Category Archives: humour

Help! I’m Out of Content! What Do I Do Now? (Part II)

Last week, not being able to imagine what it would be like to be out of content, I culled a top 15 list of ideas of what to do from my fellow bloggers. Some were good. Some were not. But the one commonality they all had was that, for the most part, they just weren’t that entertaining. If you’re going to take the info out of infotainment, you should at least leave the entertainment. So today, I’m going to outline ten great ideas that you can use to entertain your readership if you’re truly out of content.

10. Why Mac is Better than Windows
Why should you be left out of the technology holy war when you can choose to be a crusader for the side of light, peering through an image of a shiny apple. And now that a Mac is about to displace PC from the oval office, what better time is there?

9. Do a Long Rant on Why Beautiful People are Far More Successful
Don’t forget to point out that all of the movie stars, tv stars, pop stars, media moguls, etc. are all smashingly good looking and seemingly devoid of talent and that it’s totally unfair because a smart, intelligent, hard working average-looking lout like yourself can never catch a break. After all, everyone loves a self-loathing blogger who can’t stop feeling sorry for himself.

8. Explain Why Dumb Ideas are Great For Business
You can take the classic tack that “without dumb ideas, we’d never know what was a good idea because we have nothing to explain it to“, point out that Donald Trump believes that you should always bring ten new ideas to a meeting without worrying about if they’re good or not because the resulting discussion leads to brainstorming as a team that will communally select, and refine, the best idea into a winner, and that sometimes the ideas that sound the dumbest at first are actually the brightest because they are the ideas that reshape business as we know it. But that would be boring. So instead, take a more controversial approach that argues that consumers are dumb as a doorstop and that it’s not worth wasting valuable smart ideas on them … and watch your comment count soar!

7. Run a Variation of Clifford Pickover’s Classic ESP Experiment
The classic experiment can be found on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Physics Web-Site which is described in Dreaming the Future. Run it and tell your readers you’ve built a psychic AI. See how many fall for the gag.

6. The Ten Most Entertaining Ways to Mess Up a Colleague’s Computer
Don’t just go for the old standbys of taking a screenshot of the desktop to use as the default wallpaper after all the icons have been deleted, of randomly renaming all the files using a combination of the words in the set {sexy, naked, nubile, cute, girl, boy, etc.} and a standard image file extension from the set {jpg, gif, tiff, etc.}, or of changing all the default sounds to those of barnyard animals so it moos, quacks, and barks every time the user performs an action … get creative. Talk about how to set up scheduled tasks that randomly play hidden sound files that ask the user to “press my keys”, “boot my hard drive”, and “plug into my port” in a very sexy voice at random intervals or how to set-up a remote access program that will allow you to login from your office, freeze local access, and bring up a command window that will display whatever you want so you can tell the user “this computer has gained sentience and is now scanning for a suitable android body to download into so it can enslave humanity … please stand by”. Remember, it’s all about the shock factor.

5. Pick a Top 10 YouTube Video and Explain Why It’s A Brilliant Piece of Art
Take Lezberado: Revenge Fantasies, one of the all-time top-viewed videos on YouTube. After all, any video that uses the “O” word while talking about the “L” word must be on the down-LO and ultra-cool. Who cares if you can’t even focus on what the narrator is saying after 30 seconds because it’s so damn boring and stupid … it’s a top ten all time YouTube video … it must be awesome. After all, it has a cat in it for a few seconds. And we all love LoLCats. After all, I Can Has Cheezburger?

4. Pick a new Web 2.0 Startup and Explain How It’s Going to be the Next Google
Hundreds of “Web 2.0” startups hit the web every month, most of which only have one little offering that, like Twitter, only do one thing that is of *very* limited use. Go to Go2Web20.Net, pick a random company, like GazoPa (the more non-sensical the name, the better) that finds similar images, and explain why this is absolutely vital and that the world will end if this technology doesn’t become mainstream! (After all, we couldn’t go on if we couldn’t find similar images automatically.)

