Year: 2008

A couple of days ago, I got email from Rob Kutner, who is a writer for my 11 p.m. weekday ritual, The Daily Show. He sent his thanks for my (unsolicited) plug for Jewno and asked if I could plug his new book, Apocalypse How, which he describes as “my new book about how much better things are going to be after the end of the world”.

Click the photo of the book to visit its official site.

I wrote him back, saying:

• Sure!
• You know what you need for an apocalypse? Canned bacon, yo! (To which he replied: “Are there any words more delicious than shelf stable?“)

Here’s Apocalyptic Exercises, the first of two animated promos for the book:

That’s Daily Show correspondent (and actual Marine Corps Reserve Major) Rob Riggle doing the voiceover.

Here’s the second promo, Catastrophic Careers:

Here’s a sample of the book: the Opportunities page, a glass-half-full laundry list of the many options available to you once everything goes to Hell (there are more samples at the book’s site):

Finally, a little Canadian content: here’s Rob Kutner’s podcast interview by Moxy Fruvous’ Jian Gomeshi for the CBC.

While clicking through the “Related Videos” on the YouTube page for Checkmate, the video about check-cashing services featured in the previous post, I stumbled into this ad for Cashcall.com featuring Gary Coleman. Take a look; it’s a mere 10 seconds:

I vaguely recall seeing this ad on TV, and according to this article in Canadian-Money-Advisor.ca, they were running ads that you could see here in Canada on A&E back in February of this year. I didn’t pay much attention to the ad on TV, but noticed the “fine print” at the end when watching it on YouTube. Here’s a still frame from the end of the ad, enlarged for legibility with the really interesting stuff highlighted:

Let me repeat the most important part of the fine print:

The APR for a typical loan of $2,600 is 99.25% with 42 monthly payments of $216.55.

There’s a term that describes interest rates like this: usury. There’s also a term for people who charge interest rates like this: mobsters.

For those of you who are math-phobic, 42 monthly payments of $216.55 means that when Cashcall.com gives you a loan of $2,600:

• You will pay it back over three and a half years…
• …during which time you’ll pay them back 42 times $216.55, which comes out to $9,095.10. This is just a shade under three and a half times the money you borrowed.

(By the bye, you should become familiar with APR, as it’s supposed to reflect the true cost of a loan, and under the right conditions can make it easier to compare lenders. In addition to the Wikipedia article, consult this page and this page to find out more about it.)

If you want to find out more about their rates, here’s their Rates page. To calculate how much you’d end up paying for a loan, multiply the figure in the “Number of Payments” column by the figure in the corresponding “Payment Amount” column. For example, if you live in California and wanted to borrow $10,000 (a loan available to “Exceptionally qualified applicants only”), you would spend almost $31,000 paying it back over 10 years.

“Loans that fit your lifestyle” is Cashcall.com’s slogan. If that slogan applies to you, you might want to put your lifestyle (and financial planning skills) under review.

Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam, a.k.a. “The Internets Celebrities”, have a new video titled Checkmate in which they do a “ha ha, just serious” on-the-street report on those cheque-cashing places you see in urban areas.

“America’s most valueable resource,” says Penn, “is poor people. Poor people drive our economy, okay? Poor people…with checks”. In the report, they explore a number of themes, including why the poor favour cheque-cashing places over banks, usury, economic instability, commercial banks and their profit line, the cycle of poverty and how hard it is to cash a giant novelty cheque.

[This is a New York “street humour” piece, so yes, there will be swearing. You’ve been warned.]

A couple of interesting observations in the video:

• There’s always a cheap jewelry store beside any NYC cheque-cashing place. As the Internets Celebrities put it, “Why would you want to leave a check-cashing place with all your money?
• The banks-per-1000-people ratio is a very telling indicator of the neighbourhood’s socioeconomic status. Brooklyn Heights, where an ex of mine lived, has a bank for every 1,000 people. Bushwick has one for every 50,000.
• Equally telling — and one idea I’ve covered before — is Starbucks. The more banks a neighbourhood has, the more Starbucks it has. “Bank workers love to drink Starbucks,” observes Penn.

In their blog, they write:

Commercial banks don’t exist in the ‘hood. People with no money to save don’t need them. What they need is a facility that gives them the cash they need to buy their groceries, pay their bills and copp their drugs. Poor people need cash. It keeps them on the economic grid. What is more patriotic than going into debt? Our government has a zillion dollar deficit. If they can do it why shouldn’t the backbone of America also follow suit?

We vacillated on whether check cashing joints were really the devil in disguise. For many of us there are no other options. These establishments aren’t here to help poor people gain economic stability. They are here to provide a service and for that service they extract their blood, just like any other service that is contracted to the poverty class. Just be aware of that when you step inside of those doors.

Go watch the video. It’s a fun and informative 9 minutes and 44 seconds.

“Child is father to the man,” the old saying goes, and child is also mother to the shrill, desperate, Machiavellian-as-Karl-Rove politician. Here’s a great YouTube video, Young Hillary Clinton, created by Jerry O’Connell and Brandon Johnson, and starring Laci Kay who does a brilliant job playing Hillary:

[Found via The War on Folly.]

If you’re looking for food for a camping trip, doing some contingency planning for emergencies or perhaps have a platoon of hungry soldiers, you might be interested in the MREdepot.com, an online store that carries MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and what’s known in the industry as “shelf-stable foods”.

