I’ve always been a fan of the raspberry, with its tartness and sweetness working in perfect harmony. As a child I used to eat raspberry jam (a rare treat in my house) straight; bread and peanut butter took time to combine into the regulated sandwich. I consumed it far too quickly, which is probably why It was such a real treat in my house. In order to supply me with a constant supply probably would have required second mortgage on our home.

As I aged, my cravings died down, though I continued to have a deep longing for raspberry-esque food products. For a long time there was nothing. I am excluding the occasional sour candy that opted for mis-representing raspberries, which I would eat and then be unimpressed with their piddly attempt at deliciousness.

Then something changed. I’m not sure where or when, but something changed. I didn’t really notice at first; a cran-raspberry blend here and there, raspberry Voortman cookies. Overall nothing special. Then one one trip to North Bay to see Theresa, a Tim Hortons along the way was selling rasberry-filled donuts and TimBits. My mind was blown. Suffice it to say I bought both and consumed them, nearly vibrating with joy that the flavour had found it into the proper channels.

A little later I noticed other raspberry-flavoured foods showing up. Suddenly every drink that wanted to be trendy was including raspberries in them. Alcohol has had a recent influx of raspberry booze. Hell I’ve come across many raspberry-flavoured drinks recently in a variety of styles. Juice, sparkling, crammed full of caffeine. All delicious. I’ve seen gums coming out with raspberry as their proud banner. I’ve even found a recent influx in raspberry-imbued muffins and other confectioneries.

I’m not complaining here people, far from. I’m now living a taste bud utopia where I can enjoy raspberry in more than in conjunction with cranberries, their evil counterpart. I’m truly happy that raspberrys are finally mainstream.

My question is why? Why now, after all this time, is it becoming a normal food product? What happened to the mystery and misunderstanding that once surrounded raspberries? Did someone manage to create the perfect artificial flavour of it? Did someone recently stumble upon an endless field of raspberries trapped in a mountain pass somewhere that we are now exploiting?

I’m happy about the increase in raspberry-related goods, but I wish I knew why there was an increase to begin with.

Highlights of the week include:

I hate InfoPath:
I know the idea behind the program is sound, and I’m impressed with the level of integration that Microsoft has managed to achieve with SharePoint 2007 and InfoPath. What I don’t like is all the very, very moronic design choices they made with the InfoPath GUI, the blatant limitations with the items therein (what program doesn’t allow tables to have id’s honestly) and the very depressing requirement of absolute URL references for important items. Items such as data sources, links, validation servers etc. I also dislike how trying to get a form from one server to another has way too many manual steps required. I shouldn’t have to upload the form, and then have to change the references in said form manually. There should be some sort of stream-lined upload process for that.

The concept of the product is great, but the execution needs work. Much work. I can only cringe as I see more work with this product coming down the line. At least I got it done on time, against the wire I should add. I didn’t even care if I got praise or not for this one. I just wanted it done.

A Half-missed Concert:
Richard got us some tickets to go see Spoon and The Ponys in Toronto. The tickets clearly stated that the show started at 10:15 pm. We whined because it was a late show and would be pathetic-looking at work but whatever. Suffer for the music and all that. We ended up getting there early so we decided to wander around Toronto’s harbor-front. It’s really pretty in a weird sort of way, especially at night. We found a whole wack of used book stores and had a look around. We both ended up buying copies of I am not myself these days: A Memoir. We made it back to the concert hall around 10 and walked in. We saw guys on stage setting things up, so we figured “great, we made it just in time. We’re so cunning.”

The band came out on stage and played… and played… and played. Don’t get me wrong: I love concerts and music, but an hour and a half set (without encores) is a little much. In any case they walked off stage and we waited for the next band to come out. Then the first band came out and played an encore. Richard and I were both rather confused by this taboo behavior but figured “it’s an indie show, they can do whatever the hell they want.” They finished up their three-song encore and walked off stage. Then they came on again. Now I’m getting annoyed. The lead singer had basically been masturbating with his guitar all night to the crowd and after nearly two hours I was getting sick of them. They finished their second three-song encore and walked off stage, this time saying they were done. Hurray!

Then the houselights came on, and everyone started leaving. Both Richard and myself were now suffering from a complete mindfuck, and it honestly took us like 4 minutes to realize we missed the first band completely. Apparently the time changed when they moved venues (originally at The Phoenix, they moved to the Kool Haus for reasons I don’t understand). On the plus side, we got a new book to read and got home about 2 hours earlier then we thought we were.

Coincidentally we don’t know which band we saw. We think it was The Ponys but we’ll never know for sure.

Oh and as an aside, I’d like to write a quick letter:

Dear Indie crowd,

Stop smoking so much fucking weed. Seriously. They didn’t have any smoke machines at that concert, and yet the air was hazy. And if you are going to smoke that crap, at the very least blow your smoke upwards, and not directly into my face. Actions like that tend to make me punchy.

Thank you.

Corey.

Friendsgiving:
Though not yet an official holiday, it was great to get so many of my friends together in one place. What made it even better was the fact that everyone brought something to contribute to the night, whether it was food or games or whatever. Dinner was fantastic, and the turkey was fantastic, the potatoes were great, and I did not know you could use maple syrup in so many ways. My pies were well received, and by the end of it all we were happy, stuffed little people.

Then the drinking started. And the games, and the Guitar Hero followed shortly after. The title of this post is actually the utterance of Bart’s brother as he played a game of Aliens vs. Spacemen, a game we created using a Jenga tower and some plastic aliens/spacemen. Believe me, there was much debate within the creation of the rules but I think we got something marketable.

I really hope this becomes a yearly thing, because it’s a great chance to catch up with people you haven’t seen much of, as well as an excuse to eat really yummy food.

I’m sure there were other things, but as my brain as the recall ability of a rock, this’ll have to do. Stay tuned for more reviews and the like. As an aside, I dislike the “More” tag. Don’t like how it works or looks on the site.

So i called up Marie; she’d have sex for free,
but for 10 bucks an hour she’d listen to me
Talk about rock stars and models on dope,
and why I can’t cope with this scene.

Every Monday – The Marvelous 3

Corey signing off.