Month: September 2008

While walking to Hampton’s farewell party on Friday, I passed by Jupiter, one of the relatively new shops that have sprung up on Queen Street just west of Spadina in the past few months:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

In my youth, a store like this would have to resort to all sorts of semantic and semiotic trickery to avoid getting shut down. They’d say that they were selling generic “smoking supplies” to enthusiasts who liked to “roll their own cigarettes“. These days — at least here in Accordion City — you can be pretty up-front about this sort of business: they say very clearly that they’re in the weed accessory business, with the same sort of pride Hank Hill has in his business of selling “propane and propane accessories”.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent food-borne pathogen problems, from salmonella in tomatoes and peppers earlier this summer to the recent listeriosis contamination of cheese and processed meat, it’s that we need to pay better attention to the journey our food takes from farm to table.

One of the interesting side effects of the outbreak is that people seem to be switching away from packaged meats and either going to their butcher for deli meat. Some are even forgoing deli meats and buying fresh roasts that they cook and slice themselves for their sandwiches. Even without listeriosis as an incentive, it’s a good idea: it’s cheaper, you can spice them any way you like, and you’re not adding nitrites to them.

A number of local butchers are playing up the fact that they’re not large meat-processing plants and pay better attention to their work. Here’s a sign I saw outside Astra Deli on Bloor Street West on Saturday. They’ve got some good stuff, and they make some pretty mean meat-on-a-bun combos:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

That’s the title of one of the articles in the current edition of Cosmopolitan, which I saw yesterday while grocery shopping:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

Given that Cosmo comes from the pop culture machine that reinforces the notions that politeness is wimpy, dickery is the same thing as assertiveness and Grey’s Anatomy is good television, I suspect the article might be better titled Give Me What I Want or I Will Create a Commotion that will Demean Us All.

Related Reading

Back in March, I posted another article based on a Cosmo article title. This one involved use of the word “vajayjay” (you know, that new slang term for “a lady’s nethers”).

I’m just sayin’…

For some weekend reading, I present the bittersweet Gospodin Libar (Mister Bookseller), a short story in comic form by Darko Macan and Tihomir Celanovic. Originally published in Croatian, a comic enthusiast has lovingly translated and re-lettered the comic into English, and I’m glad she did. If you’re a bibliophile, you’ll love this story.

I’ve posted the first two pages here, and you can read the full eight pages over at the comic site here.

Click the images above to read the full comic.

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

“Was this ad supposed to be funny?” is the question that a lot of techies are asking after having seen the first of the new series of Microsoft ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The ad, which sets up both the tone for future commercials and the Bill/Jerry dynamic, could’ve been lifted straight from any number of Seinfeld episodes. In fact, the “Churro? No thanks” exchange is practically a repeat of the “Snapple? No.” exchanges in the episodes The Virgin and The Visa.

It’s a real shame that the ad turned out this way because there’s prior work with Bill and celebrities that is funny and gives Microsoft a warmer, fuzzier image. Here are two of the most notable ones…

Bill and John Heder in a Napoleon Dynamite Spoof

This video was shown at Microsoft’s 2005 Professional Developers Conference, and unlike the ad with Seinfeld, it makes good use of the source material and the guest star, and better still, it’s actually funny. They could’ve easily repurposed this ad or called Jon Heder to shoot some more:

Bill Gates’ Last Day

This one’s not as funny or as clever as the Napoleon Dynamiteone, but it’s still amusing and cute: it’s a video shown at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year that purports to be a documentary of Bill’s last full day at Microsoft. This one features a boatload of celebrities: Bono, Hillary Clinton, Bob Costas, Al Gore, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Jay-Z, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Stewart, Steven Spielberg and Brian Williams.

We’ll have to wait ands see if the next Gates/Seinfeld ad is any better, or at least generates more than a mild chuckle. They’ve got nowhere to go but up…