Re: no big loss. I never did like Shake ‘n Bake much.

Fudge replies:

Miracle Whip, Shake n’ Bake, Jell-O, Maxwell House, Kraft Dinner, Kool-Aid,
Raisin Brand, Miller Beer…Why are people buying tobacco from a food
company?

All are really popular products, most are actually not that bad (try adding
hot-dogs to the kraft, breaks up the taste). Why boycott these products?
Tobacco revenues are falling yearly and the lawsuits are mounting. Fairly
soon most of these companies will likely give up on the tobacco side of
their business and focus more on other things. Maybe if people spent some of
their tobacco cash on jell-o it would be a good thing no matter who makes
it. Let them make all the cigarettes they want, if no one is smoking them it
won’t last very long anyway! Some places are currently asking for
legislation that limits where people can smoke outside! If the price of
pants goes up to $300 and when I buy them I’m told that I can’t wear them in
restaurants or downtown, and when I do wear them people stare at me and
shake their heads, and they make my breath smell, and they have this picture
on the side of some guy who wore pants all his life and his legs are all
white and pasty…pretty soon I say “Fuck pants!”, gimme some of them shorts!

Who the hell reads Harper’s anyways?

As to your pants parable, in theory you may be correct. Unfortunately, in reality most people are not as wise as you are – many do continue to smoke, likely due to the fact that, unlike wearing pants, smoking is rather addictive whereas pant-wearing is merely a matter of style and comfort.

Cigarette companies advertise, they do not simply produce a product. They advertise to “young people,” a demographic which has not abandoned smoking as readily as others. I would prefer if the money I spent on groceries did not end up financing an ad campaign for a product which kills approximately 1200 people a day in the US alone.

If I might make an analogy of my own, let me cast tobacco companies as a criminal, a mass-murderer. If said murderer becomes more inept and bumbling with age, unable to knock off people in the record numbers it has previously (7.2 million in the last 20 years), I still don’t think I’m going to buy Popsicle-stick sculptures from the guy because his profits (431 billion in the last 20 years) are diminishing somewhat, no matter how attractive his art might be.

I was somewhat surprised to learn that all the brands pictured below are owned by Philip Morris. To read about Adbusters Harper’s Campaign go here. And stop eating Kraft Dinner, it tastes god-awful anyway.

Go see The Legend of Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan. In this re-release of the ’94 Drunken Master, Jackie Chan plays a master of the Drunken Boxing style of combat who needs to actually be drunk to reach the peak of his abilities.

There’s this one scene where a dude with an axe comes at Jackie, and then Jackie’s like: “pow, pow, whap-pow, kapow, smack-wap”, and axe-guy is like “oof,” and then Jackie does this flip-somersault thing and then: “whap, whap, whap, YIIAHH! wap-wap-WHAP,” and the axe guy falls off the roof.

Probably the best Jackie Chan movie I have ever seen. I don’t think he’s human.

Taglines from what is possibly one of the worst marketing campaings I have ever witnessed:

Because .com is for old people.
The global MUsic Domain has launched! Declare your independence now!
The screamin’ streamin’ Domain for people who love music, movies, hot cars, sports and lots of partyin!

It goes on, but I’ll spare you the rest. If you haven’t guessed already (and why would you?) the above cheese is in support of the new .mu domain. Go here to get the full experience complete with guitars, cars and cleavage. I don’t have adequate words or bile to describe how unbelieable god-awful this site and ad campaign are. This guy apparently has two more top level domains appearing soon. Live in fear.

Oh, Alanis Morisette, you are so very wise! You’re high but you’re grounded, you’re sad but your laughing. Oh, you are so wise (but at the same time green)! You’re this, but then you aren’t! What a paradox you are Alanis! What a contradiction you are. You are the thesis and the antithesis. You are a fucking conundrum.

Ok, I’m done. I feel much better now. Sorry.

