Muffin Tops For All

My mom is awesome, she just bought a Muffin Top Pan from her Avon lady. No, no, Im not kidding, I couldnt even make this shit up. If you know a Avon lady, get one of these sick pans. We the people are too good for stumps!

Derbs'

Wow, white people go fucking ape shit for this derby shit. Again Im hearing some mad talk about how wasted and fucked up people are going to be. Fair enough, the weather is shit, honestly the whole summer was shit and you work hard for the money so go fuckin at'er. In the spirit of derby dont forget to remember why you are there, take a momment, pause or keep stumbling if you are gonna fall over, look around through your one eye and take and big whiff of the fumes. Remember, this is a special special day in Fernie, friends and family coming together and expressing ourselves in what we truely love and do best apparently. Rock On.

please be safe and know your limits - sorry I just have to say it for the sake of the many times I have seen familiar faces at the derby buck naked in the bleachers winging abround "helicopters", or passed out in ditches, or starting stupid fights, or ...... ya you get the picture.

Impressive

Erin Frances. What can I say really, 'cept this girl has blown me away ever since the day I met her 4 years ago in Sarah Thomas's small ass kitchen while we slung back box wine till 4am. Not only has she been gifted from Jesus himself musically, but her sarcasm and unrelentless passion for gin tonics and some good 'ol straight talk will leave you breathless, and sometimes quite frankly, shocked and awed. She wears her heart on her sleve and will throw her red hair back and wickedly laugh in your face if you tell her that's a bad idea - she has no shortage of material for writing her songs.
Fernie born and raised and currently killin' it in Vancouver right now. She's been working it out in the studio every week turning out an album that will have you salivating at her voice and fist pumping her kick-some-ass female no-bullshit lyrics.
Erin Frances has honed in on her inner rock goddess and in the next year be prepared to see the curtains drawn as she announces loud and clear what she came here to do. Stressing her joy of loving and poingnant sophisticated revenge in her lyrics and sound, fuck man, you will love this girl.
Click This to see FACEBOOK FAN PAGE AND LISTEN TO HER NEW SINGLE

Caveman Party. West Fernie Rules

sooo I guess this thing is all legit and shit....

Tweet Tweet

Twitter is now infiltrating Fernie!! WHOA.
Schoolyard Musings has joined up !!!!
Follow @ SchoolyardM

BOOKED!

Del The Funky Homosapien has been booked for Fernie at Bulldogs Sunday April 11th. This has been confirmed!!! This is not a tease!!!!!The Last day of the hill. OMFG!!!!!

If you dont know who this is, I wont hold it against you, READ HERE YOU FOOL

Straight Talk on the "Quality of Life"

okay, so many of you reading of this wont know what Im even talking about, so let me give you the back story.

Recently, The City of Fernie hired a firm from the coast to conduct a "Quality of Life, Liveability + Sustainability" study. Yes another study. This study is to research through us locals why we like living in Fernie. To quote it:The City of Fernie along with Halcrow Consulting will present the Quality of Life Index and Liveability Reporting Initiative. A report that measures the vitality of our community and identifies significant trends in areas critical to our quality of life. This will be an important opportunity for community members and interested stakeholders to learn about and provide preliminary input on the proposed process for monitoring Fernie’s liveability.

The idea is that everyone in Fernie knows this is happening right now (ahhh nope) and contributes to this study. What do they do with the study after its done? Well who the fuck knows, but ideally it will help them plan where the town is going with keeping these quality of life things in mind. ahahahahahahhahahaahh ya right!! No Way Bullshit. This study is a waste of thousands of dollars.

Deep breaths.
I contributed my own personal sentiments to this study. My list included things like: I like that people are friendly, I love my friends, the nightclub scene is really good for a small town, you can walk everywhere, yada yada yada, but you know me, I just couldnt help myself, I JUST HAD to include my two cents cuz Im a shithead...
My SideNote:
I just want to note that I think having a quality of life here or really anywhere in the world requires money. This might not be the popular thing to mention, but I feel its the elephant in the room most of the time here in Fernie. Everyone in Fernie is unique, there are many different types of social sectors in Fernie - and I think they all need money for their quality of life. You want to mountain bike the trails and have weekends off to drink beer with friends? - You need money. You want to go camping and/hunting? - You need money. You want to garden all day in your hemp pants?- Well then you need money to make your steep morgage payment, so hopefully you have a husband with a good job bringing that in. You want your kids to ski race and see thier goals come to life?- Money. You want to have nice clothes and bar hop? - You need money. You want a Wildsight membership? - you need extra money. We want new fancy restaurants like "Picnic" to survive - we need more locals making reservations. You want to open a business, well you need money and people with money to support you. Money Money Money, its just the way it is. Your quality of life goes down when you lack money and jobs. We need more economic development here. We need professional jobs. When everyone has some money then we can all go have a good quality of life in what ever various reason we all want to stay here. It seems the never ending debate is the environment vs. development. Until the extreme environmentalists can wake up and understand that it IS possible to properly manage development/growth and the enviro then I cant see money really growing in Fernie, thrus a lack of quality of life.

