the fiercest calm

Yes, he absolutely is the coolest!

We had a little after work get-together last night. It was organized by Joanna, because she was back in Vienna for the first time since moving back to Switzerland. We went to Rathausplatz where there is currently the opera/film festival. The programm for the night was going to be a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. But for some reason the programm was changed and they showed a movie ("Der Bockerer IV"). This was very strange because the only play opera films or other musical performances or - on very rare occasions - documentaries.

Whatever, we weren't there for the film anyway. It was fun and I had something called Frozen Lychee Daiquiri, which was, uhm, interesting but very, very sweet. We were about 10 (ish) and even Mathias made it out - he lives about 120 km from Vienna and missed his last train before midnight. The next one was going past 4am, so he had to find a room for the night close to the train station in the middle of the night. Hope he did!

Joanna and I ended up talking about Francis Cabrel and how much we both like this song here:

 Was good to see some of the again (other I could have done without, though :-/).

Hey, my camera has a movie function. This is my first (substandard) video...

 

They are over-the-top-in-your-face-happy with crappy underlying beat and very, very annoying. Generally, I am not much of a fan of happy music.

But of course, for every rule there is an exception. Here is mine:

I  LOVE this song! I could listen to it 50 times in a row and never grow tired of it.

First nothing in an eternity and than two posts in a day.

When researching (read: surfing the internet) for one of my other blogs I stumbled upon this video on youtube. I absolutely must share because I love, love, love the Tiger Lillies. This is the song "Flying Robert" from the so-colled junk opera Shockheaded Peter. So beautiful and so sad.

 S

I have been neglecting my livejournal for quite a while now. Sorry, but I got sidetracked by stuff like facebook, my other two (!) blogs, life (yeah, strange), and - most of all - looking for a job. Oh, and I also was on vacation in Prague last week.

*sigh*

I could now vow to be better in the future, but somehow I don't think I will be.

*sigh*

Back in real life and I had my first weekend since I can't remember when. It included a party (for Boris/Doris/Manfred) and a very lazy sunday WITH reading. Yay! I can read again!

Now I am back at work and I am bored, bored, bored.

We will have a meeting, shortly. No idea what that will be about, though. It definately will not be to exciting, I assume.

I moved back into my old office. We usued to be 2 people in there and now we are 6! Just imagine. So far, it was fun. We spent our time registering on facebook and playing scrabulous vs. the people sitting in spitting distance.

Hello everyone, I am back after not having had much of a life last month.

Let's call this a "soft (re-)opening", hence not much in terms of writing but a photo of Shaggy from our staff party Sunday night.

One of our long terms gave me a bag of spongebob goodies today. She said, "I can't promise anything but I really hope Patrick is in here."

This actually made my day. Now, how sad is that?

This makes me smile.....and I need that right now.

 

Please tell me I am not the only one that thinks that this yrs' song contest was one of the worst ever. The two *lovely* hosts were bad (yes, they always are), the two people commenting from the "green room" (which was once again NOT green) were so in your face happy and funny, it was almost painful to watch. The music was exceptionally bad this year, as well.

Let's see what I remember (I am trying to *forget*).....

Romania. That was the one with the Tenor and the female singer. Mostly boring, I guess. Forgettable.

UK. Really, really bad. It was like a very cheap version of Seal (on a bad day).

Albania. The youngest contestant, who got booed at rehersals for being Albanian. Another forgettable one.

Germany. OMG! How bad was *that*! Did they even hit a single note? What happened to No Angels? They used to be able to sing, no? And all of Germany wonders why they only made last place. C'mon guys, haven't you seen/heard them?

Armenia. One of many, many half-naked dancing young women with an annoying song. My brother put it this way, "The Armenien girl thinks that the one that screams the loudest gets the price." I must say that I agree. But it did pretty good, as clone-songs are bound to do. People are simply so used to all that chart crap that they think they like it.

Bosnia & Herzegovina. Surely, they were joking, weren't they? One of the more bizzare entries.

Israel. What boyband did they plug that guy out of???

Finland. They couldn't hold a candle to Lordi.

