McSpin

That time of year fast approaches once more. No, not Christmas. The day where one of the world's largest corporations goes into a media spin overdrive to entice people into it's restaurants with the promise of raising money for sick kids and their families.

'Won't someone think of the children!' is the rallying cry of those responsible for the mass media campaign for the Red and Yellow multi-nat.

And after the Australian Idol judge Kyle Sandilands and the remaining contestants plugged the fund raising activities of this special oh-so generous corporation with the golden curvatures, why would you not go eat a sugary burger there?

Even Delta Goodrem backs McSpin day! Need anyone say more to get you eating those golden fries cooked in a oil* that contains yummy yummy transfats? Because I'm sure with Delta's svelte figure she eats them every day! (*Perhaps done as a reaction to the fact that the fries were previously cooked in a fat - solid at room temperature - that contained up to 93% beef tallow?)

The corporation responsible for the recent McSpin intends to raise 2 million dollars for sick kids' families.

Contrast this attempt to raise 2 million dollars, coming mostly from public good will, with the profits globally of the corporation with the scary red headed clown mascot had a net income of over 2.3 billion dollars US with a total revenue of almost 23 billion dollars US and assets to the order of 29 billion dollars US in 2007. See here for some details. And with only 60 billion of market capitalisation it is easy to see why they need the help of the public to raise some funds for the families of the sick needy kids.

No doubt some 15 year olds employed enjoy their jobs under the glamorous golden curves. Although sometimes in Western Australia they have not quite been 15. But I'm sure that the friendly yellow and red corporation was striking a blow for the rights of the child empowering the 14 year olds by allowing them to work in their happy happy multi-national corporation! The happy, happy McSpin handbook for employees states that the friendly corporation does have their best interests at heart, although 'the crew' are all strangely casual employees. And 'juniors' are paid a whopping rate of up to over $5AU if they work on Sundays and somewhere between $4AU and $5AU working on the happy, happy day of McSpin! They are also strangely un-unionised. But why would they want to form a union working with all that dangerous hot oil and ground-up-animal-in-a-burger goodness?

But seriously, are people just looking for a "good" reason to justify them eating junk food from one of the world's largest corporations produced by kids employed on minimum wage?

Feel like you are helping the world by stuffing your face with fatty fried food? Only now with seasoned avocado!

And doesn't the plight of the average 15 year old employee during happy-happy-McSpin day become somewhat more humiliating when some D-list celebrity paid for product endorsements turns up to sling burgers?

Hell, what would I know? I've only ever been employed casually my entire life. And look at me now. Ranting on a blog. Good for me.

Halloween

Last night Alana and I went to a Halloween party hosted by her delightful friends Rosie and Brian.

Being a bit of a handy, arts and crafts type of person, I made myself a costume during the week before.

I had this idea of going as some kind of possessed evil pumpkin monster. So I had decided to paper mache myself a pumpkin head and put together some kind of ethereal-meets-hessian sack robe.

My first attempt at the paper mache ended with the balloon I was using exploding, sending paper mache all over the lounge room. My second attempt ended up with a mask that was prune shaped too small to fit on my noggin, as I hung it upside down to dry and the balloon had a slow leak. Only on my third attempt did I end up with something that could be usuable as a mask. I then cut out holes for the eyes and the teeth and painted the mask bright orange. During the week I had also bought some curtain fabric which I sewed roughly together as a robe. I'm a gun with the old sewing machine once it is set up with the thread in the right way. From my brown farbic I managed to stitch together a reasonable robe. I ended up slashing the ends of the sleeves and at the waist to give it a ragged effect. Anyway, I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Come Friday night we are almost the first people to arrive at Rosie and Brian's place on the 16th floor. We get changed and Alana puts on her sexy flapper costume. The gloves were pretty cool and a bit super-hero so I particularly liked them. It became quickly evident that I was going to have a hard time seeing out of the pumpkin. But no matter I could sort of pull it back and set it on my head like some kind of hat. Alana said I looked like the alien purple head with boobs from the Mighty Boosh.

Rosie and Brian had also some door prizes for the party. One was for best costume as voted by the party goers. And the other prize was for guessing how many candy-corns (an American thing) were in a jar. Now I never win anything. Ever. Anyhow, come the voting for best costume I voted for the guy dressed as a pirate who looked like pirate Steve from Dodgeball. Eleri, other Ed, Jos and David had all come as mummies - zombies. Brian was dressed as a cat burglar with a cat in his pocket - haha! Rosie was dressed up as Dame Edna and looked fabulous. Other costumes were another pirate, Caesar, a noble, two odd cats, Morticia Adams, and a vampire girl.

As it turns out people really like my costume, so I won the first pick of the door prizes and opted for the Japanese DVD of The Ghost. Then I also won the candy-corns with a guess of 157 which was closest to the 158 candy-corns in the jar! Brian joked that this led to the impression that the door prizes were rigged! Ha! Some people had tried to work it out quite scientifically, but I just picked the first number that popped into my head that was over 100.

We then drank a fair bit. Then we danced the night away once there was just the eight of us left. And at about 3am we watched Shaun of the Dead. I ended up falling asleep.