(I remember meeting someone ages ago at an Accordion City chapter of those “Company of Friends” gatherings organized by Fast Company. He was in the business of “shelf-stable protein”. Talking with him further revealed that “shelf-stable protein” is a techno-sexed-up way of saying “canned tuna”.)

Being a fan of bacon, the item at MREdepot.com that fascinates me the most is Yoders Canned Bacon, which they say is available for the first time in the United States in 20 years. This is a crying shame; I’m sure that canned bacon would’ve been a big hit with me and my housemates back during my Crazy Go Nuts University days.

MREdepot.com boasts that Yoders bacon surpasses its predecessor:

More than 2 years went into the development of this bacon, and we’re proud to be able to bring this back to you after improving on a what was a very successful brand of canned bacon made years ago by Celebrity Foods (registered Trademark, all rights reserved).

According to the nutritional information on the can, a single serving of three strips of Yoders bacon has:

• 60 calories (40 of which are from fat)
• 5 grams of fat (2 of which are from saturated fat)
• 15 milligrams of sodium
• 190 milligrams of cholesterol
• No carbs!
• 5 grams of protein

The ingredients list reads:

1. Pork
2. Water
3. Salt
4. Sugar
5. Smoke Flavoring
6. Sodium Phosphates
7. Sodium Erythorbate
8. Sodium Nitrite

“Comes out easy,” says the site, very reassuringly. “Bacon stays together until you unroll it.”

Furthermore:

Each can is 9 ounces of fully cooked and drained bacon. Between 2-3/4 and 3-1/4 pounds of raw bacon go into each can. Each can is the highest quality fresh #1 bacon slices. Cured to our specifications, cooked and then hand wrapped, rolled and packed in the U.S.

We cook this bacon down for you prior to canning, so you won’t pay for all of the natural shrinkage that occurs whenever you cook bacon. Then we carefully drain all of the fat and liquid off and can it fresh so it will taste as good out of the can as it would right out of the refrigerator.

The site goes on:

With a shelf life in excess of 10 years, this bacon makes a perfect addition to your food storage program and it is great for every day use. Take some with you when you go camping, hiking or hunting – keep a case in the boat, RV, cabin or anywhere that you may need to prepare a meal but don’t have refrigeration!!

I really could’ve used this stuff at Burning Man!

Yoders Bacon sells in cases of 12 cans at US$109.95 a case. Perhaps it’s time to see if they’ll ship to Canada and if there are 11 other people who’d like to chip in for a can and collectively buy a case.

All time rock and roll great Bo Diddley passed away today. So long, and thanks for all the music.

In Bo’s memory, here are some videos of the man doing what he did best:

Hey, Bo Diddley on the TNT Show:

Road Runner:

Here’s Bo rockin’ out in concert:

Once upon a time, musicians were featured on TV like this:

While running out from the b5 office to get a little fresh air and caffeine, I noticed some young twentysomething kids handing out pamphlets amidst posters that declared “Stop AL OGRE [sic] from eating African babies!”

My curiosity was piqued, so I decided to go in for a closer look.

Seen around 12:30 this afternoon at the corner of Queen and Spadina.

A very young, very earnest-looking guy approached me and greeted me with a slogan: “Stop the British Empire!” I was instantly reminded of that episode Gilligan’s Island featuring a Japanese soldier who had not yet been informed that World War II had ended.

Now that I was closer to the posters, I saw “larouchepac.com” at the bottom. That’s when it became clear to me: Crazed babbling about the British Empire? Bizarro statements about globalization? larouchepac.com?

“You guys are with LaRouche as in Lyndon LaRouche?” I asked Earnest Guy.

“Yes! You’ve heard of him?” he replied, looking at me as if he’d met someone else who could draw the other half of the “Jesus Fish”.

“Yeah, he’s my favourite conspiracy nut!”

Earnest Guy deflated quickly. He thrust a copy of Save the American Republic from the British Empire! into my hands, said “Read it and learn,” and turned off to try and win converts elsewhere. I’ll give it read later on and let you know how it goes.

Here’s what Earnest Guy handed to me.

I’m half-tempted to print out LaRouche’s Wikipedia entry and hand it to Earnest Guy to see what he makes of it. Maybe I will, in the unlikely event that things slow down at the office today.

Fun Lyndon LaRouche Facts

Lyndon LaRouche’s Wikipedia entry. Considerably more entertaining than a lot of political figures’ bios.

Be sure to look up these fun terms in LaRouche’s Wikipedia entry:

• Ego-stripping
• Operation Mop-Up
• The “Brianwashing” Scare
• LaRouche’s position on “Star Wars” (as in the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies)

During his 1988-1994 imprisonment, he shared a cell with disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker for a while. Bakker wrote in his memoir, I Was Wrong, that he was impressed with LaRouche’s knowledge of the Bible.

Well I’ll be damned, there’s some kind of LaRouche youth movement! The existence of such a thing is a minor miracle considering that pop culture has pretty much cast him as a paranoid conspiracy nut since the 1980s. Back then, The comics Bloom County and the somewhat more underground-ish Zippy the Pinhead frequently used him as punchlines and Saturday Night Live ran parodies of his presidential campaign ads. Both The Simpsons and Futurama have also name-dropped him at his expense.

Special Bonus Fun Fact for the Ginger Ninja: Guess where LaRouche grew up!