Lost punctuation.

As if Lost didn’t have enough problems. The ponderous pace of the plotting, the characters’ exceptionally poor communication and conflict resolution skills, its myriad empty clues that lead to nothing… well, they might, but you’ll have to wait for the finale of Season 17 to find out what. Well, we can now add bad subtitle punctuation to the list.


Look at this poor man! He just happened to glance down and see that subtitle, and now he’s awash in shame at his association with the show. He just can’t believe what his eyes are seeing. Although maybe the subtitles are right and that actually is the correct translation. “You are husband, Jin is wife. Your whole relationship is completely dysfunctional!” Or maybe ‘husband’ is the Korean word for ‘annoying’? I couldn’t say, as the only Korean word I know is ‘annyong’, which doesn’t mean annoying, but does look a lot like it! Maybe that’s a clue?

Or maybe this ‘unintentional error’ is actually another profound and incredibly clever (wink-wink) clue about the reality of The Others?!!! Maybe The Others are seeking to disrupt the laws of punctuation through manipulation of the earth’s magnetic field? Who can say? What am I missing? Wait, let me guess: nothing?

untitled.

hurgh! feeling a bit flat today. post-commonwealth games blues, you know? the party’s over, the bunting’s coming down, the fish have gone, the smurfs have disappeared, and the pursuit of excellence has settled back into the everyday, humdrum struggle with mediocrity. what’s a world-class city to do? i hope thorpie’s feeling better.

Alpha bets.

I'm running a book. I’d love to hear any predictions for any Alpha variables: date of arrival, weight, height, hair colour, eye colour, etc, but particularly what you think the name might be...

Whoever comes closest will win... um, the respect and admiration of… well, one or two people, maybe three, as well as the Honour of Changing the First Nappy. ('Changing the First Nappy' prize is certainly negotiable but is not redeemable for cold, hard cash).

Microsoft iPod.

If you haven’t seen the Microsoft iPod packaging video you should definitely check it out. The update is that it's now been revealed that the video was made by none other than Microsoft itself! You can read the story at the iPod Observer. Hilarious.

This baby really moves…

Well, we can say with some degree of certainty now: 14 days to go! A degree of certainty because it was discovered at Kate’s last scan a week ago that the lil' tine-eh bear-bee is actually no such thing: it’s a monstrous, 90th percentile, camel-sized thing that’s currently eyeballing the eye of a needle, and when it’s big they don’t let you go over term. And please note that I use words like ‘monstrous’ and ‘camel’ with the utmost affection and tenderness, of course.

Waiting for this baby is like every idealized, childhood fantasy of Christmas morning, but only a million times more exciting and fantastic. With the exception of my Power Mac G5, I can’t think of something I’ve waited for with such an eager expectation. That is, of course, not true: there’s my KERN zip-up as well. Incidentally, I just noticed Apple’s introductory spiel to the G5:

Power one up today and blaze through your work, deliver ahead of schedule, and astound your clients — because this baby really moves.

You thought it was ridiculous of me to compare my child to a G5, but if, “this baby really moves,” and “delivers ahead of schedule,” as hoped, well I can think of worse comparisons to draw and hope for!

In the lead up to B-Day, each new day is certainly one to enjoy and experience to the full, but I can’t help but be impatient as I wait to discover who this person is going to be. There’s whole lifetime of learning, living and growing to go, but I'm sick of speculating about what could be, and I want to get started now! I know it’ll come soon enough, and that I should enjoy these few final poo-free days while I can, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m already keen and ready to garry go.

And of course there’s always the desire to see Kate’s gruelling ordeal come to an end. What a difficult nine month, hurl-fest it’s been, and now the prize-winning pumpkin she’s carrying about is making it harder to get around, as well as making it difficult to sleep. Which is all good training for the sleep deprivation to come; as Kate keeps telling herself while doing the grocery shopping online at 3 in the morning…

Soon, soon, soon…

National banks on small change.

Have you seen the National Australia Bank’s new look?


No longer ‘National’, they’re now just ‘nab’. I’ve never actually heard anyone call the bank ‘nab’, but I’m told this change reflects common usage among National, sorry, nab employees and customers. I guess I don’t talk to enough people about banking.

