so much for the six month plan

I looked at the staff directory at my new workplace today and was astounded. Of 60 odd staff working here, at least 50 are managers! That's like a 5-1 staff to manager ratio. Boy, either the staff really need a close eye on them, or the company really likes promotions!

Alas, I fear the reality is much more mundane. It's all part of this 'streamline', work-from-home, 'open plan', modern workplace BULLSHIT. End of the day, you might be able to call yourself a 'manager', but your job's just as shitty as it was 2 years ago.

Where are there job openings for peasant? I want to sit on a haystack flinging mud at my inbred family for a sack of potatoes and a bucket of milk and catch dysentry, it's got to have more meaning than 'employer investments in people'.

barf

My first rejection!

I feel like I should be bummed out. After all, they're saying my story doesn't meet the prized standards of the intellectual elite that is Black Static Magazine. But instead I feel a sort of elation. I think in a way this tiny slip of pre-written, badly-printed paper gives me the sense of legitimacy I always lacked before. I am a writer. A talentless, shitty writer, but a writer nonetheless. Here's to the hundreds of rejection letters to come and the ever increasing gloomy sulks that will inevitably follow. Lord knows I'll probably not be this stoked second time around.

Milestones of Graphics Design

There are some very mundane things in this world that I nonetheless hold dear. Matches are one of those things. I think it's all tied in to machismo and primitive survivalism or something, but I find it a very satisfying pastime. Mastery of fire is something all male personalities aspire to have, and matches go some way to helping us acheive that dream.

Matches can make every one of us like Prometheus: he who stole fire from the gods. But the power of the gods doesn't necessarily come packaged with their wisdom like a tesco 2 for 1 deal. We all know some dunderhead who accidentally set fire to his room, or burnt off his own face. That's why the thoughtful people at Swedish Match decided to put a warning on the back of the box in case any of us hadn't yet heard the breaking news that fire can actually be harmful.

Now, if you're going to go with a health warning that's integral to your product, you'd likely go for something eye catching, but tasteful. Maybe hire a couple of ad guys or some dude with a graphics design Phd to come up with something. Not Swedish Matches. They went for the less conventional path of doing a picture on MS Paint of a burning stickman. It was a risky manouvre, but as you can see for yourself, the results have really paid off. The combination of the stick man's imploring eyes, its half casual, half worrisome cry for help, and its flaming arm, really create a lasting impression. I don't think you could get someone with a salary of a million pounds an hour to design something that good. And to top it all off they include a recipe for rice pudding, magnanimously trusting that their customers might one day try cooking something more inventive than sausages and beans.

Thanks to Swedish Matches I will never forget that fire kills children or that I can have my very own ricey dessert in less than two and a half hours.

I like Southland Tales

Fuck you, fight me.

Unrest in Tibet

Since 1950 Tibet has been under Chinese control, largely against its wishes, and this year marks 49 years since the first major uprising which lead the Dalai Lama (the head of the Tibetan state) to be exiled to India after a long and bloody struggle. This year, the Olympics are being held in Beijing. The Tibetan people, as well as allies across the world, have taken this as a prime oppertunity to re-ignite their struggle, at a time when all the world is watching.

However, since the uprising started in Lhasa about 2 weeks ago, the Chinese authorities have thoroughly censored all footage and news reports of what's going on over there. News websites, blogs, and video streaming databases are among the websites which the authorities have blocked for domestic access. In addition news teams from across the world have had great difficulty in getting into the problem areas to see what's really happening.

Guardian video journal

Despite these difficulties, news has got out of Tibet and China in small chunks. Wikileaks (jah bless the freedom of information act) is hosting over a hundred photographs and over 30 videos of events over the last fortnight.

Please be advised, some of these photographs are of a graphic and disturbing nature. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Photo gallery with Captions

Leading scientist suggests we're fucked, basically.

'Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.'

James Lovelock is a bit of a kooky scientist dude. Noone ever takes anything he says seriously, like his Gaia hypothesis: that the entire planet is one big self-regulating organism. And then about 30 years later anything he says is confirmed by all those lab heads. He could be dead smug about it, only he's normally saying terrible things about how we've fucked up and we need to sort it out now. The major problem we have is he's been saying that since the 60's, which means we're now about 50 years too late to do anything about it, by his estimations.

I like Lovelock, he's got outside-the-box ideas, without being one of those nutters that thinks you can heal heart disease with fucking crystals. And he truly, genuinely believes that we're utterly utterly fucked. Which I'm not really sure how to take, to be honest.

Read the full article here, it'll only take a few minutes, and it's very interesting.

Doghead Issue 1

Photobucket Album