bad reputation

just been watching campbell live. lead story was on the upcoming university games and the difficulties students are having finding accomodation

after the mini riots that resulted from otago university's undie 500 and toga parade, there has been quite a media moral panic over young people's binge drinking

the university games is an annual event where students from the various institutions get together and play touch rugby, netball and so on. naturally, there is a certain amount of socialising which tends to involve a certain amount of alcohol, which in turn results in a certain amount of unfortunate behaviour.

campbell interviewed a couple of motel owners who had the pleasure of the students coompany last year. at the end of the games, they found that seveal of the rooms had been trashed, with vomit and other bodily excertions. they had sued the (canterbury, i think) sstudents association but lost a case in the disputes tribunal when the referee ruled that the students association could not be held responsibility for the actions of a few students.

the motel owners are not renting their rooms to any students this year. their quote:

"rent your rooms to the mongrel mob or black power. don't rent to students"

bubba hotep

elvis presley (bruce campbell), who has cancer of the penis and john f kennedy (ossie davis) who has been died black, are seeing out the end of their days in an east texas rest home, when they realise that an egyptian mummy is stealing the souls of their fellow residents.

oh, come on, with a set up like that, you've just got to check out the movie to see what happens

well. its pretty much what you would expect. its low budget, so the effects are strictly old school-all model work and make up instead of cgi, which is no bad thing.
director don conscorelli makes muach of the inherent black humor in the premise, hinting that the supernatural plans of an ancient cursed enemy is not nearly as bad as growing old and neglected

one to rent, rather than keep

come on and make me happy

well, its official. i've been diagnosed with clinical depression and have been diagnosed happy pills.

to be precise, its a pill called citalopram and a quick trip to wikipedia tells me that the side effects can include nausea, insomnia and impotence

i should be happy in no time with that little lot

what he said

from the nz herald

Questions over extra $94m in AIG bonuses
Wall Street fights to protect bonus culture
Worldwide fury at runaway corporate salaries in a time of mass corporate meltdowns has more to do with unfulfilled shareholder greed than a moral failing on behalf of corporate executives. It's the corporate, capitalist model that is the real villain in this piece.

To understand the reason for this, it is necessary to understand the reason for the hefty pay packets of company heavyweights. Accountability and responsibility is severed when you decouple decisions about payment from ownership.

Individuals generally make prudent, rational decisions about their expenditure because the money is coming from their pockets. That's why people employed by sole traders or partnerships never get paid above the odds.

Okay, law firm partners often get paid over the $1 million mark, but that is only because they personally generate at least twice this amount. When it comes to setting corporate salaries, it's a free for all because the money comes from shareholders who are effectively excluded from the salary determination process. It is a luxurious position for company executives to be in, knowing that nobody who has a direct interest in the money they will be milking sets their pay.

A fundamental constant in life is that all human action is referable to one of six desires: power, fame (ie. status), love (including loyalty), fear, sex and money. Fame, love and sex (Friday drinks aside) are absent in the corporate setting. That leaves open the scope for an unbridled pursuit of money and power.

Thus, given that the owners of the money don't have much direct control in decisions relating to how their money is spent, it is inevitable that corporate executives are going to award themselves large salaries.

But are they above the odds? This requires an assessment of the worth of human labour. From a functionality and utility perspective of human activity, the people that rate the highest are those who provide others with the necessities of life.

In descending order, these are health, food, security, shelter and education. Thus doctors, farmers, police, builders and teachers should be at the top of the pay mountain.

Yet, there are other elements to the pay matrix. One of them is supply and demand economics and the desire by consumers to make their money go as far as possible.

Teachers, builders and even doctors aren't paid over the odds simply because there are lots of them and market forces drive down the amount they can charge for their services.

The reason why there are lots of these types of professionals comes down to one or more of the six motivators for human action. Thus, people often become doctors and teachers because they think it will give them status and it is the way to make money consistent with their interests and skills.

So where does that leave corporate salaries? By any measure they are large. For example, the top 10 CEOs in Australia in 2007 averaged more than $15 million annually.

Those types of figures might be justifiable to people with rare, nearly unique skills and insights whose management profoundly catapults a company. But you see, there are no true geniuses. Even those that at the right end of the bell curve of human capacity normally fail to implement their talents in a manner that is commensurate with their acumen.

In truth there is nothing that a $15 million executive can do that the next bloke or lady couldn't do just as well for $200,000.

