Where Are The Women?

Dog Blog has over 60 posts this month. Only one is by a female contributor. This is ridiculous. Anyone have suggestions on how to fix our blog's heinous gender imbalance?

UPDATE: A friend just made the obvious suggestion: "encourage more women to write for Dog Blog." Good idea--why didn't I think of that? (Theory: I'm stupid. Fact: I have! But maybe I'm not trying hard enough. And I'm just stupid-looking, thank you.)

And so:

Are you a woman writer? Are you looking for the fame and glory that comes with contributing to a Regina, Saskatchewan blog read by LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE EVERY DAY? If so, we should talk. Dog Blog is looking to add one or two female writers who will contribute a minimum of two posts a week, because right now we're a total sausage factory and that sucks. We need smart people with strong writing skills and a voice that's compatible with what we're trying to do here (funny, insightful, informative, conversational, forward-looking, progressive). This is an unpaid opportunity (welcome to the realities of writing in the internet age), but strong writers will undoubtedly earn opportunities for paid freelance writing in our print magazine.

If you're interested e-mail us at freelance@prairiedogmag.com. Write DOG BLOG in the subject field, please. And please include short writing samples or links to same.

The Final Word On Carrie Prejean

Wondering what to make of fired, disgraced and all-around tragic beauty queen and right-wing, Christian faux-martyr Carrie Prejean after sex pics and vids showed her to be a double-talking hypocrite who opposes same-sex marriage and showing off one's body but took pics of herself masturbating and sent them to the boyfriend she wasn't married to? I don't think you'll find a better summary than this one by Seattle editor, pundit and sex columnist Dan Savage. A quote:

And now we have proof that the person Prejean pretended to be after that pageant—the good Christian girl with a strong moral code who was chosen by God to stick it to the homos—doesn't jibe with the person she was before the pageant, i.e. a highly sexual and sexually active young woman with breast implants and a string of ex-boyfriends to her name. Carrie Prejean was not the very model of modern right-wing Christian conservatism that she pretended to be to ingratiate herself with the likes of Maggie Gallagher. She was an average young American woman, a little prettier and dimmer than most, with sexual urges and desires and agency. She was just another young woman aware of her own erotic power, a young woman with a digital camera, another young woman sexting her boyfriend because it turned her on to turn him on.

Worth 10 minutes of your time if this is a topic you're even slightly interested in.

Six In The Morning

1 WE MUST HAVE 1.8 BILLION LYING AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE Thanks to incredible, shrinking potash revenues, Saskatchewan moves into budget deficit. NDP to have a field day in the legislature in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... (CBC)

2 HOTEL GROUP PLEDGES $10 MILLION FOR DOME Read about it here in the Leader-Post. This was before the news, by the way. (Leader-Post)

3 FOOD BANK USE RISING IN REGINA It's true. But I thought that if the economy was strong everything else would take care of itself. (Leader-Post)

4 IS CANADA COMPLICIT IN TORTURE? Probably. (Globe And Mail)

5 CONSERVATIVE PLAY THE ISRAELI CARD Federal opposition politicians attack Tory ads for grotesquely pandering to pro-Israeli voters. (Globe And Mail)

6 DEADLY DELAY The Copenhagen collapse is bad news for green industries, because it's causing wealthy countries to dawdle on climate plans and funding. (Guardian) Case in point... (Globe And Mail)

Pick of the Day: The Trews

This gig by the Trews at the Drink Nightclub tonight is billed as a special acoustic show. Acoustic is a relative term, I suppose. At the very least, it means that bands don't resort to electric guitars and generally tone down the intensity of their sound. In front of the right audience, that can be an intriguing musical experiment. In front of the wrong audience, though, it can be a recipe for disaster.

Maybe seven years ago, I remember Feist playing a Wednesday night show at what is now the Distrikt. She hadn't hit it big yet, but she was definitely a name artist. Had she played the club on another night, I likely would have gone. But back then, Wednesday was cheap draft night, and with a bunch of people stumbling around guzzling watery beer, I knew the gig would be a joke. A subsequent conversation with a filmmaker of my acquaintence who did attend confirmed my suspicion. If memory serves, I believe Feist even cut her set short and stormed off the stage, so inattentive was the majority of the crowd.


On the other hand, I caught that legendary Supersuckers show at the same club in 2004 where their drummer got hung up at the border and Eddie Spaghetti and the boys sat down on stools and played an acoustic set that was pure magic. Then at the end, an audience member familiar with the band's then-current release The Evil Powers of Rock 'n' Roll stepped forward with an offer to sit in on drums, and the band plugged in and ripped through a six-song electric set (including the title track) to close out the show. Good times! (YouTube)


How this gig will turn out is anybody's guess. If the audience is attentive, it could be great. But if they're a bunch of loud mouth drunks, it could suck big-time. Just so you know what to expect, here's video of the Trews performing an acoustic version of "So She's Leaving" on MuchOnDemand. (YouTube)