Evidently change happens in the background:
Getting married Septmber 3rd.
Applying for MA anywhere.
Moving house to wherever anywhere ends up being.
Would like to meet affordable future.
Most people I work with = six years no pay rise.
Submitted a petition to UK government titled "Privatise the royal family".
Rejected on grounds it was a joke.
I failed to mention I wasn't joking.
So what could they do.
Their hands were tied.
When someone says their hands were tied they mean they didn't want to voice an alternative for fear it might affect their status.
You hear it a lot in the Civil Service.
I'm off.
I thank you for reading.
I hope to re-emerge soon with something gobby and less comprehensible.
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
To Be A See Also
This Christmas we've formed a cross-continental task force to assault all eleven of your seasonal senses and you'll be like Christ that's nice. In the meantime the rejections from agents make me feel like I'm progressing with the second book, while the third book is still a festival of detritus awaiting a suitable container. I really appreciate you putting these things in front of your eyes. Thanks.
Examples Quite Excessive
Johnny Cash sang about Christmas. A History of Bombing described innovations in missile stability. I sat everywhere in a succession of childish chairs, trying to concentrate on the bombing, but anywhere I went the CD started skipping, although I didn't think people used CDs anymore, and none of the other customers anywhere seemed irked, so I never asked the staff what was up with their music, or the customers when they planned to begin to be irked, Johnny isn't half going on about this pudding of his, do you not think? In case they said it's not a CD, it's not Johnny Cash, it's not even music, you're in the hospital, your head's come off.
A History of Bombing finished, and I burped and started on Martha Gellhorn's History of Aftermaths, which isn't what it's called. The music dissolved into something small and nervous, and Martha went round talking to people and looking at stuff.
A History of Bombing finished, and I burped and started on Martha Gellhorn's History of Aftermaths, which isn't what it's called. The music dissolved into something small and nervous, and Martha went round talking to people and looking at stuff.
Texts to Zero
There's a chair fallen over in the garden I've been meaning to pick up for a year. Quiet now and listen to how enlightened I am. I never buy a car I wouldn't be happy to crash. Stop bullying yourself and bring me a sandwich at once. When I die I want you to have my feet. Sorry, we never hear the doorbell, but the smoke alarm goes off if you open a bag of bombay mix. I've tried telling her. And the news just keeps getting better. Minidiscs were always my favourite except for before they existed and after they became unwieldy. I have a lot of explaining to do I guess. Nah shaving isn't one of my interests but have you seen what happens when you don't do it? Well she tends to remember things, I think it's one of her hobbies. Usual, but I did this course, how to live with yourself, it was alright. If he's gonna be a big shoe about it tell him I'm a very busy man with a lot of things to do. It's about a comedian but most of it isn't funny, I think you'd like it. I know, she has me on the wrong list. There was no-one official to sign our timesheets so we just got the tallest man in the marquee to do it, hope that's alright. Two weeks in a room with the lights off, yes, but with more powerpoint than there'd be at home. Mostly a cross between a cashew and a Nik-Nak. Have one installed in the garage if you like it so much. Thanks, if anything changes I'll extremely let you know. We're letting the side down but I still haven't done anything about it.
Got Long
The two-spar system couldn't last. They shut one. We moved to the lake district, or the Lake District.
I work in a small shop that sells things you want. Where are the eggs? people ask, with tears on their faces and panic in their brains. They are at ankle-level, towards the back of the shelves, which is why you can't see them. Next to them are the Kinder Eggs. A daring location, away from confectionery, but so far not unpopular.
I had an interview and an indoctrination day and I hardly had to lie at all. It was like being eighteen again and having not much to lie about. They asked the classic retail questions: During an armed robbery, how controllable would your weeping be? Was there ever an occasion during which you didn't know what to do, but because you had to do something, you did something, and everything turned out alright? If a man buys a bag of potatoes and when he gets home and starts making dinner for himself and a young woman he only met three weeks ago, he discovers the bag is full of pygmy heads, do you offer him a refund when he returns angry and sickened and unable to contact the young woman, who thought he was weird anyway but that was kinda sorta part of the charm but a bag full of heads like hairy massive sundried tomatoes is really a make-or-break moment these days? When you picture yourself here in the future, is that future a long way off and you've finally had a haircut? If your own mother filled her largest handbag with Uncle Ben's and walked out the door while you were serving at the till, would you let her get away with it? In the event of an inferno, how burnt should you be? When a trembling three-year-old boy tries to buy 96 paracetamol, a litre of Famous Grouse and a party popper, what forms of I.D. do we accept?
