Fuck.
Oh
Fuck.
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London holds its breath.
They’re still counting the votes. Boris is ahead as I type, but they’re not onto 2nd votes and I genuinely think Ken could still win it on 2nd votes. Because you might vote Brian or Sian with Ken as a back-up "better than Boris" option. You wouldn’t vote Brian or Sian and put Boris second, you just wouldn’t. No-one is that stretched across the political spectrum.
There are also no right-wing equivalents of Brian or Sian for Boris to scoop up the second votes of. Sure, crazy-assed BNP-types, but they’re not in the same likely-to-come-3rd-and-4th league.
I remain, ever, optimistic.
Borken
I’m a little bit worried about tomorrow. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I live in London and tomorrow is the London Mayoral election (yeah, there are other ones, but I’ll repeat – *I live in London*). I’m getting a bit frantic that Boris Johnson might actually win.
It was all fun and games a few years back when the thought of Boris being leader of the Conservatives seemed like a jolly laugh and how funny would that be, eh? Now we’re staring at the actual possibility that he could be in charge of something real, serious and hugely influential in a lot of people’s everyday lives… Not funny any more. Quite terrifying, in fact.
I don’t buy the hapless bumbler shit (well, I sort of do, I suppose, in as much as I think he’s somewhat inadequate in many areas) so much as I do the idea that he’s an intelligent man with a fairly approachable public persona and a set of political and personal values which make me want to die/kill.
Not, it has to be said, that I’d want to hang out with Ken Livingstone. But, you know, he has two factors in his favour. 1) The congestion charge rocks. 2) He is not Boris Johnson/a Tory of any description. Oh, three factors – 3) He patently capable of running the city.
Personally, I’d be quite pleased if Brian Paddick won. He won’t, of course, but it’s a nice thought. He couldnt’ really be trusted to run the city, either, but then someone has to take over from Ken. The only way you learn is by doing.
Progress report
Not doing too badly. At least one update per week since the start of 2008 (ish – mid-January really). Some of them with actual content. Comment count – fairly low, but I don’t necessarily define success by number of comments left.* Number of posts about office equipment – much improved. Will almost certainly be a thing of the past by Q3 2009. Number of posts dissing MySpace/Facebook/LiveJournal – practically zero. Good work, though I did notice an offhand comment about Facebook a few weeks back. Keep that in check.
Now I need to start putting pictures in – to entertain, inform and arouse. Let’s see how that goes.
*Not true. I’m just trying to cope with rejection.
A good Deal.
I don’t really go to gigs any more – it’s the knees, you know, all that bouncing isn’t good for them – but I make an exception if The Breeders are in town because, well. Fuck it, they’re brilliant.
We picked up the new album last week and I’ve spent the last few days cramming – I hate going to gigs without knowing the songs. It’s good. I recommend it. Quite low-key, lower even than Title TK, but with that album’s odd sprinkling of jaunty, punchy pop-rock.
There was a small question mark over whether this would be a full album play-through or all Best Of, a la the 4AD Birthday Celebration gig we saw them play a few years back, but thankfully they wove the new tracks into a set which included greatest hits (Cannonball, still one of the greatest tracks of all time, cropped up along with Divine Hammer, Son of Three and Saints to name a few) and a couple of less well-known tracks. Hell, they started with Tipp City – an Amps song!
The band were, as ever, on form. Kim and Kelly bantered with the audience and, mostly, with each other quite winningly. Charisma and likeability flows from the two of them like smoke from KoKo’s over-zealous smoke machine. The rest of the band were quiet, but tight as anything. We are both particular fans of Jose, the drummer, who is spectacularly great and looks like he should have a much less exotic name, like Graham.
Shuffling out after the world’s longest encore (read: they went out for a fag brak half way through the set), we both agreed that it had been worth it. Somehow I think it always will be, if The Breeders still think it’s worth playing.
Overstatement
I just turned my stapler over and it says on the bottom “This machine uses Niceday staples.” Machine? I mean, yeah, okay, I suppose so.
But still. Let’s get some perspective here, people, it’s still a stapler.
Dear sir/madam
Christ on a bike. My email got hijacked. Oh, yes. Not my regular nickname email-to-friends one. My serious, real-name, send emails to serious people one. So I was locked out (they changed my password, the beasts!) and to everyone in my SERIOUS EMAIL CONTACT LIST, they sent the following message, with the header "i need your help please!!!"
"Hi
" How are you? hope every thing is ok ? Just wanted to seek your help on something very important, you are the only person i could reach at this point, and i hope you come to my aid. because something very terrible is happening to me now,i need a favor from you now,I had a trip to the African on some works."
This email went to my boss, by the way, the very day I called in sick with some kind of nasty stomach bug. She must've thought "Oh, yeah, sick, sure… not IN THE AFRICAN??" And on some works? Now she's thinking "We didn't send him anywhere! He must be doing some work in the African ON THE SLY!!!".
"Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen at the hotel where i lodged along with all my belongings also with my passport ,and since then i have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here thats why my telephone service is disconnected so i have only access to emails for now because my mobile can't work here,"
Which doesn't make any sense, does it? How do I have no access to a telephone, but access to email? I'm no technical genius, but I'm sure they're linked somehow. Maybe I got the email from a free cyber cafe, I hear there are lots of them in the African, where I am on some works.
