So, of all the stupid things, it looks like Taco Time of Canada has decided to go after a local mexican eatery called Casa de Amigos for using the supposedly copyright “Taco Tuesdays” slogan to promote their cheap taco deals. You’d think the fools at Taco Time would have better things to do, like maybe make their food edible and learn how to make tacos bigger then 2 inches long, but apparently not.

This looks like another case of a big company getting power hungry and bored, and deciding to go after a little guy trying to make a living cause they know they won’t be able to put up a fight.

The folks at Casa de Amigos have already had to pull anything referring to or mentioning the Taco Tuesdays slogan, and, as a result, have had to throw away around $5,000 in advertising, which is pretty rough for a smaller restaraunt.

What really gets me about this is something my wife brought to my attention last night. Being born and raised in Nebraska, where Mexicans and Mexican restaraunts are more common than Chinese food and Sushi in Vancouver, everyone and their brother that sells Tacos on a Tuesday uses the Taco Tuesdays slogan. Why is it just now that the big wigs at Taco Time have decided to go after anyone for using the slogan, must have been a boring day at corporate.

One things for sure, if Taco Time was trying to get some PR out of this, they sure are, but certainly not the kind of PR you WANT to get for your company. Although, getting this much PR for Casa de Amigos would have cost substantially more than the $5,000 they had to forfeit, so it’s not all bad for them. Next time you’ve got a hankering for some yummy Mexican food, think Casa de Amigos, not Taco Time.

Casa de Amigos is located at 8718 Granville St, in the Marpole area of South Vancouver.

Read the story @ 24 Hours Vancouver

The Emmy’s are still on and I’m watching them, so this is going to be a quick recap of tonight Big Brother All Stars episode.

Erika was the Head of Household.

The Legion of doom is pretty much broken up now that James is gone.

Danielle is still vowing to get rid of Will at all costs. “Will’s Ass Is Mine.”

Mike Boogie gets a game of Texas Holdem Poker started up. It was supposedly Janelle’s first time playing Texas Holdem Poker and she kicked ass.

Chicken George was running out of the Big Brother house, through the back yard and belly flopping into the pool. It was actually pretty damn funny.

Janelle and Will are flirting it up big time in the pool. All a part of Dr. Will’s strategy, no doubt.

Erika tells Mike Boogie she wants to nominate Will and Janelle and Boogie is naturally trying to talk her out of it and get her to nominate Danielle.

Food Competition - Chicken George is jumping people to squeeze the juice of of their suits and Erika is riding Boogie like a cheap whore.

Results of the food competition:

Meat and Fish, Trampoline (whole house gets 1 day on slop as a result), Christmas in August (1 more day of slop), George gets a 1 week slop pass (Yay, food!), the entire household gets a 5 star dinner and they get alcohol (but give up the pool table).

Dr Will has a showmance with the backyard camera, too funny.

Will works on Erika to nominate Danielle, though Erika seems to buy into it she doesn’t nominate Danielle.

This weeks Big Brother All Stars nominee’s are: Janelle and Chicken George.

That’s all folks

Wow, tonight sucks! Big Brother All Stars is on at 8:00pm PST tonight, and the 58th Annual Primetime Emmy’s are on at the exact same time on a different channel. What am I going to do?!?!

I really need to get a VCR for events like this. I think I am going to have to watch Big Brother. I need to have a play by play on the show so I know what happens, what new alliances are being built or what alliances are blowing apart. As much as it pains me to say it, the Emmy’s will be flipped to during Big Brother commericals and whatever I miss I’ll read on any one of a few hundred blogs tonight.

Damn TV people putting two things I want to watch on at the same time, the nerve!

Related Sites:

Big Brother All Stars
58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

The Vancouver SPCA Paws for a Cause… Walk for the Animals is an annual event held in Vancouver, along with numerous other locations through-out British Columbia. The event is a sponsorship run/walk with the goal of raising some much needed money for Vancouver SPCA Animal Shelters. All of the funds raised by these events go to the local shelters where each event is held, so if you sponsor in Vancouver, your money goes to a Vancouver SPCA Shelter, which is pretty cool.