Still, in judging the ethics of executive salary, you need to look at the whole matrix and in this context the white elephant is the public company structure. The executives aren't taking from the poor; they are taking from the shareholders. This raises for consideration the degree of concern that shareholders are entitled to.

There is one sole reason that individuals turn into shareholders and buy small parts of big corporations: to make money. Moreover, they don't want to do anything to make their money. It is a purely passive investment. By and large shareholders don't care how the corporation makes money, so long as it is successful in this pursuit.

Shareholders only get angry when corporations start losing money and hence the sudden revolt against executive pay. Shareholders and corporate executives are cut from the same cloth. They share a fundamental desire to make money for the sake of it. They differ not in nature, but simply in the extent to which their activities can enrich them.

Hence the current fury towards executives is hypocrisy at its capitalist finest. Never in the history of the free market have shareholders complained because their shares increased too much.

In the end, the fury about corporate salaries is simply an expression of unfulfilled greed - this time not by directors, but by shareholders.

This is an interesting take on the current AIG situation. One I only agree with in part. Truth is may shareholders were already beginning to grumble about high executive salaries even before the recession.

Most of the current anger is coming from US taxpayers who are being asked to pay for these salaries when they themselves are losing their jobs and himes. Nobody minds sahring the pains, but it seems that the guys who actually caused the meltdown aren't feeling any pain at all!

The comment that got me nodding was the one that said "In truth there is nothing that a $15 million executive can do that the next bloke or lady couldn't do just as well for $200,000."

What, exactly, does a CEO do that generates an income to enable that sort of pay packet? Is it the right mission statement? A classy corporate brochure? Is that the individual person giving an aura of trustworthiness and reliability?

I note that the AIG bonuses were not done on the basis of performance, but of retention. And yet these were the people who made the company insolvent. Twice. Why would you want to retain them?

I also note that seven of the bonuses went to people who had already left AIG.

The latest is that all bar five have agreed to give the bonuses back. You can see why there is anger.

do you want fries with that?

LINCOLN, Nebraska - Residents of a small southwest Nebraska town have a question for state officials: You're not doing anything with that old electric chair, are you?

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled last year that the state's use of the electric chair was unconstitutional.

Some people in McCook - population just under 8,000 - think "Old Sparky" could be a tourist attraction and have offered to take it off the state's hands.

Fifteen men were executed in the chair, which is about 338 kilometres east of McCook at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.

Corrections department spokeswoman Connie Nemec says there are no immediate plans to move the chair.

I can imagine a whole museum, detailing the lives and crimes of the fifteen men who were executed. And just imagine what the gift store would be like

genetics?

The son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has committed suicide in the United States, according to reports.

Nicholas Hughes is believed to have hanged himself at his home in Alaska. The 47-year-old was not married and had no children of his own.

The Times in London and the BBC said his sister, Frieda, confirmed his death. Ted Hughes' publisher in London, Faber and Faber, says she has arrived in Alaska.

The death adds another chapter to the family's tragic history. Plath committed suicide in 1963, shortly after her turbulent relationship with Ted Hughes ended. Her son had just turned 1 year old.

Ted Hughes had left her for another woman, and spent years battling feminists who blamed him for her death.

A former neighbour of mine, who ran a bookstore was a big fan of Ted Hughes and used to get into terrible arguements with people who claimed that he (Hughes) had "destroyed a great talent" He disputed that she was a talent at all and claimed that the people who deified Sylvia after her death were simply spouting "plathitudes"

filling an empty life

i'm on a holiday at the moment-using up some long service leave

as i can't do anything more than day trips, i can't eat or drink, and dialysis wears me out three days out of every seven, I'm using the time to catch up on DVDs and sky movies I've missed:

The Mist

This is the third film that Frank Darabont has made based on wworks By Stephen King. Whereas "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" suited Darabont's carefully paced style, the story of The Mist was always meant as a cheesy B Movie. The casting of Thomas Jane as a kind of poor mans Viggo Mortenson is a step in the right direction, but ultimately, the film was too slow moving.

Superbad

meh

junk food-kiwi style

from the nz herald

A North Shore baker wants to resurrect Georgie Pie and is even talking about going to court to make it happen.

It has been a decade since the well known Kiwi pie became high street history, and Bakers Harvest owner Martin Gummer believes the demand is there to breathe new life into the brand that once sold 700,000 a week.

"I don't think we'd aspire to the 700,000 a week but it could conceivably easily be 10,000 or 20,000 a week."

He said a Facebook campaign to bring back Georgie Pie had about 14,000 members.

