Final Lessons from Zellers

Target is moving in to Canada, by buying up Zellers stores.  They're going about it a weird way: closing stores, selling everything down to the shelves, letting all the workers go, only to reopen the stores under the new brand.  Wal-mart also entered the Canadian marked by buying existing stores (of Woolco) but they kept them open and just gradually changed the stores over to their way of doing things.  You'd think that if any store chain considered itself so culturally unique that they would feel the need to shut stores down and start afresh, free of the unprofitableness cooties, it would be Wal-mart.  The idea that Target is even more controlling makes me a little uneasy.

Anyway, many of the Zellers that are being re-branded are now having everything-must-go clearance sales.  After going to a couple of these, here's what I've learned:

• Zellers employees are/were really nice.  Everyone I had to interact with was very polite and patient, in spite of the situation.  You earn a tiny salary, to begin with, your job has now been arbitrarily eliminated by a foreign company, and you're expected stay at work for a few weeks to sell off everything around you.
• We have an obesity problem.  When you have to sell men's size-small t-shirts at $1.49 and still can't get rid of them, we have a problem.  Small was the only size they had left, or I would have bought the "More people have read this shirt than your blog" shirt.
• Speaking of which, why do big-and-tall stores exist?  Surely anyone who has an unusual sized/shaped body just has to wait until the end of a sale and they'll find entire racks of clothing just for them.
• A clearance sale is a time to rethink security.  You've got expensive and easily concealable MP3 players just hanging on the racks, but you're going to make me call an employee over to unlock the video game cabinets just to get a $10 copy of Gran Turismo for the Play Station 2.
• Zellers stores are more organised in a desperate clearance than ever before.  Normally you have trouble finding a price on half the items, now everything has a big sign on it telling you how much it is.  And most of the time you find merchandise just lying around in aisles yet to be sorted on to shelves, so having it arranged on haphazard clearance racks is hardly different.
• I was right not to bother collecting Club Z points.  I'd still only be halfway to that toaster oven I wanted.

Taking the Bait

That little symbolic fish you see on the backs of cars is actually a symbol of Christianity.  In Greek, the phrase (pause while he looks it up) "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour" spells Fish, and thus the fish became an early symbol of the religion.  That's why the fish often has "Jesus" or "ΙΧΘΥΣ" in it.

But as with anything attached to the back of cars, people can't leave well enough alone.  Your truck has Calvin peeing on Jeff Gordon's car, so my truck has him peeing on Tony Stewart.  Similarly, smart-assed atheists added legs to the fish and put "Darwin" in the middle. 

What's weird is just how few people notice these affirmations of belief going on around them.  Once I was walking through a parking lot and I saw a Christian's car with a fish marked "Truth" eating the "Darwin" evolved fish.  I pointed it out to a friend, who had no idea about any of this, so I had to explain the entire backstory, thus looking like a freak for following this slow-motion debate that most people don't notice.

Generally that's how it goes.  Whenever I have had reason to point out these emblems, Christian and Atheist alike usually have no idea what they are for.  I think it has something to do with Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, and other car makers that have oval-shaped logos.  The fish, salamanders and others just blend in.  So I wonder if anyone goes the other way and mistakes the company logo for a religious statement.  Especially Toyota, who's logo looks vaguely devilish.

Anyway, what triggered all this is that today, I saw a fish with the Star of David in it.  Okay, now even I'm confused.  Is it Jews for Jesus?  Even smarter-assed Atheists just trying to confuse people?  Jews who just like fish?

Penny For Your Doubts

At McDonald's, I always put my change in the box of donations for Ronald McDonald House.  Partly I would of course, like to help others, but it's also because I am overloaded with small change.  It's a weird warping of economics: quarters don't seem very valuable to me, because I have so many, so four quarters seems less valuable to me than a dollar.

Anyway, a few time when I've done this around friends, they claim that the boxes are bogus, and the change just goes into McDonald's profits.  That seems like an odd thing to believe.  For one thing, it's the height of cynicism, and I think of myself as quite a cynic.  I'm no fan of McDonald's - I paid full price to see Super Size Me in the theatre - but even I wouldn't believe their execs have their hands in the charity boxes.  It's not so much faith in humanity as the bad publicity if it ever got out - and the sheer number of people involved would guarantee it would get out, with or without Morgan Spurlock's help.  Besides, if McDonald's wants to scam us, I'm sure they can do it more than a dime at a time.

