Davidoff: Adventure®

Whilst passing through the Sears fragrance department this morning, I couldn't help but notice that the spokesmodel for the latest, heavily advertised new fragrance (Davidoff: Adventure®) looked familiar.

It took me a few seconds to identify this latest manifestation of the decline and fall of western civilisation: it was Ewan MacGregor, the actor who burst into the public eye with his preformance as a junkie in the indie favourite Trainspotting, then immediately commenced his street-cred downward spiral by acting in no less than 3 Star Wars movies.

In the advert he is staring searchingly into the lens, half-reclining on a desolate hillside somewhere, perhaps Afghanistan.

What is with the scarf, though? That doesn't look adventurous. In fact, it doesn't look practical at all!

Ewan's opening monologue from Trainspotting:

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing ga me shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

But who would want to do a thing like that?

A quote off Davidoff's website of Ewan describing Adventure®:

I think it is important to go out and discover what an extraordinary world we have, and the people who live in it, and to broaden our minds instead of to narrow them… The thing about a real journey is that you have to lose control of it. You can't control an adventure. You have to give yourself in to accepting whatever experience is round the corner. And you never have any idea what that might be.

My guess is that someone at Davidoff saw one or more episodes of Ewan's crappy around-the-world-by-motorcycle series, and thought Ewan would make a perfect spokesmodel for a fragrance called Adventure™. (The presence of a motorcycle in the background is a dead give-away.)

I understand Davidoff's reasoning for hiring Ewan. What I don't understand is what Ewan was thinking when he agreed to the contract.

Still EM also appeared in that piece of shit the Pillow Book, so maybe he makes poor decisions. And again, we must come back to the Star Wars films...

In retrospect, perhaps Ewan sucks as an actor, Trainspotting aside, and he has realized this and gone the Mariah Carey merchandising route...

I have accepted the challenge of the Omnivore's 100

I am not even sure what the point of this is supposed to be. Mostly I posted this because things have been *very* slow so far here at my new, unionised job.

The rules for the Omnivore's 100 are

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating

So here I go!

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (sounds like something one might drink to induce vomiting)
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (the current Listeria scare has turned me off the possibility of ever trying this)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (makes me think of a bony, scaley bottom-feeder)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich (I believe this means "peanut butter and jam")
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I don't think there are such things in Canada)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Cheese fondue
8. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (is this a joke? One of the hottest peppers in existence, average 50 times hotter than a jalapeno)
27. Dulce de leche (Diabetes warning!)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (love clam chowder, hate sourdough)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (clotted cream is illegal in Canada)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (unless I was trapped in a Road Warrior-type future, in which case I would eat *anything* on this list)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (takes the fear of choking on a bone to the next level)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (inching closer to type 2 Diabetes)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin ("industrial mineral used primarily as an inert filler"?)
64. Currywurst (not sure if this exists in North America)
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (standard menu item at the Stratford Chefs' School)
73. Louche absinthe (the night after purchasing a bottle of this, I dumped the remainder of the bottle down the drain. Not a good tipple for someone with an Oral Fixation.)
75. Roadkill (aren't most wildlife disease-ridden?)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (I remember Alex P. Keaton making fun of this in Family Ties)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (Does Madeline's count?)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (if we count zucchini flowers)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I had forgotten how much the Olympics suck!

But now, it is all coming back to me.

Even though I don't watch TV any more (instead I libernate it from the intertubes), I am still confounded by impossible-to-avoid Olympic coverage in newspapers, elevator TV, radio bits, etc.

As Adam Radwanski points out in his Globe & Mail blog

I'll admit to being profoundly irritated by the Olympics - all Olympics - to begin with. It's never been clear to me why our sense of national worth should be affected one way or another by our performance in a bunch of sports that we wouldn't remotely care about if they hadn't all been lumped together in one big event. But if you want to make the usual comparison to Australia, as Campbell also did, then fair enough. I find the Aussies' Olympic fixation weird and tedious, but theirs is a comparable democracy that promotes athletics in a reasonably healthy way.

I always thought that the best thing about Canada was that we, collectively, feel no need to wave the flag. Typically, it is Christine 'Man Meat' Blatchford that is leading the Waving the Flag people in Peking.

Christine 'Crusty' Blatchford (as defunct mag Private Eye used to call her) definitely needs some calming down. I suspect she has been allowed to hang out in mens' dressing rooms again, and with the wealth of skin on display in the Olympic Village (unlike Base Kandahar) the possibility of someone taking a hit for the team is very small.

I must admit one Olympic-related vice. The last time I watched random Olympic coverage (and this was only sporadic since CTV had the cunning idea of showing the first season of The Sopranos at 22h00 every night against the CBC coverage) I found myself fascinated by the Womens' Distance Walking competition.

It was a relevation how sexy watching Womens' Distance Walking was, when viewed from the right perspective. Ie. from a vehicle 10m behind the main group.

Beach Volleyball has nothing compared to Ladies' Distance Walking, IMHO.

An apt description of Christiano Ronaldo?

From Guardian article titled "Rooney yet to ignite as United pay for lack of Ronaldo's derring-do":

(My bolding)

Cristiano Ronaldo could be located at Old Trafford yesterday sitting apart from the other injured players, with his baseball cap the wrong way around and unaware or unconcerned that one of the fanzines being sold on Sir Matt Busby Way described him as a "preening, perma-tanned, posturing, petulant prick".

Kudos to the anonymous fanzine writer, and to Daniel Taylor for bringing this description to my attention. I always enjoy alliteration, but especially so when it is applied in such a pithy fashion.

Give me one good reason why Russia SHOULDN'T conquer Georgia

I mean seriously, one good reason. My reasoning:

There is no way in hell any NATO countries, including the Great Satan, will physically intervene in the conflict by sending troops.
They won't even provide air support! (Airlifted "Humanitarian Aid", is a possibility, however.)

Why? Because even though Russia has been portrayed as a basket-case for the last decade and a half, they still have the nuclear and conventional forces to deter any potential adversaries (ie. the Great Satan and/or its NATO stooges). For all practical purposes, it is like dealing with the old USSR.

Who helped out Afghanistan when the USSR invaded in 1980? As Mel Lastman always used to say, NOOOBOOOODY!

Which segues nicely into the next possibility: sanctions, UN-related or otherwise.

Not going to happen. Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and they can veto anything they don't like, just like the Great Satan did when it invaded Iraq.

Any other sanctions (ie. Group of 7 or whatever) will never be enacted because Russia directly controls 25% of Europe's energy purchases.

So no intervention, no effective sanctions. Why shouldn't Russia go all the way and install a pro-Russia regime, especially when doing so would allow control over the pipelines that were routed through Georgia specifically to avoid Russian control?

Someone has got their Game On, and it is definitely not the Great Satan.