The summer blahs

I'm morally opposed to the common advice that you shouldn't shop for groceries on an empty stomach. When I'm at the grocery store, if I'm hungry I'll buy all the things I will want when I'm back at home and crave something. It's a win-win system.

But lately, I've been in a bit of a dip. There have been many things pressing for my attention, both at home and at work, including a number of distractions that seem to be the easiest to attend to. Given all the things that are vying for my time, eating is one of the ones that has fallen far down the list.

I've written before about forgetting to eat, but that's primarily about when I'm engrossed in a task and lose track of time. This is a bit different. Eating has fallen from a reward to a chore (in which I rarely find myself engrossed). In other words, it's gone from "ooh, I can't wait until the next time I eat at..." to "what, I have to eat again? But I just did that yesterday!"

I know that if I don't floss often enough, I'll get cavities, but that doesn't mean I'm keen on flossing. It takes a conscious effort to remember to do it. That's how I feel about eating right now. "Sigh, I guess I'll go out for lunch before I pass out or get a headache." Or, "I'm meeting someone for dinner in three hours, I should grab some lunch soon."

And then, once I've decided to go eat something, I can't decide what (well, not yogourt). I work in downtown Ottawa and there are plenty of great places to grab lunch, but nothing really sticks out in my mind as "hey, I like going there! How about I just go there!" particularly not among healthier options. It doesn't help that I'm a picky eater who doesn't like most things that make food "interesting" (spices, curry, tomatoes, mushrooms and more...), and that food I do like doesn't like me (the many many things derived from dairy, because they put cheese in everything).

My nocturnal lifestyle doesn't help. My workday is time-shifted so I can avoid morning and afternoon rush hours, as well as the lunch rush. Before the Mayflower closed I enjoyed eating lunch there, where I could take an entire booth to myself in the early afternoon instead of cramming into a tiny seat at noon with everyone else. (Side note: I miss the Mayflower! A photo I took from there was the main image on the Wikipedia entry for OC Transpo for over three years) Similarly for fast-food places: when you only have a limited time for lunch, why take it at a time where you'll have to spend much of it waiting in line?

The downside to this is that lots of lunch options dry up after a certain time in the afternoon, and similar problems exist for late night dining. Maybe if I had a lunch buddy I'd be more adventurous.

I avoid cooking mainly because when I do cook it's hard for me to start early enough to be done eating at a reasonable hour. The time I spend cooking can be spent catching up on other errands that I can't outsource to any of zillions of local establishments.

Also, I'm very fickle about what I eat. I am fortunate that I can afford to eat out for most meals, and that's important because I never know in advance what I want to eat. If I were to put a frozen item in the fridge in the morning to defrost it for dinner that night, I wouldn't see it again until days or weeks later, when its colonists make first contact with me declaring their shelf of the fridge to be an independent republic.

This indecision has been worsened with my recent lack of interest in food, since I don't even have last-minute cravings to pounce on. I remember incredulously seeing "lack of interest in food" in a list of symptoms for something at some point, and now I know what it means (hm, come to think of it I wonder if it's a side effect of my pills...). In his 2006 Ted Talk, Sir Ken Robinson talked derisively about how intellectuals consider their bodies as mere vessels to carry around their heads, and I have to admit that's a paradigm that fits me. My body will only cooperate with me if I give it food, and my brain wants to spend as little time and energy as possible doing so unless it's fun so let's just get it out of the way and read a newspaper or watch the latest Daily Show episode so I don't have to pay attention to the fact that I'm eating.

Which takes me back to grocery shopping.

I was at the supermarket the other day, and I did have few items on my shopping list so I wouldn't forget them. But when it came to picking out food to eat for the coming week (mostly prepared meals, since I try to buy produce from smaller shops instead of the big stores), I wasn't interested in any of it. I had a vague sense that I had bought certain items before and enjoyed them, but couldn't at all gauge whether I'd be likely to want to eat any particular one in the coming week.

You think shopping for groceries on an empty stomach is bad? Try doing it when you're not interested in food at all!

(And yes, I do give generously to the food bank. Hunger is a terrible thing.)

- RG>

On the economics of leftovers: it's probably better not to

At the end of dinner last night in a Chinese restaurant, there was the inevitable discussion about who will take home the leftovers.

As with other elements of bistromathics, this can be awkward, indeterminate, and occasionally testy. If not handled sensitively, everyone--including the person who takes the leftovers--can end up feeling worse off.

