Nathan Campbell – Page 94

In which I write a complaint letter to Pascall for the unfortunate pink/white ratio in a 500gm bag of marshmallows

To whom it may concern,

I love Pascall’s Marshmallows. Seriously. Our two person household probably powers through a 250gm bag of those bad boys a week. They’re almost fat free. They’re delicious. And they’re magical. I love the easy tear corners on the bags. Somebody over your way has obviously put a lot of thought into the optimal packet design.

When I say I’m your biggest fan it’s probably a little bit exaggerated. I don’t live in a house made from, or even decked out with, your product. But I consider myself at least in your top #7, and I would challenge anybody who suggests otherwise.

They are great in hot chocolate, they’re great by the handful, and they’re amazing just slightly toasted and consumed while hot (but not on fire). I can’t get enough of them. Pink or white. To me. It doesn’t matter. I’ll take either…

Which brings me, somewhat dramatically, to my point. Earlier this week I purchased a 500gm bag of your delicious marshmallows. I don’t think I’d ever noticed 500gm bags before, my local supermarket must have just expanded their range, which again shows you’re doing something right. Incidentally, how do you actually make marshmallows? I read on the Internet that marshmallows, in their original form, were some sort of sweet plant growth and what we buy and eat by the handful are artificial replicas of these original products. Amazing. Is that true?

I purchased a mixed bag. 500gm. Pink and white. Now, you would expect in a bag with only two flavour options, statistically speaking, to find roughly a 50/50 split of pink to white. I would think. Is this the case? Or are you aware that one particular flavour is more popular than another. That would be the kind of market research and knowledge I would expect from a subsidiary of the Cadbury company. So nothing would surprise me more than to learn you hand pack these bags, or at least use trained animals. I’ve seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I know about the squirrels. I bet that put a downer on things for you guys when Hollywood blew the lid on the confectionary industry’s biggest secret. Trained squirrels. Brilliant. You’d think an Australian animal would suffice, but I’ve heard koalas are suckers for marshmallows and kangaroos are rowdy and hard to pin down.

So in my mixed bag, thus far (I probably have 150gm to go), I’d say I’ve had a 90/10 ratio of pink to white marshmallows. I assume this isn’t normal. It’s like the old conundrum about picking out two different coloured socks from a drawer. If you’ve got ten socks that are red, and ten that are blue, after three socks you will definitely have a pair, and after ten socks you’ll definitely have one of each sock (you may have ten red, and one blue, or vice versa – but in this case the next nine socks will all be the same colour). Eventually. Over time. The two colours will become evenly represented in your outside-of-drawer collection. Imagine my surprise when this didn’t happen. I wasn’t expecting socks from my marshmallow bag. I’m not an idiot. No. I was expecting to eventually see a normalising of the ratio of pink:white. But it didn’t happen. That’s a statistical anomaly that I think we’ll all agree you should be made aware of immediately. Hence my writing to you.

Now, I’m not just being a good citizen of the world who passes on feedback to companies simply for their edification. I have a bone to pick. Metaphorically, if I’d found a bone in my marshmallows this would be a very different letter, and would probably involve the police. No. My metaphorical bone is this. My wife does not like pink marshmallows. If marshmallows were people she’d be a racist. She’s not a racist, because they’re not… but she doesn’t like the taste. Which means I’ve eaten lots of pink marshmallows from this packet and she hasn’t eaten many at all.

So, from one marshmallow fan to another, or more correctly, from a marshmallow fan to the creators of delicious marshmallows, I would ask you to lift your game a little bit, or, at the very least, fire the squirrels. They carry all sorts of lice and disease anyway. It might be time to move on.

Yours in confectionary,

Nathan Campbell

August 2, 2011

I had a brilliant idea…

I’m currently working on a little project that may take up some of my discretionary blog related time, but hopefully will produce some blog related fruit. And since I can’t keep a secret. I’ll tell you.

If, like the majority of my current traffic, you’ve only been reading here for a short time, you may have missed all the fun of my scambaiting efforts. Check them out. They’re probably the best bits of original content I’ve ever produced… For the uninitiated – scambaiting is when you deliberately lead on the people who send you scam emails, you know, the ones promising you a marriage with a beautiful African girl, or untold riches from some deceased estate…

I worked pretty hard to get a photo of a scammer holding a sign with a Bible verse on it. It was a long road. A journey. But it paid off.

My new venture is a Scambaiter’s Recipe Book. It will doubtless be a pastiche of hastily googled recipes submitted by scammers upon request. But it will be a recipe book made up of recipes sent to me by scammers, representing the cuisine of their country of choice. I will then, if the ingredients aren’t too outlandish, cook the recipe and take a photograph of it.

I’ve sent off my first batch of requests. I’ll let you know how I go.

August 2, 2011

Monday Music: Fleet Foxes

Loving these guys at the moment.

Also loving the line up of new music coming from Australia in the next few weeks.

