My warranty

Found this in the inbox this morning.
These people have really nailed it!
The primary characteristic I look for in a trusted and competent mechanic: a mullet. Also must have own pencil. And a logo that looks like a bit of hair (possibly a mullet) flying in the wind.

LOST

Years ago when I bought my first little dwelling, I went through a period of being quite keen on gardening. My tiny little fenced-in area became a veritable miniature Kew Gardens. Everything I'd planted had a tendency towards volume and needed a lot of pruning, but that was okay because I found crawling around the lawn with a pair of garden shears quite therapeutic.

Then came the day when I outgrew the place, and I now have a tenant installed there. A tenant who, it goes without saying, is not remotely interested in gardening. Last time I was there you could hardly get to the front door without being garroted by thorny sprays of Bougainvillea twenty feet long. Consequently, I went along there today to do a bit of pruning. The tenant was out, but her beloved bulging-eyed incontinent little rat of a Boston terrier was in the garden.

In fact it looked like she'd finally sorted out the garden and it already looked fairly pruned back. This was a relief as it was noon and a bit warm to be toiling in the garden.  I cut back a few straggling creepers, then turned around and realised that I'd left the gate open and the dog was nowhere to be seen. It couldn't have got far, I reasoned. Probably just outside trying to sniff the bottoms of the neighbour's dogs. But no, it had vanished completely.

I trudged round the neighbourhood for about half an hour in the noonday sun, with no success. I couldn't yell for the creature as I had no idea what its name was. I tried to think of ways to deliver this difficult news to the tenant. Unfortunately the dog had appeared quite lethargic as well as being tiny, so there was no hope she'd buy the concept that it had vaulted over the fence.

Finally I decided to unlock the apartment and have a quick snoop around before I called the tenant. The lounge was an odorous shrine to the animal with squeaky toys, bones and dog cushions littering the sofas. No dog though. Despairing, I peeped into her bedroom and there the smelly little bastard was, sitting smugly on the unmade bed. It had wriggled in through one of the lower windows left ajar.

I'd had enough and went home. Then discovered I'd left my bag on the tenant's patio and had to go all way back to fetch it.

kitchen nightmares

5 days until payday:
Economical though it may be, I need to stop eating in that office canteen. I saw the catering staff washing the dishes today, ie. holding curry-stained plates under the tap and giving them a vigorous rub with the palm of the hand. No cloths or detergent involved at any point. The chilling thought occurs that they were actually showing unusual diligence thanks to my presence in the kitchen. The moment I left, they probably went back to licking the plates clean.

Hypermiling

7 days until payday:
Despite subsisting on leftovers and oily but inexpensive canteen food, a budget deficit is developing. It's hard to plan for those extra little expenses, like handing over the contents of the wallet to a jovial policeman after performing an illegal U-turn (last night).
Then there's filling up the petrol tank with what might as well be Chanel No 5, going by the price.

However, this evening I learned a useful tip from a very old episode of Top Gear that helps to maximise fuel economy. From student days, I developed the habit of putting the car into neutral at the crest of any incline in the road and coasting down. But it seems that in neutral the engine still uses a small amount of petrol to keep itself from stalling. What you have to do is coast along while still in gear, and absolutely no petrol is used. It works! Tried it out this evening.

I draw the line at Drafting though: A “deliberate form of forced tailgating,” this involves turning off your car’s engine and then following closely behind the vehicle in front of you “in order to take advantage of the reduced wind resistance in [the other car's] immediate wake.”

Interesting Times

Machinations are afoot. Our CEO (whose litigation against the company had been making headlines) has been ushered out the door with unseemly haste, and a directive from our head office abroad requires the appointment of a new Executive Creative Director pronto. Can't imagine why this post has not yet been snapped up. An atmosphere of unease hangs heavy over the agency. Only today somebody sent their payslip to me by accident when they'd intended it for their prospective new employer. It made for quite interesting reading.

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot

An unusual amount of social commitments this weekend, including putting in a brief appearance at someone's birthday party which was also attended by the MAM. I regret to say that he was offensively cheerful and still very much in lurve with his woman, who has not wised up yet and was gazing adoringly at him from across the table. He was at pains to tell me how great his new job is, how he's had loads of brilliant TV scripts approved, and that he's landed with his 'bum in the butter'.
I don't want any of that butter.

