recipe: Indian Summer bacon cabonari

 

 

4 bacon rashers

200 gm mince

6-8 capsicums (or substitute some broccoli)

250 gms sour cream

4 mushrooms

2 tablespoons ready made mild mustard or equivalent

mustard powder made up.

1 teaspoon rosemary

1/2 teaspoon sweet basil

cracked black pepper to taste

500 gm packet of pasta.

Other vegetables.

 

Chop the bacon into rough pieces, 2 cm square and fry

with mince.  Fry until browning, but before they become

crispy.  Say ten minutes.

 

Put on the pasta while the bacon and mince is cooking.

 

Finely chop the mushrooms and add with the herbs and the

pepper.

 

When the mushrooms have also browned add the mustard, and

then when it has mixed through add the sour cream.

 

While this is cooking put on any other vegetables you

intend to have.

 

Finally add the capsicums (and broccoli).

 

Let the mixture cook for 5 to ten minutes.

 

Drain the pasta and the other vegetables.

 

Serve together.

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Columns not up to Herald publication #1

This is unpolished and was never going to work for the Herald on Sunday or anywhere else. And now it's dated by the iPad release

 

We all know it’s been a long cold winter.  The surprise this week is that there's probably ood reason.  According to NIWA, the New, um, International Weather Authority or something, Hell has possibly frozen over.  Well NIWA says they don’t know. Some El Diablo or something from South America creating, unusual, isobaric, influences…. Actually it doesn’t matter what exactly it is in weather terms. The discussions have turned to the place where science meets Women’s Magazines: it’s a religious omen. 

 

Seeking sense I decided to see what New Zealand’s main religions could offer to explain the phenomena. What I sought ways to stop the cold or at least keep warm. The first religion I turned to was Rugby; New Zealand’s orthodox church. Bishop Henry believes it is because people have lost faith.  Apparently the worship of false Gods; Netball, league and, apparently soccer has caused severe upsets in the heavens. Now fully a third of the population are not worshippers any more and unless we return to being rugby-fearing the weather will only get worse.  His answer was to watch more rugby, buy tickets to the world cup and wear black.

 

The devotees of Apple and things beginning with small ‘i’ s have a strong code; the problem is personal,  Nirvana will be achieved when we all have Apple everything.  Currently awaiting their next major religious festival – the arrival of the iPad – the AppleMac-ites aren’t eating, sleeping let alone thinking about the weather. I tried to question one disciple but had to let him talk for 37 minutes about the arrival of the iPad, the models and their capabilities, which store he’s going to camp outside, and how early he thinks he’ll need to be to get one before Bevan.  Breaking his religious euphoria by asking whether it was a virus on a Mac that stopped the aliens in Independence Day, I asked about hell freezing over. It seems in Mac worship the idea of buying a PC and hell freezing over are linked.  

 

The new religion on the block and one that will be interesting to track in the 2011 Census results is Social Media.  While there are many sects in Social media the three largest; Facebook, LinkedIn, and the Tweeps have very few shared views on anything.  The key tenet of faith is that social media is the future, it’s all about social media and the rest of us don’t get it.  I put the question of Hell freezing over to a range of congregation members and all I got back was some virtual crops; a connection to a marketing manager in Tucson; and a 140 character rave about how stupid I was for not having full time staff on Twitter. I did get some responses on hell freezing over but the messages went back to comments about what’s for dinner and a quote from Shirley Maclaine. 

 

I did also look at web pages devoted to the Holdens and the Fords, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Westie-based religions. Both worship declining quality Gods which apparently both handle better than the other in bad weather, so more a religion to cope with, rather than address, the cold.

 

The Homeopaths, a religion devoted to medicine not working, believe the way to freeze hell over is to drop a lighted match in it. Conversely if it is cooling dropping a splinter of an ice cube will keep it as a blistering inferno.  Didn’t seem right to me but then I’m not a believer.

 

In the final analysis there should be signs that confirm that hell has frozen over. 

The signs I’d be looking for are, for example, Rodney Hide being in Cabinet, New Zealand beating the world champions in the Football World Cup, TVNZ admitting they were wrong and rehiring Mike Hosking, and the Coach who lost the last Rugby World Cup coaching the All Blacks in the next one.

 

 

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Herald on Sunday columns

I've got a 4 week gig writing columns for the Herald on Sunday.  'That guy' Leigh is away so I've had an opportunity to get back into writing humour. The Herald on Sunday is newspaper of the year and I have to say I always enjoy getting it as it is a good read.

Felt a bit rusty and I'll be sad when the last one is in this coming week, but it's been good.

