Posts Tagged ‘Medicine Hat News’
I was reading the Medicine Hat News on Tuesday when I stumbled upon my favourite section, Ticked Off & Tickled Pink and read this comment:
Ticked Off
I’m ticked off at the placement of the pap test ads. First they were next to a headline talking about student accomplishments, then beside a muffin. Appetizing. Now they’re a Canada Day treat. What a fantastic way to celebrate Canada Day.
I more or less read the paper everyday, but mostly just the headlines so I didn’t see what he or she was talking about days earlier. I flip the page back over, and see the following:
Talk about unforunate ad placement, it’s even worse than the location he or she described, especially since the arrow in the ad points to “Salmon”. I know most of this stuff is fairly automated or at least not a conscious decision by the layout person, but, sheesh…
The Gas City? - Original Photo by Mitch Woods via Flickr
To those of you who haven’t been following this, several weeks ago, Mayor Norm Boucher told the Medicine Hat News’ Amanda Stephenson that he was thinking of trying to re-brand Medicine Hat; he described that the current slogan and marketing might not be giving us much credit in terms of recognition. He also brings up the point about how Medicine Hat is ranked 82nd out of 157 best places to live in Canada which he postulates might be a matter of “how we sell ourselves”.
There’s been a huge uproar over this in both the comments section and in the Ticked Off & Tickled Pink sections on the Medicine Hat News. The majority of which are personal assaults against Norm Boucher – real mature, guys/gals.
Released today in a Medicine Hat News story by Amanda Stephenson, the slogan will officially stay “The Gas City” after the much criticism against the change. The votes against the change was unanimous by the Medicine Hat Aldermen who meet last night to settle the fate of the slogan.
While I understand the heritage and long standing culture behind the slogan, does it really represent what Medicine Hat is now or where it is going in the future? If we are keeping it for the sake of tradition then what’s the point of a slogan that doesn’t describe the place that you live accurately. I originally moved here from Regina, “The Queen City” and even though I am attached to the slogan and heritage behind it, It doesn’t represent it anymore – its slogan, like Medicine Hat’s becomes functionless nostalgia. I’m a little bit torn on the whole thing.
Rebranding the Gas City – Medicine Hat News
Gas City slogan to stay – Medicine Hat News
Mitch Woods’s Photostream @ Flickr
As found in the Medicine Hat News: The Medicine Hat and District Food Bank is holding a garage sale and BBQ this weekend. It will be held on Saturday (May 23rd), from 9AM to 4PM in the food bank parking lot which is at 532 South Railway St. SE. It is a charity-style garage sale which means anybody can bring items to donate; although I think the deadline just ended as I am posting this. There will be both breakfast (coffee and muffin for $1) and lunch (burger, chips and pop for $3) available to visitors.
Also, keep in mind, as posted earlier, The Farmer’s Market will officially open Saturday as well. Looks like I got lots of shopping to do tomorrow!
I’m sure most of you know this website by now since it’s fairly popular in the city, but you might not know the details. Medicine Hat Menus is a website dedicated to listing full local restaurant’s menus. They also offer maps, links, addresses and other information (all the common YellowPages stuff).
Medicine Hat Menus Logo
Quite a few restaurants (30+) are listed but there is also some that aren’t – most of these places that aren’t listed are chains or corporations. Medicine Hat Menus is more about local food and restaurants and big chains probably don’t see any value in a site like this – but I still think they should at least take advantage of it. I think it’s a great service and probably more useful than any traditional advertising restaurant owners in the city use; however, Medicine Hat Menus also promotes itself and its clients in the Medicine Hat News newspaper (physical print advertising) and on the Medicine Hat News website through skyscraper ads which really justifies the cost. I’ve also spotted some promotions in hotel and motel room directory books, catering to out of town people. I’ll also say while I am involved in the design and development of the project, I do personally believe in it 100% and I also just struck a partnership (link exchange) between our sites.
Since YouTube is the video God of the Internet, and Vaughn and I are no exception in having accounts to upload videos, I set out to find some prime Medicine Hat YouTube accounts, so here they are:
MHCVideo is my user account I made to upload not only my own videos, but videos from the Video I and II class I was in during college, so there are also a few student videos to view.
