When the world catches Spamish flu

It's another odd little "Who'da thunk it?" sign of global recession: Apparently when times get tough, the tough buy Spam. My secret coyote sources tell me that Hormel Inc, manufacturer of the delicacy, is already cheering it's fat(ty) windfall profits. Even added extra shifts to the assembly line to meet surging demand.

But anyone warming up for a swan dive into the dietary Spambyss should note that, though we coyotes will eat most any damn thing, we won't touch that stuff. (Note to early Christmas shoppers: We prefer chocolate, and large, slow cats, and sugary baked goods but really, we're not fussy... I digress)

You're baffled, you say? All of Great Britain lived on the stuff during the Second World War, you say? It can't be that bad, you say? Who wouldn't like unidentifiable parts of porker, frappé-ed to vaguely pinkish molecules in some industrial-sized Cuisinart, then suspended in gelatinous yellow goo comprising half fat and half salt, you say? Then welded into a metal-jacketed brick of maybe-meat, you say? Resembling food? You say?

Oh, wait, you say. Except that Great Britain immediately after the war had to invent the National Health System to counteract its effects. One 12-ounce block (Remember ounces? I digress again...) serves you 180 per cent of an average human's normal daily dose of salt, 150 per cent of the total fat, and 170 per cent of the saturated fat. Oh, and, like, rather more than a thousand calories. That's a lot of goodness in one unassuming little can.

Which, judging by my speed-reading-on-the-fly the last time Hartman's Independent Grocer stockboys were chasing me out with brooms, ain't that cheap compared to like, food, anyway. It's all so... unappetizing.

Let's get very clear here: buying Spam is not about economizing, it's about self-flagellation for goin' all greedhead and buying those sub-prime mortgage futures your idiot brother-in-law was flogging, even when you knew the economic model sounded like utter lunacy. Is it coincidence that penitence and penury share prefixes? But for those that feel a need to maintain certain standards of social decorum and gracious living in a global meltdown, we look to Hawaii for a ray of hope: Spam sushi. Because even while you're killing yourself, you can hang onto a vestige of your old panache doing it.

Gone baby gone

We see a number of new condo towers going up in Centretown and I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, anything that injects some life and people into the core is good. On the other, I wonder where all these folks are going to eat, shop, stroll and generally enjoy life?

Too many downtown bookshops, cafes, cinemas, grocery stores and restaurants to count have disappeared over the last decade or so. And the only things that seem to spring up in their place are condominiums, office towers and chain-sponsored coffee shops.

Five places I miss:

1. The Canadian Tire store at Kent and Laurier, torn down in 2002. A veritable urban oasis of tools, home supplies, paint and sporting goods. Apparently the smallish outlet did not fit with the corporation's vision of suburban megastores.

2. The Bay Street Guest House. Once a quaint bed-and-breakfast on Bay near Gloucester, it has been a graffiti-strewn wreck for years, endlessly waiting to be demolished along with several other adjacent houses so Richcraft Homes can put up a honkin' big condo building.

3. The Elgin cinema on our beloved boulevard, where Audrey, ESI Cultural Affairs Officer, once toiled as an usherette. Little-known fact: it was the first theatre in North America to have two screens. This foreshadowed the multiplex trend that eventually sent The Elgin to the big box office in the sky.

4. The little cafe just inside the Rideau Centre, across from the magazine shop. It quietly served fine, fresh-brewed coffee, delicious pasta and tasty sandwiches. A perfect place to steel oneself for an afternoon of mall-bound Christmas shopping. I can't even remember its name. But maybe that's a good thing, as I do know the replacement is a Starbucks.

5. There's no fifth thing. It's already long gone.

Image: http://www.magma.ca/~hra/travia.htm

Summer Solstice

For those of you that don't know what to buy your very favourite - indeed, your only* - blog-coyote-about-town as a thoughtful and much appreciated summer solstice gift, may I suggest a Doggie IQ Test? Only £4.99! With the small stipend for 'super fast delivery', you might still make it by tonight, if you hurry! And after all of this damnable rain, I'm pretty sure it'll bring me a very welcome little ego boost.

If you figure I'm already smart (ass) enough, and don't need further excuses to tap my full potential in that area, I'm also completely open to the Stylophone or the intriguingly fluorescent Space Putty, suggested as alternatives further down the catalogue page. But be forewarned that paste-on smile for pugs is a non-starter.

Meantime, I suggest that everybody reading this start flushing your minds right now of any and all mental images of certain Irregulars dancing naked around their gas barbecues tonight. Down that road lies rump of skunk, and madness. 'Kaythxgbye!

*This town, anyway. Wandering Coyote has the Southern BC franchise sewed up.

Image: Captain Cripple and his K9 Companion Skipper the Wonder Dog

PETA + KFC = ESI opportunity

Yesterday's papers were all clucking over the news that PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - has finally twisted Kentucky Fried Chicken of Canada's drumsticks painfully enough that the company has pledged to: a) buy only what PETA deems to be humanely scragged poultry (which apparently means gassing it); and b) introduce what the Petfinder called "a vegan, faux-chicken flavoured menu item". How droll.

