Watched the Olympic opening ceremony - well, the replay of it - this afternoon. I always look forward in these things to a bit of national pride tricked out in a tacky display geared to please the tourists. I wasn't disappointed. Bits of it were fantastic, dead impressed, but the rest made me either giggle or cringe. Loved the detailed costumes/props in the 'parade of civilisation' and the discombobulating statue was very cool but the huge olympic torch thing just put me in mind of a plasma canon. I couldn't escape the feeling that the torch-bearer was about to be atomised. <g> Too much sci-fi? I think not... (Hee, and if that woman had really been pregnant I would've been extremely concerned about the background radiation levels in Greece, though I can see the idea of a lamp in the shape of a pregnant woman being quite popular...)
202 nations had sent teams, and I (and the cubs to a lesser extent) watched allll of them march around the stadium. Tell you what, there were some fantastic costume/uniforms on display, very colourful and sparkly, just gorgeous, dahling - except for the UK team's which were very dull. Or perhaps it was the way they were wearing them, the team members didn't seem to be terribly enthusiastic about being there. Eh. Some wit in the Spanish team was sporting a plastic matador hat, which set me thinking how neat it'd be to collect stupid plastic hats from around the world and display them on your wall. There was something I spotted in the NZ team though, that I am intensely covetous of. A plastic blow-up kiwi. I want one!! So, Val, if you happen to see one of these things in your travels, could you let me know how much it is, pretty please? : )
The Olympics are being broadcast in Aus on a commercial tv station so I saw more ads during the three (?) hours of the ceremony than I have in the past 6 months. <shakes head> How stupid do the ad companies think people are? Tch. I'll stick with my ABC, no commercials there, thanks very much.
Heh, speaking of ads, last weekend I got asked to take a survey about brand recognition for household appliances... Given my non-commercial telly viewing, and non-reading of newspapers and magazines I just don't see many commercials anymore; I was hard pressed to come up with a list of company names, had to delve into my memory from years ago. : )
Grrr... and that's another thing... our government deregulated the power companies (or something) a little while back so now I regularly get visits from poor sods employed to go house-to-house to try and convince people to change their supplier. I'm not a sociable person at the best of times and I resent strangers appearing on my doorstep trying to sell me things!
But anyway, the last quilt strip has been attached to the last section and I've started taking out some of the paper piecings preparatory to sewing the sections together. Neat, eh? <g>