Lousy Sports Press

As usual they used their lousy, overhyped reporting skills to repeatedly say an 'undecided' Mats Sundin would either sign with either the Canucks or the Rangers. In the few days before he made his decision, TSN, Sportsnet and the rest of those hacks all hinted that he would most likely choose the Rangers. Sure enough, 'Skeletor' chose Vancouver, causing even a larger media circus that came before it.

As a Canucks fan, alls I gotta say is that although it is way too early to make any assumptions of whether or not he'll be a good addition to the team, I'll be happy as long as this:

Doesn't turn into this:

The Pomegranate Popularity Perplexity

Select any juice, yogurt, tea, bubble gum and hell, even estrogen tablet products and you'll find pomegranate flavoring in it. How has this fruit become so popular all of a sudden? I don't remember ever hearing of the fruit up until a few months ago, so Im always confused  every time I see it. I mean really, it looks as weird as it sounds:

Yikes. It looks like salmon eggs fashioned on a star fish. 

However, the last thing I want to do is alienate and publicly malign this innocent fruit, so I thought I would take the time now to offer 5 interesting facts on pomegranate. Huzzah! (sponsored by Wikipedia)

1. Each pomegranate contains 840 seeds (or arils), accompanied with a tangy, sweet juice.

2. A good source of antioxidants

3. Featured in Botticelli's 'Madonna of the Pomegranate', where the Virgin Mary herself is clutching both the fruit and her lil' baby Jesus.

4. It holds strong symbolic meanings to Greeks. It is often given as house warming present, placed under the home alter to provide luck, fertility and abundance. 

5. Is the official logo of many Turkish cities. 

So there you have it. A fruit good enough for the Virgin Mary herself!. While I can't speak for the fruit as I have never tried it, the pomegranate berry Extra brand gum is fantastic. Simply delicious. 

The Price is EXACTLY RIGHT

Either this guy is the inventor of world's first time machine, or he's in cahoots with CBS.

Let the debate commence!

Good to be home

Due to a strike at my University out east, I have had the pleasure to come home to Vancouver 2 weeks early for the holidays. While being re-aquatinted with my "bro-skies" and the city that I love, I just so happened to pass the corner of Davie and Burrard St. where the former Shell gas station has been transformed into a community garden. 

Now of course, all biases aside, I think its a fantastic move by the developers and the community to do what they have done. No where else in this country would you see a plot of land at a busy downtown intersection, which in reality probably made condo developers drool, turned into a garden for city slickers to plant their pre grown flowers from Home Depot. But for God's sake, don't plant any food. All environmental cliches aside, its a unique thing. Its something that will hopefully keep Vancouver on top of their game. 

side note: I can't help to think that it was done make up for the 70 trees that the city hacked to preserve the view from QE park over the summer that pissed off all the local tree huggers (myself included). That being said, I accept the community garden as a token of your apology, but I'm still pissed about the Gateway project (That rant will be saved for another day).

Just 'cause I love them, another PSA

Thanks to the brilliant and stoned Hanna-Barbara animators, we have this gem of a PSA ad.

If a walking blunt and pills with arms and legs lead you to a party in some wardrobe,

you know its gotta be good.

And now a word from the Japanese MAFF...

Moving on to international news, who ever said the Japanese doesn't care about food security or global warming? The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries certainly do! 

Whether you care about these issues or not, this 4 min PSA beats the hell out of any of Al Gore's power point presentation on climate change. I'm super-duper cereal, guys.

Plus its Japanese - how could you not enjoy it?

note: keep on the lookout for the cows who are dancing ever so subtlety.

Shop till you drop (dead) over the Holidays!

Back on November 1st, I came across something that absolutely ruined my week, and possibly even the holiday season. I was watching SNL that night when it cut to its first round of commercials. One of them was a Christmas themed ad for Lowe's, complete with 'cutesy' kids decorating the tree, Christmas music, and scenes of people dopeishly pushing their shopping carts full of useless, excessive shit. The ad immediately made me sour. How dare they start shoving this shit down our throats no less than 24 hours since Halloween, I thought. Have they no shame? Honestly!

I wanted to do something about it besides drone on into friend's ears about how pissed off I was about this, etc, so I'd thought to follow the advice of my roommate and write a column for York's campus rag, or even start a blog about it, thus giving me a mass audience to bitch to. However, I quickly came to the conclusion that my thoughts and opinions could possibly make me sound like a complete kook, writing phrases that could be easily translated into: "These ads are warping our BRAINS, people!", so I was a little hesitant to write it. Not to mention I fell into some lazy days around the time of the ad since the T.A.'s at York went on strike a few days later, thus wiping out any real motivation to write it. 

As the days went on, I still remained stand off-ish about it, and continued to cringe and scoff at every time I saw yet another  billboard on the Toronto subway or TV ad bite the dust and make an early pitch to eager holiday consumers, but at the same time, I still felt the need to load my argument with better ammo. Luckily, I've been inspired recently to search for weird news articles to exchange with my friends back home, so I just so happened to come across this article on America's most trusted news source:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/index.html

You heard it right people, a Wal-Mart worker trampled to death for opening the door to a wild pack of shoppers, and two people shot dead over a dispute over toys at a toys store. Is the reality of crazed, irrational North American consumerism? That people who want to buy toasters with a shelf life of 10 months and other throw away Wal-Mart merchandise at half price so badly that they are willing to completely disregard the fellow human being trampled to death? That people will come to gun violence over discount toys? This just seems so crazy to me...

What's even worse is the response of the retailers and CNN, blatantly and disgracefully denying that their sales and their media campaigns had anything to do with the deaths. Give me a break! And besides, aren't you people supposed to be in a recession?

To quote the movie that Kevin watches on Home Alone

- "Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!"

... at least I have my Christmas party in December to look forward to...