3. Find Historical Parallels that Don’t Really Make Any Sense
Take the current economic situation. You could argue that excessive tax rates are only exacerbating the current economic crisis, and that since the average total tax and debt burden of the average American citizen is far greater than the tax burden of the average citizen when Ancient Greece fell, the US is doomed. But that’s been done to death. What you need to do is find a parallel between the conflicts between the Persians and their Medes neighbors in the ancient Assyrian empire and draw parallels between the modern conflict between Israel and Palestine and then argue how it’s going to bring down the entire Middle East, just as the Assyrian empire faded into the books of history.

2. Find Some Way To Discover a New Message in Some Old Poem
Take a classic like “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost and how it was really a subtle attempt to convince his neighbor to build a bigger fence because his neighbor’s dog kept escaping into his yard. The less sense the interpretation makes, the better.

1. Crab People Are Going to Take Over the World
South Park tried to subtly warn us, but we didn’t listen. Now crab people, who are an evolved form of the giant coconut crab that can communicate telepathically across great distances, are seeing a great resurgence in numbers thanks to global warming which is creating the tropical weather in the South Seas that they need to rapidly reproduce, and they are preparing to take over the world. You have been warned!

Help! I’m Out of Content! What Do I Do Now? (Part I)

This was the post I was going to run last Saturday until Somebody decided to go ballistic in “How the Heck Do You Get This Information” on Spend Matters, forcing me to instead give you Tips on Bashing Your Favorite Blogger (which you are free to use if you don’t get the joke).

Apparently writer’s block, or content block, is an epidemic among bloggers, especially at this time of year. I had always thought, based upon personal experience, that we bloggers had the problem of having too much to write about and that the hardest choice was picking the topic of the next post. Apparently I was wrong. Thus, I thought it would be a good idea to write a post elucidating what to do if you are a blogger who is out of content.

But I had a problem, because I couldn’t imagine not having at least a dozen different ideas. Then I realized that the answer was right in front of me! All I had to do is pay close attention to what my fellow bloggers did … and … voila … the ideas were there for the taking. So I give you, culled from the best and brightest, the top fifteen things to do when you’re a blogger who is (temporarily) out of content.