Welcome to Hard Times

Time and budgetary restraints meant that today's lunch (eaten at 3.30pm) was a bowl of instant porridge. A sad state of affairs indeed.

It might have been possible to go out and obtain a sandwich if I hadn't been chained to the desk, designing a brochure for the mountain of crappy old phones our client is trying to flog to an unsuspecting public at 'amazingly discounted prices'. This dire task has been the cause of two consecutive evenings spent in the office, one of them a Friday (the horror).

Working on this brand means dealing with the high class hooker-turned smarmy client service woman. We watch as she commits us to entirely unrealistic deadlines, gushes 'that's a great idea!' the second the client opens his mouth, and generally behaves in an embarrassingly fawning and obsequious manner. It only remains for her to start stuffing banknotes into her knickers.

Austerity drive

All discretionary income having been frivolously blown over the long weekend, strict measures are now in place to get through the next challenging couple of weeks until payday.

One main area of expenditure is dining out. Driving home a bit late this evening I was tempted to save time and collect a takeaway, but no. I would rise to the challenge. Went home and foraged for ingredients, cooked a gigantic meal, put individual portions in the freezer, then washed a mountain of dishes. This made for a less than relaxing evening.

Although I regard the staff canteen as a bio-hazard and breeding ground for E.coli, it does have the redeeming feature of an 'eat now - pay later' policy. Desperate times truly require desperate measures... 

Fashion Police!

Arrest this woman. She was standing in front of me at the shops, and I just had to sneak a surreptitious photo. Nobody's haunches can possibly be large enough to justify a garment like this. As she walked, acres of sagging, flapping, empty denim tapered to the elasticated cuff above her ankles. It's also those funny little feet turned at a comical angle that add to the impression of an escaped clown. Apart from that, she was astonishingly quite normal-looking.
Why?

tyger tyger

Exciting trip to the lion & rhino reserve yesterday. We arrived as six lions were tearing apart a carcass in a grassy arena, oblivious to the ring of cars circling them.

We had been handed a list of instructions at the gate detailing how to avoid being eaten by the lions. Specifically, getting out of the car and having your windows wide open were a big no-no. So naturally, many people were waving their children out of their car's sun roof and sitting perched on the edge of open windows.  If I were a lion I would've definitely abandoned the chunk of dead horse and gone to investigate the tasty living humans.

At the Siberian tiger breeding enclosure one of the park employees was apparently showing off for his friends, creeping on all fours along the fence and generally trying to look like a stalking animal. The tiger seemed very interested in all this. When the man broke into a little sprint, the gigantic tiger leaped up and charged across the field towards him, giving everyone watching heart palpitations as it closed in on the flimsy-looking fence. It seemed to me that this was in contravention of the 'Do not tease the animals' signage prominently displayed around the park.

Any old oil

Another photo opportunity spotted on the way home today. It strikes me that displaying these two messages next to each other is something of a tactical error.

'Please take away my manky old cooking oil in your truck. Oh, you're getting some new oil for me. Out of your truck.'

In another food-related incident, at lunchtime friend and I popped into the designer Chinese restaurant up the road from work. I'd eaten a couple of my chicken dim sum before donating the third to my friend because her food had been a dreadful disappointment. She then discovered that the chicken filling was completely uncooked, which had gone unnoticed by me as I'd wolfed down the dumplings. A scene ensued which resulted in us flouncing out without paying for anything at all, which was quite exhilarating. Almost worth the risk of salmonella.

The art of stating the bleeding obvious

Another strategy department triumph! We are doing a second car commercial, this time for a smaller mid-range hatchback. (Our SUV ideas were liked by the client, and now await death by research).

This new vehicle has quite nice styling, an okay engine and decent interior. According to the strategists though, none of these features can be singled out as a unique selling point. So the platform they've devised effectively boils down to... this car has something that will appeal to everybody. And our target market is really... anybody who wants to buy a car.

ring ring

Today I dragged myself out of a relaxing bath to answer a phone call which I had reason to believe might be vaguely important. Of course, it was not. A sales representative from a certain cellular network (for which our agency handles the advertising) wanted to tell me all about some tempting new deals.

I stood wrapped in a towel, dripping on the carpet and explained that as I regularly produced their marketing material, I was already well acquainted with the products on offer. The salesman then proceeded to seek career advice from me on how to enter the exciting world of advertising, and wondered whether such a vocation would involve a lot of travel. Naturally, I was thrilled at the opportunity to discuss all this.

