Favourite movie SCENES.

Everybody makes a list of their favourite movies, but have you ever stopped to wonder what your favourite movies SCENES are? Well, here are mine: 1. The running gun battle in Heat. Seriously, not many shootouts get as gritty and realistic as this one. Not so much for the thousands of bullets being fired, but more so for the deathly silence between salvos with only the sound of breathing being heard. I don't even think there is any background music playing either. 2. Death Star trench run in Star Wars. Despite being made before I was born (yes, by a good 2 years even!) the death star trench run has you right in that cockpit with Luke. 3. The trashed Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Never, in any movie I have seen, is the word 'shit' so eloquently spoken as when after the Ferrari gets knocked off its axle stands and careers out of the window into the forest below. 4. The shotgun under the newspaper in Terminator 2. The scene, where Arnie walks into the building with a newspaper, then, in slow motion, whilst walking with intent through the hallway, the newspaper falls off, revealing the 12-gauge shotgun underneath. Classic cinema. 5.The "I Just Sharted" scene in Along Came Polly: Despite the fact that this movie just is not funny, the scene where Phillip Seymour Hoffman tells Ben Stiller that they need to leave the party because he just 'sharted' is simply one of the funniest moments in cinema. 6. Arnie having breakfast in Pumping Iron: A lesson in how to fully psyche out an opponent. Arnie, sitting having breakfast with Louie Ferrigno, his main rival, on the morning of competing at the Mr Olympia, and telling him how is he going to feel when he holds up the trophy. Confidence with a capital C. Oh, and then questioning Louie on his choice of food for breakfast, sowing even more doubt in his mind. Poor Louie. 7. Private Pyle wigging out in Full Metal Jacket: Yeah, when he shoots the drill instructor in the toilet. You might think yourself an enlightened person, and think "oh no, vengeance is never an answer to anything", but after watching Pyle get continuously harassed and berated by the drill sergeant over the course of one agonising hour, even fricken Ghandi would be calling for some sort of vengeance to be served. And when he gets it, you can hear that little voice in your head go "yeah, take that you evil S.O.B.!" 8. The "My Sharona" scene in Reality Bites. Haven't we all wanted to have a boogy at the local 7-11?? 9. After John Cusack's character in Grosse Pointe Blank kills that guy in the school corridor and sits down and says to himself "This is me breathing." Seriously, if you lie in bed at night, and say that to yourself, you get a weird sense of self-realisation. 10. When Steven Segal shoots the arch villain in Under Siege 2. Despite this movie being, well, a bit below par, the scene where Segal shoots the arch villian and his laptop to foil their attempts at global sabotage is just a guilty pleasure to watch.

Band Video!

Me and the band. Outstanding. Never mind the quality by the way....it was filmed on a Nokia N95.

Self sufficiency??

A while ago Miss R and I thought it would be a top idea to grow our own vegetables in our postage stamp sized patch of ground some people may refer to as a back yard. However, with dogs that emit urine that should be confined to toxic waste dumps, it's probably best that we don't. However, if anyone out there should happen to travel on the Epping line, you would notice that at a couple of locations there are some community gardens. In effect, these are little allotments, for people without backyards, where, for a nominal fee, you can grow your own vegies. Awesome huh? I know that in Europe garden allotments are quite common, but unfortunately, not so in inner urban Australia. So made a few inquiries, and found that one of the allotments you have to join the commitee and wait "perhaps" a year for an allotment to become available. The other one run by the council was more promising...or so I though until they said that there was a 5 year waiting list. Yes, FIVE YEARS! So anyway, I gave her my name and phone number over the phone, but I'm pretty sure she was just amusing me and sounded a bit shirty that I had perhaps interrupted her crochet session. So anyway, the only way around this I can see is to start one up myself. There is plenty of vacant land around the Preston/Reservoir area, but whether the council would approve of such a facility is beyond me. Quite frankly, with food prices the way they are, the local council should be opening up more community gardens. I'd love to have a little allotment, to potter about in a few minutes a day...tend to my crop...connect with the earth...you know, all that 'man o' the land' crap.

Other blogs...

