Month: January 2003

Strange toys are coming out of China these days. First, the musical box/night light toy that supposedly whispers “I hate you” and now this:

The photo was taken in Baguio City, Philippines, a city north of Manila and high up in the mountains (so high that the temperature drops to a chilly 12 degrees C — that’s 53 degrees farenheit — and the locals break out the leather jackets.) The game is made in China and retails for 250 Pesos (about US$4.70). You play the Americans, and the object of the game is to defend the World Trade Center from the bombers.

Another version of the game is shown on the Web site bootlegactionfigures.com. The packaging uses photographs from the September 11th disaster. Classy.

The Tapei Times reviewed the game:

Laden vs USA is a monumentally boring game, but its value as pure kitsch may be a turn-on for collectors of such items.

The game’s soundtrack is an attempt at a Middle Eastern melody, but the sound is so high-pitched and grating it’s almost impossible to listen beyond five notes. Adding a touch of surrealism, Deck the Halls or London Bridge plays when you win a round.

The game has two versions, one that pits bin Laden against Bush in a boxing match and a version in which a submarine shoots down fighter jets screaming around the tiny screen.

Both versions require some imagination on the part of the player. The bin Laden and Bush characters look nothing like their real-life likenesses in the boxing one and the submarine in the second version is hilariously out of place in the context of Afghanistan, which the manufacturers apparently forgot is a landlocked country. Made by Panyu Gaoming Electronic of Guangzhou, China, Laden vs USA is now out of production for reasons that a company spokeswoman refused to clarify. She also declined to answer what the submarine is doing in Afghanistan and whether the player in the boxing version controls bin Laden or Bush.

From neighbouring Taiwan comes Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank (gotta love the names that Asian manfacturers come up with for their videogames!), which according to the Taipei Times, was conceived a day after the World Trade Center attack:

On Sept. 12, the managers of INSREA, a Taiwanese game software firm, convened a hasty meeting at their downtown Taipei office to discuss how to make the events of the previous day into a gripping video game.

Hu Long-Yun, marketing director at INSREA said (half-jokingly, for what it’s worth, according to the Times) “We’re the first company to make software for a game specifically themed on the conflict in Afghanistan…..we wish bin Laden would contact us so we could give him a copy of the game.”

Hey, Mr. Hu: Du lei lo mo*, punkass.

* Extremely rude. Ask your Cantonese-speaking friends, but not in front of their moms.

[Thanks to Ed’s Up, Hos Down!, where I saw the photo; he found it in Yahoo News.]

For the first time since moving back to Toronto from San Francisco back in spring 2001, I missed a Kick Ass Karaoke. I had to do a little freelance programming work for a client in order to guarantee that I’d be able to cover next month’s rent.

I thought my absence would go unnoticed, but it didn’t, which proves two things:

• Never doubt the power of the accordion
• More importantly, I’ve got some great friends. I love you all!

A phone message from Will

Monday, 6:00 p.m.

Call answer voice: You have…one…new message. To hear this message, press “one”

Will:Hey, Joey, it’s Will! Long time no see, and we missed you at karaoke last week. You never miss it! I hope everything’s okay.

Hey, I’m actually at the gym and I’m watching you in the Body Attack class right now, doing those punches. Looking good, my friend, looking good…oops, you just went the wrong way…oh, there you go.

Anyhow, I hope everything’s okay, you were missed at karaoke, let’s catch up some time. Talk to you soon. Ciao! [Beep]

Thanks, Will! I’ll give you a ring.

Email from Carson

Wednesday, 5:52 a.m.

Missed you last week.

Everything OK? Do you have that flu?

All your sweet babies came.

Joey! Where are you?

— Cars

All my sweet babies came? Damn my client! Damn him to hell!

Oh wait, I need his money. Bless my client! Bless him!

Next month, sweet babies, next month! I’ll catch up with you soon, Carson!

