I’ve decided to listen to EVERYTHING on my iTunes. It sounds hellishly dramatic, and in some ways it is, particularly this first 10 minutes or so. Why? Because I’ve decided to listen to it from smallest file to largest - which means I’m currently privy to bursts of introductory drumbeats interspersed with short vocal pieces, comedy skits and John Lennon quotes. I know eventually it’ll become punk songs a minute long, followed by those new wave sellouts who could play for two, the perfect three-minute pop songs, the post-45″ four, the rock five, metal six, prog-rock seven, eight, nine and beyond, then a few days.. weeks… later the epic classics, followed by the full-album-downloads-noone-ever-bothered-to-cut-up and then wrongly miscast Lost fan podcasts on how Faraday will change the future I haven’t deleted by then. 

Provided I go through with this insane plan.

It’s Mothers’ Day tomorrow/today. Tariqa hates surprises, so I bought her a dress she indicated she would like, and it arrived a day or two ago with an outdated, yet impressive price tag in the triple digits. We’ve kept up this ludicrous facede it’s actually the cross trainer I bought a day or two ago, which actually cost triple digits, which is the kind of thing I’m buying cause we have all this space to fill in the new place. 

After 15 minutes of listening to my iTunes from smallest file to largest, I’m a little disturbed that I’ve heard the Who sing how worried they are little Tommy is going to be staying with paedophile Uncle Ernie three times already. Do the Faraday and tell him not to go, already!

My cross trainer hasn’t arrived yet, so despite shaving completely yesterday, I still don’t get ID-d at the supermarket. 

Next week my new, music/tech blog goes live on 3news.co.nz.  It’s called ‘Eight Track Mind’. I’ll link when it arrives.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I'm not gonna list everything I/we got for Annual Gift Day, cause tariqa probably already has/will. The day itself was fun though, hung out all day at Tariqa's dad's with her brothers and sisters and brothers in law and kids galore... twas fun.

Unlike being back at work, grrrr. At least the manager is away, so we're not doing a hell of a lot, but still. A couple more people I know are planning to quit ASAP too now.

BUT ANYWAY... we got another cat! I'd post a pic but don't have one yet. He's a tiny little 9 week old ginger furball we've named Scully. So far, Sophie's showed her anger by running away (last night at least), and Kosh grumbled, but is still hanging around like normal, just avoiding the bedroom/bathroom where Scully is. We were only meant to get a flea collar... but he looked so sad as all his brothers and sisters had been taken and he was all by himself... and Tariqa and I do have this idea to get a new cat/kitten for each year we're together. I'm aware this could potentially leave us with 20 cats at any one time at some point in the future, but hey. I assume we'll have a bigger place by then.

Mum got me a $50 Warehouse voucher (lots of thought put into that one, huh), which was ill advised; not because it's a stink present or anything, but I take an extremely long time to spend money when there are a million billion choices, and I don't have something in mind already. Like, when I go to the video store, I could easily chew up half an hour choosing which video to watch. Yesterday we spent about twenty minutes looking, gave up till today, where I spent nearly an hour trying to choose... I ended up with some tennis balls for the kitten (they don't have a pet section anymore), a box of biscuits (I ran out of time to buy lunch), a bag of CCs (ditto), and Rise of Nations - a game I've always wanted to check out, cause it looks like a cross between Age of Empires and Civilization. Pretty much random, huh.

