Picture this:

While biking to work today, I encountered a hideous sight. I’m used to seeing the fat homeless lady airing out her under-skirt bits, and I’m used to seeing garbage strewn about. I even wouldn’t really be too surprised if I saw that naked woman sleeping on a bench again. But this…this was different.

Picture this: perfectly normal looking Asian girl. Big hair on top of her head, baggy layered sweater, purse with a small stuffed animal hanging off of it, tights, skirt, shoes…typical teenage/early 20s girl.

Now picture this: perfectly normal looking Asian girl squatting over the sewer grate with her tights pulled down and her skirt pulled up, taking a piss. At 7:45 in the morning. On Bloor street.

I honestly had to turn around and look back while I was biking by because I could not believe my eyes. This perfectly normal-looking girl was going to the bathroom in the middle of one of the busiest neighbourhoods in the city, right during the rush-hour commute. How did that even happen?! What possibly made her think that it was okay to pee in the middle of the street? It’s not even like it was a Friday night and she was wasted and her friends were holding her up saying "Sherri, no! Stop!". Eugh.

Now, I guess I should say that I may have seen her(?) holding a penis. So it may have been a man dressed as a woman, squatting and taking a pee over a sewer grate on Bloor street. While the “that is disgusting and you’re peeing all over yourself” factor is gone, the “what the fuck are you doing peeing on the street on a Tuesday morning” bit is still there. I was listening to a podcast last weekend about a woman who had traveled in Africa and she said that often times people would just stop and squat along the beach and she found it unnerving. I, too, would find it weird and gross, but I suppose I would expect it; if there’s no toilets or running water, you go where you can go. If there *are* toilets and you’re living in the biggest city in Canada, it’s really not cool to stop and squat in the middle of the street. Ever.

I never thought I’d wish to see fat homeless lady fanning herself so much.

Metro News

For the past three weeks Metro and 24h newspapers have hired people to stand at the corner of Yonge and Bloor and hand out papers. Giving free hand-outs is a great promotional tool and really does encourage people to try new things and buy your product. At Yonge and Bloor we get all sorts of cool hand-outs; shampoo, cooking sauces, water, juices…for two months last summer I didn’t have to buy laundry detergent once because I got so many free samples! Giving away samples of products is a great way for people to try new things and a get way to get new customers. Which is why it totally perplexes me that Metro and 24h newspapers are giving away copies.

Metro and 24h are FREE papers. You can pick them up at any street corner in the city and if you ride the subway (as a good 85% of people that are walking into office towers at Yonge and Bloor do) there are copies in every station along the way. Chances are most people that walk by the corner have already read the paper on their commute and/or have a copy shoved in their m/p-urse. So what does handing out these free copies accomplish?

Further, doesn’t it cost these companies money to give do this? They must be paying people to stand there and give out papers (mind you, they’re probably not paying them well as the people are the most unenergetic, unenthusiastic people I’ve ever seen giving away shit in my life). I’m guessing they’re spending about $8,000 a week to pay people to stand around and try to give away something they can get for free (I'm pretty sure they're doing it at multiple stations around the city, not just big intersections downtown). How does Metro have this in their budget? I know that they make money off selling ad space and stuff like that, but is it really necessary to have this “promotion”?

Maybe a better idea would be to give away something else and try to bump up traffic on their website. Like a granola bar with a “Check out metronews.ca for all your awesome news!” sticker? Or one of those accordion Chinese fans with “metronews.ca” printed on them? I know it would end up costing more money than just giving away free papers that they already print, but I think it would actually accomplish something and provide results you could see. COME ON GUYS. Put this kid out of a job. He's obviously miserable.

Celery

Stop putting celery in stuff.

If I want a chicken salad sandwich, I want a chicken salad sandwich. Chicken + mayo = chicken salad. You throw celery in there and it ruins the integrity of the sandwich. It’s no longer “chicken salad”. It’s “Chicken Salad XTREME” or some shit. Stop putting stuff in there.

Would you put walnuts in a chicken salad sandwich you were serving to a friend or bedfellow you woke up beside and were like “shit I should feed this person” and all you had was leftover chicken, mayonnaise an old tortilla in the back of the fridge and an old can of beets you tried once but hated? No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t put walnuts or pickles or beets or anything else in that sandwich because it would taste nasty. No one wants that stuff. If someone asks for a chicken salad sandwich, they’re thinking “Hm, I could really go for a plain ol’ chicken salad sandwich” not “I want the most flavourful thing in the world in my mouth right now”.