So for the question, "who takes home the leftovers," we are presented with a prisoner's-dilemma matrix of outcomes. Except the central assumption of the prisoner's dilemma is that everyone has the same goal: that a smaller prison sentence is better than a longer one. With leftovers, it isn't a given that each person will consider it to be a benefit to bring home more leftovers than fewer. For example, a vegetarian will not be interested if the leftovers contain meat. Or a monster.

At least the nature of Chinese restaurants simplifies the options by separating each dish into its own leftover container, so taking home a vegetarian dish doesn't necessitate taking home all the other dishes, including the meat ones. But it does add complications. With containerized leftovers, the question now must be broken down from "who takes the leftovers" to "who takes which leftovers?". In effect, the question gets multiplied by the number of dishes: "Who takes the chop suey," "who takes the fried rice," "who takes the fried tofu," "who takes the bird's nest?"

The other complicating factor is that some people would prefer not to take any leftovers home. So the question of "who takes home which leftovers" is further broken down into "who wants to take home which leftovers?"

The problem we encountered last night, despite being a small group with only one vegetarian, was that the vegetarian was interested in taking home the vegetarian dish, but nobody was particularly keen on taking home any of the rest. It eventually got narrowed down to whether I or another person was going to take home the non-vegetarian dishes. The other person had a regular lunch on Fridays, so they wouldn't be taking it in for lunch today. My fridge is generally where leftovers go to die.

So for both of us, the desire factor was low. We've already asked for it to be packaged, so somebody's got to take it. The question has at this point devolved again from "who wants to take home the remaining leftovers" (answer: nobody) to "to whom will the remaining leftovers be assigned for the purpose of being taken home?" In other words, who doesn't want them least?

Probability to the rescue!

I tend not to like labels, or categorizing things into black and white. Everything is probabilistic. Will I die tomorrow? I can't say no, but the probability is very, very low.

And one last assumption that had been hovering over the conversation was that whoever took the food home would eat it. So I offered up the fact that there's about a 50% chance of the leftovers being eaten if I took them home. I knew this and this was factoring it into my decision, but it was not known to the remainder of the group.

All of a sudden, this cemented the decision. My competitor for the leftovers didn't particularly want them, but if they brought them home the leftovers would get eaten (convenient, since this happened to also be the person who paid for the meal).

The central goal of leftovers is to not let the already-prepared food go to waste. A 100% chance that they will be eaten versus a 50% chance that they will be eaten makes the decision much easier.

Were it not for that, we might still be at the table wringing our wrists about who would take them home. At least we'd have something to eat.

- RG>

Grammar Nazi's Triumph

Kettleman's Bagels has had a couple of unfortunate connections to stories in the media. There was the time that I caught them with taxi hands, and more recently, some of their product was recalled due to insufficient labeling. Of course, I still go there, because the bagels taste good.

But the thing that gets me most about Kettleman's is the motley signage. Lots of notes are scribbled in permanent marker on white paper, taped to various surfaces. And they all have apostrophes galore where they don't belong.

They renovated their store this past fall, and redesigned their garbage bin to have a hole for recycling. A nice new container, with modern stylings.

Then they slapped this onto it:

"Recycle only / glass + can's please."

Now, I'm easily perturbed by such miscarriages of punctuation as this. I also like a good challenge. The easy thing to do (aside from ignoring it) would be to scratch out the apostrophe, but that would just draw more attention to it and make it look uglier. It'd be sufficiently passive-aggresive, but clumsy. Also, not much of a challenge.

I could also point out the typo to a staffperson, but nobody likes to feel patronized by being called out that way. (The store has a few signs where apostrophes were clearly added after the fact, so getting them to make a new handwritten sign would likely have little long-term effect). Generally with this type of thing you want to give the offender an 'out' so they learn what their error was while still saving face, pretending that they knew all along how it was supposed to be.

I figured if I was going to fix this, I was going to fix it completely. No leaving the Kettleman's sign-scribblers to solving it halfway. I am a perfectionist, when I have the patience to see something through.

My solution? I made this sign, with Kettleman's trademark red and yellow colours (mimicking the arched text of the word "BAGEL" on their outdoor sign). As an added flourish, I used the whitespace for a not-so-subtle plea for an end to apostrophe abuse:

This isn't just a piece of paper, it's a big sticker. You see, when I took the picture of the sign in the first picture, what I was really after was the hole, using the pop can for scale. From there I could tell how big a curve I needed for a sign to fit neatly in.

I've got a little device designed for cutting circles in paper (functionally equivalent to a compass with an X-Acto knife at the end), with which I scored the arced bottom edge of the sticker, and I used a straight edge and knife to score the sides.

