Wax on, wax off

A couple of weeks ago, my sister - who temps as a PA - was asked by her current employer, KPMG, to sit a series of in-house tests that assess her competence in her field for consideration as a permanent member of their staff. Lynette, who has been working as a PA at management level for years, breezed through the tests, only to be told she had failed them dismally and would be unlikely to be taken on should she apply.

Today she, along with everyone else in her team, gets this:

The CMS team are pleased to announce that the temp of the month award for January goes to Lynette Knight in London.
'Lynette came to me on very short notice and with no KPMG experience, to look after a Partner and his team. She is professional to the core, friendly, diplomatic while resilient, and copes well under pressure. She settles into any environment straight away and just gets on with the job no matter what the tasks. She is extremely pro-active, diligent and very personable. I have moved Lynette from pillar to post (always on short or no notice) to cover roles when people have been sick for odd days or longer periods she demonstrates a very high level of professionalism and forethought whatever role I place her in. She is willing to do any job no matter how large or small and has even cancelled a personal appointment to remain in the office to assist us when the pressure was on for end of day deadlines. More recently she has assisted me with settling in another temporary member of staff and showing her the ropes!. A valued lady, and a pleasure to have on my team'.

WTF?!

She's been unable to control her giggling all afternoon. I'd probably be less amused.

Very Happy Meal

A voucher for a free Happy Meal with my quarterpounder and fries today netted me (read: Zara) this pink Hello Kitty pencil case that looks remarkably like an emergency dildo. You know what I mean; an object that, in a pinch, will do as a convenient replacement for the real thing. Sheer boredom during class (read: lectures) has been known to raise libidos by orders of magnitude, and there isn't a fridge or grocer's to hand for a cucumber or mutantly large carrot . It seems that McD's (or Hello Kitty manufacturers, a more disturbing thought intrudes) is enhancing their customer service ethos by catering to these urges. I say, a salutary effort, if so. Bring on the vibrating Sonic the Hedgehog 'back massagers' and Pokémon pleasure pussies! Sex education for the nation, at a pound ninety-nine!

The Ant & The Grasshopper Fable

Because it's topical, and I know someone reading this will enjoy it, another roaming email pinned down here for general consumption:

Classic version
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

The end.

British version
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like him, are cold and starving. The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home in Hampstead with a table laden with food. The British are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The Liberal Party, the Respect Party, the Transvestites With Starving Babies Party, the Single Lesbian One Eyed Mothers Party and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant's house. The BBC, interrupting a Rastafarian cultural festival special from Grimsby with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome."

Ken Livingstone laments in an interview with Panorama that the ant has got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share". In response, the Labour Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant's taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers. Without enough money to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by Camden Council. The ant moves to France, and starts a successful AgriBiz company [funded by the EU] (although within weeks, his business is threatened with Compulsory purchase by the state unless he marries a French ant).

The BBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food, though Spring is still months away, while the government House he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain it. Inadequate government funding is blamed, Diane Abbot is appointed to head a commission of enquiry That will cost £10,000,000.

The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, The Guardian blames it on the obvious failure of the Government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity. The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Britain's multicultural diversity, who promptly set up a marijuana-growing operation and terrorize the community.

The end?

And today's winner is... Google Video

After having heard very little about Google Video since its launch, suddenly today I am referred to two hosted shorts in a row. Alive in Joburg is a squidrillion times better than the last one, though. It's funny, and clever, and poignant, and witty, and insightful, and... oh, just go watch it, but have some tissues handy. Don't say I didn't warn you!

via the Scrivener

Lyric call

I need you to grind like you're working for tips

Nasty Girl - Notorious B-I-G feat. Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge & Avery Storm

Is this the owner of the house?

A little while back, I lifted some advice about handling telesales calls (amongst other things) from an email doing the rounds and, just recently in the press, the telesales counter script was discussed as another deterrent. Another potentially effective method of dealing with these time-jackers just occurred to me; coolly asking the caller to hold while you tranfer their call to a premium-rate line. I guarantee at least a stunned silence from the caller, if not splutter and confusion, as you press a random number on your pad and then return to say that the transfer is complete and they have your complete, undivided and, most importantly, remunerated attention for as long as they're happy to pay the premium rate.

*click*

I'm looking forward to testing it.

Poke the geek, why don'tcha?

If you have to descend to sterotypes and cliches to get a laugh, I suppose you could do worse than Fear of Girls.

It has a couple of funny moments, and I will admit to giggling almost uncontrollably at one point (God knows she's sterile - master retort), but once it had run through the credits and the distraction had ended, I realised just how insidious it is. What, it's not enough that role-players have this stigma, but now we have to laugh about it as well? It would hurt more if we role-players gave a damn what the rest of the world thinks, but since we get to shape our own reality anyway...

And I know that I'll get comments about how it's an intentional parody, or witty self-mockery, or some such other justification, so I'll say it now. Bollocks! It's poking the geek, just with a more technologically-advanced stick. Our ignorant forebears did it for generations for fun, and ignorant hicks everywhere still do.

