Despite being a boring git, the last few days have been thoroughly thought provoking. The last two days of work consisted of being at a conference at a stupidly pretentious hotel in Kensington, albeit extremely well put together. The decor is so OTT they have art-deco designs on the wooden flat-screen monitors. However the food, organisation and staff were top notch. Being the only long-haired bearded scruff bag there (with one exception see later) made the whole experience quite unpleasant because everyone else was a white male in a grey suit. OK, there were two asian women in suits and possibly an asian man. But out of 60-70 people it was a total sausage fight. There was a woman speaker who, despite having a PhD in business bullshit, was introduced as “single, with a better golfing handicap than anyone else here and likes to drive fast cars” so she doesn’t count. Having a MegaCorp ID badge got me and my line manager a seat at the captain’s table for lunch. It also earned me the cleanest ringpiece in Christendom 🙂 Again, the food was superb, it’s just sad that the table consisted of such different personalities. Apparently the evening meal had a “carribean” theme with steel band, palm trees, the lot. No one seemed to see the irony that there wasn’t a black face in the joint. This is how the world is run – politicians, businessmen and officials are all white men in suits. No wonder the world is so fucked. Apart from the disturbing political aspects of the days, it was more difficult to deal with the boredom invoked by the event. The company trying to shift their shit (it was a sales conference but disguised as a “customer forum”) basically exists to defend other companies from litigation and help them develop a case. In fact the whole industry surrounding this event was involved in legal affairs. I’m sure they do a good job, but wouldn’t it be far simpler and cheaper to take all of the lawyers, throw them against the wall and shoot them in the face ?
Instantly the whole problem vanishes. We could save billions! No wonder the lawyer with a keynote managed to make a few jokes – the geezer’s laughing all the way to the bank. He cashes in even if he gets sued!
So come on people – shoot any lawyers that you know. Even if you like them, think of the destruction, waste and misery they cause. Please. Do it for Jesus.

In other news, there was a chirpy Norwegian guy at the conference who told me how astonished he was at the lack of jeans there – I liked him. Also I went to an anti-war demo on Saturday with Dave et al – made me feel sort of cleansed.

A friend of mine, Kauser, inadvertently introduced me to a really excellent word: Air. Not the noun that we all know and breath, but the verb.

Air vb.
To air is to ignore, dismiss or blank in an aloof or haughty manner.
Example:The next time I saw Britney she totally aired me man.

Well, the other day I got aired in the most nasty way imaginable by some 50-something woman who makes most of the uptight, straight, tosspots who populate my officeblock look like warm, friendly, hippies. I once made the mistake of trying to converse with her in front of the coffee machine, an act to which she responded with a dirisory sneer. The other day I held a door open for her and, as she walked through, she aired me with a look on her face which, when translated to English, said “that scruffy twat understands the concept of respect for his elders and betters then”. If I hadn’t found it so shocking I would have followed her back to her desk, opening every intervening door with the biggest cheesy grin I could muster. And then grinned as I shat on her keyboard. Much like Humphrey does.

Not depressed this time, just annoyed. Annoyed with the whole way life and society is structured in 2005…in London anyway.
Work: Why do we do it ? Most people would agree that we don’t like it, we don’t like most of the people there and we don’t do it out of choice. How crap is that ? We spend most of our waking lives in this crap situation. Even when it’s gorgeous and sunny out. Wouldn’t it be better to at least be with people we like ? Doing things we enjoy doing ?
OK we need to eat, but if we spent our days totally in search of food with our friends/partners at least it would be something we couldn’t bitch about – unlike doing the accounts in some crappy corporate hell-hole.
And don’t even get me started on dress codes…is there anything more bizarrely weird than that ? Ties ?
A workmate was kind enough to answer my “three meals away from revolution” query (Heinlein – although I’ve yet to validate this) so I’ll ask you all for the answer to this:

What are ties for, and from whence do they come ?

Why obscure shirt buttons ? Perhaps because they hint at the raw nudity underneath ?
Also, where do cotton trousers stop and jeans begin ? Why are they so offensive to business minded people ?
I’m concerned that my trouser/jean combination may be offending some of the office workers at my place of employment so I have decided to invest in a posh suit so I can look “business professional”. And, as there is nothing in the dress code about it, I’ll paint the words “Fucking Rats’ Cocks” on the back in acrylic paint.
Can’t do this for the rest of my life. Anyone want to fund a slacker ?

A ganglion is a small lump that forms on the hand or wrist. It’s harmless except that they can often hurt quite badly, and if they grow large then they can look really nasty. In the old, unenlightened times when people still believed in a god, they used to recommend hitting it with a bible. In fact I hear that the Kansas medical board have recently invested in several thousands of bibles for this and other medical cures. Oddly, this cure is supposed to work because the bible, being heavy, can smash the ganglion and disperse whatever it’s made of…ew

Years ago my mate Dave unintentionally grew a ganglion on his hand. It got so large and painful that it was interfering with his work, so he made an appointment with the hospital to have it removed. The weekend before the op we all ended up in Glastonbury (not during the festival) and thought it would be a good idea to climb the tor, despite the gale-force wind. We climbed up like excited schoolboys and by the time we reached the top I was genuinely worried about the prospect of being dragged off of the tor and on to the rocks at the bottom. It was really scary in a biblical sort of way. Anyway, once we’d reached the ground, Dave’s ganglion had totally disappeared! Cured by Glastonbury tor! He had to cancel the appointment and everything.