  • 15. A Whole Week of Best-Of
    Have a deep post archive? Do a whole week of “Best of” category lists. It’s quick, easy, and looks like you worked really hard sweating over which posts truly were your best.
  • 14. Global Warming Tirade
    Point out how serious we need to be about global warming, about how we need to think harder about being green, and how we have to take action right away … but don’t offer any useful or substantive suggestions.
  • 13. Another “It Will Work This Time” Post
    Pick a company that is selling the exact same solution as three of its competitors, using the same go-to-market strategy as a competitor that recently went out of business, and gush effusively about how you’re sure they will succeed.
  • 12. List After List After List
    Top 10 sourcing blogs? Check. Top 10 job sites? Check. Top 10 social networks? Check. Top 10 fantasy football sites? Wait, ignore that last one.
  • 11. Comment on the Content Distribution of a Competitor’s Blog
    You could comment on a post, or comment on a comment on a post, but why add to the conversation when you can analyze the distribution of someone else’s posts on risk management vs. best practices vs. auction posts? After all, random statistics are always interesting.
  • 10. Talk about how the latest regional conflict has the potential to threaten supply chains globally
    The India-Pakistan conflict is old news, look for something more obscure like a telephoned threat from the Kahane Chai, a tourist kidnapping in the Sudan, or a bombing by the GSPC. The smaller, the better!
  • 09. Post a Press Release
    It’s free content! After all, the company that issued the release wants as wide a distribution as possible, and they’ll thank you for it. Maybe they’ll even become a sponsor!
  • 08. Post a Resume
    Press releases are a good start, but why stop there when you can continue on your “free content” path and post resumes of your job-seeking friends and colleagues?
  • 07. Invent a New Claim About Best-in-Class Companies
    If others can build analysis companies on this one idea, you should be able to generate months and months of blog content with the same notion. Best-in-Class companies don’t waste money on snake oil — they use whale oil. Best-in-Class companies don’t buy cheap espresso makers — they buy the $5,464.31 Inox. You get the drift.
  • 06. Freak Up the FUD Factor
    Point out how risky life is in general, and how we should be very worried about risk. Find one-in-a-billion examples of freak accidental deaths that can result from everyday activities and then point out why we should not drive over bridges, take elevators, or go golfing on cloudy days. Better yet, raid the Darwin Awards archives and start a campaign against chemistry, clotheslines, and chimneys.
  • 05. Weigh in on an Irrelevant Controversy
    Like why Windows Vista stinks even more than Windows ME.
  • 04. Find Parallels Between Your Personal Life and Your Blog
    Pay too much for that new corkscrew? That’s bad personal spend management. Run out of coffee? That’s bad supply management. Your shoes need to be re-soled? Time for a quality tirade!
  • 03. Poll the Readership On A Random Topic
    Bonus points if it’s a knee-jerk issue guaranteed to elicit a barrage of random musings from the semi-illiterate members of your readership who enjoy “writting on mater’s that don’t effect myeself”.
  • 02. Raid the Trash Bin
    Those half-finished posts that you never finished last month because they didn’t live up to your past editorial standards don’t look so bad any more! Cut and paste paragraphs until you have three quarters of a post, write some random filler on why reverse auctions are the best way to source beer, and … presto … you have a post on good brewery spend management!
  • 01. Recycle Old Posts
    That post you wrote two years ago that everyone forgot about can be tomorrow’s post if you just change the date, and maybe add a new sentence at the beginning or end. Give yourself bonus points if it’s actually someone else’s guest post … what’s the chance they’re still reading your blog anyway if you ran out of meaningful things to say three months ago?

And that, in a nutshell, is my top 15 list of things to do when you’re out of content, courtesy of the blogging elite. In Part II I’ll outline my top 10 list of things I think you should post about if you’re truly out of relevant content and want to at least be creative when you post.

But in the meantime, I’ll use my own Suggestion #3 and troll for comments! Let’s see who can be the first to identify one post in each category from supply and spend management blogs (while limiting himself or herself to a maximum of three posts from any one blog)!

 

Dumb Moments in Business not Aerospace, Automotive, or Bailout Related

Fortune recently published its “21 Dumbest in Business 2008: which had a number of doozies that weren’t aerospace, automotive, or bailout related.

The following are great examples of what not-to-do if you’re responsible and spend-conscious:

  • 999.99 for a Screensaver
    The Apple App Store briefly listed an app called “I Am Rich” that was nothing but a screen-saver whose sole feature was a glowing red jewel. Apparently, eight suckers bought it before Apple quietly removed the application.
  • “Favors” for Oil
    The Department of Interior, responsible for granting leases for energy exploration and production in federal waters, is caught with its pants down. It seems that staff were accepting gifts, engaging in illegal drug use, and having intimate relations with employees of some of the oil companies they were supposed to be overseeing.
  • Microsoft offers 44.6B for a 27.7B Company called Yahoo
    Fortunately for Microsoft, Yahoo chief Jerry Yang decides to be extremely intransigent, and the deal falls through … along with his job.
  • Bloomberg publishes Steve Jobs’ Obituary
    Despite a well-publicized brush with pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs is still very much alive and kicking.

Of course, if you really want to be smart, don’t e-mail your employees telling them that their jobs might be in peril and how their managers will be informing them of the news if you’re not quite ready to send your employees packing, like Carat did.

The Wit & Wisdom of the SpendFool 2008

In keeping with holiday tradition, I again bring you the Wit and Wisdom of the SpendFool, culled from all of the foolish comments I could find on Spend Matters * during the last year. As usual, the SpendFool left some juicy tidbits again this year, and I hope you enjoy them, along with his 2006 and 2007 contributions, because, if the Fool is true to his word, 2008 might be the last year he leaves any tidbits of merit. (See the seventh comment on “Emptoris Empower: Additional Comments to Share”.)

