great news!

my new jantzen shirt came today! it is awesome! blue and brown check! brokeback chic!

top 100

if I were to make this a top 100 of my blog posts, every post I have ever written, including this one, would be on it. and there would be no blank spaces. just saying.

blogs are so much better than work

written summary of all my work this summer: 2,438 words. 559 of those are my bibliography, so my work this summer clocks in at a smooth 1,879 words.

blog? 18,790, counting that paragraph above. I did not make that up. dear future employer. if you ever hire me, please be advised that if you pay me for 10 hours I will spend 1 of them working and 9 of them blogging. or maybe I will spend 1 working and 10 blogging, I never really understood ratios like that. which is a shame because I love horse racing, but all that 10:1 business confuses me.

observations on canoe

many sweet things in a recent article about canoe, a toronto eatery. for easy reading, a list:

1) “a recent $408.24 delivery of bison.” that is so sweet.
2) they google their VIPs. I hope to one day be a restaurant VIP, or else to work at a restaurant and google some VIPs.
3) last year canoe spent $74,000 on foie gras. I wonder how many lobes that works out to.
4) canoe documents “moments of truth” in which a server goes out of his or her way to please a customer. I would trade half of my $408.24 worth of bison to read that document. I love service excellence.
5) canoe’s servers are allowed to carry only two dishes at a time. four-top? team service I LOVE WELL EXECUTED TEAM SERVICE.
6) the S on each spiegelau wine glass must face the tip of the place setting’s knife. I LOVE ATTENTION TO DETAIL
7) THE SALT SHAKER ON EACH TABLE MUST FACE SOUTH. MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING WITH HOW AMAZING THAT IS. THEY CARE SO MUCH ABOUT YOUR DINING EXPERIENCE I LOVE THAT.

60,000 is your annual birkin budget

oprah is interviewing a couple who pretty much does not want to get married but are kind of going ahead with it because they have already spent 60,000 on the wedding. oprah keeps going on about how much cash that is. "60,000 puts you in the hole!" said oprah.

oprah winfrey, give me a break. you spend 60,000 on afternoon tea with dr. phil. 60,000 does not put you in the hole, oprah. go buy some cars for your audience or something.

noname facial tissue redux

we just picked up our first case of the fall/winter 06/07 noname facial tissues. new this season in box design? a collage of black and white 1950s family photos. and I am pretty sure they are not recreations, because they have old cars in the background and stuff. and the outfits and hair styles look pretty authentic. so since I doubt noname has an extensive art direction budget for its tissue boxes, I am pretty confident in saying that these are actually someone’s old photos.

IF I EVER CATCH SOMEONE SELLING MY OLD PHOTOS TO NONAME FOR THEIR PACKAGING DESIGN I WILL BE VERY MAD. jeeze it is noname, how much would they pay anyway? I mean if walmart wanted them or something, that is a different story. they have a global empire, they would probably pay some pretty good coin. or even target, because they really try to make good design accessible to everyone, they say so in all their ads, so my family photos might end up on a sweet lamp or something. BUT I SWEAR, DO NOT SELL MY FAMILY PHOTOS TO NONAME.

processed fromage

we were at the grocery store a few weeks ago and I tried to put some of those kraft singles in the cart. but mila was all up in my face like hold up, I do not want any of that processed cheese in our home. something about it being lowbrow or something.

now do not get me wrong. I very much turn my nose up at cheez whiz, cool whip, et al. I have no tolerance for most processed foods. ideally my cheese would come with a picture of the cow that produced it, and my whipped cream should be in liquid 35% format so that I may do a shot or two of the white stuff before I whip it.

but on burgers I do not think there is a substitute for kraft singles. there is a block of 5 year raw milk cheddar in the fridge? nope, pass me the kraft. single origin artisanal emmental? I will still take the modified milk product, please. maybe I should call boulud, mcewan and their gourmet burger brethren and give them the heads up. brie de meaux has nothing on kraft singles.

please take rr off the air rright away

the city tv man just voiced the words “food guru rachael ray.” food guru? excuse me?

“garlicky holy guacamole!” (her punctuation, mind) is not the work of a food guru, it is the work of an imbecile. “macho gazpacho vegetable chunk salad” sounds disgusting and does not even make sense. there is nothing macho about it, nor is it a soup. I will concede that is contains vegetables, and it is a salad. funny though, I somehow do not think escoffier ever went around telling his staff to ‘chunk’ some veg.

do not mess with the stump

the bay adelaide stump is so cute and scrappy. a little late, but I just read that they did some testing, and the concrete was too hard to just knock down. so they have to drill all these holes in it to put some chemicals in that will weaken the concrete. but it was so tough that it was even difficult for the worker men to drill into, and it took them a long time. the little worker men cannot handle a little stump? it has got some serious spunk, that stump.

teen poor choice

this teen choice award show is simply appalling. it is such a flagrant demonstration of the misguided nature of today’s popular media. they just gave out the award for choice grill. as in grillz. you know, tooth bling.

