Oh, Canada. Please Stop It

You've scarred me more than enough. If I promise to always pay attention and follow safety procedures that I know by heart will you start by the friendly happy Canadia that I dream about*?

The Canadian Workplace Safety Insurance Board- I'm really picturing their office as being incredibly dark, with probably a few skulls and rusty pliers and maybe a dart board that they play with to envision weird and terrifying scenarios of workplace mayhem and mutilation.
Not content with their continuing series of television ads that are maybe the most gruesome things this side of Eli Roth's mind they've begun branching out to print ads, y'know so you can be startled when you're not by a tv or computer





Pretty soon there's going to be one of these where someone is reading a magazine, with one of these ads ominously inserted in and will sever an artery in the most gruesome paper cut incident ever.

(VIA BWE)

*This is the kind of happy friendly Canadian ad I like to see

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Drink of the Week: The Caesar, eh?

Earlier this week I was looking to see if I could find a sketch from the old Sid Caesar show, which spoofed DW Griffith’s "What Drink Did "as A Drunk There Was. I haven’t found the sketch yet but I stumbled upon the Caesar Cocktail, something I have never heard of before.
Some background from The Art of the Drink (the site that introduced me to the Caesar)

When someone says Caesar the first thing that might come to mind is a salad, or possibly and old dead Roman guy, but if you are in Canada you'll probably think cocktail. If you were to pick an official cocktail for Canada, the Caesar would be it. For some reason this cocktail is the most popular cocktail in Canada. It could be that it is a savory cocktail with nary a drop of sugar. It could be the multitude of garnishes that adorn this popular drink, some would even say it is a buffet atop the cocktail. It could be the spice, or the salt, or the overall combination. If you say it is just a Bloody Mary knockoff, you'd be short sighted. This may be a similar cocktail, but where the Bloody Mary is quiet and subdued, the Caesar is spicy and fun. Please note that it is not a Bloody Caesar, it is called a Caesar. The “bloody” part comes from a confusion with Miss Mary and doesn't belong in this cocktails title.

“The Bloody Caesar was invented in 1969 to celebrate the opening a Marco’s, a new restaurant in Calgary, Alberta. Bartender Walter Chell developed the original cocktail after three months of exploring different recipes. He came up with a spicy drink made of Clamato juice, vodka, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and a dash of oregano. It is Canada’s #1 selling cocktail, with more than 250 million sold each year.” The oregano has been replaced by Tabasco in most Caesars.

Now first I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Caesars, but I've tried them, so I know what they taste like. But, if you like seafood and Italian cuisine, this is a drink you might very well enjoy. Hell, millions of Canadians enjoy them every week. On any Friday night behind the bar I make sure there are a few extra bottles of Motts Clamato in the fridge and a whole lot of extra Caesar garnishes. The Caesar seems to be the way to start off a weekend meal at a restaurant.

The fun part about the Caesar is that it lends itself to a boat load of garnishes. Originally celery and a lime were standard, but since the Caesar has become so popular, every restaurant felt a need to customize the garnish to make the drink unique. For example in some places you get pickles, olives, peppers, a spicy pickled bean, or pickled asparagus. Actually any type of vegetable works well and pickling it seems to up the flavour quotient. Even boiled sea creatures (shrimp) make an appearance in the garnish at certain restaurants. Some drinks look like an appetizer. If you find it in your crisper, you can probably put it in your Caesar.

The other part of the fun is that you can add different spices to the drink to spruce it up. Depending on the restaurant the additions to the Caesar are endless. Horseradish, in place of the Tabasco seems top be very popular, and wasabi is also pretty common. I've seen places add basil infused vodka and HP BBQ Sauce to sweeten the drink up a bit, and it goes really well with the tomato in the Clamato. The brine from pickles is often used and I've heard that it tastes like a McDonald's cheese burger, well at least the ketchup and pickle part of the burger. The latest addition to the list of condiments that goes in a Caesar is the White Wine Chicken Marinade (white wine worcestershire sauce) from Lea and Perrins. The base of this worcestershire is Sauternes and is actually quite tasty.

By all accounts, a well made Caesar is a great cocktail. It isn't tied to any traditional recipe, but follows a basic set of requirements, such as Clamato. Part of the fun is hitting different places to see what they've done to make their Caesar better. Every place is a surprise.

Canadians are weird. Incredibly bizarre. I'm not a fan of Bloody Marys either but I will try anything twice.

So here’s the Caesar Cocktail recipe

11⁄2 oz Vodka
3 Dashes Worcestershire Sauce
3 Dashes Tabasco
Salt & Pepper
Fill Clamato Juice

Line the rim of a glass with salt and pepper. Over ice, add vodka, fill with clamato juice, then add the remaining ingredients. Garnish with a celery stick.

Salute.

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Canada Scares the Heck Out of Me

So sometime back I posted on this first Canadian work safety psa but little did I know that they had made more! Just when I had finally gotten that first one out of mind
And AOL and their Videologists have compiled “5 shocking Canadian PSAs” along with their own comments and rankings of the gore from up Nor’
but really remind me never to get a job in Canada, or perhaps even visit there again- it is obviously the most dangerous place on Earth

Lousy Ladder


Man Crushed By Steel


here’s that Scalded by Oil one


Man Gets Electrocuted, rises from coffin


Propane Explosion


Now I have new fears, awesome; I'm now afraid to: climb onto a shaky ladder and overreach while standing above a glass table, drive a forklift in a warehouse near any "skeds", get electrocuted and riase from the dead at my own funeral or be anywhere near a propane tank.

Oh Canada, oww

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Great, I've Found a New Fear

All today basically every site I've been to has posted about the Canadian Kitchen Safety PSA. I didn't watch it, because let's be honest that is like the least sexiest tease ever; kitchen safety? in canadia?
But then I watched it in a moment of boredom and let's just say Jesus, I now believe in the importance of kitchen safety


I really thought she would cut off a finger or something but it was so much worse and unexpected.That last shot of her face was way way unnecessary- she looked like old Anakin or one of the adherents of The Divine Bomb in Beneath the Planet of The Apes. And her scream was so terrifying and piercing.

People I can't implore you if you spill grease in a high traffic zone, take the time to clean it up. I'm still a little shaken.
I feel like this is going to be the most talked about psa since that brain on drugs one.

But seriously, cooking from now on is going to take a lot longer, as I mop and dry the floor like every 5 minutes.

Here's the website because there are no accidents [obviously] Just a warning though, this "cheery" flash animation is quite disturbing. Why are Canadians so scary?
(found on Deadspin originally)

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I'm Afraid of Americans; Ignorance Addition

A new Newsweek poll has just come out and it sort of confirms what I've long known. There are some serious morons in this country. Like mildly retarded, functionally illiterate dumb . Some highlights (if you can call them that) from the article :
40% of Americans believe Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks
More people know who won American Idol this year than who is Chief Justice (and this was like the lowest rated American Idol ever)
8% don't believe SUVs contribute to global warming
47& of respondents think Christianity and Islam are older than Judaism
and 39% of Americans polled don't know that the Roman Empire came before the British and American ones.

(btw, I got that great photo from Wonkette)

Thankfully those numbers are lower than I had thought (and to be honest I didn't know who was Federal Reserve chairman, but I recognize that beard). So maybe there is some hope though looking at the following clip quickly strips alot of that away. I really hope, like some of the comments suggest that these people were paid to be stupid, otherwise I will have very little problem moving to Vancouver, consistently one of the best places to live.)
But I bleed red (and if I'm really sick white and blue) so let's just say these people are abberations or pod people.

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