Has anyone ever hit the "Next Blog" button on the top left corner of the screen? If you do, you may realise that I am one of the few people who; a)writes a blog in English; b)Doesn't write about their holidays; c)Doesn't write about their children; or d)doesn't do 'scrap booking'.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, yes, after much soul searching we have sold Miss R's beloved Peugeot 205GTi. The poor old girl was starting to show her age and we couldn't afford to give her the love and attention that she so desperately needed to keep on putting along. Here are a few more pics of this wonderful little car taken a while ago. The good news is that the buyer is a Peugeot collector/mechanic and was looking for just such a car for his latest project....to give it an engine transplant and to heavily modify it. The engine will be the same 1.8L 16v turbo engine that was fitted in the monstrous Group B Peugeot 205T16 rally cars of the 1980s capable of up to 600bhp...which in a car of only 850kg is a tad overkill, but still, once he has finished the modification the temptation will be there to buy it back!

Complaint letters

I love writing complaint letters. There is nothing like the feeling of venting pure frustration at faceless organisations who control our lives. My latest gripe has been towards Optus Mobile. with my letter of complain being thus: ____________________________________________________________________ My story.... I recently updated my phone when I had three months left on my contract because my phone was unreliable. I was more than happy to pay out the $27 to obtain a new phone, but I was informed by Optus Shop Northland that this will not be necessary and that it would just be a matter of starting a new contract. I explicitly asked on more than one occasion whether there were any charges with upgrading the phone. I was assured there were none. Fancy my surprise when my new bill arrived in the mail with a $103 'cancellation fee' attached to it. Hey, if I had known it was going to cost me $103 I would've just waited 3 months and got my new phone then. I rang The Optus billing number who said that I should go to the store to sort this matter out. So, I went to the store and they assured me that the problem will be rectified and that I will credited on my next bill. No problem, I'll just pay the cap component of the bill. And that would be the logical thing to do until the credit came through right? Hmmmm, not likely, my next bill was again stating that I was owing $103! So I rang Optus Billing again, who were about as helpful as a sack full of garbage. She told me to go the shop, who I called, but they said it was a billing issue now. I ended up going back to shop in person. The staff there got in touch with the state manager, who said that I had to pay the entire bill BEFORE i got credited. So I found myself in the ridiculous position of having to pay you in order to get credited. Huh? Yeah, I thought so too. Having found out that I had to rustle up these funds at short notice, I called billing AGAIN to inform you that I would pay on the 13/6/08, which I did via B-Pay. Yes, I paid the entire fricken lot because you can't take the time to type a few commands into your computer system. Hey, I'll get three months credited right? But wait, my phone has now been disconnected! Fix this or I'm going to the Ombudsman tomorrow. I shouldn't be disadvantaged for YOUR MISTAKES. Maybe I should bill YOU for my time to sort this mess out? What about the petrol it cost me to go to the store?? _________________________________________________________________________________ ....and hey presto, today my phone is now able to 'magically' make calls. Sometimes a little gentle persuasion...and mention of the ombudsman, goes a long way.

Biggest Loser?? Bring it ON!

As most people who are now grown adults, I am well aware of which foods do not agree with me. Unlike those kids out there with Peanut allergies who seem to make a bee-line straight for the "condiment" aisle at the supermarket and cheat death by playing with the Peanut Butter jars. Luckily my allergies aren't that severe....dairy, or should I say, EXCESS dairy is a real no no, swigging down a gallon of full cream milk is one sure way to empty me out and avocados burn my mouth to the point of blistering. However, something I have eaten this week has definitely not agreed with me. And my stomach had not been very kind in letting me know such matters. For a grand total of 3 days my metabolism has been fueled solely by Salada crackers...yes, Man Size, Snack Size AND Bite Size! As these are the only food items that my stomach has been willing to pass. Everything else that I have tried has ended up in the bottom of the toilet bowl half an hour later. Not nice. However, one must look at positives in these situations and mine is that I have suddenly found myself pulling my belt in a notch and being lighter in the order of 3.5kg. Nothing like a good case of gastro to empty one out. Suffice to say that I now have 3 days of calories to make up and bring my blood sugar levels up to somewhere near normal again. Did someone say Big Mac??

My generation.....

