Occurs to me I've been whining a lot about work on here. As a general rule I like to keep my life off here and restrict myself to ranting about the shameful reduction in the size of Curly Wurlys.
Apologies, it won't happen again ;)
I've worked it out, I am a human Buckaroo! I've come out of the 'I'm going to murder everyone in the office' stage now, I'm now entering the 'Laughing in the face of people I really shouldn't be laughing in the face of' stage.
Someone is currently trying to handover 8 months worth of work to me in 15 minutes.
Friday will be interesting, I've been asked to give a talk at a local University - I wonder if I'll just stand up, announce 'I am a fish' and faint?
Work is total balls at the moment. Seriously, morale in the office is truly awful, lowest I've seen it in nearly 4 years.
I tend to buy a lot more things when I am pissed (in both senses of the word). See the last week's worth of drivel about Netbooks.
in order to delay the inevitable, and to lighten my mood I have invnested in affordable awesomeness.
Queen: The Platinum Collection.
51 tracks of platinum dipped awesomeness on golden brown, buttery toast.
I'm going to be vaccuuming this weekend. Yeah, now get THAT thought out of your heads.
I hear your silent protests people (you can't hide your desperation from me you poor little mites), trust me I have every intention of webbing it up just as soon as the 2 requirements are in full alignment: Free time and Inclination.
You see I'm still working more than I'd like, and right now not in a good way. More in a 'Die, die, die, die, please just die' kind of way. So when I do get free time,I spend it productively drinking and eating.
Plans, however, are afoot. I will make a lame, visitorless website if it's the last thing I do!
Right, I'll wait until the end of April. At the end of April I should (I hope) be getting a nice nutritious, vitamin filled bonus.
And then Mr NetBook, you will be mine.
Samsung are the front runner, they so purrdy.
Browsing the t'internet about Netbooks and found this comment in response to someone else in my position:
Don't think of this as some big long term decision. These machines will be so much better in a year or two that you will have a hard time giving away whatever you buy in the next few months. Really! Homeless people will look down their noses at you, saying, "Why are you trying to give this old thing to me?"
So you could keep waiting for two years and get one free in a box of breakfast cereal that is twice as fast and comes with a year's free Internet connection via cell phone network, or just say what the heck and start having fun with what is available now.
So I bought a new gadget the other day, something I can't class as furniture or decoration - it's electronic gadgetry that makes life marginally but unnecessarily easier.
I spent hours pouring over spec sheets, customer reviews, adding and discarding requirements at a speed that was really quite something. The end result is that my car now has a wisewoman-in-a-box to guide it.
I caved, I bought SatNav.
This is because I am terrible at navigating towns and cities I don't know, it already guided me through Milton Keynes' infinite number of roundabouts. Milton Keynes was built by Lego, everywhere looks the same as everywhere else. So I have a Garmin Nuvi, it's awesome and isn't TomTom. And I can make the icon on the screen look like the Black Pearl. Yeah, be jealous.
Unfortunately, this gadget - that does fill a valid role - has opened the gadget gates of my mind. I am currently seriously toying with buying a netbook. I've already decided when, where and how often I would use it and unfortunately there is enough there for what little fiscal sense I have to be beaten to the ground with old CRT monitors.
But we all know the truth. Yes it could be useful, and yes I will use it frequently. But we know the truth. It's small, it's gadgety - I don't stand a chance.
This is bullshit! Seriously!
Before, it was fine, I was low enough to the floor to put my drink there, my hand dangled down and my wine/lager/cider/vodka/gin/whiskey/meths/pipe cleaner was immediately to hand. Now I have to move.
I totally need a coffee table now - this is balls! Now it looks like a proper room keeping it clean is on my mind, as is potential spillage.
Maybe I should laminate the room.....
So now I don't have my loungy chair & footstool thingy I don't have anywhere to put feet and pizza when slounging. This now means I need a coffee table. Pah!
Also, apparently I need place mats for the table. I'm not sure why I need place mats, the fact that the table surface is one huge placemat appears to be lost on most people.
Plates are generally bigger than place mats so they can't be for keeping the table protected from spillage, and even if that were the case you still have to clean the bloody place mats so where the hell is the win here?!
Frankly, you people are ridiculous.
This is it now isn't it? An endless quest for inanimate objects. Thank God the Nintendo DSi is out soon so I can go back to sensible, right-thinking purchases.
