plasticbag.org

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…

Answer me honestly, oh faithful readers, do I (or do I not) look like Jack Nicholson?

Blogger just can’t sit still. Latest launch: blog*spot – a free blogger-blog hosting service. I have to confess though, that even after looking at their products page, I wonder how/if they make any money. And if there aren’t ads on blog*spot, you have to wonder how it keeps body and soul together.

I have this image of Meg and Ev sitting on a doorstep with two extremely powerful laptops, with a cable snaking sneakily out of a nearby warehouse, and “Will Code For Food” written on their T-shirts…

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I’ve just discovered that I have built up a backlog of 50 unanswered e-mails over the last two weeks. So if I haven’t replied to you yet, I’m very sorry, and I will get around to it.

It was Saturday afternoon at 5pm, and I wander into Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus. The whole place has been redecorated and looks quite different from how I remember it. The most significant addition is a whole bank of iMacs with net access for sale at £1 for 20 minutes. “Cool”, I think to myself, “I can blog from the middle of Tower. That’s got to be pretty hip”. So I sit down with my little 20 minute card and try to access something.

Time passes. Sites resolutely refuse to load. After twenty minutes, I have managed to glance at two pages: my site and Blogger.com, where I have written a piece slamming the appalling connection speeds. I click on post and publish and nothing happens. For six minutes. My time runs out. I am furious.

At least in the meantime I’d found a way to remove all their sponsors from the browser (why don’t they ever turn off keyboard shortcuts) and replace them with kitschbitch and prolific links. I rule.