Gotye – Making Mirrors
Boy and Bear – Moonfire
The Panics- Rain on Humming Wire
Eskimo Joe – Ghosts of the Past
Josh Pyke – Only Sparrows

And I’m a bit sad that the Middle East is no more (apparently they announced a break up at Splendour). This is why I’m sad:

That is all.

August 1, 2011

Two lego heads, joined as one…

According to the title, this post could be about stacking up dismembered lego heads to create some sort of Lego Frankenstein, and lets face it, who hasn’t done that…

But no.

My friends Todd and Alyda are super awesome wedding photographers. Award winningly super awesome. And with photos like this, you can see why…

Alyda posted a link to this photo on that Lego Head storage post from the other day. To think I almost didn’t post it.

July 31, 2011

Nananananananana nananananananana… Mathman

This is pretty cool. I knew graphical calculators played some useful purpose. I once spent a couple of high school math lessons drawing a Happy Meal. But this is better. Somebody figured out the equation, or series of equations, for producing the Batman logo.

Via BoingBoing so it must be true.

The old Batman logo is mathematical, the new one is apparently whimsical. It appears to be based around a baby unicorn. Who knew.

July 30, 2011

Some more amazing cinemagraphs

Ahh. The humble gif. Why did it take you so long to get classy? You might remember the post about cinemagraphs from a month ago. Or so. It was amazing. Here are some more.

From here

From here (same guy as above, there’s a series)

From here

Here are some not so nice gifs. In a gif museum. To remind you why you hated the Internet when it was full of them. And some nicer not nice gifs. As in they use the medium well, but not as well as the above.

These were all poached from this great feature about the art of the gif on dashes.com, and I commend it to you.

July 30, 2011

Melonus Prime: why transforming your food is ok

So you were told not to play with your food as a kid. We all were. I still get told not to play with my food now. And I’m no longer a kid.

But I thumb my nose at all those naysayers (except my wife. I won’t thumb my nose at her. I’d get in trouble).

Because the proof, as they say, is in the watermelon sculpting.

Bizarrely, this isn’t the first time I’ve featured watermelon carving (there’s a second time too). Or Optimus Prime carving for that matter. I guess it’s true what they say. They being Qohelet, the writer of Ecclesiastes. There is nothing new under the sun. Though that Optimus Prime link wouldn’t do so well under the sun, given he’s made of ice.

That melon prime was featured first (where I saw it anyway) at That’s Nerdalicious.

July 30, 2011

Being the best at being bad at Super Mario Bros

You may, or may not (if you’re not pretty geeky) have heard of Super Mario Bros speed runs. That’s when people try to finish the original Super Mario Bros from the original NES, as quickly as possible. Once, in my childhood, I took part in a Super Mario competition. In a shopping centre. I went in feeling a little bit special, because I knew about these warp zones that let you skip levels. Turned out everybody knew about the warp zones and lots of people were quicker than me… anyway. Here’s what a speed run looks like.

Impressive, no?

Well. What could possibly be more difficult than a speed run? How bout a speed run getting as few points as possible. This is actually an impressive point. A guy managed to finish the game and only get 600 points. And if you watch the video, the only thing preventing him scoring only 500, was that he appeared to accidentally bop a gumba on the head.

Wow.

July 30, 2011

Lego head will solve your storage dilemmas

I love Lego. That’s like saying “I love air.” It’s obvious. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who doesn’t love Lego. If you’re looking to spruce up your in house storage options you could do worse than getting hold of one of these Lego head containers.

It’s almost worth it, just for this photo. Imagine what people would say if this was your Facebook profile.

July 28, 2011

A bit clever: a drill based pencil sharpener

You’ll never have to manually sharpen pencils again. Which is great. Because we all spend so much time sharpening pencils these days. Isn’t there a saying about necessity being the mother of invention? Not here.

At the very least it makes making art like this a little bit easier.

July 28, 2011

History Cookbook: Is what it says it is

So you’re holding a Viking themed party, but don’t know what to cook. That’s a dilemma. You could cook some beancakes. Yum.

Here are the ingredients.

broad beans, in their pods
stoneground flour
goats milk
honey
optional: hazelnuts and linseeds

If that doesn’t excite you then get on board the history train and find something that does. There are dishes from prehistoric time through to today.

July 28, 2011

Make your notes a chip off the old block

There’s some sort of post joke to be made here. But I’ve got nothing.

This would be cool if it was a chunk of wood with something really sharp to cut slithers off. Like a laser. But it’s not.

You can buy them though, via Lushlee

July 28, 2011

On the 2190000th day God created Nascar…

And we’ve been thankful ever since… Tim sent me this on Facebook. I love that he thank God for his smokin’ hot wife. They probably share a Facebook profile.

July 26, 2011

First World Problems Rap

Sometimes, in my more lucid moments, as I watch the bickering on Q&A, I’m reminded how lucky our country is that our politicians argue over stuff like where we put timber plantations… these are first world problems. And we have a lot to be thankful for. Luckily we have an incredible capacity to whinge about just about anything.

