The Citizen, 2015-01-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2015. PAGE 5.
The nightmare always begins the same
way. I’m standing in a line of mute,
expressionless zombies shuffling
slowly toward a shiny shrine, hazy in
the distance. After a century or so I reach
the shrine, but not before the zombie in
front of me opens its mouth and chants: “I’ll
have a Vente half-soy, one-pump, no-whip
vanilla frappuccino with a caramel drizzle
and…”
And I realize that I’m in something
far worse than a nightmare. I’m in a
Starbucks.
Or a Second Cup, a Blenz, a Salt Spring
Roasters or a Fill in the Blank. I’m in a coffee
house, a 21st century mutation of the fine old
institution that was once a gathering place for
gossip, romance or intrigue over a cup
of…what was that black stuff called again?
Oh, right – coffee.
Ordering coffee used to be simple. You
could have it black or with cream and
sugar to taste. Then the ‘whiteners’ crept in
followed by the ‘sweeteners’. Wasn’t too
long before people were ordering latte
macchiatos and café ristrettos, not to mention
red eyes, flat whites, mochas, espressinos
and, no kidding, the Yuanyang (don’t
ask).
Well, since you asked, the Yuanyang is a
drink based on copulating Mandarin ducks.
But that’s another column.
The modern coffee shop could easily be
confused with the United Nations.
You can order cafés Cubano, Romano,
Turkish, Greco, Vietnamese Iced or
Viennois, not to mention the old standby, Irish.
My local caffeine outlet even offers a Café
Canadiano (not to be confused with the
Americano) “cuz we do things differently up
here, eh?”
Clearly, ordering a cup of Joe isn’t nearly
complicated enough. That’s why we now have
the Bulletproof – a cup of coffee that’s blended
with…butter.
Well, it’s not that simple of course –
nothing about coffee is, anymore.
The Bulletproof is made with clarified butter
and low-mould, hand-ground Fair Trade
beans. One Bulletproof enthusiast who travels
a lot never leaves home without a satchel
containing ground beans, a silicone squeeze
bottle of medium-chain triglyceride oil, a hand
blender, an Aeropress filter and several
tubes of clarified butter.
The Bulletproof payoff? Well, it’s
supposed to give you all kinds of energy.
It’ll also give you around 450 calories per
cup (that’s about three Molsons, minus the
buzz).
Can’t wait to line up behind a zombie
ordering a Bulletproof.
The humorist Dave Barry once said: “It is
inhumane in my opinion to force people who
have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait
in line behind people who apparently view it as
some kind of recreational activity”.
Well said, Dave. Now will that be one pat or
two?
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
If you watch cable you’re likely familiar
with Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank which
are the reality-television versions of a
venture capital firm.
If you’re like me, the idea of a venture
capital firm is a little bit out there to begin
with; a group of people with a lot of money
decides to put its money into new ideas hoping
to make more money.
Although, having watched a few seasons of
Dragons’ Den (which started on CBC in
2003), I get the feeling that the ‘Dragons’, or
venture capitalists, don’t know the meaning of
venture capital.
After some incredibly quick research, I’ve
come up with the following: Venture capital is
financial capital that is given to high-potential
startup companies to aid in growth and is
typically given for equity in the company.
Now, if you’ve ever watched the show, the
startup companies are the ones that rarely get a
deal inked. The dragons always want to see a
company with several years of sales under its
belt to justify a $1 million valuation.
Anyway, that’s probably a topic for another
day, the topic for today is the urban-rural
divide and the class divide and how shows like
Dragons’ Den make those two dichotomies
more and more visible.
I guess I first became aware of how out-of-
touch these people are with the majority of
Canadians when someone came on the show
pitching a new kind of shower system.
This system, which placed a single pipe
(which the designer said could be made to
match any bathroom, or to look like anything
that could be made in a plastic mold, even a
dragon to fit the dragons’ bathrooms) above
the shower would make it possible for multiple
people to use the shower without having to
switch or swap or have one person in the cold.
The pipe, which would run above the centre
of the tub, has several spouts where
interchangeable shower heads can be placed,
limiting, expanding or moving the affected
water areas.
To me, the idea seemed like solid gold.
While the inventor said that the idea came to
him when he was showering with his wife and
freezing, I saw other opportunities.
During my youth, I spent a lot of my
summers at the beach, and I could see
someone installing one of these shower
systems outside their home. It’s quick, it’s easy
and it would turn a single water pipe into
several showers. You could easily get all the
sand off you before entering your home or
cottage without having to sit and wait for the
person in front of you to get hosed off.
I’m sure that people bathing their children
would also enjoy the system because, as the
shower heads can be moved, water could be
continuously falling down in one part of the
tub while a parent could stay relatively dry
elsewhere. The same could be said for pet
owners.
Most high schools, universities and arenas
would probably be interested in the product as
well. Think about it: instead of drilling five
holes in the wall for five showers in the
washroom beside the change room, you just
run a single pipe from a single water outlet and
have five shower heads with a single drilled
hole. It’s a time saver, a money saver and the
fewer holes you have in those walls, the
smaller the chance something will go wrong.
The dragons (with the exception of LavaLive
founder and “Internet Guru” as the show calls
him, Bruce Croxon) all couldn’t get past the
idea of having “an exposed pipe” in their
bathroom.
