Micro-rant of the day from Morrissey

Coldplay

Coldplay have just released a free to download live album "as a thank you" to their fans. Yay! songs that you already own but in a shitty live recording. FOR FREE! The album cover is on the left where I have included a hidden subliminal message. I'll provide the link here on the proviso that none of you actually click it:

http://lrlrl.coldplay.com/leftright.html

Anyway, this little nugget of news got me thinking about just how much I really dislike Coldplay. And reminded me of the glee I felt when all those music stealing allegations emerged. Here and Here. (I love Cat Stevens getting in on the act).

LET'S DO THE MUSIC THEORY! (If you don't like nerds, don't click this link). The allegations seem a bit far fetched but I'm tempted to side with the youtube comment of a man who goes by the name of sjulianp:

Acabalos Satch!!! Putos Ingleses copiones.

I'm going to assume that a translation is not needed. It also reminded me of a quite brilliant rant from way back when in 2002 entitled: Let’s hunt and kill that guy out of Coldplay. I strongly reccomend you give it a read.

Micro-rant of the day from a film nobody has ever seen.

Not even Harvey Keitel.

Swine Flu

So Swine Flu has erupted pretty much at the bottom of my road and like every other two-bit blogger I'm going to write about it. I'm probably a good couple weeks behind the curve on this one, I mean we've had The London Paper ("IT'S IN THE CITY") casting it's usual level headed and balanced eye over the matter. But even they seem to have given up trying to convince us of our imminent death and have reverted back to the more serious matter of documenting Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan and Lady Gaga's unofficial race towards contracting AIDS.

Coverage on the internet, populated as it is by immature nerds (I should know), has, for the most part, been in it for the LULZ. I say 'for the most part' because it would be crazy to ignore this man who is taking it very, very seriously indeed:



Seriously. "Securedeboadersandvacationindiscuntry".

Ignoring the utter impracticality of his suggestions (because the economic effects of not allowing anyone to enter or leave America just in case there is flu pandemic would really be offset by making everyone vacation within the US) shouting at a video camera and then uploading the results on youtube with all the other luminaries of our time, seems an unlikely way to get this turned into official government policy.

Of course various other crackpots, religious and otherwise, couldn't help chipping in with their views on the subject, key highlight include:

"Swine Flu a Pestilence of the End Times Christian Living"
"Swine Flu Genocide: Part 1 (Satans Homeland Minions Exposed)"
and "You fucked up huh, you know your ass is doomed" (Ok so not really, but it could be about anything)

I'd take these a little more seriously if they actually made any sense. What the fuck is 'End Times Christian Living' anyway? Meanwhile if you're really going to expose 'Satan's homeland minions' you probably shouldn't put that shit in brackets. It sounds like it might be important. Oh and before you ask I haven't watch part 2, mainly because Part 1, not content with being full of excretable lies, is also very, very boring.

The next video, I consider second favorite only to Mr Securedeboadersandvacationindiscuntry.

"Swine flu... is Christianity to blame?"

Now maybe Youtube has a policy that prevents a simple ten minute display of the word 'No'. That would explain the insanity that follows in this video which can be neatly summarised as stuff and zany rituals that make no sense and are a waste of time.

Unbelievably Mr Whatsnext?Illtellyouwhatsnext actually has the last laugh and maybe we should end with his pearl of wisdom: "HELLOO. YOU DON'T GET SWINE FLU FROM FREAKIN PORK. PUTTING A BAN ON PORK IS LIKE LINDSAY LOHAN REFUSING TO GO IN THE OCEAN BECAUSE THE DOCTOR TOLD HER SHE HAD FREAKING CRABS." Nice metaphor...

What does Joey Barton have to do to get kicked out of the game for good?

Following Monsieur Barton's latest charming contribution to the 'beautiful' game - a wild, dangerous lunge at Liverpool's exquisite, composed midfielder Xabi Alonso - I began to wonder what exactly this man will have to do to find himself excluded once and for all from the sport. A 93rd minute decapitation? Dugout rape? Centre-circle bestiality?