PETA and point-person Pamela Anderson, who by virtue of having surgically crammed her chest full of dangerously gratuitous plastic products, twice, is an ideal spokes-Barbie for the cause of cruelty to animals, have been after KFC for years on this.

Pam, sweetie: Without even going in to the mental images I see when I hear the term "gassing chickens", for your own good I advise you to plan never to be around when I knock off a pheasant or partridge for tiffin. Not pretty. Yum. I mean, ummmm, now 'scuze me, I have to wipe the drool off of this keyboard thingie, so my claws stop skidding... Ahem. I digress. All better now.

Anyway, with this announcement, I believe I smell a toothsome business opportunity for ESI Global PLC. The Mumumelon® line is doing very nicely, and our new lingerie is taking off... so it's time to diversify. The Globe and Mail reports that KFC's vegan menu option will apparently be some sort of soy-based product, generically labelled 'unchicken'. Sounds inhumane to me, but I'm willing to roll with the market: a contract to supply KFC with this stuff could be worth a little scratch. So here's to dee-lishus ESI ChickUn®, served up on a foam platter with sides of fries, gravy and three-bean salad. By the time we finish breading it with eleven secret herbs and spices and deep-frying it, it'll be almost as healthy as the real thing.

Now. Somebody explain to me: why the hell would vegans want to go to KFC anyway....?

Oh, and that Schreiber/ Mulroney thing...?

...Kinda like watching eels Mazola-wrestling. Don'cha think?

As you were...

Phew. Yesterday's drop in lululemon® stock prices appears to have been a mere knee-jerk market blip. The integrity of our (studiously mimeographed) Mumumelon® business case is intact. Apparently it takes more than being dead wrong about your product having some kinda wearable nutriceutical mojo. Or rather, not.

But lululemon®'s chairman apologized right away. They just trusted suppliers that told them the fabric was impregnated with seaweed: "Hey. It felt different! How were we, sharp business people that we are, to know the stuff was suspect? Now can we go back to making money, here?"

That's the spirit. Pure damage-control genius! As chief spokescoyote for Mumumelon®, I apologize for panicking. It was our news supplier's fault. How were we to know they'd update their story when the market changed direction again, two lousy hours later? Back to sucking on the hems of your favourite 'melon mu'umu'us, everybody... And to the naysayers? I say let the market decide. 'Cuz it's obviously so smart-like...

Image: corg.org

Mumumelon® biz model: down the ol' flusher?

Aggie reports this just in from the CBC: Lululemon stocks appear to be taking a bath after an investor's private lab analysis discovered that a new line of clothing purported to contain beneficial health-inducing seaweed additives, turns out to be, ummm, maybe, less than likely to carry this enhancement. Could the venture be (fish?)tanking on the market?

Loyal ESI readers will recall that our nascent Mumumelon® venture was closely modelled on lululemon® -- in a matter/antimatter kinda way, since we're using many of the same marketing ideas to corner the exercise-wear market for the exact opposite somatotype. (That'd be the 'endomorphs', or to us new-age, workout-challenged lay-types, the potentially-lucrative Pillsbury Doughboy® contingent...)

To head off any financially-ruinous speculation among our main investors, I, as Mumumelon's® chief spokescoyote, just want to take this opportunity to assure the market (Huh? Whaddaya whispering at me? Oh! Them...) ...and our valued family of customers... that every mu'umu'u we produce is absolutely guaranteed to be factory-drenched in lime Jell-O®. If you start feeling a blood sugar emergency, say, after climbing the stairs or something, you can just suck on the hem until your head stops spinning and your glucose levels return to normal...

After all, the well-being of our bank accou... uh, customers, is paramount. Thank you.

Image: Toiletology.com

Holes

Holes hold a fascination for people. Coyotes understand this -- I like a nice snug one myself, smelling of dry earth, roots and many good books. Lately, though, my wanderings have taken me past this very large hole at Kent and Laurier Streets, where a noticeable crowd of men -- always men -- gathers to gape every week day at civil service quitting time. Which is anywhere between 1:30 and 5:00 on a given day... I digress.

This hole is a former Canadian Tire, and was the only hardware store left in Centretown. I do not address that loss directly here -- the Independent Observer is passionate on this, and tells hilarious, twisted stories around a series of crotchety correspondences with blandly clueless corporate flacks. He may write 'em up sometime.

Let's just say that the store's demise, and that of an adjacent pocket park, have left holes in the Centretown community. Now there are holes in the ground, soon to be replaced by um, erections, that we coyotes would argue are actually holes in the sky. Ones that punch holes in the ambient sunlight reaching pedestrians way down at ground level. In summer, there is permanent semidarkness. In winter, add cold, bitter winds shrieking between the walls of artificial canyons created by this and all the other holes in the sky in that part of the city. No one knows precisely how all of this will interact with the remains of the local micro climate until it's a fait accompli...