1) Open up MSN, find a 'friend' who is playing their XBox 360 (it will show in their description)
2) Start conversation with them. they will have to type with the console controller.
3) They will grow tired of this, mostly they will go away and 'catch you later' so be sure to pick a dumb one.
4) The dumb ones will shut down their game and mvoe to their PC, fire that up and log back in
5) When they do so, type 'gtg' and log off.
Behold the desolate, sofa-less wastleland in which I live..
...Here, the cold light of the laptop as I write an email from the harsh iron(ish) chair, the cruel glass of the dining table reflects my misery...
A charity shop jigsaw puzzle, abandoned in the corner........
.......But what's this?! (cue an angelic 'ooohooaaaaaahhhhooooooh!')
.........oooooooooooooooOOOOOOOooooooooh!
.....here I am chillaxin', listening to some cool tunes, completely unaware of the camera.
.....Here I am studying hard, but still fully chillaxidaisical, again natural, unaware of the camera I must have accidentally attached via gorillapod to the shelf unit....
I'll do some more pictures later, when the sofa-bed element is extended - I'll probably be wearing some sexy lingerie.
Don't even try - that's in your head for the day.
Carrying on the fine tradition of ignorance and murder by proxy pioneered by Jean Paul II, Pope Benolyn has decreed that the use of condoms can only serve to increase the spread of the deady AIDS virus which has claimed 25 million African lives since 1981.
Rather than referring to anything approaching a scientific or factual analysis he claimed that friendship and spiritual awakening would cure Africa of this deadly epidemic. The Pope didn't, of course, refer to the Bible when making this decree as it is also completely silent on the issue of contraception.
Can someone explain to me why completely unqualified religious people are allowed to speak to medical matters? To matters of state? to matters of life and death? I'd have no objection to this if he backed up his words with credible evidence. I would have no problem with any religious 'leader' vomitting out their opinion, no matter how unpalatable, if they based it on anything other than uninformed, ignorant opinion.
yeah, this is a smashing day.
The last two posts should give some brief insight into my less than sane method of working.
Here it is in brief:
Receive Information>Analyse>Evaluate>Go fucking mental>Swear>Swear Louder>Invent new Swear words>Solve.
This is a variation on the correct method of work, but it works for me. Now normally the process is brief, I need the venting bit in the middle because that's the part where identify all of the problems with the particular nugget of crystalised stupid that has landed at my desk. If you can't find all of the problems, you can't make a solution and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking idiot.
This is the first time that something so monumentally dumb has landed at my desk that I've worked on my CV rather than a solution. I've calmed down, the CV stays on hold - at least for the next 3 months. After that, we'll see ;)
I just checked out monster.co.uk and discovered that if I hold on for 6-12 months and get on a particular training course, there are a lot of jobs for what I do out there should things continue along the same lines as they are here.
It's important I think short-term here - making the changes while the sofa is still young.
I know I get irritated by the world at large a lot, but I also laugh a lot at the things that I find irritating - if you can't laugh at them you'd really have to cry. being a manly-man who likes fire, red meat, beer and pies that really isn't an option for me.
Right now I am so angry that I can't actually work - I'm properly seething and I don't like it. It doesn't matter why, it's a work thing that would bore you senseless but suffice to say circumstances and people beyond my control are currently doing some unfathomably stupid things that will result in my life becoming very difficult. I made a decision the other day to stop using swearing like puntuation, unfortunately these fucking fuckwitted fucksticks have put paid to that at least for this week.
Apologies for the lack of bloggin by the way, but if you think I'm in a bad mood now you really should have caught me last week, that was something spectacular. Thursday was particularly special. I think I managed to speak entirely in expletives for a whole afternoon, which is harder than it sounds.
In other news, S-Day is on Thursday. Squoodgy sofa goodness. w00t!
I've actually been playing around with some webby things today. I am of all next weekend and right now, unless I find something better to do with my time (Jason IX anyone? :p) I'll be doing something with this. I've got a couple of tools I'm playing around with. I think I'll launch something 'Make do' to start with while I tinker with something else that may or may not eventually get completed.
At the very least I'll launch a new blog. Working title is 'tasteless colour', but I'll take other suggestions before dismissing you all as idiots. :D
This year so far I am going to Glastonbury and Sonisphere.
