OMG Marketing people infuriate me

Why are there 3 brands of water on my desk?

Water is water, surely. Why is it "Australia's premium spring water" or "Australian Spring water for Australia" or "the spring water for Australians"? I'm not sure. They kinda taste the same.

They're actually just water.

None of them are a shonky orange juice/vodka/in a water bottle mix that we took into the cricket 100 years ago so are much less likely to get you in trouble now.

Top 10 Music Videos

In no particular order.....

The criteria considered here was that a video had to not only be incredible, but it had to have changed the face of music video by its existence.  A lot of otherwise brilliant videos were ruled out as a result.  The final list...

1. Take On Me - AHA
2. Rock DJ – Robbie Williams
3. Money for Nothing – Dire Straits
4. Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel
5. Thriller – Michael Jackson
6. Material Girl – Madonna
7. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
8. Weapon of Choice – Fat Boy Slim
9. Everybody Hurts – REM
10. Around The World – Daft Punk
    

An honorable mention goes to ‘Baby One More Time’ by Britney Spears.  


L.

Sequel due out in May

The sequel always generates mixed emotions for me. On the one hand, when you love a film, it's exciting to look forward to getting more; more of the characters, the sets, the jokes, the adventures, etc. But then, on the other hand, some of them are especially dreadful. Statistically, this is more likely, as a sequel that outshines its predecessor is somewhat rare.

So here's a list dedicated to, IMHO, the best sequels put to film.

1. Aliens
   
2. The Empire Strikes Back - some debate on this one, but it has less whiney Luke, more Darth, and perhaps the most famous sequel twist involving, you know, Luke's father and that....
3. Terminator 2 - appropriate and plausible lapse of time (both real time and story time) between the films, excellent use of terminology, and some exceptional oneliners that have entered the lexicon for all eternity.
4. Ice Age 2 - it's all relative. This was so much more enjoyable than the first film for me., even though neither is spectacular.
   

Hmm, this is a short list. Let's look at the sequels I was particularly unmoved by, to clearly make my point.

1. Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest - A medley of clever fight scenes. Very little storyline to speak of. Well that's not strictly true, but it's hard to rationalise it all as the same story, it's just too disjointed.
2. The Matrix Reloaded - So dumb have erased it from my psyche.
3. Every formulaic straight to video Disney sequel. They go like this: take dilemma/challenge of first film and generate the exact opposite dilemma. Pose this dilemma to offspring of first film's character. Voila, crap sequel.
4. American Pie 2 - if there is no plausible reason for any of the characters to return to the scene of the crime and do it all again, then give it up. Ditto for films where the world ended, all the characters died, or the lead characters fell in love and got married. The story is over!

There's a lot of okay sequels that i'm not going to talk about here. There also needs to be a special mention for Kill Bill vol 2. I don't consider this a sequel, moreso one film in two volumes - it is freaking awesome, so don't go complaining that I left it out, ok?

Songs for Survivors

Obvious:
"Eye of the Tiger" Survivor
"I Will Survive" Gloria Gaynor
"Survivor" Destiny's Child
"Irreplaceable" Beyonce
"Good Luck" Basement Jaxx

Borderline:
"Stronger" Britney Spears
"Breaking Free" Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens from the High School Musical soundtrack
"You Don't Own Me" Bette Midler (or The First Wives Club - Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Dianne Keaton)
"When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" Billy Ocean
"I Move On" Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta-Jones from the Chicago soundtrack


Inspirational:


"I Know Where I've Been" Queen Latifah from the Hairspray soundtrack





Gorgeous:


"Shine" Take That


"Celebration" Kylie Minogue


"Young Hearts Run Free" Kym Mazelle from the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack

The thing about cities

1. Easy to get around, you can walk to everywhere,
2. but there’s a maccas and a coffee chain on every corner, so you don’t have to
3. People tell you they’ll be in ‘early’ tomorrow
4. they arrive at 9:30
5. and leave at 4.
6. people are everywhere
7. they don’t look at each other
8. they don’t talk to each other
9. they bump into each other
10. this is the city version of community engagement
11. and because it’s such a big place a random person in my team
12. has a boyfriend from my town
13. his parents live on the street behind me
14. and teach at my kids’ school
15. but there is sushi on every street and I like that very much

the absolute happiest thought

Was trying to think of the mostest happy-making thing:
an excellent book plus no interruptions
pop song that reminds you of something good
fresh-baked bread plus EV Olive oil
good, good, smooth sleep
dance music that hits that perfect beat boy

Big fat cranky pants list

this is like a debrief dumping list of stuff that gives me the pip, after having a couple of "action" filled weeks, I have to say this and maybe once it's out in the ether I won't keep talking about it but probably not:
There are some things that are exceptionally specialy annoying:
people who pop up from their cubicle and offer advice when it's so not warranted or even useful.
actually, people who won't do their job and won't shut the freak up when it has nothing to do with them. O yes, that annoys me so much I want to make rude hand gestures at them.
service guys when lie about when stuff was shipped
people who won't answer their calls when you REALLY need to know where something is (like PCs or phones or filing cabinets)
people who don't appreciate how much the Pet Shop Boys rock.
City based people who have no concept of how little service we have in the country and how big a deal it is that I know where the patch panel meets with the switch.
that nobody understands how cool it is when I can plug in network access for someone (esp a person I like)
and nobody gets (except maybe Shannon who gets a lot more than everyone thinks she does) how disproportionately happy I am when the phones and the freaking filing cabinets finally turn up.

Things that rhyme with boring

You know how at work, sometimes, you have to go to presentations and stuff.  Some of them sound interesting, but then it turns out they're not.  This list was written at one of those...

Things that rhyme with boring

• snoring
• ignoring
• (asleep on the) flooring
• 1900-TRAPDOOR-ing
• blah blah gabor-ing
• drawing
• through my brain a rat is gnawing
• it’s as fun as manuring
• the dentist may be more alluring
• from the edge clawing
• 2:30 appointment is reassuring (added at 2:10)
• enough guffawing!
• I wish beer was a-pouring
  

I went to the 2:30 appointment from here.   And, by the way, the 2:30 appointment was real.  Thank you to those who thought me clever enough to have made it up for the sake of leaving the meeting room!