Barton's rap sheet to date, even excluding his own irreverent spin on the art of the tackle, is startling. Of his numerous misdemeanours, a few are worthy of special attention. In December 2004, at the Manchester City F.C. Christmas party, Barton made a clean break from the traditional dispensatory powers of an ashtray, preferring instead to extinguish a cigar in the eye of a youth team player. Continuing his own special brand of 'youth work', the following summer Barton could be found assaualting a 15-year-old Everton fan, presumably because he looked at him the wrong way - a luxury sadly no longer afforded to his previous victim. Happiness is a cigar called...

Later, in 2007, Barton clashed with his City team-mate Ousmane Dabo in training, leaving him looking like he'd gone twelve rounds (OK, a round and a bit) with Manny Pacquiao. Admitting the charges (what a guy!), Barton soon went on to add to his reputation with a Happy Meal-tastic battering of a man outside a Liverpool McDonalds. His 77-day prison term presumably provided him ample time to carefully plan his next ankle-smashing blockuster.

It is fair, therefore, to say that we are not dealing with our common-or-garden petulant pantomime dame; a Robbie Savage, or a Danny Mills, if you will. Rather, Barton is a dangerous, spiteful, unrepentant villain with a disgusting track record. Barton's frequent "I'm a changed man"-style interviews only serve to make his consistent unpleasantness stick in the throat more.

In a perfect world, English football's governing bodies, or even his employers at club level, would tell him to sling his hook. But, alas, that would almost certainly prove a step too far for the morally skewed, money-powered version of football that constitutes the sport at its top level today. He is a 5.8 million pound investment, and it would thus be unthinkable to dispense with him on a business level. However, when Barton ends someone's career (or life - hey! this is a rant, OK?) one day with one of his trademark assaults, his apologists will not be able to say that they have not been warned. Football needs to amend its moral code, and act quickly to ensure that Barton can inflict no more damage...

Work part 2.

If, from now on, we're only going to write 'what we know', I'm going to have to stop posting in the very near future. That or embark on a series of updates about the the ins and outs of the Lutheran Reformation. Neither of these options seems a particularly good recipe for a successful blog, so expect to again be reading the incoherent prose of a man who writes 'stuff he knows absolutely nothing about' soon. In the meantime, inspired by Ashley's brutally honest appraisal of his career to date, I thought I'd contribute another job to avoid.

Back in the summer of 2007, as a fresh faced second year history student, I got myself a job at a housing association in order not to default on my vastly over priced rent payments to my unesteemable landlord. Work began innocently enough: I was presented with a mountain of filing to do and people seemed modestly impressed that I knew what a mail merge was. What I didn't realise was that working there was going to make this tatoo seem like an eminently sensible world view.[ pic shamelessly stolen from here]

Having started out doing general office admin, my boss (who could clearly spot an eager-to-please push-over a mile away) soon began setting me to task on a series of jobs "with more responsibility". For no extra money I should add. The people I worked with were lovely people. Patient people who cared about helping others. I admire them greatly. The majority of people who live in housing association properties are normal, average, nice people who are just trying to get on with their lives and maybe get someone to fix the leak in their front room. Unfortunately the vast majority are not the ones ringing you up everyday demanding that you find them a four bedroom house in Covent Garden (true story). In fact the majority of the people who you end up dealing with day to day are either insane, inconceivably angry, or, more commonly, just out-right dick wads.

One of my first tasks with "more responsibility" was to ring up all the deaf tenants to double check if they were indeed deaf. Please just read that sentence again and take a second to absorb the utter insanity of the project. We were trying to get the attention of people who we suspected were deaf using the medium of sound. After a day or two of calling everybody on the list I reported back that, unsurprisingly, very few had actually answered the phone. My boss's response was "we'll have to try calling them at different times of the day. They must of been out." At this point my brain almost melted.