I am now trying to work out how to afford Download too, mainly becaise Faith No More are playing.
So far Glastonbury bands look OK, but I'm going more because of the experience than anything else.
Sonishpere is new and has Metallica headlining (w00t!). Also, the super-more awesomer Alice in Chains are playing. The blonde dude died a while back, but the new dude they have in the line-up looks passable and its the guitarist guy who's the creative talent anyway:
Who the hell calls themself 'Superman'?!
A twat, that's who.
Some Super-Heros & Villains have names that relate to their powers - The Flash; The Human Torch; Banshee (1)
; Aquaman(2); The Green Lantern; The Silver Surfer; Jubilee(3)
The list goes on.
Some Superpeeps have names related to animals to which they or their powers bear (haha! I am funny) a resemblance or an affinity - Rhino; Spiderman; The Blue Beetle; Batman.
Some of the sooper gang have completely random names that don't mean anything and are selected purely for their cool - Gambit; Rogue; Lobo etc.
All of these I can live with, but there is something about the kind of Superhero (not villain) that gives themselves a name which basically says 'I'm better than you are'. Superman - fuck you, fuck you right in the ear you spandex wearing, narcissistic closet-case. The only reason you don't like Bizarro is because you thought that you would finally get an opportunity to make sweet love to yourself.
Wonderwoman, I have a marginal amount of time for if for nothing other than the fact she is about the only female super-hero who isn't some lamed-up female immitation of an existing male hero. She-Hulk? Please. Seriously, you're telling me that the only way women can get super powers is if a guy has had them first - and even then can only develop powers that are lamer than the original? pfft.
Anyway, Wonderwoman - change your name, you don't want to associate yourself with the likes of Superman.
And while we're on it - the Mr Fantastic and the Fantastic 4?! Yeah, you haven't disappeared up your own arses. How you manage to defeat the galaxy's enemies so regularly with such weak-ass powers is beyond me, but whatever the case, Fantastic is a word reserved for describing things like a nice pie, not stretchy losers.
I am personally very impressed that I can still get angry about this 18 years after I stopped collecting comics. no one is cooler than me.
1 Yeah, scream like a girl and dress in lime green and pink - you're totally not gay.
2 - I could spend all day here, but everything is too easy
3 - Latin for 'Irritating scrotal growth with a superpower that would make Aquaman laugh who should DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!'
If you eat a filled donut and it is filled with anyhing but jam, you are a sick freak and beyond help.
That is all.
I supposed to be in Oxford yesterday visiting a friend, I was promised curry and crumble. Unfortunately, she was moving and realised that getting back from Birmingham at 1am, starting the move at 5am, then preparing a meal and enduring an evening of my company did not make for a stable mind.
I did highlight this earlier in the week, so it was not exactly a surprise - but any loss of curry or crumble is a shock to the system, even when you are pretty sure it's coming. Time will heal the wounds, but the memory of what could have been will never fade.
I was up pretty early having had a pretty liquid evening on Friday. Apparently I had some kind of premonition about the cancellation because there was a virtually intact curry all plated up and covered in my fridge that I had purchased the night before. I couldn't work out why it was so intact, then I found the tell tale signs that I had ordered multiple courses, Nan and side-orders. I seemingly didn't get around to the main course. I don't usually order so many bits, and then I noticed that I had used my own rice. I know my brain so I can make a good guess at my astounding fiscal logic:
Brain: There's no need to order rice, I have plenty
Counter-brain: That's a good point. You've got that nice lime and coriander stuff
Brain: Yes, yes I have. Yummy.
Counter-brain: That saves some monies, we rock!
Brain: Indeed we do.
Counter-brain: ....
Brain: What's that look?
Counter-brain: They have chicken tikka and onion budgies. If we're saving all that money by not ordering rice, we could have a feast fit for a king!
Brain: How much contact have you had with royalty exactly?
Counter-brain: The queen drove past our primary school once, do you remember? We had a flag.
Brain: Uh-huh. Back to your proposal. Will we get through all that food? We're pretty steamed - I don't want to fall asleep in the mint yoghurt
Counter-brain: You know you're going to lose this debate right? Apart from anything else you are too drunk to do sums
Brain: Fair point, let’s stare at the menu for 10 minutes then order the same things as always but with some superfluous extras
Counter-brain: w00t.
