Triple Washed...yeah right.

So we opened a brand new bag of baby spinach which was sold and described as 'triple washed.' To me, that means we can expect it to be clean. Maybe my assumption is too presumptuous but really what does 'triple washed' mean. Did they spray it 3 times with tap water?
Anyways we found this root structure that looks decidedly small to be from a spinach plant. (I could be wrong - I'm no botanist or gardener). After eating all this spinach without washing it I felt a little disconcerted. I guess it could be worse; at least it wasn't a finger or some other appendage. But still, what would you do...?
I was tempted to call the spinach plant and force them to give me triple washed spinach for life. But that plan was foiled when I couldn't find a phone number on the package.
Then I got to thinking, what if this root is from some drug operation that the spinach people are doing on the side. What if I had stumbled upon a massive grow-op disguised as a triple wash spinach plant. But that was shot down when I searched for marijuana root structures on the Google.
Too bad.

Just kill em already!

This is more than mildly amusing...

Well this just sucks....

Currently Listening to:
last.fm >Similar Artists To Sufjan Stevens

I just came across this article online and if what it says is true, good music may become harder to find. Basically the recording industry is trying to shut down (or grab profits from) all those great internet radio stations.
In my experience, the best one is last.fm. I have also tried iceberg radio and yahoo's launchcast. Iceberg was decent in the early days i guess but it is more for the mainstream crowd. Still, Launchcast is even better for mainstream stuff plus its rating system which works amazingly well throws new music at you based on similar artists, other users ratings and similar genres. I have worked up my ratings to the 'Fanatic' level. Ah yes, good 'ol college all nighters. Since college I have switched to Last.fm which, although it has a tendency to crash, it has the best music selection and a pretty good listener community. One of the features I really love is that it tells you what bands are doing shows in your area.
Anyway, the point is, all these sites will probably die when the U.S. starts this new legislation. Even though the music industry probably makes more money this way they don't like it because they can't control it. I think the record labels would shut down Pitchfork if they could. Even though the website indirectly sells millions of cds because of it's reviews the labels don't like it because the reviews were not endorsed by them. There are actually only 4 record labels in the world that basically control the world's popular music. It sometimes feels very Orwellian so thats why I try to stay away from mainstream pop music.

Ok I am stopping the rant here before it dissolves into conspiracy theories.

Winterlude Pics

Currently Listening to:
Beck's Broken Drum from Guero

Winterlude has come and gone once again. Once again I missed out on a free indie concert which featured Amy Millan of 'Stars' among others. Ah well - there is always next year eh. Actually we are going to a concert in Wakefield with the 'Great Lake Swimmers' in March so my music fix should get satisfied. This year I went down to winterlude the most of any year. I was down at least once every weekend. The canal was ok but not amazing this year - thanks to global warming and hummers. Stupid hummers. They should be outlawed.

Ice Sledding - Mush! Lawren Mush!

Eureka!

Ice Mountie - Take that bad guys!

Cap'n Haddock looks eerily like my Dad.

Beavertails - anything will taste good when it's deep fried.

Look even the snow is jumping on the knitting trend.

Don't mess with this Care Bear!

Mmmmmm Tea.

Francine, Me and Tim on the Rideau.

Those lost children services are useful aren't they Tim?

Tim and Me enjoying the festivities.

PS I love the Nederland hat - almost as cool as my Peruvian Alpaca Hat.

A Space Oddity

We watched 2001: A Space Odyssey the other night. It is a Stanley Kubrick film so I guess I should have been prepared but even after my brothers warnings (he loves this stuff) I still wasn't fully prepared for the loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong cinematic sequences with scores of classical music and a box that sparks evolution (i think) and a series of lights that leads to immortality (i think) and so little talking that it drove me to fast forward through parts of the 150 minutes. To be fair, there were some very compelling parts to the movie - especially the man vs machine (HAL) moments which I thought were going to be a much larger part of the movie. Also without this movie we would never have had Spaceballs. But alas, I like so many others, have been trained to want movies that are fast and simple and easy to relate to. I don't think that movie would fly in today's hollywood which is sad. The truth is we looked at what was playing in the theaters and nothing was interesting enough to warrant paying for so we popped in the only movie we had. I am sure it was better than Jim Carrey's 23 or whatever else was playing.

Is this immortality?

C'mon Everybody, Do the Colour Shuffle!

Wow that was fun!

Henderika (Oma) Helder 03/24/1918 - 02/16/2007

In memory of my Oma who passed away last Friday morning I have put together some of the digital pictures I have of her.
If anybody has any other pictures, especially really old ones, I would love to see them.