I could easily have ended up with The Sims 2: Open for Business, or Call of Duty 3, or Battlefield 2, or a box of CDRs, or a Star Wars action figure. If they'd had Lego Star Wars for PS2, I'd have got that (they only had Lego Star Wars 2, which was a little more than I had to spend). Probably. I read this book a few weeks back that argued the reason people are getting more anxious and unhappy with thier lives despite objectively, everything getting better, is that we see every option rejected as a missed oppurtunity - we can only do/choose so much. The modern world is awash with choices and stuff, but we're still limited to making a similar number of choices about things as our ancestors did; but where for them, it would've been a choice between A and B, and if they chose A they'd sometimes regret not choosing B; and that was about it. Nowadays if you choose A, it's not just what could have been if you chose B, it's also what could have been if you chose C, or D, or E... and so on down to Z. That's 25 different choices you could have made weighing on your mind as opposed to 1 - and in most cases, there's no way you could have even properly weighed up the options of all 25; so in the end, you've made your one choice, rejected maybe 5 or 6, but are left wondering if one of the other 18 or so could have been better than the few you considered in the time available!

And that's an amateur summing up of the book, and why I feel kind of stink with what I ended up buying, despite the fact I've wanted to play this game for ages. Maybe I should have bought something else entirely? Considering that would have opened my options up from a decision between 10 or so games to a million or so different possibilities, perhaps it's best I stuck to that section of the store... or I'd need more than a lunch hour. A lunch month, perhaps. That would be nice. But not if I spent it in the Warehouse...

Okay, this entry is going nowhere.

When I was younger I told myself I was never going to get a driver's license; and/or I was never going to buy a vehicle until I could get either a Formula One racing car or a tank. I suppose now I'll just have to settle for being in the 99.9th percentile of such madness, as (with a little help/pressure from the gf) I'm now the proud (I suppose) holder of a learner's license.

It was easy to get too. I completed the test in less time than it took to queue up for it! And I only got one question wrong - lets just say if I'm drving you somewhere and we're heading into the sun, you'd better remind me to slow down and pull over until the sun is no longer in our eyes. Or something. It was a silly question.

So if nothing else, this means I'll be able to become a member of any future video stores/libraries without drama. That, and I can finally retire my 18+ card - though it is without a doubt the card I've managed not to lose the longest! I must've lost about ten EFTPOS cards since 1999, yet ye olde 18+ has always been there. It doesn't even expire till 2010, though I already bear only a vague resemblance to the skinny, stubbly teen in the picture (which I took myself in a sticker booth, in the K Mart plaza).

Only a couple of months, if that, before I start my course. It can't come too soon, I'm hating my job even more than ever at the moment. The hypocrisy is getting pretty silly. After a lecture from our team manager about the importance of customer service (and how it is on an equal footing with sales), he unveiled the targets for the next quarter - call quality and service are no longer measured, and the importance of sales has increased from 50% of our targets to 70%. And if you tried calling us today and were on hold for a long, long time, that'd be 'cause at a point where we already had 33 calls waiting to be answered, the entire staff on this floor were pulled off the phones to award someone a prize for getting second place in sales for the past few weeks. Priorities, huh.

Okay, it's actually the next day now, the last Friday before Annual Gift Day. It's going to be perhaps the least exciting Annual Gift Day ever, as I've already got the presents from Tariqa (early presents both of them - new shoes and driver's license) and my mum and sister ($50 of Warewhare vouchers)... though Tariqa has picked up an extra present for me, which I've guessed are socks. A traditional present, she said... I have to make sure wherever we go over the Annual Gift Day and Month Counting Reset day breaks that there's TV though, as TV2 is replaying Lost season two, late at night. I missed Lost the first time it played, in civilian hours, so am catching up... tiredly.

WEEKLY TOP FIVE!!!

1. The Decemberists - Picaresque
2. The Beatles - Love
3. My Morning Jacket - Z
4. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
5. Grandaddy - The Fambly Cat

You know you're working in a call centre when you go to bowl a bouncy stress ball to someone across the room from you, and they whip out a hidden cricket bat. Dang Indians and their natural cricket abilities. And there's always one guy who tends to exaggerate the truth a little, though I'm sure that's common to every workplace, not just call centres.

Last week our particular guy told me when he was last in the US, he saw a one TERABYTE iPod. And he just told me now that George Lucas is remaking Star Wars 4-6, with a new cast.

WTF?!