Drathy is Vaughn’s user account (one of his internet pseudonyms), mostly used to upload his own videos done in college, as well as gaming videos that synergize with one of his websites, The Gamer’s Journal
Bent Radio is the user account for someone that was in First Year when we were in Third Year. His name is Matt and that is about all I know regarding him. He has a funny video though that we saw at the Video Show in December-ish.
The Newsom Brothers generally do short 10-45 second videos regarding a lot of questionable stuff. Pretty funny if you are not grossed out easily.
And some others:
Medicine Hat College Campus
Medicine Hat Blog
Medicine Hat News
Tiger’s Hockey
Kim Johnston
Chat TV
Some featured videos after the jump:
Twitter Twittering Tweets. If you don’t already know somehow, Twitter is a social networking and extremely popular micro-blogging service that enables users to post short messages (or tweets) from their phone, computer, their own website and other devices. There is not a lot of people quite a few people and businesses that post regularly on Twitter that are from Medicine Hat. This post is another one of my famous lists, so here it goes:
*Updated July 26th, 2009*
Medicine Hat Public Library
That’s right, the MHPL uses Twitter to post updates and events happening in the Library. It’s nice to see a place you would think would be fairly old-school using this service.
Medicine Hat College
Now, even the Medicine Hat College has begun to tweet! I’m told they will begin to post event info, advisor updates and more.
Medicine Hat News
Medicine Hat News has started posting links to their top and local stories using the “twitterfeed” web application.
TriCube Media
Local web design and development company has just started using Twitter to post and will post a variety of things including finished/portfolio work, cool gadgets, internet happenings, and more.
From Womb to Cradle
The From Womb to Cradle posts about pregnancy, birth, postpartum and parenting information as well as professional events.
Memory Lane Computers
This local computer store and web development company uses Twitter to post about new stock, technology/computer news and other things.
I originally had a very large list here of individuals in Medicine Hat that post on twitter, but it just got to hard to keep up with. So instead, please take a look at who Medicine Hat Media follows (login required). We try to follow everybody from Medicine Hat, unless they have been inactive for months, then we usually un-follow them to keep our list active; however, we do try to keep all the businesses and organizations followed.
Well that concludes it, I hope you found some twitterers that tweet in Medicine Hat to follow or friend! Okay, I’m sick of saying Twitter related words now. One thing I did notice was the mass majority of Twitter users also have their own website, in most cases it is another blog which 99% of the time contains their Twitter feed in it. Comment if I have missed you!
*Thanks to Sarah and Michelle*
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.
If you are like me then your favourite section of the Medicine Hat News is reading the commentary, and one section in particular “tickles” your fancy – Ticked Off & Tickled Pink. Home to the strange, weird, stupid, infuriating and funny comments from people around the city. Recently the Medicine Hat News website has posted a “best of” list showcasing 20 of the funniest (stupidest) comments submitted this last year.
Medicine Hat News – Ticked Off/Tickled Pink – Best of 2008
Some of my favourites from the list:
A little specific aren’t we?
“Ticked Off: I’m ticked off that my assistant CEO is allowed to abuse employees by throwing shoes at them. It’s a degrading and an embarrassment to our industry. Something needs to be done.”
Definition of irony?
“Ticked Off: I’m a little bit ticked off because all you have in the Ticked Off/Tickled Pink column is ticked off. Nothing positive, everything is negative. How about putting some stuff that is a little brighter so everyone can smile and laugh.”
Wow… possibly the best comment ever?
“Tickled Pink: I am tickled pink that the 1970s cheesy, pornstar, handlebar mustache still exists in this world. It can turn a little man into a big man, especially if he suffers from small man syndrome.”
Definitely has their priorities in order:
“Ticked Off: I’m fed up with the constant time change every six months. In our house, the clocks are not changed and every six months we are right on time.”
1 word: Google
“Ticked Off: I’m ticked off on Thursday’s paper, it shows Malcolm Bauld, a Montreal based artist, coming to play in Medicine Hat at the Ottoman Lounge. I’d like to know where the Ottoman Lounge is. Is it in Medicine Hat? In Montreal? Or Calgary?”