I just spent a fortune on ribbon and some cards. Now how logical is that. Medium. How Christian is that? Not very is the answer there I think.

So I’m all set. Perhaps this year I will make a big effort and ‘put on a happy face’. Or perhaps not. Jolly? Jolly? Just because my names Jolly doesn’t mean I have to be fucking jolly all the time does it? Ah if only – however I consider it extremely unlikely that my parent’s have a copy of Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, which I can strongly recommend to anyone in need of a good laugh.

OK – it’s a bit studenty but sometimes we need that. And also features more classic lines than you can shake a stick at.

However they do have a large collection of Luis Bunuel classics, though not I think my absolute all time favourite : That Obscure Object of Desire, partly because it features the sublime (almost unnatural) Carole Bouquet, and partly because it’s just such a funny movie. Strange, surreal, misanthropic yes, but above all hilarious.

Ach – I’m bored bored bored. Only another 1¼ hours to go and I’m outta here. But back on Weds X(

So have a good Christmas guys - Get drunk, take drugs, sleep with your partner’s siblings, fall asleep under the Christmas tree with your head in saucepan. Preferably whilst wearing a Santa hat that lights up and plays Jingle Bell Rock all through the long hours of your booze, vicadin and speed comedown coma. Now that's what I call festive family fun!

Lollipop

Has anyone but me noticed what a weird word lollipop is? I mean it’s just weird. Try saying it a few times, see if it makes any more sense. Lollipop lollipop lollipop. Ugh even thinking about it now is freaking me out.

Festive

But enough of that. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not feeling even the slightest bit Christmassy yet. And who can blame me. What I am feeling is hungover beyond the powers of man or beast. Not that beasts normally drink until their heads fall off, but there you go. Ack. As they say.

But the BIG news is that The Panster has finished his Christmas shopping. YES! Normally I’m still scrabbling around on Christmas Eve so being done by 22nd is nothing short of miraculous. Don’t know how I’m going to transport it all but that’s another story. I even have the paper and tags as well!! The only thing I don’t have is ribbon. Where can I get ribbon from (apart from vvrouleaux of course)??? Do I even care? Answer: NON!

And even after the forthcoming festivities I’ll still be coming in under £1K! Bargaineous.

Cards! Cards! I haven’t got any bloody cards. Maybe I can get some at James Selby a store so old fashioned they don’t even have a website of any kind . . . or . . ooh I just don’t know anymore. What with the massed wosnames and the hangover from beyond Hades I can’t think straight anymore. Everything hurts – back, kidneys, neck, stomach. Plus feel dizzy and sweaty. Not to mention sick as a dog. I need my bed. Probably dying. Anyway, no more booze for me till, erm Friday. And possibly not even then. Will I never learn. Apparently not.

The Inferno


I walked past Argos last night and it looked like the last chance lucky dip at Satan’s Own all-comers BBQ and pot roast. Those poor unfortunate souls.

Maybe they sell cards in Waitrose? Well actually I know they do but can I be bothered to brave it? I think not. But I bet they have cards and ribbon at James Selby.

Sofa + duvet + DVD + Chicken Korma Ready Meal = YES!

I made some prawn balls last night and they were . . . not good. I think my mistake was to use some cod as an additional binder. When I try them again I wont bother with fish at all – as they are simmered in broth the fish gains a rather unappealing fibrous texture and a very dominant taste and smell. Still – live and learn I guess. Plus should really have chopped the garlic and ginger a bit more finely – was a bit chunky. Still have tons of the bloody stuff left over as well – perhaps frying would be better. But then you don’t get the benefit of the lovely broth with noodles & pak choy.

The question would be – how to get it all to stick together without the ground fish – maybe use pork instead . . . now we’re talking, or somehow mince up some of the prawns . . . I don’t know. They did hold together pretty well thanks to the gloopiness of the ingredients plus the addition of egg and breadcrumbs, notwithstanding the addition of distinctly unbinding coriander.

I’m feeling rather random today – saw the funniest episode of vintage Frasier last night, now that the cable is fixed – Eddie was depressed and everyone else got depressed as well – Daphne opining that ‘human’ Eddie would cook poached salmon if he was giving a dinner party made me laugh and laugh. I don’t know why . . .

The reason for all this noodling is that I’m trying to avoid thinking about either a) work or b) Christmas. And in particular Christmas shopping. Thankfully I’m *nearly* done, just a few more to get, but it’s draining. And then there’s the wrapping, and the travelling and the enforced jollity . . . ugh.

Most bloggers seem to really look forward to Christmas – it seems to be something they are actually going to enjoy. What’s wrong with you all?? Locked in the bosom of the family without enough booze and fags, forced to regress to being a sulky 14 year old, everyone trying not to notice the fact that each respective member of the family is another year closer to the grave and more than another year closer to becoming a full blown freak / loner / nutjob / crashing bore / common or garden pervert.

Still, at least you get some decent fud. This year I fully intend to eat sufficiently grossly on Christmas day so that I can pass out for most of the afternoon while my body desperately attempts to avoid some sort of gastrointestinal meltdown by diverting all the blood from my brain to my stomach. I don’t even like turkey that much but that’s OK, because we’re probably not going to have it. Hurrah. On the other hand it does tend to increase feelings of sleepiness due to all the Trytophan, but I’m sure that as a factor compared to the general killer blows of carbohydrate and lunchtime alcohol the effect is pretty minor.

Having said all of that if I need to fall asleep all I have to do is think about my work for 5 minutes. I’ve got this monster XML script to write . . . it’s driving me insane . . . it’s so repetitive. And no matter which way you look at it falling asleep with your head in your keyboard doesn’t make a good impression.

I absolutely fail to understand what people can be thinking most of the time. Here we are in the middle of one of the jolliest political debacles for years and what does the great British public do? Only go and give Blunkett a 67% approval rating. Here’s the perfect opportunity to rub his nose in it and they go all soft on us. Depressing or what? I can only assume that despite the fact that journalists regularly come out even lower than politicians in public opinion polls most of us still believe what the papers tell us, to whit the largely reactionary press telling us that foreigners are a dangerous scourge attempting to invade our island nation and infect it with their filthy heathen ways.

So let me explain something about immigration once and for all. Britain is currently producing kids at a rate below the replacement rate (about 2.1 children / woman). “So what?” you may say, but this is basically very bad news indeed for anyone who wants to ever retire. Wealth, and in particular the value of pension schemes, is largely based on the number of people working / the number of people not working. The sums are simple. Aged population with fewer kids : everyone has to stay working till they’re 97 because there aren’t enough people of working age to support this demographic.

So when a bunch of gypsies turn up at Dover instead of shipping them back off to whatever God forsaken sink hole they came from the immigration people should be saying something along the lines of “yes please come in, and here’s some English lessons to help you integrate, and by the way, if you’re thinking of having any kids the national health service offers excellent benefits you know.” What we need to do is encourage people from other parts of the world to come here and have a bunch of rug rats at our expense. Why? Because someone has to pay for my pension and at the moment the kids from Jumblistan look like my only hope.

Dear Kids from Jumblistan,

As you may be aware some of us here in the West are having a little problem with our saving schemes over the lifetime (that’s pensions to you). It may come as a bit of a surprise to you to realise this, but saving money without a stable demographic profile is frankly a bit of a waste of time. In the larger scheme of things (and nothing is larger than pension schemes) money invested in the financial markets is really just a guarantee of a slice of the future earnings of those markets. If there aren’t enough people working to maintain the value of these bonds, companies or weird derivative bets then we might as well flush the money down the toilet. Either way we’ll all be working till our fingers drop off.

Meanwhile things for you don’t look that rosy either. You don’t have a pension at all, and your neighbours hate you because they think you look funny. Well stop worrying. Here in multi ethnic Britain we gave up worrying about people dressing funny long ago, and (disregarding a few local nutters, hem, hem) you’ll be completely free to practise whatever bizarre cultural and religious affectations you may have. When you add in the current dangers to you from pollution, local climate meltdown, political ostracism and exploitation by unscrupulous foreign multinationals it hardly seems worth the candle does it?

So here’s the deal : come to Britain (now re-branded Sunny Fun Britain™) and you’ll get the following great benefits :-

• A free* education for all your young family


• Local authority help with language and adult education


• Access to the full range of social security benefits


• Automatic local authority housing while you get on your feet


• Full employment at competitive rates


• Full access to The National Health Service (including complete ante natal care!)


• Automatic residency rights


• Full access to Sunny Fun Britain’s™ unparalleled range of retail and investment opportunities.

* Does not include further and higher education.

And remember, Residency + 10 years guarantees citizenship. All that we ask in return is that you shag like a bunny and have plenty of kids. No Jaffas.

Don’t delay – sign up today!

Yours in expectation, etc etc


I just don’t understand it. I suppose it’s simply the case that many of the people currently banging on the hardest about a ‘tide of illegal immigrants’ (courtesy The Daily Mail Government Policy Unit) are not the people who are going to have to face up to the fact that without these immigrants we are, technically speaking, completely fucked.

And I haven’t even got onto the excellent humanitarian and social reasons for allowing people into the country, to whit, most people only want to come here because their lives back home are unbearably shit. And who am I to gainsay them?