Which brings up the next problem I have with this cynical conspiracy theory:  You're in a McDonald's, presumably you're about to eat some of their food.  Doesn't that worry you?  Again, I'm not one to believe that their beef has dirt or worms or plastic or whatever in it.  But I certainly find that much easier to believe than the idea that they steal from Ronald McDonald House.

That's the problem with cynics these days.  (I'll now pause to let you digest all the layers in that statement.)  They have a weird unfocused cynicism where they talk as though they believe the worst, but act as though they're totally naive.  So unless you've bought that cabin in the woods to go full Unabomber, forgive me for not taking you seriously.

The Nerds have the Screen Printer

I've been really amazed at just how many geeky t-shirts are for sale on the Internet, such as at TeeFury or Qwertee.

So who is buying all these t-shirts?  I know, geeks.  But living in a high-tech mecca, you would expect that I'd occasionally see one.  A few weeks ago, I saw someone with a "Han Shot First" shirt, but that's pretty old-hat when it comes to geek self-expression.

But it's more than just lightweight geekery that any dedicated Big Bang Theory viewer would get. Now I see that the shirts are getting to new levels of obscurity.  Take a look at this "The Angels Have the Delorean" shirt.  To bring the uninitiated up to speed: in one of the more memorable Doctor Who episodes, a character mentions having a T-shirt that reads, "The Angels have the Phonebooth" (trust me, it made sense at the time.)  Of course, someone actually started selling such shirts.  It's hard to believe that alone makes economic sense.  But then someone else said, never mind T-shirts referencing a single line from Doctor Who; that's not esoteric enough.  Let's cross that with a Back To the Future reference. 

Why stop there?  They had a phonebooth in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, can you work that into it?  Oh, you can.  Well how about Superman?  Ah.

I think the real question is: why am I the only geek who can draw yet is not designing T-shirts?

Beeb Fever

For the last couple of weeks, BBC World News have been showing programs (I'm sorry, "programmes") about Canada.  Like any Canadian, I'm fascinated with knowing how (if at all) the rest of the world regards us.  It was interesting that their view of us seems to be primarily Vancouver, Montreal, the Atlantic provinces, plus Calgary and the Tar Sands.  That seems to reflect what I've seen from other foreign journalists that are familiar with the country.  So it's more bad news for a certain Ontario metropolis that continues to have less global mindshare than they expect.

But even if I do appreciate the channel, I am aware of it's many, um, "quirks."  So what better time to critique them, than a time when they've chosen to observe us:

The Weather
Doing a planetary forecast in under two minutes is a pretty silly idea to begin with.  But it's made worse by the fact that British meteorologists have rather limited climactic experience, and may not know that, say, telling us it's going to rain in Vancouver may not be useful.

Programs
For the most part, BBC World has a simple schedule: every hour on the hour, there's a half-hour of news.  Then the second half of the hour is a more specialised program, often something business related.  But I've noticed that those news programs often have different names.  They have programs called, The Hub, Impact, Newsnight, Newsday, and GMT.  But each time, it's just someone reading the news.

Commercials
It's kind of odd that they very seldom have ads, then suddenly have really long, well-produced spots.  There are some interesting travel commercials, and occasionally ads for places you've never heard of and probably blew their budget producing.  But mostly they fall into two categories, neither of which fit with their programming:

• Fixing our image.  Big companies show ads trying to sound like the good guys.  Shell in particular does a lot of these spots about how nice they are to the environment.  Actually, I notice they do that on CNN a lot too.  I still don't understand why they're trying to spin the best-informed viewers on the dial.  Why not run those Clean Coal ads on TLC?
• Luxury ads.  Not just Mercedes ads, or products that might be used by someone you might know someday, but obscenely expensive things that really clash with their programming.  (More on the African famine after this word from the Emirate of Dubai.)  The same goes for the occasional program that's an obvious cop to their wealthier viewers.  In between in-depth reporting on the world's trouble spots, you have shows like Equestrian World.

Sports
A global sportscast is difficult just to prioritise.  Obviously you cover soccer first, but then what?  You can argue for Cricket to get next priority largely on its South-Asian popularity.  But Rugby?  I think the British might be alarmed if they did the math on how many people around the world follow it.  Oh, and slightly off topic, they might be surprised just how small a segment of humanity gives a damn about the Eurovision Song Contest.

