It’s Samsquatch time!

Today the 2010 Olympic mascots were unveiled to the public. There are three mascots (a seabear, a sasquatch, and an animal spirit) plus one sidekick (a marmot). Being a city of complainers, I’m sure the initial reactions are those of disappointment and dismissal.

Personally, I love them. The designer of the creatures absolutely nailed the purpose of Olympic mascots: they exist to get children interested, and to sell merchandise to the parents of these children. All the associated reasoning behind them — the reasons why a sasquatch and an animal spirit were chosen — isn’t really as important. Naysayers and opponents to these four mascots have their heads up their asses and should just learn to enjoy sasquatches like the rest of us. These characters could easily have their own Saturday morning cartoon series. Wait, do kids still watch cartoons on Saturday mornings? Anyway, watch the promotional video on the 2010 site, and just try to deny their charm. Besides, it’s not like the Olympic committee decided on something like this:

In case you’re wondering what that is, it’s Izzy, the mascot from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It’s a blue blob. The rationale behind it? There isn’t one.

A Lunch for the Ages

Today I went to a sandwich shop in Gastown, with three friends, called So.cial (yeah, I don’t get it either). The place itself consists of an actual restaurant and a deli counter that offers both sliced meats and sausages as well as freshly made sandwiches. Nigel and I decided to go for the largest size, a round focaccia loaf loaded with smoked turkey, provolone, grainy dijon mustard, lettuce, roasted red pepper and zucchini, and pickles. In addition to the sandwich, a small bag of homemade potato chips are provided as an accompaniment. Needless to say, it’s a lot of food to stuff down one’s gullet, but thankfully my gullet was more than willing to be stuffed. It’s not a stretch to estimate the weight of a large sandwich at over one pound.

The sandwich was, in a word, wonderful. Perhaps a little oily — the marinated peppers/zucchini leaked oil like a 1986 Chevy Cavalier — but fully loaded with taste and on an ingredient-per-dollar basis, this sandwich is Andre the Giant to other nearby sandwich shops’ Pee-Wee Hermans. I’m not sure Pee-Wee and Andre ever met, but if they did, you can imagine the results.

There’s a key ordering at this sandwich shop: the small sandwich is one-quarter of the circular bread, while the large is the full wheel meal. The complete circle rings in at $10, while a small will cost you $5.50. Some simple math and you’ll discover that, if you order the large, it’s actually four smalls, thus reducing the cost of a small to $2.50. Thus to maximize your value, you must split a large with multiple friends.

In lunch blog tradition, I must choose a rating for this meal. Therefore I give the So.cial large smoked turkey sandwich one giant stacked-pad save courtesy of Kirk McLean.

That was a playoff game?

I just got back from the BC Lions loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The Lions were pretty much limp for the whole game, aside from a couple of decent kick returns. Numerous times the Lions had the Riders pinned deep on 2nd down only to let them connect on a big pass completion. Or, given good field position, old man Dave Dickenson would get sacked for a big loss. Repeat this on every other possession and you get the idea. It’s sad when the highlight of the night comes courtesy a girl-on-girl smooch from the jumbotron Kiss Cam. I really hope this is Dave’s last year with the team; three years in a row it’s been the horse and pony show of getting injured in the early season, and coming back for a playoff game. It worked last year due mostly to great defense. This year Dave just looked old.

At least the huge Rider fan contingent went home happy. I’d guess there were at least six or seven thousand people wearing green tonight. Someone also went home with a jaw-dropping $41,000 in the fifty-fifty draw. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a draw that big, even during Grey Cup games hosted here. Guess all those rich Saskatchewan uranium farmers came to the game and threw some cash around.

Take that, The Man!

