I had been pretty much ignoring recent milk adverts; after all, Milk is pretty much just Milk unless it is Wiseman’s “The One” which only has 1% fat but tastes pretty much the same as normal 4% milk. (No, this is not a sponsored post I just like the taste and the fact that it is purple).

Anyway,  I saw some of St Ivel’s new Omega-3 milk, reduced to 40p in Tesco last week so I decided that I may as well try it.

St Ivel, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that what milk really needs, is added Omega-3. Of course, being moderately sane I figured that they would make this tasteless but apparently, I was wrong.

The first thing I did with it was to make a Latte - I was still being naive here and I thought the fishy taste was just my imagination but then I had a pint of the stuff, cold and fresh. It tasted like herring in a milk sauce! I am not exaggerating, it really did.

I checked… I didn’t believe it so I took a photo of it because I knew you wouldn’t believe me either. St Ivel got perfectly good milk, straight from a perfectly happy and innocent cow, and then squeezed the innards of a fish into it.

I don’t think I can say any more, this is just madness! Mind you, the cats love it.

** Update: That last statement was a lie, they were just being polite because I was watching them. I just went back into the kitchen and the rest of has been left untouched by a pair of greedy felines who will eat just about anything; alive or dead.

As some of you may know, I have been having a bit of a problem with Mark Wahlberg lately. He has managed to get into my house and he is scuttling around and hiding out in the bathroom. Normally, I wouldn’t really mind but I am not sure why he is here, and it’s a little disconcerting seeing him scuttle off, just on the edge of vision every time you get close to finding him. I can feel those little beady Wahlberg eyes staring at me as I sit on the loo reading, and even as I sit here, typing this entry.

I have made up a sign, so that he knows that I am onto him, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. He’s still here.

There is nothing on the Internets about ridding your house of Mark Wahlberg so I am having to somewhat play this by ear. I am not sure what his natural predators are but I know that Bill Hicks is one. Unfortunately he is dead but then I realised I could just disguise somebody else as Bill Hicks and that may well scare him off. Whilst I am at it, I may as well bring in some more troops, so I got together Mark Harmon, Chuck Norris and MacGyver to command an army. Of course, I have to find them an army, but I have something in mind… I shall make them an army of Jungle Animals and Monkeys!

I present to you… My General Staff.

And, their army:

Tonight they will seek out Mark Whalberg and remove him from my house. I am afraid I cannot post any more details, I have been sworn to secrecy. This is, after all… War!

I seem to be on a bit of an anti-Google thing at the moment, a lot of this is because of what I consider to be their somewhat questionable attitudes towards their employees. It’s odd to see how similar they are becoming to The Church of Scientology these days and as a little experiment, I decided to chat to a Googleologist I hadn’t talked to for ages (names changed, to protect the brainwashed). Here’s how it went:

Michael: How are things?
Thetan: tiring
Michael: Whyso
Thetan: work
Michael: Aaah, evil Google.
Michael: Or have you left.
Thetan: no.
Michael: Escape! Escape!
Thetan: why would I want to do that?
Thetan: the money is great, the company is good, we’re doing good stuff, we have hte biggest supercomputer in the world, the most brilliant engineers, and we’re not making weapons or being a drug company
Michael: Ah well differences of opinion about google aside, good to see you ok :)
Thetan: well, if you think that google’s anything other than an ad company with a sideline in search, you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were
Michael: I remember why I stopped talking to you now… You make your own world view and stick it on someone without any regard to asking someone what their real opinion is.
Michael: ah well, tara.
Thetan: whatever
Thetan: actually you stopped talking to me because I stopped replying
Thetan: hth
Thetan: hand
Michael: Erm, as I said own world view, you were the last person to speak in the previous scrollback.
Thetan has signed off.

Now I am not reading this wrong, am I? Did I ever say I thought Google was an advertising company with a sideline in search engines? Did I even criticise Google except in a slightly jokey way? I don’t think I did and this person wasn’t aware of my previous weblog writings against Google. I actually like Google search engine, it’s great when Firefox along with Noscript and Customizegoogle remove all the crap from it. My objection to Google is that that everything apart from their search engine is just mediocre garbage which simply by existing seems to stifle other things. In fact, it’s much the same objection that most people who turn into Googleologists probably used to have about other companies before they started their regular Auditing.

This is the just part of the problem. To them, there can be no criticism of Google; ever! If you dare to do so, you will be told what an idiot you are. They also ignore everything you said and make up their own reasons you have problems with Google, reasons that are easy to prove wrong. See, look above, it happened just as predicted it would and that wasn’t a setup, I think I was being perfectly friendly there.

Their employment system is interesting. They make any new employee feel like they are the most important person ever and that they personally were specially selected from everybody in the world because they were the best there is anywhere for the job that they do. Then they keep them pretty much detached from the outside world; mostly by working them every hour of the day. They don’t force them to do it but they are on a campus, so they can’t really socialise outside Google and being the most important person there, they can hardly relax, or they may upset their peers and managers. The company has its own internal language, its own ranking structures, its own inter-group rivalry and its own internal impression that the Google way is the only way and anyone who opposes that is just an idiot. Sometimes when I have to talk to one of them, I start to wonder if there is a specially converted large ship travelling around to house the Google Sea Org. (*)

The fact that they pay them so much means it loses some points on the “How to identify a cult” chart but as people may well point out, it’s not like they have much chance to enjoy their money.

Anyway, it amused me and another friend of mine has just been approached by Google. I will just hope they see sense before they are assimilated. Oh and in case you think there is some case of sour grapes here, I have been approached by Google for a job - In fact, I think I would have been the log-person’s bosses bosses boss or something and would’ve been paid shedloads of money for the pleasure. I didn’t take the job as you probably guessed.