Weird

I’m really not sure what’s gotten into people lately. First we had the guy who swam over Niagara Falls and now this that I just read in
This Is True.

HEY, WATCH THIS! Two police officers on routine patrol in a New South
Wales, Australia, park saw a man on top of a block of toilets set
himself on fire, climb onto a bicycle, and then jump the bike toward a
pile of mattresses. He missed. The officers rushed over to find the
unnamed 39-year-old suffering from burns and broken bones — and still
on fire. They dumped a garbage bin full of water on the man and got him
to a hospital, where he is in serious condition. Police noted there
were quite a few spectators for the stunt. (Australian AP) …He’s 39
years old and trying to impress people with stupid bicycle tricks?
Yeah, that’s the very definition of “cool”.

Don’t ask me why that makes me laugh so much, I’m really not sure. I think it’s just the picture I’m getting in my head of how it all would have went down. More later, topics permitting.

Hallowe’en Countdown. Last Edition

Well, it’s an emotional day. It’s the last installment for the Hallowe’en Countdown which really wasn’t a countdown since there was no particular order. And I’ll admit this is is a very anti-climactic end to the “countdown” as there have been more amusing edtions… but it’s still good and it’s still hard to be done with. Anyway here it is. Down the road we’ll find some Christmas fun but for now, let’s just deal with this.

—
can’t tell you how it began, when it began, or why it began — but it happened. “Ghoul-Aid,” a series of Halloween beverage mixes from the fine folks running Kraft’s Kool-Aid factory, sought to capitalize on the season we love so much with spooky flavors and devilish pictures of the Kool-Aid Man in vampire garb. To say this was the defining moment of mankind is a gross understatement; the reality is, every culture and every race in the entire universe can look to the debut of Ghoul-Aid as the benchmark by which all other events must be compared. In fewer words, I really, really like the stuff.

There were several varieties of Ghoul-Aid available, though “Scary Blackberry” seems to have been the only one to receive a wide release in the States. This, by default, makes a handful of other countries much better than ours. World leaders, take note. Wars are a thing of the past. Conflicts can be resolved and victorious nations can be named simply by determining who has the most available varieties of Ghoul-Aid. Bring our boys home; pour them a cup of liquid sugar high. Yeah. Flavor aside, the real coup was all in the packaging — a Dracula version of the Kool-Aid Man is the kind of thing that shapes the dreams and doodles of any third-grader, or in this case, a really bored guy in his mid 20s. Rumors persist that Ghoul-Aid is a permanent addition — something that’s dusted off year after year during the Halloween season — but I’ve had no luck finding it. That might put the cool drawing of the Ghoul-Aid Man on the shelf, but for those wondering what this “Scary Blackberry” crap tasted like, there’s still hope.

If you’ve never seen the Kool-Aid F.A.Q., you don’t know what you’re missing. The immense document covers everything from how to make “Kool-Aid Toast” to at least 30 different tutorials on how to dye your hair with the shit, and when it comes to lost flavors, the F.A.Q. has you covered. I’m not sure when it was last updated (seems to have been running from at least 1998, if not earlier), but according to some guy named Michael Cooper, “Scary Blackberry” is but a single trip to the local grocer away.

In his words: “Just a note to let you all know I mixed up my own Scary Blackberry tonight, just a little different than the recipe given by Kraft. I actually mixed grape, cherry, and tropical punch and three cups of sugar together in a three quart pitcher and then diluted it accordingly into my storage pitchers. For the record, I can’t say it tastes exactly like Scary Blackberry, because I’ve never had any. I will say that it tastes *exactly* like a mix of those three flavors, with the tropical punch flavor being most dominant. The color, however, is a great Halloween blood reddish-purple.”

Well, if it’s good enough for this Michael Cooper guy, it’s good enough for me…

I had to substitute “Blastin’ Berry Cherry” for “Cherry,” but I found the right “Grape” and “Tropical Punch” flavors. Had to dig through a huge pile of Kool-Aid’s “Mad Scientist” flavors that had magical changing colors and other weird crap, but if that’s what I gotta do to get myself some Ghoul-Aid, I can take it. I was probably a little off with the flavor-to-flavor ratio, but after adding enough sugar to lure ants as far away as Guam, the end results seemed on the mark:

Well I’ll be! Though technically not “Scary Blackberry,” the mixture is indeed an intensely deep red and tastes pretty much exactly how a blackberry-flavored Kool-Aid should. Incredible stuff, actually. I’m not a big Kool-Aid aficionado, but I still drank six or seven cups in succession before finally succumbing to the sugar rush by running around the ceiling singing that song Frasier belts out in his ending credits. This was gooood drinkin’. Who knew the key to harmony lied in a glass of Scary Blackberry Ghoul-Aid? I mean, besides Michael Cooper?