A phone call from Karin

Karin: Hey there! We missed you last Wednesday. I was a little worried. You weren’t sick, were you?

Me: No, I was doing some urgent work for a client. I needed the money and they needed it first thing the following morning.

Karin: That’s too bad. We had a great time. We did The Strokes’ Last Nite. Will was there. We all missed you, and Carson was asking where you were.

Me: I wanted to be there. I haven’t missed a single Kick Ass Karaoke in about a year and a half.

Karin: It was a lot of fun, but I think I’ll be doing things a little more low-key for the next few weeks.

Me: And low-key for you is what…keeping it down to seven, maybe eight drinks?

Just kidding, Karin! Looking forward to a low-key evening soon.

Once again, to all my friends: thanks, and the job situation is improving dramatically. I’ll be back on the scene before you know it.

I drop by the Your Good Health (hmmm…no Web site) store on Queen Street West quite often. It’s only a couple of blocks from my house, it’s on the way to the gym, and since the summer, I’ve made friends with the staff, especially Char.

Although it’s called a “health food store”, for the longest time, they didn’t actually stock much actual food, save for the protein bars. They carried a wide range of protein powders, vitamins and other supplements, diet aids, muscle-building pills and powders, some cosmetics and shampoos, but nothing that looked as if it belonged on your dinner table. I remember that once this summer, a guy from South Asia came in and was immediately confused because:

• A place billing itself as a health food store didn’t have any recognizable food in it
• Coming from a place where you see starving people every day, it’s mind-blowing to come to one of the best-fed nations in the world and find out that they still need food supplements.

That state of affairs has changed since the management embarked on a program to increase the sales at that particular branch. It was decided to make the place more grocery-like and they started stocking health food. Now you can purchase rice cakes, soups made with free-range chicken and organic vegetables, pasta made with spelt and a whole rack full of those mostly-twigs-and-bark cereals that my housemate Paul got brainwashed into eating by a couple of hippie chicks.

The problem for me is that I’m on a low–carb diet (which is working quite nicely — between that and a lot of working out, I’m approaching the fifteen-pounds-lost point) and most of the stuff in the store is low-fat. Low-fat often means high-carb. In fact, when some food item — say, soup — comes in both a regular and low-fat or “light” version, the low-fat version is almost always higher in carbohydrates. A number of customers at Your Good Health, myself included, pointed this out and they’ve been pretty good about stocking some low-carb items.

This brings me to the title of this entry. One kind of low-carb item they carry is low-carb baking mix. It’s made of soy flour instead of wheat flour, which is not only low in carbohydrates, but pretty high in protein. It’s also incredibly expensive. One can of Keto Quick Bread Mix, which contains enough to make one loaf of bread, is selling for 8 dollars Canadian (that’s $5.25 American). On a per-weight basis, the Atkins Bake Mix sells for the same price; it comes in a bigger canister that sells for $18 Canadian. That’s a lot of bread for very little bread, so it had better be tasty.

(Is soy flour really that expensive? They give away holy communion bread for free, and they tell me it’s high in Jesus.)

My question goes out to you low-carbers out there who’ve tried the stuff: which tastes better? Or should I just make like Jared and just have regular bread (he had a 6″ sub for lunch and a 12″ sub for dinner every day for at least a year)? Put your opinions down in the comments or e-mail me.

Earlier, I promised that if your nominations got me on the nominees list for the 2003 Bloggies, I’d tell you the stories of my two worst dates ever.

Even though my bid to become one of the nominees was not successful, I’d still like to thank everyone who reads this weblog.

So I decided “screw it, I’m telling those stories anyway.”

Give me a week to write them up. I promise you’ll get a chuckle out of them. I hope they don’t turn you off dating.

I didn’t make the nominations for the 2003 Bloggies. I still encourage you to check out the nominees, as you’ll probably find a lot of interesting weblogs you might not have seen before. (Even if they are accordion-deficient lesser blogs. Can’t eat caviar all the time, you know.)