As for delivery, again, subtlety and minimalism is the rule of the day.

Sure I could go there, tear off the taped sign and stick this thing on, but there are enough staff in the store that I'd probably get some questions. And the whole point of this exercise is to avoid directly confronting them about their bad grammar and terrible sense of signage style.

So I did what any psychology-conscious trickster would do: I brought in a newspaper, read it during my visit, and left it there. Underneath the newspaper on the counter was the sign. Odds are, I gambled, that a staff person would be the one to put the newspaper away, and would see the sign.

I told a few people about this plan, with various responses. One person was particularly incredulous that the plan would succeed, and suggested I should have just put the sticker on myself. But the next time I visited, lo and behold:

Now that's satisfying. The best part, aside from the perfect size and design, is that the plan involves the intervention of the target. That's the key to any successful practical joke. The requirement for conscious thought on the part of the mark changes things from a mere object to a message.

And try to imagine what would be going through someone's mind: somebody, somewhere, went to the trouble of making this very specific sign for this very specific purpose, and just left it here. Who would have done that? What was their motivation? On its own, it's such an innocent sign that you can't deduce any reasoning from it.

Unless they thought that some other manager had left it there, I'd like to believe that after a certain amount of head-scratching they gave up, shrugged, and thought to themselves, God thinks it's Friday.

The only kink in the plan--a very minor one--was that the offending sign had already been replaced with another paper-and-marker sign, sans erroneous mark of possession. Obviously someone had gotten the message through to them, making my little "stop abusing apostrophes" message redundant. In the interests of minimalism, I pulled that part of the sticker off, leaving just the "Recycling" sign. This left it with even less context, adding to the psychological aspect.

This isn't the first time I pulled this kind of thing. One of these days I'll tell you about the prank I pulled at Bridgehead.

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com, who does a lot of this kind of stuff (like the McDonald's drive-thru menu prank and the TGI Friday's Menu Prank).

Also, a shout-out to Elmaks (RIP), whose swap boxes helped me realize that anything we can touch, we have the power to change.

- RG>

Beat the heat with RG's Purple Slush Drink

It's possible that you don't live in Ottawa, or you're reading this in December, or you're one of those people who goes from their air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned garage to their air-conditioned car to their air-conditioned office garage to their air-conditioned office (in which case, that's real weak). Otherwise, you'll likely know that it's fucking hot outside, like 37 degrees not counting the humidex.

During the previous heat wave, I had run out of my soft drink of choice, and either it was too late or hot or I was too lazy to go to Bridgehead for my favourite slush-based drink. It occurred to me that I had purple stuff mix of a certain vintage, allowing me to make the next best thing.

Here's what you need:

• Drink Mix (can be Gatorade powder or sugary drink mix or try out something else--on a per-drink basis the stuff is dirt cheap)
• Blender
• Mason Jar, or County Fair Drinking Jar (with screw top)--I've seen them at Canadian Tire
• Ice
• straw (at least 0.5cm diameter; not pictured)

The amount of ice I used in this sample was not enough. It should come loosely to the shoulder of the jar, or about 3/4 full. Too much and there's no room for it to blend; too little and the drink is too watery.

Add the Purple Stuff mix (2 heaping tablespoons tingles my sweet tooth just right, though you might want less)

Add water to the shoulder of the jar. Again, this is a bit too low. You might want to put the water in first to make sure the mix doesn't stick to the bottom.

Unscrew the bottom of the blender jug and reattach it to the jar. This makes for one less thing to have to clean afterwards. Don't tighten it too much! If you do, it is a bitch to unscrew it. The rubber seal works well.

Put the jar with the blender attachment on the blender. Yes, it feels weird turning a container full of drink upside down. Get over it.

Once again, this doesn't have nearly enough inside to blend properly. Here's one I did during the last heat wave that blended much better:

I had to add more water to this one, which made for a poor ice-to-water ratio. This shouldn't have layers like this; it should be more homogeneous.

Either way, it's an iced drink, and if you used Gatorade powder, it has electrolytes too. Pop a straw in and drink! Drink it without a straw at your own risk!

So there you go. It's easy, cheap, and fast.

Unless, I guess, you don't have a blender or a compatible jar or glass. In that case, you'll probably have to buy air conditioning, which is probably not easy, cheap, or fast.

- RG>

In which RG demonstrates genius

I don't go through too much cornstarch, but the cornstarch I do use I keep in this jar. I have to refill it about every year. To do so, I go to Herb & Spice on Bank Street, which sells it in bulk.

