God Bless Disney

Okay, so I've made the point before that my job is pretty sweet. However, I think I've found an even better job.

To make sure LA talent scouts don't get caught in a "booby trap," potential lassies will have to undergo a Hollywood-style jiggle-your-jugs test and jog for judges. If there's nothing moving from the waist up, they're saying, it's a dead giveaway that you're not all flesh and bones -- and you're out

Phenomenal. How tricky would it be to fly out to California and apply for this?

Right, blogging at work.

Man, there's a whole new level of dork that I'm discovering within myself here. I mean, I'm working in IT, and now I'm updating my blog on the internet while I should be working.

Clearly, I have made some bad decisions in my life.

So, anyway, it's the international day of drinking Guinness and saying something like 'Well, my Great-Grandfather was like, a quarter Irish, so that makes today a national holiday for me' and then drinking ten million pints of green beer and throwing up on someone. This always seemed like a curious holiday to be celebrating in the UK, given that we really don't need the excuse to go to the pub and drink heavily. We already have a whole range of excuses, like "Footy is on telly, let's go to the pub and watch it" or "It is [unwilling friend]'s birthday, let's drag him to the pub and force booze down his throat" or even the popular "Today is pub day. Let's do it."

The only appreciable difference that I expect to face tonight it shamrock decorations, silly hats and a more difficult time in getting to the bar.

Oh, that, and I actually won't have spent all day drinking, which is a first in about four years I think. Instead, I'm running from lunch beers, and then a few quick tins in the late hours of work and on the train up to the pub this evening. It promises to be an okay night. Hopefully I won't have to murder anyone.

Scribbled Thoughts from a Long Weekend

*Ripped directly from my notepad when I got in today*

This is the first time I've been sober in about 3 days now. I'm writing this down old school style, on a notepad that I brought with me in a flight of madness. This will go up in the blog later, but for now le me trace my steps to find out how I got here.

Thursday

A long tiring day at work. Nothing but standard stuff, but man, the day dragged on and on, and was made even worse by how tired I was. Anyway, directly from work, I wind up at the Ivory Rooms, celebrating my sister's 18th birthday, about ten days before it actually takes place. Surrounded by teenagers and parents, I decide to drink to power through. Entirely fucked, I go to bed at 1am.

Friday

I wake up in a haze of terror realising three things simultaneously:

1. I need to be on the train to work in ten minutes
2. I need to put together a weekend survival kit for my trip to Nottingham in the evening.
3. I cannot find any underpants.

I solve this with incredible alacrity and roll into work five minutes early, looking horrifying, and spend much of the morning attempting not to throw up on anything valuable. At lunch with a friend, I get a steak and wash it down with three pints in an attempt to get my head right again. The afternoon passes by in a blur of Facebook, music and boredom. Post work, I plant myself on the train to Nottingham with my copy of Good Omens and listen to Glee, the two bits of pop culture blending together quite nicely. After I arrive, plans are formed, booze is bought and we attend a house party and meet a girl called Ousome Georgia, pronounced "AWESOME GEORGIA" and repeatedly inform her just how awesome her name is. We also see several male poledancers.

Saturday

I wake up with Mike gently spooning me and declare immediately that we must go to the pub. We visit the local, eat a great deal of meet while watching football and drinking beer, declaring loudly that we are true men. We move on to Nottingham SU, and I lose spectacularly at pool while drinking very heavily. At one point, friend of The Useless Ambition, James Turner turns up to drink with us. He has j2o, and many slanderous things are suggested, concerning his homosexual leanings, minuscule penis and incredibly gay car. Then he drives us to buy more booze and these criticisms vanish into the ether. James leaves shortly after depositing us back at Mike's place, leaving us with nothing but a crate of beer and a solid sense of goodness in the world.

After much more drinking, we head to town, hitting up Nottingham Trent's uni club, on the basis that the male to female ratio is approximately 1-5. I amaze Mike and his flatmates with my display of my magnificent flirt ray powers on the local ladies, and make spurious claims about Mike's dancing abilities on the public display text screen. It's a good night, and a good club, and, much later, we return to Mike's buying phenomenal kebabs and sit up until 5am, watching crappy TV and setting the world to rights.

