Puppeteering

School kids! Look out for your new "family life" teacher, complete with puppet! 

I'm shy! I put my hand in my pants!

Show me, using the doll, where it hurts on your person.

I'm giggling! Or, I'm smelling myself!

My body's nobody's body but mine

You run your body, 

Let me run mine!

ザ・カーリング！Curling!

Curling! It's what that one fat guy in Aberdeen, SK is doing (when he's not sleeping in his camper, hanging out in parking lots in his pyjamas pants, washing his feet in public washroom sinks, or adding dirt to his hairy butt crack). 

I threw this rock into the house. The house is the bull's eye.

It combines all my favourite elements of sport - drinking beer, wearing regular clothes, not sweating - and it's all on ice! 

Only the youngest, fittest, beer-guttiest will make the team.

You have to get used to the fancy curling lingo. Your equipment is a "broom" and you use the "broom" to "sweep" the ice so that the ice gets "smooth." When you have smooth ice, it makes that heavy round thing, the "rock," go faster. If you want your team mates to sweep faster or harder, you have to yell at them, "Hard! Hard! Fast!" And then when it's time for them to stop going so hard and fast, you yell out, "Whoa, whoa easy there."

Hi! We're here to curl!

Now watch the young amateur throw her rock.

Oh, can't tell which one she is? She's the only non-white person on the ice/in the town.

   

Sport: Curling

Final Grade: A++

Winter Grillz Part 2: Still Grillin'

Now with REAL MEAT, new and improved!

Now with less hair, winter grillz master griller new and improved!

Christmas Dollar Grillz y'all

The oven is full but there's still meat to be cooked! What to do? Fire up the grill and get'r done! And no this ain't Christmas in the South - Southern Hemisphere, I mean. This be the North, foo, and dang it's cold!

Don't need no jacket. Don't need no hat. Just my invisible tongs and meat.

So I brought my camera out too late and the meat was already off the grill and grilling tools put away. I didn't realize this until I looked at the picture after I'd taken it and saw that I was being mime-grilled. But you can see the tupperware at the bottom where the meat was being marinated, and that hazy fog? -Why none other than SMOKE FROM THE GRILL! It happened, I swear it did.

Boomtown Pt 2

The pumpkin is pureed and draining, so now it's time to power through. You won't want to miss the grand finale, so stick with me!

Inbred and bored - is this a realistic portrayal of children at the time?
Now, debate!

Mud house? Oh it's just packed in mud. I'll take it.

A nod to the germaphobe Japanese settlers. Really should be less of a nod and more of a bow with your hands forming a triangle and your forehead touching the ground, though. 

Oh my god. I'm so sorry. Your life is terrible.
And I read inside your mud house that your husband left you for some slutty widow.

Fast forward to 2005 and let's give thanks to your settler ancestors.
Now line up for your BBQ!

Boomtown! Saskaboom? Saskabush!

Boomtown! Saskatoon, 1910.
Saskaboom! Saskatoon, 2009.
Saskabush! A website with no content, or maybe just if you're on chrome. But more importantly, the here and now, 2011.

Yesterday afternoon I took a trip to the Western Development Museum with my roommate. Thanks UBC student card! I got myself $1.75 off the regular admission price.

When you walk into the museum, they've set up a replica of the old Boomtown, probably the way it looked back in 1910, complete with bleached blonde ladies of the night and their portly male patrons. They were all called, "settlers."

it's blurry for your own good

We didn't realize we were coming in on the last day of their Christmas Tree festival, so the place was pretty packed (for Saskatoon), but lucky for us, it meant that with the extended business hours, we would have longer than the anticipated 45 minutes to spend there! We were very glad. At the end of the recreated street, there was a man with an orange tan and heavy stage make-up singing, "O Holy Night" and a woman in a beaded black wrap (AND THAT'S ALL!) using the instrumental breaks in her songs to talk to the audience of 8 senior citizens in 60 fold-up chairs. I didn't take any pictures of the performers though since I'm genuine and welcoming and not rude.

 The museum reminded me a bit of Taiwan Storyland, although obviously, lamer. 

Let's look at some photos!

