An evening on the tiles...

I had a rare night out on the pop last night.  It was to commemorate and commiserate with my former boss, who has been unceremoniously bumped from his job after 20 years' service.  I used to look forward to these affairs, but these days I eye them with dread.  I simply cannot stick away six pints and not feel the consequences.  That implies I used not to notice the damage; that isn't true.  But I was better at ignoring it when I was younger.  Also I had fewer qualms about turning up to work in an unfit state.  These days, I feel bad if I arrive at the office bright green and trembling.

I left them to it at about 10 o'clock.  My former boss, who was visibly in his cups when I arrived at 7pm, was still draining the bitter cup when I left.  I imagine the inside of his nut resembles the Somme today.

[update]: I got an email from him a few moments ago.  He was so "confused" upon reaching home that climbing the stairs seemed a Herculean task, so he slept downstairs with the cat instead.

What else has been happening?  Oh, yes, I know - Sainsbury's has unveiled its Christmas advert, which is a dramatisation of the famous Christmas truce during the Great War when British and German troops met in no-man's land to play football.  It's a beautifully realised, subtle and sweetly poignant film, and about the most offensive thing I've ever laid eyes on.

I'm staggered that not absolutely everyone in the country isn't horrified by this cynical, heartless and brutally calculating piece of marketing.  Let's think about it for a moment.  A supermarket is using the First World War to hawk its pickled onions and y-fronts.  If, as some people argue, it's fine to to invoke an historical event in which thousands tragically died, then why not go the whole hog next year and base the entire yuletide campaign on 9/11?  The reason they won't is because people would, quite rightly, hit the fucking roof.

But the principle is exactly the same.  Or are we to conclude that an event that killed 37 million people...err...yonks ago is fair game, but one that killed three and a half thousand and happened within living memory is off limits as to use it to market Pot Noodles might, just might, be considered to be beyond the fucking pale?  This is clearly bullshit.  It is either a principled or an unprincipled act.  One cannot cherry pick instances when it's okay and others when it's not.  That's like arguing that it's fine to ridicule a Chinaman, but not a Nigerian.  Actually I do believe some racists actually advance this confused argument.

Anne Guish

I had a very vivid and troubling dream last night.  There was nothing nightmarish about the subject matter, but it was one of those dreams that could have passed for an actual memory.  Nothing supernatural happened, and I wasn't sat it the basket of hot air balloon with Brian May or anything.  No, all the events were played out in plausible surroundings with "real" human beings filling all the major leads.  It was so mundane in fact that the befuddled night manager of my brain thought it was real and flicked the "go" switch.  At this I started shouting and flailing, which is what I was doing in the dream.  Loudly and violently enough to wake my wife as it happens.  I thought being paralytic during sleep was supposed to stop things like this happening?

And so it was that this morning I woke up physically refreshed, but a little lateral in the noggin department.  And I've been at 6s and 7s all day since.  I don't know quite what prompted this whole thing, a combination of factors in all probability.  I may have eaten something that disagreed with me for a start.  Also the council in my locale has introduced a "mini-Holland" scheme to promote cycling, which is as condescending and cock-headed as the name implies.

They've closed a largely commercial street to traffic, much to the annoyance of local business owners, and decanted the cars to several residential streets instead - my own among them.  This has given home-owners to pip, as you can imagine.  The worst aspect of the whole idiot exercise for me is the fact that I am lifelong cyclist: commuting, touring, racing, utility-cycling, I do it all, and it has made my cycling life worse.  I now cannot cycle the roads that have become rat runs, due to there being too much traffic on them.  I also cannot cycle down the main street in my village (the one that was closed to traffic).  It is supposed to have been given over to cyclists, but the locals now think of it as having been pedestrianised, so it's always thronged with people window-shopping or simply staring off into the middle distance, like expensively-dressed pink cattle.   

So all-in-all it's been a colossal fuck-up.  This is what is annoying my mind.  I have a phobia about flabby, illogical thinking.  I work with a lot of marketing types.  Marketing tends to attract two types: people who think plugging, selling and hawking are a necessary evil but are good at it.  And those who actually think it's laudable, akin to being a healer or a prophet.  The first type are women and the second men.  The men also all think they can count and think clearly, when the actual fact of the matter is that they know shit and pretty much do shit for a living.  So I've developed quite a specific aversion to dunces throwing their fuck-nutted weight around.  Having some of their brain-storming ordure, still warm from the colon, dumped on my doorstep, then, has got right in among me.

I will rise above it, however

Bob Hopeless

I'm in the office watching England's last group (and therefore by extension last [fullstop]) game.  It's against Costa Rica.  Marketing have laid on drinks and nibbles for us all, but no-one's heart is really in it.

A few weeks ago this must have seemed like a prime fixture: 5pm on a fine late-June Tuesday afternoon, everyone in the office, the sun cracking the stones outside and free ale for all.  The thinking was, also, that England would need to win this match, so the excitement would be palpable.  It isn't; it's a dead rubber.  I can't even bring myself to down a complimentary continental lager beer; that's how bad it is.

Maybe next time...

Marketing - a lesson from history

My phone at work rang earlier, which was an unwelcome distraction from the Internet, as always.  Worse still, it was someone who'd been put through to the wrong number.  He wanted to place an order for a digital product, and I had no idea who might be able to help him in his quest.

The reason I was lost at sea like this is because the job titles that my colleagues labour under are at best nebulous, and at worst wilfully obfuscating.  It turned out in this case that the person who deals with digital products was someone I have worked with for five years.  She sits about twenty yards from me, and I would count her as a friend.  And yet, I have no real idea what it is she does to keep the wolf from the fiscal door.  This ignorance isn't aided by her title as vice emperor of strategy parameter facilitation or something.  I checked, incidentally; facilitation isn't an actual word, not in English at any rate.  You may find it in some disreputable dictionaries, but that doesn't mean shit these days, let's face. it.

The worst department for this is marketing - that renowned refuge for the corporate weasel.  The difference with marketing types, however, is that they actually take these sterling-silver nomenclatures seriously.  It's enough for your average marketing bod to have a grandiose job title and an age-inappropriate wardrobe.  That's why they're content to fill their days guffawing at each other's weak puns and pointing and laughing at the internet's funniest cat movies.

I finally got so I couldn't take it any more, which led to the following poignant exchange recently:

Self: [sidling up to marketing johnnie] What is it you do exactly?  [gesturing to rest of office] We're all intrigued.

marketing johnnie: I facilitate brand purview.

Self: How so?

mj: By creating a nexus of social media...

Self: I'll stop you there if I may.  Specifically, what is it you do?

mj: [doe-eyed sideways glance at marketing colleagues]  We brainstorm below-the-line digital content.

Self: What do you do with the rest of the day?

mj: I...[looks at lap.  silently mouths vowel sounds.  briefly looks up, and immediately returns eyes to lap]...

Self: [sotto voce] I think it would be best for you and for everyone if you took you stuff and wandered off into the night, don't you?