Category: Random

There are some increasingly strange people lurking on what used to be the Nexus over on barbelith.com – quite how I’m supposed to respond to this without looking like a complete egotist is beyond me. Thanks, guys!

I have just had a long conversation with my boss of bosses about work and life and holiday time. He’s been really reassuring and nice and helpful, which means that I just have more to think about now than I did before, if I’m completely honest, but at least I’m less tense.

The most satisfying part of the whole shebang is that he (I fear with nervousness in his heart) practically insisted that I take a couple of weeks off work starting after work tomorrow. I think I’m going to be off from the seventh until the nineteenth, during which time I plan to visit Bristol, get cable television, work on my sites, clean my bedroom and sort out the weird thing that seems to be growing on the bottom of my feet.

Every so often I forget that notsosoft has a Scary MegCam Archive. On those days, the world is grey and depressing. And then I remember that it’s there and look long and hard. And then I can’t stop laughing! For months!

Am I the only person to have read Freud around here? I mean – really?!

Mark:
“from a dream about honey bees on a school playground: kerry showing off his pirate sword took from a monkey bar. be careful, i told him, you’re going to stab someone with that sword of yours. kerry, c’mon, put the sword down, we’ll play dodge ball! honestly! kerry!

“of course kerry stabs me with his sword while running to play dodgeball. i woke up, with the most incredible stomach ache.”

It was my father’s birthday on Friday, and I bought him this book on the history of the twentieth century, but I haven’t had time to send it to him yet, which makes me feel completely appalling – and indeed is pretty unforgiveable. The thing is, I pretty much know that whatever I buy him will be pretty much wrong. If he wants something he buys it himself, and he doesn’t really seem to have any particular “general interests” that a present can easily cater for.

I asked him what he wanted for Christmas one year, and he said that he’d like fifty Bic biros. So I bought him fifty Bic biros. He seemed as happy with them as anything else I’d ever bought him…

I’ve only made him smile genuinely once with a birthday present, which was for his fiftieth and contained fifty presents – from a bean bag frog to a vibro-massage kit. But although he smiled at the time, I don’t think any of the gifts were ever used again. In the end, I think my brother stole the frog, which we decided to call Wilbur. He got a hole in him in the end. All the beans fell out.

Disclaimer: Everything that follows is the result of me having had a bad day at work and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt (the size of a small planet). God is love. Love is God. I am Bored. I’m going Home.

I have been working really hard today. I’ve got a lot of things done which needed to be done, and I feel quite proud of myself for having done them. However, it has to be said that I have a limited amount of respect for the things themselves. In fact, through my current distorted gaze, the only productive things I seem to have done today are:

• Throw a plasticine castle against a wall very hard until it turned into mush.
• Play “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine” very loudly in the office after everyone else went home.

Three perspectives on work, with excerpts [via metafilter and randomwalks]:

• The Abolition of Work
  “Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.”

• Fuck Work
  “The goal of Unamerican Activities is the creation of a business model that will permit the dissemination of FIVE MILLION STICKERS THAT SAY ‘FUCK WORK’. ”

• We Need Less Labor, More Days
  “With 16 new holidays added to the 10 existing ones we could have what amounts to a three-day weekend every other week. I would, however, retain the five-day school week, giving parents two days a month to themselves.”

What are you supposed to do when what you do doesn’t give you pleasure? And if it’s not that you don’t like it but that it no longer likes you – well, what are you supposed to do about it? My whole work life feels completely out of control at the moment – spiralling all over the place. And decisions seem to be made about my future by, it seems, everyone other than myself. I probably just need a holiday (hopefully approaching rapidly – oh sunny Bristol, how fair thou art), but it doesn’t feel like that at the moment.

Being an unnecessarily defensive post about Tom’s inability to get things done on plasticbag.org:

• Question: Am I still watching That Thing You Do, reading Harry Potter IV and listening to Moby?
• Answer: No. I have been watching Shanghai Noon, reading comic books and listening to the Beta Band.
• Question: So how come it says different on the left, then?
• Answer: Because I’m really disorganised. Sheesh. You guys give me such a hard time sometimes…