Not long after the deaf person telethon, I was promoted (that's the word used on my CV. A more fitting description would be 'given a job that everyone else refused to do'.) I became transfers administrator. This meant that everyone who wanted to move within the housing association had to contact me, and I then had to explain to them why they were going to be put on a waiting list for two to three years, possibly forever. Lots of people really, really needed to move due to overcrowding, medical reasons etc. Unfortunately there was no where to move them to. There were many, many genuinely sad cases. A family of five living in a one bed flat with a son who, due to being born with an imperforate anus, had no control over his bowels. The man who, due to his schizophrenia, got irrational urges to jump off ledges, but lived on the fourth floor with a balcony. Seriously, these people all existed, and none of them had any prospects of being able to move in the near future.

Were these the people giving me crap everyday? Where they hell. People with real problems tended to have some dignity and were polite and accepting of a system that simply sucked balls. They understood houses in London couldn't be magic-ed out of nowhere. Instead I got phone calls every damn day from a plethora of retards (apologies for the tasteless word but these people broke me) who seemed to think I was personally vindicating them by not allowing them to move to their dream home.

Yes I'm talking to you: lady who wanted to live within walking distance of her daughter's school. I'm sorry you couldn't get a move but it turns out the government doesn't have a duty provide you with a house on the specific street you want to live on. If you want to live there why don't you stop crying about your extremely reasonably priced accommodation and go and rent privately instead of being a massive douche and asking to speak to my manager. You see there are worse things than having to get the bus to school; for example having to live in the same room as your mum, your dad, your sister and your brother who can't stop defecating all over the place.

There were also two idiots who would ring me up on almost precisely alternate days to berate me for only giving houses to white people / blacks and immigrants [delete as appropriate]. I longed for the day when they would call up at the same time so that I could transfer their calls together. What these ass-clowns failed to realise was that calling someone racist over the phone when they had never met you and hence had no idea of your race didn't make any sense.

It was always those with the least to complain about who would demand to have a 1-on-1 meeting and then spend half an hour shouting at me, demanding I photocopy "important' documents (which turned out to be letters from the housing association, hand annotated with comments such as "Aha!! This PROVES I need a move"). Other notable efforts included a man insisting on a move because his floorboards were moving and he used to work for the Queen. When this didn't seem to be doing the trick, he promptly faked a heart attack.

I think a nadir was reached when I replied in writting to a woman saying 'Dear so-and-so, Thank you very much for the picture you sent me... blah blah blah' after she had mailed me a letter with a polaroid picture of her still born baby attached. God I hated this job. But, for all my dreams of going all Office Space at work, any act of rebellion tended to end up more like this.

So as I sit here unemployed, contemplating applying for "A recession PROOF career in recruitment!!" (Guardian Jobs) I can still allow myself a brief moment of happiness knowing that at least I'm not doing any of the above any more.

Words of warning from a call-centre veteran

They say you should write about what you know. And despite the fact that I’ve never quite managed to figure out exactly who ‘they’ are, ‘they’ certainly have a point.

So what do I know? I know that I will always laugh when John Motson ecstatically chirrups something along the lines of “…and he’s come inside his man magnificently” over the top of some meaningless mid-table Premier League action. I also know, like the estimable Wyclef Jean, that two wrongs don’t make a right, especially when you’re just trying to have some dinner with some candlelight. I, unlike this lady, am aware that jumping into the bear enclosure at feeding time is a bad idea. Most of all, however, I know first-hand of the soul-crushing woe that comes from working in a call-centre. And it is this affliction upon which I will focus my attention.

First and foremost, it is important to provide some context. The call-centre can seem like an attractive proposition for some; flexible hours, the chance to meet new people, a lack of really stressful work. Don't be fooled, for the harsh reality is so very different. As a call-centre veteran (I have worked various spells over the years to support myself through University, and as a post-graduate to create a much needed financial buffer zone), I can now reveal the psychological torment that takes hold when holed up in one of these places for too long.

