Fruity billboards

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Global’s Got It

ABC advertising on bananas, 1998My recent encounter with lolbananas reminded me of a brief craze a few years ago for third-party advertising on fruit. In the late summer and autumn of 1998, ABC ran ads on bananas (including ones destined for Canada), while Global covered the local apple market. CBS ran ads on eggs a couple of years ago but third-party advertising on food still seems pretty limited, especially considering how ubiquitous it is elsewhere in daily life.

Amusingly, “Global’s got it” has been immortalized as a brand of fruit on the web site of a German fruit sticker collector.

Incidentally, I regard the pictures in this post as perfect justification for being a packrat, both digital and analog. Somehow, I knew that I’d have some use for these dumb labels in the future. The scan of the banana label has migrated along with the rest of my data through ten years, having originated two scanners, four computers, and at least eight hard drives ago. Similarly, the negative for the apple picture has been sitting in my archives for all that time, waiting until today for me to scan it. But I don’t keep absolutely everything: Risa should be thankful that I don’t have the actual 10-year-old apples and bananas still hanging around in my collection.

Supermarket finds: lolbananas

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LOLbananas

If there’s one complaint I’ve always had with fruit, it’s that it just isn’t interactive enough. I mean, it just sits there on the counter for a day or two and then gets eaten. How boring is that? It’s so old fashioned. If only, I’ve frequently thought, my fruit not only nourished me, but entertained me too. My attention span has gotten so short that I can barely take one or two bites of even the best fruit before I drop it and go searching for some shiny baubles.

Chiquita to the rescue! With three simple letters and a domain name emblazoned across the label, they’ve put the URI back in fruit. This banana is my key to the fun and gut-busting laughter that I’ve always wanted fruit to provide. So it was with great joy and anticipation that I sat down with my banana and aimed my browser squarely at eatachiquita.com. Sadly, there was not a single LOL to be found on the site. I couldn’t even find a snort, smirk, or meh. I guess I’ll have to stick with lolcats for my daily lulz.

I still don’t get how this is supposed to encourage me to eat more bananas in general, never mind Chiquita bananas specifically. My local supermarket doesn’t get it either: two days after I bought this bunch, all of the Chiquita bananas in the store had been replaced by Del Montes.

My search for a complete fruit experience continues.

Goin' down the road

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Goin’ down the road

It feels like months since I’ve gotten out for a good ride but I was finally able to hit the (dirt) road yesterday, heading out into the farthest reaches of Scarborough. With the country roads, fields of corn, tangled meadows, and overgrown forests, you’d never know that you were still inside Toronto on the municipal street grid. But then you pass one of the familiar bike route signs (seen here at the rural intersection of Beare Road and the wonderfully-named Plug Hat Road) and you know that you’re still within reach of civilization:

Bikeway network signs at Beare and Plug Hat

This isolated corner of the city is plagued by illegal dumpers and it shows in the informal signage along the roads:

Informal signage on Reesor Road

In the last couple of years, northeastern Scarborough and neighbouring northern Pickering has become one of my favourite cycling destinations. The best thing about riding there (or almost anywhere) at this time of year and in cool, rainy weather is that you basically have trails and roads to yourself.

"Warranty void if removed"

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Warranty void if removed

I picked up this shiny new hard drive (1 terabyte!)  yesterday and was a little perplexed to see Seagate’s new warranty terms on the static bag. It seems that if I remove the drive from the packaging to, you know, use it or something, I’ll void my warranty. Quite the conundrum.

Supermarket finds: Diet water

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Compliments Diet Water

This bottle represents everything that’s wrong with the food chain these days. It’s not just the general waste and unnecessary expense of bottled water, but the fact that companies have somehow managed to convince people to buy diet water. This is by no means the only diet water option on the shelves, I’m just picking on it because it’s explicitly labelled as diet water. And judging by the diet water shelves of my local supermarkets, diet water is one of the faster-growing food segments.

In a few short years, companies have convinced people that they need to drink water from little disposable bottles. But that’s not good enough, so they need flavoured bottled water. And with flavour almost certainly comes sugar or some other sweetener. And something to act as a preservative. And carbonated beverages sell better, so let’s make it all fizzy. And what you end up with is essentially indistinguishable from pop. I haven’t yet seen caffeine-free diet water advertised, but it’s only a matter of time.

Of course, the only problem with selling diet water is that water is naturally calorie-free, and it’s only because of all the crap that water manufacturers (there’s a phrase our parents would never have heard) are putting into their product that they now feel the need to make dubious health claims. Diet water indeed.  What started out as a healthy choice (water instead of pop or other processed drinks) has now been so corrupted by the drawers of water that the healthy choice has become indistinguishable from the unhealthy choice. Just how similar the two products are is made clear by the ingredients list:

Compliments Diet Raspberry Sparkling Water:

carbonated water, citric acid, potassium citrate, natural flavour, aspartame, potassium benzoate, acesulfame potassium, and malic acid.

Diet Sprite:

carbonated water, citric acid, natural flavo[u]rs, potassium citrate, and potassium benzoate, aspartame, and acesulfame potassium.

So, uh, what’s the difference between diet water and diet pop? Why bother?

But seriously, who needs diet water? Apparently, the people who drink Compliments (non-diet) flavoured water do: it has 90 calories per serving.

