johnrobe

Once again, I am breaking my "don't link to things without adding value" rule for the sake of sharing this story with my friends.

Waldemar Kaminski operated a butcher stand in Broadway Market in Buffalo for more than 50 years. He died last week, and now that he’s gone, the true story of his almost completely unknown philanthropy is comng to light.

Over the years, Kaminski took his hard-won money from his butcher shop and invested it in the stock market, eventually earning millions. Rather than closing the shop and living the high life, as I suspect most of us would have, he gave it back to the community and people around him. Apparently, the amount of his charity will never really be known, but it is known that he donated millions to several charities in the Buffalo area, as well as helping friends, family and customers with everything from college tuition and mortgage payments to lines of credit at his store.

Through it all, he lived in a simple apartment above his store, and, according the article, his only luxury item was his computer, on which he made the investments that made him, and everyone around him, rich.

Apparently when he was alive, he didn’t want a fuss made about either how much money he had or what he was doing with it. As much as I believe in respecting people’s right to privacy, in this case, I’m glad the story has come out. Given all the stories in the world where people pass away and scary skeletons are found in their closet, the world needs more like this one. As fantastic as the massive charitable contributions of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are, it’s a lot easier to give away millions when you’re rich than it is when you’re running a butcher shop in a rough neighbourhood in Buffalo.

Bravo Waldemar.

John General

A while back I put a site called "Pimp My Snack" in the "Recently Cool" section off to the right on my site. I don't think I mentioned it in the blog itself, but I hoped you all took a moment to look at it, because I loved the site.

I say “loved” because Pimp My Snack is no more. Sorta. Apparently, the site received threatening legal notices from Viacom because they felt that the name of the site infringed on the rights of the show Pimp My Ride.

Now, I don’t want to besmirch Pimp My Ride, because it’s an entertaining show — it’s not their fault that they happen to have a bunch of jerks as their parent company — but this is just dumb. Pimp My Snack was not damaging the reputation of Pimp My Ride, and in my opinion was clearly a satire site, at least at its heart, so it should have been protected. I’m sure the Pimpdaddy at Pimp My Snack just didn’t want to fight it out with a company like Viacom who certainly would have deep pockets for their legal team.

No matter. Pimp My Snack lives on, as Pimp That Snack. So screw Viacom, and go enjoy the site under its new name.

Now that I have that out of my system, let say how much I love Pimp My That Snack.

For those who haven’t been there, the general idea is this … it’s a site for devotees of making giant versions of snacks. Simple on the surface, but so fun if you love cooking and/or snacks.

I will become a contributor to that site one day.

Oh yes. I will.

Until then, I will simply behold the works of others. A few of my very favourites: The King Rolo, Lord Lindor , and the Giant Creme Egg.

I’m dizzy just thinking about them.

John Food, Rants, The Weeb

Grocery stores in Paris were a strange experience. One the one hand, with boulangeries, fromageries, charcouteries, wine stores, vegetable stores, butchers and seafood shops everywhere, there was a feeling that you had to be some sort of loser to be shopping in what we would call a supermarket or grocery store.

On the other hand, they were definitely busy, and definitely different from the ones around here.

There were a lot of little differences, things like instead of Muzzak, they played bird songs. The biggest difference for someone from Ontario was easily all the booze. The best choice when it came to alcohol was easily (duh) the French stuff. In fact, it was close to your ONLY choise.

So as mentioned in the headline, I’m not a professional boozer…but I did grow up in Canada. I did have my first taste of rye or “Canadian” whisky at a fairly young age. On top of that, given that it was the liquor of choice of both my parents (in sensible moderation — this is not a “my parents were alcoholics” post), I am fairly familar with the booze in question, but I can honestly say, I’ve never seen this brand anywhere in my travels in Canada.

I took this picture in a grocery store in Paris — a fairly low end one at that. Sort of the “No Frills” or “Price Chopper” of France. I couldn’t actually check the bottle, but now that I think about it … maybe it wasn’t even made in Canada. Maybe it was like Bright’s Sherry, made in Canada, not Spain, or Paarl Port, made in South Africa, not Portugal. It would be ironic, given France’s obsession with forbidding other countries from calling sparkling wine Champagne, etc. etc.

Then again, maybe it’s just a white label type brand… like Dharma brand whisky.

I wanted to find out, but I didn’t want to find out bad enough to actually buy it. For some reason, it was behind glass, in a country where nothing is behind glass.

Anyone ever seen this stuff before?

John Food, Photo Snarkiness

Growing up, one of my favourite things was when my dad would bring home Tim Horton's donuts. I loved the orange twist and the walnut crunch, but by far my favourite donut from T-Ho was the dutchie. It’s safe to say that growing up, at least until around 1982, the word dutchie only meant one thing … a square, glazed donut filled with plump, succulent raisins (that nobody else in my family seemed to care for).