The more I read about Kimberley Quinn and her ever so entangled love life, the more I like her. It’s seems to me that she’s basically just completely up for it, and doesn’t really give a monkey’s who knows it. I can see the great and the good squirming with horror at all this. Here she is – a married lady of independent means, and she’s *SPILLING THE BEANS* left right and centre and there’s no way they can leverage her to shut up. Compare this to the way 20 years ago that ultimate creep Cecil Parkinson browbeat poor Sara Keays into shutting up and then used the full power of the courts to stop her telling anyone what a shameless revolting disgrace he was. How times have changed. Tee Hee.

All those naughty boys who thought they could get away with a bit of extracurricular shagging on the side are going to be hung out to dry. I love it! You just don’t get stories as entertaining as this very often. I’m only hoping that there’s more to come. Oh if only Boris could somehow be drawn into the frame – then my week would be complete.

Don’t get me wrong, you know she’s a complete monster – probably egotistical to the point of insanity and utterly cavalier with the careers in the hands, but at the same time, she’s just kinda cool. All those slimey blokes undone in their debauchery because ultimately she didn’t really give a stuff about exposing herself and (as a corollary) them too.

Kimberley Quinn – dangerous, but refreshing.

Shagger

This whole David Blunkett thing is just getting weirder and weirder. It certainly looks like Kimberley Quinn is a bit of a serial power junkie – looks like she’s been knocking off Simon Hoggart as well . . . the plot thickens.

Poor Simon. His career is pretty much based on being the outside sneering at the antics of the inhabitants of the goldfish bowl, and suddenly – whoops – it’s caught with pants down time, and you’re exposed as being just the same as everyone else – desperately shagging around, lying your head off about it and crossing your fingers that you don’t get caught.

I have to admit though that I’m liking Mrs Quinn more and more. It would start to appear that she’s basically just been staggering around Westminster shagging anyone who catches her eye – nice one Mrs!

Shithead

Perennial Leper Boy Donald Rumsfeld seems to have been acting like a total wanker again.

Donnie Boy – it’s too late to say you’re going to start signing the letters by hand after you’ve been caught out having them photocopied. The fact that you allowed this to happen in the first place tells everyone exactly what you really feel for the soldiers who have been killed in Iraq : contempt.

Don’t believe it? – then answer this. If Rumsfled really gave a shit you’d think he could take 5 seconds to scrawl his name at the bottom of a letter put in front of him by a secretary. But clearly not. I guess Rummy just doesn’t think that the life of a young soldier is equal to 5 seconds of his time. Now that’s arrogance for you.

It’s quite beyond belief that anyone can still stomach this guy. Still, as I’ve blogged before the thing the GOP is best at is persuading people that they are in fact just a bunch of Good Ole Boys, not the sociopathic, violence obsessed, billionaire autocrats they really are. Combine that with a heartland of American voters who are willing to swallow any bullshit to avoid seeing the actual consequences of America’s current policies and it starts to be understandable. It still makes about as much sense as poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick, but it’s more understandable : the combination of a bunch of compulsive liars and an electorate of starry eyed masochists is a powerful thing indeed.

I went for dinner at the Boss’s house last night. Culturally it was a little slice of the 1970s preserved. We were all on our best behaviour and trying to make with the social chit chat.

That is until Boss lady got pissed and started telling everyone which of my colleagues are secret coke heads. You’d never have guessed it of some of them. Others however . . .

Sad but true conversation :-

Pan’s Colleague (F) : You know that woman?

Pan & Pan’s Colleague (M) : No . . .

PCF : Yeah you do, she’s new

Pan & PCM : No idea I’m afraid . . .

PCF : She works in IT.

Pan & PCM : Drawing a blank here . . .

PCF : She’s blond and has got big tits.

Pan & PCM : Oh yeah, I know who you mean.

Well what can I say? BIG DAY!

Not only does Blunkett finally get his, but the worst of New Labour’s anti civil liberties agenda seems to be getting the silver bullet as well, thank you Law Lords. It’s such a pleasure to once more be able to have the most senior court in Britain make a legal ruling without Blunkett immediately rushing in from the sidelines to try and kick them to death for even daring to think about ruling against his own personal wishes.

My only regret is that Blunkett went over something as stupid as all this as opposed to on the grounds of being a horrible heartless megalomaniac, knee jerk authoritarian fuck stick – not to mention all round Daily Mail suck-up. In fact I was *almost* beginning to feel a bit sorry for him until I read this quote from the man himself in the Guardian :-

"I misunderstood what we had. I misunderstood that someone [Mrs Quinn] could do this, not just to me, but to a little one as well"

Nice one David.

Even in the middle of pouring out his crocodile tears for the press Blunkett couldn't resist doing a little bit of spin, and suddenly you see the real unvarnished Blunkett again : “I’m always right, White is Black, Black is White, I'm an honest man, you're a terrorist, I can have you arrested you know, when did you last see Bin Laden?“

Word of advice David – it wasn’t Mrs Quinn who ‘did’ anything (apart from shagging you of course which *is* fairly unforgiveable I admit), it was all you mate – bullying, blustering, sneering and attempting to get your own way in everything as usual. It was you, Blunkett, who dragged the ‘little one’ into the middle of this – purely for your own personal edification without a single thought to the feelings of anyone else involved. If you’d done the honourable thing and backed off none of this would have happened.

So what have you managed to achieve through this exercise of your monumental and utterly charm free hubris? You’ve lost your job, Mrs Quinn (7 months pregnant) is in hospital suffering from stress (and presumably insanity as well), and her husband, who seems a decent enough bloke and rather undeserving of your predatory antics is now Britain’s biggest cuckold and all round laughing stock, not to mention of course that all this will now have to be explained to the ‘little one’ in a couple of years. Plus everyone hates you, but that’s not new. Let's be fair though, there aren't really any innocents here - The Quinns are not by any stretch of the imagination anything less than master manipulators . To some extent we'll never really get the whole truth about all of this because everyone involved is fully embedded in the media. It's a media story about media people - normal journalistic rules (such as they are) need not apply.

Really everyone comes out smelling of poo - after all Mr Quinn is guilty of at least one complete foolishness best summed up by the quote (I forget from whom) "The man who marries his mistress immediately creates a vacancy". Except that in this case its Mrs Quinn who's wearing the trousers.

The rules on this are fairly clear after all. If you've been shagging someone's wife and she makes it perfectly clear that she wants to stay with her husband and the affair is over, the only decent thing to do is slink away, keep schtum and nurse your wounds to fight another day. Stumping off to the Family Division of the High Court with a HM Secretary of State sized sulk on is the act of a bounder at best, and an out and out psycho at worst.

So well done, David. Give yourself a slap on the back – you’ve acted like the utter shit you are and you’ve finally managed to shoot yourself in the head as well as everyone else.

Congratulations, you twat! Sorry – redundant twat.

See-Ya! BYE!

Wanker.

From Yahoo News, courtesy of Nicole. Apparently both NBC and CBS have banned an ad from an American Church group which encourages Gays and Lesbians to attend services.

From NBC: "[the ad] violated a long-standing policy of the network not to allow commercials that dealt with issues of public controversy."

What exactly is controversial about saying that gay people can attend church too if they want to?? I'm assuming (just to mix things up a bit) that the army are still running recruitment ads are they not; now why aren't they being banned on grounds of 'public controversy'.

"Are you young? Poor background? Education looking too expensive? Then be all you can be : Help George W build a New World Order and get to drive really big tanks at the same time. Joining-the-army-may-have-unexpected-side-effects : media-scapegoating,depression,suicide,injury,disfigurement-and-death"

And as for CBS : "[CBS] said the fact that the Bush administration had proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman made the advertisement "unacceptable for broadcast"

I have no idea what that even means. They seem to be saying that they are unwilling to promote, advertise, even talk about anything that W doesn't like. That seems to me to be pretty much an admission of total craven acquiescence to the right wing agenda.

Everything is completely FUBARED, *especially* the Rev Albert Mohler. I'm no theologian but I'm fairly sure that one of the central planks of Jesus's ministry was to say that helping people to God is the most important thing, and let him worry about who's guilty and innocent of sin. if you must worry about sin, worry about yourself.

But then nothing gets me going quite as much as supposed men of the cloth who can somehow pervert the Gospels, surely one of the most tolerant and anti-establishment pieces of writing ever, into a mandate to seek and destroy all those around them who disagree with their own rigid, codified, twisted little world view.

I may not be going straight to heaven myself, but at least I'm not standing on a podium pointing my finger at all the 'sinners' around me. Honestly, if these guys seriously think that they can promote discrimination, militarism, elitism and (lest we forget) the fucking death penalty and also be welcomed by Jesus with open arms they are so, SO mistaken.

Guys - if you think Jesus would have ever even contemplated voting Republican you are just flat out plain old crazy. Oh hang on a sec . . .

Busy

Phew – no time for blogging today – super super busy (for once in a while) sudden rush to get everything done at the last minute as per. Ah well – done now and seemed to go down OK.

Opera Ponce

Last night to the ENO to see Semele which I thoroughly enjoyed. Although Handel does lure you into a bit of a false sense of longeur in the forst half of the first act it suddenly livens up, and really has some wonderful tunes and fantastic bits of showing off in it. If you get the chance I strongly recommend it.

Manchester

Another weekend of pain – this time spent getting royally mucked up in Manchester and being kidnapped by Virgin Trains – yet again. I mean what kind of excuse is it to say you can’t sell any tea or coffee or hot food because you’ve run out of paper bags and the law *requires* you to sell anything hot IN A BAG?

