Feedback Friday, On A Monday :: Has The World Gone Mad?

bulk :: 15st 10
cigarettes :: 0
mammoth sweats:: 3
fibre freakouts :: 4 (bowls of bran with banana, sultanas and piping hot milk and honey)
James Bond-related rages :: 3
government communiqués :: 1
Hob Nobs :: 0
Halloween-themed Jaffa Cakes :: 5

The good news is, I think I may have just landed a job which means I can stay at home again. The bad news is, if it comes off, it will be very, very tedious indeed. But you know... whatever. You can’t have everything. You’re not Rupert Murdoch.

So, back in January, I did some work for a certain government department that shall remain nameless. Suffice to say, it wasn’t one of the most exciting ones. In actual fact, it was one of the least. Basically I was asked to write their ‘yearbook’ and tidy up the copy on their hilariously tedious website. I did this on behalf of an advertising agency who’d hired me on the say so of someone else for whom I’d written some exceptionally bland garbage. At some stage I swapped a couple of emails with the agency’s contact at the government department in question. Let’s call her Miss Manypunny (weirdly, that is her actual name). Well, last week, Miss Manypunny got in contact with me. She wants me to do more of the same, but she wants to save money by cutting out the agency. Would I have a problem with that, she wanted to know. Um… no. No, I’m fine with that.

So, hopefully, as of next week, I’ll be working for the government. I’ll be a kind of copy writing James Bond.

Aaaah, James Bond. Did you know by the way, that there’s a new film out next week? Had you heard? Had you by any chance picked up on any of the tsunami of publicity that’s saturating every nook and cranny of the media at the moment?

I should come clean. I fucking hate James Bond. There, I’ve said it. I think he’s crap. All of the films are exactly the same and they all tease the muck from a dead man’s sack. The hype is driving me crazy. Everywhere, everywhere I turn these days I see that charisma-free dullard, Daniel Craig, selling me TVs, selling me scratchcards, selling me shit films, and I’m really, really pissed off with it.

Still. What about that Olga Kurylenko though, eh?



Eh?

Seriously though. Eh?

And not only that, but she’s also one of the most exciting bloggers on the whole world wide web. Poor love. Why don’t you leave her a comment?

Anyhow, much more importantly, if I land this contract, for a few weeks at least there’ll be no more goddamn commuting. And that fills me with something akin to joy.

Now I know that most people have to commute every day of their lives and have had to for years, but frankly speaking, that’s their problem. I can’t hack it. I know that if I have to carry on doing it, it’s only a matter of time before I flip out, tool up and join the massed ranks of London’s legions of proper loons.

Have you seen how many mad people are out there? How many are there in London I wonder. Every day recently, I’ve seen at least two, usually men, either ranting at invisible friends like displaced bloggers, lunging at invisible enemies like geriatric swordsmen, or buttonholing some overly timid stranger and terrorising them with loud stories from above and beyond the call of common sanity. The sheer amount of bona fide string-collecting crazies has been a revelation to me. On Thursday last I saw three. All men. All in various stages of bristliness. All with hideous verbal shenanigans going on. One of them seemingly under the impression that he was a poltergeist. Imagine that.

Where do they all come from? Glasgow, mostly. But the rest of them, I don’t know. I don’t understand how there can be so many people who clearly need help just roaming the streets and swarming over public transport, shouting and lashing out at the things in their heads. It’s horribly sad. Keith suggests I blame Thatcher and her economy-driven rebirthing of the Care in the Community programme. So I’m going to do that. Bloody Thatcher.

Anyway, that’s my news. And today I was supposed to be commuting, continuing with the work I’ve been doing for Jack Wax (I just made up that name for him, but it’s surprisingly appropriate). Things however, changed last night when Keith received a panicky phone call from his step-mother. His dad is apparently not doing well. So we’re dropping everything and driving back up to Burnley to see if we can help by standing around worrying and drinking tea.

Keith insisted that I didn’t have to come, but I felt a really strong desire to use the situation as an excuse to get out of fighting my way through hordes of insane people in order to sit in an enclosed space for eight or nine hours poring over inane crap for a farting old word-mangle and self-important turd.

So. Burnley here we come.

We’ll be back as soon as possible though, and if I get this job, which I should find out about in the next couple of days, then I’ll be back in the safety of my home, able to blog freely again, and getting the government to pay me for the privilege.

Eat that, Credit Crunch!

Oh, one more thing. The reason I bought those Halloween-themed Jaffa Cakes – or Spooky Cake Bars as they’ve been branded – was because I was really curious to know how much they’d done to make their standard fare slightly more sinister. ‘Trick and Treat’ the wrapping promised. I was intrigued. Were they poisoned?

No.

In fact, they were so disappointingly similar to non-Satanic Jaffa Cakes, and I was so furious at having been taken in, that I ate them all in one session with a nice cup of tea.

Eat that, 007!



Comment Whoring :: What do you think about James Bond? He’s shit, isn’t he?