I find it bewildering that a bank would choose to identify themselves with a word meaning, ‘to take or grab suddenly’ and ‘to catch and arrest a criminal’. I mean, their candour is refreshing, but none the less surprising. Even more surprising when you consider this quote from an article in The Age:

“The bank's rebranding has been characterised by marketing experts and banking analysts as an attempt to assert a new identity after it discovered rogue traders on its foreign exchange desk had lost $360 million through shonky accounting.”

Let’s refocus, people. Let’s leave the past in the past. Let’s put a new face on things and boldly move forward towards a prosperous future, and let’s do it under a name that means to take, to grab, and to arrest a criminal.

That really is a bold move! I don’t know. Maybe people won’t be affected by any alternate meanings, maybe I’ll be the only person who double-takes at ‘nab’, maybe the National will be revitalized and business will boom, and if so, well, good luck to them. Many happy banking returns.

AWB crisis claims unlikely scalp.

I always knew this AWB/AWB crisis had the potential for misunderstanding and trouble, but I never thought it’d happen with me.

There I was last Saturday night, having dinner with AWB and his wife Laura during a lightning visit to Australia. Well, it’s a well-known fact that all good things must come to end, and this evening was no exception, but when the bill arrived, AWB offered to pay and, I’ll tell you, I froze. Alarm bells exploded inside my head, and my guts twisted with uncertainty and conflicting emotions.

I felt like I was stepping onto a slippery slope; sure, it started with a free dinner, but where would it end up? Me, splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country in disgrace, or even worse, shipped to Iraq and dumped in the dock with Saddam?! I mean, how would you respond if you were offered a ‘free meal’ by the AWB? (And to me this is the AWB). Would you think twice?

I quickly cleared my head, and realised the foolishness of my thoughts, but that I could hesitate for a moment - that I could question everything I’ve always taken for granted - shows how insidious this situation is, and how real is its potential for harm.

Then, while still reeling from my brush with corporate kickbacks, JJ emailed me* some breaking and troubling news concerning AWB and another of my close friends who had somehow been drawn into this scandalous affair: ‘AWB bigger terror threat than Thomas: QC’.


It suddenly occurred to me that my friend ‘Bomber’ Thomas might have got his nickname for reasons other than his love of the Essendon Football Club. I’ll make no unsubstantiated claims though, and take consolation in the fact that if AWB is, as claimed, a bigger threat than Thomas, and if I can handle AWB, then I should be ok with this new challenge as well. Time will tell.


* Let me restate that this image was sent to me by JJ, which is why it has that Fisher Price, pre-school look-and-feel of Windoze XP, and not the refined sophistication of OS X. :-)

Yo.

I always have trouble typing ‘you’ for some reason. I always leave the ‘u’ off; in some sort of ironic, post-modern, self-referential, conceptually-based profundity or whatever… Actually, the significance of taking the ‘u’ out of ‘you’ had never occurred to me until just typing that ‘u’ then. I thought it all had something to do with my fingers, but maybe it’s my subconscious acting on my very conscious loathing of the ubiquitous, modern-times ‘you’ replacement?

We’re so lazy these days that 2 extra keystrokes is 2 much 2 ask. Who's so busy that they can’t find time for a couple of extra keystrokes here and there? How much easier is it to type really? On keyboard or keypad. How many baby harp seals are you clubbing by using 'you'? And don’t even talk to me about ‘ur’. It’s moronic. ‘Ur’ is what you say when you’re trying to work out 2+2 and you just can’t do it. “Urrrrrrrr… dunno an’ stuff?” I think it’s the one I hate the most… scratch that, I just remembered ‘2moz’.

Anyway, I didn’t start out to write about grammar and how much pleasure I find in keying in words in full into text messages (and using correct punctuation). I just wanted to comment on how I keep typing ‘yo’ instead of ‘you’, and how it’s a problem because there’s always the chance, particularly with clients, that they might think I'm being a bit too familiar, or that I'm trying to be hip and with it, down with the Now generation. “Do yo want me to email that PDF to yo?” I’m only a couple of emails away from, “Sup dawg?” Help!