Long time no ... zed?

Saw this poster for Zoolander 2 the other day, and it struck me as a particularly bad advertisement to hang in an Australian movie theater.

A poster with a tagline that reads "Long time no Z" is actually saying "Long time no Zed" if you read it out loud in these here parts.

Just another way that Australia fails to conform to the "correct" way of doing things. Don't even get me started on the whole "starting seasons on the first day of the month" thing.

Or does it fail to conform?

I had a weird experience at work the other day where I was training a new starter, and during the training he had the occasion to pronounce the acronym ZZZ as part of our work. He was talking to a client on the phone, and instead of saying "Zed Zed Zed" he said "Zee Zee Zee."

I was a bit gobsmacked, as this is a native Australian -- one who is probably 15 years younger than I am, but that still means he's been around speaking Australian for something like 25 years. The weird thing was that he wasn't saying it to appeal to me or my American ways. He was saying it because that's how he was taught to say it growing up. Making him the only Australian child I'm aware of who was taught that way.

The even weirder thing was that he thought it was weird that I thought it was weird.

So is Zed dead, baby? Is Zed dead?

Not yet, I don't think. In fact, as far as I can tell this is a total aberration. However, it does give me hope. Maybe if they start saying the letter Z like Americans, the next step will be figuring out how to release movies according to American release dates.

What I'm really curious about is who will win the battle of the zoos at the multiplexes in early 2016. There's Zoolander 2, of course -- and it has been a long time, as the original came out 15 years ago -- but there's also Zootopia, which figures to be the next movie I see in theaters with my son. He loves the bit about the sloths talking slowly in the trailer. Which is pretty much the whole trailer.

Given that they're aimed at completely different audiences, it could very easily be a tie.

Z you then.