Author: Tom Coates

I’m supposed to be going to a work-mate’s leaving do tonight in Camden. Unfortunately my spirits are at a low (again) and the thought of making cheery conversation while my head is full of bloody murder is not particularly attractive to me. The thought of all the things that I am supposed to be getting done this evening (from washing and packing, Christmas present wrapping to flat-tidying and bill paying) also fills me with a certain degree of horror. I’m off to Norfolk after work tomorrow evening. Finally a break.

Can anyone access this article? I found it in my referrers log and can’t seem to get access to it.

I just stumbled upon Derek‘s new micro-site about the writing and subject of his upcoming book: Design for Community. His first post reads: “Observation number one: writing a book is hard.” From personal experience from my doctoral work, all I can say is expect a hell of a lot of creative work from him over the next six months to a year, as he finds absolutely any humanly possible excuse to not actually put finger to keyboard. I, for one, am tremendously excited…

Scroll down the page a little way to discover the horror that Katy and I went through at a recent screening of Meet The Parents. She and I have had interminable counselling, but I still have flashbacks. The horror. The horror.

Thank You For The Days: Kirsty MacColl is hit by a speedboat in Mexico and dies. [Generic plasticbag.org tasteless comment here.]

“Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.” Sharon Stone

There may come a day in your life when you find yourself so sick to death of your job, so overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of respect that your very presence seems to engender, so totally bored by office politics and that boss who you’ve always found intolerable, that it comes to you that the only answer is to resign and go and find something else to spend your time on.

But those letters of resignation aren’t the easiest things to write. You have to be nice, don’t you? You can’t just tell the truth. You can’t catalogue every individual grudge and aggravation that you might have stacked up in your head. I mean, you have to think about your reference, don’t you? It’s important that you should leave in the same (apparent) good spirits that you joined with. But there is a place for all your petty grievances. And that place is called (satisfyingly enough) kissmyfreckledassbye.com.

I hope your hell is filled with magazines
And on every page you see a big picture of me.
And under every picture a caption should read.
Not bad for a girl from the gutter like me.

Finally, after many many months of me silently willing it in the background, Mark appears to have read Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus Trilogy. Not only that, but he’s put a version of the Principia Discordia on his site as well. He’s one of us now…

I have two projects in the pipeline at the moment, one a small one with Katy that is completely mercenary and about half complete. The other one is completely secret and hopefully very cool and very big. That’s all you’re getting from me at the moment.