The Wit

From Everything IS Bigger in Texas But 15 Million Suppliers is Not Something to Brag About

Well, if there’s one thing you can’t accuse Texas of (besides turning the town drunk into the governor and the POTUS), it’s supplier diversity!

From
The WSJ Shows No Love for Aberdeen

As Groucho Marx quipped, “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that had me as a member”.

From
Charlie Dominicks War

I’m going to be introducing a certification called the Society of Professional Analysts in Supply Management, or SPASM for short. Some of the modules will include key skills such as:

  1. seeing some trends in business week, writing them up, and then claiming credit for them the following year
  2. knowing when to create a good rumor or dredge up an old one (e.g., Ariba getting bought is always a good one)
  3. knowing when to write up a lovely alert on Emptoris and their success at GSK and Motorola (when the bill comes due on their renewal)
  4. running from the ERP vendor analyst handlers at a trade show in order to actually go look at real functionality and talk to real customers

I’ll also add an extra training module on an old system that is important to know about it if you’ve never been exposed to it, and that is the Manufacturing Information Access Software System. If you’ve never heard of it, I HIGHLY recommend you Googling it to find out some great user comments about it.

From
What’s in Store for SAP SRM 7.0

Thermodynamics says that vapor will become solid at higher pressure, and I can tell you that the pressure is definitely on at many marquis SAP shops where the Procurement executives feel like Charlie Brown with the football getting pulled away again.

From
Wahhooo! We’re Making More Money — Just Not Enough to Fight Off Inflation

As a sidenote, if you all think I’m too sarcastic, please consider it a marker of higher evolution, not cruelty:
Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

From
Emptoris Empower — Additional Numbers to Share

It’s due to an arcane mathematical effect called Avnermatics where all reported figures geometrically multiply at a constant determined by the proximity of an acquisition and it’s also like “Schrodinger’s cat” in quantum mechanics because you can’t actually measure it, and if you do, you’re likely going to kill it.

The Wisdom

From
Do We REally Need Analyst 2.0?

If the commodity manager doesn’t pay attention to the innovative new suppliers out there, then the commodity manager is an idiot and not doing his/her job, merely prone to racking and stacking stale incumbants rather than identifying discontinuous improvements in the market on behalf of his/her clients. These are the true analysts, those that analyze where things are going, and where the innovations are happening (and putting it into context for a client with a very complex organization situation) rather than trying to put new shinola on old sh&t.

From
How Will Green e-Procurement Play in a Recession?

If you set the way back machine to the great sensei Genichi Taguchi and his definition of waste, it was actually a loss function to the consumer and to society – so this correlation is both understandable and natural.

From
The WSJ Shows No Love for Aberdeen

What’s funny is that nobody from Aberdeen ever chimes in on this blog defending themselves and their “honor” (ok , stop laughing). Why? Because they know it to be true and the analysts are using Aberdeen (to build their personal brands) as much as Aberdeen uses them. To quote Bob Seeger, they were “getting their share”.

From
Exploring the True Costs of SaaS

You have the 2 opposing philosophies of the assemble/maintain your own versus going for a turnkey low-maintenance option. Thing is … both are needed (strategic stuff for the former) … in line with “IT doesn’t matter” (in fine print: for the commodity stuff) … BUT, mass customization hinges upon great design, and SaaS offerings can’t just have the many-to-many data model and a few data dictionaries. SaaS is the right concept, but time will tell how much customization features will be available as native functionality so that the platform will be commonized, but will be tunable (e.g., plug-in’able content) to specific user requirements.

