On YOGURT

March 20^th

On YOGURT

Here are some reviews of my Favourite and Least Favourite foods

Yogurt: Awesome. I prefer eating fruit at the botttom, and eating all the yogurt and then all the fruit. As a wise person once said, it’s like having two snacks in one. Also, if you are in Sweden, and all you have is some granola cereal and strawberry yogurt, that can go a long way. Still, I don’t buy yogurt and eat it as often as I’d like, because I can’t decide between individual sized and big sized, and then I forget about it and leave it in the fridge. A-

Raisin Bread: The best. Sometimes I just eat a few slices of raisin bread, and it hits the spot. When I moved from Walmer Rd to Crawford St, I went trough a few days when I just carried a loaf of raisin bread around with me for sustenance, because I never knew where my next meal was going to come from. Those were heady days. A

Swiss Chalet Quarter Chicken Dinner: Also the best. Every time we celebrated something growing up, our family would go to Swiss Chalet. The reason? It tastes great. A+

Mustard Ugh! The worst F

Green Peppers Bleeeech F

Red Peppers Ugggggh F

Any Peppers Deeesgusting F

Things I didn’t like as a kid but I like now: Mushrooms, broccoli, Salsa, Indian food, Chinese Food, Thai food., the skin of a baked potato (I was so wrong about that!)

Things that I officially do not like but I eat things with them in it and like it all the time: Mayonaisse, Cream Cheese, Sour Cream

Dill Pickles Krista loves dill pickles and eats them out of the jar. That is super gross. I like sweet pickles, but dill pickles are all blecchy and briny. FFF

Poutine I love poutine, especailly in theory, and then when I eat it I usually feel bad inside. We are going to a poutinerie for my birthday this year. B+

McDonalds Chicken Nuggets A Big Mac D- (no meat, all lettuce and bun) Angus Burger C

Zucchini The king of the green vegetables B+

Spaghetti Delicious, I like how my mom makes it with nice meat sauce. A+

Pizza Cowabunga! A

Anything my mother-in-law Barb makes So good. Table-groaning feasts every time. Then sleepiness. A+

Apples My mom used to give me apple skins as a kid when she was peeling apples. So good! I like to eat all the skin of an apple first, and then move on the the fleshy insides. A

My favourite fake flavours: 1. banana 2. cherry 3. Apple cinnamon 4. Strawberry. Last: Blueberry I don’t know, it doesn’t work for me.

Stouffers Lasagna The only frozen meal that deserves to be called Gourmet A-

A couple of fresh buns, a bag of baby carrots and a thing of hummus is sometimes what I have for dinner. A-

Hamburger Helper You know what I’m talking about!!!! It’s a special day when I make Hamurger Helper. A

Slushies Once I was in a Slushie Club as co-president Sir Slush-a-lot. My co-president was George W. Slush. I think that joke has some mileage. B+ (but on a really hot day, A)

Preferred Beers: Rickards Red or white, sleemans, creemores, Waterloo Dark.

On DONALD DUCK

January 27th
On DONALD DUCK

How to Succeed in Life While Still Being Lazy (A list of Mostly Cartoon Characters)

1) Donald Duck
How many of us have not wanted to put their pants on in the morning? The much beloved Donald Duck never has. Sure, other people like Bugs Bunny don’t wear pants, but Donald throws it in your face by wearing a shirt and hat. It’s clear that he gets up each morning, puts on a shirt and hat, looks at his pants and says to himself ‘eh, not today’. Then he walks out his front door to face the world.

2) Pig Pen
Why bathe? You can still make millions as a minor character in a major comic strip. If pig pen was a clean large headed child like the rest of the peanuts, he would have no distinguishing features and quickly vanish from posterity. He has the most one-dimensional character in the strip, except for Franklin, who is black.

3) Karl Marx and Charles Darwin

‘I can’t shave! I’m thinking of theories that charge the world!’ Honorable mention: Albert Einstein, get a haircut!

4) Peter Jackson
This guy let himself go. Oh wait he lost all that weight! Take him off the list!

5) Jughead Jones
Now we’re getting real. Jughead Jones became famous because he was lazy, and raised it to an art form. And he eats so many hamburgers, and never gains weight! What metabolism. But what of his mysterious past, with that S-girl we sometimes hear about that broke his heart? That was when he learned that to be lazy, c’est divine. Jughead also shows that laziness is just intelligence in another guise.

