Thursday, May 27, 2010

Yaaarrr! Round up the Scurvy Facebook Dogs.

Let fly the Jolly Roger!!

For Facebook users, the geeks at Facebook have let loose their pirate cannon fire on the masses. Login to Facebook and sail down to the very bottom of the page, where it indicates your current language - English. Click on it and a list of languages supported by Facebook pops up.

Click English (Pirate) and put on yer Cap'n hat.

AAAAaaar!!!

Man dies after getting run over by a plane.

A guy is filming a plane and he gets hit by it and and dies. Sad and tragic that he was injured and died.

But how do you get hit by a plane when you're staring right at it? How can you not see that coming? Freak air accidents aren't uncommon up here in the North. Last year a guy jumped out of a commercial flight over Nunavut. Deliberate suicide. Again, sad and tragic but how does that happen? They were never able to recover the body.

June 19th, 2004, a CF-18 fighter jet wipes out at Yellowknife airport on take off. The pilot ejected and was safe. Shortly after that a CF-18 took off from Yellowknife airport and accidentally dropped a bomb on the golf course. The missile dropped off its wing during take off. Fortunately it didn't go off, but it put a golfer or two off their game.

Aboriginal Awareness Week

Aboriginal Awareness Week is this week. Up here, every day is AAW. How can you not be aware of them? They're everywhere.

Big fish fry at INAC today. mmmm... whitefish.
Bannock and baked goods as well.

Traditional bannock recipe: http://www.jerrysweet.com/personal/GabriellesBannock.htm

It's easy. Throw a couple of handfuls of dried fruit, like cranberries, raisons, currents or whatever into the dough before you bake it. It's also called bush bread since you can take the dough and wrap it around a stick then hold it over the fire to cook. Premix the dry ingredients and take it camping.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Fraser Tower Burns...

Fraser Tower caught fire yesterday just before 4pm. Crazy smoke covering the city. Kudos and cookies to the fire fighters. The damn thing's 13 stories high. I wonder if the elevator has a '13' button on it?

Anyhoo, it was burning brightly until the chopper water bombers dropped 10 loads of water on it. Fortunately, no injuries and everyone got out ok. Apparently they (who's 'they' anyway?) were letting people in by 2am this morning including apartments on the 13th floor. Apparently the majority of damage was in the penthouse on the roof.

Yellowknifers (as they are known to do) rallied around the victims and found places to stay for everyone from the Fraser. It does beg the question though... Does the city have anything in place should to assist people should something like this happen again? Or even smaller catastrophes. What do people do who's house catches fire? Yeah, insurance is important, but at the very least a community contact at city hall to instantly react when these things happen.

Is there a United Way here in town?

Bear Shot in Yellowknife This Morning

CBC News reported a bear shot on Lankey Court this morning. Not sure what kind of bear it was, but (to wax Pythonian) it's now pining for the fjords. I wonder where the meat will go. Bear chili rocks.

I seem to recall a number of bears wandering into Yellowknife last year with one of them being a grizzly.

Time to bring in the cat.