"It was a distinctive style of pie both in terms of its flavour but also particularly in its appearance and I think it's part of Kiwiana."

But fast food giant McDonald's is standing in his way.

McDonald's bought Georgie Pie in 1996 from Progressive Enterprises. It was more interested in the real estate but as a condition of the deal also bought the assets, including equipment and intellectual property rights.

McDonald's NZ managing director Mark Hawthorne said Progressive planned to close the business. "So the economic model just wasn't feasible."

Progressive continued to operate Georgie Pie under McDonald's' ownership until it closed in 1999, and McDonald's still holds all the intellectual property and trade marks.

Glenfield-based Bakers Harvest employs about 30 staff and supplies products to about 200 wholesale customers in Auckland. Gummer said he could recreate the recipes and in December sent McDonald's a proposal, including licensing and paying a royalty for the trademark.

However he had had no formal response.

"We'd even be prepared to covenant that we wouldn't set up a dedicated fast food restaurant of the old style."

Gummer said he had offered to make the pies available to McDonald's and to develop a healthy product.

"They haven't used it for 10 years so that could put them in some difficulty if they wish to hang on to it," he said. "If I end up having to take them on in court, which is a distinct possibility ... we may simply be able to get their continued ownership of the brands struck down."

Hawthorne said McDonald's had legal advice that its trademarks were protected.

"We do have a genuine desire to do something with the equity in the brand," he said. "It could potentially be something like Georgie Pies through our McCafes sometime down the track."

McDonald's' first preference was to use its existing suppliers, he said.

"We're in discussion with suppliers at the moment so I think a lot of it depends on the suppliers' ability to meet our requirements and if we can get over that hurdle then we might see something happen, I'd say probably sometime early next year if we do anything at all."

Hawthorne said he had contacted Gummer and that McDonald's was concerned about being forced into a quick decision.

"But what I'd ask them is to respect our internal preference to work with our existing McDonald's suppliers and for them to be patient for that process to be done. When and if that process is exhausted we'll definitely be coming and talking to people who have approached us."

I remember Georgie Pie. The packages always said "caution hot filling" and they weren't kidding. I think the sole reason for going to it was National Pride.

I like pies, even though they are off my menu. The best pies i ever had used to be sold at the dairy when lived in Otahuhu. The steak was chunky and the gravy was thick. The pastry-espcially the lid was thick enough to hold the filling in place, but not thick enough to be annoying. On the morning after a hard night, a steak pie and a passionfruit milk shake used to set me up for the day. sadly, these pies were discontinued and replaced with Big Ben.

The next best were those from one of the three bakeries by Five Crossroads in Hamilton. When ever I got down there, i would stock up with several and freeze them for later enjoyment.

There actually is a pie franchise (or there was eighteen months ago (like I said, pies are off the menu now) called Jester Pies. They didn't look like normal pies, but they weren't bad. Their stockman pie (steak and vegetable) are pretty good. Their beef stroganoff pies sounds better than it tastes, but their apple and custard was superb.

I've found it odd that the humble meat pie has never taken off in America. You think it would be right up their alley. Perhaps that's why McDonalds are trying to block the return of Georgie Pie.

Still if it does get up and running, may break my diet for once and buy one. After all, its my national duty

words to make you wince

another one for your lexicon

verse (verb)

to play against in a sporting contest

"the auckland blues versed the waikato chiefs on staurday and lost 63-34"

it just doesn't sound right. (the score is true incidentially. if dad was still alive, he would have taunted me for ages about this)

heaven tonight

russell brown on public address notes the death os steve android of the christchurch band the androids.
they issued one single "auckland tonight/getting jumpy". i don't have the single but i have both songs on various complimations. classic bits of nz post punk pop.

(best of the complimations, apart from ak79, is a thing i picked up for 5 bucks called "christchurch music". its a double cd that has a wide range of christchurch sourced music from dinah lee (do the bluebeat) and lutha 9only time will let us know), to bic runga, the narcs and the feelers and the gordons (adults and children), jpse (i like rain) and the johnnys (who killed johnny). the androids track is "getting jumpy")

mr brown also notes that its the ten year anniversary of the death of kevin amith, actor, comic and one third of "say yes to apes" beleive it or not, i do have a copy of the ablbum he released under the name hyphen-smythe

sniff

it is said that you can tell whether a person is high or low maintenance by seeing how they react to the sniffles.
if they insist its just a cold, they're low, if they say they have the flow, they will be more trouble than they're worth.