When: Sunday, September 10th
Where: Vanier Park, Vancouver
Time: Site opens at 10am, Walk begins @ Noon

The Vancouver event is hosted by Randene Neill of Global News and will be a 2.5km run/walk beginning at Noon in Vanier Park. The minimum amount of pledges required to participate is $20. If you don’t get $20 in pledges, you can always pay a $20 registration fee to partake. And, of course, this isn’t just a walk, like every event that happens in Vancouver, there are always other things happening. Among the fairly long list of things happening at the event are: BC SPCA presentations, Dog Stars - Dog Agility Demonstration, Paws 2 Dance - a doggy dance event, Pet Look-a-Like contest and a Bowl Lickin’ doggy style pie eating contest.

If you can’t afford to pledge anyone, volunteer yourself and get out there. If you can’t do that, come on down and check out the events and give your support to the walkers and runners, and the puppies!, this is a great cause to get involved with anyway you can.

Get more information on the 2006 Vancouver SPCA: Paws for a Cause event.

So what happens when you sit in front of the computer, read blogs and work on your blog for a bit, all the while with Winamp on randomzie playing it’s heart away? Well, I don’t know what happens for you, but for me, this happened:

“I Love This Bar” by Toby Keith (I balme chrys for getting me into country, but this song is just plain fun.)
“Love Never Dies (part 1)” by Apoptygma Berzerk (Industrial music is always better with opera samples.)
“Black” by Pearl Jam (Throw a little Eddie Vedder into the mix.)
“Love Song” by The Cure (Can’t go wrong with Robert Smith, I not so secretly wish I had hair like his.)
“Stately Lover” by Lacuna Coil (Ooh, long time no listen, such a beautiful voice.)
“Thursday” by Jim Croche (Chrys’ music, hit the skip button :))
“12 Black Rainbows” by Type O Negative (Peter Steele is pretty, and he’s got a gorgeous voice. What? it’s true.)
“Gasoline” by Audioslave (so when you getting Soundgarden back together Chris? huh, I’m waiting.)

And that’s enough for now, I think it’s time to get to bed. I’ve been a bad bad blogger today, well, yesterday, technically, and didn’t manage to get anything posted. I hope google doesn’t get to mad at me. Here spider spider, I’ve got cookies!

Cheers

Spicy over at Celebrity Smack is trying to help out a beautiful boxer puppy named ‘Dallas’. This poor guy had his leg hurt some how and his previous owner was to much of a dick to get it checked out and decided to dump him somewhere instead. So not only has Dallas’ leg healed all gimpy, he got abandoned too. Luckily the Lone Star Boxer Rescue picked him up and have been looking after him ever since. However, they don’t have a whole lot of money and do the work for the love of the animals. As such, they’re reaching out to animal lovers out there to make a donation and help to get Dallas all fixed up so he can run and play with his buddies again.

If you can spare anything or would like to donate anything, please check out Lone Star Boxer Rescue’s website and drop some change in their jar.

I also apologize to everyone for making this kind of sob story post, but I’m an animal lover and I hate to see things like this happen, especially due to the lazyness and just utter lack of care and heart on the owners part. There are some terrible people out there, how they can just dump their animals in the middle of no where is beyond me, especially when they’re as cute as Dallas, look at that face!

It looks like British rocker and Baby Shambles frontman Pete Doherty may have finally bought himself a one way ticket to jail, hopefully. This guy has been caught with drugs so many times it’s amazing that he’s yet to spend a single day in jail. Though this time, Pete has gone to far.

Pete Doherty was reportedly caught in the adolecent addiction unit of the rehab center he currently resides in giving cocaine to one of the teenagers that’s there to kick the addiction. Now, Pete has done some pretty screwed up things in his time, like drugging an already passed out person on camera and squirting a syringe full of his own blood at a reporter/cameraman during an interview, but this is just evil. He’s already thrown his life away and now he’s trying to destroy a teenagers life when they’re trying to get back on the right path again, good work man, real class act as always.

Read the story @ Perez Hilton

The advent of web radio was and still is a fantastic thing. Many a day have I lost myself in the wide variety and eclectic selection of web radio stations while plugging away at the computer.