We play replica music. It's all the songs you hate by the people you've never heard of. A shadowy phenomenon which I might be making up. Somewhere someone is approximating pop hits and number fours from fifteen years ago and selling them to supermarkets for their instore soundtracks. Which is why the announcer doesn't announce any musical information in his announcing voice. Because what's next isn't quite what it sounds like. Chris Morris played one on his radio show in about 1998 and I heard it and it was foul. But heard through the mangy speakers we have, you're not really going to notice unless you stand there every day for seven hours. Which I do. Now. But didn't. Before.
There's a red button to stop the music and a microphone for the broadcasting of cries for help. This happens when anyone tries to buy anything from me that might lead to a good time or death. I scan an item and the till freezes and I have to call in a higher being with the code to unlock it because for the first four weeks I am considered to be some kind of renegade and untrustable in my judgement of what ages people appear to be, and they have to check I'm not just dishing it out to anyone.
When the higher beings are in the warehouse my cries are unhearable and I can get to know the queue with apologies and small talk about the modern world we live in and whose fault it is. The weather is also highly mentionable. Is it as cold, today, as it was, yesterday, do you think? And what about the temperature tomorrow? What will that be like? Well, we can only speculate, can't we, not being from the future? But I am betting it will be similar, if not exactly the same. Would you like a bag?
I work in a small shop that sells things you want. Where are the eggs? people ask, with tears on their faces and panic in their brains. They are at ankle-level, towards the back of the shelves, which is why you can't see them. Next to them are the Kinder Eggs. A daring location, away from confectionery, but so far not unpopular.
I had an interview and an indoctrination day and I hardly had to lie at all. It was like being eighteen again and having not much to lie about. They asked the classic retail questions: During an armed robbery, how controllable would your weeping be? Was there ever an occasion during which you didn't know what to do, but because you had to do something, you did something, and everything turned out alright? If a man buys a bag of potatoes and when he gets home and starts making dinner for himself and a young woman he only met three weeks ago, he discovers the bag is full of pygmy heads, do you offer him a refund when he returns angry and sickened and unable to contact the young woman, who thought he was weird anyway but that was kinda sorta part of the charm but a bag full of heads like hairy massive sundried tomatoes is really a make-or-break moment these days? When you picture yourself here in the future, is that future a long way off and you've finally had a haircut? If your own mother filled her largest handbag with Uncle Ben's and walked out the door while you were serving at the till, would you let her get away with it? In the event of an inferno, how burnt should you be? When a trembling three-year-old boy tries to buy 96 paracetamol, a litre of Famous Grouse and a party popper, what forms of I.D. do we accept?
We play replica music. It's all the songs you hate by the people you've never heard of. A shadowy phenomenon which I might be making up. Somewhere someone is approximating pop hits and number fours from fifteen years ago and selling them to supermarkets for their instore soundtracks. Which is why the announcer doesn't announce any musical information in his announcing voice. Because what's next isn't quite what it sounds like. Chris Morris played one on his radio show in about 1998 and I heard it and it was foul. But heard through the mangy speakers we have, you're not really going to notice unless you stand there every day for seven hours. Which I do. Now. But didn't. Before.
There's a red button to stop the music and a microphone for the broadcasting of cries for help. This happens when anyone tries to buy anything from me that might lead to a good time or death. I scan an item and the till freezes and I have to call in a higher being with the code to unlock it because for the first four weeks I am considered to be some kind of renegade and untrustable in my judgement of what ages people appear to be, and they have to check I'm not just dishing it out to anyone.