Someone asked if I was still taking that Tae Bo class at the gym. Yes, and pretty regularly. It beats the boredom of stationary bikes and treadmills, and I’m pretty sure it’s helped me drop a pants size.

But let’s get one thing straight: it’s not Tae Bo. Tae Bo is a registered trademark of Billy Blanks Inc. (or whatever the company is called). It’s Body Attack. See? The names are different.

I just call it Tae Bo because everyone knows what Tae Bo is, what with that spate of TV commercials a couple of years back. When you call it “Body Attack”, you get funny stares.

How’d I get suckered into this again? Oh yeah. (Never underestimate the persuasive power of cute girls.)

Two Sundays ago, I was at Amber’s and Micheline’s wine and cheese party with Paul when the subject of our exercise class came up.

“Amber, why don’t you come to class anymore?”

“I can’t take it any more!” she said with a laugh. “It’s just too…cheesy.”

Amber probably doesn’t need to go to too many gym classes anyway. She’s a dancer and a dance instructor; she gets a pretty full daily workout already and was probably the fittest person in the class. Other than me, she was the only person who did “real” pushups (on your toes) during that portion of the class rather than the Beautiful People pushups (on your knees) that the rest of the class does.

“But you do interpretative modern dance. It doesn’t get more gruyere than that.” I pantomimed some “Jamilah and Darcel“ Solid Gold dancer moves.

She threw me an evil look.

I don’t see Amber’s problem with the silliness factor of the exercises. Really, folks, if you’re going to do modern dance — which I think of as the socially acceptable face of mime — you shouldn’t have any problem with punching and kicking air or looking like you’re a member of the Bruce Lee Chorus Line.

The music, on the other hand, could use some work. The opening song in the current workout series (which changes every three months) is a Euro-dance-dreck mixed version of the Backstreet Boys’ Shape of My Heart. And the curds just keep on coming: a terrible dance remix of Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, some forgotten 80’s hair-metal track and the obligatory-licensing-hassle-free techno treatment of a classical piece, this one being the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (some know it as the Ode to Joy, some know it as a hymn, and most kids in Ontario know it only as the Drink Milk, Love Life song from all those annoying TV commercials). The only bright spot is the pushups/situps portion of the class, where they use a slightly extended version of Goldfinger’s punked-up cover of Nena’s 99 Red Balloons (99 Luftballons in German), but Diane the instructor didn’t like it, and away it went.

If I had my way, I’d change the music completely. More meat, less cheese. A little more loud rock. The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Hives and The Vines for sure. For female vocals, Le Tigre, Bis and for a real kicker, Butt Trumpet’s I’ve Been So Angry Lately, because no workout is complete without the f-word played at maximum volume. And definitely better dance. For popular appeal, the holy trinity of mainstream electronica — Fatboy Slim, Moby and the Chemical Brothers — would be a good start. There’s also a treasure trove of dance music out there that doesn’t get radio or video airplay that probably could be licensed cheaply. I’d like to hear some mash-ups too — the one where Beck’s Mixed Bizness gets gene spliced wth AC/DC’s Highway to Hell would be a good one. The “Industrial” genre would also lend itself well to Body Attack: who hasn’t listened a little KMFDM, Front 242, Ministry and Der Trentster and thought, “hey, this would be a good soundtrack for giving someone a boot to the head?” Same goes for gangsta rap. Anything about puttin’ a hurt on The Man.

Maybe I should just start my own line of instructional videos. I mean, if this guy can, anyone can:

Of course, in San Francisco, where this story takes place, this is everyday small talk*:

J: I have a good story.

Mighty Girl: Tell it.

J: I’m not sure if it’s really acceptable dinner conversation.

Mighty Girl: Oh, who cares? Tell it.

J: OK. So my balls were really itching, right?…

(from the January 13th entry in Margaret Berry’s blog, Mighty Girl.)

* I kid, I kid.