It seems that the last time I refilled the jar, I noticed how difficult it was to get the powdery cornstarch into the narrow-mouthed jar with the wide scoop. So I scribbled on the bottom of the jar in permanent marker, "Need large mouth funnel to refill".

Good that I did, because in the time that had passed since I had last refilled my cornstarch jar, I had forgotten about the funnel requirement; however, after washing the jar and inverting it onto the dishrack, I saw the note and was reminded!

Ain't that clever?

- RG>

Vietnam Noodle House: the last supper

Tonight at our weekly dinner, the Human Powered Vehicle Operators of Ottawa (HPVOoO), the local gang of people who ride crazy, fun, kustom, and otherwise interesting bikes, were informed that the Vietnam Noodle House was closing after tonight.

We've been coming here since it opened in 2004, every Sunday, plus Mondays on long weekends, making it over 300 dinners there.

It's located at Humphrey Plaza (the name of which I only discovered last December), at Somerset and Arthur, in the lower level. For reference, that's the same block as the Yangtze.

One of the things we liked about it was it was spacious. We had previously alternated between Istanbouli shawarma place (on Richmond Road near Island Park Drive, which has since moved to Holland Avenue) and Pho Thu Do on Somerset, which was far too small, didn't have vegetarian options, and aside from that had very little variety. (Some say they preferred the pho there, though.)

Another thing I enjoy about the weekly HPVOoO dinners is that they're very anarchistic. Whoever shows up, shows up. Some people show up late, some early. Some weeks there are lots of people, some weeks there are only a handful. I've been there nearly every week, though I don't take photos every week. On this night in early June 2006, there were about two dozen people, including some leaving and others taking their spot. We could build various permutations of tables to suit the attendance.

There was also ample bike parking, both inside and outside.

More recently (and I have no idea if that is months or years), they'd turn the tables down the middle for us every Sunday, and we'd extend it as long as necessary. We regularly get 8-12 people. The guy with the blue collared shirt is one of the servers.

Grant and Mike Watson also come out. Mike built the bike I ride, and often brings new creations of his to showcase. Grant is... let's say he's taught me a few things about how to successfully annoy people (randomly telling someone "you don't know that!" in a conversation, for example). Our weekly dinners, and by extension the VNH, is also a prime distribution hub for Momentum magazine in Ottawa.

Tonight, this was the Last Supper. While they gave us free spring rolls and shakes, it was still a very sad and depressing end to an otherwise very fun weekend.

Goodbye, Vietnam Noodle House. We'll miss you!

The hunt is on for a new affordable, family-friendly, vegetarian-optional, spacious, central, bike-friendly weekly hangout.

- RG>

Leftover Monster

I came home today to find the Leftover Monster in my living room. Here he is.

I wrote him a song:

Leftover monster, how are you doing?
I've been waiting to see you all day.
Leftover monster, what is brewin'?
I bet it's the same as yesterday.

- RG>

Race to lunch on Elgin

I went to Wendy's today to try their new fish fillet sandwich, which I had seen advertised between online clips of the Colbert Report.

Harvey's (my fast food restaurant of choice) hasn't had a fish sandwich in years, and I haven't had a McDonald's Filet-o-Fish in five and a half years.

I also haven't been to Wendy's very often. It's the next rung up from McDonald's in my list of 'corporations I probably shouldn't frequent'. I used to enjoy it, but more recently the food would taste rather bland.

Then I remembered that the taste I get at Wendy's isn't just from the food.

Inventory

The last time I was there, the girl at the cash was a young black girl whose eyes and face wore an expression of despondency. Her white colleague, a female maybe mid to late 20's, wearing a crisp managerial-type outfit, made smalltalk at her, completely oblivious to the black girl's utter lack of interest.

I think the black girl could see what I see.

Of the various traditional fast food places on Elgin street, Wendy's is the only one where the staff are nearly all of black or southeast Asian ancestry.

At Harvey's, they're almost all white except for the two managers, including Sammy (seen here shaking hands with Jean Chrétien). The recently-opened Quizno's is also very white bread. I haven't been inside the McDonald's recently, but peeking through the window on my way back from Wendy's today I saw a white guy behind the counter. Haven't been to Subway recently either so can't comment on that. There are no Tim Horton's on Elgin, but most of the ones downtown are staffed by visible minorities who barely speak English.

Meanwhile, look at the prices. McDonald's, Wendy's and Subway are lower on the budgetary spectrum, while Harvey's and Quizno's are definitely more expensive. There are also ethnic eateries like Shawarma and pho/bubble tea places, plus pizza places and non-fast-food places that are hard to compare because many of them are family owned and run.

