October 2004

October 31st, 2004. Vote

America coughs, and the world sneezes. America has an election, and the world jumps up and down shouting.

Right-wing Americans were very wound up by The Guardian's campaign to write letters to Ohioan voters.* Non-Americans everywhere were puzzled when George Bush stopped them accessing his website. And, I was puzzled and wound up, when large amounts of election-related spam landed in my inbox.

I assume it was election-related, anyway. It was all "do you want another four years of incompetance and arrogance?" As I didn't click on the link, it was probably just advertising porn or cock-enlarging pills, like all the other spam out there. If it was genuinely election-related, I can't help but think it was a double-bluff: the Republicans putting out spam that looks like it's supporting Kerry, to make everyone go "blech, the Democrats are spammers! I'm not voting for them!" And, of course, 90%** of spam is sent from Florida, well-known as the homeland of Republican dirty tricks.

My own reaction, though, was completely different. It was: "I'm not an American! Piss off!" Damn that whole reverse colonialisation thing.

* and even more wound up when one of their TV critics suggested that the world would be better off without George W. Bush

** Statistic provided by the Department Of Thin-Air Statistics. I made this number up, but I do know that a huge proportion of spam genuinely is sent by a few Floridians.

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October 27th, 2004. Natural light

It's Monday evening. I'm sat at the computer, reading my emails, browsing the websites I try to keep up with, and watching the telly in the background. The room lights flicker. And, just as I'm thinking: "uh-oh", everything goes black, and all I can hear is the sound of computer fans spinning down to a halt.

"Oh," says my mother, in the living room. I want to laugh, because her comic timing is perfect. My dad starts to stumble about in the dark, looking for torches, tripping over the cat. Outside, no streetlamps are on, apart from one maybe three hundred yards down the road.

The parents, finding a couple of torches with live batteries, manage to get themselves up to an early bed. I'm at a loss for anything to do. It's too early for me to sleep,* and I feel a bit too active. There's little to do, though, in the dark. We don't have any candles. Outside, I can see torchlight sliding around the windows of one across the road, and candlelight from their neighbours'.

Looking out of the window, I realise it seems surprisingly light. I can clearly see the house's shadow across the garden. Going to the back of the house, the moon is bright in the sky. I don't think I've ever seen it so bright before, and the back garden seems lit up almost as if it is day. Northwards, towards town, there's nothing to be seen at all in the sky aside from an ugly orange glow. I wish I could see the moonlight more often - but I want to keep my electricity too.

* I think it was about half-nine, if you're that bothered

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October 24th, 2004. Popularity contest

Pop Idol, Popstars, Fame Academy, blah, blah, blah - they're all the same, aren't they? Just another talent contest designed to get people to phone premium-rate phone lines as often as their redial buttons allow, surely? Because they do all seem identical to my eyes, I never bother to watch.

Last night, though, I did end up watching the latest almost identical variant, X Factor. There was a reason, though: I vaguely know one of the contestants. Very, very vaguely: we went to the same school, and played in the school band, sitting opposite each other - he was playing one of those complex brass instruments with lots of plumbing. Yes, I sat through a whole hour of TV talent show just because I used to sit within ten feet of one of the people on the telly.

It's clearly short-attention-span telly. The songs are all brutally cut down to 90 seconds, just so we can get to the next insult a bit quicker. There's a thin gimmick to make this show different to the previous series; but it's so wafer-thin, you wouldn't notice it if you hadn't been constantly warned by the presenter that there are TWISTS to keep you on the edge of your seat, and keep your finger on that redial button.

The band I was waiting to watch have their own Unique Selling Point: they sing everything a capella. They might well be quite good at it, but you couldn't really tell from the 90-second REM cover they did over an awful backing track. They are, apparently, completely distinctive and different from anything else in the charts - which they are, if you've forgotten about the Flying Pickets from twenty years ago.* They didn't get knocked out, but I'd be surprised if they won the series.

On another TV-related topic: there's a trailer on Channel 4 at the moment, for some documentary season about American politics, that has great music on it. Does anyone have any idea what it is?

UPDATE, 26/10/04: According to a reliable source, my estimate of 90 seconds per performance on X Factor was rather optimistic. The truth is that all the songs are strictly limited to seventy-five seconds in length. It's hardly going to do them any favours - how many good songs can you think of that are seventy-five seconds or shorter?

* If you have forgotten the Flying Pickets - or if you're under 25 - they were the cast of a left-wing play about singing miners, who went on to release a couple of albums of a capella singing.

