blp
03-29-2006, 01:06 AM
I have an odd deja-vuish feeling of having posted this before, but can't find it in the forum. Apologies if I have though.
****
At This Spot a Great Thinker Was Buried
The view from Highgate
I was lying in bed dreaming about socialism when the ad agency called. I headed over to the meeting, but it was delayed.
‘There’s a ten minute delay on the Circle Line,’ said Louise, staring out the window.
‘Somebody jumped on the line at Warren St.’
‘There’s a bomb in Knightsbridge,’ said her friend, ‘This morning I saw a packet of Diana cigarettes run over by a car.’
‘Diana cigarettes?’
Metaphorical inquiry into the nature of quantity: how many going to St. Ives? It doesn’t matter if you can’t count if you don’t exist because then you don’t count anyway. If you want to drink that amount of beer again you should drink half pints so that you drink less. I’m supposed to work out trends in behaviour and people react like that and things are the way they are and people react to that - statistically. But I don’t think my friend is really like that. Maybe he is. No. I know. I used to be a victim of uncertainty. Then I discovered big databases and user interface research. Now the paradigms are shifting. With the introduction of wireless technology, sparrows are becoming part of the GSM network and acquiring sophisticated linguistic capabilities.
Why does everyone want to know what’s going on in the lives of the stars?
Neither do I [changing channels] **** off. A load of media buyers discuss GRPs and audience shares and ratings and exposure control and lead time needed to buy. Suddenly they all froze, death metal started playing and somebody advertised a car (or was it a drink?). ‘Lick my shoes.’ She rushed back with her tongue out as far as it would go. A woman sat down opposite and began to sing. It was dubbed. Or the words didn’t come out right.
‘Wrong Internet – everything you know is Wrong.’
Olympics style drug testing for novelists.
‘Well, to say that I’m trying to make sense of things implies that I’m opposed to nonsense… which I’m not. But I sure as **** am confused.’
‘Xanax - The main thing is not to strive for clarity.’ ‘Well, clarification is, by definition, clarification.’
‘What are you watching?’
‘Anything.’
Everything breaking – phones, air conditioners, copiers. Sick building syndrome. (needs tlc) To do list. Basically we’ve got one person down with the flu and three people have become asthmatic and everyone’s been sick at least once since we moved to this orifice… office and, you know, something’s got to be done about it… Yes, you know, I’m sorry about it, but I ‘ave to reschedule because on fursday when I said it’s going to be… yes and zayr going to be downstairs… Oh, I don’t know, you know, it’s… yes and the object is to stop people working… there is going to be an action. Yes… Oh… including animal defenders, angry cyclists, striking dockworkers, you know, and many many more… so, I think, if we could recycle… I mean, reschedule for Monday… ah, you’re not free…
Do you think you know when you’re dead? No. Then how do you know when you are then?
Had a few G&Ts and then they went to a funeral. ‘A fun… sorry… whose funeral?’ ‘Um… I dunno… some… no, you’ve got me there. Wait. He was a small, pale man who smelled of mince.’ ‘Mints?’
Inky streaks began appearing in the sky. Tiny bluetits fluttered about like gnats in the bare tree branches making electronic noises. What are her books like? Don’t know. Never read them. Why not? Not got round to it. Later, the sky began to grow dark. Why do companies grow? Well, I think in this case their branding is just very young and sexy and forward looking. Oh, so you have some kind of an opinion? His breath came out smoky in the cold, autumnal air. We need to get in touch with that area of the market that Malcolm X described as ‘brand chumps’.
‘The people who are in control and in power and the class system and the whole bull****, bourgeois scene is exactly the same except there are a lot of middle class kids… walking around London in trendy clothes. Nothing happened except that we dressed up. The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything. It’s exactly the same.’ – John Lennon
Somebody joked that we were going to be wearing t-shirts and baseball caps. But in the end, it was not a joke.
Do you think you know when you’re dead?
No.
Well, maybe we are all dead then.
Right. That reminds me, does Carol Smiley present a holiday program at the moment?
Dunno.
Changing Rooms?
I meat, I mean I met a TV presenter. He was a small, pale man who smelled of mince.
Mints?
Change management user guide. End user test scope. Deep colonisation of the back of the brain. Get netscape navigator (ask Tony). Ely knows who had this computer before me and he won’t tell me who it was (because of the porn saved on the C drive). After lunch attended the build out the beachfront strategy heads up. Truth moment: ‘Like computers, we have drives.’ Finished management piece entitled ‘the dirty motivators’. Thinking about using it as the name of my thrash band. ‘Do you know John Cheever?’ ‘Does he work in Testing?’
He leant forward so that part of the PowerPoint slide was projected on his forehead: ‘Revenues registration metrics’. ‘OK first of all, you need to make a chart… you need to make a big chart. Big. And you want circles and lines and… boxes because, OK listen you want to divide your day and you say, OK, I want to speak to two companies every day and if you speak to one and then you haven’t got another one to speak to then you’ve lost a day. You want to divide your day into four parts and one part is for relationships… and you want to say to them, OK, this is what I want and if they can’t give it to you, you want to say… why can’t you?’