I haven't done enough observation of the customers (Ottawa is pretty vanilla), so the most I can go on is the counter staff.

Clueless white guys

Andrew Nellis (who like me is white) told me a good story once of a trip to a suburban breakfast place with a black friend of his. They sat down and the staff never approached the table. Never gave them menus, asked for their orders, or so much as acknowledged their presence.

Andrew's friend told him that it was because he was black, and they should probably just go someplace else.

Andrew, being the hardcore activist he is, was upset by this and wanted to put up a fight. Stage a campaign, make a fuss, and so on. But his black friend told him that if he were to fight every time he encountered racism, he'd do nothing but. This shocked Andrew, as it did me when he relayed the story.

It's a good story of how easy it is to be ignorant of racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination against the poor when you're in the majority.

Just one clue

That's why I'm so bothered by this observation of the Wendy's staff. I've gotten as far as observing that there's something different going on, but I otherwise don't know what to make of it.

Is it because these are the lowest-paid jobs in the service sector, and these people are the only ones who will take it?

Are the other places discriminatory in their hiring practises?

Is there a correlation between race and poverty? Like, do they only apply to the lower-priced places because those are the only places where they shop?

And assuming I did figure out where this discrepancy came from, how should I respond? Actively boycotting Wendy's and Tim Horton's won't work; that would only encourage them to stop hiring minorities. (Not that fast food is good for your health)

I don't think the problem is with the fast food places; I suspect this is just a manifestation of a greater social problem that causes minority youth to be poorer and less well educated.

But it's really hard for me to know any of this because I'm a well-educated middle-class white guy who hangs around with other well-educated people and professionals who are mostly white.

Not that it matters at this point, but the fish fillet sandwich was unspectacular. A bit smaller than I'd hoped and the sauce bland.

- RG>

New kid on the blog

The other day I met up with a friend (who is a fan of the blog) to show her the ropes on blogging.

Give a big Ottawa Blogger welcome to Sweet Willow Organic Community Garden at sweetwillowgarden.blogspot.com!

- RG>

The Yogourt Rant

In a recent post, I referred to "The Yogourt Rant." It's a somewhat boilerplate rant of mine that many people who know me have heard in one form or another.

A fellow named Barry Schwartz wrote a book called "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less," which talks about this phenomenon. I haven't read Shwartz's book (yet), but he describes it well in his (20-minute) 2005 TEDTalk: [disclaimer: RG takes no responsibility for the incredible amounts of time you lose watching TED videos]

I had heard of this principle, probably even seen this very video, a few years ago, and it certainly resonates with me. Since then, I had forgotten the term "paradox of choice" and where I had heard it, but I had lived it and reconstructed it.

In the yogourt aisle.

The concept carries to many of my consumer-purchase experiences (for example, I refuse to specify a "chocolate" Frosty at Wendy's), but its purest form is when I'm buying yogourt.

When I go to the supermarket and I want to buy yogourt, it takes me forever.

For one, they're sorted by brand. I'm not interested in brands, I'm interested in flavour--raspberry. But because of the way the products are sorted, I have to first determine which type I want before I can decide on flavour.

This is harder than it looks. There are at least a dozen different types of yogourt on the shelf. Some types are the same brand, but different varieties--like, say, Danone Silhouette yogourt, Danone Creamy yogourt, and Danone Activia yogourt. (To further confuse you, "Danone" is known as "Dannon" in the U.S.)

Some are from the same company, but different "quality" brands, like President's Choice brand yogourt, the No Name brand yogourt, and the Blue Menu yogourt, all of which are from the same company. Often these brands may vary in quality and/or health factor, or at least, so say the packages.

Some are different brands' version of essentially the same product. Metaphorically speaking, the "Coke" and "Pepsi" yogourts, and the "Diet Coke" and "Diet Pepsi" ones. Similar price, similar product, similar taste, different brand.

Then there are the specialty brands, like the middle-eastern not-yogourt yogourt, goat's milk yogourt, and the organic yogourt with Omega 3 and "active bacteria cultures". I'm sure there's Soygurt out there, too, and other horrible things that go to extraordinary lengths to distract me from finding ordinary raspberry yogourt.

And without tasting them, how do you differentiate between these alternatives? Price? Perhaps, but is this one priced higher because it tastes better, or because it's healthier for you? Or simply because that brand costs more? Or do they push the health and social benefits of this one to make up for how much it offends the palette?

