Let's bag these up

Looking forward to shopping this weekend at ALDI, a Germany-based, no-frills grocery chain. It has the reputation and feel here in the States of being an IKEA meets Walmart: Although there are cashiers, you have to bag your own groceries; the food, mostly staples such as canned goods, produce, milk and bread, is mostly ALDI-branded; it has a warehouse feel, where food is stacked in pallets and replaced when only the pallets are empty; they sell plastic bags, but you can bring your own; and you have to pay a $0.25 deposit into a machine for a cart, which you get back when you return.

That last one sounds really cheap, but it's (1) common practice in Europe, and (2) meant to discourage lazy people from abandoning their carts in the parking lot, which takes resources to go track down. I'm definitely all for that one; it drives me nuts to see people leave their empty shopping carts in whatever space next to their car they can find instead of walking a short 10 paces to put it in the space clearly marked "Cart return."

The chain is trying to make a big move in the U.S., with 13 new stores in Central Florida, and from what's been going on in the economy lately, they've picked a strategic time to do it.

Downside: From what I've read on its Wikipedia page, ALDI started out with a rep like Food Lion, a place only poor people with food stamps would shop. Since most of their food is generic, ALDI brands, it also had a rep for being poor quality, a la "Dixie Darling."

On the flip side, you can say the same thing about Walmart, which hasn't exactly suffered for being low-cost. And with the European economy being dragged down by ours, ALDI's rep has been elevated a bit.

NPR: Caring makes us human

From a prisoner serving time for murder:

It was an amazing bit of grace to feel him under my hand and know that I was enriching the life of another creature with something as simple as my care. I believe that caring for something or someone in need is what makes us human.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95088503&ft=1&f=10

Morality bites

My summer of slaughtering the meat I eat left me with mixed feelings. But not the feelings I'd imagined. I thought I might emerge from it with a greater sense of entitlement and accomplishment. Like if you can face the realities of meat, you're allowed to eat it. But I felt no sense of entitlement. I felt more hesitance, a deeper reverence and a new conscientiousness.

read more | digg story

"It's like a really bad Disney movie"

Matt Damon saying everything I've thought about Sarah Palin.

Triumph at RNC

"Change is coming"

I guess if you can't beat 'em, steal your opponent's platform: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94332523

Sleeping like this

Obama on Gustav -- from a TIME blogger

Obama spent today giving curtailed speeches in respect to Hurricane Gustav. But tonight, in front of a Milwaukee audience of 14,000, invoking both the Bible and Thoreau, he was as good as I’ve ever heard him.

read more | digg story

No matter your political leanings, you have to admit that Obama is perhaps one of the greatest public speakers of his generation.

Bad water

Seagulls ride out the whitecaps on Tampa Bay as Gustav squall line rolls through.

Scary situation

Driving back from St. Pete in the Prius, we got caught in that squall line from Gustav on the Howard Frankland. For about 5 mins, it got pretty frightening to be on the freeway. Traffic slowed to about 25 MPH a couple of minutes after I snapped this. That's sis' BF in the white truck in front.

Prius HUD part 2

A button switches the HUD from battery status to energy consumption. This says I'm averaging 48 MPG. Yes, I took this while driving. Kids, don't try this at home.

Prius HUD

Driving sis' BF's Prius back from new house in St. Pete to old house in Tampa. Heads-up display shows car recharging its battery.

Over Tampa Bay

Howard Frankland Bridge, heading southwest to sis' new home in St. Pete yesterday. Note squall line from Gustav in the distance to the south.

Screening room

Highly recommended: Tokyo Godfathers. I stumbled upon it last night while channel surfing, and since it just happened to be starting on Ovation TV, I stopped, thinking that I'd watch the first few minutes and keep going. Instead, I was captured by its amazing animation and its warm, sympathetic characters. I normally have a hard time sitting through a two-hour movie at home, but the plot moved quickly, and it had just the right amount of goofy Japanese schmaltz to make it heartwarming but not over the top. A wonderful, unexpected treat.

Too Much of a Bad Thing

NYT's Maureen Dowd:

My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

I figured, given her stringent moral standards, that her great affection for McCain would be dimmed.

“So,” I asked her, “what do you think of that?”

“A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I was startled, but it brought home to me what a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free. [MORE]

Fay vs. Orlando

Shot tonight, 6 p.m., from my front porch. It's been just like this for more than 24 hours now. It just won't stop raining. At about 48 seconds into the video, a gust whips up. The 'bush' to the left of the vid is actually a low tree that has been knocked over. It was being supported by ropes and stakes, so we expected it to fall over.

Eyesore update

A second slant-eyes pose, this time from an Argentinian sports team, as emerged.