Nearly managed to kill myself by bouncing off a door with one of those enormous exercise balloons but there you go – back of my head/neck still intensely painful, but I’d probably know if I’d fractured anything. Right. Right?

Apart from that – excellent Mancunian antics – made a really inappropriate pass at one of my friend’s office juniors. NICE.

Knacked

Can’t work out why I’m so tired today. Last night to bed at 10pm after a delicious nourishing meal of broccoli cheese and fighting with the flatmates. Admittedly I woke up between 3.45 and 5.15 am, but I didn’t get up till 8 – that still a good 8.30 asleep. I think the only solution is to start going to bed as soon as I get home. I thought you were supposed to need less sleep as you get older – I seem to need more.

Blunkett

The downside is that quite a bit of that 1½ hours was spent thinking how much I hate David Blunkett and what an intense pleasure it would be to kick him down a set of wet rubbish strewn concrete steps, preferably at one of his own ‘illegal’ immigrant centres while he attempts to explain exactly why not only are ID cards a good thing, but why it’s both stupid and an act of ‘terrorism by default’ of me to even think about questioning his vision and trustworthiness on this.

I think the thing that really really gets me going about Blunkett is the mock outrage he expresses that anyone could doubt his word, whilst simultaneously attempting to insinuate that anyone not 100% signed up to his fascist vision must have something to hide – probably a member of Al-Quaida already, and really he’d be doing less than his duty if he didn’t tip off the Department of Homeland Security about his suspicions. Now here’s a terrifying thought – and I don’t think I’m being paranoid there either.

Terror States

This is the state we have now reached. While at the moment only those unfortunate enough to have funny sounding names and swarthy skin are being locked up indefinitely without trial the rest of us need only suffer ‘home’ arrest. All it takes is one anonymous politico or civil servant to add our name to a list somewhere and suddenly we will be unable to travel anywhere abroad :-

Why can’t I go there?
You’re on the list mate.
Can I see the list?
Not in the interests of national security mate.
Can you tell me why I’m on the list?
Against the interests of national security mate.
So what am I accused of?
That’s a matter of national security mate now fuck off before you have an unfortunate accident in a police cell.

You think I’m joking? You know I’m not, and you know it’s true. Anyone who speaks out against this tide of ‘anti-terror’ insanity sweeping over us is very rapidly going to find themselves going nowhere at all.

As soon as politicians start saying things along the line of “The innocent will have nothing to fear from these proposals” my blood starts to boil and can shortly afterwards be seen spouting out of the top of my head in a rather unpleasant geyser of rage. Everyone has something to fear. These people are NOT trustworthy. Their assurances that none of this information will ever be used other than in a strictly controlled and approved manner is both ludicrous and pathetic. It basically amounts to being asked to put your head in the lion’s mouth and hope he doesn’t bite it off. Fair enough, except that in this particular case the lion also assured us that WMD really, really existed. He’s been caught making it up before and now when anyone dares suggest that as a result of being caught out telling such gargantuan porkies they don’t really want to put their head in his mouth, his rage is incandescent.

Neg/Pos

Negative stuff : Intense feelings of hatred, terrible feeling of depression at concept of another Blair term, increasing age, girth, everything really.

Positive stuff : just got paid. Lots. HA. In your face Blunkett!

Shagger

And one more thing – I fail to understand how Blunkett shagging someone else’s wife doesn’t qualify as sleaze. However you look at it it’s not the act of a gentleman or the act of someone who puts much stock in the values he supposedly represents – the sanctity of marriage, the upbringing of children in a stable environment, the use of contraception etc etc. And even worse than that, the thought of Blunkett on the job is just so repellent I can actually feel my lunch coming back up. I can only assume Mrs Quinn is suffering from some sort of deep seated psychological childhood trauma which makes her want to throw herself under aging megalomaniacs. Reeeevolting, anyway.

Ugh.

So that’s over at least. Truly team building away days are a bunch of arse. As these things go it wasn’t too bad. Stayed an a pretty decent place and some people had some very nice things to say about Pan, despite me being horribly late (both for the workshop) and pretty much on a daily basis, and also not being much of a team player. Not that I shaft my colleagues – quite the reverse – but I simply find it hard to be all touchy feely and consultative – the thought of taking a vote to decide some critical point is alien to me.

But anyway my colleagues seem to see me as some sort of maverick wunderkind / troublemaker / joker / visionary of the group. Which is nice. After all you wouldn’t want to be the practical ‘can-do’ enabler would you?

So now I’m knackered. Too much food, too many hours sitting in stuffy conference rooms battling with concepts such as ‘when did I last achieve one of my dreams’ or ‘on a scale of 1-100 where would you put your commitment, and where would you like your commitment to be’. Had to get up too early to get the train back to London and too much brekker as welll. Ack.

As I said – it wasn’t t actually that bad overall. Which is lucky as we’re booking a follow up session as well. Plus you get a free feed and get to sleep in a ridiculously squishy bed as well as all those other traditional hotel hobbies – looking at the wee shampoo bottles, wondering if you want to keep the slippers, gazing at the air conditioning units outside the window, flicking through 137 tv channels, none of which is porn, or at least not free porn, browsing the world’s most boring directories of local attractions and trying to work out if the fact you got a twin room and some of your colleagues got a double room was purely random or some sort of implied insult : chances of you getting pissed and repairing with an equally drunken co-worker for a sport of soon to be bitterly regretted How’s Your Father : Zero.

When I stayed here:

I used to amuse myself by disabling the window catch so that it would swing completely open and then seeing if I could flick lumps of wet toilet paper into the roofs the cars outside. I never even got close but it helped to pass the time.

Some people really don’t have enough to do. Imagine spending this much time creating a web page for a 1970’s board game about the supernatural. Can you guess what it is? I can’t even believe I’ve spent the time to create a link to it. Weird, huh?

Went to see this exhibition (Encounters) about Mummies earlier at the British Museum.

It was quite interesting (and a freebie) but what was most impressive was the 3d surround cinema technology. It’s really impressive, especially with the computer animation sections , because then there are no seams between the different projection footprints. Felt quite queasy zooming down the tunnels inside the pyramid, and actually had to stop myself from reaching out trying to touch things a couple of times. How old am I? Four??

Off on a team building away thingy tomorrow – horrors. Any event where they tell you in advance that the day will be co-ordinated by a ‘professional facilitator’ fills me with horror. Still – probably better than an unprofessional facilitator. That’d be me – the kind of facilitator who immediately forms favourites and pet hates from the group and favours / humiliates them appropriately. In the evening you could slip the graduate trainees too much booze and try to sleep with them and then have a bit of a weepy breakdown in the bar.

I’m laughing just thinking about it. If you’ve never been to works outing which dissolved into chaos you haven’t lived. I can remember one particular Christmas office outing to a Greek restaurant which I helped organize where I danced to The Birdie Song with The Big Boss, one of my colleagues started to break plates on his forehead requiring a quick trip to casualty for stitches and more than one person spent the entire evening in floods of tears. Happy Days! Ugh.

The Birdie Song is not, thank fuck, an international phenomenon. There are special ‘dance’ moves you have to do, and it’s just the last word in making a twat of yourself naff fucking awfulness. This will never become a post ironic ‘so out it’s cool club classic’. It will remain what it is: shit.

I include the full instructions for anyone wishing to travel to the UK for the purposes of committing social suicide anytime in the near future. Or possibly real suicide.

Birdie Dance (England) Music: Birdie Song ESP 001

No formation: Hands simulate bird chirping sound by opening and closing hands.

Hands under arms with elbows moving up and down simulating flapping or hands may be shoulder height with elbows bent, waving hands.

Body twisting to right and left simulating wiggling tail. Cheep with hands 3 times. Flap wings 3 times.

Repeat above for a total of 4 times.

Make a right hand star and turn with it for 8 steps, reverse with a left hand star with 8 steps.

Repeat this sequence again and go back to the beginning.


Holy shit.

Blogging can be a strangely cathartic exercise. Sometimes you don’t even have to post what you wrote. Just writing it gets it out of your system. As you can probably guess I just wrote something that was, to put it mildly, a but rabid, so I’ve edited out the personal attacks, most of the more obvious slanders and just left the broad thrusts as it were.

I don’t know from ‘kin boiler

How come I don’t have a problem with the boiler. Well it provides me with hot water to shower in and heats up the radiators. What’s not to like? Others however, disagree. Others think it blows itself out, that the hot water suddenly stops, that it makes funny noises. Who am I to judge their subjective experience? So how did I end up having to sort the boiler out? I don’t really mind, it’s more of a philosophical question. You’d think that the one with the mysterious hot water problem would be the one to find, book and pay the plumber, but you’d be wrong, because it’s Pan. Which is odd because the boiler can eject itself through the roof and head for Mars leaving a trail of steam and sparks and 119 bottles of ‘colour confidence’ conditioner behind it for all I care.

Why do otherwise pretty decent examples of humanity sudden loose their va-va-voom and become, for want of a better word, crashing bores. I mean seriously, people who are in bed asleep by 10.30 every night and never go to the pub. I actually asked one of these types for a pint recently and was rebuffed in favour of - the horror - Top Gear.

Which is worse – not wanting to go to the pub because you just don’t want to spend an hour or two in the company of Pan (odd I know but sometimes you just have to accept these things) or because you actually want to watch Jeremy Clarkson standing in front of a bunch of hero worshipping petrol heads over . . . emphasising . . . every . . . single . . . fucking . . . word? Christ on a bike. I have now sunk lower than Clarkson in the popularity stakes. It must be me. I must be doing something.

