Hallowe’en Countdown: Crowning The Season’s Champ… Sorta

Well, we haven’t had this in a while so here’s another installment of our Hallowe’en Countdown. Enjoy. I’ll try and get some more reading of “interest” for y’all up here tomorrow.

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We’ve seen lots of oddball candy selections for this Halloween season, but not everyone is skipping over the classics. Even at the top of Choco Mountain, three of the sales leaders have taken a bite out of the holiday spirit and filled the wound with all sorts of marshmallow slime and peanut butter creme. Hershey’s, Reese’s, and Snickers have all been given the Halloween treatment, and more striking than their similarities there is the fact that they’ve uniformly been souped up to look like pumpkins. No ghosts, no vampires, no witches or Frankensteins. Pumpkins, and lots of ’em. Their respected names will surely make these the season’s top sellers and the most bragged about entries into any kid’s trick-or-treat sack, but when all the chocolate is stripped and the bellies of our youth more bloated than a dead beached sea turtle, there can only be…one champion. Which of these three ace card contenders is the true leader of the pumpkin-shaped chocolate Halloween candy society? Let’s find out.

First up, Hershey’s “Marshmallow Pumpkin,” a big chocolate shell containing an even bigger loaf of marshmallow gunk. Though it’s the only one of the three magic pumpkins that isn’t hideously unhealthy, it’s also the most boring. The marshmallow filling is fine on the first bite, but subsequent bites will leave you craving the worse yet tastier types of fillings found in the next entries. There is such a thing as too much marshmallow, and this is edible proof. Worst of all, it’s only shaped like a Jack O’ Lantern in the vaguest of ways, looking as much like half a monkey’s ass as it does a pumpkin. On the plus side, it’s cheap eatin’ and the royal purple foil wrapper might inspire you into grander themes for your future wedding parties. Truth be told, apologies to Hershey’s — this just ain’t the candy I’d be willing to build my future around. Pass.

From flop to glob, here’s Reese’s “Peanut Butter Pumpkin,” a takeoff on their classic peanut butter cups. If you like the cups, you’ll love this — it’s the same thing, just with 80 times more filling. Again, the pumpkin shape is more subdued than it should be, but you’ll be too busy eating way too much peanut butter creme to care. Besides, with this one, it’s all about the free association. This is a Halloween peanut butter cup, right? For all intents? So, you’ll bite into it, realize how much it tastes like the regular cups, and invariably be reminded of that old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial, where Dracula confesses that “he likes to eat the peanut butter…first.” Then you’ll try to eat the pb-pumpkins just as Dracula, ultimately failing, but having an incredible amount of fun along the way. For 69 cents, all that shit’s a bargain. Still, I don’t think Reese’s has successfully topped our last entry…

Presenting this year’s champion, the “Snickers Pumpkin.” If you’re going to eat a candy bar, there’s usually no better avenue than the almighty Snickers — and every part of that enticing formula has been perfectly mimicked and modified into a pumpkin-shaped holiday concession. This time, the pumpkin actually looks right, with decisively pronounced triangular eyes, a gaping mouth, and a stem that makes you want to take a step back and thank the good lord for creating life intelligent enough to make something so wonderful. And there’s caramel! And nuts and all that other stuff! Chocolate! You can talk up the marshmallows and peddle the peanut butter all you want — anyone faithful to their objectivity can see that Snickers took the crown fair and square tonight.

Bow to your new champ. Then eat it
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Y’all have a good night. More tomorrow.

Oops

For some reason this didn’t post the first time but maybe that was for the best since I screwed something up anyway. Here it is again, hopefully all fixed.

What’s In A Name?

I just read that The Gator Corporation, the people behind some of the spyware we all love so much, has decided to change it’s name to Claria to better reflect their business plan and marketing strategy
and to distance itself from the Gator name, a name that anybody who has ever been a victim of it’s software or who knows what it does at all hates with a passion.

This is stupid on a number of levels. First, what in hell does Claria even mean? Is there a dictionary definition under the word Claria that means installing your software on other people’s computers without their knowledge like a virus, making it next to impossible to remove, disguising it as something useful and then using that software to track people’s internet surfing habbits, serv pop-up ads to them over sites that didn’t authorize the displaying of those ads as well as gathering personally identifyable information on those same people? If there is then I take it all back, the name change makes perfect sense. However as it is, the only thing that the new name reflects is a company running scared from a bad reputation, one that is very richly deserved.

And that leads to the other problem I have. How stupid do these companies think we are? Do they honestly think that people are going to think that because it’s not Gator serving the ads, but instead it’s Claria installing itself on their computers that it’s ok to allow it to happen without fighting back? Like that conversation is ever gonna happen.