I mean seriously, how did brooke hogan beat out nelly and flava flav? appalling.

does school start soon?

mila just did the entire rolo chocolate cone ad from memory.

jantzen is confused

hk tailor jantzen keeps sending me confused emails about my order. but the good news is that checkers #690 is in stock. and even better news is that "checkers is the trend of the smart causal, it always look crisp and cool, indoor to outdoor."

how does jantzen write this stuff? I could not write that if I tried. I am reassured, however, that my shirt will function both indoors and out.

jantzen also notes that "end and end design is always classic, it will bring you to the end of the day of styles." JANTZEN MADE A PUN. I do not really understand it, but still. what a joker.

p.s. spell check suggests replacing jantzen with jaundicing. how apropos.

judging a book by its cover, the good

let me start by saying that so far no one to whom I have told this story has really found it to be nearly as interesting as I feel they ought to find it. anyway, dear blog, perhaps you will understand.

I was at a kitchen store a few days ago, shopping for a knife. when I walked in, the store clerk asked if she could help me. I said yes, I was looking for a 10” chef’s. I did not say “10 inch chef’s knife” because the knife part is implied, and so dropping redundant culinary terms just comes naturally to me I guess because I am so immersed in the scene. I am guessing this helped establish my cred. then she brought me a knife, which looked awfully large to me. I asked if she was sure this was the 10”, and she was pretty sure. but I persisted and made her measure it. indeed, she had pulled the 12” from the shelf. so I am guessing my keen optical knife ruler helped reinforce the cred I established just a few seconds ago. then finally as she was getting the correct knife, I noted that victorinox seemed to have added a santoku knife to their lineup. she agreed that it was a new addition, and if I do say so myself, she seemed just as excited as I was regarding the new product. and once again, this knife rapport ratcheted up my cred a few notches.

when it came time to pay, she could not resist but to ask whether I was buying the knife for work. BUYING IT FOR WORK. that means she thought I was a professional chef. that is pretty sweet. PROFESSIONAL CHEF. ORDERING 2 FOIE, FIRE 2 FOIE.

p.s. I am so torn because I was kind of thinking I might enjoy a santoku knife but then wikipedia said they are popular with female chefs. whatever, like that would stop me. did my sunglasses come from the men’s section at zellers? no they did not. but then wiki went on: female chefs, such as rachel ray. rr, you have just ruined an entire family of knives for me, I hope you are happy.

judging a book by its cover, the bad

whenever we take the train home we always have to pass by the via rail employee as we enter the train platform. they stand there yelling out the destinations and the appropriate car with their via rail accents (a close relative to that of air canada). anyway, sometimes they wait for you to tell them where you are going, or sometimes they just keep up a running stream of cities. but I also think they kind of try to guess where you are heading and shout out the appropriate city. so this once when we were entering the platform the via woman said “aldershot? first car on the left.”

via rail woman, do I look like I am from aldershot?

blazer season is in effect

I do declare, I detected a bit of a nip in the air this morning. good thing I had donned a blazer. because blazer season is in effect.

I am the master of tripeaks

I had to reinstall everything on my computer a while ago because I got a new one. I backed up all my important stuff so that I could copy it over. no worries there, all good. EXCEPT THAT I FORGOT TO BACKUP MY TRIPEAKS SCORES. I had a pretty awesome tripeaks record. I cannot remember the exact numbers, but how does $30,000 in winnings with a game average in the mid teens sound? PRETTY AWESOME IS HOW IT SOUNDS. so I was kind of stressed that I had lost this record of my achievement. would I ever be able to reproduce it?

well do not worry, I have not lost the touch. would a $32 game average impress you? it should because it is amazing. how about a 15 card streak valued at $120? that might not impress you so much because it is really kind of amateur stuff but I have just played a few games so I will update soon.

this is just splended

in my quest to purge my computer of spyware I decided to consult a computer engineer that I work with. I do not actually work with him but he does sit near the desk where I sometimes sit to check my email. anyway he suggested I change some settings in my web browser, which I did. and being a good computer engineer, his suggestion cured my spyware.

but in doing so I had to turn off my google toolbar. so now I cannot type all the hard words into the search box and get the internet to tell me how to spell them. problematic indeed, because I cannot spell. I will have to start blogging at a grade 3 level or something. I hope that is not too ambitious, what kind of words are they teaching in grade 3 now anyway?

AND NOW MY SPYWARE IS BACK. but I would say that if before I had a code red spyware alert (severe risk of spyware attacks), I am now in the relative calm of code blue (general risk of spyware attacks). so what do I do? turn google back on and risk dialing it up to red? or put up with code blue but have compromised diction? I have a dilemma on my hands!

p.s. computer engineer any more ideas?

crickets

a few nights ago there were some crickets outside our window (suburbs represent yo). mila and I wondered how they made their noise. I suggested it was their legs rubbing together, but mila insisted it was their wings. wiki said it was their wings. so now mila is mighty smug. that is pretty much the whole story, mila wanted online vindication so I had to blog. I guess since it is my blog I should have just lied and said I thought it was their wings but I am not a liar what can I say?

