'Party Down and Go Fuck Yourself' indeed...

I'd forgotten how horrible call centre work is when you're overhung. It's just as bad when you're learning how to do it, as I am now. At FirstSource there's one computer you can use teh Innernetz on, and Facebook doesn't work, so I might as well try to bash my brain into order by writing something. Tried to read some of Heart of Darkness there. I could feel grey matter dripping onto my shirt, so I called a halt to that. And I took all the skin off the middle knuckle of my middle finger playing an air conditioner like a reco-reco in Lavery's. Helluvan enyjoyable though.
I've been thinking about this- the last time I bothered my arse dancing on a night out for any more than thirty seconds at a stretch. Time was me and Laughlin would pull outlandish shapes until one of us got hit for spilling someone's drink or girlfriend or something. Wonder why I stopped? But the point is I bothered my arse making a tit of myself, rather than working on getting as blocked as possible in as comfortable a fashion as possible. And it was great craic. I remember the buzz now, of actually having to sit down for a while and take stock, pick things out of the blur of stuff happening, and not just sitting on my hands and then wondering why I've got no money left and naught but frown lines to show for it. Someone remarked last night than I've become awful quiet recently. Self-consciousness seems to have snuck up and bike-locked itself round my neck without my noticing it. Must try and do something about this.

I do WHAT now?!

Finanlly recovered from Friday. Turns out I've worked a whole week in a call centre without realising it. I feel strange. Now to go finish Caliban before the odd weasrs off. Back in a minute...

Early Doors

Today is the pagan festival of Good Friday. Or something to that effect. This means that bars close early; no-one knows why this is, but it seems to be a law of nature. As such, me and the fellas (the Brothers Bacchus) and some other fellas (Sang By Fire and Connor Hutcheon) will be playing some tunes upstairs in Lavery's, then clearing off somewhere else where we can drink without fat bald men in black jackets telling us to go home at some daft hour. Land down. Should be fun.

Crossbows?!

Very well done to the XKCD man. It would appear he's got half the internet asking what the fuck a Higgs excitation is. The internet is a horrible place. And here are some reasons why.

Caliban

No point going round calling myself a writer if I'm not doing anything with it. Easy trap to fall into, that one. Like calling yourself a sculptor or a doctor of philosophy or something. Very difficult to disprove. I know a fella claimed to be the spider monkey handler at Belfast Zoo, and he got away with that. I suppose you're not going to get asked to demonstrate your technique unless you're in the bar, making this claim, and someone runs up to you wide-eyed and shaking and says "Oh thank God you're here! There's a rabid spider monkey scampering around the place, biting and dry-riding all and sundry!" You'd have to come clean at that point.
The same with literature. You're not going to have someone come running up with pen and paper and implore you for a couple of chapters about the Spanish Civil War. But fuckit, I start the nine to five again next week, so I've a week to batter out at least a short story. It'll be about a man and his mirror. I'll tell you how I get on.

Earth Hour

Apparently the good, if rather hairy, people at the WWF are organising an hour of darkness and leckylessness. At half 8 of your local time, they would like you to turn off all your lights and things. Might as well I suppose. Whether you're paying for your electricity or not. Take a gander here. Or slag the whole idea here. Although that guy looks like the type I drunkenly bullied at school. Not proud of it, but clearing off to the bar seemed a helluva better idea than double German, and I like to shout at people after a bottle of Buck. Some of my fellow students didn't join me in seeing the funny side.

Bollocks to this, I'm off for a job

In celebration of Tuesday Kid's 46th day off the pipe (tenuous I know, but fuckit, it got me writing), I decided that doing bugger all is more difficult than working by some distance, and got meself an interview for some pishy call centre work like they do so well here. Think I nailed it too, but you always say that when you've made a cunt of yourself in an interview. I don't know how people sit on the dole for any longer than a couple of months. At least in a job, you've something to complain about all the time - boss, incompetent colleagues, how the hot girl's fucking some idiot and won't give you the time of day - and isn't that what the vast majority of us want out of life? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick again? When I'm on the dole I always end up doing far less writing, tunes or otherwise, than when I'm doing it to distract myself some fat co-workers shooting banal shite about Saturday night TV any straight man would be embarrassed to flick past, let alone actively watch and talk about. That and any time I've tried to get money out of the government I've managed to get a job before they see fit to give me a full Giro. I find it a damn sight easier showing up, switching off and blethering at English types ovet the phone than I do running round Belfast from one jobsworth civil servant to another, compiling their fragments of knowledge to find out who to tap for an application form, to find I'm not eligible because the month has an E in its name or something.
Fuck that. Back to the drudgery I think. The pay's marginally better, and my colleagues will probably be better looking than my housemates. No offence Paul.