The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

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!

…I’m reminded of that line (it’s from this episode of The Simpsons) every time I see photo ops of Hillary Clinton pretending to enjoy beer or whiskey:

“Shhhwiiiing loooow, shweeeet chaaaaa-reeeeee-otttt…”

If I were George, I’d be telling them that if they really wanted to apologize, they SHOULDN’T run the apology:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

To borrow an expression from a commenter on The Seattle Weekly: “Critical Massholes – Saving the planet, one sociopathic gesture at a time.”

As a daily cycle commuter and supporter of Accordion City’s bike plan (I’d really like to see them pull it out of its currently stalled state), I believe in the promotion of cycling as a safe, environmentally-friendly, fiscally responsible and community-building way of transportation. I used to participate in the monthly Critical Mass bike ride in the mistaken belief that it was a way of promoting bikes, but after a year of riding and playing accordion with them, I grew disillusioned with the whole thing. It seemed less like a way to promote cycling and more as an excuse to annoy people who had the gall to travel in a car and not live “I’m so individual, just like the rest of the clique who look and live just like me” twenty-something hipster lifestyle and to live out those unresolved “rebelling against your parents” issues.

Photo by torontopile.
Click the photo to see torontopile’s Flickr photostream.

Last Friday, yet another Critical Mass bike ride took place here in Toronto, and they’ve upped the ante on their pointless gestures. This time, they — in the words of a participant — “shut down the Gardiner” Expressway, the major east-west highway running along Accordion City’s southern end. The story is covered from different perspectives in different places:

• BlogTo: Cyclists Shut Down the Gardiner, which cites a Facebook group posting featuring a lot of CAPITALIZED PHRASES that DEMANDS that the police DROP ALL CHARGES and PROMISE NEVER TO ARREST CRITICAL MASS RIDERS AGAIN.
• Torontoist: “Here We Are. Let’s Take The Gardiner” — Torontoist writer David Topping seems way more level-headed than “Tim”.
• Toronto Star: Four Cyclists Charged After Gardiner Ride.
• “torontopile’s” Flickr stream:
  

  this was my first (and likely last) critical mass ride. i really like their principle of “we’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic”. that being said, i have always felt that as a cyclist wanting to be treated like a vehicle in traffic, we must also respect the rules of the road (ex. stopping at red lights and stop signs, passing on the left, etc.). while i think that it is a relatively minor issue disrupting traffic on the downtown roads for a couple of hours on the last friday of every month (the group is very polite to pedestrians and motorists temporarily disrupted by the ride), i can’t help but wonder if what happened on may 30 was a bit too much. even as i joined the group riding up the jarvis entrance to the gardiner expressway, my gut told me it was a bad idea. with a few other riders in tow, i exited at spadina while the rest of the group continued on to dunn ave. where the boys in blue awaited. quite the experience to say the least and i have certainly enjoyed reading the various opinions about this event online this morning. oh, and i am looking forward to riding the gardiner again tomorrow in the ride for heart!

If the goal of Critical Mass is to participate in some kind of “us-vs-them” war between bicycles and cars and to fulfill some fantasy about fighting against “the pigs”, then Friday’s event was a success. If the goal was cycling advocacy and winning hearts and minds, I’d have to brand it a failure. I can’t imagine someone whose commute home on the Gardiner — which is already slow at rush hour at the best of times — was stretched out even longer thinking “Gee, those Critical Mass guys have sold me; I’m biking to work from now on!”

I don’t think Critical Mass is about cycling advocacy anymore. I think goes even deeper than punishing people for using cars and trucks. I think it’s about a few key people within the group punishing people for not being just like them. You know, just like the conservatives they despise do.

I will continue cycling, but I want nothing to do with the Critical Massholes.

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Recommended Reading

• Critical Massholes – An earlier article of mine explaining why I stopped riding with Critical Mass