While biking down to the Hacklab (which I use as a day-to-day workspace) on Dundas Street West this morning, I noticed this ad at the Landsdowne bus stop’s shelter:

“My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken” might sound like the sort of situation that would make for a pleasant freshman year in a dorm, but in this case it refers to the Jamaican style of cooking in which you dry-rub meat with jerk spice. It’s pretty tasty, and I recommend trying it if you’ve got a Jamaican restaurant in your neighbourhood.

Speaking of restaurants in your neighbourhood, that’s what these posters are all about: encouraging you to support your local businesses. There are plenty of great ones around my place – Sweet Flour, My Place, Bloor Meat Market and Crema Coffee come to mind – and I’m sure that there are plenty of businesses in your ‘hood that deserve your business.

If you look closely at the bottom of the poster, you’ll notice that they were sponsored in part by Tabia, the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas:

A little farther east on Dundas, I stopped to take a picture of a less racy poster in the series:

While going out for brunch with our friends Liz and Keith and their kids on Roncesvalles, I saw these signs promoting Kennel Cafe’s services. If you never played Dungeons and Dragons, the jokes are totally meaningless, but if you have, they’re pretty amusing:

[Found via Certified Bullshit Technician.]

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Photo courtesy of “mongolblues”. Click the photo to see the original.

I have no idea if WIND Mobile is going to be able to deliver what they promise – a mobile phone company that listens to its customers and provides better service than the sad players in the Canadian mobile phone oligarchy – but they’ve got the right ideas and some rather funny videos that perfectly illustrate what the Canadian mobile customer has to contend with.

What if Toronto’s hot dog vendors had a pricing model like Canadian mobile phone companies? Buying a hot dog would be like this:

Canada is the only country in the world where mobile companies lock you into three-year contracts for mobile service, and this situation is illustrated in the video titled Bike Lock:

I always look at the service packages offered by U.S. mobile companies with envy. Here, the mobile companies love nickel-and-diming you:

WIND is a new entrant into the Canadian mobile phone market and a branch of Globalive Communications, who already have a presence in Canada in the form of Yak Communications, an alternative phone and internet provider. They seem to be taking a very “social media” approach to their marketing, what with the “viral” YouTube videos and a “conversational” website in which readers are encourage to actively participate in online discussions.

They look like an interesting company to watch, and hey, if they can get me a better deal than Rogers, I’ll switch.

Recommended Reading

Tom Purves has been one of voices leading the battle cry against Canadian mobile companies for the past couple of years. Back in 2007 at DemoCamp 17, he gave what I consider to be the best ignite presentation ever given at a Toronto DemoCamp, The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks. Here’s the slide deck from that presentation:

He recently revised his presentation for 2009 when he presented it at the FITC mobile conference in September, which mentions WIND mobile:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

[Found via Certified Bullshit Technician.]

Suddenly, Star Wars makes a lot more sense…

[Thanks to CaptainMarvel for the pic!]

As the health insurance debate in the United States heats up, we need to remember who the real victims are: health insurance executives. Will Ferrell, John Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Linda Cardellini and other Hollywood celebrities step up to defend health insurance companies in this video from FunnyOrDie.com…

[Thanks to Margot Lewis!]

Seen outside Smart Mouth Cafe in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood:

Back in April. Adam Sacks of the blog Adam Thinks created this so-funny-because-it’s-true graphic:

After getting so many requests, he’s decided to make it a t-shirt. You can order it online from Printfection for US$20.00:

And it’s spelled properly, too!

Not the fast food chains, but the amusing hip-hop number by the oddly-named duo “Das Racist”:

I’m with this commenter: someone needs to record the Canadian version:

I’m at the Swiss Chalet!
I’m at the Harvey’s!
I’m at the combination Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s!

Allen Stern blogs about a sign that’s outside Rice to Riches, a rice pudding place in New York City’s East Village:

The sign reads:

Help Wanted

Start a career in the fascinating, fast-paced lucrative pudding business

• Long hard hours
• Very low pay
• Lots of heavy lifting
• Work for a ball-busting asshole
• Dead-end job
• No benefits
• No advancement
• Must be college grad

Start immediately

It’s attention getting; Allen says that he saw a number of people read the sign and as a result step into the store. There’s more in his blog entry about the sign.

I wonder how many people read it and thought “Sounds great! Where do I sign up?”

Photo courtesy of Will from Dork Shelf.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there! May you never receive the Father’s Day present advertised below:

Seen at “Diaper-eze”, a baby clothing store in Bloor West Village, in the west end of Accordion City.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

It’s a busy, meeting-filled day for Yours Truly down at the local headquarters for The Empire. Here’s a (slightly edited) photo that I took at our big Evangelism team meeting around 3:30 this afternoon:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Another internet meme made the big time today – today’s edition of CNN’s “American Morning” ended with anchor Kiran Chetry announcing that they would be “played out” by “Keyboard Cat”. In case you haven’t yet seen them, Keyboard Cat videos all follow the same formula:

• They all have the name “Play Him/Her Out, Keyboard Cat”
• They begin with a segment in which someone humiliates or hurts himself or herself
• They cut to a strange video featuring a cat playing a tune on a cheesy home keyboard

This is my favourite Keyboard Cat video, in which a guy learns an important lesson in nunchuk safety:

This one, featuring a guy whose parents are trying to convince him that it’s bad idea to broadcast his meltdown online, is a close second:

And now, we can find out about the origin of Keyboard Cat and how he turned into an internet meme, thanks to this story in the Los Angeles Times.

It would probably go something like this:

Yes, you’ll need to have seen the Milton-Bradley boardgame “Guess Who?” and this scene from the Quentin Tarantino flick Pulp Fiction to be in on the joke: