shameful and shameless exorbitance

Who was it again who said "There's a sucker born every minute?"

I'm beginning to wonder if all of the suckers emigrated to Toronto while I wasn't looking.

The evidence?

First off, I saw a number of pretty wild food spending choices in the latest issue of Toronto Life.

Here is an example of a $170.00 steak:


That's what you pay for six ounces, mind you.

(Gotta like that line "... only a client dinner can justify the expense". I guess that's because you'd be billing the clients for it at the end of the day.)

If that's a bit too rich for your blood, or should you not have a bunch of sucker clients at your disposal, you can pick up this 12 ounce steak for $94.00 - a bargain!

(And, apparently the cows are happy while they're living. I've never quite understood this new concept, mind you. Why is the meat eater's conscience salved because the cows, chickens etc have a good time before you kill them and eat them? Could someone please explain this to me?)

This is more along the usual price range of the beef entering this house:

Anyway, next I saw an article about $15 cups of coffee being all the rage on College Street. Now, you know I'm interested in coffee, but this is a bit much. People line up for it, apparently.

Oh - and it's the only coffee in the joint in question that you can't take with you to go. Probably a good thing - they'd likely want to tack on a toonie for a paper cup and one of those annoying little sleeve thingies so you don't burn yourself.

(Last year, I saw another wildly overpriced coffee for sale in a grocery store: it's called Kopi Lewak. It has a unique flavour which comes from - get this - the fact that the beans are eaten and then excreted by a small cat-like creature called a civet. Seriously. I shit kid you not!

This is what it looks like in the wild, apparently:

Mmm-mmm good. And what do they charge for this? $120.00 for four ounces/113 grams - and you can bet for that price they have some pretty exact scales... you're not going to get 115 grams!. That's $480 per pound, folks.)

And I thought Starbucks was expensive. I think I'll stick with my extra large Tim's - $1.75 a pint.

Author's note: er, um... I may well have posted about the catsh1t coffee before. If so, sorry... but it seemed to fit in well with this theme, don't you think.

Anyway, yesterday I saw something which really took the cake. At the place near my office where they sell $15.00 hot chocolate mix, which I thought was bad enough...

... I saw this stuff first thing in the morning.


Now, this was guaranteed to put me in a bad mood up front. I hate the word "bl**g" - so much that I can't even bring myself to type it. I don't know if it's an official word yet but I would start a petition to keep it out of the Oxford English Dictionary if not.

Then I saw the price: $75.00!!!! For 750 ml of WATER!!!! From TENNESSEE!!! This, by the way, in a city in CANADA which ran out of its snow removal budget in... wait for it... January.

(Yes, I'm shouting. I've just about had it.)

I immediately came to the office and googled it, of course. According to a review I read, this is water that makes a "truly defining statement". And it tastes good. It's WATER, people! Has everyone forgotten what fish do in water, I ask you!!

Oh - but some good news... the bottles are recyclable! Why anyone stupid enough to actually but a $75 bottle of water would then turn around and recycle this bottle is beyond my tiny little brain... The B word is made out of Swarovski crystals, after all.

Well, I don't know about you, but for $75 I'd rather have 47 feet of this fancy Swarovski crystal studded yarn:

I might actually be able to make something useful with it.

At this point, however, I must confess that I feel quite virtuous. You see, when I treated myself to a little pop-in to Lettuce Knits on the way to an appointment yesterday, I came across this silk laceweight yarn to die for yesterday:

Blue Moon! I've heard of this stuff. Apparently there are only now two stores in Canada which sell it, and Lettuce Knit just got it in. Check it out!

Isn't that colourway gorgeous? It's called Thraven. I don't know what a "thraven" is, but it sounds cool to me.

And now, if I win the lottery and stop having to go to work, I can make this beauty from Victorian Lace Today:
The Cap Shawl. Swoon. If I ever made one, I'd probably walk around all day with it, just like this.

Anyway, I loved this yarn so much that I bought 2000 metres of it (each skein is sold in 1000 metres of weight). I won't tell you how much it cost me (despite all of the excesses of other people described above, I feel embarrassed)...let's just say that it was pennies per metre. Better than $1.59 for a foot (one third of a metre, roughly) in my book.

I feel much better now (although the extreme guilt of cheating on the Handmaiden is hard to live with. But I'm sure I'll cope.

I also managed to pick up some educational materials at Lettuce Knit:

And all for less than the price of a six ounce steak. Damn, I'm guid.