Following on from my last post, I've been discussing the annoying-tune-stuck-in-the-head problem with my friends and co-workers, and all are agreed that it can be a real nuisance. This is especially true during office hours, when you might be trying to finish an important bit of code or type up a project plan, but all you can think of is how you can never quite get the lyrics straight to the third verse of "Jumpin' Jack Flash". It's less of an issue when one is down the pub (when, of course, any number of putative versions of the third verse of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" might easily be belted out at top volume without raising so much as a publican's eyebrow).

My solution - and frankly, I dunno why it hasn't occurred to someone before - is that every workplace should employ someone solely for the purpose of sitting in the middle of the office and singing, humming or whistling enjoyable yet non-distracting tunes. These would serve the purpose of replacing any more offensive, attention-deficit-inducing tunes in the minds of employees. Good examples would be songs like "All I Need" by Air, "Underwater Love" by Smoke City, or anything by Sigur Rós. Bad examples would be "Get Down Tonight" by KC and the Sunshine Band, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" by Kylie Minogue (a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I heard one), or anything by Linkin Park.

Possibly, one could set up some sort of playlist, from which employees could select inoffensive tunes to be hummed, a sort of human jukebox. If we really wanted to take things to the (il?)logical extreme, there could even be a website from which you could download and play recordings of people humming inoffensive tunes.

Surprisingly, I have approached a number of key business partners and venture capitalists with this idea, and they all turned me down flat. I don't know why. They could make millions in regained productivity alone. Millions, I tell you.

Am completely unable, at the moment, to stop humming, whistling or occasionally even singing tunes from the hit musical Chicago, which I had the great fortune to see in London's West End recently. That was three hours well-spent, let me tell you.

(...give 'em the old razzle-dazzle...)

This sort of thing happens to me regularly, most notably in the middle of one of my GCSE Physics papers, when I disastrously got Kylie Minogue's I Should Be So Lucky stuck in an infinite loop in my head, whence it refused to budge for the remainder of the exam. I still scraped a B, which was a minor miracle considering that my answer to "Q11. Describe the typical complications introduced into the regular flow of a fluid medium by the addition of a stationary, spherical solid body" was "In my imagination/There is no complication". Does anyone else have this problem? Come on, own up, you know you do.

(...he had it coming, he only had himself to blame...)

Over the years, I've developed an almost failsafe method of getting godawful tunes out of my head at times of dire need. I mentally play Shirley Bassey singing the theme tune to Goldfinger. It works every time. Admittedly, I then end up with Shirley Bassey singing the theme tune to Goldfinger stuck in an infinite loop in my head, but that is usually infinitely better than what it's replacing. It's a good tune.

(...when you're good to Mama, she'll be good to you...)

But it doesn't bloody work with anything from Chicago. The songs are just too damn good. Shirley has finally been out-Basseyed. I'll have to pick a tune and make it the new gold standard, to be used the next time I have an urge to whistle anything by Neil Diamond.

(...and all that jazz.)

Today I have mostly been on the lookout for things I don't know, in accordance with the principle that knowledge is power and with Thomas Huxley's famous admonition to learn something about everything. So here are some things that (until today) I did not know:

• An espresso contains less caffeine than a normal cup of coffee. That'll save me 20p a day. Also, my stomach lining will last a lot longer. Excellent. The coffee bean is actually the seed of a variety of cherry. I already knew that, though.
  
• The word "dollar" originated in the Roman Empire. The German town of Joachimstal supplied almost all of the Empire's silver coinage. The largest coins became known (in German) as "Joachimstalers", or "talers" for short.
  
• There are 92 known cases of nuclear weapons being lost at sea. Jesus. Who's in charge of these things, Homer bloody Simpson?
  
• The African Basenji dog yodels instead of barking. To make up for the fact that the Basenji can't bark, there's a species of bird in Ecuador which barks exactly like a dog. There's a story in there somewhere...
  
• The "mile" is also the Romans' fault. It's the distance it takes to perform "mille passus", or "a thousand paces", as measured by a hypothetical Roman legion.
  
• A group of jellyfish is called a "smack". Don't smack jellyfish. Your hands will swell up, and also it's rather cruel and will get you in trouble with Social Services.
  
• The can-opener was invented 46 years after the can itself. In the interim, they used a hammer and chisel. Really. Pretty stupid, I'd say.
  
• Someone who collects beer bottles is called a "labeorphilist". I saw the word and thought it meant something else. But it doesn't. So that's OK. Stop acting all innocent, you know what I mean.
  
• Music was first sent down a telephone line in 1896. A bloke called Thaddeus Cahill filed a patent on a device which generated and distributed music electronically. Eat your heart out, iTunes.
  
• The "carat" (gemstone weight) is derived from a bean. All carob beans, apparently, weigh the same - about 200mg. Mediaeval Arabic gemstone dealers used to use carob beans to balance their scales for this reason. The Arabic word for a carob bean is "qirat". Cool.
  