I know what I want when I shop for yogourt. I want raspberry yogourt. I want it in the large container, because the small ones are a waste of packaging. I don't want the fat-free stuff, because yogourt is supposed to have fat, and whatever additives and processing they used to make it fat-free is probably worse for you than the fat itself. I don't want the creamy stuff, but I don't mind unstirred yogourt. I don't want the organic stuff because all organic yogourt I've tried so far is disgusting. And I don't want the cheap stuff that has a dollar less taste for forty cents less price.

All of this is a very complicated way of saying I want simple raspberry yogourt.

So I stand in front of the yogourt section, staring bemusedly at the wall of containers in front of me. As Barry Schmidt put it, I'm paralyzed. I stand there for five whole minutes, scanning the brightly-illuminated array, processing the information that's pouring in, mentally arranging each group of flavours into brands, and categorizing each brand, scrutinizing each one until I find the one group of containers in which is the one yogourt that I had set out to find. On the home stretch, all that remains is to select the desired flavour from the row of six containers that I excruciatingly parsed from the wall of plastic jugs.

And they're out of raspberry.

Fuck.

***

Every few months, I empty my fridge of yogourt containers, some not even opened, all of them long expired. There are usually two or three different brands, though they're all raspberry. The tubs are bulging from the chemical and biological metamorphoses they're struggling desperately to contain; I don't want to know what's inside them. Probably a lot more than just "active bacteria cultures".

I don't know why I even bother buying yogourt. Do I even actually like it? Am I buying it as a quasi-healthy alternative to pudding? Because I tend to throw out more of it than I end up eating. Maybe I just think I want to eat it so that I have to confront my fear of the yogourt-buying process. Maybe I subconsciously like the stress of buying yogourt, like some form of mental dairy-bondage.

But whatever my reason for buying yogourt, it's clear that I don't eat nearly enough of it to know which kind I should buy when I shop for more.

Hence the rant.

- RG>

McDonald's Fiveniversary

Five years ago, June 16, 2004, back when I had many fewer things to blog and a lot more time in which to blog, I went out with some friends to see Super Size Me with a handful of friends at the Bytowne. After the show, we visited the McDonald's on Rideau. It was the last time I've stepped into a McDonald's restaurant.

Of course, now that I have a job and less time to prepare actual meals, it just means I eat at other fast food joints instead with even greater frequency. Which kinda defeats the point.

I still get cravings for McDonald's food, which is why I cringe whenever I see a parent bring their kid into a fast food place. No, those of us in here are already lost! Save your children and keep them away!

To commemorate the fiveniversary, I bought a copy of Super Size Me from the Elgin Street Video table at the Minto Park Sale this weekend. I don't think I'll watch it.

- RG>

For every light you turn off... (or how I spent my Earth Hour)

I don't know if you've heard about the latest fad called "Earth Hour". If you haven't, essentially it's a thing where regular people turn off all their lights for one hour of the year and pretend that they're granola-eating hippies.

I knew when I first heard about it that I didn't like it, and not just because Mayor O'Brien was supportive of it.

There is a Japanese saying: "Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare." As profound as this saying is, this Earth Hour event doesn't fit into either category. Earth Hour is more "action without action", and hence this post is deserving of the "yellowribbons" label (see "Support Motherhood and Apple Pie").

If you really cared about the environment, you'd make changes in your everyday habits (such as reducing your car use, eating less meat, living in a smaller and more energy-efficient home, etc.). Turning off your lights once a year at 8pm doesn't really mean very much if your TV, computers, and other appliances come right back on an hour later.

And if you really cared for the Earth, you'd give it more than just an hour.

I mean, shit: every night, most people do more than was accomplished in Earth Hour simply by turning off their lights and sleeping for six to eight hours!

Of course, as is reported in the Citizen, greenhouse gas emissions will probably not be reduced during Earth Hour, especially with many people burning candles. Even if they're more 'natural', candles put a lot more dirty shit into the air per unit of light than electric plants do. (Not that I care much for the GHG fad, either.)

So how did I spend my earth hour? Well, along these lines:



While all the suburbanites were sitting in their living rooms signing kumbayah and eating marshmallows, I turned on every light in my house, including the one in the stove. In fact, keeping with the theme of the image above, I ate three animals too!

Interestingly, when I was done cooking my "three animals" (two eggs and some strips of bacon--I hadn't had bacon in years. So tasty!), I turned off the stove, and my arm automatically reached for the stove light switch. I had forgotten that I was keeping my lights all on for the hour.

I guess energy conservation is just one of those pesky habits that dies hard.

