28.06.2006 - 8:56 p.m.

waiting in temp land at a job i don't want, the promised telephone madness has failed to materialise thanks to the vagaries of the marketing department and we're sat here twiddling various thumbs. i've also been reminded of the reasons why i never want to work in contact with the general public, they are mostly and using sweeping generalisations,

selfish
self absorbed
panicky
illiterate
technophobic
number blind
stupid

this doesn't apply to the whole population, just the ones who fall under the above headings. They seem to think that if they don't see something, it won't apply to them, and when we point out that it's printed clearly in front of them they get all defensive, dig into a position and demand their 25% discount on top of the stated 25% discount they've already got, because they think they are "a loyal customer" even though they are what we know as a "low value customer" and won't be getting diddly squat.

despite the marketing departments view that the bulk of our customers are wealthy city males between 35 and 60 (which is the target market) most of the calls we get are from old ladies with eyesight problems, buying for their portly husbands. To be fair I did get a lady call me from Ascot (during the Dettori race) and she was buying for her husband and son, but the account was in her name. I think that marketing make up the sales demographics to please the directors as they lounge in their solid gold jacuzzi's.

Apart from work issues which have put my life (and by extension, J's life) on hold, which is very annoying, some things are going well. One of the 24 carat geezers here (the coworkers and atmosphere are the only good thing) has a cousin who has said he'll sort me a copy of Reason 3.0, kerrrching, powpowpowpowpowpow ! love it. That's saved me having to buy that later on, and once my life is taken off hold i'll be producing or remixing moozic in every spare minute, oh happy daze.

The other thing that's got me excited (and i could be heading for the mother of all disappointments here) is the impending Transformers movie due next year. I'm torn between my love for this particular comic creation and the naysayers on the interweb moaning because Mr Bay is directing it. He says that he's gone back to the original comics to provide the structure, feel and storyline and apart from some character substitutions (Megatron's now a tank) it should be good. But there's the overwhelming truth that apart from Sin City, comic-to-live action films over the last few years have been almost universally rubbish bordering on the shameful, and the people who conceived the films were clearly thinking only about the merchandising opportunities, or had never seen the originals, or were blind drunk the whole time of conception and filming.

Lucas fell into that trap when he made the starwars prequels, which were aimed squarely at the under 10's. He made his vast fortune from the first three films because he agreed to a lower pay deal if he got the merchandising rights, which started the huge, plastic behemoth that is film tie-ins. In 1976 no-one had cottoned on the idea of toy merchandising, and Lucas is still laughing about that every time he looks at his bank balance. I guess through producer pressure he sold himself out in the prequels, and although he and the producers had to carry their paycheques home on a flatbed truck, he was rightly slated for the dire result that hit the screens. Starwars should have maintained the gritty, desperate, and above all, adult feel to the films, of people forced to meet expectations way above and beyond their comfort zone, instead we got, well, you've all seen them...

Still, i signed up for the TF newsmails and await the trailer due out on 4th July, if you visit a popcorn strewn fleapit to watch the Pirates film you'll see the TF trailer, for the rest of us who don't like fleapits we'll have to wait for the website to be updated.

My next concern is - as neither J or myself enjoy visits to our local fleapit (or any pit for that matter) will i have the home cinema setup in place by the time the TF dvd comes out ? Although as that will be a few months after our wedding we should be flush with pressies, ho ho ho.