Foodie mecca San Francisco has come out and voted online for the best french fries and the winner isn’t some duck fat French Laundry fry.  No, it’s McDonald’s.  The golden arches prevailed with 300 votes.  The Frog and I ate a bunch of Mickey D’s fries while we were on the road because in addition to having delicious, long, hot, crispy fries they also has free wi-fi.  I have to admit they make a damned good french fry.  I was watching The Botany of Desire on PBS this week.  Hey!  It’s educational.  In it Michael Pollan specifically calls McDonald’s out for bio-engineering the perfect Russet potato.  They designed that shiny red box to display your fries like a bouquet of flowers.  Tempting your senses of sight, smell and taste.  I think it’s working.  Who wants fries?

Recently Minnesota based Target corporation made a $150,000 donation to the gubenatorial campaign of Republican Tom Emmer.  Emmer is an outspoken opponent of gay rights, one of Target’s chosen demographics.  You have to ask yourself what bozo CEO, Gregg Steinhafel, was thinking when he did this.  Did he honestly believe the contribution was so small as to go unnoticed?  Well it didn’t and gay rights activists jumped on it essentially painting a target on Target.  Yup, a boycott.  I have to admit I’m kind of gratified to see that the first corporate act under our Supreme Court approved “corporations are people” judgement had them stepping into a pile of shit.  I’m even more tickled to watch the Target CEO apologize publicly, not for the donation mind you, but for disappointing Targets employees and their customers.

Ironic aside:  Target corporation was founded by the family of Mark Dayton one of the democratic candidates in the gubenatorial race.  Doesn’t look like he got a contribution.

The Consumerist.com (a perennial Ragebot favorite), clued us in to this genius TSA tomenting trick.  It’s stickers!  You love stickers, remember?  Well at least you did as a kid.  Now you can take your $500+, cherry red, 22″, bin-friendly Victorinox bag to the next level by slapping a sticker on the front with a gagged and bound woman inside.  Funny, right?  The Cheeky thinks so.  In fact they also provide stickers for drug runners, money launderers and sex toy addicts.  I’m thinking they should expand into a sticker for human traffickers.  You’d buy it right?

…and an overburdened network?

Make you pay $150.00 for a range extender that also shifts your cellular data traffic onto the Internet. Way to go AT&T! Great solution for your inability to estimate capacity and being completely inept when it comes to building out infrastructure.

Though I suspect that it’s a wonderful system for selling goods—low overhead, more exposure than being stuck in a shop—the collection of odd things that we’ve seen being sold on the streets of Quito is pretty amazing. Here’s a sample:

Breakfast trays
Clothes pins
Socks
Bongs
Auto parts (hub caps, mirros, etc…)
Shoelaces
Batteries
Sweatpants
Packages of empanadas
Coconuts
Hats for dogs (modeled by a dog!)
Coat trees
Remotes for just about any device you can think of

…and the personal favorite:

TV antennas

More ‘Dispatches From South America’

Microsoft has got a whole new spin on pricing models for their software and services. They’re going to charge prices that are inversely related to the perceived influence of the purchaser. So…if you’re Walt Mossberg (personal technology reviewer for the Wall Street Journal) you’re gonna get your personal copies of Office and Windoze 7 for…well…free. The rest of us schmucks? Well let’s just say that, wielding zero influence, we can expect to have to pay through the nose for Microsoft’s crappy products.

Payola isn’t dead. It’s alive, well, and patented in the 21st century.

… the only way they know how, by throwing a tiny bone to consumers in the form of slightly (very slightly) less abusive practices.  But don’t be fooled. With Barney Frank (D-MA) breathing down their necks, Bank of America and Chase are going to do anything they can to keep additional restrictions of the CARD Act from being implemented early. In this case, they’ll remove some inconsequential automated overdraft fees in a bid to show what good corporate citizens they are:

New York-based JPMorgan said it made the changes, which include removing overdraft fees if a customer’s account is $5 or less overdrawn, in a bid to help its 25 million debit card customers amid the recession and rising U.S. unemployment levels.

— Reuters

Gee… $5!  Really? I suppose if I overdraw buying a Snicker’s bar I might benefit from this sop, but on anything else? Not bloody likely! And check this out:

…it [J.P. Morgan/Chase] will start recognizing debit-card transactions and cash withdrawals as they occur, according to the statement.

Oh…fabulous! My bank is going to stop deliberately lying about my account balance.

As excited as I am about my bank’s new found concern for my financial well-being, I can’t help but wonder how fast these silly changes will be withdrawn once consumers start using their credit again, once Barney Frank and his ilk find something else to focus on?

Bottle blond and human blow up doll Pamela Anderson tweeted this week about the launch of her first fragrance.  It’s called Malibu by Pamela.  Personally I think “SKANK!” would have been a better choice.  She could diversify ala Jennifer Lopez, Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton into adjacent fragrances like, “SKANK! Beach” and “SKANK! Boat”.  The Frog suggested “MILF SKANK!”   There could even be a “Vegas SKANK!”.  I’m wondering if PETA has certified her fragrance animal friendly.  I’m guessing it was tested on ‘escorts’ walking the Vegas Strip between midnight and 3 a.m.

If you’re looking for the “f-A-k-e. P.” logo here you’re not going to see it.  The great State of California really is running an online garage sale.  Gov. Schwarzenegger hopes to sell off extra vehicles from our state fleet, confiscated items, unused computers, desks and even an antique piano (?).  You see our guv figures if he signs these items, given his celebrity, they will be valuable and will bring much needed cash to the coffers of California.  He sure isn’t going to balance our budget the old fashioned way.  So he’s harnessed the power of eBay and Craigslist to move our junk.  So grab your pennies and stop by.  You never know when you’ll find a great deal on one of those nine Hummers parked out front of the governor’s mansion.

We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.

— Steven Metalitz, Washington DC representative of the MPAA and RIAA in a letter to the US Copyright Office

What an undeniable load of crap! Plain fact is that, for the better part of century, creative works (especially music) were held to exactly this lofty standard. Moreover, no other industry forces consumers to buy a product that is crippled by design. My electronic devices aren’t engineered to self-destruct when the manufacturer instructs them to. Not so the hobbled music we purchase from online stores, where that same store must provide us with the ability to get through the DRM…until they go out of business or shutter their service.

— Kvatch