Nasty-v

Switched on the TV this evening and was immediately confronted by the off-putting sight of a mashed-up scalp, which turned out to be Lizzie Borden's mother's head after the forty whacks with the hatchet. That image is now burned into my retinas and will be returning once I've switched out the lights, thank you very much History Channel.

Interesting how TV producers seem to feel that showing incredibly gruesome crime scene pictures is fine as long as they're black and white, and of a reasonable vintage. Presumably that makes them historical.

No such thing as a free breakfast

I have a friend who belongs to some kind of Ladies club which is constantly on the look-out for good causes to support. This morning the club was hosting a charity breakfast at a nearby hotel, and my friend asked me to go along.

The buffet breakfast was quite good, but a seven-course feast at the Savoy would have been no compensation for the talk we had to endure as we sat digesting our scrambled eggs.

The charity we were supporting was dedicated to assisting women who'd essentially married wealthy psychopaths, and preferred not to mix with the lower classes at the local police station or refuge for abused women. The founder of this charity was a three times-divorced former model who made repeated references to the 'diamonds' and 'sports cars' she'd possessed which made it inappropriate for her to seek assistance at such a shelter.

It appeared that we were there to raise funds for women in similar predicaments to get the therapy, financial guidance and expensive divorce lawyers needed for them to escape their marital hell with the substantial settlement they deserved.

While I do abhor all forms of domestic abuse, I've worked my entire bloody life so far and therefore could not muster up a huge amount of sympathy for wealthy socialites that married someone they could see was a dick, failing to consider the possibility of remaining single for a while as a viable option to sustaining black eyes & cigarette burns in a luxury Dubai holiday apartment.

Signed copies of her book were the raffle prizes. I didn't win one, disappointingly.

The Big Top

New Office Gripe #837:
Our parking bays were designed for circus midgets driving tiny clown cars. Fact.

The question must be asked: had the designers of our parking basement ever actually seen a car? Claustrophobically low-ceilinged, with tiny bays in awkward corners from which escape is impossible unless seven other people simultaneously move their cars, it's a triumph of urban design & planning.
 

Pathogen HQ

New Office Gripe #836: 
To gain access to the garden (or 'designated smoking area'), you have to pass through the Canteen. Sort of like crossing the infernal River Styx where all horrors dwell. Once upon a time there were little kitchenettes scattered throughout the premises, now the entire company is served by one kitchen (I use the term loosely).

I normally wander through there lost in thought with my eyes on the ground, which is a mistake as this brings to my attention the long strands of hair usually plastered to the sticky floor. A clean teaspoon is a rare commodity indeed at the tea station.

Hygiene continues to be an alien concept to the kitchen staff, and even apparent leprosy is no barrier to a long and successful career in our catering department. To venture into the back room of the kitchen where the dinner ladies hang out snacking on leftovers near the big industrial sink is to risk life-long bulimia nervosa.

Masterchefs

My chicken-slaughtering neighbours are hosting a little social gathering on their patio at the moment. Rather than fueling their barbecue with firewood or charcoal however, they appear to be using Industrial Revolution-era factory-powering chunks of coal.

The noxious fumes and clouds of smog are irritating the resident baby (and me), which is howling more than usual. If it's the same baby, that is. I have a theory that as soon as the baby starts learning to walk and crying a bit less, they immediately replace it with another screeching infant. It's a baby farm! Or else there is just the one baby, and it's got arrested development.

Parting shot

Presenting for your amusement the actual goodbye letter circulated today company-wide, on behalf of the MAM by his girlfriend. Includes helpful annotations by me in pink.

minibreak

It's been a very pleasant day. Having a public holiday on a Wednesday makes the week almost bearable, and should be a permanent fixture by legislation. I've just happened upon Superman II on one of the movie channels, and become strangely transfixed. Superman has decided to become mortal in order to spend time frolicking with Lois Lane in a big silver plastic bed that looks like it could become a bit sticky, quite frankly. In 1981 they probably thought we'd all have beds like that in the future.

As a mortal, Superman turns out to be particularly weedy though, taking a nasty beating from a trucker. It's also bad timing as evil General Zod (love the name) and his sidekicks arrive to take over the planet in stylish Bedouin-inspired outfits.

This film reminds me how disappointing the future has turned out to be: personal flight should definitely have become a reality by 2012. But no, still crawling to work at the mercy of the internal combustion engine.