Eat properly FFS!!!

When people start to bug you, suddenly everything about them is annoying. Eating habits for example. Two weeks ago I cooked a casserole of duck, ginger, garlic, onions, and star anise. Would anyone try it? NOOOO. Last week I cooked a hot pot of chicken, venison sausage, chick peas, butter beans and artichokes. Did anyone give it a go? NOOOOO. I made an amazing salad of tomatoes, ginger, garlic, palm hearts, fennel and sunflower seeds with raspberry vinegar and sesame oil vinagette. Care for a forkful? NOOOOO. Scallops? Niet. Squid ink pasta? Nein. Kidneys? Ne. And let's not even get onto the subject of tongue, pig's trotters and sea urchins. I don’t know what it is about well educated, intelligent and supposedly cosmopolitan people who refuse point blank to expose themselves to anything that they haven’t tried before but it’s certainly depressing.

Linda McCartney pies, macaroni and cheese and cereal does not a proper diet make. Have you any idea how dispiriting it is to offer someone a plateful of nutritious, organic food brimming with care and attention, delicious, fresh, flavoursome and good for you to have them wrinkle their nose and say ‘no thanks’, and then proceed to eat a bowl of carbohydrate, fat and water. BTW I’m not having a go at mac & cheese – I like it as much as the next man – but if you are going to make it, use some proper fucking cheese – Iceland VALU Cheddar tastes like arse. What’s wrong with people? Christ. If you have the means then please just stop buying excluseively from the super bargain left-overs bins at Lidl. Stop buying fishfingers made from ocean floor sweepings. Stop buying 4 packs of no brand pizza. Stop buying white sliced sta-fresh bread. There’s a reason why it’s only 27p and can be compressed into an 800g ball of glue with one hand you know. I know it's cheap, but it tastes bad, and it tastes bad because it's no good. If I sound like a snob then perhaps I am, but if the definition of that is being driven crazy by people who have the time, the money and the opportunity to lead interesting, pleasurable and soul enriching lives but choose instead to spend Saturday night sitting on the sofa watching Stars in their Eyes, and eating a horror pie, then so be it.

What's to 'get'?

Honestly it makes my soul ache – people who seem to wilfully deny themselves enjoyment, not for some real reason, not because of some deep seated psychological problem (hell we’ve all got one of those) but simply because, “well I might not like it, and if I did give in, then I’d have to interact with other people as well”.

I realise I’m guilty of doing here what I accuse other people of – making value judgements based on insufficient evidence. That may be true, but I’m still right. Of course I’m not necessarily the most perfect person in the world either – Opinionated? Lazy? Dirty? Fetishistic? Judgemental? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But at least I’m not sinking into a quagmire of suburban mundaneity. I may often be unhappy, I may even be 'wasting' my life, but I still manage to have fun once in a while. Sometime I feel that people must derive some kind of pleasure from being as dull as humanly possible whilst simultaneously feeling the need to communicate their more ‘adult’ mindset to the universe in general by being as rude and patronising as they can be to everyone who isn’t quite ready to brick themselves up in the mental equivalent of a Barratt Starter Home just yet. Why are they like this? I just don't understand. Eeesh.

Kill me now!

Actually the Linda McCartney pies are entirely palatable, but you'd still probably be better off with a carrot.

Birthday

Another year – another 365 days closer to the grave. As you can tell my birthday has been and gone again. I am now officially in denial about it. I refuse to have anything to do with it or accept that I’m as old as I am. I feel ancient. Obviously I’m a bit of a worrier, but is 30 something too young to start worrying about obsolescence? It ought to be . . .

Culture

Went to a very interesting exhibition though at the V&A about the social, economic and cultural interaction between Asia and Europe 1500 - 1800 expressed through a variety of artistic and cultural artefacts and paintings called Encounters. I can strongly recommend it. It was interesting to see how the concepts of Europe and Asia changed during this period – the attitudes of different countries, both Asian and European seemed to be often individual rather than generic – certainly Britain’s attitudes and behaviour towards, say, India and Japan are completely different – at least in the first half of this period – and there is a lot of cultural exchange. It was common for traders etc to interact with the local populace – embassies were sent back and forth – lavish gifts made to local rulers etc, yet somehow by 1800 we have reached the stage where Europeans decreed that it was illegal for their natives to adopt local dress. How strange is that? What turns a mutually beneficial trading and cultural exchange into an exercise in cultural isolationism and military domination? It seems really odd as by and large Europe didn’t really have anything with which to trade with as Asia didn’t really want anything we made – goods had to be bought with silver rather than exchanged. Obvs the Portugese had some problems as their trading empire was to some extent a front for Jesuit missionaries, or rather the finance wing of same but still – how was it that the guys with nothing to sell ended up dictating the terms . . . very interesting anyway.

Mass Slaughter – Latest odds & tips.

For those of you who might have been worrying that W will decide to temper his second term with a dash of humility or even sanity, it’s good to see that there appears to be no signs so far. I have however given myself a little pat on the back for correctly picking where America’s next global death match would be. There were of course quite a few options, but many had something wrong with them :

Lebanon – would have to do it by sea, and frankly who cares anyway. But can ski in the morning and spend the afternoon at the beach *on the same day* so you can’t rule it out completely. Popular choice with Israel. 7-1

Egypt – too moderate, need to keep onside for cajoling recalcitrant Palestinians (although actually this isn’t really true either; the Bush mantra seems to be ‘Why bother persuading someone to co-operate when you can just kill them instead’) but big, too tricky militarily, plenty of chums, and it’s Africa dude! 25-1

Libya – would love to really and could probably make it happen militarily but would also piss off the UK enough to withdraw from all future co-operation make the rest of ‘old Europe’ mad enough to demand a trade embargo and probably make the French declare war on America. Again, So What? Except the French have nuclear weapons of course. The reason for all this is that Europe (and the Clinton administration) have spent the last 15 years (post Lockerbie) giving Gaadafi the slow water torture – and it’s worked. Boring and slow it may be but somehow we’ve managed to get some justice for the bombing and at the same time made Gaadafi play nicely with others without having to kill a whole bunch more people. Bush does not like this sort of thing at all of course – why talk when 250k lb of high explosive achieves practically the same objective. Admittedly with a somewhat higher body count and with the side effect of making America the new terrorist target du Jour, and not actually achieving one iota of behavioural change but hey . . . . 10-1

Cuba – possible, possible, and ideologically attractive, but a pretty unfavourable risk/reward ratio. Havana will almost certainly fall when Castro dies anyway so why bother as there’s nothing to gain. An American invasion would absolutely require the imposition of a US supported ‘democratic government ‘ and the ‘return’ of all the land to Chiquita (formerly The United Fruit Company and Central American Buccaneers) et al. The GOP already has all their votes, so what’s to gain? If there’s some sort of internal revolution and general mayhem (which is a pretty safe bet) Bush gets to be King Maker instead of having to have pay for all those boring old elections. Staying away makes a lot more sense economically. 7-2

Jordan – interesting tourist destination, moderate by Middle Eastern standards and constitutional monarchy, so good at locking up lefty trouble maker types so what’s the point? 30-1

North Korea – don’t make me laugh. We *know* they have Weapons of Mass Destruction (not to mention one of the world’s largest standing armies) so chances of actually provoking them in any significant way? 100-1

Syria. Oooh – always a possibility – right next to Iraq, anti Israeli, socialist, military dictatorship, probably any number of Palestinian terrorist lurking there, You’d have to say it’s on the radar for regime change at the very least. Downside – large modern(ish), relatively well trained, equipped and experienced army. Would also probably trigger new Middle Eastern war but so tfw – can’t make an omelette without breaking heads. But likelihood of military ass-kicking and body-bag untastic news pics too much to risk. High on the list, but actually not really going to happen. 3-1

Kazakstan. Islamic & potentially oil rich & strategically VERY interesting, but technically haven’t done anything wrong (huh?) plus very real possibility of causing simultaneous invasions by both Russia and China. Don’t think W really has the appetite for that. Also have to invade at least one of the other ‘Stan’s first. 15-2

Turkmenistan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Jumblistan. Islamic and by and large ruled by thundering loonies. Apart from that skint, un-strategic and all round un-engaging as Theatres of War. Low ratings value. A bit like Afghanistan but with more cardigans and fewer AK-47s. Useful for invading Kazakstan but that’s about it. 15-2

Saudi Arabia – Right next door, repressive monarchical dictatorship, lots of oil, terrorist breeding ground, origin of Al-Quaida, not many friends, but much cash. A Bush family favourite. 50-1

Iran : Oh yes Oh yes Oh yes. Thinking of buying a time share in Tehran? Hold that thought, dude. Don’t believe me? It’s already starting : Pentagon turns heat up on Iran. Downside [Figures courtesy of the CIA ] Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 12,434,810 (2004 est.) Upside [Figures courtesy of the CIA ] Military expenditures : $4.3 billion (2003 est.). On the other hand Iran does seem to be making the right noises on non-proliferation, but we know how much credence the US gives to claims of innocence: 3-2 ON.

STOP THE MADDNESS

I can’t believe what’s going on in Iraq. It’s really teetering on the precipice. I don’t mean about the marine shooting the guy in the mosque. That’s the sort of thing you have to expect in war. It’s always happened, because lets face it – they’re soldiers and they’re trying to kill each other. Name of the game really.

