Pedaheh

I am not Ukrainian.

I know this doesn't surprise most of you ( I am Canadienne-Francais). But on Thursday, February 18th, 2010, I set out to do the Ukrainian way and make perogies from scratch.

My boyfriend, Taylor, is Ukrainian and his mom and her sister, Olga, make amazing perogies. I thought that I should learn how to make perogies since I need to carry on the tradition down the road.

So, I bought my ingredients and started to make the filling and dough. Twenty-four potatoes, an onion and 18 cups of flour later, I had my dough and filling.

I let it sit for a day and on Friday started to roll out the dough. Man, was that ever a work out! It is so elastic so it's really hard to get it as thin as you need. Plus, there was a heck of a lot of dough!

For two hours alone, I made about 100 perogies. I cut the dough into squares, stuffed up with my delicious filing and then pinched away. After a while, Taylor and his mom helped me so it went a lot faster. We ended up with almost 200 perogies!

So now, I think I got the perogy thing down. I would much rather just eat them them make them though!

Sorry I don't have any pictures to share, it's hard to touch a camera with doughy fingers!

Ineffective advertising

Okay, so there is this ad that just drives me wild - and not in the good way.

It's for Benylin, the cold medicine.

So most of us take cold medicine to feel better, at least enough, to go about our day. The whole point of taking medicine is to get better so you can get on with your life.

Well in this ad, Benylin is saying 'take a Benylin day'. The girl takes a Benylin and then goes back to bed for the day. But, why would I still feel sick enough to stay in bed all day if you're fly medicine works so well? Shouldn't I be able to go to work if I take it? Competitors like Nyquil, Advil and Tylenol advertise how their medicine will make you feel well enough to go about your day.

To me, the 'Big Idea' of this ad is counterintuitive. It really bugs me. But hey, here I am writing a blog about it, so something is working. At least it's memorable.

Blast from the past

My boyfriend and I were talking the other day of our favorite shows from when we were a kid. Here is a compiled list of shows we had come up with. What's your favourite?

1. Inspector Gadget

2. California Raisins

3. Care Bears

4. Pinky & The Brain

5. Ren and Stimpy

6. Rocko's Modern Life

7. Tiny Toon adventures

8. Doug

9. Rugrats

10. Pepper-Ann

11. Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

12. Zoom!

13. Sailor moon

14. Muppet babies

15. Tom & Jerry

16. The dinosaurs

17. and my favorite... Mr.Men!

Should people be living in Haiti?

Stories about the Haiti earthquake have been the top news topic since the quake hit on January 12.

Stories of hope; of people being rescued from the rubble of city buildings after a week of being trapped. Stories of despair; of families still searching for their loved ones, hoping at least to have a proper burial for them.

There have been touching stories; the kids from a orphanage in Haiti being transported to Canada to adoptive parents, wrapped up in blankets as they are unaccustomed to the frigid colds.

Countless relief efforts and donation banks have been set up and celebrities have let their fame to raise money for the cause.

News reports speculate that Haiti will take years - maybe even decades - to rebuild. This isn't the first time that Haiti has had to rebuild after a natural disaster. In fact, Haiti has been in a constant state of demolition and rebuilding because they are hard hit by many disasters year round. So, why do people even live there?

In 2008, Haiti was struck by 4 separate hurricanes within 30 days. About 800 people died from this and 60% of harvest was destroyed. People were saying that these cities were not completely inhabitable. But they rebuilt their cities and their towns, because this is their home.

In September of 2004, flooding and landslides from a tropical storm killed 2,500 people.

In 1998, Hurricane George killed over 400 people and destroyed 80% of crops.

In 1994 Hurricane Gordon killed over 1000 Haitians.

It is obvious that this piece of land in the beautiful caribbean is not a good place to establish cities and a country. It is constantly going through great loss and is constantly in a state of rebuilding. How can Haiti ever overcome their poverty, health and security problems when they are constantly going through huge disasters.

But would it be plausible to tell most Haitians to leave their home - the place where they have grown up and their parents were and their families are buried?

Where could all the people in Haiti go? You can't just pick up and move a country, but I think mother nature has given people enough warning that this is not a place where people should live.

What would you do if you knew where you lived was so volatile? Would you move?

Disappointing Last Men

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Toybox

TOYBOX

For our major project this term, we are creating a magazine. We have to write all the articles, produce all the ads and promote it for a Magazine Tradeshow in April.

Greg, Melyssa, Emelia and I are the TOYBOX group. We were one of the fortunate groups that got their idea approved by the panel of CreComm teachers right off the bat.

Here are some preliminary steps to creating your own magazine:

1. Idea

Coming up with an idea for a magazine is the hardest part. A lot of groups had trouble with it. You have to think of what hasn't been done before and what part of the magazine market is left untouched. You don't want the topic to be too narrow - you want to have enough room to think of new material for issues to come. But then again, you don't want to be too vague, or else you won't have a distinct target audience.

2. Material

You need to make sure you'll have enough material to produce more than one issue. Your subject should be something that is evolving and will be around for a while.

We were able to think of so many ideas for material for the TOYBOX magazine. So far, we have plans to write articles on the evolution of the toy car, environmentally-friendly toys, spotlight on a toy collector and an investigation on what the 'age groups' on toys really mean. We will also explore what toys are able to stand the test of time (really, how old is Barbie?). There are so many things we could do!

3. Advertising

Who would want to advertise in your magazine? Do those companies usually advertise in magazines, do they have the money?

We made a 'dream list' of who we would want to advertise in TOYBOX. Make sure it's realistic.

4. Get going!

This is the stage we are at now. It's good to have a plan so you know what you want to do. Right now, we're starting the production stage. Who will you interview for the articles you brainstormed? What will your design look like? Play around with some fonts and colours. Hopefully, it'll all come together.

Producing a magazine is a definite test of CreComm because it combines all the elements of communications. Layout is important to attract readership. Journalism is crucial to encourage repeat customers. PR is essential to promote your finished product and get it distributed. And of course, advertising gives you the money.

MADD campaign

This is one of the new ads in a new campaign by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). The ad is aimed to show how foolish people look as they try to beat the system and get away with driving drunk.

MADD has typically taken the more 'guilt-ritten' path, driven by drama and graphic depiction but chose to add some humour to this campaign.

Okay, so the "Lenny" commercial is pretty funny and yah, he looks pretty dumb. It drives the message home that you look stupid if you try to beat the system

Problem is, not all the ads propose completely crazy ways to get away with driving drunk.

Meet Rob.

Backroads? I'm pretty sure that's most peoples' strategy. And if someone hadn't thought of it before, it plants the idea as a pretty legit plan. So..you're trying to get people to stop drunk driving by showing common ways to beat the system? I think that could backfire.

I think there is a good 'big idea' here - it's pretty stupid to drive drunk and there is no strategy. But showing 'solutions' based on popular anecdotes doesn't seem like the best way to do that.