Sunday

We wake up to Ozzy Osbourne singing 'Stayin' Alive'. We head into town planning our futures (a company that delivers fry-ups door to door, with a pre-night ordering service) Our millionaire status assured, we break fast in Subway and have a quick half before parting ways at the station. About half an hour into the trip we are informed that the train in front has broken down, and so we're being diverted in some incredibly circuitous route around the country. It's at this point my phone runs out of power, and I start writing some absolute garbage to avoid conversation with the ginger beardy bloke next to me.

Yes, YOU.

Stop reading over my shoulder.

Weirdo.

TV, you lied to me!

They didn't do this much work on The IT Crowd. Today was one of the most labour intensive days I think I've had. Spent the whole morning ripping apart a pair of desks, and creating new work set-ups for two new traders who, I'm certain, will immediately decide that they don't like where they've been set up and demand to be moved. I've never seen a more horrifying collection of tangled wires and miscellaneous plugs and other assorted crap, with the possible exception of the time I first tried to organise my games consoles into working order. A SNES, Playstation, N64 and Gamecube, along with assorted DVD and TV cables. I truly knew what it was to party when I was thirteen.

It's not all bad though. I spent almost my entire afternoon on Facebook and was mean to other people who were in actual demanding jobs. It's been good, but I'm glad I'm never being specific about where I work, otherwise I get the feeling that one day I'm going to wake up to this:


(Via marriedtothesea.com)

On this day...

February the 8th. A date which will live in infamy. I know, I know, you're racking your brains, or even googling or wiki'ing to find out what's so damn important about this date. Well, there are a few things, like the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, or the first radio in the White House, or the opening of the NASDAQ for the very first time, or even, sadly, the last night-time launch of the Space Shuttle. However, as momentous as these moments in history may be, none of them even begin to compare to the truly blessed event that occurred today.

I finally got away from AOL, and switched to BT Broadband. It is truly a wonderful and amazing time. No longer am I under the oppressive shackles of the evil tyrant, AOL. I am now under the whims of a slightly less oppressive tyrant, who has tripled my broadband speed.

I think I had a point here somewhere. I think it was something to do with the notion that the entire time that I've had a computer, it's been connecting to the internet through AOL, except for those brief, halcyon days at University when I got to tangle with true power, like the 20MB offered by Virgin Media.

Anyway, I want to avoid this sounding too much like an advert, or at the very least, like positive endorsements of any of the aforementioned companies. What you should mainly be getting here is that AOL is terrible, simply awful, a blight and a cancer on society, and that I am finally free. I couldn't possibly be happier.

Hmm, progress!

I think I'm going to start writing again. I've been fermenting an idea I reckon I could expand into a novel for almost half a year now, and had a look back at the notes I first scribbled down on 18/05/2009, and I think I'm ready to start pulling some actual writing out of this.


How well it will go is another matter. As James was so kind to point out, I'm actually no longer living my life as one big weekend, what with the actual employment and all. It shall be interesting. Anyway, I realise that this is of no interest to people, so I'm just going to leave this link here, in which a former vice-presidential candidate commits an error that a ten-year old could probably have called as a bad idea.

LIFT AMERICAN SPIRITS

Every cliche about Tech Support is true...

This is because yesterday, after encountering a problem with one of the machines in our office, I told someone to try turning it off and on again. And it worked!

I love this job.

The 4.a.m Tuesday Update

So, yesterday was my first day of gainful employment. I think it hit me, as I was commuting(!) in with all the other young business professionals, I'm one of those people. It's incredibly surreal. It's been all I.D passes and lunch hours (yeah, that's right James, I get an hour. Suck it down!)

Anyways, thanks to going to bed at something like 9pm, I'm now awake at 4.30, so I thought I'd fire up a quick update today. I'm not sure how likely long updates are going to be during the week, it probably depends how 'busy' I am. Now I'm going to watch Simpsons episodes until it's time for work, and do some light facebook correspondance.