Obviously not good to break the ‘rules’ of engagement, but it’s clearly not only the Americans who are playing dirty. The problem is that they’re expected to adhere to a higher standard of behaviour than a bunch of semi organised militant ‘freedom fighters/terrorists’, and they should too. So: not good, obviously; very bad in fact, and a disaster for the US in PR terms, but also no surprise to anyone but the wilfully disingenuous (aka certain Islamic and anti-war commentators) in this or any other war. When you’re fighting block to block, house to house day by days, shit happens. If the roles had been reversed you know the same thing would have happened. And even if prisoners had been taken – so what? The Americans would have ended up in orange jump suits being executed on TV and the Iraqis would have ended up in orange jump suits locked up forever in Guantanamo Bay.

The really sinister development is the murder of the Care worker Mrs Margaret Hassan. Apart from the obviously insane and evil actions in kidnapping and killing someone who was so obviously only interested in defending and helping ordinary Iraqi’s, who are of course outraged at her murder, and was not in any way political or connected with western economic interests it bodes really badly for the future safety and stability of Iraq. Terrorists who are willing to carry out this sort of murder are clearly not interested in the normal political process. They are not really interested in using ‘terror’ to achieve their aims. Clearly their demands (the withdrawal of British Troops) were never going to be met, so why continue with the action?

The answer is to cause the withdrawal of individuals from Iraq – to effectively Balkanise the region. Again you might ask why, and the answers are simple – the US are probably not going to be in Iraw forever, even at the behest of whichever slightly dodgy party wins the fabled elections, and when they leave it’s all to play for politically. The purpose of these horror attacks is to reduce concepts of rationality and induce fear and isolationism within the Iraqi population. A population that regularly sees foreign nationals on it’s streets engaged in business, in charity work, in leisure is less likely to feel abandoned by the west, to feel trapped by extremists, and will be much more likely to retain and uphold the hospitable and humane values that the Persian Gulf used to be famous for.

This vile murder is actually an attack on the general population of the region, attempting to move them into an isolated position where they feel they have no choice but to bend to the will of the terrorists. We know form our experience in Northern Ireland that it actually only takes a very few (possibly as small as a few dozen) actual violent activists to seriously distort the political landscape, and these people are very hard to flush out. This murder is an opening shot in a war about the future of Iraq post America – whether it will be ruled by democratic or even non democratic but popular means or whether it will be ruled by militant fanatics in the manner of the Taliban. Without the willingness of the Iraqi population to stand up for their moderate views, and without the willingness of Western, Asian, and African nations and individuals to continue to operate in Iraq, rule by lunatic is inevitable.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m no fan of the war or American foreign policy, but Networks such as Aljazeera are not actually doing the Iraqi people (and neighbouring states) any favours by concentrating so heavily on the Marine shooting incident at the expense of proper reporting of the murder of Mrs Hassan. One is an unfortunate but inevitable outcome of violent conflict which may slightly hasten or lengthen America’s stay in Iraq and may (again depending on the degree of spin put on the reportage) decrease the public’s opinion of US forces and the US in general. The other is a clear warning that once the deep freeze of occupation is over all hell is going to break loose and Iraq will be left looking down the barrel of a violent, endless, civilian targeting civil war which will make the American invasion and occupation look like a brief interlude of calm before the storm.

Christ. I’ve only had the iPod a week and I’m already embarrassed at half the shit I’ve managed to get on there already. OK – some of it’s pretty fine – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Cornershop, The Donnas, Lou Reed. And then, ooh-er starting to look a bit iffy : Blink-182, the Darkness, Lasgo, The Bangles until finally you’re right down there underneath the barrel and wondering how you managed to pollute your lovely machine with The Buggles, Juice Newton and Busted. FFS.

What I’ve always thought would be fun would be to walk through a crowded commuter train with some sort of stereo randomly pulling out people’s headphone jacks and inserting your own which then broadcasts whatever they’re listening to the rest of the carriage. The potential cool points could be enormous – imagine if you were listening to, say, Mein Hertz Brent (Rammstein) from the Lilja-4-Ever soundtrack.

Alternatively you could be standing there: Just you, a carriage full of commuters and The Strawberry Alarm Clocks.

So where have I been since last week – The Isle of bloody Wight. There is of course a logical explanation for all of this but let me tell you first – the island is weird. Not scary or anything, but weird all the same. A strange mixture of common and posh, urban and rural. The reason for this unseasonal journey was of course to attend the marriage of The Captain to The Mixster. Yikes. Actually of course I was more than attending I was in fact Best Manning. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular role your job is to organise the stag do (already done) and then stop the groom from getting two drunk, cart the rings around till needed, chivvy people about, make sure everything starts on time, and of course make the best man’s speech.

I can’t really comment on my organisational skills but my, speech, though I say it myself was wicked good. I slayed them. Which was lucky because beforehand I was sweating buckets. I’ll never be sneery at the best man again. Trust me when you stand up in front of 100 braying drunks with the remit to be rude enough to amuse a 35 year old rugby player yet not be rude enough to offend any octogenarians grandparents, there’s a certain moment of truth. However, the truth be told, it’s not the hardest audience in the world to please, and by the end they were rolling in the aisles. I rule. Rah!

They also very kindly gave me an iPod for my efforts, and I LOVE it. It’s simply the coolest thing in creation. It’s soooooo wicked. I *heart* Apple. I feel like a giddy schoolgirl with a new crush. Bring me unto the Macs. It’s time to change I think.

And speaking of things that haven’t changed saw Bridget Jones : The Edge of Reason on Sunday. If you liked the first one you’ll quite like this one – it’s the same film basically. Down to the same scenes and everything. Jumbled around a little, but there you go. In fact I suddenly feel a strange urge to go the cinema. Not that there’s anything on particularly, I just want that cinema experience. It’s comforting.

Women’s Auxiliary Royal Canadian Moose Mounties Deliver Knockout Blow to Retarded Dickwits!

Hmmm – all quiet on the blogging front. Caused, for once, not by a total lack of stuff happening but by *too much* happening. I don’t think I have anything to add to the Great Bush Debacle except to say that I stayed up till 7am GMT and got absolutely shedded. With hindsight possibly the worst way to spend the night in recorded history.

So suffice it to say I was plastered and in no mood to do anything so spent the whole day in bed with the duvet over my head thinking "What have you done? What have you done? We’re all going to die!" and consoling myself with the thought that all the ‘tards from Lumpyhead, Kansas will be laughing on the other sides of their faces when they all get drafted to go and invade Iran. And it will be them of course – I don’t think the usual troops of ‘Operation Human Shield’ will be turning up in droves and we can also be pretty certain that none of Bush’s cronies offspring stands in any danger. The thought alone is laughable.

Numpties

And on a deeper level we all have to start to seriously examine our attitudes towards America and Americans. Many bloggers myself included have always made the clear point of disengaging the actions and attitudes of the US government from actual Americans. But now?? Those guys have been clearly shown what Bush & Co are really like – there can be no doubt as to the stupidity, greed, hatred and intolerance of the Bush administration. Yet still he got voted back in on a hugely increased majority. The only logical conclusion is that the majority of voting Americans are also stupid, greedy, hateful and intolerant. The days of ‘benefit of the doubt’ are *OVER*.

To paraphrase Dead Ringers : "My fellow Amerindians, this electionification has proved one factuality beyond any doubtednessedness : there are 59,459,765 people out there even stupider than I am."

2008

Never mind – no use crying over spilt milk. But I would say one more thing – can people please stop knocking Hillary? I hope she does run in 2008 and she is the probably the best candidate out there. What was wrong with Kerry? Not much, except he didn’t have much charisma, and people doubted whether he really believed what he was saying. No worries there from Mrs Clinton – she’s passionate and dedicated and she really believes. She is the embodiment on conviction politics. Forget all those idiots in Wyoming and what have you – they hate gays, they hate equality, they hate anyone who tells them to stop doing all the dumbass things they like doing that are ruining life on Earth for everyone else. Fuck em. They’re never going to vote Democrat. You could stand Adolf Hitler out there and if he had a blue rosette on him he wouldn’t get any votes. Get Hillary to pound whatever mummy’s boy asshole the republicans can come up with into shark chum and win back those states that must be taken to win. Trying to win votes by pretending to be ‘a bit republican’ clearly isn’t going to work. Reclaim the left of centre as the logical place to be. Of course in most countries they would all be so poor and sickly after another 4 years of this nonsense that a ‘Democrat’ victory would be a shue-in but not necessarily in the USA.

Numpties II

I’m beginning to think that republicans *like* being shat on. There’s clearly something in their make up that says “I’m nothing – use me, screw me, lie to me, patronise me, pretend I’m one of you to my face and jeer at me behind my back, take my money, my healthcare, my education, my children and feed it all into the pit. Give it to the super rich – make them richer, and the poor poorer because that’s what we do best in America – inequality.”

Enough Already

The reason I got so ming-monged was I’d been out earlier for rather groovy tapas at El Parador with the kids I used to work with at M.A.I.D. (or Dialog as it became known when it was owned by Dan Wagner instead of Thomson) - one of the most innovative companies of the last 20 years and a genuine delight to work for. Just a pity they were pathologically incapable of actually selling anything. We were reminiscing and comparing what we did there back in the day and realised that technology wise we were probably 5 years ahead of the field but had a unprecedented love of doing things the hard way instead of the ridiculously easy way. KISS – wise words when it comes to developing client-server bespoke knowledge enterprises suites. Never mind. And a second point – you’re never really going to sell a product that costs £200K if to install it you have to tweak your client’s server registry settings to install it.