But I'm actually kind of glad it did, because it started a lively discussion among Consumerist readers, who are a bit more mature than your average Yahoo and at least can post halfway intelligent responses (for the most part).

Many thought it was slightly offensive, but not to the extreme as blackface. A few didn't think so at all. An Argentinian even responded to say that it is not considered offensive in his country and described the action as "friendly and playful." He was quite nice and said that "if any Chinese friends out there find this offensive I apologize for my misunderstanding."

Finally, a commenter asked if there were any Asians out there who would say whether the photo(s) offended them, to which I and several others had the same response: Yes, it's offensive. Yes, we've seen it all before, including people saying to us, "ching, chong, ching, chong," as if that means something in Chinese.

However, aside from one, all the Asian commenters grew up in North America or Northern Europe. Have we become so overy sensitive that we can't take a joke? Or is the rest of the world so isolated from other cultures that they still find other types of people curious and amusing? The one Asian commenter not from the West said he lived in Seoul, and when he asked a friend whether the photo was offensive, his friend said no.

That doesn't change my personal feelings toward the photos, which is that if there were a question as to its taste, do something else. Just be polite.

The evil eye

As a kid, I was on the receiving end of this gesture countless times. And invariably, the kid performing the gesture had to recite the "Chinese, Japanese..." rhyme, perhaps making it a "cute" playground act.

I'm sure every Asian kid who grew up outside of Asia has had it done to him at some point in his life.

But adults -- pro athletes to whom people look up as role models -- making the grade-school gesture? Immature. Intolerant. Unnecessary. Disappointing.

I've tried to keep an open mind, see their side: Perhaps the culture in which they were raised might not expose them to offensive gestures. Or, am I overreacting, too sensitive? Becoming another annoying case of political correctness run amok?

No, I don't think so. It is an offensive gesture.

It's a gesture performed by millions of youngsters the world over for the purpose of teasing another. No, young kids don't know right from wrong yet. But they don't tease others like a teen boy who would tease a girl because he secretly likes her and is trying to keep her attention. Youngsters aren't that complicated yet. They tease because they either simply get a laugh or kick from mocking another, or they're angry, jealous or trying to assert dominance. For the most part, they eventually grow out of teasing altogether and don't find it amusing any more.

So back to the Spanish team.

"One of our sponsors asked us to pose with a 'wink' to our participation in Beijing, [so] we made an Oriental expression with our eyes," Spaniard Jose Calderon, who plays for the NBA's Toronto Raptors, said on his Web site. "We thought it was something appropriate and that it would always be interpreted as somewhat loving."

If the gesture were all in good fun and a gesture of respect, would they have willingly posed with spears for an Olympic Games held in Africa? Who knows. But I doubt the advertiser for whom the Spanish team posed ever would have approved of that. Why is it seemingly acceptible to tease Asians but not other minorities?

Not all on the Spanish team was comfortable with the pose. Pau Gasol, another NBA player, said, "Some of us didn’t feel comfortable doing it just because to me it was a little clownish for our part to be doing that. ... I think it is just a bad idea I guess to do that, but it was never intended to be offensive or racist against anybody. ... I didn’t find it very funny. I didn’t find it offensive, either. I guess some guys didn’t mind. To me I don’t want to be that way, I guess, to be doing that stuff."

So if at least one person in the group felt sheepish about the gesture, that should have been a red flag. I don't mean to be the P.C. Police. But if the team and advertiser wanted to pay respect to the Chinese, there were so many other ways to do it than a schoolyard taunt.

UPDATE: Good question posed by buddy Plan9B: How do Asians living in Spain feel about the ad?

Colmes bites back...

... after lengthy discussion about John Edwards' affair.

Debbie Downer moment

Ate at one of my favorite sushi places in town, Bikkuri, tonight. I hadn't eaten there in several weeks, and I'm sad to say it's not what it used to be. WAS: Part take-out, part counter-service sushi joint, with a limited number of two-tops at which you could eat after your food was prepared, that appealed to downtown hipsters on a budget. NOW: Full-service Japanese restaurant with a bigger kitchen, and the former kitchen preparing take-out meals only. Tonight, there weren't nearly as many people in there as there used to be. The prices on the menu also have gone up, and that combined with now having to tip yer wait staff is a double punch in the pocketbook.

I liked going there not only because it had pretty decent sushi for the price, but it was a charming little place that reminded me a little bit of Tokyo. I loved the atmosphere. It always seemed to bustle with skinny, hip urbanites, gay and straight. The Engrish signage and menu items made me smile. You ordered at the counter right by the front door, then loitered around, grabbed an always-recent copy of GQ, US Weekly, People or Entertainment Weekly from the stack of magazines they always had near the front door, or hoped to snag a coveted table while waiting for your food.

Now, it's just another generic Japanese restaurant. (Except for the residual Engrish, thank goodness.)