This week: Vampires - when did they become the goodies?

http://tiny.cc/027lp

Last week: A  bit on fflexible working conditions

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10656294

Two weeks ago: Kiwi sports fans can ditch their bad-weather gear

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10654688

I've really enjoyed the stint. I haven't done my best work I have to say, re-reading older columns I don't feel as funny as I used to, BUT as I said I am rusty and instead of repressing my take on issues I need to get back to writing things down as they occur.

 

 

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The dreaded new computer

Changing over computers should be easy. Buy a new one plug a cord from old to new, push 'new computer' and in a few minutes, maybe an hour, the new computer will start and look like your old own with all the files in the right place, connectivity set up, email running etc........ the same but better.

Instead.... days of heartbreak and hours of fevered hunching and stress.  Missing passwords, thinks that just won't work, lost files.

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the dreaded new computer

 Changing over computers should be easy. Buy a new one plug a cord from old to new, push 'new computer' and in a few minutes, maybe an hour, the new computer will start and look like your old own with all the files in the right place, connectivity set up, email running etc........

Instead.... days of heartbreak and hours of fevered hunching and stress.

nice post from 'Where's my Jetpack' blog

I tried to share this but all the share button offered me was the video embedded in the blog. so here it is:

 

http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 03, 2010

Social Media Mission Control

 

Sold on the idea that they absolutely just have to be involved in Twitter, Facebook and probably Foursquare at this point, businesses still fail miserably when it comes to social media. It's not really their fault. I blame the clowns at the agencies who made them believe how important it was in the first place.

I tweeted recently about my disappointment with my insurance company - by name. (Hint: You're not really in good hands with them.) Within a day and a half, which is a long-ass time in social media, I got a reply on Twitter, though I'm sure they thought they were being quite timely. It was a very bland and corporatey response, something to the effect of, "Sorry. How can we help?" But the truth is, that's all they could say. Unfortunately, there is nothing they can actually do to help and they know that. They sent an adjuster out to the house who denied my claim, so I said they sucked on Twitter. Is their Twitter Response Team going to overrule the adjuster? Of course not. They responded just for the sake of responding, to avoid looking like an uncaring corporate entity with little regard for their customers' petty complaints. They call it Brand Reputation Management, which is a nice way of saying "Spray the Dog Shit with Lysol." It will stop stinking for a little while and maybe people will walk through the room and not notice it. Eventually it will dry up and stop stinking altogether.

I'm sure there are others out there who griped about an airline and maybe got a few free miles out of the exchange, but those cases are rare. Personally, I'd rather go back to the days (two years ago) when companies just let the complaints happen, not worried what one little tweet was going to do to their brand. One little tweet won't do shit to your brand, unless it reflects a huge and catastrophic fuck-up on your company's part, like maybe you lost a child on one of your airplanes. You got sold on "Being in a Conversation" with your customers, which is utter bullshit. You may now appear to be in a conversation, but you don't give a rat's ass anymore than you ever did. There are other insurance companies, but this one gambles that I will probably not go to the trouble of switching to another just because I have to pay for my own claim now. They're probably right, but their fake caring response had nothing to do with that. They should stop worrying about it and stop pretending to care.

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Where's My Jetpack?

via wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com

When I clicked share all it would post were the imbedded videos off the site so I have cut and pasted this from http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/

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Angels and Demons - movie comments

I would have put 'spoiler' on this but really you can't spoil this movie, that would be the equivalent of rotting plastic fruit.

I watched this movie last night - it was on and I was in front of the TV. 

Knowing very little about the fabled Illuminati turned out to be far too much to watch this film.

The movie makers (as Dan Brown's book has different events) want us to believe, among many other things, that:

1)  a man branded with hot irons, on his chest, could half an hour later run, fly a helicopter and then parachute onto a square in an urban area.

2)  an elderly man branded on his chest with hot irons then weighted down underwater for a minute could appear on a balcony and talk to 200,000 people within 12 hours.

3) the College of Cardinals could have 4 votes for a new Pope within 12 hours.

And to quote a line in the movie: May God have mercy on all our souls.

 

 

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Nothing to do with work - SamNZed's peanut chews

 

115gm (4oz butter)

60 gms (2+ oz ) cocoa powder

2 eggs

230 gm (8+oz) caster sugar (Maybe use some brown?)

1 tsb vanilla essence

Cup of cornflakes

Tablespoon milk

4 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

55gms (1 and 3/5ths ounces) plain flour

 

Cream butter and sugar – add eggs, cocoa vanilla, cornflakes, milk and peanut butter. Beat. Add flour. Use milk if mixture too dry – should be sloppy not solid.