That really was a great place to work – the sales team only employed beautiful women so there was always some eye candy to rest your glazzies on, the offices were on Leicester Square, we ate at Chinese restaurants every lunchtime and Dan’s idea of a company jolly was flying everyone to Barbados for 2 weeks. No, honestly. It was real communal working – we strove together, ate together, got trolleyed at The Blue Posts together (every night , pretty much) and went to the cinema on Friday lunchtime together. Despite all that we did a lot of great, original, work and had more fun than anyone going to work really should. And for the record – Dan was a cool guy who really valued the input staff made. I’m making it sound like it was all a laugh but we worked 10 hour days every day long before the dot-com nonsense started, we didn’t have shares, we didn’t begrudge it – we were happy to do it – we believed in what we were doing.

Well we’re all sitting here waiting to see what kind of a mess is going to appear over the horizon. Actually I’m fairly hopeful. Given that it should be a lot harder for Bush to cheat in Florida this time it’ll be almost impossible for him to win, provided of course he doesn’t manage to get half the electorate excluded on charges of ‘being found in possession of curly black hair’ (with apologies to Not the Nine O’Clock News) or whatever dubiousness (sic) he’s got planned. Not that I’m really such a big Kerry fan – it’s pretty lily livered stuff after all – but the choice is, for any sane person anyway, pretty much a no brainer – on the one hand a rather un-charismatic, in fact boring, career politician with a track record of ‘playing politics’. On the other : Nuclear Satan on Drugs - the Coke Snorting Draft Dodger himself.

Actually I couldn’t give a stuff what drugs politicians take or used to take provided they’re not demanding tougher sentences for first time offenders whilst hoovering lines off the back’s of prostitutes and to be fair Bush has pretty consistently emphasised treatment and education over imprisonment. Plus I’m sure that things were damned tough in the Women’s Auxiliary Royal Canadian Moose Mounties – why should you be stymied for being a wee bit of a rat fink 30 years ago after all. I mean what were the choices – a) stand up for yourself and become a conscientious objector – fine but you’re NEVER going to have a career in public office in America, b) go to Vietnam and have every chance of coming to sticky end over what was pretty clearly even then a total disaster, or c) get Daddy to fix you up with a sinecure that obeys the letter of the law without any risk whatsoever of all that dangerous being shot at. Provided you don’t mind being a bit of a snivelling weed the last choice is clearly the best.

OK – having the nerve to then call John Kerry a coward and a cheat was pretty stomach churning (and if you believe the White House didn’t organise The SwiftVets then frankly you are a retard), but ultimately so what – druggy, snivelling and morally vacant – none of these were or are good reasons not to vote for someone – they’re irrelevant.

No in my opinion the reason you should vote against Bush is because he’s a raving lunatic whose policies will inevitably cause the social, political, economic and military annihilation of America and probably take most of the West with him. Stop this madman before it’s too late. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

On the brighter side of things I’ve been struggling with Java all day and it’s driving me crazy. I’m no java programmer (or indeed programmer of any kind) but I need to use some apps which are only available in a java development environment. So I’ve installed netBeans, I’ve mounted my source files, I’ve declared my classpath (whatever!), I’ve located the relevant 3rd party files I need in the jakarta-tomcat directory, and can I make it all work??? Can I arse. Nothing happens – it’s all a big con. I’ve also spent a lot of time talking to the IS team about apache servers and port 8080 permissions and we’ve come up with a great technological solution to the other half of the problem. Rather than re-writing their permission scripts to give me access to the relevant directories one of them is going to come up to my office every morning and map a drive with their secret secret passwords to a someone else’s Solaris box which has access to the relevant server area. DOHHH! And of course because they haven’t got Python or Samba or something working properly this will have to happen every single day.

I’m just *so* not interested in technology. OK – I’m a bit interested. But I’m not in the slightest bit interested in the nuts and bolts – just in the ways humans use all of these playthings to complicate their lives even more. The mere sight of something along the lines of :

public void dumpResults(TologResultsSet results)
{
for (int i = 0; i < row =" results.getRow(i);" buf =" new" j =" 0;"> 0) buf.append(", ");
buf.append(results.getVar(j));
buf.append(" = ");
buf.append(row.get(j) instanceof Topic ?
((Topic)row.get(j)).getID() : row.get(j).toString());
}
System.out.println(buf.toString());
}

and I’m reaching for the smelling salts. It’s SO BORING. I know, I’m a blogger, I work (albeit tangentially) with computers – I’m supposed to eulogise these things, but I just can’t. I would love to be some nerdy swot banging on about threading in C++ and never getting laid but I just can’t be arsed to learn it all. Fortunately though that hasn’t held me back from the never getting laid bit.

In fact I think it’s pretty much a miracle that I’ve managed to stay awake thus far. Reminds me of the people I knew on my course at college. One of them had a silicon chip (8086 generation) earring. It was so ultimately tragic but he thought it was deeply cool. And being a big nerdy geek is sort of cool – once you’ve accepted your inner nob all you have to do is let it all hang out and you can climb the ranks of university physicsy computery spod-hood with immunity. Wear enormous scuffed white trainers 100% of the time : check. Unappealing straggly shoulder length hair : check, flapping thrift store overcoat : check. And then of course once your basic numptiness has been established you can develop special powers : Only be ever seen in a variety of difference Dr Who jumpers : check. Hang around outside the Senior Common Room attempting to engage Dr Sandford in a conversation about X-Ray crystllography : check. Gaffer tape all of your remotes to a piece of 2 by 4 so you don’t ever lose any of them : check, check, check.

Actually that reminds me :-

Q. What do you get if you cross a cow with a pig?
A. N^Sin? Cow Pig

Neurotic

As part of my ongoing attempts to become slightly less repellent whilst at the same time boring the pants off of everyone I know I shall continue to record everything I consume on a daily basis. Once I’ve really started to irritate everyone including myself and begun to look a bit neurotic and need I’ll start including the calorific value of everything as well :-

2 x cup apple & peach mystery liquid
½ x bottle of Lucozade
½ x Chinese lettuce w/dressing (ginger, garlic, chile, sesame oil, olive oil, lime juice, sherry vinegar)
1 x handful pumpkin seeds
2 x small chicken thighs
2 x slices haloumi cheese
½ x can palm hearts
2 x gin & tonic
1 x can of lager
1 x medium bowl of salad – grated carrot, curried rice, chick peas, kidney beans, lentils, dressing 1 x cadbury flake
1 x large coffee
1 x rennie
1 x strepsil

Loo

I’m beginning to feel like Regina out of Mean Girls who thinks she’s eating Swedish diet bars when she’s been tricked into eating Swedish weight-gain bars. Somewhere in the list above is some high gain lard fud masquerading as calorie-less cardboard filler. On the plus side I’ve been eating a lot of pulses lately so my trips to the loo have been both frequent and productive. I’m up to 2 a day!

Pills

You know what sounds good? Diet pills. Bring on the whizz is what I say – gain without pain. Yeah – diet pills and laxatives – it’s your window to weight loss. Actually you know what sounds really kick ass for weight loss – TB.

Ghosts in the machine

Last night I woke up in bed and realised someone was lying next to me. Someone very close to my heart. I could feel her breathing 2 inches from my face, her hand lightly in mine. I lay there for a few minutes hardly believing it, and checking that I really was awake – that it wasn’t a dream. As I reached to curl my fingers more tightly around her hand and move my lips closer to hers I started to wake up.

The transition from lying in a darkened room ‘awake’ (but together) to lying a darkened room awake (but alone) was so smooth that I consciously experienced the sensation of both seeing and feeling someone vanish in front of you. As you reach for them they become insubstantial your fingers slide around them somehow, the outline of their face against the dark ceiling becomes softer and slides into the shadows, and suddenly you’re actually really awake and, of course, despite the best assurances of your sleeping mind, actually really all on your own.

It took me nearly 2½ hours to get back to sleep, so now I’m exhausted as well as bummed. I mean – it’s bad enough having to think about this stuff all the time when you’re awake. Bed, sleep, dreams, this is my refuge, but the enemy has broached the gates. Here’s the problem - it feels real in the dream, you believe it emotionally, so when you wake up you *feel* as if it really is real, even as you understand intellectually that it’s just a dream.

I can’t believe I’m such a fool as to manage to find a way to make myself feel depressed and isolated about people who never even existed, but, to quote, “Oh yes, I’m twice the fool to do that”.

Gelatine

There was about another 800 words here but I deleted them when I worked out what they were really saying : “I hate the way I look, but I’m too lazy to do anything about it”. Nobody wants to read about that. Apart from the 5% who actually *do* go to the gym on a regular basis, and the 10% who are actually young enough and slim enough not to have to worry about it we are all in the same boat. The fat boat of lardy layabouts.

Look at us all, desperately pulling in that gut and trying not to think about how your beer roll makes your trousers hang at an angle. I’m mean I’m only 11 stone (about 150lb) and 5’ 10” so it’s not like I’m blotting out the sun or anything, but still. I feel bad, therefore in my mind I look bad, regardless of whether I really do or not, and if you don’t fancy yourself no-one else is going to do it for you (above mentioned freaks excluded.