- RG>

A "Taxi Hands" Bagel? No thanks

A couple weeks ago, I went to the Kettleman's Bagel Shop on Bank Street. Wood-fired Montreal-style bagels are the best, and they're made right in front of your eyes--behind a Plexiglas shield, of course, for sanitary reasons.

Passing the "help wanted" sign on the door, walking toward the counter, I noticed a nice-looking bag of 15 assorted day-olds that I picked up for $3.50. You can't beat that deal.

In addition to the day-olds, I ordered a Breakfast bagel--a treat I first discovered at the Kettleman's on Carling Avenue when it first opened many years ago. Back at the Carling location, they'd ask you if you want ketchup on your breakfast bagel, so I was a bit surprised when I was brusquely told "ketchup packets are by the door," when I asked for it this time.

The strange things started when I was sitting down at the front window. After receiving my bagel and futzing with the little packets to smear it with ketchup, I watched the scenery.

A taxi came into the Kettleman's parking lot from the side street as though it was cutting through to avoid the red light. But the driver turned and parked in one of the parking spots. The non-sequitur that came next involved the driver getting of the taxi with his passenger still in the back seat. I could see the expression on the customer's face, and I could only imagine what the driver told her as he got out.

The taxi driver came in to the bagel shop, reached his hand over the glass, as did the man working the raw bagel dough. The two shook hands, and the man went straight back to preparing bagels.

Without washing his hands.

Eww!

As I told this story to a friend, he recalled a study which found that a steering wheel is the dirtiest place your hands touch on a daily basis. Not a toilet seat, not a door handle--a steering wheel.

And a taxi's steering wheel? Double-eww.

I decided not to eat the day-olds.

- RG>

The $62 Frozen Dinner

A rare double-post tonight!

Tonight was one of those nights where I had to do the laundry if I wanted to have anything clean to wear tomorrow. So I went to the laundromat down the block and put my clothes in the washer, then came back home while the cycle was going.

It wasn't until after I had taken off my winter boots and jacket that I remembered I wanted to go to the corner store to get a particular style of chips. Since I was fairly warm and needed to cool off, I just went out with my walking shoes, my sweater, and a fleece hat.

The corner store didn't have the chips I wanted, because the delivery truck was delayed from the snowstorm. So I got a frozen dinner instead.

The price on the label was $1.99.

When I got back to my place, I realized that I had left my keys in my jacket. The jacket I wasn't wearing. Crap.

I rang the neighbour's doorbell to get him to let me in to the building, to no avail. Luckily, I did have my cell phone on me, so I tried calling the landlord. But between no answer at home and his office door not being cleared of snow for the last couple days, I concluded that he wasn't around. Crapcrapcrap.

After dropping my frozen dinner box into the snowed-over recycling bin by my front door (in this weather, I don't have to worry about it thawing!), I stepped in to the pizza place next door to "wait". What for, I don't quite recall, but maybe it was just so I could collect my thoughts.

Collect them I did, as I remembered that I had a load of laundry going. I headed to the laundromat to put my clothes into the dryer as I pondered further.

I remembered that I hadn't tried calling my landlord's cell phone. So I called it on a lark.

Success! He answered! He said it wouldn't bother him at all to come over to unlock my front door...only he's out of town. Out of town!

I had anticipated this, so I realized that my only reasonable option was to call a locksmith. So I did, and I waited next door for him to come. One interesting thing he asked me is if I had called another locksmith, as apparently some people call a bunch of them in hopes that one will come earlier than the others. This I had not done.

I waited.

And waited.

He did finally come, and it took him less than a minute to open my front door. As I got into my apartment (the door of which I had left unlocked for the "brief" trip to the corner store), I put on my jacket and asked him how much I owed him.

Sixty bucks.

Yowza! I was expecting $40 or so, but sixty? Oh, well. So I grabbed my wallet.

"You take VISA, right?"

"No, just cash."

Shucks, because all the cash I had on me was twenty five bucks and a bunch of laundry change. He was kind enough to drive me to the nearest bank machine, so I wouldn't have to pay the exorbitant charges for using a white-label machine. He couldn't drive me back, but that's fine, as I had my jacket (though no scarf or gloves...brrr).

I got inside, and put my frozen dinner into the microwave.

It didn't taste like it was worth $62, but I sure felt good when I finally got to eat it!

The $62 Frozen Dinner:

- RG>

Conspicuous Consumption in Action

I am posting this from a train.

My employer is sending me down to help with our annual conference in southern Ontario, and I decided to take the train down first class, which is a much more pleasant (if longer) trip than a 70-minute up-down flight in cattle class, plus all the associated probing of cavities and containers (which I'll experience for the way home).

