Wrong side of the picket line

Finished the Colin Tudge book. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to rush out and plant a forest. Speaking of which, some environmentalist groups that like forests picketed us yesterday. Not us-us, as in our grunt work office, but shiny-happy-MBA-us, which at the time was congregating with hundreds of our shiny-happy-clients, including some whose companies are responsible for some ecological hecatombs. Shiny-happy-MBA-us is abuzz with annoyance that they would have dared.

Me, I think it's a great idea. Okay, maybe you can raise a nice stink having a dowtown demo about how great forests are and how it's shitty to cut them down. Maybe you can chain yourself to some excavators. Maybe you can even get on the fucking news. But I think it's a far better thing by far to show up at industry events like ours and make every effort possible to embarass the motherfuckers who are actually in the process of paying for the cutting down. I have to talk to these people on a daily basis and they are absolutely convinced of the rightness of what they're doing; maybe a little personal embarassment will force them to re-evaluate their morality. Probably not. But it's worth a shot. And the least they deserve is a little confrontation.

I was talking about this with the F-word last night - trying to work out how many lives your average Catholic paedophile priest can ruin over a career (my guess was 800) or a serial killer can put a full stop on (I don't know, lots?) and how many lives one of these companies at the industry event in particular has ruined or ended by this point (without even counting the orang-utans). I'm not saying anything in defence of Catholic paedophile priests, mind, or of serial killers. But I was just a touch overwhelmed that society is so unfond of them, and then are willing to pay executives of these life-ruining companies tonnes of money to keep up the good work - especially the people, there but for the grace of God go I, whose job is to paint environmental turds green. Okay, I know the wherefores. But last night the irony got to me.

Running out of fantasy fodder

You know - and I this is on my mind not merely because Corey Haim died, because I don't know him from Croesus, but because another guy at work died, and yes, you may have noticed that's been a disproportionate number (three in a year, if you count M, but this one worked in a different office and my interactions with him were limited, so I'm unnerved by the unexpectedness and sad for his circle but not at all fucked up as I was/am over M) - I really am not looking forward to how I'm going to feel when celebrities who I wanted to have sex with when I was pubescent start dying. Teenagers manage this ridiculous level of passion for total strangers and I have a feeling it echoes through the years, as I still can't pass over news reports about them in utter indifference.

David Bowie having a heart attack was worrying, as were those "Jeff Goldblum died in New Zealand" rumours. Mick Jagger is totally living on borrowed time and I have no idea what years of heroin use have done to Nick Cave's physiology. Tom Selleck and Robert Smith have both been worryingly quiet lately. Paul McCartney has those billions to keep his brain alive in a jar if all else fails so I'm not too bothered on that score. But every morning part of me fears reading that David Attenborough has given up the ghost. He just doesn't trek through the jungle on camera anymore so I have no way of knowing if he's still so - you know - vital or not.

Mind you when Michael Hutchence died I dealt with it quite well, and I'm quite sure that I wanted to have sex with him when I was pubescent, although now, not having kept a detailed enough diary, I don't know if he fell into the post-15 yr old "hey wait maybe sex isn't icky" catchment area that I'm still living in, or if he fell into the "maybe we can play with My Little Ponies together" pre-15 yr old catchment area. When did Kick come out? I don't even remember. Sunrise, sunset.

Anyways. Besides youthful obsessions echoing through the years, the thing is, in sexual fantasy terms, they're just not going to be replaced en masse with new celebrities. I like to think, fondly and foolishly I know, that part of the reason I don't get many new celebrity crushes anymore is because I'm in a satisfying adult relationship, though it's apples versus oranges really, or rather all of the exciting and nourishing fruits of the forest versus a well-marketed Twinkie. But I don't think it's just that, because now all the new young heart-throbs are so young. So obviously young. Which is gentle, woman-code for 'fucking moronic looking'. Plucked and poofed like fucking prize chickens. I fucking ask you. Can you point me towards a famous putatively attractive celebrity male of my own or the younger generation who doesn't look like Magnum PI's fey little doormat?

Losing my workigion

These days I have the feeling of clawing my life back a little bit. There was another brief firing orgy at the office recently which has reminded me - as it always does, and as I always forget due to this strange habit I have of anthopomorphizing everything to be cute, making it seem like my company is a nice, jolly old man who has some concern for his employees - that I work for a very typical sort of firm whose motive for existence is a short-term bottom line, and I could break my balls for a million years for them but that won't prevent them from getting rid of me the second I become inconvenient.

And the present fact of the matter is that I'm currently working two full-time jobs for them, have been since the middle of last year and will be until I leave, at the same pay I was getting in 2007, and they're still not ready to give me any commitments as to the mid-term future. I would like one - I'd like to stay with them - but in view of the utter fucking ball-breakage I'd also like not to. S0. Time to stop breaking my balls.

Part of that is that now I leave at the crack of five on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or the commensurate hour based on when I arrive in the morning. The new CSA we've joined that I have to pick up from at 17h30 on Mondays provides an excuse, oh it's so much better than the last one, I just show up with money and leave with food, and no more fuss or muss involved than is inevitable in view of the fact that it's a Flemish organization whose local chapter is run by Francophones who can't even decipher the label "kleine groenten" on the small vegetable packet. Wednesdays and Fridays are obviously fucked, but I plan to leave at five on those days too on the days when I'm not the one putting out the magazines.

Mostly it's a frame of mind though. Understanding my company isn't, in fact, a kind jolly old man who will reward me for working insanely long hours and breaking my balls at my 2007 pay is very liberating, very stress-alleviating, something like becoming an atheist after being raised Mormon would be, I imagine.

And when you combine that with the fact that the recent firing orgy is a damn clear indication that not only do they not give much of a fuck about each of us as individuals, they also don't give a fuck about the quality of the product we're putting out - well, it obviously signals I can untwist my knickers a little about it too. I remember - heavens, this is so naive - feeling until quite recently that it was odd that I was very conscious of doing an absolutely crackerjack job in a lot of domains, and yet not getting any positive feedback at all from my boss boss - have never got any positive feedback from him, or indeed any feedback of any kind, though he said all the right things when M disappeared, which I appreciate.

I used to think that was because he was one of those types who was concerned that if he offered positive feedback his staff would get lazy, but now I'm pretty sure he actually honestly doesn't know or care - us doing a really ace job is not what his rewards or motivation is based on.

Fair enough.