“Hey Dave, help me fix this computer, I’ve got these ads all over it and I never used to have them, I think I got Gator on here somehow.”

“No Bob, that’s Claria, not Gator.”

“Well ok then, guess I can leave it there. Gees, that was close.”

The only thing that this re-branding has done is given us a new name to hate and the same old reasons to hate it. Trust me, people are going to catch on, and they’ll be changing that name to something else in another 5 years. Might I suggest Viral Scum Corporation or how about Unwantedd Commercials Unlimited?

I’ll leave you with this thought. Even if I call it human bi-product fertilization, I still shit on your lawn. The act is more important than the name you give it.

Hoe Or Hockey?

Well, with the wheel of sloth out of the way the boys over at the Edge 102 Morning Show needed to find something else to hook people on…. Well they’ve got a winner in my book.

They’ve started a new phone in contest called “Hoe or Hockey?”. It’s really a pretty simple contest. While you’re on the line they play 3 sound clips for you to guess of whether the clips have been taken from a hockey broadcast or “dirty movie” (as they call it). Obviously it’s usually very simple and easy to decide on but it’s more for humour. They’ve had some great lines like Ryan Smyth in a post game interview spouting off gems like “I’m a Banger! Big time, Baby!” or Bob Cole during a game calling out “Tucker lays the heavy speer to Roenick and he doesn’t look happy about it.”

They’ve run a few other contests similar to this one that were a lot harder to pick out at times. The most difficult one was called “Hoe Renovations” where you had to pick out whether the clip was from a “dirty movie” or from a Home Renovation shows. Again, usually it was just humour but there were rare occasions where the clips were difficult but there were some priceless lines out of that one as well like “To prevent injury, make sure you get right in there before you start pounding away!” or “Things won’t turn out the way you want if you spray the backside.”

Pretty much childish humour. But hey, I need to laugh in the mornings.

More Later

Good Old Politics

Right now here in Canada one of the main stories making news involves a bunch of high ranking government officials taking trips on the dime of a wealthy business family named the Irvings. I know that the idea of politicians taking gifts from people and not wanting anybody to know about it is nothing new, but every time something like this happens or even looks like it has happened, our media and the opposing political parties feel the need to jump all over it. I’m not sure why they think that we, the public at large really give a good god damn but it never fails that whenever something is made public that looks even a little suspect, there they are. The media with their cameras microphones and production trucks and the opposition with their “we’re standing up for the interests of the people” line of horseshit all trying to get a little slice of each and every non-story. Problem is that nobody cares! We expect our politicians to be shady, it’s part of the system. It’d be great if they weren’t but it’s like that old saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, or something like that.

It almost seems like the news media and big government think we’re all stupid and can’t look out for ourselves and need to be told when something is bad. After all, we did put them there to look after our interests, right? But people can be pretty observant at times and we know when something stinks. Beyond that, most of us can tell the difference between a gift and a bribe and as long as the politicos can do the same, then please, for the love of all that’s good and just in this world, keep it off my TV! I don’t need to be told that the Prime Minister’s personal janitor once took a fishing trip with an oil executive, I’ve got bigger things to concern myself with.

And if the opposition parties think that anybody is dumb enough to buy their concern over what the governing party’s members are doing they’ve got another thing coming since pretty much every Canadian with a functioning brain knows that each and every one of the blowhards coming to our defence are no better than the people they’re railing against when it comes down to it.

I figure let them have their trips and let the corporations pay for them, that way at least they’re not doing it on our dime. And as long as that gift bribe line doesn’t get crossed, I see no problem with taking things from people who offer them. And if they do cross that line, voters know where the door is and we’d be more than happy to direct those responsible through it. That’s one of the beautiful things about this halfass democracy we live in, the ability to replace our current groupe of no-good criminals with a new group of no-good criminals.

I’ve got an idea that I think is really good and I think that those in power should seriously consider looking into it. Run the country. You’ve got provinces running deficits into the billions of dollars, the health care system is going to shit, our military has been reduced to 2 guys with a blow gun, and the list goes on and on. Why not fix it before you worry about who spent what time at who’s fishing camp? After all, we did put you in power to look after our interests, right?

Sympathy For The Devil?

I just saw on the news that a bunch of record stores that I don’t shop at due to retardedly high prices are protesting against a decision by The Rolling Stones to sell their new DVD boxed set through Best Buy and Future Shop exclusively and not include these other stores in the action. You might be asking yourself just how they’ve decided to protest. Well they’re going to stick it to The Stones by costing themselves money. I know, I can see Mick Jagger’s lips trembling from here. The stores in question, HMV, Sunrise and Music World are pulling everything Stones related off of their shelves as their way of making a statement that this is profoundly uncool. It’s also profoundly unsmart for a few reasons.

