philly NYE kit

Found this New Years Eve kit at the party store in South San Francisco. Brings up strong memories of freezing my arse off on New Years Day in Philadelphia, watching the Mummers Parade as a child. Yo Philly!

lowfat cookie dough

Why does Costco put lowfat cottage cheese next to the chocolate chip cookie dough? Isn't that like having a Baskin Robbins next to a 24 Hour Fitness?

holidaze food, part 2: hamentashen

Mom's 'secret' hamentashen cookies. Actually, I think this was grandma's recipe originally. Wrong holiday, since this foodstuff is traditionally made for Purim and we are currently halfway through Hanukah. But these cookies are yummy anytime of the year.



Doughy stuff
--1 cup vegetable shortening or margerine
--3/4 cup sugar
--1/2 cup OJ
--2 eggs
--4 cups flour
--1 t. salt
--3 t. baking powder
--1 t. vanilla extract

Cherry filling:
--1 can cherries
--2 T. cornstarch
--1/4 t. almond extract (note: I use vanilla extract since it's already here for the dough)
--2 T. butter
--1/3 sugar

1. cream margarine and sugar
2. add OH, eggs, salt, vanilla, then mix
3. add 2 cups flour and baking powder, then mix
4. add 2 cups flour by hand, slowly, arrrgh!
5. refrigerate 1 hour (until cold)
6. roll out dough, cut into circles size of jar top
7. add filling in center of each circle
8. pinch dough around filling
9. on greased baking sheets, bake at 325 for about 40 minutes

holidaze food, part 1: corn latke

My mom's corn latke recipe. Except my dad always made these. My head and belly are swimming with Hanukkah. yummm.



--1 large can of cream corn
--1 large can of regular corn
--1 large egg
--Salt, pepper, honey, cinnamon -- bit of each
--1.5 cup flour, 1/2 matzah meal
--1/2 t. of vanilla
--heaping t. of baking powder

Mix everything together, then fry in nyafat or veggie oil or corn oil.

the lost political Tiger

Poor Tiger Woods. I could care less if he had an affair. Or three. He's a superstar and most people who are driven to that kind of height also have a strong sexual drive. Surely his wife knew or suspected and they had an agreeable arrangement. Until now. Even if they didn't, once again, who should really care? Seems like he wasn't putting himself in the public eye as a role model; everyone else was forcing him to be one for branding purposes. Not that he didn't go along with the farce, of course.

This WSJ article 'The Tiger We Thought We Knew' has the most compelling points that I've read about what Tiger has actually lost. Hadn't thought about him as being a future political candidate but the logic is sensible.

"Five years ago, during the 2004 presidential campaign, I wrote a cover story for a golf magazine about Mr. Woods's potential as a presidential candidate. Not immediately, but some distant day after he retired from golf, if he got the itch to dive into politics the way Dwight Eisenhower did after his military career ended, and Ronald Reagan did after he was done acting.

"I interviewed savvy political operatives and several well-known athletes-turned-politicians, and to a person they agreed that his political potential was astronomical, if he ever chose to move in that direction, and that, up to that point, he had doing everything right and nothing wrong to establish a framework for such a career.

"Rather than committing to half-baked political ideas that could only get him into trouble later, he was remaining essentially apolitical. Was he Republican or Democrat? No one knew, which only increased his value to both parties."

crazy mayor likes Snoopy, hates faux muslims

From SF Gate last week, Tenn. mayor claims Obama blocked 'Peanuts' special

"The mayor of a suburban Memphis city accused President Barack Obama of deliberately timing his speech about the war in Afghanistan this week to block the airing of the "Peanuts" Christmas television special... "We sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose," he wrote, according to the newspaper."

Which yet again proves that elected officials aren't necessarily smarter than Snoopy and the Peanuts gang.

Burger King's bikini campaign

I am now a fan of Burger King, and not just 'cause they're proponents of mayo in the burger. This promotion is brilliant. I was personally only able to get through about 35 seconds of each video -- too dumb -- but brilliant nonetheless.



From the Adage 'Advertising Age' website:

"The www.singingintheshower.co.uk website is billed as "the world's first guilt-free shower-cam," where visitors can ask a 20-year-old woman to wear a different bikini and sing a different song as she takes her morning shower each day. Burger King invites customers to "watch the shower babe shake her bits to the hits at 9:30 a.m. every morning." And it doesn't end there -- you can also win a date with the "sizzling shower babe" by filling out a form saying why you deserve to be chosen. A Burger King spokesman explained the blatantly male bias of the campaign. He said, "Our research showed that breakfast is a male-centric audience for Burger King; it doesn't resonate as well with women -- we are targeting the people who are buying breakfast.""

good spam, lame spam, green eggs & spam

Not sure which part of this spam email is more appalling, the design layout or the lack of marketing perspective.



In contrast, this spam was worded correctly and because it seemed to be from the al-mighty Facebook, I almost clicked through. Then i noticed the Zip attachment and slapped my digital wrist. But it almost got me.



Similarly, this spam almost caught me because of perceived familiarity. My company uses a tshirt manufacturer of a similar name.

Males - who needs 'em?

From the NY Daily News feature 'Amazing animals: Kingdom oddities', a blurb and photo about a female only ant colony.

Males - who needs 'em? Not the species of ant known as Mycocepurus smithii, which scientists have discovered is exclusively female and reproduces asexually by cloning the queen. Reproduction without sex is fairly common in the ant world, but the Mycocepurus smithii is the first known to be a male-free species. The phenomenon takes the stress out of finding a mate and may help keep the peace in colonies, the scientists believe.

synergy

red carpet treatment, aka, why i hate United Airlines

I recently flew United instead of one of the carriers I prefer, which are Southwest and Jet Blue. United seems to do everything possible to make you feel unimportant if you don't pay a couple extra hundred for their upgrades.

For instance, for the first round of boarding, the ticket staff put out a red carpet. Or rather, a red square of carpet, as evidenced by the photo below. Then one staffer announced over loud speaker that the 'premiere executive exalted guests' -- or whatever -- were welcome to walk the red carpet into the terminal entrance. Once those maybe 5 people took their 30 cushy steps, that 4 foot direct entryway was cordoned off and a lengthy windy path was constructed for the rest of us. Honestly, I felt embarrassed for the United staffers going through those comical motions.



Here's another insulting gesture from United. This is a screenshot from their checkout process. The checkout consistently threw in upgrade suggestions that added costs to my total which i then had to recognize and cancel, rather than giving me the more typical (and less greedy) option of adding the upgrade myself. I felt like punching my screen by the time they *allowed* me to buy the ticket.