How I spent my afternoon.

I feel really sorry for the poor bastards who work for big corporations, you know the type: banks, utility providers etc. When us folk on the 'other side' call in pissed off because we have been billed £450 too much for a bit of electric or our internet connection promises it is indeed 'connected' yet the little circle on the web page just slowly rotates, they have to sit and listen to us whiny dickheads ruining their Tuesday.

The thing that fucks me right off is that the staff at these places are so tied up in procedure that they are rendered nothing more than people who say 'I can see where you're coming from but...' and then proceed to get a verbal shit-kicking from us folk who just want to pop onto google without it being a long drawn out affair. The ones that should really be receiving a big fat piece of their clients' minds are the big-wigs who create these fantastically 'efficient' departments' procedures - that curiously seem alien to any other department within the same organisation (?) - then proceed to sit in their offices wanking over the cornflower blue icons whilst the staff in their call centres are being ripped apart by someone who needs but a modicum of sense and reason to see that the billing procedure is fundamentally flawed in that it seems to base most of it's 'facts' on random dates and figures plucked from the air.

If I didn't view Fight Club (the movie) as little more than pro-capitalist irony I would say that Brad Pitt was onto something...

Hello, how are you? No seriously, how are you?

Today I am disturbed by the volume of perfunctory engagement we humans have with each other. Case in point, a colleague in the office I work in just addressed a fellow employee:

'Hi Jane, alright?'

'Oh hi Lou, I'm ok thank- oh he's gone' (embarrassed giggle)

Now this is viewed as quite a common, natural even, exchange in a busy-busy-oh-so-busy office but I think it's odious. Really I do.

People ask how you are without giving a shit and, even worse, people respond knowing that person doesn't give a shit yet put themselves through it in order to conform to damn social norms. I refuse to engage in conversation with anyone who is either looking at their FUCKING PHONE or has glazed over. I mean it, I will just say 'oh you're not listening, forget it' to which they reply 'no, no I am you were saying (then they are able to recall the last word you said which proves nothing other than that they have ears and short term memory)'. This sounds like I am desperate for attention, that I WANT TO BE LISTENED TO BECAUSE I HAVE GREAT THINGS TO SAY, in a way that's true, we all want to be heard if we feel we have something worth saying but fundamentally I just get really really annoyed when people choose to engage with me then proceed to mentally check out. Why have you asked me out for a drink? Is it to tick the part of this weeks list that says 'Do something sociable this week, don't just go to work then lie on the settee as this makes you look boring/you're wasting your oh so short life?'

I'm not saying we all have to live our lives staring deeply into the eyes of everyone we meet addressing them with the utmost sincerity as a means of creating a connection and therefore reminding each other that you do exist; it sounds great but who has the time? What I am saying, I think, is stop fucking asking each other how we are whilst tapping away on laptops or leaving the room before having the chance to response. It's humiliating and infuriating to think that a photocopier is worthy of more attention, especially if it's only printing a spreadsheet that keeps records of all the other spreadsheets you need to maintain for your boss who will never actually read them.

That is all.

I love this...

"Nothing I do is ironic. I am post-Ironic. Irony is the ultimate cop-out way of turning something you did not mean into something you did. Like bands that put big tits on their album sleeves and say it's an ironic comment about sexism. Like bands that put car shit on their album sleeves and say it's anti-car. Bollocks. If it glorifies then it's bollocks. Irony is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Julian Cope