These multi-millionaires couldn’t imagine a
different form for the function they were
seeing and couldn’t see that, in this rare case,
the function outweighed the form so
exponentially that it didn’t really matter.
If I had a device that made it easier for
Ashleigh to clean her cats (and not soak our
bathroom in the process) I wouldn’t care if it
meant a coloured PVC tube running around the
same height as our shower curtain.
I’m probably not doing the idea justice, so
look it up. Just go to Google and type in
Dragons’ Den MySmartShower.
It was at this point in the show that I decided
that, if I had any great ideas to take to market,
Dragons’ Den would not be the place I would
go to find funding for them.
Don’t get me wrong, the show has proven to
be entertaining, interesting and educational. I
now know what could work, what won’t work
and some great ideas for products to buy when
I’m at the time in my life I need them. I guess
that chocolate, gardening and educational
software are of universal interest, regardless of
income brackets.
However, after watching, it’s pretty apparent
that any idea I have is going to address a
problem that someone in my life is facing and,
odds are, people who own islands, tropical get-
aways, jets and who go to and from work in a
limousine likely won’t see the value in an
invention that makes life easier for the middle
class.
I’m not begrudging the dragons. Heck, if I
had struck it rich with an idea or a franchise or
a book, I likely wouldn’t be worried about
cleaning sand off my legs when I get back
from the beach. I’d probably just build a house
on the beach with a room filled with shower
heads to clean me off. That said, the idea
behind the show is start-up companies,
products and plans that need the funds to hit it
big and, more often than not, the things that I
see getting funding are the kind of things you
likely wouldn’t see in Huron County.
Gourmet wild mushrooms, indoor garden
cultivators, designer water coolers, high-end
baby strollers, carbon farms, chewy fibre bites,
organic gluten-free vegan food, jewelery for
shoes and an endless parade of pet products,
that indicate people spend more on their pets
than their children, have been funded through
the show and that leads me to believe that
Dragons’ Den, while entertaining, is less and
less reality unless you live in Toronto or
Vancouver... and let’s be honest, that’s a
completely different kind of reality than the
majority of Canada.
It may sound cliché and it may be a lesson
I’ll never be able to teach my friends from the
city, but I prefer the reality of small towns, of
communities and of common sense.
If, however, you think that the above list is
what you need to make your life complete, I’ve
got a fantastic set of clothes for sale for you,
only wore once by an emperor.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Decisions, decisions
Huron County Council has its decision-
making hands full in the next month or
two with a number of funding requests
from various organizations in recent weeks. I
have to say that a councillor’s chair isn’t where
I’d want to be sitting in the coming weeks.
When discussing causes, whether they be
charities or local initiatives attempting to get
their feet on the ground, build a foundation and
become a permanent part of the community,
it’s often hard to argue one over the other.
Most causes looking for money are noble, so
the decision then becomes who is most
deserving of the deserving? (Unless, of course,
we’re talking about the new, digital version of
holding a hat out on the street called crowd-
sourcing through websites like Kickstarter. I
often find I don’t even want to know the kinds
of things that people have paid for because it
just makes me doubt the intelligence of the
human race.)
In the last few weeks, council has heard
from a number of groups looking for funding.
No decisions have been made, however, thanks
to the county’s relatively new policy on such
things, which dictates that council cannot
approve a funding request the day the funding
request made.
This mandatory waiting period gives council
some time to think, while at the same time it
gives staff members time to prepare a report on
the cause or organization, the request and what
the county’s potential donation will fund.
Take the request from the Huron County
Food Bank Distribution Centre for $60,000 per
year for four years. On the surface, it sounds
like something the county should definitely
direct its dollars towards, since it can be
viewed as an essential service for many people
throughout the county. Plus, just think of all
the food $60,000 can buy.
However, thanks to a report from Treasurer
Michael Blumhagen, council was provided
with a full picture of where the county’s
$60,000 might go. Nearly half of the money
would go towards salaries, with less than a
third of the money going towards the actual
purchasing of food.
Now, I’m not, for a minute, suggesting that
the local food bank is not a worthy cause. It
most certainly is. However, the breakdown of
the donation, specifically, the fact that the
largest line item within the donation is
allocated to salaries, is something that made
more than a few councillors take pause after
receiving Blumhagen’s report.
Under that proposed formula, council may
still very well decide to donate to the food
bank, which, of course, is totally up to them.
But because of the foresight it took to institute
a policy that allows for a sober second look, as
well as additional staff research, councillors
can’t say they didn’t know what they were
putting taxpayers’ dollars towards.
Reports are forthcoming on a number of
other funding requests made at the county
level, including requests from Blyth’s
Emergency Services Training Centre, Huron
East’s HealthKick Huron and the Southwest
Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT)
initiative, among others.
As I said earlier, I wouldn’t want to be a
councillor looking at greater than a five per
cent tax increase before even considering any
of these grants, and having to decide whether
or not to approve them, and if so, where that
money comes from. Should taxes be raised to
help fund HealthKick Huron? Should services
be cut to pay the salaries of food bank
employees? These are all decisions I would
never want to make.
Other Views
Urban divide never so apparent
Coming next: bulletproof coffee
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep
led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led
by a sheep.
– Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
Final Thought