Archive for the ‘News & Announcements’ Category
This is the first post I’ve done of this kind on Medicine Hat Media. Small tweaks and changes over the sites short history were always just done and never commented about. The changes done in this case are more important – or important enough to do a post about.
Logo
New Logo
Somebody recently asked us for our logo which made us come under the realization that our “logo” was more of just a site header rather than a traditional logo-type that could be used in multiple applications. Which really was bad considering I never do that for any of my projects and I did graduate from the Visual Communication program after all. I was also never satisfied with what I created in the first place – it was just too busy and meaningless for the sites function.
Although I’m traditionally opposed to using the “tipi” imagery since it’s so cliche; I think it speaks more about our site than anything else ever could. I also wanted to add things like “art” and “music” symbolism into the logo but was too busy and maybe was too specific anyways since this site ranges topics a lot more now than it did in the past. So more than anything, this site is about commenting about Medicine Hat – the reference that the speech bubble with the tipi conveys.
Old Site Header
THE JUMP – Read the rest of this entry »
A Canadian movie, just released (March 6th) called ‘One Week’ with Joshua Jackson from Dawson’s Creek fame. It was filmed across Canada and there is an interesting story of the filming in Medicine Hat.
From the website, Director Michael McGowan talks about how the film was made on a shoestring budget and explains that this type of guerrilla filmmaking mirrored the spontaneous nature of the story and the lead character’s journey. “Countless times, if we happened to drive by a location that we liked, we’d just stop and shoot,” McGowan says. “Fortunately, everything that could have gone wrong– everything from Josh falling off the bike to bad weather to locations we couldn’t get–didn’t happen.”
For example, one of the most stunning locations in the film is ‘Fran’s ranch’. Finding the location was pure luck. “This was always going to be an ambitious day of filming. We needed a stunning vista, a pick-up truck, a farm. Horses for the actors to ride and not to mention lunch for the crew,” McGowan says. Typically this would involve wranglers, extensive location scouting and organizing the infrastructure to shoot in a remote location. By the time the crew arrived in Medicine Hat, on a Friday, they still didn’t have a location for their Monday shoot.
The story has changed somewhat since our original Gregory Fritzke post. Tuesday, police charged Gregory Fritzke, 43, ex-vice-principle from Ross Glenn School with two more charges: Sexual Assault and Sexual Exploitation to go on top of his original charge of Accessing and Distributing Child Pornography. The alleged assault is believed to have taken place in 2004 against a young girl at Alexandra Junior High School where Fritzke was vice-principle.
This is hard because on one side I hope this charge isn’t made up because it would just be one of those exploitation of the accused cases, but at the same time I hope it is made up because it’s really sick and terrible. Would people rather want this be true and have a tortured child or would they hope and pray that it’s made up to exploit the Fritzke case. What do you think?
To many, this simply reinforced their original beliefs and speculations; however, I am still cautious with saying he is not guilty of anything yet. He is due for court appearance on February 12th (tomorrow). Only after he is defined by law as guilty or innocent will I respectively call him either or – this isn’t the middle ages anymore (ordeal by fire/water).
We have will have more information after (and possibly during) the trial.
Original Post:
To the Gallows, Gregory Fritzke!
Angry comments below (sarcsm):
As plastered on the front page of the Medicine Hat News, Gregory Fritzke has been arrested and charged with accessing and distributing child pornography. Okay… pretty sick, but to make matters worse, he was the vice-principle at Ross Glen School. Start the angry parents riot! Parents of children that go to Ross Glen are going crazy, and this is just from the comments posted on the Medicine Hat News website (most of the comments are now gone when the Medicine Hat News website was updated), who knows what the future of Ticked Off & Tickled Pink will look like.
Greg Fritzke, 43 - Image from CTV Calgary
Quotes have appeared like “We as a society need to screen the people involved in our childrens lives on a daily basis more carefully” from one commenter. Comments like this remind me of the Grey Hound bus situation – one person gets killed, or one sick bastard is all it takes to warrant spending thousands if not millions of dollars for these “screening” procedures. Obviously in this case, I believe the commenter is referring to using ourselves as a “screen” to weed out child pornography collectors (somehow). This is a rare and isolated event in this community – just like the Grey Hound bus slaying. There’s no magic “pedophile-meter”, just like there is no method to gauge if somebody is just going to wind up and kill somebody; obviously there are warning signs to these types of psychological issues, but they aren’t accurate, even so, the average person is not trained to spot these “warning signs”. In no way am I defending Gregory Fritzke or his actions, I’m just against the irrationality involved with people commenting and ranting over these isolated events (isolated in terms of the Medicine Hat community, not on a global scale).
