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Esto­nian band Ruf­fus gets it. Their entry into the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test for Esto­nia was about “The 80s Com­ing Back”

you know they say it’s just the eighties com­ing back

can you feel it’s just the eighties com­ing back

aw i know it’s just the eighties coming

eighties com­ing eighties coming

eighties com­ing back

Pos­ted from: Macin­tosh Ti Power­Book, run­ning MacOS X 10.2.3 with Bluetooth (sim­pler, more integ­rated than Win­dows XP) using Optus GPRS (also more and bet­ter integ­rated than Win­dows XP). Just double-checking that this works. Seems to drop out a little quickly…

In all this talk of 1980s music, I keep for­get­ting that Crowded House’s Don’t Dream Its Over was released in 1987, there­fore mak­ing it a 1980s clas­sic. Neil “dont­ated” the song to the NZ Tour­ism Board in their advert­ising cam­paign for New Zea­l­and. “In 5 days you’ll feel 100%”. Too right!

Just prov­ing my point that the 1980s are cool: Holden are now advert­ising the Bar­ina with a rework­ing of the 1983 hit: A-Ha’s Take on Me. Go Morton!

Can the only logical reason be that we teen­agers of the 1980s are now cashed up? Are the advert­isers pur­posely try­ing to use nos­tal­gia to free us of our dol­lars? Does Adam Sandler’s The Wed­ding Singer have to answer for this new wave [hehehe], or is it my fault due to the Pho­toshop 6.0 Roadshow’s “1980s Music Trivia” contest?

If World War II had the same imme­di­acy of media and inform­a­tion flow as we wit­ness today — would there have been any more wars? What is it about human nature that forces people into a “dic­tat­or­ship” mode and reli­ance on armed con­flict to resolve issues? It also goes to prove the adage from WWII vet­er­ans, as repor­ted by Ambrose, that war is hours of bore­dom inter­spersed with minutes of sheer terror.

The embed­ded journ­al­ists and the com­mu­nic­a­tions infra­struc­ture provides an ele­ment of hon­esty in war. At least with the units that have journ­al­ists attached, the abil­ity to com­mit “war crimes” is dimin­ished. Media at its best.

How­ever, the cost is the lack of “fil­ters” and the great degree of con­fu­sion that occurs as dif­feren­ing qual­it­ies of inform­a­tion is com­mu­nic­ated. For instance, Chan­nel Ten News repor­ted live on TV that Tariq Aziz had defec­ted after the ini­tial bom­bard­ment; this was pure rumor and proven wrong very quickly. Con­firm­a­tion is import­ant. In times like these, some of the media pro­cesses are for­got­ten in the fog of war.

Now this is scary. Neil Finn as described by Goog­lism. You can type in your name, and there is a report of what google knows of you…

80’s Music Lyr­ics. I won­der if we could load the lyr­ics into the Ran­dom Neil Finn Lyric Server? Wouldn’t that be cool.

Is it wish­ful think­ing on my behalf, or is the music of the 1980s “hip”? On Qantas flights in recent months the inf­light music has been dis­tinctly 1980s: Nena’s 99 Luft Bal­loons (Eng­lish lan­guage ver­sion) and Tears for Fears (some­what ironic if you are afraid of fly­ing). Now Mit­subishi Motors (Aus­tralia) are using Big Audio Dynamite’s Rush as their jingle. I sup­pose the real lit­mus test will be when hair­styles change…

Slightly more off-topic than the above. One of the two guys that stars in the Mit­subishi ad is an old friend of mine from high school.

gorge (n.) - 1185, from Old French gorge "throat, bosom," from late Latin gurga, variant of gurges "gullet, throat, jaws," probably from Latin gurges "abyss, whirlpool," related to gurgulio "gullet." Transfered sense of "deep, narrow valley" was in Old French. The verbal meaning "eat greedily" is from Old French gorger, from gorge.

gor­geous — circa 1495, from Middle French gor­gias “eleg­ant, fash­ion­able, fond of jew­elry,” lit. “neck­lace” from Old French gorge “bosom, throat,” also “some­thing adorn­ing the throat.” From Online Ety­mo­logy Dictionary

I saw this word used in rela­tion to the new 17inch screen on the new iMacs Apple have announced. Whenever I see or hear the word, there is an instant recol­lec­tion of the song You’re Gor­geous by Baby­bird and Lon­don. It was on the radio when Avril and I were in the UK in May 1997. The words are a little naughty so I won’t link them here. Some­thing about a car. The root of the word is naughty enough. Isn’t lan­guage a won­der­ful thing?

From Apple for MacOS X users: Using and Man­aging Fonts in MacOS X

Happy birth­day Mum.

We have intro­duced Liam to The Young Ones, and evid­ently his favour­ite char­ac­ter is Vyvyan. Each epis­ode, a guest band played — usu­ally with an obtuse link to the story plot. Clas­sic Retro early 1980s bands such as Dexys Mid­night Run­ners (way more than a one-hit won­der) and Mad­ness were fea­tures in series 1. Now to get Liam hooked on great early 1980’s music…

For those who remem­ber the Aus­tralian Pho­toshop 6.0 Sem­inar (Oct/Nov 2000) — my theme was “Music of the 1980s”. Just stumbled across a great web site. Time to swat up ready for the next road­show, people!