First, they’re not hurting the band. If you’ve been with this site since the very beginning or have skimmed the archives like the devoted fan that you are, you’ve seen me explain this already. But just to refresh your memory, record sales don’t pay the bills on their own, most of the money artists make comes from touring around the world playing live shows. Last time I checked they didn’t have any shows planned for the local mall. Not only that, but they’re the Rolling goddamn Stones, I don’t think they’re going to be all that upset if Sticky Fingers takes a bit of a sales dip because of this, I think they’ve sold a few copies already. The whole pull the music off the shelves thing might work on somebody who hasn’t been around for 700 years but I think the Stones aren’t going to feel this very much in the old pocketbook.

This doesn’t hurt the consumer either since now people like you and I can get a fair price for our Rolling Stones purchases. Sure you might have to go further to find the stuff if you don’t have a store near you that isn’t participating in this sham of a protest but by the time you figure in gas money to get there I think it’d still be cheaper than hitting the local HMV to pick up what you want. Have you seen the prices in there lately? Christ, I think I could rent my own music store in the mall beside HMV for less money than it would cost me to get every Stones album ever made.

As for who this decision does hurt, I’m counting the record labels and the stores themselves which is fine with me. No problem there, go Stones! The stores are saying that they’re costing themselves at least 2 million dollars in sales by doing this. Now granted I don’t have a business degree and I’m pretty shitty with math but isn’t that, um, not good? There’s just something about people bitching about lost potential sales revenue and fighting this by costing themselves even more sales that just makes the logical part of my head spin.

As for the record companies, I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame this all on downloading. Honestly, somebody needs to get these people glass belly buttons so that they can look out and see what’s going on in the real world sometimes.

I have a mission for all of you, at least the ones who live near any of the stores involved in this. I want you to either call email or go down there personally and ask for anything you can think of by the Rolling Stones and then watch the kid behind the counter try to explain why you can’t have it in a way that doesn’t sound stupid. Then when they’ve explained it to you I want you to ask why they’re willingly costing themselves lots of money to complain about a little bit of lost revenue and then watch as they squirm and get a manager who won’t be able to give you a good answer either. If you manage to get somebody to admit that head office is filled with idiots,
let me know.
Even if they won’t say so publicly, you know they’re thinking it and you’ve made somebody have to face their own private shame, which is always a good thing.

Everybody Knows That The World Is Full Of Stupid People

Since I spend so much of my time here lately talking about people and how dumb some of us are, I thought it was pretty cool when I found a whole website full of examples. Feel free to click on over to The Stupid Page and have a look. Some of it is quite funny. There’s other stuff there that I haven’t checked out yet so have a look at that too. Just thought the stupid page part was interesting.

Last Joe Shmoe Update

Well it’s a sad day for me. It’s the last Joe Shmoe Update. Gotta say that in the last little while that there hasn’t been many shows that I considered “can’t miss”. At one point Raw was can’t miss but lately I don’t seem to mind so much. I can’t think of anything that I’ve considered to be a can’t miss since Game 7 Leafs/Flyers back in the spring. Joe Shmoe though was can’t miss tv for me. It was something new that we had never seen before and I couldn’t help but be drawn toit. Enough with the sappy shit though, let’s see what happened.

After hyping all week for us not to miss the first 15 minutes I took special care to be there FIVE MINUTES EARLY! What do I find? I find that the first TWENTY-THREE minutes are all recap of the big events of the entire season. Normally that would not bother me at all as it was pretty much to be expected but don’t plug the show like we’ll miss the climax if we miss the first 15. Anywho…

The former house guests all vote and it turns out that the final vote comes down to Dr Pat and she votes for The Hutch making him the winner. They do the big celebratory scene with music and stuff until the host gets a phone call that says there is a major problem and they go to commercial. They say that someone is not who they say that they are. Hutch admits that he indeed is not The Hutch. He is an actor but then accuses of Kip of being an actor too which he admits. Eventually they all come out and admit to being actors as a look of combined horror and confusion goes across Matt’s face. He begins to almost laugh in stunned disbelief but then turns to Bryan, his ‘best friend”. this was the only part of the show where he actually looked like he could really flip out and poeple seemed nervous. He was literally yelling at Bryan to tell him if he too was an actor or not after the two having gotten so close. Bryan finally admits it and Matt strings out a string of profanities.

