Ernie retires; viewing and reading

One of the landmarks of my university years is stepping away from the grill. The Toronto Star reports:

After 25 years flipping franks outside Ryerson University, where he served political quips with the pop and even launched a bursary in his name, Ernie the Hot Dog Vendor, downtown Toronto's most famous purveyor of tube steak, retired yesterday for the second time in his life.

I think I only ever bought half a dozen hot dogs at Ernie's stand during my three years at Ryerson, but he's a memory nonetheless. Finding out his last name is typically an activity included on frosh week scavenger hunts.

Dalhousie University here in Halifax has its own landmark hot-dog vendor: a fella named Ibrahim, known by students as The Dogfather. I've never seen him, but he's legend. I'm also told Bud The Spud has the definitive chipwagon downtown.

Haven't fed y'all any Scientology links in a bit. If you've never paid attention to any of the stuff I've talked about or posted, and just thought it sounded like mumbly jargon ... okay, I can understand. But if you have a few minutes, I encourage you to read the recent Rolling Stone article "Inside Scientology".

Google Video is getting a lot more popular (witness recent appearances at hainsworth.com, among other places), and the folks at xenutv.com have posted some videos there. But you'll also find some of the slick-but-boring videos produced by Scientology itself. They have some good chroma key/Ultimatte stuff with tracking camera moves, but the rest of the stuff is dead dull. But you can get video explanations of some of the more "what? are they serious?" themes, such as the Overt-Motivator Sequence, which suggests that the only reason someone would quit a job is because he's done bad things to his employer. (Or, in context, the only reason you'd leave a 'Church' is if you've committed 'crimes' against the group.)

If you have half an hour, though, you're better off reading the Rolling Stone piece.