Supposedly Gregory Fritzke did not have any images/photography of children at the school in his stash – but the fact of the matter is he was a vice-principle and he seen kids all day. Obviously this makes parents feel pretty sick even if he didn’t actually harm any children at the school. Psychologically speaking, Gregory Fritzke knew that what he was doing was wrong which is why he never acted out on his thoughts at school, instead he went home and downloaded child porn to satisfy his urge. Obviously I’m not a psychologist but I’ve read enough on the subject to know that most of these people aren’t pure evil, Satan incarnates; rather, they may have psychologically traumatized in their past or some past experience made him this way (maybe he was molested as a child). Obviously I’m being general and pretty speculative on the incident until actual details arrive. The bottom line is he downloaded and looked at child pornography which is wrong, granted, but he is NOT a child molester, child rapist, nor did he physically abuse children in any way as far as anybody knows currently (this may have changed though – see below). Guilty before proven innocent? I guess there is no gray area to most people…
*UPDATE – February 11th, 2009*
More charges have been laid against Fritzke which leads me to not retract my above statement but to clarify. I said that “nor did he physically abuse children in any way as far as anybody knows currently” which is still the case right now since he has NOT been found guilty.
Supposedly sales were down everywhere this holiday season; however, I did not see any evidence of this myself in Medicine hat. I made the stupid mistake of going to get a few items from Superstore on the day before Christmas Eve… how stupid of me. There was literally no parking spots, I should of taken that as a warning. You know how you often wonder why there is such large parking lots outside of stores when they are normally only half full at maximum anyways? Apparently they are just for the few days before and after Christmas. I entered the mosh-pit-like environment as soon as I stepped through the doors. This place was packed and the line ups were half way down the aisles themselves. This wasn’t an isolated incident either, supposedly the malls were packed and Walmart… well I won’t even begin to imagine what that place would be like. Supposedly this situation doubled itself on Boxing Day where shoppers were reported to have spent 10 hours waiting overnight in line outside Visions to get a new TV in one case.
Imagery via blogtalkradio.com
I did notice the sales though, Boxing Day is no longer a day, and now not even a week, in some cases in a few weeks or full month of sales. And normally the deals aren’t that great either, but this year 75%-90% off signs were littered everywhere. And these sales even started before Boxing Day, they started weeks before Christmas in some cases. For example, the Medicine Hat Mall had two Moonlight Madness events this year. Obviously this is a marketing tactic to get people to buy at Christmas in the wake of the Canadian recession. I think it probably worked on some level locally in Medicine Hat, but I think overall, we are a little too dramatic about the recession thing in Medicine Hat and other smaller towns. I cant wager a guess at what will happen next year though, depending how much deeper we have dug ourselves. Business’s have been reporting that they did just as well last year in terms sales (on Boxing Day), and maybe even better.
Ken Gousseau, Medicine Hat News Reporter, has reported about this here.
In the Discovery Channel finale of Canada’s Worst Driver, Ashley Van Ham was given the title of “Canada’s Worst Driver”
Many people seem to dig this show, but honestly, you wonder how someone can be so ignorant as they appear in the show. From a young age, kids grow up seeing their parents or guardians driving. It does not take a genius to realize that the gas pedal accelerates, the brake decelerates, and you turn the wheel at which ever direction you want to go. Combine that with traffic lights, and obviously again, as we are conditioned to think from a young age that green means go, red means stop, amber (or yellow) can only be between the two, and mean proceed with caution. Signs like stop signs are clearly labeled “STOP”, while other signs can easily be determined with even the lowest of I.Q.’s.
Image Courtesy of DiscoveryChannel.ca
Ashley Van Ham was quoted saying: “It was a great experience overall, and I use the skills I learned every day,” but who really needs to go on a public show and prove their ignorance just to learn something not only learned since a young age and while growing up, but should also learn in Drivers Education class?
This show is parallel in many ways to the show Canada’s Worst Handyman. The difference is that building something takes some form of logical thinking, and not everyone is conditioned with the thought process of how to build things from a young age. But still, you need a good foundation and appropriate support to hold up a roof.
Back to Ashley Van Ham and bad driving habits. If you are overly distracted, aggressive, and unskilled to the point of not learning the skills, then get off the road. As if the ice was not bad enough, or the bumper-to-bumper action going down Dunmore road or any of the bigger hill roads in Medicine Hat, now the news and television perpetuates the fear of Canada’s Worst Driver cruising around the streets.
Not only one, but two deer were euthanized or put down recently. The two deer, one of which was the mother and the other, the mother’s “injured” fawn. The fawn and a sibling have been seen hanging around outside the Riverview Care Centre for a couple weeks. The mother supposedly had a “badly-injured” leg, while the fawn was missing half of his leg with part of the bone protruding. It might sound like they were in bad shape; however, I have personally seen at least one of them, dating back to about a year ago (the pictures are below to prove it). The ultimate reason brought forth by Sustainable Resource and Development spokesperson Darcry Whiteside was that it was their policy to put down animals in distress and also noting human safety concerns. They were originally phoned in to the Fish and Game Conservation by a women looking to get treatment/help for the injured deer. The Fish and Game Conservation later put down both of the two deer in question on separate dates.
Here are the photos I took on December 24th, 2007. This may or may not be the mother in question; however, the fawn (shown younger in these pictures) is clearly the one in question. These pictures were taken at the Medicine Hat College.