Finally, a reason to obey your thirst. Fuck Sprite.

I’m not sure if they were available here, but at least in Canada, other varieties of Ghoul-Aid popped up. “Scary Black Cherry” and “Eerie Orange” can’t match the charm of the original, but it’s nice to have options if you wanted to drink Halloween Kool-Aid but had a peculiar distaste for anything blackberry-flavored. Unfortunately, instead of wearing the vampire suit, these follow-ups pictured the Kool-Aid Man with nothing more than a cheesy black wrap-around bandana — a costume that would’ve seemed way more pitiful if the guy wasn’t already a living pitcher full of fruit punch.

Anyway, I guess that’s all. For those interested, I wasn’t kidding about that makeshift mixture. It’s really tasty. As for the “real” varieties of Ghoul-Aid, who knows? Maybe Kraft’ll surprise us. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they will. Maybe maybe they they won’t will will won’t. God, I drank too much Kool-Aid.
===
And with that, Hallowe’en is over forever! Well, for a year or so.

Be Safe

Top 10 Signs You Are Too Old To Be Trick Or Treating

10. You get winded from knocking on the door.

9. You have to have another kid chew the candy for you.

8. You ask for high fiber candy only.

7. When someone drops a candy bar in your bag, you lose your balance and fall over.

6. People say, “Great Keith Richards mask!” and you’re not wearing a mask.

5. When the door opens you yell, “Trick or…” and can’t remember the rest.

4. By the end of the night, you have a bag full of restraining orders.

3. You have to carefully choose a costume that won’t dislodge your hairpiece.

2. You’re the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker.

1. You avoid going to houses where your ex-wives live.

Famous People

Just read a couple things that I thought were worth mentioning. First, Vanilla Ice is 35 today. Happy birthday to him. I respect Vanilla Ice for a few reasons. For one thing, he hardly ever puts out music anymore and when he does, it doesn’t show up on radio and haunt me everywhere I go. But when I think about it, I’d rather hear his stuff than some of the shit we’re subjected to these days.

Another thing I like about him is that for a guy who’s career has basicly been dead since 1992, he’s amazing at making sure people don’t forget him by coming back just enough to make us remember before going away again. We don’t get any sort of Vanilla over-saturation like we get with other celebs. You can count on hearing about him every couple years or so pretty much like clockwork. There was that metal album he did, that boxing match he had for the celebrity boxing special, and I think he even did a song with The Bloodhound Gang at one point. He’s made being washed up in public into an artform and for that he deserves something, although what that is I’m not really sure.

I also respect the fact that he’s not a whore like Pam Anderson, or at least the fact that if he is, he’s smart enough to keep his fool mouth shut about it. Just saw this on Rolling Stone and for some reason it pissed me off.

PAM BOUNCES BETWEEN TOMMY, KID ROCK

Just three days after KID ROCK publicly serenaded
on-again/off-again fiance PAMELA ANDERSON at a New York City bar,
she was seen holding hands and kissing ex-husband TOMMY LEE at the
Los Angeles premiere of “Scary Movie 3,” according to the new issue
of “Us Weekly.” “I see [Kid and Tommy] both,” Anderson told the
magazine. “They’re just great guys. I have the best of all worlds.”

No, you’re a whore! Well maybe not a whore, but a skank for sure. I think the thing that gets me so mad about this is that nobody’s going to say word one about how slutty that is just because she is who she is. Let’s be honest here, if your sister or the girl across the street from you busted out remarks like that she’d be the town tramp and we all know it. I’m sick of celebrities getting a free pass just because they made a movie or something. Give me a break!

Ok, I’m gonna go before I bust a blood vessel or something. Comment at will.

What’s Your Life Rated?

Found this quiz while I was surfing around. I always thought this stuff was kind of neat so I’m sharing it cause well, I can, damnit! It’s a test to figure out what your life would be rated on the MPAA movie ratings scale. Somehow I ended up with NC-17, that’s X for people who aren’t familiar with what that means.

If you do the test, leave your score in the comments section at the end of this post. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of people we’ve got reading this site on a daily basis. You can rate your life
here.

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.

—
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
===
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.