Still, they do try to cover the whole world's sports.  Most notably in this part of the world, they've figured out that they can't just put Hockey write-ups on the Teleprompter and trust their anchors to phonetically pronounce Eastern European names.

That brings up another problem: Some sports just can't be described with an English accent.  Just try imagining the Queen saying "first and ten on the fifteen" and you get the picture

Phrases
And speaking of, well, speaking: When reporting on the U.S. they seem to be unaware that their British phrases are often entirely inappropriate.  An anarchic, bullet-riddled housing project in an American inner city gets described as a "block of flats."  A burly trucker with a Toby Keith tattoo, Dale Jr. T-shirt and a Confederate belt-buckle is described as a "lorry driver."

Infotainment
Of course, I appreciate the fact that they largely avoid the Tanning-Mom style meaningless distraction news. It's a big part of my proud pop-cultural ignorance that I spoke of earlier.  And when they do make a reference to such a story, it's usually with an antiseptic distance that's reassuring; the awkward British accents and phrases ridiculed above come in handy.

The problem is, sometimes they seem to forget who they are and plunge into a pop-cultural story with complete enthusiasm.  I don't know, maybe they delude themselves into thinking they can win the hearts of America.  But they're just so bad at entertainment news.  After watching them do a solid hour on the latest celebrity death, even the shallowest viewer is left wishing they'd go back to analysing the latest Euro bailout plan.

Just One Shade of Grey

Today I was driving on a two-lane road, and some guy in a grey Corolla is stuck in my blind spot, trying to pass me, but barely going any faster.  Meanwhile, there's a parked car up ahead, so I'm going to have to pull into the left lane, but this guy is taking an hour to get past me.  So I'm stuck trying to slow down and let him past, hoping the guy behind won't pass me too.  Because if that happens, then I'll be stuck in that cyclical hell of getting passed for going slow but not being able to get into the fast lane because I'm going too slow.

A few minutes later, in heavy traffic, I see a car trying to pull into my lane, and they're not having any luck because it's a solid line of traffic.  Normally I'd let him out, but then I realise: it's a grey Corolla.  So my next reaction is, screw you, learn to drive.  Of course, it quickly occurred to me that there are about 10,000 grey Corollas in town, this is surely not the same one.  So that's just something to think about when you're considering a popular car in a popular colour: not only will you never be able to find it in a crowded parking lot, you'll also get blamed for the crimes of everyone else with the same car.  Instead, buy a purple Mitsubishi and everyone will love you.

But that brings up another question:  What ever happened to car colours?  Insurance penalises you for red, and everyone knows how hard it is to keep black or white clean.  On top of that, car manufacturers are charging a few hundred extra for "metallic" or "pearl" colours, thus ensuring they can charge extra for any non-boring shade.  Whatever money they make from charging for paint probably goes into hiring poets to come up with new names for shades of grey ("platinum graphite," really?)

Free Advice for Hollywood

As an addition to my earlier rant against What to Expect When You're Expecting, here are some more non-fiction, non-story books that should be made into movies.

Guns, Germs and Steel - assuming they don't actually use anything except the title, this could be a great sci-fi action movie.

Freakonomics - Robin Williams as an odd-ball economist who saves the world from the housing crisis

Plato's Republic - remember, The Matrix was loosely based on the Cave Analogy

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - They never did make a sequel to Gladiator

The Guinness Book of Records - and you thought the Jackass movies were great for laughing at people endangering their lives.

The Secret - a great supernatural thriller.  How do you stop someone who can make things happen with their mind just by being positive?

The Origin of Species - again, great horror possibilities.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - that's a more sophisticated premise than most Adam Sandler movies

Dianetics - no idea how easy it will be to spin a story about it, but it won't be hard to find people to act in it.

any Malcolm Gladwell book - is it just me, or is he a pair of glasses from being the Literati's Napoleon Dynamite?

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves - who wouldn't want to see a movie about vigilante grammarian Pandas?

Down With Corporate Drinks

Extending my previous post about hipsters taking over grocery stores, I found new evidence of the non-mainstreaming of our food vendors. On one of the signs at the end of an aisle, it notified us that in addition to juice and bottled water, this particular aisle has something called "Alternate Beverages." 