A smithy! He is a real person. Or, an excellent robot.

In the general store, the local setllers would come to discuss...

Probably how terrible their lives were.

Children ran the post office.

No child labour laws in the days of Dr. Quinn!

Old-timey candies shaped as mice. And LSD. 

The mice look more appetizing if you drop the acid first.

Tinned goods and bananas. Bananas help you plow better.

Medicine including  baby laxatives. Probably just made of bananas.

How exciting! One of the original RCMP, before they were even known as the RCMP!
He's hard at work, about to arrest some outlaw - oh wait, let's read the provided description - 

 

Fair enough.

This, I actually did like. ANNE SHIRLEY COULD HAVE SMASHED
HER SLATE OVER GILBERT BLYTHE'S HEAD IN A CLASSROOM LIKE THIS!

I went inside expecting to see some long braids coming out from underneath round caps and was severely disappointed. All they had was an abacus. Time WASTED.

Not trains, not cars, but TRACTORS! The true heroes of the prairies!

Blogger is making me upset and I'm getting bored so you probably are too. I'm going to go puree a pumpkin now.

What happens in Diva's...

Diva's is one of the gay bars here in the Bush. Yes, one of. Amazing I know! I was there for a drag show, which wasn't as sad as you might imagine, but also no where near the glory of Unity circa when I was 19. 

Anyway, this was a poster Diva's had on their toilet stall door, advertising their F asterisk Me Fridays. Do they play hangman? Hide and Go Seek?

Q: What happens in Diva's?

If you answered, "Free WiFi," you get a gold F asterisk!

In Da Club

Happy Halloween from the Bush! I went to da club, and by da club I mean the one that shares the parking lot with Timmy Ho's. There were a lot of hos and pimps out that night, both sexy and so unsexy it was spooky. Way to capture that Halloween spirit, folks!

"Gosh darn-it I forgot my Halloween costume!"

The Berry Barn

The madre is gone now, but I will continue to post about her visit. As you may have seen on facebook, I took her to a place that advertised itself as the best in Saskatoon hospitality. This place was The Berry Barn. 

A barn! Or is it...

It was on a nice spot by the South Saskatchewan River, and to get there we drove by many farms, other Berry Barn-esque businesses, and the landfill.

"Any open houses in the area?" -Mother Wang

I actually live pretty close to the landfill. Handy if I need to find a bunch of seagulls to lasso to my giant peach!

Food & Fashion

May I present to you a feast for the eyes and body!

Item 1.

Fresh greens, boiled in tap water and seasoned with boiled tap water:

Delicious.

Item 2.

Purple on purple on purple, with a necktie.

Say cheese! 

Sure that's fine too.

Classy Shopping

Webster's dictionary defines the word classy as an adjective meaning, "without class." True story.

I have been frequenting some extremely classy retail establishments since moving to the Bush. 

Yesterday, after a hard morning's work, I treated myself with a trip to Giant Tiger, a very classy Canadian chain, to which I had never been before. What a treat!

Canada is known for its giant tigers.

Fluorescent lighting and plastic hangers, my fave!

Then this afternoon I really went all out and went to the king of classy, Walmart.

Good job, Walmart!

interior of Walmart

Yes, Walmart sells "fresh" produce! Yes, I bought 2 Walmart-brand chicken breasts from the meat section! I am living it up and having adventures!

My local news anchors are SAXY!

While watching the local evening weekend news, I couldn't help but notice how attractive the anchors were. These people are so high profile, I couldn't even find pictures of them on CTV's website or anywhere else online! So I resorted to taking pictures of the TV screen with my HTC.

Sports! Exciting!

Economy-grade Will Shuester keeps it real while reporting the news!

The best part was when the two of them were in the same shot! Look at their on-screen chemistry!

"Hey wouldn't it be fun if we wore matching suits for tonight's show?"

I have to apologize for my bad timing - after taking the above picture, the two anchors clumsily attempted a fist bump. Imagine it: sports guy throws his fist forward, news guy gets confused and keeps his fist clenched on the desk, and then nothing! No fist bump bump! I'm thankful though, because failed fist bump makes local tv magic.