That was the last time I’d even considered ganglions until a couple of months ago, when a ganglion started to form on my wrist. It’s irritating rather than anything else and it tends to get in the way so I really wanted it to go. While I was on the phone to Michele earlier I told her it was irritating me and it brought to mind the old bible trick. Now, I do actually own a bible – I bought it in a dollar store in Philadelphia – but I thought I’d try the 21st century version. And besides, hard-disks are much heavier.

To cut a long story short: one quick thwack with a 150G Maxtor hard drive and it has totally gone! Maxtor be praised!

Good couple of days. It was quite late by the time I got home yesterday but Humphrey was very happy. She managed to compress a day’s worth of play into about half an hour. In case you, dear reader, do not own a parrot, let me tell you that it’s like having a tiny green Stan Laurel about the place. You can turn off the telly and watch her carefully play with something (TV remote control, phone, stick, delicate china cup) until it falls onto the floor, at which point she looks shocked that it moved in such a sudden way.
Then she will beak something with increasing ferocity until she falls off of it. Maybe later she will take a bath without wanting to get wet (seriously, she does this). Poor beautiful, dim, liitle bird.

No one I’ve asked, including a few ‘ask a quotesmith’ websites, has been able to provide an attribution for the quote:

Any civilised society is only three meals away from revolution.

apart from
Arnold Rimmer…
But in light of the recent events in Louisiana it does seem to have some credence. Chaos (not anarchy thank you very much), death and despair in the richest nation on earth surely can’t happen in the 21st century can it ? That evil baboon Bush had the shocking nerve to smile while he was talking about it last night. Maybe he really is the pig-ignorant shithead we’ve been saying he is for so long ?
There are so many reasons why Bush and all of his neo-con mates should be thrown against the wall over this, it’s difficult to isolate one in particular, but if I had to it would be that everyone, including Bush, knew that this was going to happen yet he still cut flood defenses to fund the war in Vietnam^H^H^H^H^H^H Iraq. A truly cynical act which should surely be regarded as terrorism. What other sort terrorist act could destroy an area the size of New Orleans ?
James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, surprises many people when he stands up and promotes nuclear power. However if, if, this disaster is a symptom of global warming then the argument is more compelling. In an interview he once described the impact of Chernobyl on the environment and the human race as negligible compared to the effects of global warming. If Katrina is a taster of what’s to come then we’d best get busy with the Uranium, at least until the fusion reactors manage to stay on for longer than a few seconds…
Cough…Kyoto…cough…

Perhaps we were spoiled at G********s with our own offices with windows and doors and everything. Or perhaps open plan offices are objectively evil ? I’m tending towards believing the latter. Imagine the misery of spending 8-10 hours a day in the same, small train compartment, with the same people for more than say, a week. Imagine if you were permanently listening to one half of their telephone conversations in the knowledge that they could hear everything you said on the phone as well ? After a few days, at most a month, you’d want to kill all of them. In fact, by a month you’d probably want to keep them alive enough to ensure the tortures you were applying were still hurting.
Welcome to my new office!
My immediate workmates really aren’t a problem. Partly because they’re thoroughly amenable chaps, and partly because they’re hardly ever there. Either way, not problematic.
No. It’s the other bastards that I hate. Over there, to the left is “John Tuggit”. John has a very nasal, squeaky voice. At this point allow me to introduce you to an new SI unit of measurement:

The Tedium:
Defined as a number of hours in the company of John Major,per hour.

Based on his voice alone I’d give John Tuggit at least 4 Tediums. But when you take into account the loudness of his voice and the fact he spends all fucking day on about Windows, the score increases massively. In fact he was last measured by SIMOB (Societé Internationalé Measurellement d’Obnoxios Boredome) as a masive 9.5 Tediums! I have dreams about slitting him open with sharp edge of my MegaCorp inspirational mousemat.
Rather than try to describe all of the pathologically annoying shitheads that live in my office-space in one go, I’ll spread it out. Tune in next time for the tale of “The Boysey Speakerphone Lardbrains”!

For the last week I have been reminded, by professional pastimes, of the many reasons why Perl can fuck right off.

Hang on, it’s important to recognise how good perl can be. It’s a very useful language and you can do a massive amount in a few simple characters. But, and today I have overused this metaphor far too many times already, I see it like Gaffa tape [duct tape]. It’s really useful and there are no shortage of jobs that you can do with it. In fact our hot tap, after being repeatedly vandalised by my sister, would not be functional without Gaffa tape! However, there are limits. I wouldn’t build a house out of the stuff (unless I was currently stranded on the roof in New Orleans). You can fix-up your sofa, guitar, and a thousand and one other things with gaffa tape. But making your clothes out of it is clearly going too far. See what I mean ?
Yes, lets do a regular transfer between two incompatible databases in perl. But no, let’s not write an air traffic control system. Another person whose head I’d like to eat is the person who saw perl and said “Hey! This is good, but just not object orientated . Why don’t we fuck it up ?”

Sorry for the obscurity there.

Tomorrow I’ve taken off work. Purely to save the life of a couple of MegaCorp staff with really irritating voices. Michele is off to the land of the free on Saturday so it also means we can spend more time together and I can still have a few drinks to celebrate Llynos’ leaving G********s.
Night all.