Fanfair

Remember the Montreal Olympics in 1976? I think a lot of people in Montreal do because they're still paying for it today.

Anyhoo, remember Emerson, Lake and Palmers' Fanfair for the Common Man? It came on my MP3 player in the car just now. What a masterpiece! At least for about a third of it, then it goes all prog rock weird and it just goes on and on and on for about ten minutes longer than it should do. There are quite a few songs like that, Led Zeppelin did that too.

They don't half go on, those prog-rock types. I don't know who they're trying to impress, perhaps they just get carried away with the moment, so many moments.


So busy!
I love it when colleagues complain about being so busy that they don't even have time to put out the fires, yet they fill their diaries with about five meetings with the same person each week. In fact, today, I noticed the same three people in conflabs from 9.30 to 10.40am, at which point they came into a team meeting and talked to each other some more. This was followed by further discussions between the three of them from 11.15am to 12.30pm, and again later on in the afternoon. All three are supposed "senior managers" who seem to need to discuss everything at length rather than just getting on with it.

Annoying? Most definitely.

My favourite ploy of theirs is placing the "meeting in progress" post-it on the closed door of their office to prevent people disturbing them.

That's leadership for you.


Gender queer
I'm trying to get my head around the concept of somebody being gender queer. Max in the L Word is gender queer apparently - a lesbian who has transitioned and is now a gay bloke. Trump is much more worldly wise about this sort of thing and, amused at my confusion, she just told me to google it.

What the hell, so long as somebody's happy and harmless, eh?

But the L Word. I don't know whether I'm really enjoying series 5 because I'm getting it about 8 months early and it feels "special", or because it's one of the best ones so far, but it's bloody fantastic!

And the next series of the US Office starts in April too. Telly is my friend again.


Priscilla
Currently watching Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, what a great film. Classic Australian cinema, like so many others of the era. There was a time when you'd see virtually the same cast, in different roles, in everything that appeared in Australian film and TV. It seems to have gone quiet now that all their best actors have gone to Hollywood... or L'Oreal.

They're worth it.


Vista
Now that I have my new laptop, I've been busy getting used to using Vista. It's OK I suppose, with a few "oooh, look at that" bits. I think some commentators have said that it's how XP was supposed to have been. Who knows.


Opera
Why is it that you can't make out what people are singing in opera, no matter what language the thing is written in? And they complain about music these days.