WALL-E

On Friday night Alana and I went to see the latest offering from Pixar - WALL-E. Some very minor spoilers do follow, so if you want to go into the film knowing nothing best hit the 'back' button or 'next blog' button now.

Before the main feature was another Pixar short animation about a magician and his hungry bunny rabbit. Very clever and very funny. We then got to our main feature WALL-E just as we finished our noisy crunching of potato crisps and Twisties and threw our chip packets on the floor by our feet. By the end of the film we found ourselves picking up our chip packets and I found myself thinking about how much waste two people were able to so quickly generate. None of which is even able to be recycled at present.

The film is set on Earth in the not too distant future and Earth is completely covered by piles of rubbish and the sky is filled with dust and pollution. No sign of human or plant life remains and vehicles and remnants of robots litter the streets of a city. Giant piles of rubbish built into towering structures are intermingled between the other skyscrapers.

From this brief description of the setting, you might be forgiven in thinking that WALL-E is going to be a depressing or perhaps even preachy film. Not at all. Of course the setting is an important background for the story to take place in, but the narrative overlaid on this distopia is one of agency, hope and a love story.

The hero of this story is a small, square, dirty robot called WALL-E. He traverses the city by tracks, scooping up garbage into his square stomach and then producing small compacted cubes of garbage that he builds into giant towers of garbage. It soon becomes clear that WALL-E is almost all alone on Earth as he passes by other broken down WALL-E robots. His only companion is his pet cockroach. WALL-E spends some of his time collecting discarded things that interest him like lighters and rubix cubes. At night, before he shuts down, in his protective container which used to house all the WALL-Es, he watches old movies with singing and dancing. It becomes clear that the humans have left the planet and left the solar powered WALL-Es there to clean up the mess.

The film makes excellent use of various devices like his quirks and his care for his pet cockroach to make you care for WALL-E and by the end of the film I cared more about WALL-E than I often care about many human actors.

One day WALL-E discovers something he has never before seen - a freshly germinated green plant. This he takes back to his container and becomes a significant part of the unfolding story, as a giant ship lands nearby and WALL-E is no longer alone on Earth.

Pixar films are almost genre films, so keep this in mind, when I'd say that for a Pixar film WALL-E is 4 pixels out of 5 pixels! Strongly recommend, as I found it much better than CARS or The Incredibles.

...

Alana also made another lovely discovery of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is co-written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon. A funny, brilliantly written, original postmodern pastiche. You can buy it off iTunes for $2 an episode. Well worth the $6 for all three episodes.

Happy birthday to me!

Well today I turn the big THREE TWO. I'm now no longer 'just out of my twenties' in my mind.

Nice figure too, divisible six ways by 1,2,4,8,16,32. All doubles. Next birthday I can do that at is at 64. Then 128, which I'm sure I'll make it to.

Thus far I have drunk way too much nice coffee, read comics (Planetary 2 & 3), made myself sumptuous scrambled eggs with too much cheese and butter. And now I'm blogging. Fairly determined not to do any real work today. Enjoy the day, get some sun, walk around the burg, read some more and perhaps paint a bit.

The only thing that would make this day better is if my beloved did not have to go into work today.

Anyway, see you in the soup.

Vegetarian Moussaka

Last night I cooked a vegetarian moussaka. It takes some time to prepare and cook. The primary ingredients are eggplant, olive oil, tomatoes and cheese.

Ingredients

• 2 medium to large eggplants
• 1 onion
• 1 can of organic chopped tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• Organic olive oil
• 1 zucchini - organic if you can get it
  
• 1/2 a large capsicum - also organic if you can get it (I have used TVP - Textured Vegetable Protein in the past instead of capsicum, but if you are not a fan of 'fake meat' then obviously use the capsicum.)
• 1 teaspoon of ground oregano
• 1 teaspoon of oregano flakes
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 100-200 grams of rennet free cheese

Thinly slice your eggplants into pieces longways. Put your oven on to warm at about 150 degrees C. Then fry your eggplant in a non-stick fry pan in a number of batches of around 4-8 slices. Use about a tablespoon of olive oil per batch as eggplant is hungry for oil. After you gently cook each batch place it in a tray in the oven to continue cooking and cover with foil after you finish the final batch.

Then finely chop your onion, garlic, zucchini and capsicum. Fry the onion of garlic in a fry pan with a little olive oil. Cook until the onion is a little glassy. Then add zucchini and capsicum and cook for a few minutes. Add your can of chopped tomatoes and half a can of water. Stir in the oregano and season to taste. Stir and reduce mixture for five minutes. You now have a sauce.

In a long flat dish (I used a glass Pyrex dish) put down a thin layer of your sauce, then a layer of eggplant slices, then a layer of cheese, then repeat the process building layers until you fill the dish and put some cheese on the top.

Then cook in the oven for half an hour at a temperature of about 150 degrees C. Total preparation and cook time is about a hour to a hour and a half. So you do need a bit of time to prepare this one.

Serve with some fresh crispy green leaves. I used cos lettuce with a light dressing I made up.

Enjoy!