If you’ll recall, a fortnight ago my ladyfriend was tactlessly dumped by her employer. After a few days stewing in anger, she decided (at the suggestion of my brother, who told us of his own getting-screwed-over work story) to use the Employment Standards Branch to fight back. The basis? No pay, no Record of Employment, which are required to be given within 48 hours and five business days respectively of leaving a job. A few calls from the Branch later, and my wifelady will be getting her paycheque tomorrow (and her ROE too I believe). Acceptable? No. Based on Big Brother’s experience, an employer can be fined for not following the law, from between one and five thousand dollars. If this happens, it’ll be a bit of sweet justice, not out of spite but because the people that fired her didn’t do what’s required. Hey, if they’re going to fire someone for no good reason, they have to be prepared to follow the rules.

TWIG Notes X

It’s been another mostly uneventful Week in Garrett. That being said, here’s a rundown on some observations and opinions from the past seven days.

- George Carlin is by far one of my favorite people. After watching his latest HBO special (from two years ago, as it happens) I admire how George hates pretty much everyone equally. What he has to say about society in general is funny but also unquestionably true. I love that he can make us laugh at how seriously F’ed up our world is, merely by saying what most of us already know to be the truth. I see a lot of that in Steven Colbert.

- I spent some time at Future Shop on the weekend, staring at the latest models of HDTVs. I did this because in the past week certain qualities of my HD set were starting to make themselves noticable, making me wonder if similar sets had similar ‘problems’. After my pilgrimage to the grown-up toy store, I was relieved to see that the nitpicky issues I have with my HDTV are in fact quite common and widespread. The only improvement was visible on the high-end sets that cost 50-60 percent more than what I spent — and spending that much more to alleviate an unimportant issue such as black levels isn’t worth it.

- Sticking with the TV theme for a moment, I’ve decided to no longer watch Bionic Woman. While the show boasts a hot young woman in the lead role, the writing is god-awful and there’s zero compelling reason to watch. Every episode is paint-by-numbers dull, and the Bionic Woman herself fluctuates between being a bitter hardass to an eager-to-please smilewagon. I think I made that last term up just now. I should trademark it.

- Things involving work may be changing. I can’t go into much detail here but with some luck I’ll find myself enjoying what I do a little more than I have for the past couple of months (I probably could go into detail, since no one I work with who cares actually reads this blog … but the truth is there’s not much detail to give at this point anyway).

Back on the wagon

Tonight, I hit the gym for the first time in about seven months. It was a quick workout, as I’m prepared for the sore muscles and back tomorrow as my body goes into shock from experiencing exercise. The past few weeks, exercise has meant getting another candy bar from the cupboard. A lot of the reason for working out is to try and undo the poor posture and lower back pain I’m getting from my job as desk jockey. Part two of this initiative will also include eating less junk food. With the halloween candy gone, nary a bag of potato chips to be found, and local apples finally overtaking the fruit stands, this is already somewhat underway.

The radio tonight tells me that the Canadian dollar has now gone above 1.10 US in after-hours trading, and the price of a barrel of oil is almost $100. Both these numbers scare me and I don’t know why. The loonie soaring so high, so fast, is so totally alien that it gives me the willies. The price of oil, while not really surprising, is also extremely weird to see. It really makes me wonder what’s keeping the United States economy afloat. If China ever wanted to crush the US, now would be a good time to start calling in some of the debts they’re owed by the American government. That house of cards seems pretty flimsy right now.

Finally, news hit today that EA is shuttering its studio in Chicago. The bigwigs at EA claim it’s because EA Chicago wasn’t going to be profitable until 2011, mainly because the titles they were developing weren’t bringing in the big bucks (and quite honestly, were of dubious quality in the last year or two). Is this really the fault of the Chicago studio? If EA down south operates like it does here in Canada, the answer is no. Every project at EA doesn’t see the light of day unless it gets the green light from the top of the ladder — thus if a product fails, I would say it’s due to poor guidance and decision-making at the top. It’s also been proven that EA can sell anything as long as a huge marketing budget is put behind it. The titles that Chicago made did not receive that kind of push. I’m not saying EA didn’t want Chicago to make a profit, but I have to think they weren’t committed to it in the first place. What’s even more surprising is that Chicago was a studio of about 150 people, which is not large in terms of a development team plus administration. An average size studio shouldn’t be hard to keep in the black when it has access to the wealth of development resources that EA can leverage.