Croatia. This was actually not that bad, I thought. At least the music was different (or, it actually was music) and 75 Cent was pretty cool....but the elderly gentlemen seemed to be confused by the woman dancing around him. Of course, that was probably planned but he looked like he had no idea where he was most of the time.

Poland. What the hell was that? She looked like a cousin of Dana International. For a moment I thought it was a guy in drag. The Austrian commentator said, "She spent a lot of time inside a toaster." Can one look more cliché? And the song had too many bumps in it. Crap.

Iceland. Did the disco stuff from two decades ago really only make it to Iceland now? I had Dr. Alban flashbacks (which is so not a good thing).

Turkey. Rock! Not all that bad.

Portugal. I liked this. OK, I have a thing for anything Portuguese, but this was actually a good song. At this point it was the first contestant that could actually sing.

Latvia. They were pirates. Uhm. They were pirates.

Sweden. OMG! What happened to her?!?!? She won the contest a few years back and I remember her looking halfway *normal* then. Now, some parts of her are probably younger than the last time she participated. Thomas Herrmanns (who hosted the German Grand Prix Party) said he was sursprised she did not lift off with all that botox. If you ever need an argument *against* face lifts, she is it.

Denmark. This was nice. Almost classic song contest material.

Georgia. Why do blind people always have the meanest wardrobe people? Seriously, the poor girl. "Ok, we have those boots here that no-one in their right mind would ever wear. How can we put them to good use before we throw them out? I know, let's have a blind person wear them. They won't mind."

Ukraine. Another half-naked clone. Obviously, it did well.

France. I loved it! A French entry in ENGLISH! Just imagine! This was an issue that went all the way up to government level. One of the performers that doesn't take himself too seriously.

Azerbaijan. Was this the angel/devil one??? OMG! OK, at first there was the angel guy....singing, well, uhm, soprano. He wore freaky contacts, making his eyes look almost white. Then there was the evil one in black. They sort of sang against each other. Good prevailed over evil.

Greece. And another dancing clone. I think it made top 5.

Spain. This was the lowest point of the show. They aimed for humor, I know that. But WTF??? Not even remotely funny. Only bad. Really, really, really bad. And I think this guy would be extremely ugly without his elvis-ish disguise.... Look here:


Serbia. I understand the need for a schmalzy Song Contest ballad but this was sleep-inducing at best.

Russia. The eventual winner. A Russian superstar with open shirt, a Hungarian violinist playing a real Stradivary (the intrument had its own bodyguard) and the ice-skating world champion/olympic champion/european champion and now eurovision champion.

Norway. Thank you Norway for a classic song contest entry.

Overall, it was crap, crap, crap.

Can't wait for next year.


 

If anyone cares about my take on saturday's finale, go here: http://iblogwhatiwant.blogspot.com/

If you do not want to go there, this was my favorite performance of the evening: 

"We're sorry. This video is no longer available."
Wow! RTL is very fast in protecting their copyrights.

But, you can watch it here officially:
http://dsds-video.rtl.de/player.php?videoid=MTM2MzUwfDIzNjAzOTg%3D&cat=201

Ok, so I now have a skype account.

...

I have no idea how it works.

...

Yes, I am a dork. Unfortunately, not the technically versed type.

Pauli and Barbara visited me in the office today. They were here for well over an hour before Pauli started getting tired & cranky. Apparently, he sleeps longer now and everyone feels much better.

There now exists photographic proof of me holding a baby. I obviously could not defend myself since both my hands and arms were in use. Vicious scheme by Barbara.

I had the pleasure of carrying him around for about half an hour and I can confirm that holding a five-kilo-baby for any length of time does work on your biceps. Had to change arms quite a few times, but it got better after a while.

After discussing the state of the world with me (read: making funny sounds and animal-like growls) for half an hour Pauli & Barbara took off again.



This was taken *before* he spit on me.

This morning I handed my boss a stack of letters to sign and there was one thing - and only one thing! - that I asked him not to do....change anything about the order of the letters (I have a very good organizational reason for this)!

Now, guess what he did.



Breathing in.


Breathing out.


Breathing in.


Breathing out.

seen over on lizmopuddy's journal

Ok, so he is very young.
But....see....I am still a bit sick and this makes me happy. 

I feel better already. :o)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/26/atheist.soldier.ap/index.html