Year: 2008

Categories
It Happened to Me

Colossal Cake

We have team lunches (on the company dime, whoo-hoo!) reasonably often at b5media. Sometimes it’s dim sum, sometimes it’s shwarma, sometimes it’s pub food. Last week, we ended up at Wayne Gretzky’s, where we saw this colossal cake in the desserts display:

A whole colossal cake sitting in the dessert fridge at Wayne Gretzky’s
Damn, that’s one seriously stacked cake!

Naturally, we had to order a slice of this sucker. From what we could see, it’s a tricky cake to slice and carrying it to the table is a two-handed operation:

Darcie Vany, Jeremy Wright and a slice of “Colossal Cake”
My coworkers Darcie Vany and Jeremy Wright marvelling at the slice.

The slice fed 7 people quite nicely, and one can be yours for the low price of CDN$13.99. You might want to drop by Gretzky’s and get one if you’re entertaining hockey fans from out of town.

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Uncategorized

Pete Forde’s Taking the IonCleanse Challenge!

Section of the IonCleanse poster showing “before” and “after” photos.

My friend Pete Forde suffers from “Rich Man’s Disease”, which the medical profession has given the less colourful name of “gout”. He saw my earlier post, Quackery in the ‘Hood, in which I wrote about the IonCleanse system, a footbath which purports to remove harmful toxins from the body…through your feet. One the ailments that IonCleanse is implied to cure or at least prevent is gout.

Like most people in the field of computer programming, Pete’s an empiricist and wants to put IonCleanse to the test. He’ll go in for a treatment, which will give us a chance to see the IonCleanse system as well as the brown goop up close. Of course, doing this costs money, and he’d like your help in raising the money for a session. Here’s his page at Fundable, a site for online fundraising. If you’d like to help Pete put IonCleanse to the test, go there and pledge some cash!

Recommended Reading

Ion Cleanse or Ion Scam? An article that points to other articles on IonCleanse. The short version: Ion Scam!

Categories
Geek

Star Wars Hijinks at Global Nerdy

Small versions of the “Slave Leia Pillow Fight”, “Darth Emo” and “Speeder Dogs” from Global Nerdy

My tech blog, Global Nerdy, is largely focused on computer technology and programming, but it also covers nerd culture, of which Star Wars is a significant part. Right now, I’ve got some Star Wars fun on its front page:

  • Slave Leia Pillow Fight: Six women. In the “gold bikini outfit” from Return of the Jedi. Having a pillow fight. Why are you still reading this?
  • Darth Emo: There’s a special bond between a boy and his first droid that’s not easily broken.
  • Speeder Dogs: The only way to fly!
Categories
Uncategorized

When Engrish Accidentally Makes Sense

The b5media office is just south of Accordion City’s downtown Chinatown, so I encounter “Engrish” — gramatically incorrect versions of English from southeast Asia — quite often. It’s quite rare to encounter Engrish that accidentally makes sense, as with the T-shirt shown below:

“Think twice before making any trunk calls” T-shirt

“Think twice before making any trunk calls,” the shirt says. Given that the shirt was being sold at a store that carried mostly club clothing for women and the social phenomenon known as drunk dialing, I believe the intended T-shirt slogan was “Think twice before making any drunk calls.”

In spite of this gaffe, the T-shirt slogan makes sense. The term “trunk call” is an archaic term used to refer to a long-distance call. Long distance calls, especially made from mobile phones (on which most “drunk dial” calls are made), can get quite expensive, so you really should think twice before making them.

Maybe they should give away these T-shirts with new mobile phones.

“Think twice before making any trunk calls” T-shirt

Categories
Uncategorized

Hello Pukey

My friend Nancy has had a contest with her sister for years: they’ve been trying to outdo each other in giving the other some kind of “Hello Kitty”-themed gift. In this contest, there are only two criteria for a qualifying gift:

  • It must bear the image of Hello Kitty
  • It must serve some useful purpose

There’s no end of the lineup of Hello Kitty products: I’ve seen laptops and iPods, toasters, vaccuum cleaners and yes, the er…personal massager.

There’s even an airline — EVA Air — that’s adopted Hello Kitty as a mascot. EVA Air use the Hello Kitty brand everywhere. And I mean everywhere, even on their air sickness bags:

EVA Air’s “Hello Kitty”-themed barf bag
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Scenes from the Good Food Festival

Last weekend, Wendy and I attended the Good Food Festival, an annual showcase of food vendors and cooking instructors sponsored by Food Network Canada. It features samples galore, either for free or a very low price, which means that you can get a complete lunch simply by “grazing”. Here are some photos I took at the festival.

I can’t resist a photo op with a mascot:

Joey deVilla and Mr. Peanut

My Favourites

My favourite stall at the festival was Kozlik’s Mustard, who provided peameal bacon (that’s “Canadian bacon” to my American readers) sandwiches made with very nice ciabatta bread and a spread made with one of their spicy mustards.

Chef frying peameal bacon in a giant iron skillet.

Anton Kozlik makes a mean mustard — in fact, he make several varieties, both hot and sweet. They’re available at several locations across Canada — if you’re in Accordion City, you can get them at many gourmet food shops including Alex Farms, St. Lawrence Market, and one of my favourite places, The Cheese Boutique.

Chef frying peameal bacon in a giant iron skillet.

Another favourite of ours were the sauces by the relatively new Redhead Pantry:

Redhead Pantry logo

They make some tasty sauces! We got their barbecue sauce and their honey peach jalapeno sipping sauce, which I used to baste some chicken thighs for Sunday dinner. It’s really good stuff, and I hope this stuff finds its way to a store near us soon.

Under the “ready-made” category, my hand-down favourites: Key Lime Tofutti Cuties. Damn, they’re good!

An Engrish Encounter

Check out this banner we saw beside the barley tea stand:

Barley tea poster with Engrish

Here’s a closer look at the text:

Barley tea poster with Engrish

“Drinkable Magazine?” I have no idea what they’re trying to say.

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Quackery in the ‘Hood

Here’s a photo I’ve been meaning to take for a while: it’s a poster of the “ionCleanse” treatment being offered at a chiropractor’s office not far from my house. The treatment is purported to remove toxins from the body through the feet:

Poster for “Ioncleanse” treatment that purports to remove toxins from the body through your feet.

I’d love to see this device in action. I want to know how it muddies up your foot bath to make it appear as if “toxins” are being excreted from your feet. I also want to know what the brown goop is. Clay? Paint? Nestle Quik?