6) Andy Capp
All time couch sleeper. Also, you don’t have to raise your hat above your eye level. Keep em down there. What are you gonna look at, your wife? What a harridan! Watch out for that rolling pin!

7) Marmaduke
Marmaduke! Get offa there!

8) What about that sheepdog that was in those Wile E Coyote cartoons? He looked like he was asleep, but oh ho ho, he knew exactly what was going on. He know when to save his strength. Which is what lazy people call what they are doing.

9) Beetle Bailey
What separates Beetle Bailey from his contemporaries is that, by being lazy in the army he is, in some ways, a force for peace. I salute you, Beetle Bailey.

10) Drabble, the dad on Hi and Lois, Dagwood, Al Bundy
The husband squad!! Very realistic couch sleeping, Dagwood.

11) Homer Simpson
Obvious. What am I making here, a volleyball team?


12) Casper the Friendly Ghost
You’d be surprised how much energy you can free up by not breathing, circulating blood, what have you.

13) Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He could have walked if he wanted to. Didn’t you see Pearl Harbour?

And there we have it. Thirteen successful individuals who are lazy. Let our inherent laziness never hold us back, let us never say ‘I’ll never become a famous cartoon character – I’m too lazy’ Or you can become president instead.

On MADRID

January 6th
Today I was legitimately hanged for the first time. The odds were stacked against me, as the word was six letters long, and two of those letters were D, which I did not try until I had already placed a shoe on the foot of the poor dead man I was trying to save. The cruel dictatorship’s reign of terror continues, try as might to stop it with my powers of vocabulary.

On MADRID
Speaking of longtime dictatorships, here’s some fast facts about Madrid:

1) Madrid is the third largest city in the European Union, bigger than Paris, France (and Paris, Texas).
2) In Spain, they call counties Autonomous Communities. Madrid is in the Autonomous Community of Madrid.
4) Originally, Madrid was known as Ursaria, which means “Land of Bears”.
4) The town motto of Madrid is, “On water I was built, my walls are made of fire. This is my ensign and escutcheon.” Presumably one would say this while displaying the town escutcheon (and ensign). A rule of thumb that applies to any situation, really.
5) An escutcheon is a different thing depending on the context you’re using the word in. In heraldry, as the Madrilenos are using it in the above motto, they mean the shield in a coat of arms, which in their case depicts a bear trying to knock down a strawberry tree. On a boat, an escutcheon is a plate on the stern of a ship with the boat’s name on it, i.e. the H.M.S. Strawberry-Eating Bear. In a doctor’s office, the escutcheon refers to the male or female distribution of pubic hair. As in “Mrs. Johnson, your escutcheon is a bushy as a strawberry bush the top of a strawberry tree! Lucky there are no bears around.”
6) The capital of Spain was moved from Seville to Madrid in 1561 by Philip II. Take that, Seville!
7) Madrid was the first city to have its civilians targeted by bombs dropped from airplanes. As depicted in the painting, Guernica. (The lesser-known painting Madrid is a picture of cows quietly eating grass in the town of Guernica.)
8) Madrid is sister city to New York, but partner city to Paris. Big difference. You see, Madrid loves New York (and wears a T-shirt to prove it), but it has sex with Paris.
9) In the Soviet Union, they call sister cities brother cities.
10) Apparently, Terminal 4 at Madrid’s airport is really something to see.
11) Drinking in public is a popular pastime for the youth of Madrid.
12) Madrid is the world centre of bullfighting! That makes sense.
13) The fans of Madrid’s poorer soccer team, Atletico Madrid, are known as The Sufferers, or The Cubs Fans.
14) Madrid’s subway system is the second largest in Europe now, after London. (What happened, Berlin?) Its subway lines appear to have been created haphazardly in broad, looping strokes.
15) My sister recently spent time in Madrid, but I do not recall her mentioning anything in particular about it.

There you have it – the jewel of the Iberian Peninsula. The closest I have personally come to Spain is Portugal, and I have also worked in a bank in a Portuguese neighbourhood in Toronto. I had the impression the people there did not like me. The Portuguese women would fight amongst each other to be the one to get the Portuguese-speaking teller, backing away from me and pointing at each other, like children trying to avoid going off the high-dive. Perhaps someday I will have an understanding with those who speak foreign tongues. But right now, we both have a deep-seated fear of one another.