And then one day, that all changed.

A group of kids from Birmingham, England, called Musical Youth, released a single called Pass the Dutchie, that forever did two things:

1) Made me wonder why the hell they were passing a donut around

2) Made me wonder whether they were really talking about weed

24 years later, I have the answer, sort of.

Timmi was exploring a site called “Music Videos from the 80s” that seems to have one video from every group from the 80s. (Go enjoy it now — it likely won’t be around for long), and she happened to play Pass the Dutchie, and once again, the questions bounced around in my head.

But now, I was an adult… a man of the world… no longer the starry eyed kid from a small town, naive in the ways of the urban landscape — I was pretty sure they weren’t talking about donuts.

But could it be true? Were they really pulling a fast one on all the censors out there back in the 80s, singing about doobies just by calling them dutchies?

Well, thanks to a newfound desire to find the answer and the tireless research of other people on the Internet, I have the answer. The answer is…

Yes and no. Mostly no.

It turns out, the Pass the Dutchie we know is a cover of a song first done by a reggae group called The Mighty Diamonds, called “Pass the Kutchie”. Now a Kutchie is a hash pipe. A dutchie is a donut (in Canada anyway). In Jamaica, a dutchie is a dutch oven, a type of pan that you cook in. I was going to say a type of pot, but that would just confuse things.

Apparently, the group’s manager wanted to avoid any problems involved in using the word kutchie and substituted dutchie… the rest was history.

Wait … did I say they were from Birmingham? Why yes I did. What the hell was going on with their accent??? Did anyone reading this think they were English?

I guess if Snow can be born and raised in Toronto and sing with that accent, anyone can.

John Music

We saw this sign in Paris. It’s from Ile de Cite, near Notre Dame in Paris.

What the heck does it mean though?

- No holding hands?
- No children?
- No parents with children?
- Is it significant that it’s a male stick figure and a little girl stick figure? I hope not.

I had forgotten about this photo until I saw this Flickr group yesterday, called Stick Figures in Peril, which is hilarious.

John Photo Snarkiness

Once again, I am breaking my own rules about not just posting content without adding value to it, but my reaction to this story was so strong that I wanted to post it here, even if it had already been on BoingBoing and some other sites.

This link goes to a clip from the nature films of David Attenborough, voted by fans as their favourite television moment. It’s a feature about an Australian bird known as the Lyrebird, and seriously, go look at it, you won’t believe it. This bird is the Michael Winslow of nature, only it’s every single male bird of the species. And it doesn’t suck.

Seriously, go look at the bird.

John The Weeb

“Do doo do do do….”

Unless you didn’t grow up in this country, I bet you now have a song in your head, namely the “Mahna mahna” song, which I know originally from the Muppet Show (see the picture on the right).

The reason I blogged this song is that I was sitting at home, and suddenly, for whatever reason, the song was in my head. Of course, I can sing along — who can’t? I can even picture the Muppets singing it. What I couldn’t do, was spell it. Throwing caution to the wind, though, I decided to go to Wikipedia and just type “mana mana” into it and see what happened.

The result was one of those things that makes the Internet worthwhile.

Not only did I get a result, which was amazing enough, but I learned so much about this song!

Did you know that:

• The song is actually called “Mah Nà Mah Nà”?
• The most popular spelling according to Google is “Mana mana”, followed by “Manamana” and “Mahna mahna”?
• The song contains no real words?
• That the song became famous after the Muppets performed it on the Ed Sullivan show?
• That the song was used on the first episode of The Muppets as its first sketch?
• The song was written by Italian film composer Piero Umiliani?
• That the song originally was used in a SWEDISH SOFT CORE PORN MOVIE!?!?!
• The the song was played over a lesbian BDSM scene?

The factoids took a bit of a left turn at the end there didn’t it?

If, like me, you now have an urge to listen to the song … here’s the Muppets singing it, as an MP3.

John Music, The Weeb

I love watching the World Cup every four years, and I don't even like soccer. The reason is simple … because even a game that's sort of dull gets REALLY exciting when you know that two countries are holding their breath for the entire match.

That being said, I don’t really follow soccer the rest of the time, so I admit, I am a little confused about things a lot of the time, both with respect to the teams and the rules. I still think the offside rule is weird and unintuitive. Another thing that has been bugging me for as long as I have been watching the World Cup is “Why do Brazilian players only have one name?”

If you watch Brazil … you know what I mean. I used to think it was a superstar thing only … like Pele. Then I began to notice that it’s the vast majority of them who only have the one name. There’s Ronaldo, there’s Ronaldinho, there’s Dida and there’s …. Fred. Don’t believe me? Check out the roster! There’s also a guy named Kaka, and that’s just unfortunate.

