plasticbag.org

I have become a cautionary tale. Friends in crap jobs they hate look at me and say ‘we can’t leave right now, we must stick it out longer. If we leave our jobs now we will end up like Tom.’

Ten Good Posts From The Past (Nov 2001-Jan 2001):

1) Gay Gangsta : “Palare had a word, ‘omipalone’ (Oh-Mi-Pal-Oh-Nee) which was a combination of Man and Woman (‘palone’), and which at the time meant something along the lines of ‘poof’. Creative etymology leads me to posit the creation of the word ‘Homey-Palone’, referring to the almost non-existent phenomenon of the ‘Gay Gangsta Rapper’. “
2) On not being a proper ****: “OK so it’s a standard conversation. You’re out with women and you’re chatting away about someone who’s just fucked them over in some way and they say things like, ‘All Men are pointless’, or ‘I’ve never met a man who didn’t like football’. And then you look a little perturbed.”
3) Portillo Predictions: “And that was before Thatcher’s gradual lunacy pushed her over the brink into Hawk-Nosed Hitlerite. But now … well now politics is all about image, which is why William Hague will never become Prime Minister.”
4) Health advice: “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – even pointless, lacklustre, unimaginative, dreary, workaday, missionary, vanilla sex with someone you are bored with can have tremendous health benefits. “
5) Presents for multi-millionaires: “And while you are there perhaps you would feel like buying the cheery multi-millionaire a Zircon 50793 Studsensor Pro 4.0 or a Star Trek electronic key chain (three types requested).”
6) Two weeks before handing in notice: “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.”
7) The beginning of the rot: “Since I am going to have to be drearily positive for the next seven weeks as I scrabble around for a new job, I thought I may as well take this opportunity to moan about how appalling my life is at the moment in laborious and tedious detail.”
8) Rebranding: “Merely take two words that you feel ‘represent’ your site in some way, and then combine them to produce your newly rebranded site-name. If in the process you can spend $600 million, then all the better. With this spirit of adventure in mind, I hereby declare plasticbag.org to be called ‘fascillåte’.”
9) Photo of father: “Imagine my shock when I realised my father (bottom-right) was a big, baldy, 70s-style beardy-weirdy…”
10) Tom Coates Explains Everything: “No, strudel is beyond my meagre talents in the kitchen, I’m afraid. I think I missed out on many of the important gay genes that make you able to decorate effectively and not fart in public.”

The weirdness never ever ends. Just when you think you’re over the whole birthday thing, Jerwin sings for you. Scroll down to Marilyn, click, and then hear the true wonderful horror of “Happy birthday, Mr Plasticbag”. I’m freaked!

Last night Nick and Katy came around and watched Charlie’s Angels on video. In the process we got to take this photo of Nick standing in between my flatmate’s large cardboard cut-out of Angel and … er … my birthday present from Kate and Nick – a large cardboard cut-out of Buffy. How embarrassing.

Gallery of galleries (blog party in the park): notsosoft, little blue fox, Nick Jordan.

So I was kind of bored the other day and was watching TV and Margaret Thatcher was on TV clapping Jeffrey Archer and I thought to myself, I really must e-mail Mr Big. So I did. He’s in Ibiza for a month. Who the hell is Mr Big?

So I saw this flash movie on Metafilter and I was like “Weeeeeeeee”!

Today on Barbelith: Discovering Rufus Wainwright – “Poses” shattered my envious vision of a modern Jim Morrison, replacing it with the reality – a brutally honest and even dangerous gay musician.

Fighting with BT Internet’s 50p a minute help desk is less than entertaining at the best of times. It’s particularly unthrilling when you are complaining that the connection number that you are supposed to use has been engaged for the last fourteen hours (checked by dialing the number and listening) and they suggest that the way to fix this situation is to change your control panel settings and check your modem. £5 (at least) worth of phone calls later, I am in a near-stabbing frenzy.

I don’t even know where to begin talking about last night’s Singalonga Birthday Party. I had a tremendously good time – that much I am sure about. We all met up outside around six to make sure we all got tickets. People turned up that I haven’t seen in ages. It was great to see Emma and Katy and Matt and Fran and Rebecca and Nick and Meg and Danny and Davo and Phil and Michael and Luke and Pippa and Chrusty and everyone else I’ve momentarily forgotten.

The show was, as usual, tremendous. Most of us seemed to enjoy ourselves – belting out songs with as much force as our little lungs could grant us. Even those people who hadn’t seen the film before (and there were a couple) seemed to have a great time as well. We fell out of the cinema around 11.30pm, exhausted and flushed and (in my case at least) incredibly bouncy.

I also ended up with the most astonishing bag of goodies ever, and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone. Thanks to Davo for the album, Danny for the musical card, Pippa for the chocolates, Meg for the incredible original ER set script, Rebecca for the … whistle, Luke for the novel, Matt and Fran for the other novel, and Michael for the other other novel. You’re all stars. Plus thanks to Simon for the album delivered this morning. I’ve made out like a bandit.