The host explains everything to him and you can actually see him trying to take it all in that EVERYTHING he’s gone through wasn’t real. He has a million questions and all the actors start introducing themselves to him. Matt gets the line of the night when he looks at Kip and says “Dude, tell me your at least gay!” which of course was not true. But Matt loves him anyway, that’s great.

They give Matt the hundred thousand and all the other prises that the “house guests” acquired throughout the show for his trouble! That’s nice of them. They keep telling him that they’ve done it all for him when really they’ve fucked with him for money and ratings. But he buys it so its cool.

This wouldn’t have worked so well with anyone else. Matt was just that kind of trusting guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. it could have turned out real ugly with anyone else finding out that they’ve been fucking with him for so long but he laughs at off and boy does he stilll want a piece of Molly.

they follow this up with a one hour interview with Matt done a while after the show to get his prospective on everything. It’s an interesting watch but I won’t explain it all here. They show him all kinds of different things from the show and ask him what was going through his head at the time. it’s really interesting and I’m sure it will be shown a million times on Spike TV in the next little while. Check it out.

Now I have to find something else to become infatuated with. Any ideas?

One last note. there are some new links up over on the right side. Check them out. There’s some good stuff.

Later, y’all.

Sharin The Love

Just wanted to quickly mention a couple of people, and it’s even in a positive way this time!

First, our friend
Armagideon Time
seems to have his own blog thing going on. It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s Nintendo, check it out!

Another guy who needs some thanking is
Roland G.
Thanks for the link in the column man, and thanks much for the link on the blog too. You didn’t have to do that, and it’s very much appreciated. Your links are coming, just as soon as the posting system will allow.

And thanks also to everybody who’s been visiting this site, linking to it, telling people about it and even stumbling on it by accident and never coming back, but I’m sure that never happens. We did our highest day ever yesterday, yea for us! I’m glad people are enjoying the site, it makes dealing with some of the goofy comment stuff and having to work alongside that backstabbing arsehole Matt seem worth it. Yeah Matt, that’s right, you and me, an infight at the playground after school! You’d better show up this time, sissy! Man that joke never gets old. It’s almost as fun as passing off other people’s work as your own.

You Win!

One thing that’s always gotten on my nerves is the practise of giving things to celebrities for doing their job. Anybody who has ever watched or listened to any sort of sporting event or seen Mike Bullard on TV more than once should know what I’m talking about. Things like, “for being our guest on the post-game show, Frank will receive a combination can opener and alarm clock courtesy of WalMart.”

First of all, why can’t Frank buy his own combination can opener and alarm clock at his own local WalMart, I’m sure he’s got the money. And secondly, he doesn’t need one, and not just because can opening time pieces are a stupid idea either. Fact is that Frank probably has about 372 of the damn things kicking around his house from all his other guest spots on all the other post-game shows in every other city in the known world. I think it would make Frank much happier if WalMart just gave him 30 bucks so he could go out for a beer and a cheap lap dance at the club later on instead of yet another self-propelled personal video organizer.

I’m convinced that that’s why famous people live in such big houses. It’s not because they’re self-absorbed egomaniacs who need everything to be a status symbol that will prove their own worth to humanity, it’s because they need a place to put all the solar-powered night goggles and digital forks that people keep giving them. Seriously, cut that shit out.

Siegfried And Lunch

I swear to all of you that I’m not making this up. I saw it on a newswire so until I hear otherwise this is absolutely true. Where do they find these people? This was just one of the stories that we covered on the
radio
today, and we had a good laugh about it, for obvious reasons. Well maybe they’re not so obvious to Roy Horn but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a little fun at his expense. This makes me laugh every time I read it and again, I didn’t write this, it was reported as actual news on an actual news site so if it’s not true then it’s not my fault.

LAS VEGAS (Wireless Flash) — The white tiger who attacked animal illusionist Roy Horn has a message for him and Siegfried: “I need more time off.”

That’s what Montecore, the 600-pound white tiger reportedly told animal psychic Charlene Boyd when she telepathically visited him in his cage.

Boyd says Montecore attacked Roy because he was tired, “felt more was expected than he could handle” and because “he needed more down time.”

Even worse: Montecore feels little remorse for his actions even though he told Boyd he probably mauled the wrong trainer. In Boyd’s words, “He thought Roy
is `okay’ but didn’t care for Siegfried.”

The chances of Montecore going back on stage again are slim, but Boyd says the tiger wouldn’t mind as long as “there’s more emphasis on tiger education.”

Gees, where to begin with that. There’s nothing I could say here to make that any funnier. Guess I’ll just go and look for other topics or something and let you guys ponder the concept of an animal psychic. Man, that’s right up there with pet therapist on the usefulness scale.