I had actually convinced myself that it must be that all guys in Brazil just went by one name, but apparently it’s not, it’s more that once you get famous, you get a nickname, and that’s what you go by. The president goes by Lula. I learned all this in an article Timmi sent me that will finally let me sleep at night. (But only until 9:00, because that’s when the games start).

John Sports

The World Cup is upon us, and what the heck is the deal with the photography of Brazil fans? Is it just me, or do all the photos of Brazil fans seem to be of scantily-clad women?

I was going through the Yahoo photo stream for Team Brazil, when I was noticing the trend but in this one particular case (the thumbnail to the right), what caught my eye, wasn’t the woman, it was the combination of the woman and the headline:

“FBL-WC2006-BRA-SUPPORTERS”

Though really, that headline works better for this photo, which is later in the image set:

FBL-WC2006-BRA-SUPPORTERS

Yeah, that works better.

John Photo Snarkiness, Sports

Sometimes, despite the annoyance, I love spam mail.

Usually, the mail contains links that are either an attempt to phish, or gain clickthroughs. Lately, though, I’ve been getting more and more of it that doesn’t have either. BoingBoing mentioned the phenomena of no-click spam lately, and I must admit, this blog has been getting a LOT of it. Today though, I received an email that was slightly different, though not at all new to me — the spam stock recommendation.

This little gem comes from “Rode U. Restrict”, and goes a little something like this:

Subject: a small cap examined a money in MARVIN

WE TOLD YOU TO WATCH!!!

IT’S STILL NOT TOO LATE!

TRADING ALERT!!!

Timing is everything!!!

Profits of 200-400% EXPECTED TRADING

SYMB0L: ABSY
Opening Price: 0.98

Yes, it is MOVING, Tomorrow could be even BIGGER!!!

A $1,000 dollar investment could yield a $5,000 dollar profit in
just one trade if you trade out at the top. ABSY should be one of the
most profitable ST0CKs to trade this year. In this range the ST0CK has
potential to move in either direction in bigs wings. This means you
should be able to buy at the lows and sell at the highs for months to come.

YOU COULD MAKE $$$THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS$$$ TRADING.
THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

ABSY is also on The REG SHO Threshold list, this means someone is short the
ST0CK. Any significant volume spike could yield drastic results.
If the people that are short have to cover, they will be buying the shares
from you at higher prices. This makes this ST0CK a TRIPLE PLAY for profits.

For pennies you can participate in a ST0CK that could yield results over
and over again just based on the trading patterns if the company is
able to effectuate it’s business model.

WATCH OUT!!!
We could see a GREAT STORY IN THE MAKING.

GOOD LUCK AND TRADE OUT AT THE TOP!!!!

Let’s take a boo at this little gem, and decide if we should invest or not, shall we?

First of all, when it comes to investing… step one is make sure the stock really exists. Call me old-fashioned. I checked, and YES! There really is a ABSY stock symbol, and you know what? As of the time I write this, the asking price is only one cent off the one mentioned in my spam email. This could be legit! I could really make $5000 on a $1000 investment if I TRADE OUT AT THE TOP!!!

Next step when it comes to stock investing — nothing means more than the number of exclamation marks in the recommendation. Think about it… which would you listen to?

“Hey John, buy some IBM stock.”

or

“Hey John, buy some IBM stock!!!!!!!!!”

This little beauty from Rode U. Restrict has TWENTY ONE exclamation marks. It HAS to be good!

Going hand in hand with exclamation marks are capital letters. The ones at the beginning of words don’t count, since they’re automatic, but making the whole word capitalized? That’s a clear indication of the astute nature of the recommender. Think about it… which would you listen to:

“Hey John, buy some IBM stock!!!!!!”

or

“HEY JOHN, BUY SOME IBM STOCK!!!!!!”

I rest my case.

Err… sorry… I REST MY CASE!!!!!

After that, let’s look for those little touches in the email that show the person making the recommendation really cares — things like:

• Spelling “symbol” “SYMB0L”
• Spelling “stocks” “ST0CKs”
• Randomly capitalizing words in the middle of sentences like “Tomorrow” to make it Seem more Important.
• For realizing that when you’re already in all-cap mode, you need an extra special something to emphasize things, and using something eye-catching AND contextual, like the dollar signs around “$$$THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS$$$”.
• For using the sentence “For pennies you can participate in a ST0CK that could yield results over and over again just based on the trading patterns if the company is able to effectuate it’s business model.” Seriously. Just read it. It’s so good I cut them slack on the extraneous apostrophe.

And finally, so good it’s outside the unordered list, for that subject line… a random collection of wonderfulness ending with an all-capped MARVIN. That’s what made my day.

John The Weeb