• The biggest frog in the world is over two feet long. And weighs eight pounds. That's bigger than my dad's dog. It's called (appropriately) the Goliath frog, and I believe there are only a few left, due to over-predation by unusually hungry Frenchmen.
  

Now here's something you didn't know: I've got an enormous piece of potato crisp stuck between two of my molars, and despite my persistent and increasingly vicious attempts of the past half-hour, I cannot dislodge the bastard. Unfortunately I do not know the location of the nearest toothpick-vending machine.

Here's a fun little movie meme (courtesy of Selkie) onto the bandwagon of which I shall jump, in lieu of actually going to the cinema (which I haven't done for bloody ages, more's the pity)... feel free to join in...

1. A movie that you can watch over and over.
   The Three Amigos. I can watch that almost indefinitely. And The Matrix (only the first one, mind).
   
   
2. A movie that you liked more than you expected to.
   Pirates Of The Caribbean. Expected a one-joke pile-up, got a super-enjoyable swashbuckling romp. On with the eyepatches! Scrape the barnacles off yer keel and hoist the mainsail! Arrrrr!!!
   
   
3. A movie that you liked more than it deserved.
   Groundhog Day, of course. Hardly an Oscar candidate on paper, but I love it to bits. I still don't know why.
   
   
4. A movie that you wanted to like but couldn't.
   The recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley, who was herself quite excellent in it, but couldn't carry the rest of the cast and the woefully dismal direction. Sorry. Colin and Jennifer still have my votes on this one.
   
   
5. A movie that you were excited to see when it first came out, but never saw.
   The 2001 remake of Planet Of The Apes. Loved the original, and heard fairly good things about the new version. Also last year's King Kong, for the same reasons. A trip to the DVD shop beckons, I suspect...
   
   
6. A movie you love but can't watch.
   Schindler's List. Truly great movie, but it's a bit too close to home.
   
   
7. A movie that you liked when you were 5-8 that you still like.
   The little-known but truly fantastic Flight of Dragons. Open-mouthed wonder.
   
   
8. A movie that you liked when you were 12-15 that you still like.
   Oh, tons of them. The Goonies, Crocodile Dundee, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Stand By Me, The Last Emperor, Big, and (of course) everybody's favourite obligatory Christmas thriller, Die Hard. I really got into movies in a big way when I was that age.
   
   
9. The first movie you saw in the theatre without your parents.
   Probably Back To The Future, although I wouldn't swear to it. Great stuff.
   
   
10. The first movie you saw on a date.
    I think it might have been Dances With Wolves, but I suspect I wasn't really concentrating on the film at the time.
    
    
11. Your favourite literary adaptation.
    It would be difficult to top Doctor Zhivago, although Sean Connery and Michael Caine do their damnedest in John Huston's superb The Man Who Would Be King. That's another one I can watch repeatedly.
    
    
12. Your favourite TV adaptation.
    I imagine it would have to be the first two Batman films (I do love Tim Burton's stuff), if those count as TV adaptations rather than comic-book... If not, then The Naked Gun and the recent Starsky And Hutch will do just fine.
    
    
13. Your favourite movie from a genre you don't usually like.
    Bridget Jones' Diary, which transcends the usual rom-com pap (see Notting Hill and Love, Actually and their sickly ilk) and shines as an unexpected gem in a sea of vomit.
    
    
14. Your favourite obscure movie.
    Probably The Wisdom of Crocodiles. Jude Law gives an astonishingly introspective performance. Who knew the man could act?
    
    
15. A movie you watch when you're home sick.
    The Matrix, again. When you feel like the world is pressing in on your sinuses, it's great to imagine being able to punch through walls and jump across the gaps between buildings.
    
    
16. A movie you wouldn't want to watch with your parents.
    The Postman Always Rings Twice, which I unfortunately did watch with my parents. If you've seen it, you'll know why this is a bad idea.
    
    
17. Four more favourite movies you haven't already mentioned.
    Only four?? Bollocks to that.
    
    • Casablanca
      
    • Aladdin
      
    • The Princess Bride
      
    • The Lord Of The Rings trilogy
      
    • Star Wars trilogy (the originals, emphatically not the more recent piles of dung)
      
    • Wayne's World
      
    • The Untouchables
      
    • Gattaca
      
    • South Park
      
    • Un Coeur en Hiver
      
    • The Godfather
      
    • Akira
      
    • All of the Wallace and Gromit movies
      
    • Practically any Western involving Clint Eastwood, especially The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Unforgiven
      
    • The Hunger
      
    • Ice Age
      
    • Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (early Almodóvar... genius)
      
    • Foul Play
      
    • Like Water for Chocolate
      
    • The first and third Indiana Jones movies (Temple of Doom was a bit of a wet biscuit)
      
    • Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
      
    • Ran (Kurosawa at the top of his game... unsurpassed genius)
      
    • At least another twenty which I can't bring to mind off the top of my head right now
      
    
    

Notice how well I stuck to the implicit one-movie-per-question requirement? I'm good like that.