Your Thursday Roughage

My John Ashcroft Conspiracy Theory

In 1992, John Ashcroft’s nephew was caught growing 60 cannabis plants. Normally, growing this many plants would be tried in federal court and Ashcroft’s nephew would most likely have served a prison term, especially in light of then-governor Ashcroft’s “tough on drugs” stance. However, Ashcroft’s nephew was tried in a state court and got put on probation.

Today, Ashcroft is now the U.S. attorney general and it has recently been discovered that he has a great brownie recipe. That’s right, brownies. The recipe is so slacker-simple because the main ingredient is brownie mix. So simple that you could follow it could follow it even while high.

Coincidence? I think not.

KPMG again

The KPMG linking controversy continues in Wired News’ story, Big Stink Over a Simple Link. They have an interview with one of the KPMG spokedroids who has this to say:

George Ledwith, a KPMG spokesman, insisted the company wasn’t trying to harass anyone, and was just “protecting its brand.”

Asked if he was aware of the weblog backlash, he answered: “What we are aware of is that individuals and others link to our site without an agreement, and we have a Web policy clearly outlined.”

The policy he refers to — posted on the company’s website — states, “KPMG is obligated to protect its reputation and trademarks and KPMG reserves the right to request removal of any link to our website.”

He said that this was not a new policy, nor was it unusual. “We easily sent hundreds of these letters over the past year,” he said. Indeed, he wondered why this was considered newsworthy at all, as “many organizations do this.”

Our Vision of Global Strategy

Oh, dear sweet Baal, this is the worst easy-listening dreck I have heard in a very long time.

I’m referring to the KPMG corporate anthem, Our Vision of Global Strategy. The lyrics are standard PR boilerplate…

KPMG

We’re strong as can be

A dream of power and energy

We go for the goal

Together we hold

On to our vision of global strategy

…and the music is has 80’s easy listening ballad-with-a-cause written all over it, right down to the cliched electric piano. My guess is that it was meant to be used with a corporate video (“I can see a helicopter shot with rolling green vistas,” said Mike Skeet, my co-worker, tech writer supreme, author, movie reviewer for the CBC and all-around Renaissance Man).

If your curiosity’s been piqued, you can listen to the MP3 and experience the evil for yourself.

That does it — I have to do an accordion version.