Near the bridge were a couple in leather jackets (one brown, one white) laughing. ‘We left the upstairs windows open.’ A bird call sounded, similar to a car alarm. Cars crawled up the road towards a dark tower block. All around us were vast floating rooms with candelabra, hovering above pruned, knobbly trees, strings of garlic hanging in the windows, peasant artefacts, ethnic masks. She pushed him, laughing, ‘God you’re so boring.’
He suddenly adopted a droll, sarcastic voice, bulging his eyes out, saying, ‘Well! Have a nice weekend.’ ‘Thanks’, I said, backing away. I bumped into the doorframe on my way out. ‘Ooh!’ he said, ‘Off to a bad start!’
I met Liza on the stairs and walked to the tube with her. ‘What do you think of Charley Casey?’ I asked her. ‘He scares me’, she said, ‘Well, no, that’s unfair. I don’t mean that. What do you think of him?’ ‘I think he’s OK.’ ‘We had the stupidest row about what SO should stand for today’, she said, changing the subject. ‘What? You and Charley Casey?’ ‘No. I’ve moved on from that one.’ ‘The testing department then?’ ‘Yes’ ‘So what does it stand for?’ ‘Nobody knows. Either series owner or sign off. But it hasn’t been decided.’ ‘Surely it stands for both.’ ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ We walked on for a bit. Then she said, ‘Do you know John Cheever?’ ‘Does he work in Testing?’ ‘No, silly, he’s a novelist.’ ‘I didn’t know that’, I said, ‘But did YOU know that they’re thinking of bringing in compulsory drug testing for novelists?’ ‘Like in the Olympics?’ ‘Yes. And if they find that their work was produced with the aid of drugs, then we won’t think of them as great any more.’ ‘Wow. That’s good, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s going to radically overhaul the canon’, I agreed.
It’s rational to follow the behaviour of a crazy market. The market comes to a fundamental equilibrium over time. Recent discoveries show that superstition and belief in magic have actually increased as technology has advanced. Definitions of these categories need to be expanded for the new high miracle environment. We need to plan ahead clairvoyantly in the speccing of functional breakdowns. Heads up, people. Raise your game.
Sun colour saturation. Clouds long furrows looking like a white ploughed field or a bevelled curtain. Airplane trails. Chemical leakage. A little girl on the top of the bus to her mother: ‘Sometimes you wanted it to be like the houses but without the shops.’ Later in London Bridge Station I met an arms dealer at the Costa coffee stall. ‘You probably think I’m a fascist. I’m not a fascist’, he reassured me, ‘I just take some of their ideas.’
****
At This Spot a Great Thinker Was Buried
The view from Highgate
I was lying in bed dreaming about socialism when the ad agency called. I headed over to the meeting, but it was delayed.
‘There’s a ten minute delay on the Circle Line,’ said Louise, staring out the window.
‘Somebody jumped on the line at Warren St.’
‘There’s a bomb in Knightsbridge,’ said her friend, ‘This morning I saw a packet of Diana cigarettes run over by a car.’
‘Diana cigarettes?’
Metaphorical inquiry into the nature of quantity: how many going to St. Ives? It doesn’t matter if you can’t count if you don’t exist because then you don’t count anyway. If you want to drink that amount of beer again you should drink half pints so that you drink less. I’m supposed to work out trends in behaviour and people react like that and things are the way they are and people react to that - statistically. But I don’t think my friend is really like that. Maybe he is. No. I know. I used to be a victim of uncertainty. Then I discovered big databases and user interface research. Now the paradigms are shifting. With the introduction of wireless technology, sparrows are becoming part of the GSM network and acquiring sophisticated linguistic capabilities.
Why does everyone want to know what’s going on in the lives of the stars?
Neither do I [changing channels] **** off. A load of media buyers discuss GRPs and audience shares and ratings and exposure control and lead time needed to buy. Suddenly they all froze, death metal started playing and somebody advertised a car (or was it a drink?). ‘Lick my shoes.’ She rushed back with her tongue out as far as it would go. A woman sat down opposite and began to sing. It was dubbed. Or the words didn’t come out right.
‘Wrong Internet – everything you know is Wrong.’
Olympics style drug testing for novelists.
‘Well, to say that I’m trying to make sense of things implies that I’m opposed to nonsense… which I’m not. But I sure as **** am confused.’
‘Xanax - The main thing is not to strive for clarity.’ ‘Well, clarification is, by definition, clarification.’
‘What are you watching?’
‘Anything.’
Everything breaking – phones, air conditioners, copiers. Sick building syndrome. (needs tlc) To do list. Basically we’ve got one person down with the flu and three people have become asthmatic and everyone’s been sick at least once since we moved to this orifice… office and, you know, something’s got to be done about it… Yes, you know, I’m sorry about it, but I ‘ave to reschedule because on fursday when I said it’s going to be… yes and zayr going to be downstairs… Oh, I don’t know, you know, it’s… yes and the object is to stop people working… there is going to be an action. Yes… Oh… including animal defenders, angry cyclists, striking dockworkers, you know, and many many more… so, I think, if we could recycle… I mean, reschedule for Monday… ah, you’re not free…
Do you think you know when you’re dead? No. Then how do you know when you are then?