July 25, 2011

An open letter to the Australian Christian Lobby: Please don’t use tragedy for political gain

Dear Jim Wallace,

I know. I’ve said some stuff in the past. Less than flattering stuff. About your place in the Australian political scene, and your place in the Australian Christian scene. I don’t doubt that your motives are wonderful, we’d both like to see more people know Jesus, and less sin means a better society for all of us. And we agree that Christianity should be fairly represented and protected in our society. Just like all minorities, it’s important that we Christians have a voice speaking to our nation’s decision makers… I would like you to talk more about Jesus. I’ve covered that. And I would like you to do more than just represent the conservative Australian voice. But I’m not opposed to your very existence. I don’t want you to disappear.

Jim, I notice that the media releases on your website currently deal with really important issues. Like gay marriage and video game classification. These are obviously issues that are important to the people who fund you. There isn’t a lot of funding in speaking out for refugees, or the homeless, or against more complex “sins” like greed. The climate change deniers who are already firmly in the ACL camp are watching their dollars because they are busy funding scare campaigns. I appreciate that you have to pick and choose. That’s the nature of lobbying. You’ve only got one voice, and you’ve got limited opportunities to speak to the politicians on your rounds. And you have a hard enough time getting media coverage (unless you’re saying dumb stuff about gays and Anzac Day, or making bizarrely offensive claims about child abuse).

I apologise for the sarcastic tone of this missive. I really do. But you’ve pushed me a bridge too far. Jim. You’ve made me grumpy. I know you’re a busy man. You may not even be aware of what people have posted on your website in your name. That was the story when a former Family First Candidate (now ACL staffer) tweeted a regrettable message during an election campaign. It’s possible you’re unaware of what you’ve putatively said. But let me draw your attention to this, because it’s bad. And if it’s a mistake you’ll want to sack somebody, or something. Because whoever posted this is doing a bad job for your cause.

I may need to give you a little bit of background. On Saturday, tragically, a gunman identifying himself as a “cultural Christian,” a right wing fundamentalist, caused havoc in Norway. Now some people might want to make comparisons between his ideology and yours, Jim. But not me. What he did was horrific and not consistent with the ideology of any normal person. He’s a sociopath. That’s clear. So linking his conduct to the actions of normal people isn’t really logical. But people will. They’ll start to draw links. Make connections. He killed a lot of people, Jim, singlehandedly. Callously. And since then there’s been a bit of a PR problem for Christianity because it turned out this terrorist claimed to be one of us. I think we’d agree that what he did couldn’t have been motivated by his Christianity. The guy is crazy. It would be wrong to make such a connection between something harmless and his actions. Be it his Christian beliefs, or the fact that he played Modern Warfare, a war game enjoyed by millions around the world. Because he’s not normal.

But he claimed to be a Christian. He wasn’t a Muslim. So you’d think that Christians wanting to articulate a position on this would be, you know, talking about how what he did was in no way representative of the teachings of Jesus. Wouldn’t you? If you were going to say anything at all. That would be the key message to be getting out, if you were going to speak on the issue. We certainly wouldn’t want to see any vulture hijacking this event to further their own policy agenda would we? It always looks so cynical when people do that. When they take a horrible tragedy. Still fresh. And rebrand it, even if it’s a possibly legitimate link, in order to score political points. Usually it’s nice to wait until the furore has died down, till the grieving families have identified their loved ones and laid them to rest. That’s the classy way to capitalise on tragedy. If you must. But not the ACL, Jim. Not the Australian Christian Lobby. In the Australian Christian Lobby’s infinite wisdom, and with a bit of media savvy that belies days of experience, the Australian Christian Lobby has published a media release with the following headline:

Norwegian Tragedy Highlights Impact of Violent Video Games… why no partner release highlighting how drugs killed Amy Winehouse. At least the link there is directly plausible. Why not an acknowledgment that twisted and evil people do twisted and evil things because we live in a world tainted by sin, where we, as humans, are fallen and inclined to do wrong? That would be a Christian response to tragedy. Why not offer a clear condemnation of this man who claimed to be acting as a Christian?

“If there are even a few deranged minds that can be taken over the edge by an obsession with violent games it is in every Australians interest that we ban them.

“The studied indifference of this killer to the suffering he was inflicting, his obvious dehumanising of his victims and the evil methodical nature of the killings have all the marks of games scenarios.”

Do you see how the sophisticated arguments you’ve employed in this statement could be used against the man’s religious affiliation? Do you not see the inconsistency in your position? The guy was a deranged, evil, lunatic. He committed abhorrent acts. In the name of abhorrent beliefs. That could not possibly be born from Christian theology. And you’re trying to capitalise on it for political gain. That’s disgusting. It’s cheap point scoring. It’s tacky. People see right through it. You’re not convincing anybody of anything except the idea that Christians are out-of-touch and only interested in protecting ourselves.

UPDATE: This excellent piece from Tim Challies is a much better response to the tragedy from a Christian point of view, as is this piece from Mitchelton Presbyterian Church

UPDATE 2: See this interview with the editor of Kotaku (who also linked to this post), and Jim Wallace, on Sunrise…

July 25, 2011