Ah, life is good.

Well, damn.

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say 'Holden Caulfield' on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died and then right under that it'll say 'Fuck you.' I'm positive, in fact."

--J. D. Salinger

Liveblogging a Drinking Challenge

So, at 2am GMT, Obama is doing the state of the union address. I wouldn't ordinarily care, at all, but this year, in collaboration with a bunch of folks from the forum I frequent, I'm going to play the State of the Union Address Drinking Game. The rules are right here. The game, and the speech is expected to last an hour. In the entirely likely event of my death, this post will also serve as my last will and testament.

2:00am: State of the Union is meant to begin. Beer One is open and being drunk.

2:05am: Beer One is starting to get a bit low, but the president is here!

2:06am: Oh shit guys, this could hurt.

2:14am: Nancy Pelosi does not have a face. That is some kind of solid mask.

2:15am: HOPE and CHANGE are going to be big killers.

2:20am: Joe Biden and Pelosi are wearing PURPLE TIES. This is a sign of UNITY because it combines RED and BLUE. SYMBOLISM.

2:22am: TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES HGBLUGBLUG

2:24am: Oh man, standing ovations are up to five.

2:27am: SMALL BUSINESSES. WALL STREET. BLARGH.

2:30am: Obama is all like "Health Care? Fuck you Republicans, I'm just gonna pass it, and you can just deal."

2:32am: Standing ovations count: seven.

2:35am: "Hey, all banks. FUCK YOU. GIVE US MONEY"

2:38am: Bipartisan policies, yo.

2:40am: Standing ovations count: eleven.

2:41am: PANAMA! PANAMAHAHAHAAAAAA! VAN HALEN RULES

2:44am: Barack just broke out the comedy. Hell Yes.

2:46am: Big shout-out to Michelle Obama. Barack clapped his own point for the first time 'cos he knows he's getting laid.

2:48am: Standing ovations is around seventeen Eighteen.

2:50am: McCain looks like hell. Daaamn.

2:52am: Fiscal Responsibility. This is important. There are plenty of numbers being thrown around here.

2:55am: Barack just totally laid into the senate. 'Fuck you guys, I'll just do it myself.'

2:57am: Now he's dissing the Supreme Court. Obama is THE MAN.

3.01am: Barack just cracked a joke and no-one laughed. Fantastic.

3:06am: Standing ovation from everyone except the Joint Chiefs, because Barack Obama just committed to pull out of Afghanistan, or somewhere like that.

3:14am: Barack is a GOOD DAMN COP, BUT HE DOES'T PLAY BY THE RULES, DAMMIT.

3:16am: Story Time! A little kid sent Obama his allowance money and told him to give it to Haiti. D'AWWWWW.

3:21am: We've just finished the speech. I'm pretty trashed. There are many beer cans here. And now I think we have the Republican response. I'm gonna pass out soon.

3:27am: VIRGINIA governor Bob McDonell is providing the response. IN VIRGINIAS CAPITAL. My contact in the USA informs me that his sons are 'hot'.

3:32am: Man, this guy just cannot match Obama. He just got a standing ovation, but I don't think it was a good one.

3:35am: Yep, decided I don't care about the repub response. Gonna post this and bail.

WOO OBAMA

Welcome, to the real world.

Today was a big day. I woke up at regular people time, went to London in an actual suit, and got myself one of those real person jobs. It's all very exciting. And terrifying, naturally. So, starting February 1st, I'm gonna be the guy who you call when your computer isn't working. I'm guessing roughly 90% of my time will be spent telling people "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

So yeah, this is a pretty big deal. I'm going to be doing an actual, full-time job for actual money. I'm concerned that this may hinder my television and movie watching. Still, there's a couple of weeks. I'm working on Arrested Development, which is rocking my world so far, and I'm going to do some tinkering with the site as well. I anticipate that this may be tricky what with the impendng demands of real life, but hell, I've been learning how to properly waste time for about 22 years now. I'm sure we'll be fine.