Among the definitions for 'hole' extant in the Oxford English Big Word Thingy for Literate Dogs are: "an empty space in a solid body; an aperture in or through something; an awkward situation". Less polite, more scatological dictionaries have other definitions of interest also. To describe the many levels of politicians, bureaucrats, city planners, investors, developers anon anon, who have taken part in imposing this dense skyscraper farm, one might refer to the latter...

*Note: The photo here is a composite, created with a demonstration version of a program called Autostitch. Five dozen separate pictures of the construction site and two hours of chugging on my wood fired computer -- et voila! The estimable David Scrimshaw told me about it and explained how the algae-rhythm works when the Irregulars went to his last party. He's gone to school for these kindsa things. What I took away from it was that this algae-rhythm thing has to do with pond scum -- either an R&B band formed by some of the more musically talented, or a method of asexual birth control sanctioned by their traditional church. I have no idea what this has to do with photo software... but I like the subtly off-kilter, weird, rickety, blurry thing, because it's pretty much how us coyotes see cities...

City of Spires II

(Or: The Environment Is the Economy...)
(... Stupid.)

Each autumn, I become a cranky coyote. Something to do with being 'bout six thousand years old, and having the arthritis that goes with that, even if I am partly mythical. And really, I'm not very patient with patent stupidity at the best of times.

When ya combine these two coyote factoids in a guy that watches CPAC while he gnaws his coffeebreak bones (I know. Perverse. And likely to cause indigestion.) ya can imagine the extremity of the yapping aimed at the TV.

I'm especially fascinated (read: 'galled') lately by politipeople who claim to know what's going on in this country cautioning us that "we must balance environmental concerns against the needs of a healthy economy."

Fuck. The environment is the economy.

Let's make this simple, with a metaphor even I can understand: piss in your own bed (or, say, souse it with oil sand tailings) and it ain't worth nothin' anymore -- to you, your children, or anybody else. Everything, including the economy, will be damp, smelly and unhealthy. Why is this simple connection so hard for allegedly 'smart politicians' and 'smart businessmen' to grasp?

So, check out the wondrous sky over Parliament Hill. Because global climate change starts there...

Return of the Meta Contest

The time has come to launch the second part of the meta contest.

How to Win:

• Before 7pm, Thursday, 8 November 2007, write a comment on this post suggesting a prize.

The Winner Will Receive:

• The very prize that they suggested.

The Winner will be determined by consensus of the Elgin Street Irregulars. No consensus = No winner.

Introducing Mumumelon

Okay, the business pages these past months have been full of stories about Canadian sportswear manufacturer/marketing powerhouse/success story Lululemon™: Lululemon™ founder sells out for a gazillion bux! Lululemon™ goes public with a monster IPO! And just yesterday: LuluLemon™ snags a former Starbux™ CFO for its board! Omigawd!

Lululemon™ purveys yoga wear featuring built-in "butt bras". These are purported to make any woman's ass look great. No, great!

Quibbles re: jawdropping prices, and non-yogis wearing the ultra-casual gear in inappropriate business & formal situations are summarily thrust aside by acolytes worshipping at the lululemon™ altar, because their asses look great. No, great!

There are, of course, flies in the lemonade. There always are. The trademark completely-synthetic nylon-spandex pants themselves are said to be prone to pilling faster than cheap 70s leisure suits. Hey, they're synthetic. The fashion police are starting to realize that fashion-impaired teens are stuffing themselves into low-rise lululemons™ five sizes too small, for that winsome plumbers' butt look. And (gasp!) obese people are buying and wearing lululemon™ stuff hoping the pants will whittle 10-odd cheeseburgers from their thighs. These poseurs are driving the brand's cachet downmarket. Unlike, say, all the poseurs I see every day, running around downtown, dressed in lululemons™ and carrying yoga mats™, but for some reason never actually attending any actual yoga™ classes.

But anytime life hands you a sackful of bagged-out, overstretched lululemons™, hey, it's a chance to make us some lemonade. I'm pretty sure no less an authority than Ann Landers herself said it.

So here's the scam: Aggie is becoming a crafter. Who sews quilts. Who is buying a sewing machine. Who can teach the ESIs to sew in conditions that, when we get up to speed, will echo East Asian sweatshops. All perfect for crafting stylish mu'umu'us. Ya heard it here first: Mumumelon™!!!!: exercise wear for all the people who shouldn't wear lululemon™. Given North American obesity rates, I'm pretty sure our target market ain't trivial. We are so going to make a killin'....

Muumuu Cam

For whom the Bell tolls

My cell phone conked out in the middle of a conversation today. No problem, I thought: I will use the nearby pay phone.

I inserted a quarter. The phone display told me I had a credit of 25 cents, and requested another 25 cents.

Yes, folks, it now costs 50 freakin' cents to make a pay phone call!

I understand that phone technology is still in its infancy, having only been around for a century. And that Bell Canada is a small startup with poor cash flow. And that people are always willing to shell out more for basic services because, hey, we like doing that.

But this is ridiculous. Yeah, everyone has a cell phone, yada, yada .... no, wait, not everyone does have a cell phone. And the people who don't probably don't because they can't afford one.

So how does Bell make life easier for these poor folks? By dialling up a 100 per cent increase.

Talk about a disconnect.