The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

For starters, it’s now possible to get deep dish pizza from a vending machine:

Photo from the blog she eats.

Before you go blaming this machine on the Obese States of America, please note that its manufacturer is Wonderpizza, a company based in Italy, birthplace of the Mediterranean Diet. Damn you, “Old Europe”!

…is from CNN: Officials: Burglar wakes men with spice rub, sausage whack. The main points of the story, according to the “story highlights” list, are:

• Authorities: Burglar woke victims by slathering one with spice rub
• Burglar whacked the other with an 8-inch sausage, officials say
• Money was recovered from suspect, sheriff says

A suspect has been arrested: “Fresno County sheriff’s Lt. Ian Burrimond says 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxers and socks after the Saturday morning attack. He says deputies arrested Vasquez after finding a wallet containing his ID in the ransacked house.”

I figure that this news item might be the one that makes CNN’s “Turn a headline into a t-shirt” service take off:

Click the photo to see the order page.

While walking to Hampton’s farewell party on Friday, I passed by Jupiter, one of the relatively new shops that have sprung up on Queen Street just west of Spadina in the past few months:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

In my youth, a store like this would have to resort to all sorts of semantic and semiotic trickery to avoid getting shut down. They’d say that they were selling generic “smoking supplies” to enthusiasts who liked to “roll their own cigarettes“. These days — at least here in Accordion City — you can be pretty up-front about this sort of business: they say very clearly that they’re in the weed accessory business, with the same sort of pride Hank Hill has in his business of selling “propane and propane accessories”.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent food-borne pathogen problems, from salmonella in tomatoes and peppers earlier this summer to the recent listeriosis contamination of cheese and processed meat, it’s that we need to pay better attention to the journey our food takes from farm to table.

One of the interesting side effects of the outbreak is that people seem to be switching away from packaged meats and either going to their butcher for deli meat. Some are even forgoing deli meats and buying fresh roasts that they cook and slice themselves for their sandwiches. Even without listeriosis as an incentive, it’s a good idea: it’s cheaper, you can spice them any way you like, and you’re not adding nitrites to them.

A number of local butchers are playing up the fact that they’re not large meat-processing plants and pay better attention to their work. Here’s a sign I saw outside Astra Deli on Bloor Street West on Saturday. They’ve got some good stuff, and they make some pretty mean meat-on-a-bun combos:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

That’s the title of one of the articles in the current edition of Cosmopolitan, which I saw yesterday while grocery shopping:

Photo taken by your ‘umble chronicler.

Given that Cosmo comes from the pop culture machine that reinforces the notions that politeness is wimpy, dickery is the same thing as assertiveness and Grey’s Anatomy is good television, I suspect the article might be better titled Give Me What I Want or I Will Create a Commotion that will Demean Us All.

Related Reading

Back in March, I posted another article based on a Cosmo article title. This one involved use of the word “vajayjay” (you know, that new slang term for “a lady’s nethers”).

I’m just sayin’…