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It's Tuesday September the 12 around 4:30AM and

When Self Publicity and Ugly Food Websites Attack

I recieved an email over the weekend and it was almost worse than getting a press release but certainly worth sharing. Actually a press release would have been better, since it may have had a point of some sort, and yet we still feel dirty and in need of a shower. Now, normally, I would have just copy and pasted it, but the emailer in question actually had the balls to add a disclaimer suggesting the email was subject to copyright and you know how much I hate lawyers. Whatever. We totally feel like Jack Black in High Fidelity right now. "Well, it's sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells I Just Called to Say I Love You? Go to the mall."

Anyway, the email was from someone at Food Vancouver - which I link to, even though they didn't bother hyper-linking their own company URL and I had to take the time and copy and paste it into my browswer. God I hate that. But wait there's more. Their amazing email spoke of their magical 53,000 visitors a month and a promising "interesting" food site. Wow, that means i am one of 53,000 visitors now subjected to both one of the least visually appealing and completely not-interesting restuarant guides in the city (yeah, this one really does take the cake). Even Google cleverly ranks them one and two for Vancouver restaurants for your convienence. As Stephen Colbert would say, look it up. I'm sure if you look in about a week it will show up if you google "Vancouver Restaurants Ugly Websites". But I'm just being grumpy and mean now.

Obviously so many people are going to their site, they needed to tell The Vancouverite all about it. The inclusion of a article about the company from The Vancouver Sun - as if that was supposed to impress me - was from May 2006. How cute. Clearly this was more important than, say, their own URL, since this was the only clickable link. Who needs to write a proper email, when you can link to an article about yourself in The Sun. Wow. Thanks.

And the worst part about this is that the website really likes to tell you all about restaurants which can and will cater to your every special dietary need, like how awesome Earl's is. Great. So good for you, congratulations Food Vancouver, we just wrote about your food site. I hope you are happy now.

I'm sure that our complaining about your souless flackery wasn't what you had in mind. And no, we didn't have any quesions about your novel "concept". It is surely heating up the interwebs.