Bad Day At The Office

This video is, I believe, the best expression of having a bad day at the office known to man:

*Bad Day*

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The New New Thing

Flying through the blue states. Busing through the red states. About three weeks: most of April. Tentative at this point.
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You Can Take This Job And Shove It

I gave notice at my work today, and then later at my flat. I'm quitting this job and this house and this city.

A steady stream of freaks, the unemployed, the homeless and the flat-out thieving passed by my uniformed gaze today, as it does most days. Eventually, after 5pm the regular working people begin to saunter through the doors, stepping out of their SUVs long enough to pick up the latest marketing explosion. Films are rented not by merit, but in direct proportion to the amount spent on their promotion. The Big Macs of the film world fly out the door with dulling regularity while the back catalogue of films guilty of nothing but being old languish in ignominy.

My flatmates: exactly like these two guys.

Calgary: like the picture below, but with half-melted snow mixed with dirt, solidified exhaust fumes, staggering homeless people, fifteen commuters in shapeless cheap winter jackets and a sign on the bus saying 'OUT OF SERVICE'.

Interesting Things

Click for larger images.

A Hideous Mess, As Viewed From The Inside

Tonight it was not the 12:30am Saturday night closing, or the ritual humiliation of minimum-wage work, or the wait for a train that never came, or the hour-long search for a taxi, or the freezing cold. It was the hammering realisation of my own powerlessness in the world.
My life is a hollowed-out shell, unlived and unpopulated, lonely and characterised by escapism and cowardice. My intelligence has not resulted in success, or my education in wealth. I have run away from all the things that make life valuable and good, leaving a string of half-completed satisfactions and conversations which trail off into silence. I have no skill in making life, of building a foundation for gladness or for continuity of any kind.
My hit-and-run existence has lead me to a bleak and desolate place, and my punishment is to be alone with my thoughts.


I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better to dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
William Cowper (1731–1800)

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