My ears prick up whenever I hear the term "Generation X" and all that goes along with it. I am a child of Baby Boomer parents, ergo, I am Generation X, born in 1974. I guess I'm at the accepted tail end of this group which, apparently, ends with those born in 1976 or so. Anyway, yes, Generation X....it's funny how they put the label on a whole group of people like this. I was listening to a podcast today, and I'll be buggered if I can't re-find the link, but anyway, a few points of note came up. We, Gen Xers have found our careers quite 'hard' for a number of reasons. Firstly, when we left school in the late 80s and 90s, the economy of the world was dire. Jobs were hard to find, parents were being retrenched left right and centre and there was no financial stability. It sapped our confidence in the world at large, we were happy to take a job, any job, just to survive. Now, as a generation, as we move up to higher level positions (those lucky enough to have one) we are again finding our pathway stalled by world economics. On top of this, we have stubborn Baby Boomers who will work until they're 90 years old keeping us waiting for our chance. (I guess we kinda feel like Prince Charles in a way.) And it is not only Baby Boomers, but the Gen Y's behind us, who have no knowledge of 'hard times' have confidence that we could only dream of, hence many of us are being overtaken on career ladders. The Classic Gen X movie, Reality Bites, says it all really. The general state of apathy was never more poetic. We have been disenfranchised with the world the Baby Boomers left us, and yet, we needed to conform to survive. We're the buffer between them and Gen Y, who now have things very, very easy. Technology is leaving us behind. The internet was in its infancy when we hit the work force. Computers were things that were hideously complicated to operate. (Try and get someone under 25 to use Telnet for instance.) But Gen Y, with all their tech talk, are very well versed in modern technologies. The Baby Boomer CEOs just get them to do the tech work, and not us. We're forgotten and left on the scrap heap before we even had a chance to do anything. Oh, and are we pillaged by society? Of course! We get no tax breaks, no rebates, nothing. We can't afford dental surgery because we're paying for someone else's teenager to have porcelain veneers. We're even paying paying for the next generation to learn about 'healthy eating' and that drugs are bad. We're paying for the baby boomers to enjoy cheaper phone and electricity bills than we could ever have dreamed of, oh, and we're adding very nice sums to their superannuation funds, which, knowing our good fortune, will go belly up just in time for our retirement, because as if those baby boomer CEOs really give a toss after they've cashed in on their gravy train. Yes, that is a chip on my shoulder....got something to say about it??

Something funny I did...

Of teaching and other things....

My apologies for not having written a post of late, but in all honesty, life has been ticking along on a nice even keel of late. But, as I have mentioned before, nothing mind shatteringly bad happens to me, and yet, nothing earth shatteringly great ever happens to me either. But it's all about perspective isn't it? If I were a homeless person, on the street, I'd be over the moon to be able to afford a house, put food on a table, sleep in a bed etc. I count my lucky stars that I don't live that kind of existence. But complacency is a dangerous thing. Put it this way; when I landed a job working in the mines of WA and earning, let's face it, for a 22 year old, a dangerous amount of money, I never found myself particularly well off. And yet, when I took a 40% pay cut to go into teaching, I managed to make ends meet quite okay, although my standard of living had taken a giant leap backwards. Goes to show, the more you have, the more you spend, and the more you want. The unfortunate thing is, since leaving the mines 10 years ago, I'm still not earning anywhere near what I was back then, you would think that after 10 years in the work force that that would be different, but alas no. Which brings me to something else. The Australian Education Union, and the state government, is becoming increasingly concerned over the declining numbers of teachers in the state school system. This is on top of a booming population that shows no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, Australia is not alone in this predicament, so poaching teachers from overseas is not going to solve anything. I went into teaching with quite noble intent, the working conditions didn't seem that bad (compared to an open pit mine), the hours weren't 12 hour shifts and the holidays seemed pretty good. So why, after 7 years, did it all change? Why have I just become another statistic to the dwindling numbers of teachers? In the end yes, it did come down to selfish reasons such as pay and conditions. Quite frankly, if everyone in society had to be a teacher for a day they would understand the pressures faced by those in the profession. The exhaustion, the stress of trying to get things done in limited amounts of time, cos hey, in 2 minutes 30 kids are going to be coming in through that door and you still haven't gotten to the photocopier yet. As I became more experienced, I was lumped with greater and greater responsibilities, to the detriment of the kids in my classroom. I could see that I was heading towards becoming a senior teacher or, heaven forbid, a Vice Principal. There was nowhere else to go, except out. I received in the mail not long ago my final "Statement of Service" from the education department. Also, my education login on the government intranet has been wiped. Seven years. Where did it go? All gone and did I get any thanks? Pffft, what do you reckon?