Friday, February 15, 2008

Airboarding the Eelpout

Wikipedia defines waterboarding as "a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent."
Every year in February (this year beginning Feb. 15), during the International Eelpout Festival in Walker, Minn., fishermen and women will practice the technique of airboarding.
That is, they will drag unwary or unlucky fish to the surface and throw them onto the ice until they can be weighed en masse. The choicest of those fish will end up hanging from racks near the festival tents during the festivities, gasping for oxygen for minutes if not hours before they die. Take a look at the photos at www.eelpoutfestival.com to see.
I don't believe it's torture, any more than the Justice Department believes it's torture when they subject a person to waterboarding. After all, festival-goers are trying to win prizes for the most fish, or the greatest weight or something, and they're just eelpout, after all. While the Justice Department is just trying to capture the most terrorists, or the greatest terrorist or something, and they're just Muslims.
It isn't that the eelpout, or burbot, is valuable. Even though, again according to Wikipedia, the burbot's liver--which is six times the size of the average freshwater fish's-- is also 3-4 times more potent in vitamin D, and 4 – 10 times more potent in vitamin A than 'good grades' of cod liver oil."
Apparently it's such an ugly fish it deserves to die by slow strangulation, hanging, gasping its life away. Because for these critters, death IS imminent.

Monday, February 11, 2008

RV Show is over, Golf Show coming!
The Minneapolis St. Paul RV show was held at the Convention Center in frigid Minneapolis from 2/8-2/10, with vehicles from $1500-$450,000 on display. I attended Friday night and videotaped various units and some interviews, then did some rough edits on Saturday, following up with another session Sunday to try and fill in necessary information.
All of this footage I plan to assemble into at least one show for Minneapolis Telecommunications Network, and I'll probably break that down into a number of shorts to plug into the 'net.
In the next few weeks I will get together with some of the vendors to add extra information.
Meanwhile, I'm going to try and get permission to videotape the Minneapolis Golf Show starting 2/22. This will allow me to interview some of the pros and course managers from a wide variety of venues, both in the Twin Cities and outstate as well. Plus, perhaps I'll get a chance to play with some of the new equipment.
Again, I'll put together a show for MTN and some shorts for the 'net.
Keep an eye here.