To you can take this "study" and put it to something useful like papermache hats because not everyone is participating in this (I just randomly looked at Fernie.com, Ourfernie.com, the Free Press.ca and the City of Fernie's website and I cant find any real blatent info, and I just asked two random locals a 23 year old and a 29 year old and they never heard of it, the only thing I could find on it was a posting of the event online at OurFernie ahhhahahaha not even gonna go there, oh and I saw a poster with lots of writing on it posted on that goddamn eyesore the old movie store downtown) AND this is useless if we have no money in the valley to support everyones quality.

Hmpf.

No Game.

Oh dear. Michael Ignatieff, man you suck. I really thought you'd be a thorn in Harpers ass, turns out your games are tacky and old and no one is interested. Dude you gotta get some more game, who are your people??? Fire them. The latest attack ads are sooo, hmm, "American". After all this time you've had thats all you got? While you are playing junior high on this break from parliment all the Tories are around Canada doing press releases and press confrences on important issues they are "trying their best" to fix. I have tuned out your dribble and promptly flip to Simpsons and Seinfeld repeats while the news gives you some time on TV. Jus sayin.

Funny Story

So a group of 18 year old Calgary boys get a table at Gabs. They all try and order a beer, server denies them after ID'ing. They order food and eat it all up. One by one they leave Gabs. Until the server suddenly notices that the table of little boys has dined and dashed. Little Pricks. They phone RCR security, but no luck.
Next day, managar of Gabs is driving into Fernie from Hosmer, and there is a Range Rover in the ditch. Oh look who it is???!!! Manager pulls over and asks for them to pay te $160 bill NOW, cuz now she's got the license plate number. They collectively shit their pants and pull out $100 bills.

Fucking little rich kids ripin off a Fernie Business???? Nice Try ya lil shits. Karma works here in Fernie too.

KISS This

I dont know why this was made, but I love KISS so here you go...


which reminds me, I should share one on my fav KISS songs while we are at it...

The Train Returns

Today The ICE GALA tickets go on sale at Freyja!!!

and speaking of raising money for the Salvation Army...

Canadian Pacific's brightly decorated Holiday Train returns to the rails in December, raising food, money and awareness for food banks across North America. Last year, the Holiday Train helped raise more than $500,000 and 250,000 lbs of food and there is greater need this year. The Holiday Train makes a stop at the Fernie Arts Station on Saturday Dec 12th @ 6:30pm.

"Canadian Pacific is proud to support communities where we operate, raising more than $4 million in funds and two million pounds of food in the Holiday Train's first decade," said CP President and CEO Fred Green. "Each year, the Holiday Train's message gets stronger and the impact on our employees and in communities becomes more meaningful."

At each stop, Canadian Pacific provides a brightly decorated train, a box car converted into a stage, great musical talent and a corporate contribution to the local food bank. The community, in turn, rallies together

Couldnt of said it better myself.

Victory, and reflection.

So it seems, running a negative campaign, ignorance of facts, juvenile bullshit, bullying, smears and fucked-up humor - cant win you an election. Go figure.

After becoming publicly involved in the election as a supporter of Bill Bennett, I learned a few things that I didn't quite expect to. Now now, Im not so naive as to say that I didn't know politics could be so dog-eat-dog and dirty. C'mon I used to work in a newsroom and I used to be a reporter! I love elections! ...But some fundamental differences emerged from this election to me.
One thing I DID expect is to be confronted with differences of opinion because I know where I am, Im in Fernie, NDP territory. Bill has never won the Fernie vote before. So I knew I was going against the grain. I can handle that. What surprised me was that the opposing party's tactics were odd, dirty and disrepectful. I feel some crossed the line. It was a difficult thing to learn about my community that I so blindly beleived was "good people". Watching fellow community members that I had GREAT respect for, involve themselves and publicly support tactics that, to me, were sooooooo juvenile that it was blowing my mind week after week. I have lost sooo soo so much respect for people in this community that I once adored and admired. Im sad about it, truly am. Dont get me wrong, I am not sad they had a differnece of opinon, no no, thats fine, it was the tactics they used that I am shocked and dissapointed with. True colours were shown.
Bill Bennett's victory was the sweeeeeeeeetest victory ever! GodDamn!!!
I contemplated why it felt so good, I think when you struggle to survive and remain classy and true to your values in a campaign this dirty, you are filled with immense pride that doing the right thing paid off. Also, you hope the others learned something from the example you set. For all those who I have lost a great deal of respect for, I hope this is a good life lesson for you. A lesson in how to behave as an adult, how to show humility, how to have respect for fellow people that might have a different opinion then yourself, a respect for the truth and compassion. Your tactics got you nowhere.
Sorry to have this God complex right now, but the people I have worked on Bill's campaign with kept it classy. When I looked around the room at the victory party, I felt so proud and thankful to be surrounded with such competent community members.
We won. We won fair and square. We won without negative bullshit. The win feels extra good!

