A Real Life Conversation, EP: 1

Me: Can't head out tonight, I'm gingerbreading.*

Friend: Haha. Man, what activities are you going to do when you're sixty?

Me: MMA Shark Wrestling and Sexbot fabrication.

Friend: You will require a robot penis for both of those activities.




*Gingerbreading: Building a ginerbread house.

Steven Page - Wilted Rose

I Made a Mistake

UFC 121 was this past weekend, in which everyone's favourite fighter that you love to hate, Brock Lesnar, was defending his heavyweight championship belt.

For those that don't follow UFC, here's the quick summary:

• Lesnar is a giant freak of an athlete. The man's hands are literally the size of those football hams. He has specially made gloves.

• He started in the WWE, which everyone knows is choreographed fighting. You do have to be an athlete, you do get seriously injured, and you do have to seriously train to be a pro wrestler. But there were lots of raised eyebrows and incredulous looks at Lesnar when he was signed to the UFC.

• He was given a chance at the UFC heavyweight championship belt well before any fighter normally gets, and this was somewhat controversial.

There's more to the story, but that's all you really need to know.

There were a number of bets made on Lesnar's fight this weekend, as it could have gone one of two ways. Lesnar would either sit on his competitor Cain Velasquez for five rounds, or Velasquez would completely walk all over Lesnar.

I decided to bet on Lesnar winning.

The stakes? Whoever loses the bet has to grow a moustache for the month of November. My friend I was gambling with is much like me in that I can't grow facial hair. Our facial hair is easily rivaled by many 16 year old boys.

And I lost the bet. Miserably. Lesnar got his face totally punched all to hell in the first minute of the fight. It was pretty sad actually.

So now I have to grow a moustache. I hope it'll turn out like this with a matching chest fro':

But more likely, it'll look like this:

Any tips on moustaches maintenance anyone can share with me?

So many babies!

I've been rather tardy on updating my blog, I know, but I have big news!

I just became an Uncle!

My family welcomed a new addition into our clan Saturday, October 16th, when my older sister gave birth to healthy baby girl.

Here's the wee baby and her father

Congratulations to my big sister and the new dad. Also, welcome to the family Elizabeth Victoria! I look forward to many years of buying you the most annoying toys, craziest stuffed animals, and ridiculous clothing possible.

On a sidenote, not only am I an uncle for the first time ever, but a coworker's , a very good friend's, and an old co-worker all have family members who gave birth to baby girls this week too. Weird, eh?

Okta Logue - Bright Lights

More Treasures

As you may recall from an earlier blog, I talked about how I find things all the time lying on the ground. Last time it was a giant wad of bubblegum as large as a man's head I tell you!

Well, about a month ago I discovered a much tastier morsel on the ground.

It was just after noon, sun shining brightly in the sky, a fine fall day by any account. The skies were clear for the first time in weeks, Though everyone still wore sweaters to keep the slight breeze from giving you a chill, the warmth felt refreshing.

I stepped outside, and there, in the middle of the street, nary a soul in sight to claim it, lay a single strip of Jack Link's Original Beef Steak.


Its packaging was a little dirty, suggesting it had lain in the street most of the morning, possibly through the night, but remained sealed. Someone without keen scavenger eyesight as I possess probably would have spotted it lying there and mistook it for refuse.

But I, being a natural “Indiana Jones” of sort, saw that 'refuse' and discovered treasure.

I picked it up and looked to my left...

All clear.

To my right?

All clear.

The beef jerky was mine.

But did I dare eat it? On closer inspection, the jerky was still hermetically sealed. The expiration date was months away. With careful unwrapping I wouldn't even get any dirt from the external packaging on it! Just as I was about to tear into it, I stopped for a moment to consider that perhaps this was a clever trap.

As anyone should know, Beef Jerky makes perfect Jake Hammell bait. It's practically irresistible!

Assured that the possibilities of the jerky being a trap were too great to ignore I placed it aside, and left it.

A day later, the jerky was gone. Vanished. Wrapper and all.

While I can't confirm my theory, I'm quite certain it was some sort of teleportation device, laid to capture an unsuspecting person. More than likely laid there by the Jack Link's Sasquatch himself.


Pretty clever if you ask me.

Or maybe the shirtless from down the street whose redneck parents insist upon barbecueing on their car's hood found it and ate it.

Either way, we'll never know.

Edit: According to a reader, the beef jerky was spotted first by Jen Baron, and not myself. Upon reflection, this is probably true. So finder's rights do not go to myself. However, I was the one to pick it up and take a good look at it.

The Kills - Tape Song

Review: Cat Ladies

Update Sept 8/2011, Check the bottom of the comments for an update on the Cat Ladies. One of the producers of this documentary found this review, and graciously provided an update on the status of the "Cat Ladies."

Cat Ladies
Directed by Christine Callan Jones

Yesterday being a holiday, I took the opportunity of a day off to rent movies with the girlfriend and fold laundry (mine, not hers). One of the films I rented was 'Cat Ladies' a Canadian-made documentary about the lives of four different 'Crazy Cat Women.'