So off to the gym (yeah right) and start eating properly. The last 24 hours has seen Pan consume (in sequence) :-

1 x Gin & Tonic
1 x glass of red wine
1 x portion meatballs
1 x portion couscous
1 x espresso
1 x piece of cheese
1 x portion angel delight w’ half fat milk
½ bottle Lucozade
1 x cup apple flavoured fizzy drink from vending machine
1 x portion roast gammon
1 x portion red cabbage
1 x portion roast potatoes
1 x tarte tatin
1 x cup of coffee
1 x chocolate biscuit
1 x cup of earl grey

Well I’ve been told that what goes on stag stays on stag, but frankly I have little time for this kind of nonsense. If you’re going to behave like an arse the place to do it is not in front of 12 of your oldest friends and on video camera. Thankfully I can report that nothing too unpleasant happened so I only have a few beans to spill . . .

As you know the weekend was split into two halves – nice and nasty – and we’re onto the nasty half. Have to say I was *SO* not looking forward to another 12 hours solid drinking, but there was nothing to be done about it, so Joe and I girded out whatsits and headed out to the merry mayhem.

Well it’s amazing how 6 pints of Grolch and 5 games of 10 pin bowling will get you back on your feet again, and so it proved to be, and the evening passed off relatively painlessly. The only bit that was weird was the Strip Club.

Strippers

I’ve never been to a strip club - I couldn’t imagine why I would want to go to some seedy dive and pay a fortune to see a bunch of unhappy women debasing themselves for cash. But stag night it was and off we went. So I go there and then the really weird thing happened. I suddenly realised I was enjoying myself. A lot. I mean what’s not to like? – perfectly pleasant venue, no entry fee, no obviously too dodgy geezers (alright some of them were a bit iffy, but there is no danger of any trouble), pub priced bar with no queue and a whole herd of really beautiful young women wearing virtually nothing wandering around. Every so often one would get on the stage and disrobe. And that’s about it.

Except of course it’s not. There is of course the concept of the private dance. This is where you approach one of these girls, ask for a dance (or she approaches you – again no hassle if you say no thanks), she leads you into the back room, relieves you of £15 and proceeds to grind her various attributes an extremely short distance from your face (remember – no touching!). Put it this way, if you’re getting on a bit remember to bring your reading glasses.

As I’d never seen all this the boys insisted I go along (number of private dances range in our party 0-6+). So that was out of the way – I’ve had the private dance and it’s over, and it was really not that bad at all. Except I suddenly found myself looking at the girls and thinking about one in particular, and before you know it I’m off again and going for the private dance – of my own free will without any coercion at all. And frankly, it was great.

OK, OK, I know this is all bad stuff, but I can’t help myself. Or rather I can’t be bothered to help myself. I know they’re not doing this for fun, but who does go to work just for fun after all? Nobody looked like they were having a bad time (though of course how can you tell) and I do feel a bit ashamed. But provided you can quiet that voice of conscience / voice of Germaine Greer / voice telling you you’re a sad old wanker, I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Having said all that I don’t think I’ll be going back – enjoying it once by surprise is one thing, enjoying it on purpose by going there seems like one step towards being a genuine stripper ogler.

And on that note I should give my congratulations to ‘Uncle’ Bob. As the oldest man in the party (49) he not only managed to keep up with the drinking, he also kicked our asses bowling (188 is a *very* respectable score btw) and was the only man to (at least voluntarily) go for the ‘2 Girl Special’. Impressive. Well expensive at any rate ;-)

And speaking of excessive drinking last the weekend just gone saw Pan deliver his (hopefully) one and only stag event.

As I’m sure I've mentioned before I hate stag dos and have jibbed out of the last 3 I was invited to, so inviting me to organise one is a bit like, well, a not particularly clever idea. However, there could really have been no other choice for as The Captain’s best man (hem hem) and it all goes with the territory, so organise boy I was. I immediately broke with tradition by inviting the ladies, but what can you do. Some people were so outraged that I had to compromise and make it 2 nights – Friday night for dinner in company and Saturday afternoon and evening just for the boys.

We all pitched up approximately on time (some more than others) at Captain Birdseye’s crispy Brisket on Norris Street and then proceeded over the road to QUOD where I had booked the red room for dinner. I’m not going to go into too much detail other than to make a couple of quick points :-

1) 3 people were sick, including the Panster. Hurrah. But I don’t think anyone noticed.

2) I stood on a chair and told the assembled audience (including several passing waiters) about mine and The Captain’s 4-in a bed romp.

3) Our waitress was very impressed with both the amount we drank (fairly impressive actually) and with our ‘antics’. I know this sounds like bullshit but it’s true! She specifically requested to be allowed to light the ‘mouth burners’. That by the way is where you take a big swig of Sambuca, close your mouth, swill it around, tilt your head back, breathe out hard and have someone (or even yourself) stick a lighter in your gob. With practice you can project lovely blue flames 6-8inches out of your mouth.

4) I was only sick because of the 5 pints of Guinness I had at the Captain’s Cabin. Yes.

5) The Fat Doctor made a really inappropriate lunge at El Espangola. It’s lucky she has a sense of humour. After we’d managed to get him off her he stood in the middle of the road (Haymarket) and refused to move. Betty & Numinor fell on their swords and took him home. (time ~1.30am)

6) After repairing to another watering hole there was ‘more drink taken’.

7) Can’t really remember getting home, but home we got – woke up with the Captain on Saturday both still fully clothed.

8) Final bill (inc service): £1,125.90. Not bad going for 12 people, but I really, really wish I hadn’t ballsed up divvying it up. Am feeling extremely poor now.

So after that rather tame start to the festivities we rolled out yet again on Saturday for more.

There’s a definite thrill to be had from going to some skanketty skank pub (Big Red at Nag’s Head Corner if you must ask) and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you’re with the baddest girl in the place, the role for which my soul mate Lisa definitely qualifies. I was just buying another round and L was putting some ROCK on the jukebox, and she just looked amazing – pencil skirt, high heels, ankle chain, tight sleeveless T, Bensons, pool cue, red red lippy, weird snaggly teeth, blue inked prison tattoos on the biceps. She will confess quite openly that if she was in Grease she wouldn’t be Good Sandy, or Bad Sandy, or even Rizzo, but one of the girls who hang out with the Scorpions.

It turned into a bit of an epic session actually. Lisa had come round the night before because she was upset / tripping her nuts off (kept telling me I looked like Jesus which is *so* unfair) and had promptly fallen asleep on me. Literally. I didn’t want to move off the sofa as was quite comfortable and didn’t want to disturb her so nodded off myself. The next thing we know it’s morning and Lisa’s head on my chest felt like Fatty Soames had been pounding in a fence post with a Hyundai 4x4 or similar. Anyway (after a spot of heart massage) we repaired to Manoli’s which is, I think, one of the finest greasy spoons any arterially challenged gastronaut could wish for and proceeded to scoff down a couple of their ‘everything pie’ options. As it was 11.30 Lisa then suggested we have a quick breakfast pint to settle the food in nicely. Well one thing led to another and before we knew it it was 3pm and we were pissed. At that point there’s nothing to be done but push on through to the other side. We left sometime after 12 but it’s all a bit hazy to say the least. All I can really remember is me and Lisa telling eachother we were eachother’s best mates *EVER* losing at pool 17-12 (so that’d be £29 on pool alone ffs) dancing like a loon to some dodgy Beatles tribute band and attempting to persuade a complete stranger that I drove articulated lorries across Africa for a living. WHY??????

A few weeks ago I woke up in a strange place – bit disorientated – had a quick look around – empty bottles, beer can ashtrays, knickers, magazines. Nothing very helpful. Looked over and - bloody hell – I was in bed with Lisa and she didn’t have any clothes on. A quick check thankfully revealed that I did. Not quite sure why as Lisa is very much my type, but somehow it’s not about that – our relationship has an implicit requirement of platonicness. Anything else would lead to immediate implosion and never speaking again. (Lisa has over 30 numbers in her phone that just say “Don’t answer this number”). So we got up staggered around a bit and crawled off to the pub somewhere in Clapham. Sank a few pints, felt better, went to another pub where I had a conversation with a bloke who’s accent was so strong I couldn’t understand one single word he was saying (didn’t seem to matter though), played a lot of dance music to liven all the stiffs up a bit, Lisa beat the locals at pool again and I tied a bandanna onto a pub dog. After that it all starts to get hazy again, though I can definitely remember being in The Blue Posts in Soho and I know for a fact that we met up with some other people and went to Joy King Lau where I impressed the company by eating an eel and a jellyfish.

This sort of thing pretty much always happens when I go out with Lisa. We egg each other on into more and more debatable antics, and let’s face it, neither of us need any encouragement in the first place. All that drinking can’t be good for either of us. I’ve never been anywhere and not had Lisa match me drink for drink all night, and as regular readers may know I’m no Sunday drinker.

My trousers smell of wee and so do I. But who cares - it's Friday and as I'm heading out to London's notorious London to spend the evening shouting my head off in some disgusting boozer I might as well smell of Donald Rumsfeldt's crevice fluff for all the difference it'll make.

Having said that I'm reparing to a Japanese restaurant later, but by then I'll have drunk 6 pints of Cockney Fizzy Keg, smoked a packet of gaspers and no longer care what I smell like.