Crunchy, munchy Asian inspired salad

Last night I made a yummy crunchy salad for dinner, which I'd like to share with the blogosphere. It is all about textures and combining sweet and sour flavors. It is also vegan, but my next recipe will involve some cheese!

You can skip over this next bit and go straight to the recipe for the salad.

Unlike the advocates for 'greensumption' I don't believe the whole world can eat animals like cows and it not have a negative impact on the environment. I don't believe in 'carbon neutral' beef. The research claiming the possibility of 'carbon neutral beef' has been done by Japanese who have a clear bias in their research towards continuing to eat animals and who cannot actually produce carbon neutral beef for themselves due to the land usage. See also their so-called 'research' into 'scientific whaling' for another example of their approach to the use of animals and the biases at work in such so-called research. Furthermore it is not even a remote possibility of feeding China and India's populations a similar amount of meat contained in the Western diet, without industrialized factory farming, which generates huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. And it is simply not possible to feed the populations in Europe and the United States without such industrialized factory farming.

Red meat also remains in the digestive system for much longer and places a person at much higher risk of bowel cancer and other cancers due to the release of carcinogens. Iron is also carcinogenic, which is found in high levels in red meat. Men also have a build up of iron in their systems over time which can be also damaging to their hearts. All up a reduction in consumption of meat is better for both the environment and human health. Even if you replace one meal per week with one without any meat you are immediately doing less damage to the environment and yourself.

I also realize it has been a significant time since my last blog post, although I have been tapping away on my keyboard. The two versions of this blog, the public one and the one I keep for myself are almost of the same size now. One day the two versions may become a gestalt, but at the moment I'm happy with a public and a private version of life. But without further ado here is the recipe.

Crunchy, munchy Asian inspired salad!

To make this yummy crunchy, munchy Asian inspired salad you will need:

• 15 grams of sesame seeds (About 1/2 a packet but you could use more)
• 2 teaspoons of sesame oil (If you are allergic to sesame this one is not for you, although you could swap out the sesame parts for crushed peanuts and olive or peanut oil.)
• 2 teaspoons of rice wine vinegar sauce (Available from most Asian grocers.)
  
• Bean shoots (one big hand full per person)
• 1 fresh piece of ginger
  
• 2 Carrots (one per person)
• 1 Nashi or pear or apple (Crunchy sweet component)
• 1 Pink grapefruit or blood orange or orange (Colorful and tangy component)
• Sprouts (Another crunchy component)
• 2 teaspoons of lemon juice
• 2 pinches of organic sea salt
• 2 teaspoons of brown sugar
  

This salad is best assembled in the bowls it will be served in, so you will need two large deep bowls for two people.

Using your hands place the bean shoots in the bowls. This has the added benefit of also draining any water from the bean shoots. Also you really do need fresh bean shoots, as every day past the day you buy them their quality deteriorates by half.

Cut the skin off your fresh piece of ginger and cut into tiny shards. The ginger must be very fresh and crunchy to do this, else just don't use it. Perhaps a tiny amount of ginger paste could be added in the dressing, but this recipe really demands fresh crunchy things.

The grate the carrots, leaving the skin on for added nutritional value. It is best to use organic carrots as carrots tend to have a relatively high pesticide load as they soak up a great deal of pesticides. Mix one grated carrot and the bean shoots together in each bowl.

Core and finely chop the nashi (or pear or apple) and add half to each bowl.

Then put the sesame seeds in a fry pan to dry fry on a medium flame. Keep an eye on them as you don't want them to burn. They should be toasted in under 5 minutes.

While you are toasting the sesame seeds take the skin and pith off your pink grapefruit (or blood orange or navel orange) with a sharp knife. Then pull the segments off the remaining pith so you just have pieces of the inner pink fruit that resemble coral. Put half the grapefruit coral in each bowl.

Then spread you toasted sesame seeds and crunchy sprouts over the top of your salad. This will make it extra crunchy!

Then you need to make a dressing. To do this mix together one teaspoon of brown sugar, one teaspoon of sesame oil, one teaspoon of rice wine vinegar, one teaspoon of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. This is the right ratio for dressing one bowl of salad. Then repeat the process and dress the other bowl of salad. Then you are finished with a fantastic crunchy muchy Asian inspired salad.

Enjoy!

My next post will be my recipe for a vegetarian moussaka.

Matilda Nightingcat

On Wednesday night I came down with the dread lurgy. Spent all of yesterday in bed weak as a kitten. Still too sick to do really anything today. I'll probably go back to bed after this blog.

I've been as sick as a dog, or should that be cat? As our cats seem to have sensed this and have been doing their best to act as hot water bottles on the bed, which is a difficult task for a cat as they are not made out of rubber and filled with water.

Here is a picture of Matilda doing her best Florence Nightingale impersonation. Or Matilda Nightingcat.



With care like this, no doubt I'll be right as rain in no time. A saying that is surely a throwback to when the weather played far greater part in our lives. Perhaps it should be reworked to be something like 'as right as takeaway food on a Friday night.' But it does not quite have the same ring to it.

Again I'm quite sure that blogging about one's pets constitutes one of the cardinal sins of blogging. But frankly my dears I don't give three hoots.