Endorsed

Today the Vancouver Sun has endorsed the Liberals for a third term. Ya Im not shocked, I mean seriously are you either?

Vancouver Sun Campbell and and Liberals have earned right to a third term.

Two weeks into the provincial election campaign, a story that appeared on the business pages of newspapers put a sharp focus on the central issue in this election — the economy.

Statistics Canada reported that British Columbia’s economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in 2008 for the first time in more than a quarter century. The last time that happened, B.C. was in the grip of the 1982 recession.

Businesses were being shuttered. Young people were leaving the province to find work elsewhere.

It doesn’t yet feel like that in the Lower Mainland. But the good times that just nine months ago felt like they would roll on forever are now a fading memory and the outlook is anything but rosy.

This world-wide recession didn’t start in B.C. and it won’t end here. But whoever leads the next provincial government must have a strong role in minimizing the damage to families and businesses, and positioning us so that when the world economy eventually recovers we will be ready to make the most of it. click here for entire article...

Can't Ignore The Facts

National Post: Carole James bets her principles, and loses
Posted: April 15, 2009, 8:30 AM

British Columbia’s perennially bizarre political culture proved true to form this week, as several high-profile environmental groups rallied around Gordon Campbell’s right-Liberal government and pledged to work against Carole James’s NDP opposition.
And we’re behind those groups, although one might well raise an eyebrow at participation in such a nakedly partisan intervention by tax-exempt charities such as the David Suzuki Foundation and ForestEthics.
It is perhaps slightly dodgy for them to issue carefully worded “apolitical” statements while piggybacking on the greater freedom properly enjoyed by other critics like the non-exempt Pembina Institute. But in any case, the overall message of this ad-hoc coalition is correct: By railing against B.C.’s carbon tax, Ms. James and the B.C. NDP are being insincere and cynical.Many mainstream environmentalists favour carbon taxes, because they discourage usage of all forms of greenhouse-gas-producing fuels, automatically distributing the economic burden according to usage. The associated economic incentives are in line with environmentalists’ goals: The more energy that people conserve, the more money they save.
But when gas prices were at their peak about a year ago, Ms. James gambled on populism instead of principle. She came out against the broad-based Campbell carbon tax, and instead advocated a cap-and-trade system that would hypothetically meet the same emissions-reductions targets, but impose the added costs only on a narrow group of industrial emitters.
By doing so, Ms. James was hoping to position herself as the champion of the little guy, and the enemy of big business. And we suppose that there are a few voters in B.C. who’ve been fooled by the gambit. But as anyone who’s studied the issue can attest, there’s no inherent economic advantage in either an adjustable carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system: Either way, the associated costs get passed down to the end user (that’s technical parlance for you and me) in one form or another. The only difference is that the cap-and-trade system — which would require close monitoring of individual purchasers and oversight of a carbon-credit exchange — involves more government tinkering and transaction costs.
By putting the overall burden on a narrower basis, moreover, James’s plan leaves more kinds of economic activity outside the incentive structure. And it depends on non-compulsory public participation in emissions cuts, which has never worked as a serious strategy and never will.
As for the consumers Ms. James is purportedly so concerned about, any potential savings would come with a cost in net jobs in the energy-producing and heavily energy-dependent sectors in B.C. So says Simon Fraser University enviro-economist Marc Jaccard, who modelled the NDP plan and estimates that 60,000 jobs would be sacrificed in the long term as a result of “the extremely high [greenhouse gas] prices that would be faced by B.C.’s industrial emitters under the NDP policies.”
Mr. Jaccard’s numerical assumptions might be questionable, but his unimpeachable broader point is that there can be no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to emissions reductions — notwithstanding socialist fantasies about making the “bad guys” pay. What governments can do, if they are serious about reducing carbon output, is to reduce the associated transaction costs and make sure there is an efficient payoff for the pain caused to consumers — which is more or less what Mr. Campbell’s government tried to do in the first place.
As bizarre as B.C.’s political circus has become, there is a larger lesson here for Canada’s mainstream left, which remains torn between its populist and elitist camps. While a specious environmental policy based on sticking it to the oil companies may play well on talk radio or in push polls, left-wing opinion-makes such as David Suzuki know better. And as this week’s goings on attest, they aren’t willing to keep their mouths shut just for old-time’s sake.
In the run-up to the May 12 B.C. election, many pundits have been speculating as to whether Mr. Campbell could win a third term for his Liberals. His odds have always been strong. But with the left running against itself, we don’t see how he can lose.