They range from a lonely older woman obsessed with her three cats (this one has collected nearly 1,000 whiskers from a single cat, and calls them 'presents') to another weirdly cold woman in her mid-thirties who seems bitter about the relationships in her life, and has 14 or so cats to fill the void of the relationships she doesn't have. Finally, the last two women both own more than 140 cats and believe themselves to be 'rescuing' lost and abandoned kitties.

This documentary was like watching an hour and a half long video of 'Hoarders,' but presented more objectively, and with far better story telling. It delves not only into the lives of these Cat Ladies, but also what led them to the point they're at, and how they deal both internally and externally with being Cat Ladies.

This documentary makes you want to reach into the TV and shake sense into some of these women, and other times you just sit back in awe at their lifestyle. It's entirely engrossing and makes it so you can't stop watching.

The trailer is posted below, and trust, you're going to be hard pressed not to watch this film after viewing it.






Overall I give Cat Ladies

8.5/10

It's a great documentary! You learn a lot about the people in it, their life stories, and it's presented in a completely objective manner. There's absolutely no spin. At no point does it judge them, nor does it say “These are bad people.” There's obviously something not-quite-right with some of them, others seems to be simply victims of circumstance, and others just can't interact with humans. From the first five minutes in, Cat Ladies has you hooked.

I take points away from it because occasionally it seems like they forgot a couple of segway clips and subsequently some scenes seemed completely out of context. Also, since this documentary just came out last year, it would be nice to see it re-released with some follow-up interviews to see where these people's lives ended up after the documentary.

So go rent Cat Ladies! This is an outstanding piece of Canadian produced film that you have to see to believe.

Battle of the Bone 2010 Wrap Up

Photos courtesy of Amanda Wiebe

My team did not win The Battle of the Bone 2010. It's disappointing, it sucks, I wanted it real bad, but it just didn't come to fruition. My team and I didn't stack up.

The team from left to right, Jim, Myself, last minute addition Andy, and Steve

However, this year's contest has, to put it simply, been fraught through and through with controversy.

During the qualifying rounds, allegations that teams weren't eating enough meat on the chicken wing bones flew around, and that makes a huge difference in a team's performance and finishing time.

But I'll cut to the chase. Last Wednesday five teams met to compete. It was Big Country (my team), two other radio stations, the local rugby team, and Grande Prairie's football team The Drillers, featuring Shannon George, the man who narrowly defeated me last year.


So anyway, our teams was strategy was to be fast, but do an excellent job of cleaning the meat off the bones. I had confirmed the day of the contest that we would indeed be weighing the buckets of chicken both before and after to determine who ate the most chicken, as that does affect the standings of the team to finish first.

Basically, Big Country didn't finish anywhere near first. I think we might even have been last. But we ate all the wings. I'm not %100 if teams that didn't finish first did as well.

I even ate the one wing I dropped on the ground.


They weighed the buckets and Big Country had eaten 58 ounces of chicken, roughly 3.6 pounds (that “pound” of wings you're eating isn't actually a pound by the way). But when the announcement came down as to who had eaten the most chicken, it wasn't Big Country, is was another radio station, who ate about 47 ounces.

Whaaaaat?

Well, as it turns out, the judges mixed their numbers up, and the fastest team (who people complained were barely eating their wings) also ate the least amount of chicken.

But because I'm not going to be the team that complains over losing a charity eating contest, I just let it go. Big Country obviously wasn't the fastest team, and regardless of how much we ate, the championship belt wasn't going to us.

Congratualtions to the United Way, I hope that this year's competition raised lots of money, and that they see what a unique and fun fundraiser this is to keep doing it. This is only year 2 for the Battle of the Bone, and now that more people are competing, some bad blood and rivalries are developing, I think things for the United Way are only going to get better.

Next year we'll see how this goes. I think I need to recruit some serious ringers, because we keep losing to giant football players.

And believe it or not, giant football players eat more than starving radio people.

Field Music - Let's Write a Book

Scarecrow Festival 2010

The scarecrow festival begins in Grande Prairie today, and I've made another entry this year. To you I present the Big Country 93.1 "Dragon Warrior"

This took about two to three weeks of steady work. No single thing took all that long, but cumulatively it took forever to make.

My big issues are that I didn't have time to make him a tail that would swing and sway, his hips are too wide, and his head is too small. All of these were things I ran out of time, or didn't have the ability, to fix. Oh well, It's done I'm not looking back!

Basically I wanted to make something that I thought geeky kids who were like me would think is cool. Plus, Scarecrows should be one of two things, funny, or scary. None of this self-promotional BS. (except for the logo on his belt, that was the only thing I was told to include)


Unfortunately I'm very bad at genre specifics, and I wanted to do something related to country music I should have done the zombie of Marty Robbins or Johnny Cash. Maybe I'll do that next year!

The scarecrows are on display around Grande Prairie til' October 15th, from which point they go up for auction to suppourt the local rodeo association. If you're in Grande Prairie, you vote for, and see all of the competing radio station's scarecrows at Canadian Tire, and tons of other scarecrows around town at various businesses. If you're not from GP, you can just wait two weeks for me to post photos of all the decent Scarecrows. Either way, you're a weiner.