Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 


If you were at an LCBO (the government-owned chain of liquor stores, fyi, for you non-Canucks) yesterday at all, you have my pity. Not because you were probably looking at a bottle of cabernet sauvignon to go with your grilled snapper when you should have been considering the unoaked chardonnay (I googled this to be sure...and now I'm hungry, dammit), or that you were daring to cheapen your gin & tonic with Seagram's Extra Dry instead of using Bombay Sapphire.

For anyone who missed it, yesterday was the official strike deadline for all LCBO workers; as of midnight last night, they were within their right to walk off the job and leave thousands of Canadians without their hard liquor. (Thankfully, the separately-owned and/or run Beer Store chains would still offer their wares, in a worst case scenario.)

Now imagine, if you will: an LCBO store that was only this busy the day before Christmas, when everyone was stocking up on party drinks and dinner wines. From what some reports were, yesterday’s crowds made Christmas Eve Day look like a slow day. This scares me; believe me, I was there at an LCBO on Christmas Eve Day on ’08, picking up some Zinfandel for Mel. Thankfully I had no pressing matters to attend to and actually enjoyed idling about in the crowd as opposed to being one of the poor bastards on the other side of the counter (ah, retail!), so I didn’t care about the 20-minute wait in line. But to put this into perspective, despite having all 5 tills open and the employees pushing through customers in a professional, rapid-fire fashion, every line went straight to the back of the store, with at least two lines curving around most of the back wall too.

So when the news reports were of even grander crowds who were terrified of a country suddenly without their liquor, all I could think of was how thankful I was to be in a luggage store. Hence, my pity for any of you who either had to brave an LCBO for some party-related drinks, or who missed the news about the strike and rambled in on a whim only to discover the hordes having also descended upon the store.

Tell me, how long did your beards grow while you were waiting in line? And did you have to take down any yuppies in order to get at that blocked display of rum?

As an aside to the non-Canucks: don’t worry, the strike has been postponed for now. Canadians still have their beer and their liquor and will not be forced to conquer the rest of the world in order to get some. (Don’t laugh: knowing our liquor is safe & accessible is the only thing keeping us from subjugating the rest of you.)

Though I must confess a morbid curiosity to wondering what would have happened in Toronto, which is already enduring the beginnings of a summer garbage strike. Can you imagine what levels of pandemonium would ensue when a vast majority of Torontonians suddenly had to contend with the rancid smell of sun-cooked garbage, and couldn’t try to erase the stink with alcohol?

My bets are on at least two days of rioting before the government would desperately sign whatever contract was up to get either or both the garbage and LCBO employees back to work. You know, the usual: looting, fires, random acts of violence against parked cars, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together.


…and I’m pretty sure I haven’t blogged about this before, and it astounds me that I didn’t originally blog about it shortly after the Con. Then again, my little bits of nowhere have been erratic at best when it comes to updates. (Last week’s excuses for not updating revolved around the evidence mice turning all my boxer shorts into paper doll cut-outs. This week is simply: it’s too damned hot to type.)

I’m sure many of you recall the aftermath of Anime North 2007. At the time, the last thing I said to my staff as I left for my 4-day vacation was, “Don’t burn the store down.” And they laughed and reassured me that they would never dream of such a thing.

Spoiler: they lied.

Upon my return from the Con, I learned about an incident involving our store’s microwave and a flaming hamburger that almost set off the fire alarms and/or sprinkler system. Oh, that would have been a grand clusterfuck to return to; my only consolation would have been that I wasn’t anywhere near when it happened, so I’d be absolved of any wrongdoing.

Flash-forward and then briefly rewind (okay, so this bit of nowhere is an analogue VHS tape instead of swanky DVD. You can live without being able to bounce between chapter breaks.) to AN09. As Mel and I left our house to rendezvous with Kevin & Dana the night before the Con, we joked about the flaming hamburger of death.

Mel laughed at the mental image.

I sighed and shook my head and remarked something along the lines of, “Well, they almost managed it once. But surely they wouldn’t try to burn the store down a second time while I was gone?”

Aha haaaaaaa…they tried.

Not surprisingly, once again the microwave was involved. And one again, amazingly no alarms or sprinklers were triggered, a feat I thank mostly because both locations at least had a sink my minions could dunk the fiery remains into and douse with water. But this does bring us to a much-belated Today's Lesson: just because it says “microwaveable” on the front of the box does not necessarily mean your dinner will survive a microwave. Sometimes labels (like your minions) lie. Or when they say “microwaveable” they really mean “that plastic film you’re supposed to keep on your food while you nuke it might suddenly burst into flame, but there’s no guarantees.”

It makes me wonder what will happen when I eventually leave the store for greener pastures (So to speak. Last I checked, I was not the Nanami-cow.), and the microwave stays behind with the store. I give my minions a week before something goes up in flames.

The betting pool would be more interesting, though, were we to bet on what food did cause everything to go flambé. I call dibs on some sort of pasta dish.

Labels: Flaming microwaveable food of death (now with 50% more burninating), the night the booze-fueled laughter (almost) died

posted by Phillip at 7:42 AM