Possibly the mother deer in question
Fawn missing half of its leg
Close up of the fawn's injury
This is pretty much bulls**t – I mean, they were not in distress, they weren’t actually sick, they were just previously injured. I seen them almost a year ago, and they were still alive (until yesterday) – they must have been doing pretty fine. A matter of human safety? Ya right, healthy deer that run in front of traffic, now that’s a matter of human safety, these two deer would never try to run anywhere, because they couldn’t. I’m not a huge animal activist or a practicing vegetarian but you don’t have to be to realize this kind of stuff is just wrong. They were a nuisance and an eye sore to some and instead of moving them to another location they were killed off, in my mind, injustly.
The trial for Jeremy Steinke has lasted almost a full 3 weeks, two of which were spent looking at forensic data. The result in the end, after many witnesses and testimonies, the jury has made its deliberation that Jeremy Steinke is guilty on three counts of murder in the first degree.
During the court proceedings, Steinke took the position that he was indeed guilty for the murder of Marc and Debra Richardson, but that the murder of their son, Jacob Richardson, was committed by his co-accused girlfriend. The event was stated that Steinke snuck into the Richardson’s basement to meet his girlfriend there, but instead, Debra Richardson came downstairs. Panicking, Steinke stabbed the woman and soon after, Marc Richardson flew down the stairs with a screwdriver in hand to defend himself and his wife, but was soon stabbed as well.
Steinke claims he did not intend for the murders to happen, despite discussing it with his co-accused girlfriend prior, and that it was all an unfortunate accident. Afterwards, he stated that he was lead upstairs to Jacob Richardson’s room where his girlfriend stabbed the youngster, and while she initially stated that Steinke slashed the boys throat, Steinke during his trial stated that his girlfriend had dealt the death blow.
The trial involved many friends and associates of Steinke and J. Richardson, whom explained their perceptions on how the two lived, their actions before the night of the murders and afterwards, Steinke’s physical abuse as a child and his Mother’s alcoholism, and more.
More on the Richardson Family Murders can be found in these two previous posts:
http://www.medicinehatmedia.com/2008/11/richardson-family-murders-steinke-trial/
http://www.medicinehatmedia.com/2008/11/jeremy-steinke-trial/
Apparently over the last few days there has been a nudist or pervert walking around Medicine Hat taking the liberty of flashing people.
Last reports, given by people calling into My96FM, suggest the person has been sighted around Crescent Heights area and has been seen around schools, perhaps around St. Mary’s school.
I expect this story will get blown out of proportion like the “Kick a Ginger Day.” Many people will invariably assume that if they see someone with a long coat or some sinister look to them that they will be linked to the current story. Of course, “Free Speech Friday” on My96FM does not really help the situation, when freaked out people call in with half-truths or uninformed perceptions.
A fairly complete and concise history of the Richardson Family Murders and Jeremy Steinke Trial.
Every source online or in the media says they cannot name the Richardson daughter because she is under the age for being tried as an adult for the crimes she committed. But if you Google “Richardson Family Murder”, the Wikipedia article, and every source or media reference gives the history as: “Richardson family was killed by their daughter and/or Jeremy Steinke.” As a result, in this article, we will abide by The Law and not give her name, instead, we will just call her “Richardson”, because that much has already been said everywhere else in the media.
Jeremy Steinke and his girlfriend apparently met one day in early 2006. Sources vary as to the location of their meeting, going between a local Punk Rock show in Medicine Hat and on the social networking website Nexopia. At any rate. As Jeremy Steinke was 23 years old at the time, and his girlfriend was 12, her parents – Marc and Debra Richardson – naturally wished the two not to date; however, Richardson continued to see Steinke. At length, her parents forbid her from seeing him entirely. During the ordeal, the couple maintained contact through various social networking websites on the Internet. Nexopia, Vampirefreaks and Bolt seem to be the main three.
Jeremy Steinke. Image courtesy of Canada.com
On Vampirefreaks, Jeremy Steinke listed several personal interests that many people in the Western World have. BMXing, skateboarding, snowboarding, cars, music, piercings, tattoos. But as the list goes down, the interests get a little more (socially perceived) dark and name such interests as scarification, pain, “kinky fetishes”, blood, razorblades, Lycan’s and his girlfriend. In his profile on Bolt, Steinke describes himself as “A Gothic individual who believes in blood, destruction, guts, gore and greed. Am I God’s champion or Satan’s angel?” Apparently, he would often comment to his friends how he was a 300 year old werewolf.
Perceivably, these traits, coupled with photographs of him wearing dark clothes and eyeliner, and having a shaved head, lead many people – as I have heard discussed – to comment on how “weird” and “freaky” he is. The truth is that no matter how “bad” a person might appear, they might be the nicest person ever. I have been to quite a few Punk Rock shows, and there are numerous people who “look” dangerous or threatening, but when you talk to them, they seem quite intellectual, or even so nice as to help you up if you get knocked down while dancing. But the 300 year old werewolf thing is kind of weird. All-in-all, his interests, style of dress, and falsified comments regarding himself were probably, in part, an attempt by him to appear to be part of certain scenes (music scenes, trends, etc.) and getting people to pay attention to him. At any rate, in an interview his Mother said he was a very nice young man. Mother’s are always right, as mine always says.
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