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October 20th, 2004. Minion

On Monday, Ivan arrived. Ivan is our Work Experience teenager.

Now, back when I was 14, I too had to do work experience. I spent a fortnight in the admin block of a local chemical plant, doing everyone's photocopying and feeding old invoices into the microfilm cameras. It was, to be blunt, a very, very boring fortnight.

Ivan, on the other hand, loves his time with us. Every morning he's waving a letter-opener, waiting to open the post. He loves nothing more than franking a hundred envelopes, scanning old invoices,* or tidying other people's offices. He's bouncy, and enthusiastic.

On Monday morning, I was in the co-worker's office when the secretary brought him round to meet everyone.

"This is Ivan," she said. "Can you guess what department he wants to work in the most?"

My heart sank.

"Yours!"

We're looking after him tomorrow, apparently. However, our department is surprisingly short on boring, menial jobs,** so I'm going to have to think of something for him to do.

* ooh, look how technology has moved on in ten years

** ie, we don't send or receive any post, unlike everyone else in the building

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October 18th, 2004. Mythchasing

Ended up having a debate about crime with my mother over breakfast this morning. I can't remember why - it was probably sparked off by something on Today, which is usually on the radio whilst we're having breakfast.

"I think it's just wrong when these criminals hurt themselves and get compensation," she said. I replied that I had never heard of criminals being given compensation for hurting themselves on the job, and I didn't really think it had happened outside of the pages of right-wing papers.

"It has happened," she said, "it happened to a friend of Mrs. T.* She heard a noise at night, came out onto the landing, and there was a burglar there! She screamed, he jumped, fell down the stairs, and then he was given compensation! He got more compensation for falling down the stairs than he was fined for doing the burglary! That's just wrong!"

Now, I'm not calling my mother a liar, but frankly I'm a bit suspicious about it. I know we're talking about something that might have happened 20 years ago when I didn't keep track of the news at all, but I'm sure that if it did happen then there would have been uproar in the press - especially the Daily Mail, of course. So, can you help me? Has anyone else ever heard of any cases like this? Has anything like this ever actually happened in British legal history? I'm sure there must be some law students reading this out there somewhere.

* A supply teacher at my old primary school, whose husband was my dad's boss at one time.

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October 16th, 2004. Cameo scene

Being driven out of Doncaster the other day,* in the driving rain, somewhere past Wheatley or Edenthorpe, I looked out of the window and saw:

A disused warehouse, chained up behind panel fencing, looking slightly worn. Moss growing in its guttering, and a season's grass growing up between cracks in the concrete pavement around it. Then, I noticed, in the middle distance, a grey pony walking across the abandoned yard. As soon as I'd registered it, we had driven past and gone.

* I mean, I was riding in a car that someone else was driving; not that I was galloping out of Doncaster being chased by a pitchfork-waving mob.

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October 14th, 2004. Advertising

A few months ago, I wrote an article for Rum and Monkey, and was highly amused when the page was decorated with adverts for a right-wing dating website. Of course, I mentioned it here, which probably explains why I received the following almost-spam email. Which, of course, I found rather funny:

You are currently linking to conservativematch.com. I will pay you 10%, that's 3% more than you're currently earning, to replace it with DatingRepublicans.com, the newest, hippest conservative dating site with over 2MM members!

I'm sorry? 10% of what, exactly? 3% more than the nothing I'm already being paid? What the hell kind of measurement is "MM"?

The site's front page features a wince-inducing "cute" cartoon of shagging elephants,* and questionnaires such as "Would you date outside your political party?" and "Was President Bush joking when he said 'too many ob-gyns aren't able to practise their love with women all across the country'?" Somehow, I don't think it's for me. The people running it clearly aren't doing it out of their love for the Republican Party, because they also offer the almost identical DatingDemocrats.com - yes, even the questionnaires are the same. The links from here aren't adverts, but public information.**

* Elephants. Ie, Republicans. I suppose the British equivalent would be ... um ... well, someone being fisted by a hand holding a flaming torch, I guess. Ow.

** Although if they do feel like sending me money, I wouldn't turn it down.

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October 10th, 2004. Exhaustion

I feel I should be apologising, for not updating. After all, it's been nearly a week now.

