nothing in winnipeg

But this time, Justin Bieber…

Melissa — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:57:44 +0000

Justin Bieber has a long and honoured history of saying idiotic things. Unsurprisingly, his latest contribution to the treasure trove of stupid things has him in hot water: he wrote in the guest book at Anne Frank House that he hoped Frank would have been “a Belieber.” It’s not the kind of thing a person [...]

Full Circle

Melissa — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:41:00 +0000

A little over five months ago, I blew up this blog. Deleted it all and turned it into something of a diary of a loss I had no other way to process, except by spilling out my guts. A layoff, not personal, just a fact of cuts. Lost my job and my dream and my [...]

Idle No More, and All The Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know

Melissa — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 23:01:16 +0000

If anything out of Idle No More is crystal-clear, it is this: when it comes to First Nations and how they work, a daunting number of Canadians have no freakin’ clue what they’re talking about. No clue, not one, not even the slightest flicker of a lighthouse of a clue to warn them off the [...]

Hockey at the heart of it all

Melissa — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 02:42:48 +0000

When The Globe and Mail first told us that the Jets were coming back, he was in Winnipeg. Not for the first time, but for the last, and just to see if we could salvage a friendship from the wreckage of all of that. So we were on the couch together, but sitting far apart, [...]

Faults, Fears and Twitter Beers

Melissa — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 05:09:16 +0000

Oh, I just threw this out there because it was sort of a frustrating night: Although thoroughly unplanned, it went over very well. For all of those that joined in, we had a lot of good Tweets, and said many nice things, and even knew we meant them. We met a lot of cool people. [...]

How Not To Have Your Eureka Moment

Melissa — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:29:33 +0000

Sometimes, for those of us with any measure of privilege, the unraveling of that privilege begins with a Eureka moment. By this, I mean the moment where a circumstance forced your eyelids wide, and made you see the ugly things you’d previously had the privilege to pass on by: racism, for instance, or sexism, and [...]

Why I Write

Melissa — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:38:43 +0000

Whenever I turn my eyes to a page, I can’t forget Mrs. Brooker’s face. I never knew Mrs. Brooker, nor even know her first name. She must have died long before I was born, her passing recorded in some dusty crate of records in a northern English town. But I see her, because George Orwell [...]

Revive The 90s: Rusty Edition

Melissa — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:26:45 +0000

On tonight’s late-night edition of Nothing In Winnipeg, we’re going to talk about rock’n'roll. Here’s where I start feeling a little old: the mid-1990s were a bang-up time to be a Canadian kid with a guitar, a Kool-aid dye job and a bad attitude. Music was happening. MuchMusic was happening, and we lived and died [...]

What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting

Melissa — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:12:00 +0000

So I got a fun present hand-delivered to my door today! I got out of the shower to fetch it and everything because everyone loves an unexpected package. Or err, usually I do… Sadly, even this wasn’t all it seemed to be. Hrrrrrrkay. So after enjoying some lighthearted Twitter banter about breastmilk and formula cocktails [...]

Same old addictions situation

Melissa — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 03:43:46 +0000

Jessica Naomi Jones is missing. Jessica Naomi Jones is missing, and her car has been found, and her wallet has been found, and her keys and purse and credit cards have been found. But she is still vanished, her footsteps grown faint somewhere on Furby Street and from there, untraceable. Oh God, may she be [...]