You may recall - if you have the memory of an elephant and actually read anything around here - the Poorhouse's distaste for the idea of the Bacon Bar, a chocolate bar with ingrained bacon. The thought at the time was to take 2 of the sublimest tastes known to humanity, inappropriately combine them into one product, and then have a cheek to sell it at £2 per ounce, was an outrageous waste. Cognitively, it still seems that way.

However, since then, the Poorhouse has great reason to thank Stu of Crazy4Flavour, the UK distributors of "Bacon Salt" who has inclined the Poorhouse to confront his prejudices and give it - or rather a bargainous equivalent - a go.

Only slightly past its sell by date from the journals of Really Should Have Known Better comes word of a special cake-related promotion from Ted Kefalinos of Greenwich Avenue's Lafayette French Pastry bakery. Along with the rest of the US / world he decided to help commemorate the wonders of President Obama's election. Only, unlike most people, he did it via rather racist baked goods.

Here we are - latest product: the Drunken Negro Face.

Check the vid, below.

Time for a berry update. Finally, the Poorhouse got round to ingesting his "miraculin" (science!) filled recreational pills of delight.

Review follows below.

The railways in Britain are a huge, huge ripoff and have been for quite some time. As a personal example, the Poorhouse reguarly travels from Sheffield to London. At "standard" (i.e. the cheapest - no food, no drink, no entertainment, often enough no seat) class, this can cost £185 for a return trip. This is equivalent to wages for about 33 hours of hard graft at the UK minimum wage, a salary the Government presumably expects it to be reasonable to survive on. Yes, if you book weird train times half a year in advance you can get far better deals, but sort of cash is what you can expect to pay should you not have the staff / luxury / wherewithal to plan trips in advance down to the precise minute of the precise day. And even that goddamned £185 ticket had date restrictions on it!

The Poorhouse was therefore disgusted to hear before Christmas about yet another average train fare rise this year. And yesterday's revelations in the Times are just disgusting:

Rail fares will more than double from tomorrow on some routes under new ticket restrictions being quietly introduced by train companies.

Funny product names are always to be included in the purile pit of juven-humour seen to be floating around the Poorhouse, but it's not always the case that they a) are not unfortunately-named foreign imports, b) have TV ads, and c) are related to some of the most sensitive of health subjects.

Check this:

Chocolate. Oh yes. Bacon. Oh yes. Bacon chocolate? Oh no.

Yes, of course someone had to make that probably-foul leap. What is the food world coming to? First the Poorhouse's once-vegetarianly inclined nearest and dearest start to eat guinea pigs with faces on, and now some twonk is breaking with the tradition of serving unhealthy but yummy evil in seperate courses by shoving bacon into chocolate.

Here's Mo's Bacon Bar.

You can only buy it in one UK shop, Selfridges, and you can't buy it quite now as it sold out within 48 hours of launch, but stocks no doubt will be replenished should you need it. Best save up though, it's £5.99 for 3 ounces. Substantially more expensive than the not-quite-so-revolting-sounding but still rough "Chilli Chocolate" the Poorhouse once saw in the local Home Bargains.

Says a fancy foodie working at Selfridges: it's "a real explosion of flavours". Maybe, Ewan, but not all explosions are good, are they? Just ask the anti-terrorist squad.

We can blame a company called Vosges Haut-Chocolat for this, and many other boke-creatingly poor creations - chocolate with lumps of mushrooms in anyone? Curse them for involving the word "enchanted" in the product title, conflicting the Poorhouse's lust for the more mind-bending things our Lord God Creator thought to bestow on us with his distaste for people deliberating ruining otherwise beautously edible things (yes, this from the Poorhouse whose raison d etre is essentially the thrill of the chase pursuing battered cheese).

Here's a nice snapshot of a town in Turkey, famous for mostly for its position on a particular river and its oil-producing nature. Not sure if it's top of the 10-places-to-see-before-you-die tourist list but it has been described with such delightful descriptions as "historical glory", "natural richness" and "magnificent". Actually its position and trade isn't why its at all famous really. It has a funny name: Batman.

But we shouldn't mock, and certainly the novelty factor has grated on the nerves of its mayor, one Hüseyin Kalkan.

The Poorhouse has a penchant for games and gambling, and where better to combine than poker? Actually, so far, online poker doesn't appear to have quite the fun that real live poker does, but it passes the time better than say an extended GMTV session, plus you can make money. In theory. If you're lucky. Unlike certain forms of betting manipulation, there's no guarenteed wins to be had (that the Poorhouse discovered yet anyway), but there is a quick way to profit in the cash value of items if you're into poker at all.

2plus2, publishers of poker books, have an offer where if you sign up to a poker site and complete certain obligations you get to pick 5, count 'em, 5 books.

One of the many, many annoyances of office-spaces and other workplaces is food theft. Most anywhere where you have a communal fridge there is associated fridge-theft. It's understandable - someone is always going to have brought in a packed lunch with a delicious sandwich far of superior quality to your own bag of "value" crisps. And, just like love and war, anything goes in the dull tedium of the average office-place.

Luckily you can employ cunning strategies to defend your wares. Poison in the cheese is probably a bit over the top, unless it's been a really tiresome day. Enter the Anti-theft Lunch Bag.

Just like pornography, you can't stumble blindly around the internet for more than 2 minutes without coming across some news. Ugh. Yep, with the sheer profusion of internet version of news papers, news aggregator sites, bloggers rehasing, enhancing and reporting new stories, you can’t get away with it.

Somehow though, actual-paper newspapers just won't die. And that's good actually, trees aside, because the Poorhouse does like a non-electronic browse of the comings and goings of the world now and then. Plus, a computer’s an expensive thing to drop down the toilet.

What else the Poorhouse likes is being cheap. So join the fun, and get these free vouchers for a month's worth of half price Guardians and Observers. Yep, it's even one of the nicer types of paper!