National Post


To me this is saying, the Liberals are prolly gonna be the next elected government in BC, sooo question is...do you want to elect a NDP MLA?? Troy Sebastian would be an opposition MLA with no experience for our voice way out here so far away from Victoria. If that happens, we will never get anything out here in the Valley ever again. Do you think the Liberal government will give a shit what an opposition MLA way out in the boonies is saying, let alone asking for??? uhhh No. Ask the West Kootenays how much attention they've had with an opposition MLA.
Bill Bennet has been a strong MLA, and has done more for this area then the history of MLAs in this riding - (prolly cuz he's strong and loud, and a shoots-from-the hip kinda guy)
Click here for list of accomplishments.

Be careful what you wish for Fernie.

LMFAO

http://vancitybuzz.blogspot.com/2009/04/ndp-release-platform-lfmao.html

Politic'in - Facts

Doctors
Did you know that Fernie has 15 doctors for a population of 4,000? That’s 3.75 per 1000, 30% more doc’s than Victoria and 47% more than the provincial average. Also, the physician supply dropped all over BC during the NDP years and has rebounded under the Liberal government

Nurses
The Liberal Government added 2,500 new nurse training spaces – that’s nearly 30 times more than the NDP created during the entire 1990s.
600 more nurses were hired under the Liberals.

The NDP eliminated 1,600 full-time nursing positions between 1993 and 1997.

Trent Got ME Good

Trent Raznor wins for best April Fool...

I fell for it!! ahhhhhh soo funny

http://www.nin.com/strobelight/

Claws Are Coming Out!

Our provincial election is coming up in May. Liberals or NDP, ya you get to decide, thats if you get your ass up to even vote. Dont even get me started on how low the Fernie Municipal voter turnout was.
Anyway, I'll save that rant for later....
I noticed some TV commericals have already been popping up that discreetly mention not to vote liberal. They sure do have their points. Point taken.
However, dont forget what our local MLA has been up too. I personally really like Mr. Bill Bennett, who is also the Minister of Tourism. I have personally asked him questions (who can say that??) about coal bed methane, tourism and why things are the way they are. He ALWAYS has treated me and my questions with respect and his replys have left me informed and enlightend on many topics. His office is totally open to you too. Inside of bitching on the side lines, I suggest you get informed first.
Just a couple things the BC Liberals have done for our area alone since they had to clean up the province after the NDP:

-The expanded Canadian Rockies International Airport;
-A $34 million expansion of our regional hospital and 35 new specialists;
-A $16 million expansion of College of the Rockies;
-The fix of the deadly Steamboat Hill;
-Hundreds of thousand$ into eco system restoration of our natural grasslands;
-The best invasive plant prevention program in BC;
-The East Kootenay Angling Management Plan;
-The Southern Rocky Mountain Management Plan;
-My private member's bill, "the Heritage Right to Hunt and Fish";
-Rennovations to the Fernie Arena;
-Millions in infrastructure for Fernie, Sparwood and Elkford;
-New high school in Sparwood.
-Additional funding for Kootenay Rockies Tourism;
-Fernie's Resort Municipality status;
To name a few things.

Keep informed.

Shout Out to Bill Bennett! (Did you know he was a chamber President for two years in Cranbrook. He grew up in a small business family and owned a small business himself - a wilderness lodge) Bill.Bennett@gov.bc.ca

And You Dont Think Tourism Counts?

Tembec Shutdowns Announced
Tembec Employees across the country are getting hit once again by the declining economy.
The Company has announced there will be a series of shutdowns affecting all of its British Columbia facilities, along with mills in Manitoba and Ontario.
The Cranbrook finger joint facility is already shut down. The Canal Flats and Elko sawmills will shut down for approximately 8 weeks starting Monday.
The softwood craft pulp mill located in Skookumchuck will be put on halt February 23rd for a six week period. Chetwynd's high yield pulp mill also faces a shutdown. It stopped operations yesterday and will remain on lockdown until there's support from market conditions.
The shutdowns in BC will affect just under a thousand workers.
President of Tembec's forest product group, Dennis Rounsville had requested a hold on the information until employees could be informed by the company itself.