Me, I prefer good old Toronto Tap in refillable containers. When I want that extra shot of flavour, I use an old family water recipe: boil 2 cups of water, pour over tea leaves into a small pot. Steep for five minutes. Serve while hot. De-lish.

Best comparison chart ever

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Can you tell the difference?

From yesterday’s Star, the above graphic (also available as a too-small PDF) accompanied a story about cougar sightings in Ontario. The relevant sentence from the story:

Some of the animals commonly mistaken for cougars: deer, lynx, coyotes, fishers, dogs, and house cats. Big ones.

Coyotes, I can understand. Lynx? Sure, why not. Deer? Okay, but only if the spotter has never seen a cat of any kind before. House cats? Seriously? You’ve got to be seriously spooked if you’re confusing your neighbour’s kitty for a cougar. Then again, if you have any giant mice hanging around your house, you’d probably want a giant kitty for protection.

Original graphic from the Toronto Star.

"How do I know you're not some kind of…weirdo?"

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Warped perceptionI stood on a North Toronto street earlier this week pondering the question that you had just tossed in my direction. If only I hadn’t left my “Non-Weirdos of Canada Club” membership card in my other pants.

This was the second time in about three years  that someone has challenged me for taking pictures on the street. The previous occasion involved a business owner on the Danforth who became quite belligerent after I took a picture of a ghost sign directly above his establishment. By the time he said he was going to call the police on me, I said that I was feeling threatened enough to call them myself, and pulled out my phone to do so. Unsurprisingly, he skulked away when I started dialling. Also unsurprisingly, the business—new at the time—lasted less than two months.

That experience came flooding back into my mind as you continued, “I’m going to go inside now and call the police…” If you’re serious, I’ll wait right here for them. You’ve essentially handcuffed me anyway; if I use this as my opportunity to walk away from your accusations,  it’ll just heighten your suspicions.

Why is it exactly that having a camera and taking pictures in public places marks someone as a weirdo? Or, more commonly these days, a terrorist? Good thing I didn’t have a “professional camera” with me. And even if I am some kind of weirdo, what exactly do you think I’m going to do when I get home with my illicit booty consisting of a picture of a quiet residential street?

“You can’t just go around taking pictures of people…” Actually, yes I can. If I’m standing on the sidewalk, I can take a picture of anyone or anything I can see. I may or may not be able to publish it, but there’s no law preventing me from taking it. That said, there are almost never people in the on-the-street pictures I take, simply because some people don’t like it and I really don’t want to deal with the hassle. Cars and rocks don’t usually get offended when they find themselves in front of my lens. I frequently go out of my way to keep people out of my pictures, and there certainly weren’t any in the two pictures you just watched me take.

“It’s an invasion of privacy…” Cars and grass have no privacy rights. Sorry.

“I can’t just let you come around here, taking pictures of kids…” Excuse me? Do you see any kids anywhere around here? I certainly don’t. I understand that you’re concerned for your children, but don’t accuse me of endangering them by taking a picture of something else entirely while they’re inside a school at least two blocks away.

“Our house was robbed a couple of months ago…” I’m sorry to hear that. Mine was broken into a few years ago and I know how terrible it feels. But I don’t see what that has to do with me unless the guy who broke into your place was armed with a point-and-shoot camera.

“If I see you in the neighbourhood again, acting all weird…” Can you define weird for me? I work just a couple of blocks away and this is on one of my regular commuting routes, so you’re pretty likely to see me again. Carrying my camera and stopping every once in a while to take pictures, is that weird? You might as well just call the police now and get it over with.

“How’d you like it if I took a picture of you?” How do I know you’re not some kind of weirdo? But seriously, go ahead. I’ll even pose for you. You’re welcome. We really should have turned around so that the sun was in front of me; you won’t get any detail in my face with that shot. Oh well.

“Where do you live? How’d you like it if I came to your house and harassed you?” Five minutes ago, I would have been happy to introduce myself and tell you all about what I do with the pictures I take in residential neighbourhoods. I even would have pointed you to this blog. But now that you’ve announced your intention to harass me, no thanks.

“Next time, you should just take your pictures and then leave.” Hmm, that’s exactly what I was doing when you drove your car in front of me and started treating me like a criminal for having a camera. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s of attempting to respond to your questions even though it’s clear you’re not interested in the answers.

But now that I’ve had some time to think about it, let me get back to your original question. Simply put, you don’t know that I’m not a weirdo. And you never will. But I can assure you that carrying a camera, or walking in a residential neighbourhood, or riding a bike, or wearing a purple t-shirt, or even not shaving for a week (guilty!) doesn’t make me any more or less of a weirdo than if I didn’t do any of those things. It’s a sad statement on the state of our society when the mere act of taking pictures is enough to make me a suspect in some imagined crime. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll see you around the neighbourhood again, but it won’t be by my choice.

I see faces #11

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Hyena in the trees

This figure emerges from the lower part of a dead tree inside the hyena enclosure at the Toronto Zoo. From my vantage point, it was impossible to tell for certain whether the figure—or the entire tree, for that matter—was natural or artificial. The resemblance to the nearby residents was so striking that I have to think it was constructed as something of a visual joke. If it’s a natural formation, it’s a remarkable coincidence.