anyway, i have pneumonia...

have just seen a news item on the drug p. tv3 have done a sting operation showing how easy it is to buy the base drug psuedoephadrime-commonly found in cold medicine.

i need cold medicine. does this mean that if i buy a packet of codral, i'll be followed by the police?

the vinyl solution

graham hill did a special on beat rhythym fashion on his show yesterday and noted that their singles ae much sought after. i was sure that i had them, so i went wandering through my vinyl. i do have the singles, as well as totally wired, a buch of monochrome set, bats, clean, and so on
then went through my telve inch vinyl and spent the day listening to the birthday party, bored games, wall of voodoo
thank god for dance music. this means that i've been able to replace the needle on my stereo

my word

this is by way of being a reply to taniwha's comment on "the new political correctness"

I actually didn't think of the sapir-whorf paradigm when i read this, but did note its most famous application-george orwell's NEWSPEAK. i was tickled by the idea that you could change the world (or at least your little bit of it) by changing the language.

it was only after thinking about it further that this is nothing new. it is, in fact the basis behind the original political correctness. someone has been using 1984 as a training manual.

i remeber in the late eighties, going to a course orgainsed by the equal employment opportunities board. the gist was the damage that phrases can do in diminshing certain groups effectiveness. phrases like "the little woman" were right out. one of their focuses was on the disabled; how it was unacceptable to say anything that may present them as victims. one of the exercises we were given was to take a phrase and reword it to be more positive. i was given the phrase:

poor jenny is in a wheelchair

and translated it into

jenny has a wheelchair but no money

and was accused (not without justification) that i was not taking the session entirely seriously. i maintain, though, that as a literal translation, it was accurate.

at the time, much of this sort of thing was mocked but looking back, its amazing how much our language (and our tolerance) has changed over the last twenty off years.

the basic principle behind that course, and indeed poilitical correctness itself was that, while changing the messaging wouldn't change society on its own, it would have an effect.

the "out" words in the article indicate not where society was but where the legislators of the time hoped it would be. nooow that there is a new government, with a new point of view. they have changed the messages in the hope that the staff will alter their focus. what is most interesting is that neither the in or out words mention anything about healing the sick, which you might thing would be at least one of the messages the department of health would want to send.

still, the modern vocabulary is an interesting thing. the media severs up "horror smashes" and "killer storms". just this evening they have referred to the relationship between the ceo of the department of corrections and its minister as "toxic", just as they did last week with minister of health and the head of a district health board and other minister and public servants for months.

in my last post, i mentioned my wish to exclude "moving forward" from the modern lexicon. its seldom needed in a speech and seems to be the corporate equivilant of the teenagers "like" or "whatever". a place holder for an appraoaching thought.

i have also been having a battle for the last few years to stop managers using "learnings" as a noun. especially when there is already a perfectly good noun already in place.

the one that is really grating on me at the moment is "inappropriate". it seems to be a weasel word, trying to avoid making a judgement. instead it sounds vague; saying that

mr x acted inappropriatly

almost implies that, in certain circumstances, embezzling $50,000,000 might be appropriate. when was the last time someone said that what someone else did was just plain wrong?

i'm not a pedant, or a grammer nazi, really i'm not. i just prize clear communication rather highly.

if it was fun, we'd do it for free

what with the current financial crises, there has been a lot of discussion lately about how to increase productivity.

while driving home, the other night, i heard a person of talkback claiming that part of the problem was that young people didn't have the same passion for their jobs as he (as an employer) did. the more common attitude, he claimed, was that they were simply there for the money and that they didn't actually enjoy working.''

this seems to be borne out by an entertaining article i read in the herald

it is not surprising that a recent employment survey revealed that the thing that most upsets us at work is not poor pay or conditions, or even an absence of work-life balance. It is lazy co-workers.

Pay and rewards barely rate a mention, coming 32nd on the list of things making us most cranky at work.

first of all, people found thirty-one things to complain about their jobs before they got to pay and conditions? i'd really love to see the whole list. how long was the list any way?

the herald followed this up a forum post in its "your views" section. the replies did not suggest thaat lazy co-workers was the problem, so much as cluless managers, bitchy and bullying co-workers, lack of responsibity, clueless micromanagement (yes, i mentioned this twice), dress code. money was mentioned, but not as much as you would think.

one thing i agreed with was the tendency to use open plan offices. from the article:

To the extent that changes have been made to the office environment, they are overwhelmingly negative. A study this year reported that the current trend towards open-plan offices is proving to be a disaster. The study's author noted that "employees face a multitude of problems such as the loss of privacy, loss of identity, low work productivity, various health issues, overstimulation and low job satisfaction when working in an open plan environment".