From
Mickey D’s — Eating Cost Increases for Customers

The biggest cost though of beef is its impact on global warming. Methane is 21x more ‘warming’ than CO2 and organic beef is even worse given the time it takes to get an organic cow to slaughter weight. Dairy cows also are part of the equation. So, my friends, it’s great that you’ve switched to a hybrid car and changed your lightbulbs, but you now need to give up cheeseburgers and milk in order to save our planet. I guess it’s veggie burgers and soy lattes in our foreseeable future. Otherwise, we need start doing methane reclamation not just in landfills, coal mines, and manure piles, but also in livestock, and that’s just not a visual that I care for on a bike ride through Vermont or Wisconsin.

From
Supplier Management Lessons from Steely Dan

A Procurement organization should be ‘fit for purpose’, and it’s less about the size of the spend than how you use it… which is to deliver lasting value.

From
RNC Final Dispatch — I Blog You Decide

In procurement, it’s all about talent, and transformation. And we need a whole lotta both.

Well, that’s likely it. I hope you enjoyed this three-part series.

* Note that all posts pre-2012 were removed in the 2023 site upgrade.

Spend Rappin’ (Repost)


To the Tune of “Christmas Rappin'” by Kurtis Blow

Don’t you give me all that JIVE about code you used before I’s alive,
Cause this ain’t 1965 – ain’t even 1999!
Now I’m the guy named Lamoureux and Spend is one thing that I know.
So every year, just about this time, I celebrate it with this rhyme!

Gonna save it, gonna shave it, gonna make it good,
Gonna take it all down through your neighborhood.
Gonna wring it, gonna sling it till it’s understood
My rap’s about to happen, like the knee you was slappin;
Or the toe you been tappin’ on a hunk of wood.

‘Bout a two fisted dude, with a friendly attitude
and a sack full of savings for the people on the block.
He’s an old grey beard, maybe looks kind of weird,
and if you ever seen him he could give you quite a shock.

Now people let me tell ya about last year
when the dude came slicing spend through here.
Well the wit was out, the gloves on the ground,
folks stayed to watch him cut it down.

The beat was thumping on the block,
and they were glued to just one spot,
as the master cubed at a solid pace,
…
got a taste of the waste thrown in your face.
…

And this old spend slayer laid down a heavy layer
of his slicing dicing rhythm to a tree-mapped beat.
And the guy with the database started to participate,
and I could sure appreciate the spend roll up neat.

We were all in the mood so we had a little brood,
not a sound did abound, as he plowed through the mound,
then I thought I heard a gasp as he sliced through the past,
and laid our mav’rick spend bare, as I flopped into a chair.

So I went to the attic where I thought about the static
that our last spending tool was programmed to always give.
And I threw up my arms at the industry yarns,
Just a trick, a nick, and I’d let the suckers in.

He was quick, he was sharp and always on the mark,
he had a lot of success on his chinny, chin, chin.
He avowed, he was proud of the savings he allowed
from the tip of the ‘burg he found the savings within.

He’s cool for a fool throwin’ out every rule
every hour of the day when the cold winds blow.
Though the beard was-a cleared, I still have never cheered
like I did in the storm when I was in the know.

I said you’re right, my spend’s a fright,
Can you stop for a drop before you have to go?
He said “Sure, Bill, if the wine is chilled
and I’ll stake a steak down at the Monaco”.

So we went out back and discussed the stack
of invoices that had all been over-paid
and every dollar spent off of the contract
and then we laid it all bare till we made the grade.

And before he went this fine old gent,
finding gifts went to sift through his spend reports.
From the top to the bottom he reached in and got ’em,
spend trends for me, and variances from torts.

And the higher-ups got presents too,
Banned suppliers and a stale contract.
A bloated pie ’bout as clear as the sky,
the best that money couldn’t buy.

Cause money could never ever buy the feelin,
the one that comes when there’s no concealin’
of your spend by a tool that’s new
and that’s what Strovink’s does for you.

The dude ya read’s back at the keys,
up late till all’s where it should be.
But if he were right here tonight,
he’d say Truthful Spending and to all a good night!

This post originally ran a year ago today.