Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Sometimes I really despise the things I have to do to make money. However, sometimes the things I have to do to make money bring me into contact with other things – things which other people have to do to make money – which actually make me feel incredibly grateful for my lot. I’ve written a lot of incredibly dull tosh for financial websites for example, and if there’s one thing that really curdles my soul, it’s finance.
I also regularly do proofreading work. Now, if the material’s any good, proofreading can be a delight, money for old rope - let's face it, it's basically reading, which obviously, is one of life’s great joys. Sometimes however, it’s an enormous, spirit-sapping trial. This week for example, I was given an emergency proofing job by an Arab financier who pays me half-decent money to make sense of this garbage:
The “value-glamour effect” makes another overreaction manifestation. Here the focus has moved away from the first past return to the accounting ratios. Considering then for instance the book-to-market ratio (B/M), i.e. relationship with companies own resources versus market capitalization. A company with an high B/M ratio (“value”) has most probably encountered the difficulties in recent past, and therefore penalized as consequence by the investors....
And so on for 300 pages. If I may borrow a phrase from the great poet, Tracy Lauren Marrow, this kind of work throws me headfirst into the very bowels of a 'capitalist migraine'.
So yes, whilst the lovely Barbara Ellen gets to turn off her mind and squat over her laptop, this is how I spend my days. I would genuinely rather lick the sweat from a dead dog’s balls. Genuinely. Find me a job doing exactly that and watch me go. I'd be all over it like a man with six mouths. But no. It's not to be. Dead dogs' balls, like Observer columns, must remain the stuff of dreams...
Speaking of the perils of work, I’m slightly concerned that Keith has been swallowed whole by his own giant toad. I know he’s doing an ad at the moment and that can mean working 16-plus hours a day, but it’s not like him to ignore voice-mails. I’m concerned for two reasons: the last conversation we had was about the possibility of me moving into his flat, and I worry that he might be having second thoughts; and also, I know he was due to get the results from his brain scan this week. I’m sure everything’s fine, but of course... I’m not.
Right. Break over. I have another 50 pages of incomprehensible guff to get through by the end of the day.
Aaaaaaah, work.