When the higher beings are in the warehouse my cries are unhearable and I can get to know the queue with apologies and small talk about the modern world we live in and whose fault it is. The weather is also highly mentionable. Is it as cold, today, as it was, yesterday, do you think? And what about the temperature tomorrow? What will that be like? Well, we can only speculate, can't we, not being from the future? But I am betting it will be similar, if not exactly the same. Would you like a bag?
Sweary Man Jackanory
Nick Cave is reading me a story. It's nice of him. We've never met. He didn't ask. He's doing it through the medium of seven CDs. It's a book he wrote about a salesman. It's very good. He's done a soundtrack with Warren Ellis, which is also very, as you might imagine, good. During the reading it swells at appropriate points. His voice is mixed so that narration is right here and dialogue is over there. The salesman hasn't sold anything yet.
Obviously the story concerns sex and death and Kylie. It is already much better than his other novel and I am only one and a half sevenths of the way through. His other novel was twenty years ago. It was dark and rich like Christmas pudding and like Christmas pudding I couldn't finish it but plenty of other people will tell you it's worth a purchase. Which, I agree, it is. You don't have to finish anything. You shouldn't carry on after you're done.
Obviously the story concerns sex and death and Kylie. It is already much better than his other novel and I am only one and a half sevenths of the way through. His other novel was twenty years ago. It was dark and rich like Christmas pudding and like Christmas pudding I couldn't finish it but plenty of other people will tell you it's worth a purchase. Which, I agree, it is. You don't have to finish anything. You shouldn't carry on after you're done.
Brain Seasoning
Recently there was a request for some writing. It said:
Do us a line to go in an architect's christmas card. You know, instead of Merry Christmas. He's going to send it out to all his clients.
I will illustrate it.
About eight words perhaps.
Cheers.
It came from the Inkymole office, in the form of an email. Whenever an email arrives from an address ending in inkymole.com, my computer starts to sweat and makes a very loud clanging noise like the bells from News at Ten, and I put down my cupcake and inject myself with magic capability juice, a gallon of which I have on permanent standby, and get straight down to five or six consecutive minutes of brain-work, to figure out what the email wants. After this I know what I am required to do and can Guinness myself unconscious for a few days in preparation for what I like to call Actually Doing What I Know I Have To Do, an activity which I find is most exciting when the deadline is within sleeping distance.
In this case, I had to distil all the feelings of Christmas into eight or less words that also evoked the history, controversy and enchantment of the entire discipline of Architecture while making the clients, Axon-Beckett, seem like reasonable people, whom you might not shy away from consulting next time you were wondering how much it would cost to build an upside-down underground pyramid to house your family in when the end finally comes.
So I wrote down a page of Christmas words, then a page of Architect words, and looked at one, then at the other, and so on, for a day. And nothing happened. Then I put a page in front of either eye and tried to look through them, in the hopes the solution might drift in like a ghost. It didn't. I was disappointed. Especially because I was doing this in the pub, at the bar, and no one would even talk to me, let alone offer any assistance.
Then I looked up every quote from every architect ever and tried to think of an uber-quote-with-jingle-bells-on. I texted 118118 and asked what do architects say to each other at Christmas? But there was only a reply saying you haven't been charged.
So I walked slowly round Manchester, which is mainly made of buildings, many of which were designed by architects. While looking at the buildings I stroked my chin with a miniature Christmas tree and waited for words to engulf my brain like a swarm of something nice.
But nothing happened, so I dipped the miniature Christmas tree in red paint, thinking I'll go and write on the wall of a building, there can't be a better way to combine all the elements of the brief.
Then, just as I was about to start writing "Wots Ur Xmasterplan?" on the side of the Hilton Hotel, the five words above popped into my noggin, and I scuttled home to email them off.
And while I was typing them out I thought goshyplops, these words are terrible. Terrible. They will make me join the Writer's Register, just so they can strike me off. But the deadline is here. The deadline has been here for a while, actually, and I haven't even offered it a glass of water. I've been too busy producing nothing. I wonder if it will be generous enough to interpret doing nothing as striving. Hm.
But it turned out it was acceptable for everyone involved.
The end.
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