People think that celery doesn’t have a taste, but it does. It soooo does. It tastes like crap. I hate celery more than I hate green peppers, and green peppers are nasty. The only good thing about celery is that its taste doesn’t really invade a whole dish like green peppers do. Celery is useless and has no place in a chicken salad sandwich.

Here are some acceptable items to put in a chicken salad sandwich you make for yourself or a fancy friend:
- apples
- mustard
- herbs or spices like cayenne, basil, pepper, paprika
- almonds
- Do not put salt in your chicken salad sandwich. You already have mayo in it and I’m sure there’s salt in mayo. Watch your sodium intake, fools.

I’m not sure when celery became a staple of CSS’s, but it totally blows. Tim Horton’s, Holts…you are going to be hard-pressed to find an ‘on-the-go’ chicken salad sandwich without celery in it. Don’t even try. Just go for egg salad instead.

I swear to god

I swear to god the next person that steps out into the road while I'm biking down it, I'm going to hit. If you seriously can't walk 10 feet to the intersection and cross there, then I seriously can't wait to run into you with my bike. And hopefully, the accident results in you bleeding.

And I swear to god the next person that pushes their stroller out in the middle of Yonge Street and tries to cross with their BABY, I'm going to fucking get off my bike, pick up the baby and chastise the parent hardcore. Then I'm going to kick the parent and make their baby watch until their baby cries and the parent cries because their baby is crying. Then I'm going to call the baby when they're like nine years old and I'm going to say "hey, your parents didn't care about your safety when you were a kid and they probably don't care about it now" and the nine year old will eat that shit up because that's what kids do. They're like sponges.

Gillette Disposable Razors. Srsly wtf.

In a world where the icecaps are melting, the ocean has a giant garbage pit in it, birds are disappearing and we pay $0.05 for plastic grocery bags, I think it’s a safe bet to say that most people are fairly eco-conscious. Politicians use the environment to help them win elections, celebs are proudly carrying canvas sacs that state “I am not a plastic bag” and even biking seems to be totally cool to do.

In an age where being eco-chic is the new Black, why the hell did they create this?

The Gillette Venus disposable razors.

Let me state this first: I love my Gillette Embrace razor. I got a free sample at a street festival two years ago and never looked back. I’m not a girl that spends money on beauty products, so for me to shell out more than $10 on a pack of razors is a big deal, and these damn replacement blades cost me around $20 (sometimes more, depending on where I go). Five blades really do make a difference. They’re awesome. I love them and recommend the Venus Embrace to everyone that asks.

This disposable razor, though, is a total crock. They say it’s just as good as a normal razor, and once you’re done with it, you can throw the entire thing out! But what’s the point? The disposable is the exact same size and shape as the normal one. It’s the same weight, has the same grips, has the same blade…the only difference seems to be that the disposable one has a tropical scent. Which I find really weird, but whatever.

Here, from the website, are the great product points listed for both razors:

Embrace:
- 5 blades for a dramatically smooth shave
- Ribbon of Moisture for a smooth glide
- Interchangeable Blade Refill Cartridges
- ShowerPod convenient in-shower storage
- SoftGrip handle for no-slip control

Disposable razor:
- 5 blades for a curve-hugging smooth shave
- Ribbon of Moisture for a smooth glide
- No blade chagne required; just use and toss!
- Pivoting head adjusts to your curves
- New SoftGrip handle for great control

So the only real difference is that the non-disposable ones come with a ShowerPod…but the ShowerPod doesn’t suction to the wall, so you have to find another big space in the tub to put your ShowerPod down, and it’s bigger than the razor so it takes up more space, and then it gets all soap scummy…it’s pretty useless. I’ll also mention that the Embrace has a pivoting head that adjusts to your curves too, but they didn’t put it as one of the points on the site (and, as I’m srsly professional, I didn’t want to put something up there that wasn’t directly taken from the site). They are the exact same razor.

I’m all for cheap disposable razors (like those pink Bic razors) as they’re truly crap and it’s okay if you lose one while you’re at the beach, but to spend more than $5 on something like this is just absurd. So why do we need a fancy scented disposable razor? It’s not about saving money, as a pack of them costs about the same as buying a refill pack. It can’t be about not wanting to bring your normal razor on a trip with you in case you lose it, because buying one of the razors (that come with a few replacement blades) is, again, about the same amount as a pack of disposables. It can’t be about always wanting to have a smooth shave, because as soon as your blades go dull on the normal one you can just eject them into the trash and throw another one on. So why go to all the trouble to create this? Do people really buy them?

Like “Lite” Cheese Whiz and avocado slicers, Gillette has created something totally useless and impractical, but is marketing it like you Can’t Live Without It. I was on board with the Diamond Shreddies campaign, but this I just can’t stand behind.