I'm tired. The parents have been away on holiday, I've been living on my own again, and I'd forgotten how tiring it is to work and feed yourself at the same time. Especially, that is, now that I work rather longer hours than I did in my last job.*

One thing I have been doing this week is: keeping an eye reading Guild Of Ghostwriters, which has currently changed itself into Guild Of Guestbloggers. It's had a huge variety of wonderful sketches and cartoons over the past week,** and I'm betting it'll be just as good this week too.

My email-writing-backlog is even worse than my lack of posting here. Someone wrote to me two weeks ago asking permission to reproduce one of my photos on some leaflets, and I haven't replied yet. If you're reading: I'm sorry, and yes, if you give a credit. I'm also putting off writing an email to a friend in Australia. Austrian Vanessa has been trying to persuade me to do it:

Vee: have you written that email yet?
C: that email? um, no. haven't started.
Vee: * slaps you around a bit.
Vee: actually
Vee: you'd probably enjoy that
Vee: * *refuses* to slap you around a bit.

I really should get around to it; but right now, I'm too tired. Maybe tomorrow.

* where I got told off for arriving at work too early - ie, 9.45 - because the marketing manager objected to getting out of bed before 10am.***

** plus my own submission, about something I didn't feel I could put into words as easily as draw. Which is saying something, considering how awful my drawing is. It looks a bit outclassed surrounded by all the other posts.

*** yes, literally, 10am.

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October 5th, 2004. Vroom vroom (yet again)

The car is still a novelty, and I haven't had the chance to use it much other than driving in to town and back again. At the weekend, I thought I'd try taking it out on the motorway, so went off on a shopping trip.

In the past month, I've become so used to zooming back and forth to Doncaster and Scunthorpe "on business" that I could probably do the motorway run with my eyes shut. The office car is rather more powerful than my little thing, though, and I found myself having to push right to the floor to get past trucks and tankers. Still, it can get up to 70, even if it felt as if I could see the fuel gauge dropping mile-by-mile. I haven't got used to having to buy petrol yet.

The shopping trip was to Meadowhall, the big American-style mall between Sheffield and Rotherham.* I always think of it as being handy as a place to go to if you want to get to Sheffield itself; it has plenty of free parking, just off the motorway, and it's just a tram-ride from the city centre. However, once I get there, I'm usually far too lazy to bother. Particularly at the weekend, when every family in South Yorkshire descends on the place. My trip there turned into half an hour's ambling round the S9 district looking for a parking place, until I finally found the overspill carpark, which apparently doubles as the centre's helipad. Once there, struggling through the weekend crowds just took all my energy away. I love to shop in shops I can have to myself, but I hate having other people in my way.** So - apart from a couple of CDs, and a DVD for Dad's birthday - that was that. A nice drive, but a wasted day.

* When it opened it was apparently the biggest shopping centre in the country - for people in Grimsby, a trip there then was an entire day out.

** I'm too passive-aggressive - when people are in my way, I'm going "aargh, get out of my WAY!" on the inside, whilst meekly waiting for them to move of their own accord. In busy shopping-crowds, it's really not a useful tactic.

22:41 Comments (1)

October 2nd, 2004. Yes, I know none of you care about him

Work has been busy this week. There's a war going on between Head Office and Branch Office B, and me and The Coworke'r are in danger of getting squeezed in the middle, as the said Branch Office try to put some of the blame on their randomly-crashing computer equipment.* Of course, the real problem is that their branch is under-staffed, and their staff are under-trained; but neither offices want to point this out as both are to blame for it.

Being so busy (and tired in the evenings), I've been falling behind on the latest exploits of Grimsby Telegraph letters-page space-filler Tim Mickleburgh. However, I was reassured to see that he's still writing letters to the paper: his latest was all about how supermarkets nowadays offer so much choice that you don't know where to start when you're shopping - but even so, today's consumer never has any Real Choice available. Tim, you're starting to sound a bit elderly. On the same evening, however, an article announced a forthcoming series of charity lectures by "Grimsby notables", including - yes, you've guessed it - Mr Mickleburgh! The lectures are all on local history and in aid of a local hospice; his is on the life of Archbishop Whitgift.** I'm tempted to go. Incidentally, I bumped into Tim Mickleburgh a few weeks ago and managed to snap a photo of him on my phone; although, as I still haven't worked out how to copy photos from the phone to the computer, I can't actually show you it.

* although, as I've pointed out to them, if you don't want your server to crash randomly, don't put it in an unventilated broom cupboard.

** One of Elizabeth I's Archbishops of Canterbury - look him up in the DNB.

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