Bake @180 C for 20 minutes (or until fork comes out clean from centre)  in a square tray.  Tray should have greaseproof paper

 

When cooked take out of tray and leave to cool.  Ice when cool

 

ICING

 

175 gms (6 ozs) Butter

500 g (1 lb) Icing sugar

3 Tspoons (or more!) cocoa or melted chocolate

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 Tablespoons peanut butter

 

Cream butter with icing sugar add vanilla and chocolate or cocoa mix, add peanut butter. Beat well. Icing will keep in fridge.

 

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Why I don't talk endlessly about my work - but just on communication without the s

I quite enjoy a lot of the perspectives I get on Twitter, Facebook, the news and blogs I read covering PR, internal communication, corporate communication, social media yada yada yada. BUT it's the industry I work in and I like to think about other things, many related, tangentially, and directly and others because they're funny.

I could try and write here everything I've learnt and experienced about communication but it would bore me, and if I'm bored it doesn't seem fair to bore you as well.

 Today though; trapped in my own pedantic enclosure: PR it's communication not communications.  Communications are phones, messages and computers and perhaps tactics of communication. Communication is strategic and about the art of communicating.  I have no sympathy for a PR marketing business who call themselves communications and get rung about computers or telephones. It might be they are only a communications company who wordsmith communiques and create design but really mostly people think they're in communication from a strategic perspective (whether they are or not).

Anyway if nothing else it is important to understand the language you're using because in thinking about it you can achieve greater clarity and generate work with more value.

Communications

Communication

and stolen from Nasa

askmagazine.nasa.gov/.../25s_communicating.html

 

 

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And now for something completely dissonant

I'm getting old.

The hold music on business phones is getting very noisy and particularly ugly.  I'd tell you what I had to listen to most recently IF I knew what it was.  I know it was rap. I spose if they idea is to get the customer all riled up for a good fight leaving you on hold and playing rap at you is a pretty good way to set it up.  'hey arsehole - wat's ur dis?'

Worse still now when I ring Telstra Clear they'll answer in Manilla. So bad music AND people who don't understand how I talk.  Digressing, an 018 call (Telecom) I had some weeks ago the woman corrected my pronunciation of the word science (I was ringing the Science Media Centre).

Business phone answering music is hardly ever right.  I didn't mind the National Bank in the 90s playing the Four Seasons over and over but I got tired of Orinoco Flow with the power company I had at the same time and all were  better than the clunky bells version of Greensleeves which is destined to become a classic cellular ring. Today it's sort of bad modern grunge and rap on the utilities I have to wait for.

You know a nice quiet buzz and the occasional  "i'm sorry you really are important to us, but not enough to hire local staff and support the local econony or to hire enough people to answer your call, please just sit there doing nothing till we find a serf to not understand your accent," would be better than having music.  And it would be more honest.

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No regrets? Really?!! - do you live in a bubble?

Every now and again I see or hear an interview where someone says they have 'no regrets' in their life.

I think I'm supposed to admire them for their steely determination or Ayn Rand-ish self-assuredness, but actually I either shiver or do an intellectual double-take.

In my mind the only people with a right to have no regrets died as infants. It seems to me at best people who claim this are confusing self-forgiveness with having no regrets and they run the gamut from stupid, through unaware to narcissistic.  I'm sure Gandhi and Mother Theresa had good reason to have fewer regrets but I'm sure they would have a lot more than the rest of us. 

In my mind it comes back to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  I know there is a very strong new-age thing about 'you can't emotionally hurt people; they do it in themselves via their reaction to what you do to them', and while there is some truth in that, it is horsefeathers to suggest it allows impunity to bad behaviour.

While I might understand why I have done certain things in my life, because I was young, unaware, hurt, misguided, drunk etc....but there are many things I regret. Things I've said, done, and condoned. And to get specific: I mean times where I have insulted people, undermined them with other people, lied, stolen things, done things I knew were wrong, including getting involved in relationships and situations that I knew were not right, cheated, manipulated and misrepresented things.  Almost always for some reason related to my ego; being liked, putting myself above others, getting something, and so on. And while I may have done some pretty bad things I doubt anyone I will ever come across has done nothing bad.

Sure I can forgive myself but really, it's not about me. It's about the world I create around me, the effect I have on people.  If I behave like a jerk, for whatever reason, no matter how others take it, it's not making the world a better place; for them or (to reflect my 70s upbringing) me.

When someone says they have 'no regrets' anything else they say disappears in my listening, what I hear is "I behaved badly to maximise things for me and stuff everyone else". Which isn't what they think; probably, but I really decide they are have low self or social awareness or are arrogant.

And I don't care the last person I heard say this on the radio was a sweet sounding 100 year old woman.

 

This post brought to you to preserve words like gamut and horsefeathers and trying to use more ';''s rather than dashes.

 

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