Anyhoo it's odd that I'm drinking at all seeing as I was SO horribly hung over yesterday that I seriously swore off the booze. Went to see Bluebeard's Castle (freaky Hungarian opera by Bartok) which is only an hour long, so was in the pub by 8.40, but somehow still thinking it was a post opera drink (normally 10.45ish), so felt the needto consume pints as fast as is humanely possible. The results were predictable enough . . . ack.

In the words of Gary 'Ooh not me hard drive Missus' Glitter : "It's good to be back, it's good to be back". And there we have it - starting off again as I mean to continue with a really unplesasnt little reference. Perhaps I should have quoted from the saintly Dodgy instead : "I've been away, I've been a fool".

I never blog during the summer (OK - this is only the second time) but repeating last year's patten gives me a certain comfort level here - plus I've been working very hard for a very posh set of fund managers in the city who really really love themselves. Anyhoo - I'm not working for them anymore because they are TOSSERS. They're so gimpoid their firewall wouldn't vene let you see blogger. not that that's an excuse - could of done it from home, but it's easier at work somehow . . .

So what else is new . . . um nothing really. I get to be best man in a month or two and so far I have done NOTHING about organisisng the stag do . . . not my fault, I hate stag dos. Complete waste of time if you ask me. Ridiculous. But it's starting to worry me.

Oh me of little faith. I got it. Starting Monday. Hurrah!!

Might go for a couple of cheeky ales tonight then :)

Spoke to my agent this morning about this job I interviewed for yesterday. She said she was putting in a call to find out what the situation was and would be getting back to me. Nothing so far 3 hours later and that is a very bad sign.

How long can any one person look at the phone without it ringing? Not that I’m desperate or anything. And the fucking bank wrote to tell me they’re reducing my overdraft. Thanks guys. Wait until someone is down and really needs the money and then whip it away. Fuckers. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to lob a petrol bomb into their head offices. Especially as they like to position themselves as the caring understanding bank that won’t fuck you. Bastard Abbey. The Landlord is after me too. And he’s kind of tricky to avoid as he works in the office underneath my flat.

He’s a tosser too. And frankly a bit dodgy.

On a positive note I went to Covent Garden last night to see Il Trovatore – the one where the wrong baby gets thrown on the fire. Really enjoyed it as ever – loads of stirring tunes and some genuine stand out moments, but if you ask me Act IV does go on a bit – all a bit to ‘woe is me’ laments and not enough shrieking. Still really good though.

I’m so depressed I’m watching the cricket and enjoying it.

Q. What percentage of pop-up ads are offering pop-up removal software - about 30% by my estiamates. Bastards

Anyway I've been up to all my usual shenanigans since last post - no real change, nothing to report. Same old same old. Actually went round to dinner at Dr Heartbreak's on Saturday - very nice meal depsite him managing to totally balls up his sword fish paella which was particuarly amusing as OOD was there, who of course Dr H has a major thing for as well. Of course. It's seemingly illegal for me to fancy anyone without one of my idiot friends developing some sort of sordid obsession for them and totally cocking it up. Was actually a very entertaining evening, despite feeling a tad peaky to start with. Also watched the end of Eurosong. Actually I love the Eurovision Song Contest, but as we hadn't organized the proper celebrations this year there was only minimal interest.

So what did we think of the plucky Ukranian victors? Put it this way - my friend's cleaner is from The Ukraine and even she said it was shit. I liked the fur bikinis tho . . .

I didn't really see any of the other entrants but apparently it was actually about the best entry, so God only knows wtf the quality of the rest was. Can't have been as wank as Jamie Cullum anyway. Or as the Guardian described him . . . this talentless maggot boy.

Sunday saw Pan at Stev and Von A's for lunch, and I'm afraid it turned into one of those days. Stev cooked a fantastic lunch, we sat outside under his table umbrealla and engaged in polite chit chat about childcare and weddings. Fast forward a few hours and between the 6 of us we had entirely filled a full sized recycling trug with empties. And I'm not talking about beer bottles here either. Nice work.

Yesterday went for a walk along the Thames from Strand on the Green to Hammersmith. I'd never realised that loop of the river was so countrified. I mean it's in zone 2 ffs and there's nothing but grass, sports clubs, boat houses, cow parsley and women with blonde hair driving 4x4s. Still - very pleasant for a change, tho to be honest I found being in the middle of London and unable to see anything except vegetation, and it being completely quite rather eerie. Unsettling. Was actually quite glad to wander back onto the river path proper.

Had an interview this morning. Seemed to go fine but I'm not counting any chickens. Hopefully I've learnt my lesson about unrealistic expectations.

Saw Teej on Friday night and we didn’t get horrendously pissed. Well to put it in context I was already drunk when I arrived at 7.15 and we then drank steadily till (bit of a guess this) 3.30am by which time we had descended to the ‘You’re the most wonderful person I know’ stage but no lower! Imagine that. No vomiting, mewling, head injuries, police, ambulances or inappropriate declerations of undying love. We must be getting old.

Saturday saw me in one of those freaky restaurants where everyone including all the staff is about 150 years old apart from you and your inebriated chums. Somehow the conversation always seems to end up being about anal sex or CCJs or something equally delicious. The meal was actually pretty damn good despite the continual fear that my neighbour was going to drop down dead next to me and thankfully the conv didn’t get too unsalubrious as a certain Object Of Desire was sitting opposite me, thought I could probably have done without Dr Heartbreak grilling her as to her exact age for 10 minutes. The OOD is actually a pretty hopeless case – in fact one who already blew me off. But as anyone who suffers from the same psychological diseases as myself knows Rejection Only Fuels Desire.

Unfortunately there are few things so repellant to an OOD as unrequested and unwanted adoration. So I am ignoring John Lennon and playing it cool. To the extent of making up entirely ficticious ‘other women’ to ‘throw her off the scent’.

What other women?? What fucking scent?? Pan you are losing whatever fucking marbles you ever had. You are deliberately trying to put off a woman who has made it perfectly clear she isn’t interested anyway and all because you want to shag her. And the worst thing is :- EVERYBODY KNOWS. Oh God.

I spent the whole of Monday in bed. From Sunday night to Tueday morning was spent in a darkened room sleeping / bemoaning my fate. And I still didn’t have any good e-mails.

I’m up and down today because I’ve had a shit week. Well as shit as a week can be that requires every second doing one of the the folowing:-

1) Leaping to answer the phone expecting it to be an agent, but it’s just one of my useless friends having a nervous meltdown on me.

2) Sleeping

3) Watching shite TV (with the exception of The Learning Zone)

4) Playing video games.

I love my X-Box. Although I hare MS and all their works – the corporation that has done more to inhibit real intelligence growth within software – within their (albeit self referentail scope) the X-Box does kick the ass to hell out of the PS-2. I’m not familiar with Nintendo’s Boxy thing, which I’m sure is cool, but the X-Box does truly give it up in terms of frame rendering and distance integration. No where else can you target something literally on the horizon, blow the shit out of it and have fully integrated physics and AI in real time. I sound like a real spod.

But anyway – there you go. Fanboy returns. In 2 hours I have to go out and pretend to be a real human being and I’m pissed. And have no intention of stopping drinking in the meantime eitherl. Haven’t eaten anything since Tuesday but so the fuck what. Actually that’s a lie. I’ve eaten 2 muffins and 2 scones. With clotted cream and jam. Nice. Meantime, I’ve had the best dreams. I was with The Captain in great burger bar in NYC and he showed me how to get the cheese, which you had to apply for after they gave it to you, then I told a story to some kids a la Ronald McDonald and then I ran through the streets, except it was suddenty medievel London and I couldn’t get to work because American tourists kept braiding my jumper and then demanding that they pay for the damage . . . dreams huh?

All of this is leading to something, but I just don’t know where exaclty yet . . . something is brewing in the Pan brain, but it has yet to take proper form. I’ve been thinking of my childhood – Manchester, The Pampas, Dark looming heather mountains, the first girl I ever had a crush on. I can’t even remember her name but I can remember her face perfectly. I guess I was about 8 or so. I know she left, and then, and then, and then . . .

I’m using someone else’s computer right now. No one we know. And I’m going through his mp3 collection as I write. Some good stuff, but WTF did he download Dogtanen and The Three Muskehounds themesong???

The problem with blogging is that one feels a requirement to do it even when you have nothing that you'd really like to communicate with the outside world.

I'm still unemplyed, have had two interviews in the last week, both of which were fantastic technically, but both of which I fell down on on the dumbass question: "So why would you like to work for us?" Both times I was unable, despite an hour of interpreting their fumbling attempts to work out whether I really knew what the fuck I was talking about or not and let them know without them having to directly ask that , Yes - everything on my CV *is* genuine and I can prove it, to answer the question properly. Instead of saying "I've been saving myself for years just to work for a bunch of numptys like you" I was forced to answer truthfully: "I want to work for you because you have money and you're hiring." Quakk Quakk Oops!

Wankers. I know more about every aspect of their businesses and client needs than they can even comprehend, but because I seem to be pathologically incapable of lying my head off in interviews I'm not acceptable. What do they want? You can't have it both ways. Seemingly people would prefer to employ an ignorant fucking muppet who will be amenable to corporate dictak rather than someone who actually knows what the fuck is going on.

And I had my biggest smile and shiniest suit on. The only thing I can't do is bend under the fucking interview table and tell them what they really want to hear - yes your dick is the biggest and super tasty too - MMmmmmmmm mmmmm.

Maybe I'm just not projecting right?