"so i didn't get it along,"
Indeed I did not.
"please i need you to lend me about 1,500 so i can make arrangements and return back please,"
Woah, 1,500 whats? Nice non-use of currency symbols, although if I'm actually from Zimbabwe, joke's on you, suckers!
"i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I would return the money back to you as soon as i get home, I am so confused right now."
Oh, ain't that the truth.
"I have made inquiries and was able to find out that you can have money sent to me through a service called Western Union Money Transfer."
I'll point out here that this also went to my bank. And my debt management agency, who were very concerned. My bank told me they would be happy to arrange a loan.
"Please i will be waiting to hear from you as soon as possible. And please scan and attach the copy of the Western Union Money transfer to me or you can put it in writing by sending me all the informations you used in making the payment via western union to able me collect the money down here."
I'm not sure of the mechanics of this scam at this point. Presumably the scammee replies and "I" give bogus details for a collection in… let's assume Nigeria, to pick a country at random.
"Thank You. "
No, thank you, brave scammer.
Luckily, few people were fooled. I wrested control of my email from them (they changed the password, the fucks!) and now I'm in the process of cleaning up. I mean, sure, some have volunteered cash and, because it would be rude to refuse, I have given them details and now I have £1,500 of their money. My favourite reply has come from my bank – the Co-op Bank, lovers of financial institutes with a sense of humour – who said this: "Thanks for letting us know. Glad to hear you're not in the unpleasant, but slightly unconvincing, situation described by the scammers!"
Anyway, from now on, all my passwords will be dotted with random numbers. This must not happen again!
adorable bastards
I don’t think there’s any shame in admitting we have mice. They’re not indicative of a dissolute lifestyle, they’re just one of those things.
We had them in the garden for ages, which was fine. Gave the local cats something to do. Then, a couple of months ago we heard one in the cupboard under the stairs and it’s been like a long, gruelling nightmare ever since. They get EVERYWHERE. They just run riot in your house when you’re not about, until one day they start running riot when you are about. i could just about – just about – live with them downstairs. Then on Tuesday night, the unthinkable happened.
They’re in the bedroom.
Oh, god, I am so effing tired right now. They are so bloody disruptive! Scratch scratch scratch squeak squeak squeak all the time. I mean, i was hopeful when we caught two in our (humane!) mousetraps. Two! That’s loads! In fact, last night we got two more (one of whom was suspiciously tubby in a pregnant sort of way) and it almost makes you feel hopeful. And they’re so cute! So very extremely cute! How bad can it be? You convince yourself that it might be ok.
until, of course, you speak to someone who knows about pest control. Then you get told that you are, basically, fucked. Visible infestation in a terraced house? They’re going to stay. You can perserve with humane traps, and live with mice forever (not an option) or you can poison the ones you have (no!) and seal your house like a tupperware tub to stop them reinfesting. Reluctantly we have ordered some poison but my god I don’t want it to come to that. But the Rentokill man was quite clear – if the population becomes critical, they are going to need so much nesting material that they might well strip your wires. Then you could get fires starting.
It’s them or us, in other words. Well, them or us and them.
We need to talk about books.
I’m not really a literary snob, I promise. I read PRATCHETT and the Potter books, for Christ’s sake. But it gets to me, going into WH Smith’s in Liverpool St.
For a start, the entirety of the non-genre Fiction section is basically chick lit. Which is fine, in moderation. I don’t care if you want to read a book with a sketch of a scatty-looking woman on the front, you’re not hurting me and I feel a bit like "Well, I bought the Bridget Jones books so I’ve contributed to the genre’s success..". The point is, put it in a genre! Crime and horror and fantasy are segregated, why isn’t chick-lit? I suppose the very title chick-lit is somewhat demeaning. But there’s got to be a heading out there for it! Mind you, if Smith’s took it out, the Fiction bit would start to look perilously thin, with only the Flashman books and erotic blog novelisations to prop up the Dan Browns.
Then you’ve got Classics, which are on the end of a shelf block. All the classics! In one tiny section. Basically a bit of Tolstoy, a lot of Dickens and Austen and one or two things by anyone else who comes to mind. This is not a broad range, Smithy! Your Children’s section runs to a whole shelving unit plus the end of the unit plus another block of Dr Who colouring books on another unit! Your Biography section dwarfs your Classics section by a factor of 3! And… and…
God, I can hardly bear to say it. The Classics section is exactly as big as the section headed Tragic Life Stories.
Gold!
I get an annual travelcard loan from work. It’s great, because it works out cheaper than buying a monthly one and I also get a gold travelcard which makes me a SUPER SPECIAL passenger and I get GOLD STANDARD treatment from the travel people. Actually, it’s just a record card. My travelcard is an Oyster, and I love it.
Anyway. Last year, the fool who gave me my travelcard managed to print the record card, my lovely gold record card, upside-down. Upside down! I had to live with that for a whole year! Any time someone wanted to check my ticket, it was a bit embarrassing. I was looking forward to the new card because – yes! finally! – I would have a proper-way-up record card. I took my travel warrant along to Liverpool Street and eagerly awaited my new, sensible, neat record card.
Yeah, they printed this one upside-down, too.