Rant Radio, now one of the older web radio stations, has been around since 1999/2000 and, though it’s base of operations has moved around, it has always been local to Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. I’ve been a fan of Rant Radio for many years now, since early 2000 to be precise, and it was in the IRC channel associated with the radio station that I first started talking to, my now wife, Chrys. Had it not been for Rant Radio and it’s fantastic selection and rotation of music, I may never have met my wife. Thanks Guys!

Rant Radio has evolved in numerous ways over the past few years and now encompasses an Industrial music station, a Talk station, a Punk station, and even a streaming web tv station known as Rant TV.

What initially drew me to Rant Radio was not only it’s great selection of Industrial music, but a weekly “talk show” that aired every Monday (I think?) night, entitled the “What The Hell Show“, featuring the loud-mouthed, out spoken and entertaining Sean Kennedy, “The Fuckin’ Man”, as he refered to himself.

Rant Radio has developed a very strong fan base and appeals a great deal to the subversive and anti-media enthused people drowning in todays society. A very strong community of people has developed around and because of Rant Radio, and it’s really quite inspiring.

By far one of the best features of Rant Radio, that is an unfortunately rare occurence in todays world, is the fact that it is 100% ad free and relies on fan support. Whatever donations and fan support can cover the cost of, which is not a lot, Rant Radio creator and producer James O’Brien, better known as Cimmerian, pays for out of pocket.

Though having received numerous advertising offers, and even the odd full sponsorship offer since it’s inception, creator and producer James O’Brien refuses to let his station become just like any other and will not allow it to become saturated with advertising and sponsorship, the likes of which has made traditional radio almost unbearable. Rant Radio was started as an ad and sponsorship free station and will remain one as long as it exists.

Check out and support the ad free Vancouver based web radio station, Rant Radio.

Related Sites:
Listen to Rant Radio Talk
Listen to Rant Radio Industrial
Listen to Rant Radio Punk
Watch Rant TV!
Watch Patrolling with Sean Kennedy
Rant Media

George and James were both nominated for elimination on Tuesday’s episode of Big Brother All-Stars.

The voting begins:

Erika votes to eliminate James.
Dr. Will votes to eliminate James.
Danielle votes to eliminate
George.
Janelle votes to eliminate James.

James is eliminated 3 votes to 1.

James comes out to speak with Chenbot and takes his elimination very well, unlike Howie did last week. Side Note: I never noticed James had a lisp until tonight. James will be joining Howie and Marcellas in the Big Brother All-Stars Sequester House.

James is shown the farewell videos made by the other house guests and Danielle vows to take down the Chill Town alliance for eliminating James.

Head of Household Competition:

The game is entitled “but first” and the house guests begin standing in the middle of a 3 step staircase. The house guests are read 2 events with “but first” seperating them. They must determine if X did or didn’t happen before Y and then step up the stairs for a Yes/True or down the stairs for a No/False.

George and Janelle are knocked out first question.

Will and Danielle are knocked out on the second quetstion.

That makes Erika the new Head of Household.

At the end of the show Chenbot assembles the house guests and has a chat. It is revealed that Chicken George has lost 20lbs on his strict slop diet. The Chenbot also announces that Sundays show will be one weeks worth of shows combined and will see 2 house guests eliminated. Should prove to be interesting.

Related Sites:
CBS’ Big Brother All Stars
Big Brother Update: August 22, 2006

Cheers

I received some rather sad news last night in the form of a press release. A fantastic India restaurant on W. Broadway and Pine know as Tamarind, is closing down. Myself and the wife ordered some delivery from there one night and it was the best Indian food I’ve had in Vancouver. The saddest part is, is that they have sold the restaurant to another person/company/whatever, who wanted control of it right away and who will be changing the entire theme. As such, Tamarind Bistro closes its doors this Sunday, August 27th. If you haven’t given it a shot, go and try it before they close their doors, it’s worth every penny and more!

Oh yeah, they even have an online order form and they deliver for free! Check out Tamarind Bistro. If you’d rather go sit down and enjoy the atmosphere while you enjoy your meal, here’s a map to Tamarind.

Read the sad, sad Press Release after the jump.

Continue Reading: (”Vancouver: Tamarind Closing It’s Doors”)