First of all, that's "Indie Beverages," grandpa.  I went down the aisle looking for them, but I'm still not sure which particular drinks they were referring to.  Was it:

• Vitamin Water?  That's kind of an alternative to water.  But it's The Man's water.
• Jones Soda?  It's always seemed like too-cool cola.
• Crystal Light and other "water-enhancers"?  Nah, water is the lo-fi of the beverage world, and Crystal Light is the pitch-shifter.
• Brio, Irn-Bru, Orangana and other lesser-known or foreign soft-drinks?  I've always wondered who is buying these things.  If I find them for sale at downtown convenience stores, then that'll confirm it.

Another Long Weekend Over and I'm Exhausted

Just wondering: What did they do for the first long weekend after the invention of television?  They didn't have enough shows to do a marathon.

How did we somehow decide that speciality channels should have movie/show marathons on long weekends?  The first time I heard of it happening was with 24, which is the one show where a non-stop marathon makes some kind of sense.  But now it's assumed that just because most people are off work, the optimum programming is eighteen consecutive hours of Criminal Minds.  What are they telling us? 

• Your mind is so pummelled by the stresses of modern life that once you have time to rest, you'll want to see According to Jim from the beginning.
• If you don't have something better to do today, we're assuming that you're the sort of anti-social obsessive that wants to see every Python Hunters ever made.

So what do people who are normally home during the day think of this?  "Normally I'm stuck with The Price is Right and Y&R. What I wouldn't give for three or four hours of Repo Games."

I'm Complicated

Our Monarchy's Better If We Kept Together

I'm not a fan of maintaining the Monarchy in Canada.  If it was up to me, you'd just as soon see a picture of Scott Thompson on your change as the Queen.  But I realise that I'm in the minority here: most Canadians seem to love our British rulers and I can live with that.  What bugs me is another issue that's been raised again now that Charles and Camilla are visiting Canada.  People are being reminded that the future Charles the Third will one day be our King and they're not comfortable with it.  Polls show many Canadians would rather dump the Monarchy than let him rule.

My first problem with that stance is that even though I don't like the Monarchy as an institution, I seem to have a higher opinion of the Royals themselves than most Canadians do.  I'm not a particular fan of Charles, but I'm okay with him. My feelings on him are much the same as my opinion of Michael Jackson: strange as he may seem, he's about as normal as any human being could be given what he's grown up with.  And I have to emphasise the “human being” part: for all Chuck's quirks at least he is human.  People love the Queen, primarily because she doesn't really do anything other than visit places.  Anyone that publicly visible for so long without offending anyone must be a machine.  I'm still waiting for it to come up in a Dr. Who episode.

But more to the point, I have to ask how committed people really are to the Monarchy.  You like the idea of hereditary leadership, as long as it produces a leader you like.  Well, then you don't like the Monarchy: putting up with the odd George the Third or Ethelred the Unready is part of the deal.  If you want to be led by a popularity contest winner with a super-human capacity for inoffensiveness, that's what democracy is for.

My Other Car is a Ferrari...Skateboard

Not surprisingly, the Ferrari web site offers a number of branded items for sale for people who can't afford one of their cars.  However, I was amazed at sheer variety of items with only tangential relation to their business, as well as the strange mixture of reasonably-priced items mixed in with extravagant luxury trinkets.

• Laptop, $1,295
• Android smartphone (autographed by their Formula 1 drivers), $562 - and it's only 3G
• Perfume, $66 - who knows what it's made of or what it smells like
• Shoes, $455
• Plush toy steering wheel, $39 - note that this isn't some generic steering wheel that any common Nascar Dad would give to his child, but an F1 steering wheel with its Byzantine knobs and dials
• Retro-style wood toy car, $27
• Paperweight, $201
• Bikini, $114 - presumably fire-proof
• Carbon fibre chess set, $2,008 - Good, I'm so sick of flimsy or heavy chess sets.
• Skateboard, $114
• Surfboard, $1,674
• Bicycles, starting at $2,596
• Tricycle, $201
• Actual valve from an F1 engine, $201
• Actual piston from an F1 engine, $803
• and my personal favourite, Ferrari edition Kaspersky Internet security software, $80

You Know You Eat Too Many Subs When...

...your favourite sub comes to $8.90 with tax, and while going through your pants pockets on laundry day, you find they all have $1.10 in change in the pockets.

Fake News, Fake Sources

You may have heard of the sexual assalt allegations against John Travolta.  I heard about it, but not in the normal way.  My first indication of it was when I caught the end of a story while channel-surfing past CNN.  Then a couple of days later, they made a passing reference to it on The Daily Show.  So I know something bad has happened involving Travolta, but I don't know what.  I thought about looking on-line, but I couldn't be bothered.  Then on Saturday, I finally heard the complete news story for the first time - on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. 