in an unrelated vein, the station now known as omni 1, how did its jingle used to go? channel 47, cable…? someone here thinks it is “… four” while someone else thinks it is “… fun.” someone the first will cede that the latter version is perhaps a novelty variant of the telemotif, but it is certainly not the classic.

cereal the breakfast product, not the grain

of everything in the grocery store I think that breakfast cereal is the hardest thing to choose. I stand for minutes just staring at the endless wall of cardboard boxes. I have come up with a number of solutions to rectify this problem:

one: ikea-style cereal shopping. the wall of cereal is simply too large. I cannot fit all the varieties in my field of vision. this means I have to pace the cereal aisle to take it all in. clearly this is not efficient. instead, they should just have one box of each cereal in a little display area, with a sticker telling you where to find the rest of your selected breakfast.

two: periodic table of cereals. I propose a left to right organization based on sweetness, and a top to bottom setup based on milk stability. this way I can dial in on my desired sweetness and the amount of milk stability I require. then I can kind of just browse in my little cereal sweet spot and not waste time with cereals that do not meet my criteria.

three: still working on the periodic theme here: group knockoff brands in a little callout box like they have for all those sketchy chemicals like praseodymium (dubious) and gadolinium (not an element) and ytterbium (yeah sure thing that sounds like a real word, nice try scientists). so this way you do not have to waste time skimming over rice crispies AND crispy puffs of rice. if you decide you want corn flakes you can browse the corn flake callout box and stop wasting my time with multiple versions of a cereal that I do not even want.

p.s. I bought president’s choice blue menu soy crunch multi-grain cereal. mila made fun of me because it sounds kind of ridiculous. and I confess I am not a soy person. more I am a 6 gingersnaps and a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast kind of person. anyway, it is a pretty good cereal, and it has like three hundred grams of soy protein which is good for my bulking up program I guess. MY BICEPS ARE HUGE.

there ain't no party like a condo party

upon the return of mila and simon to their suburban condo digs, the important announcement about the third rescheduling of the window washing had been removed and the chastising reminder about double bagging garbage was long gone. in their stead were new notes, and the text was all center-aligned – this was not some full-justify notice about repainting the garbage room floor. what was our gerontocratic condominium board of directors up to? summer bbq that is what. we are talking bring a small dessert or salad to share and the burgers are on us kind of party. when is this going down? maybe a quick hour over dinner, 6-7? yeah right like we will be done partying by then. try making it 6-8. no way jose that is still not going to cut it, better put a question mark after that 8pm because there is no telling how late these retirees might party. THE POSTER ACTUALLY SAYS “6PM-8PM?” BECAUSE IT IS THAT WILD HERE.

hk uh oh

my hong kong tailor sent me an email today and I am sorry to say that it was not good news. no, jantzen tailor is out of checkers #438. just a heads up in case any of you were planning on ordering something in this killer blue and brown modern plaid. I went for checkers #690 instead, but I cannot say I am as happy with it as I was with my first choice. do not get me wrong, of course it is pretty sweet, and it is not like I had to back off on the collar spread or anything. also jantzen just got some sweet irish linen in. order now and be ready for spring ‘07.

also p.s. last saturday's russell smith in the globe and mail: man gingham. he should just read my blog or something. I ordered one of those from jantzen in april.

you made a big mistake gordon ramsay

gordon why did you get rid of k-grease? he slammed it every night on the hot line. so what if he likes to wear his pants low, that is just how he rocks it.

hoff you better be a man of your word

the hoff just promised to sing tonight on america's got talent. I wonder if it will be his new creep chic hit 'jump in my car'?

by the way I am also reading some tolstoy in the original russian to mitigate the damage caused by this program. okay I am not but I am reading style at home.

p.s. regis you are making me cry. do they not pay you enough on your daytime talk show?

p.p.s. hoff take off your blue sunglasses.

light poster

so posting has been kind of sparse the last few days. is that because I have been really busy or because after 77 brief essays I have already mined my life for every possible nugget of interest? I hope not the latter, but I would have difficulty arguing the former seeing as I had enough free time last night to watch part of under the tuscan sun on tv.

quite frankly, that is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I think I almost vomited a few times, I am not joking, it was that repugnant. as I mentioned to mila, there is only one possible positive aspect to having sat through even 5 minutes of that hollywood euroshlock. now when I see a quality film after having seen nothing but quality films for the past month and I ask myself "I am so jaded, is this movie even good?" I will be able to answer with certainty "yes, just be thankful that diane lane is not in it."

sartorial stress

after a close call earlier today I realized I am kind of living on the edge and I do not really like it. these styling green hospital pants that I wear close with a drawstring. while this does allow me to easily adjust depending on the state of my torso (you know, loosen up for those 4-pack days, and cinch it right in when I slim down into my 6-pack) there are some major downsides. like what if I really have to go to the bathroom sometime and the drawstring gets in a knot? sometimes this almost happens but so far it has just been extra-tight bow-related false alarms. but I am petrified that one time it will be a real knot and let me tell you this is not an elastic drawstring here. they need quick release emergency ejection toggles or something C TM R PATENT PENDING.