Not cool. Funny as hell, but still not cool.

This is what a morning of reading The Ranting Gentlemen has done to me. Instant vehemence and bile. Thanks, guys.

Very short story

I had nothing better to do on my journey home this evening, so decided to try and write a story that I could SMS to people, if the urge struck i.e. a tale in less than 160 characters. I'm still working on that but, in the interim, here's one I wrote that just fits into a concatenation of 5 messages:

I met a demon on my train yesterday.

“Make a wish,” it whispered. “Any human trait will be yours in abundance.”
“Why do you offer this?“ I asked. It shrugged and told a tale of mischief and punishment, and then repeated the offer. “Any one thing, in full measure.”
“The price?” I queried.
“It is a gift,” the thing demurred, then added, softly, “if the wish is selfless.”
I pondered this, then made to disembark as the next station arrived.
“Wait!” called the creature. “Do you not want your heart’s desire?”
I answered sadly, “And there’s the trap. You know that I would not ask for that which I do not want, and I dare not ask for that which I do.”
And as the doors closed, I heard the being screech in fury as it flared and burned to ash.

There is no demon on my train today.

(later) I worked out that, to write a 160-character story, allowing for an average of 4 characters per word, you would have to tell you tale in 30 words or so, with a little leeway for punctuation. It seemed impossible, but a little online inspiration led to this:

Petals fall where once was sand, where once we toiled and now we stand, in shade.

Only 81 characters, without serious effort! And a full story, as far as I can tell. Progression, characterisation, human interest; all there, if a little roughly sketched. Now I'm determined to produce something a damn site smoother, using my whole allowance. Watch this space.

Hey, bigot! Leave them kids alone!

Pink pounds

Wonder if I'll get a raise if I come out?

Injuries (K)nights

Thursday night showed me up as a bit of an asshole.

I'd suffered delays getting home from work that evening, only to be turfed off the tube one stop shy of my home station, which was closed for some reason. While waiting for a bus to take me the last short distance, a helpful station attendant disclosed that there had been a stabbing in the vicinity of Upney station, hence the break in service. None too fussed, I hopped on the next 62 that came along, and settled down for the last short haul, only to leap up like a startled springbok when the bus sailed past Upney Lane, its normal route. I stormed down the stairs to confront the driver, who blithely admitted that he knew the road was closed to traffic, and hadn't thought to let the passengers know. Having disembarked at the junction lights, I marched down Upney Lane, in far less than the best of tempers.

Now, Upney Lane crosses the Underground and C2C lines at Upney Station by means of a small humpback bridge. There is no other way across within a 30 minute walk. So you can imagine my reaction when I reached the roadblock and was told that I could not be escorted across but had to go around. When I indignantly pointed out the size of the detour, and the length of time involved, I could see a flicker of irritation pass across the officer's face.

"Sir, " he replied curtly, "somebody's been stabbed. We have more important things to worry about."

Of course, he was absolutely right, not that it registered immediately. My dudgeon has risen way too high to allow that thought in easily. I swept off parallel to the tracks, intending to cut through the park to get to the next bridge, only to turn and head directly back the way I came as the park entrance was blocked with construction equipment. With detours and bus waits, I only got home after 10.

The time spent walking from blockade to bus stop and waiting in the cold cooled my ire, and gave me time to reflect. The station staff were clearly aware of the situation at Upney, and had not thought to advise travellers of the change in routes, which would have given those of us heading in that direction the chance to avoid additional delay. The police may have thought it superfluous to station an officer at the head of Upney Lane to divert pedestrians, and the officer who fielded my frustrated attempts to short-cut through the scene was probably as irritable as I was. None of that excuses my complete lack of compassion for the victim. I should have been horrified, and instead I was merely vexed. That makes me a bit of an asshole, a surprising and unpleasant discovery.

Not as much of an asshole as others, though.

Zara and I were invited to a Burns' Night celebration on Saturday evening. It was to have been a thronging, whisky-soaked event, replete with haggis, neeps and tatties. As it transpired, a good evening was had by all - all five of us, two of whom are currently teetotal! For a variety of reasons - some excellent (food poisoning and short-notice relocation) and some less so - only 3 of the 12 guests arrived. We managed to have a great time anyway. Magnificent kudos goes to Kevin for his tasty haggis, the surprisingly good turnips, 8 different single malts, the lyrical renditions of the Selkirk Grace and To a Haggis, and his overall good humour in spite of the dearth of drinking guests, and to Rachel for catering for the haggisphobes. I'm already looking forward to next year's event - we shall make it an even better one, and this time we'll be drinking!