A brief summary of my call-centre resume should be sufficient to convince you (the reader(s)? - [ed - Fred has already made that joke]) to stay away. I have sold boiler insurance to old ladies, but was forced by the client to lie to them about the validity of the cover period. I have attempted to convince unsuspecting members of the public to sign up to a Kerry Katona-fronted bingo website. I have pressed Texan good ol’ boys into revealing their true opinions on "aloominum" wheels through the night.

I have been told, variously, to ‘fuck off’, to ‘get a proper job’ and, in a quaintly British sort of way, to ‘get knotted’. In addition to this, I have been branded a ‘timewaster’, a 'spastic cunt' (I kid you not) and most damagingly of all, a clown. The truth hurts.

Furthermore, the call-centre has a tendency to attract a certain type of person, comprised of penurious students (understandable), attention-seeking out-of-work actors and singers (irritating) and, finally, nutters who always want to strike up conversations with you, despite your best "leave me alone" lack of eye contact and negative body language. Moreover, it is always these nutters who seem to get promoted to the level of supervisor, at which point their over-eager friendship is replaced by the steely-eyed pedantry of a true jobsworth.

Another grave problem with the call-centre are the hygeine levels. These places are veritable hives of illness. If one person has a cold, everyone will soon have it. Packed in like battery hens, sneezes and coughs spread like wildfire. Oh, and I won't even get started on sharing headsets and mouthpieces. Your only protection against call-centreitis? The wet-wipe.

My antipathy toward the call-centre runs deep. In fact, my main problem with the recent Oscar-grabbing smash ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was not its overly schematic structure, wildly uneven tone or even Dev Patel’s gormless central performance; rather, it was that screenwriter Simon Beaufoy dared to suggest that any good whatsoever could come from a call-centre. Without giving too much all Boycway to those who haven’t seen it, a major plot catalyst stems from a humorous chance encounter in a call-centre. Had I not been trying to impress a young(ish) lady at the time, I surely would have hurled my popcorn at the screen and lunged manically at the projectionist screaming "THE LIES! THE LIES!".

Having said all this, the call-centre is not without its opportunities for Beckettian gallows humour. The whole process is so spectacularly inane that once one develops a sense of acceptance, black comedy can creep in. This humour can range from the basic (laughing at the names that come up on your screen. To wit: Captain Pollock, Peter Sutcliffe, Mr. Jesus Christ, Mrs Qunt - all true) to the more complex (howling with tearful mirth on the bus home as you assess the existential calamity of what you actually do for six pounds an hour).

Occasionally when sitting there like an automated chicken whose only role is to irritate and disturb, you will chance upon a member of the public who is sensitive to your plight, and will engage in empathetic conversation before either returning to their episode of Eastenders, or (and amazingly it does happen) acquiescing to your pleading request, and partaking in a questionnaire about the location and usability of their local cash machine. Getting someone to agree to do a phone questionnaire is not in itself cause for celebration, however, because that would be making the assumption that Joe Public is cognizant of basic skills such as listening, talking and counting. One memorable scene from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's groundbreaking 'The Office' epitomizes both the thundering inanity of the typical questionnaire and the terminally frustrating inability of the majority of said public to process a simple request, like scoring on a scale from 1-5.

My post-call-centre search for employment has been largely characterized by agonizing spells of inactivity and soul searching, followed by manic hot-flush internet sessions spent hammering endless combinations into the search criteria of Guardian Jobs, Milkround et al., only to be faced with the constant, mocking six-word epithet ‘Fancy a Career in Media Sales?’. But still I persist, because my determination to avoid these stinking hell-holes is strong.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions; my theory being simply, ‘if you want to do something, do it now’. But at the turn of this year, I made an exception. At the time of writing (Wednesday April 22), I've been clean of call-centres now for the best part of six months. I feel like a new man.

I think I'm doing well. Do yourself a favour - don't make the same mistakes I did - stay away from call-centres. AC