Had a few G&Ts and then they went to a funeral. ‘A fun… sorry… whose funeral?’ ‘Um… I dunno… some… no, you’ve got me there. Wait. He was a small, pale man who smelled of mince.’ ‘Mints?’
Inky streaks began appearing in the sky. Tiny bluetits fluttered about like gnats in the bare tree branches making electronic noises. What are her books like? Don’t know. Never read them. Why not? Not got round to it. Later, the sky began to grow dark. Why do companies grow? Well, I think in this case their branding is just very young and sexy and forward looking. Oh, so you have some kind of an opinion? His breath came out smoky in the cold, autumnal air. We need to get in touch with that area of the market that Malcolm X described as ‘brand chumps’.
‘The people who are in control and in power and the class system and the whole bull****, bourgeois scene is exactly the same except there are a lot of middle class kids… walking around London in trendy clothes. Nothing happened except that we dressed up. The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything. It’s exactly the same.’ – John Lennon
Somebody joked that we were going to be wearing t-shirts and baseball caps. But in the end, it was not a joke.
Do you think you know when you’re dead?
No.
Well, maybe we are all dead then.
Right. That reminds me, does Carol Smiley present a holiday program at the moment?
Dunno.
Changing Rooms?
I meat, I mean I met a TV presenter. He was a small, pale man who smelled of mince.
Mints?
Change management user guide. End user test scope. Deep colonisation of the back of the brain. Get netscape navigator (ask Tony). Ely knows who had this computer before me and he won’t tell me who it was (because of the porn saved on the C drive). After lunch attended the build out the beachfront strategy heads up. Truth moment: ‘Like computers, we have drives.’ Finished management piece entitled ‘the dirty motivators’. Thinking about using it as the name of my thrash band. ‘Do you know John Cheever?’ ‘Does he work in Testing?’
He leant forward so that part of the PowerPoint slide was projected on his forehead: ‘Revenues registration metrics’. ‘OK first of all, you need to make a chart… you need to make a big chart. Big. And you want circles and lines and… boxes because, OK listen you want to divide your day and you say, OK, I want to speak to two companies every day and if you speak to one and then you haven’t got another one to speak to then you’ve lost a day. You want to divide your day into four parts and one part is for relationships… and you want to say to them, OK, this is what I want and if they can’t give it to you, you want to say… why can’t you?’
Near the bridge were a couple in leather jackets (one brown, one white) laughing. ‘We left the upstairs windows open.’ A bird call sounded, similar to a car alarm. Cars crawled up the road towards a dark tower block. All around us were vast floating rooms with candelabra, hovering above pruned, knobbly trees, strings of garlic hanging in the windows, peasant artefacts, ethnic masks. She pushed him, laughing, ‘God you’re so boring.’
He suddenly adopted a droll, sarcastic voice, bulging his eyes out, saying, ‘Well! Have a nice weekend.’ ‘Thanks’, I said, backing away. I bumped into the doorframe on my way out. ‘Ooh!’ he said, ‘Off to a bad start!’
I met Liza on the stairs and walked to the tube with her. ‘What do you think of Charley Casey?’ I asked her. ‘He scares me’, she said, ‘Well, no, that’s unfair. I don’t mean that. What do you think of him?’ ‘I think he’s OK.’ ‘We had the stupidest row about what SO should stand for today’, she said, changing the subject. ‘What? You and Charley Casey?’ ‘No. I’ve moved on from that one.’ ‘The testing department then?’ ‘Yes’ ‘So what does it stand for?’ ‘Nobody knows. Either series owner or sign off. But it hasn’t been decided.’ ‘Surely it stands for both.’ ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ We walked on for a bit. Then she said, ‘Do you know John Cheever?’ ‘Does he work in Testing?’ ‘No, silly, he’s a novelist.’ ‘I didn’t know that’, I said, ‘But did YOU know that they’re thinking of bringing in compulsory drug testing for novelists?’ ‘Like in the Olympics?’ ‘Yes. And if they find that their work was produced with the aid of drugs, then we won’t think of them as great any more.’ ‘Wow. That’s good, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s going to radically overhaul the canon’, I agreed.
It’s rational to follow the behaviour of a crazy market. The market comes to a fundamental equilibrium over time. Recent discoveries show that superstition and belief in magic have actually increased as technology has advanced. Definitions of these categories need to be expanded for the new high miracle environment. We need to plan ahead clairvoyantly in the speccing of functional breakdowns. Heads up, people. Raise your game.
Sun colour saturation. Clouds long furrows looking like a white ploughed field or a bevelled curtain. Airplane trails. Chemical leakage. A little girl on the top of the bus to her mother: ‘Sometimes you wanted it to be like the houses but without the shops.’ Later in London Bridge Station I met an arms dealer at the Costa coffee stall. ‘You probably think I’m a fascist. I’m not a fascist’, he reassured me, ‘I just take some of their ideas.’