I should be embarrassed: several times people have made jokes about viewers who get most of their information from such fake news programs, usually with reference about said viewers being pot-smoking college students.  Really though, I believe this is the first time I've heard news from a comedy program - though I have occasionally learned new things from The Onion's "American Voices" feature.

But instead, I feel like this is a badge of honour.  If it had been an important story, yes I'd been embarrassed, but this is just celebrity fluff.  My news outlets are so well chosen that I'm remaining informed while avoiding infotainment time-wasters.  You really can tailor today's media to your own desires.  Good luck making conversation with normal people though.

Tattoo Advice From Someone with No Tattoos

I just read in a coffee shop newsletter that 24% of Americans have a tattoo.  After checking with a far more credible source (Wikipedia) it seems the overall numbers aren't that high (only in the mid teens, but over 30% for some age groups.)

Anyway, I thought this was as good a time as any to share my ideas about them.  I know, you've heard the advice, like the only names you should get on you are your own and your mother's.  Anyone can tell you that, here are some rules you may not have heard.

1. If you're going to get a tattoo, get a tattoo.  This isn't as much of a problem now that they're getting more socially accepted, but in my day there was a rash of people getting tiny little tattoos in easily concealed areas.  Ooh, I'm a bad boy/girl, I have a tattoo - here, try this magnifying glass.


2. Spend some time with it.
A lot of people get a sketch of the design they want and think on it for a few days before going through with the procedure.  That's a nice start, but there's another step I recommend: find a friend with Photoshop or other graphic editing software, scan in the design, then blur it a little, and take out some of the colour.  That's what your tattoo is going to look like for most of its existence, so judge it on that.

3. Think about design.
It seems many people just get a picture of something they like and put it on their body.  In other words, they treat their tattoo like their Facebook Cover photo.  Except many people seem to put more thought into Facebook.  Remember that it's not just a picture you like, it's a picture that looks good on your body.  Sure you like your iPhone, but that doesn't mean you want a picture of it on your arm.  To put it in artistic terms, less Mondrian, more Van Gogh.


4. Be careful with sleeves.
Getting "sleeved" means getting an arm completely covered in tattoos.  See, that's the sort of commitment I can respect.  But if you're going to make that kind of commitment, you want credit for it.  The problem is, you can get fake sleeves - that is, actual sleeves with tattoo-like designs on them.  So make sure your arm tattoos come to an uneven edge on your wrist so everyone knows they're real.

Keep Calm and Something Ironic

I was going to write a rant about how I'm sick of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters and their various spoofs.  After all, the whole phenomena has really run its course.  Beyond the original, there's really only three more permutations you can try: satire ("Get Panicky and Go Mental,") weirdness ("Keep Calm and Have a Donut,") and gratuitous subculture references ("Keep Calm and Han Shot First.")  Now people are scrounging for variations and the results usually aren't funny or meaningful.  Often, they can't even be bothered to get the font right (Humanist, people!  It's the only font they have in Britain.)

But then I realised that there is another avenue that hasn't been explored: other countries.  The reason the poster was so amusing in the first place was because it was so distinctly British.  It's rare that you see an artefact that sums up a culture's qualities (well, best qualities) so perfectly.  So I thought, what would the equivalent posters in other countries be?

Greece:

 China:

Canada:

Exactly What I Was Expecting

While I'm on the topic of movies that I'm judging purely on their ads, we're starting to see ads for What To Expect When You're Expecting, which is based on the book.  That's part of the trend of movies based on non-fiction books.  Yes, as Hollywood runs out of ideas, it's only a matter of time until they have to start making movies based on blogs, and I'll be rich.

I have not only not seen the movie, but I also haven't read the book.  I was under the impression that the book was to inform people of the things they may not know about pregnancy and childbirth.  But apparently it's all unnecessary: if this movie's ads are anything to go by, you don't need any special books about new parenthood, since all the stereotypes and clichés in previous movies are all you need to know.

Terrifying News

Anniversaries can make you feel old.  Can you believe Star Trek: The Next Generation started 25 years ago?  But I've recently found that there is something that can make you feel even older, and that is outliving the bad-taste shroud around a major tragedy.  In other words:  I can't believe Chernobyl was so long ago that it's safe to make a horror movie about it.  I'm assuming the time needed to safely make jokes about it is longer, so I'll wait another decade or two.