The report noted 90 per cent of open-office workers reporting adverse health and psychological effects.

i work in an open plan office. there are ten of us on one side of the floor, but to encourage teamwork, we are cramed into one quarter of the floor. this makes things noisy (especially when you are on the phone) crowded and so on. personally, i would be more productive if there were less people around.

having said that, i like my job. its varied and interesting and by doing it, i can say that no matter how sick i am, i am still contributing.

but the final word on productivity came back to a call in reply to the earlier call as to why young people are only working for the money and don't feel the passion. i'll paraquote.

"i grew up in the eighties. my father had worked for the same firm for thirty years when the company restructed and may father was made redundant. i learned that the company does not reward loyalty. if the company is only in it to make money, then why should i be any different?

so how to increase productivity? well, study after study shows that the happier their employees are, the better a company does. this could be difficult given that:

a) everyone thinks that they work harder than any of their colleagues; and
2) everyone thinks that they are underpaid for what they do

but its the little things that can make a difference. checck your office policies. do they make sense, or do they just piss people off. do you really need so much management. what support do you receive.

i am performing pretty well, at present and a lot of that is the support i've received from my bosses since i found out about my list of illnesses. their willingness to cut me a break when i need it makes me feel obligated to not only match my pre-illness performance, but to, if possible beat it.

i still think i'm underpaid though

paging doctor peckinpah

in an ongoing quest to make myself feel less helpless during my dialysis sessions, last night i took my own needles out.

as i've already mentioned, i've been moved up to the purple needles which have a wider bore and longer tubes. (it also means that i can get my bloodflow up to 350 ml/min, which i also did last night-not entirely successfully)
the longer tubes mean that i can actually grip the end with my fingers.

now to take the needles out, this is what happens. when you've been disconnected from the machine, you remove the sticky tape that holds the needles in place. you then pull the needle halfway out, put on a couple of band aids. now, get some guaze ready in your right hand, then grip the end of the tube with your left hand fingers, ignoring the fact that as you've been holding your left arm still for 4 hours and the blood in thatt arm has been going on a detour through a large piece of machinery, so that you've lost a lot of feeling in it.
now, slowly pull the needle out, while quickly pressing the gauze over the whole where the needle was. quickly is the operative word. remember that the needle was plugged into an artery, so the blood will flow quickly. don't worry, its all a matter of timing.
once the hole from the top needle has stopped bleeding, repeat on the lower needle.

last night i did this for the first time. the blood was everywhere

the new political correctness

from the stuff website

"A list of words and phrases to be avoided or used when dealing with the new National Government has been circulating around the Health Ministry.

Radio New Zealand today reported the table of 26 phrases had two columns, one labelled "in" and the other "out".

Among terms now considered "out" were public health, social change, inequalities and advocacy.

Primary Health Care, value for money health information and clinical networks were "in".

Prepared by someone at ministry, a spokesman said the aim was for staff to be clear communicators.

Green MP Sue Bradford said some of the "out" words and phrases underpinned what ministries like health were working to address.

Ms Bradford said another example of an out phrase was "organised effort of society" while public private partnerships were in.

She said the focus shifted away from everyone working together for a common cause.

Labour MP Ruth Dyson said there should be a focus on the very topics whose names were now being considered "out".

Health Minister Tony Ryall declined to comment.

control the language and you control the organisation. i would like to see the whole list.

now if only we could get rid of "moving forward"

Dead List 3

Note the death of Wendy Richards
I've never seen Eastenders, so I didn't know her from there, but that wasn't her only role. On Radio Live yesterday Andrew patterson noted that she was also famous for appearing in "one of the funniest British sitcoms ever"
Anyone know what tthis was, because I only remember her from "Are you being served?' which was...um...crap.

Another death that will only resonate for New Zealanders who remember the seventies.
The dear departed is Robert Bruce, a wrestler who appeared on 'On the mat". After that show folded, he did some stunt work and eventually became an agent. His clients included Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis.
Apparently, Robert Bruce was his real name.

Names have been a topic much discussed of late. There seems to be a backlash against people who give their kids "special" names. There is a current thread on the Herald site that discuses this.

The tragedy is that some names gain a resonance that wasn't originally intended. The latest child deaath in NZ was a six month old named Cherish. Ironiaclly, she appears to have died from neglect...