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One thing the bounty of the internet gives us is the ability to take a mental break from the drudgery and/or stress of our workday with a brief jaunt into the fantasy land of a flash-based computer game.

Here is my personal top three list:

3. ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK [Adult Swim]

My brother introduced me to this ultimately violent game, where you are a robot unicorn who dashes across a scrolling landscape, facing yawning gaps and metallic stars as fatal obstacles. If you do not jump over the gaps or “dash” through the stars, you will crash in a fiery inferno, decapitating your robot unicorn head. However, as my brother pointed out, you are a robot, and therefore you can and will live again. Or something.

Anyway, what really takes this game over the top is the soundtrack — in this case, inspring pop ballad “Always” by Erasure.

2. YO GABBA GABBA MINI GOLF [YoGabbaGabba.com]

Leave it to the premier hipster kids’ show to make a game appealing to kids and adults alike. Deceptively simple, this game can be played with or without music and is punctuated by exciting animated effects. Fun for kids, challenging enough for grown-ups.

1. SUSHI CAT [Armor Games]

I really think this is the crème de la crème of flash games. It’s my favourite because it’s entirely non-violent — nothing, including dropping from a height and getting squished by moving obstacles, can hurt this cat in its quest for sushi. Plus, it’s a game where you get rewarded for fatness, and that I can always get behind. The first level is dead easy, but some levels are tricky — it can take more than one try to achieve the “Full Belly” required to progress to the next level. You can play this game with or without a nice musical soundtrack; with or without watching the bouncy cat animations between game sections. Warning: playing this game will make you want to eat sushi.

Roller derby made its triumphant reemergence in Winnipeg on Saturday, and in a big way. The bout between the Winnipeg Murder City Maidens and Thunder Bay’s Babes of Thunder played to a capacity crowd of 2000 (TWO THOUSAND!) at the Convention Centre.

Let’s just consider this feat for a moment. Getting two thousand people out a) in Winnipeg, b) in February and c) during the Olympics is a pretty awesome feat. Alas, I was not one of those 2000. Jeff Monk was, though, and he stopped by my office today and we talked about the event and how “every punkette in the city was there” and that the energy in the room was positive and amazing.

There are a lot of factors that contributed to this incredible first success from the WRDL. Obviously, roller derby has been growing in mainstream profile over the last number of years, with lots of ink spilled on the subject as well as a (rather excellent) Major Motion Picture last year. But it’s not just that. The women of WRDL have been hard at work getting ready for this for two years, building their skills and their marketing savvy. I mean, this organization has local youth-oriented top 40 radio station HOT 103 on board, as well as our daily paper of record, the Winnipeg Free Press on board as sponsors. What’s really put the WRDL over the top, though, is the fact that its participants are very involved and present in the existing indie/underground community — a blanket term I’ll use for the combined spheres of music, art and culture here in town. If you’re in any of those communities, or heck, if you sometimes shop for vintage clothing, you’ll recognize at least one face in the MCM team photo. And that counts for a lot in the age of Facebook  and viral marketing.

So congratulations to the Murder City Maidens on not only their victory in competition on Saturday (apparently the Babes were thoroughly whipped), but on the achievement of building something like this in a city where so many lofty ideas never get off the ground.

Leif Norman took some great shots, and he said I could share them with you here.

Portage ‘n’ Maim

More pics behind the cut!

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The closer I come to the March Video Scrapbook, the more I’m certain it will be the final one. (In this series, at least.) I’ve been making these things every month for 11 months now, and I’m looking forward to a day when I don’t feel the need to whip out the camera at every pretty face or streetscape. Not to say those in my circle of influence will be safe from the prying video eye. But hopefully they’ll be less frequently invaded.

In this video: hearts, gluten-free cream puffs, riverwalking, warming shacks, lady musicians, buses, crafts, a creperie, snow, trains, sushi, live radio, polka dot balloons, moms and a drag queen.

One more to go!

Previously:

• January Video Scrapbook

• December Video Scrapbook

• November Video Scrapbook

• October Video Scrapbook

• September Video Scrapbook

• August Video Scrapbook

• July Video Scrapbook

• June Video Scrapbook

• May Video Scrapbook

• April Video Scrapbook

This week I finally buckled down and started to teach myself to crochet. Now, I’ve crocheted for years, but only on an intuitive level — I didn’t know many stitches and I couldn’t read patterns. The siren call of the granny square was too much to resist. My pledge to refrain from purchasing new craft supplies this year and work through my stashes instead has propelled me in the direction of the ultimate stash-buster.

Above is a photo of some of my early progress. Given the limited size of the granny square, I decided it was wasn’t worth the effort to frog the early products, and thus I can illustrate my progress. Misshapes are quite c