I was surprised when I saw the first ad for this movie, but it just got worse when the newest ad showed a clip of the needed scene where they explain what Chernobyl was to today's movie viewers, who are of course too young to know.  But that triggered another concern: Did my generation go to movies that made light of tragedies of the past?  I know there was no Three-Mile-Island Diaries.  But maybe it turns out something bad actually happened on Elm Street.  Our apologies for any offence.

The other question is how horror movies of the future are going to use the events of today.  The economy may be scary, but I don't see that as the basis of a horror franchise.  The best they're going to do is set their movie on an incompetently-run cruise ship.

How Not to Look Foolish on the Internet

Lately I've found a guilty pleasure in Literally Unbelievable, a website that shows people on Facebook who have posted Onion "news stories" without realising they are fake.  Of course, I shouldn't be telling you about it, because the more people know about the site, the more people will know what the Onion is and that they could look foolish if they take it seriously.  And the more people know that, the harder it will be for Literally Unbelievable to find its content.  But even if it disappears, there are still more sites making fun of people being stupid on the Internet.  It's all part of nerds taking over the world:  Remember only a few years ago when the most ridiculed person on the Internet was The Star Wars Kid?  Now you get targeted for lack of knowledge, not lack of cool.

I recently saw this article reporting on, but also criticising the Internet's attacks on ignorant people.  Assuming you didn't click on the link and read the article, I'll summarise that it focuses on the many people on Twitter who were left dumbfounded by Dick Clark's death, apparently not knowing who he was.

Here's what the writer doesn't get:  I have no problem with anyone not knowing who Dick Clark was.  Well, anyone under, say, thirty.  After all, such a person would not have seen American Bandstand, that blooper show from the eighties, or the $X Pyramid.  And since these people are young, they presumably had something to do on New Year's Eve, so they wouldn't have come across him there either.

So why am I angry at these people?  Well, if you're Tweeting, you're on the Internet, and if you're on the Internet, you can learn anything you want instantly.  Instead of Tweeting, "Who is Dick Clark?" you could have gone to Wikipedia and typed in, "Dick Clark," and then you'd know.  That's what the Internet is like: it actually takes fewer keystrokes to cure your ignorance than it does to display it.

Capp Gap

Capp Gap -  the time it takes the artist of a comic strip to draw a strip, send it to the syndicate, who then distributes it to newspapers.  Thus, this is the amount of time by which event the most up-to-date comic strips tend to trail the latest pop-cultural developments.  This seems to be about a month.

This weekend the Mother Goose and Grimm comic makes a reference to the Justice League of America.  That's right, the weekend that The Avengers opens.  I hate to pick on Mother Goo - screw it - MGAG, since it is one of the funnier long-term strips, but it's hard to imagine a better illustration of the comics page's chronic unhipness than doing a joke about a superhero collective and somehow picking the wrong one.

Laugh Over Leafs

Today I saw someone wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt: it had "TML" across the chest.  However, this man's jacket was obscuring part of the "L" so all I saw was "TMI" above a Leafs logo.  I thought, have the Leafs really become that repulsive?

Jason Lets Slip His Quaint Media Experience

Okay, I've seen the previews: Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America are in it, but where are John Steed and Emma Peel?

Not-So-Targeted Marketing

Beaucoup de Poutine

Burger King is now advertising poutine here in Canada.  It's kind of gratifying that they are trying to fit in with something a bit more substantial than the maple leaf that chains like to work into their logos.  I know fast food chains put a lot of work being acceptable to foreign cultures, so I'd love to see their Department of Cultural Sensitivity trying to figure out how to appeal to Canadians.  "We could sell donuts."  "Nah, they only like Tim Hortons."  Apparently after years of travelling across the country looking for unique Canadian foods, they finally got to Quebec.

But they've also put an American spin on it that I find disturbing: it's available in regular and with bacon.  To me, this is far worse than the KFC Double Down.  Someone looked at a food that has only three ingredients, all of them high in fat, and said, you know what this needs?  One more ingredient that's high in fat.

Wendy's does a better job, editing poutine into the latest ad with that woman I made fun of earlier, who I'm sure has never heard of poutine.  And their "poutition" to make it the national dish is cute, and much less self-serving than when Guiness tried to make St. Patrick's day a national holiday a few years back.  But asking for a Poutine Referendum would have been way funnier.