The last time I took the train I was literally too young to remember. It's quite the pleasant experience, and far, far simpler than any plane ride I've ever been on. I haven't done much traveling within Canada, so it was nice to walk around downtown Toronto for an hour (albeit with my bags). Much more vibrant than Ottawa, with plenty of pedestrians, although I don't know if that's just because of the hockey game that was an hour away from starting. The multicolour lights on the CN tower does a good job of hiding its ugly.

I could only see two types of people on the street: rich-looking metropolitans walking places who didn't make eye contact, and panhandlers who quietly sat and asked for change. I literally saw nothing in between. I held a door open for one man, and he was absolutely shocked (but he did thank me!).

I'm on the second (and last) leg of my trip, right now, and it looks like the internet connection is stable enough on this train to warrant spending the ten bucks for the internet connection. I mean, work is paying for the whole trip, so I can splurge a bit on my own expenses, right?

- RG>

Mmmm....hallowe'eny...

I was at Boko Bakery, buying a loaf of Flax seed bread (the softest, tastiest bread you'd ever get from a bakery!) and a garlic baguette (oooohhhhh so tasty!) when I saw these two trays of hallowe'en-themed treats.

I didn't get any, but I thought they were so cute!

Especially these little mummies! Freshly made in-house. Boko is a local small business, so support them!
- RG>

Let's hope I don't get sick

So today I started making a stir-fry, and didn't realize until I had already started that the only meat I had was this clump of stewing beef that's been in the freezer for as long as I can remember.

I took it out, defrosted it, and was disgusted by how much it smelled like dog food. Nevertheless, it was the only meat I had, so I cut it up. I tried discarding some of the less appetizing bits.

As I was cooking it, my roommate came in and assumed the dogfood smell was her cat, who had just gone for a bath in the toilet. I assured her that it was, in fact, my beef.

So I cooked it, and ate a portion. I couldn't bring myself to eat all of the meat I had served myself, as some of it tasted just too raunchy.

When I went back and took the lid off the wok, I detected the unmistakable smell of dog food. Not wanting to waste the vegetables that I had cooked, I threw out the remaining beef in the mix, at put the veggies in a plastic container for later consumption (or disposal, as necessary).

Anyway, I really hope that it doesn't make me sick before my 4pm shift.

- RG>

It's been a while. Fuck you!

Heh heh. The "fuck you" is just for fun.

A lot has happened in the last week, much less since whenever I last posted.

I had my first meal at an Indian restaurant. I had originally planned on eating somewhere before meeting my friend there--an idea I got that last time I was at an Indian restaurant and couldn't get past the spicy bread--but I was actually quite satisfied with it. With encouragement, I could be pushed to go to another one.

I also got my very first full-time, permanent job this month. It ain't excactly CEO of MegaSuperCorp, but it's alright. Working the night shift sorta screws with my sleep (or rather, trying to juggle sleep and doing things while the rest of the world is running 9 to 5). I've been eating a lot at the nearby 24-hour diner.

Yesterday was the Great Glebe Garage Sale. After going through the entire Glebe and picking up only one thing (as well as stopping by the bike shop to get some work done), I ended up back at the very first place I had visited, to pick up the iron I had looked at, and the very second place to pick up the mixmaster (I had neglected to ask if it worked--the beaters don't stay in the holes).

Interestingly, nobody who was selling their ironing board was willing to part with only the cover, something which I had been seeking for a couple of weeks. I also wasn't willing to try to bring home an ironing board on my bike.

This morning, I had planned on going to Zellers to get one, but after visiting their website to get their hours, I was totally put off by the audio/video advertisement that didn't seem to have an STFU button. I e-mailed them to say that I would instead be purchasing my merchandise elsewhere, and I stopped short at saying that "elsewhere" was the Bay--Zellers' upscale corporate sibling.

Since I last blogged, I think I've been interviewed on the TV news twice, and been printed in the paper (in articles, letters to the editor, and media releases) a good handful of times. Since it's no longer a secret who I am, I may end up back-posting those letters and articles, as well as the ones that didn't make it in. [Edit: I think I'll use a separate blog for that, as Keith Lowell Jensen does]

I've also been thinking more about writing that "100 things about me" post. I've also noticed that I can save as a different time and date from when I actually post, so there are a few posts on here that are really quite useless.

Anyway, that's it.

- RG>

Money for fooooood...

Ten billion bucks for machines that kill people in faraway lands, eh?

How about sparing a couple of dimes for something constructive?

Sorry, but we don't have any money left to buy condoms for Africans.

Fucking military.

- RG>