Too lazy to write an actual post on this myself, I will quote relevant pieces of a story which appeared in Suck:

Through a process that was both years too long and miles too stupid, the ICANN board approved – drum roll, please – .biz, .name, .pro, .museum, .info, .aero and .coop. Yes, the thundering demand for a .museum domain has finally been met.

The only possible explanation for making such mediocre additions to a badly over-taxed system – while the well-regarded .web and .xxx domains were ignored – is that ICANN, often regarded as the sycophantic toady of trademark holders, had no intention of diluting the worth of the One True TLD, .com.

There is no technical reason why .web, .xxx, .sucks, .nom or .rectalleakage couldn’t be added tomorrow, save the fact that Disney would then have to hire someone to go register disney.rectalleakage, to keep it out of the hands of pranksters.

Oh, we could never just let anything be a top-level domain. No, because then we would have to decide who had the authority to invent and sell new ones. Well, they couldn’t just be free, could they? This is the Internet after all.

From CBC News:

Man Steals Ballot Box
PICTOU, N.S. – The RCMP in Pictou are investigating a stolen ballot box after a man walked into the Pictou Landing Fire Hall Monday afternoon and took the ballot box.

The man apparently left a letter outlining a grievance over compensation he felt he was owed.

Elections Canada says the ballot box, containing 126 ballots, was thrown into Pictou Harbour…

While the ballot box was eventually recovered, the issues that this election were apparently to be based on remain missing. It’s unfortunate that more people living in close proximity to water, myself included, did not take the opportunity to throw a ballot box ot two into the drink. It would have been much more satisfying than voting.

In large letters:

P – E – N – E

and where the final S was to be, an aov member rolling in the freshly fallen snow, laughing histerically at his poor spelling.

Today the sun made an extended appearance.* People danced in the street or, at the very least, they smiled for the first time in weeks.

Forget all that nonsence about free-will. We are simple animals with a complex system of rationalizing our actions. Actions which are based on nothing more than the electricity and the chemical soup housed in our pre-historic brains and influenced by the environment which surrounds us. A quick equation to demonstrate:

Sun = Happy

This doesn’t mean you have no control over your moods. Here are a few things which may help you tip the balance of happy vs. sad chemicals in your favour:

Ya Mama – Fatboy Slim
Shake what ya mama gave ya. Found on Fatboy’s new album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars and on the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack.

Charlie’s Angels
No plot. No point. Beautiful women kicking people. Bill Murray. Happy.

The Grasshopper
2 oz. green creme de menthe
2 oz. white creme de cacao
2 oz. light cream

* Actually this happened yesterday. Today it is snowing. The delay on this post comes from having nearly finished this post yesterday and having it disappear. It angries up the blood I tell ya.

Before last week I had never heard of the authour Lemony Snicket (AKA Daniel Handler). I do not believe I was alone. In the last week Snicket, the pen-name used by Handler when writing kids books, has been featured in The National Post, his website has appeared on K10k and Handler has also written an article for Salon discussing the top five books with the word “bird” in the title.*

It took me some time to determine whether or not Lemony Snicket (simply the best pen-name out there other than Mark Twain) was actually a children’s authour. His series of children’s books, titled A Series of Unfortunate Events, is certainly written so that a child can read it, but the content is somewhat unusual for a children’s fiction. The beginning of the series, titled The Bad Beginning, involves the death of the Baudelaire children’s parents in a fire. This is followed by, among other things, Count Olaf attemting to marry 14-year-old Violet, 12-year-old claus nearly killing someone with a buzz-saw, and an angry mob chasing the children from town.

The people who didn’t like the Harry Potter books will really hate this series. Myself, I think it’s about time we got back to the age old business of frightening small children.

* My favourite book with “bird” in the title, At Swim Two Birds by Flan O’Brien, is mentioned but doesn’t make it to the top five. It should. Thankfully, To Kill a Mockingbird does not make an appearance.