch of suckers if we don't do anything about it.

(The Economist)

Pick of the Day: Zip

Screening tonight at 9 p.m. and tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the RPL Theatre is the debut feature film of Regina filmmaker Tyler Banadyga. I know Banadyga primarily as a visual artist. Others might know him from his time spent as host of the show Local Flavour on CJTR. I haven't seen Zip yet, but believe it arose out of an earlier short Banadyga did for the popular One-Take Super8 Film Festival.

Set in Saskatchewan, it's a bit of a road movie where a guy, having experienced a couple setbacks in his life, sets out in his car on a journey of self-discovery. A journey informed by the novels of southern U.S. writer Charles Portis -- especially his 1966 book Norwood about an ex-marine living in Texas who gets duped by a con-man into driving one car up to New York and returning with another vehicle, during which he meets a host of eccentric characters.

If you're looking for something to do after tonight's screening, there's a Factor CD release featuring Def 3 at O'Hanlon's Pub. And at Friday's screening Banydaga will participate in a Q & A session.

Six In The Morning

1 TILLMAN'S GOTTA GO So says the Leader-Post, although they're pretty darn polite about about it. If it wasn't a winning Rider GM who pressed his boner into his babysitter's butt, would they be all like "to his credit, he said he was rilly rilly sorry?" What if it was a panhandler?

2 AT LEAST SOMEONE'S WORKING IN OTTAWA Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page will release three reports during the ongoing government lockout, sorry, prorogue. One of them, which could come as soon as next week, will look at Canada's structural deficit. What's a "structural deficit"? That's the permanent cash shortfall you get when you don't collect enough taxes to pay for the services Canadians depend on. (Globe And Mail)

3 LET'S ALL SHIP OUR GARBAGE TO GHANA Sketchy private "recyclers" are dumping old electronics in third-world countries, says an e-waste watchdog. Their advice: take your old TVs and computer monitors to municipal recycling depots. (CBC)

4 NO BODY SCANS FOR KIDS AND TEENS Probably a good idea, since nude images of actual children are problematic, but still, this also shows how airport security paranoia is a joke--how can you search some people but not others and call it security? (Toronto Star) In semi-related news I'm still pissed off that Cuba is on the United State's new "watch list" (USA Today) along with Iran and Syria. Give me a break, Cuba just wants to be a tourist haven.

And it also bugs me that Iran has such a shitty, evil governement, because Iranians seem pretty cool. Okay, I'll stop rambling now.

5 YOU CAN CAN'T BOMB WHAT'S BURIED Speaking of Iran, they've apparently made their nuclear program attack-proof by hiding it under mountains. (New York Times)

6 SPIDER-MAN STALLED BY STUPID STUDIO Spider-Man was decent. Spider-Man 2 was decent. Sony interefered heavily with Spider-Man 3, and it sucked. Now they're messing around with the planned Spider-Man 4--and director Sam Raimi's apparently put his foot down. Good for him. I can't believe how stupid the blockbuster movie power-brokers are. (Dark Horizons)

Pick of the Day: Let There Be Theremin

Don't know a ton about Let There Be Theremin, other than that they've gigged around Regina a bit in the last two years or so and that they have kind of an instrumental surf-rockabilly style. They're at Bushwakker tonight as part of the pub's weekly Folk Nights on Wednesdays. Bushwakker also has a jazz series that runs on Mondays. I couldn't find any decent video of Let There Be Theremin on-line, so here's some footage of the inventor of the theremin James Hoffman performing on an old TV show. (YouTube)

Six in the Morning

1. HARPER NUKES UP G8 AGENDA: Most expected the G8 summit coming up in Huntsville would grapple with the international economic catastrophe. Environmentalists hoped it would tackle climate change seeing as Copenhagen was a washout. But Canada, as host, gets to set the agenda and it looks like Harper wants to spend the time worrying about dirty bombs. Dirty bombs? It's hardly a top-of-mind concern for people these days but you can see why Harper and his scandal-plagued Conservatives would want the summit to go in that direction. "We could spend our time dealing with a real, current global disaster like the economy. Or we could spend our time working out a solution to a real, impending global disaster like climate change," goes the thinking, "But Canada's doing pretty well economy-wise thanks to the tarsands. And, because we don't want to screw up our economy doing so well (thanks to the tarsands) we suck at dealing with climate change. So... what made-up, not-yet-impending disaster that'll really freak people out can we be seen talking tough on so people won't notice that we're completely procrastinating on dealing with the problems they're actually facing? Hey! How about scary-sounding weapons that terrorists may or may not someday in the vague future get their terrorist mitts on!" (Globe and Mail)

2. TIMES ARE GOOD FOR ONLINE SHOPPING: The Canadian dollar has shot up to $96.46 US as commodity prices climb and high-financiers recognize that Canada will lead the G7 in economic recovery. Remember to quietly thank Alberta's tarry backside when you're buying those books off Amazon at par. (Globe and Mail)

3. DEBATE ON BODY SCANNERS A PROROGUE CASUALTY: The NDP is saying the decision to go ahead with the installation of full-body scanners in Canadian airports is something that should have been debated in parliament. Should have been, but wasn't because Harper's scandal-plagued Conservatives prorogued parliament. At the very least, Dennis Bevington, NDP MP for the Western Arctic, says the pros and cons of the system should have been considered by the Transport Committee. (Globe and Mail)

4. CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL TO INCREASE: One of the world's leading authorities on climate change expects to see denial of the science behind it to increase in the new decade. He also says the delay on acting to curb it that the deniers are promoting will cause serious hardship for the world's poor. (Guardian)

5. WHY IS EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT E-READERS? Seriously. Why? Word is they'll be the talk of the upcoming Vegas tech show. But, I handled one of these things recently and it left me profoundly underwhelmed. Clumsy to use, ugly to look at, an uncomfortable shape and an awkward size -- neither small enough for a pocket nor big enough so that the screen won't feel crowded. Plus, the display reminded me of a first-generation Macintosh from 1984. The technology has a long way to go, if you ask me. And with a $300 plus price tag, I'd rather spend the cash on, I don't know, an ipod and some paper backs. And yet, every time I open the newspaper, the tech reporters are gushing about the damn things. Has tech news really devolved into advertorials for whatever new gadget needs a boost? Has tech news ever been anything but advertorials? Why am I even wasting my time writing about these things? (CBC)

6. NO CRIMINAL RECORD FOR PERVY RIDER GM: Tillman plead guilty to sexually assaulting a minor and while his conviction will stand, for doing so he's getting an absolute discharge. So, no jail time and no criminal record. Pretty sweet deal. Have to wonder what the sentence would have been for someone too poor to hire a decent lawyer or for someone who wasn't, you know, leading our beloved Riders when they won a much-coveted Grey Cup. Personally, I think the guy should spend some hard time getting grabbed by the belt loops by someone larger and more threatening than himself. What? Was that crass? I'm sorry. I'm high on pain killers. I don't know what I'm typing. (CBC)