So true

Superb Saturday

I'm not the most exciting person in the world. Or even the UK. Or London Barking 28 Meadow Road, for that matter. So a day of museum and movies, while not high on the list of adrenalin fixes, really floats my simple grey boat. I got to wander around the British Museum, visiting both the Americas and the Mesopotamian and Nile regions, and then swept myself away to the wide prairies of Wyoming and the streets of Kyoto, in Brokeback Mountain and Memoirs of a Geisha. I learnt that Bastet had a sister called Sakhmet, with the head of a lioness, who visited destruction on mankind at Re's request, that Inuit clothing had enlarged hoods to carry their offspring in, and broadened shoulders to assist in feeding said offspring (although I still don't know how), that it doesn't matter how fast or slow you go as long as you like the direction you're moving in, and that even the smallest kindness is a candle in the night of a hopeless life. If a day is wasted if no memory is made, I reckon I'm insured against at least a week of amnesia.

Shutterbug bite

The exit for Upney tube station is situated - as many of the eastmost stations on the District line are - on a bridge over the track, elevating it above the rest of the very flat alluvial plains north of the Thames on which the cheap worker housing was originally built. This gives a lovely vantage point for the occasional sights worth seeing, mostly fireworks and pollution-enhanced sunsets.

Tonight, as I was leaving the station, it gave me a clear view across the rooftops to a brilliant shaft of light stabbing down towards the park hidden behind the terraced houses from what I can only assume was a helicopter, as I could hear the syncopated percussion of blades but couldn't see the machine itself, it being well past sunset and all. I stood there for at least 5 minutes watching the spotlight, transfixed by the sight of the apparent pillar of unsupported luminescence dancing in the dark, before it occurred to me to snatch a picture of it with my mobile. All too quickly I discovered the abyss between a cameraphone and the real thing. All I could see in the display was the regular flash of a single pixel picking up the tail light on the chopper.

There was this moment of singular beauty, and it's relegated to the obscurity of my memory. I think I understood just then, just for a moment, the kind of mindset that drives photographers. What's more, sensitised by the event, the journey home became a series of still frames as my brain framed further shots. It wore off pretty quickly, but Ash, Stv, is this where you live? If so, how do you get anything else done? Why aren't you paralysed by the possibilities?

The male libido as a common sense filter

We were talking in the office today about that bit in Jersey Girl where Liv Tyler comes to Ben Affleck's house to apologise about harrassing him in the video store, and to ask him to do the porn questionnaire anyway. I said that it would creep me out if some store attendant abused their access to my address to effectively stalk me like that, but the other guys in the office said if a pretty woman tracked them to their house like that, they would be quite flattered. So, am I the freak, or are they?

6 columns of fame

Looks like some long-overdue recognition has finally made the papers. Page 31 of today's Evening Standard bears witness to a force of nature:

Cute slang

Beer coat

The invisible but comfortably warm coat worn when walking home after a night of drinking

Clerks 2?

Can it be? Apparently. The trailer threatens a 1:1 rehash of the first movie, so probably not a classic sequel, but certainly a typical one.

Multiple blogasm block

A small confession: I'm a multiple blogger. That's right, I have more than one blog, and I'm not embarrassed by it at all. It's convenient, prudent and friend-friendly. And twice the work of maintaining a single journal. So I've been looking for publishing software that allows me to create a single post and, at a press of a button, post it to both blogs simultaneously. You'd think all the major blogware would allow it, but apparently not. I'm not used to being unable to find something I'm looking for on the interweb, but this has me stumped. The best I've found is w.blogger, and it requires that I save a post before sending to each blog as a separate action, not my idea of efficient publishing at all. Maybe I'm just ahead of the curve. Again. Then again, maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

Scaperesolution

At a time of year traditionally associated with turkey stew in the freezer, nude pine trees in the compost heap and half-baked, frenzied attempts carefully planned approaches at a new start, the pressure to subject yourself to a resolution of one sort or another is almost overwhelming.

My coping mechanism involves setting a seemingly reasonable target, and then finding myself unable to meet it because of all the other things I've set in motion that are definitely not in any way resolutions at all, I swear to the gods, even if they look like it from a 3^rd party perspective, it's all lies I tells ya. This year, I resolved to blog at least once a day, dooming it to failure from the start, and in that failure, I've succeeded.

What kept me from meeting this ill-fated obligation? Well, aside from the unforeseen New Year Cold 2006, and numerous hours force-feeding Zara's fledgling maths skills, we've had the alcohol drought - self-imposed, as a solidarity gesture for Zara's newest diet experiment - and learning to Lindy Hop. A mad remark on New Year's Eve has led to swing lessons. Well, will lead to swing lessons, as soon as 1^st semester exams are over. Xmas Gut 2005 seems to require some attempt at exercise, and dancing is as good a way as any, and better than most. Besides, who never wanted to wear a short skirt and ankle socks and be flung around like a cheerleader's baton? oh?! only the girls get that? Damn! Ahem!

As for an achievable blog resolution, expect to see far more inanity than hitherto. I'm tired of being sensible and edutaining in my blogs. 2006 will be the year of the prancing Greg. With a 1000 Nellies!