SHORT ON SPACE (# 74,883)
They never gave him much room to write, so he chose his words with care.
There was no rush, no panic, only patience.
Wait, wait for the swell to build, and the 7 word sentence to crash in on you, the reader.
Just before you hold your breath forever
GARY WILL BE A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLER (# 74,884)
You can’t help the line of work you end up in.
But you can blame your given name.
Let’s take Gary.
There’s Lineker, Pallister, Neville, McCallister, Mabbutt, Cahill, Birtles and Speed – God Rest His Soul.
If you name your son Gary, there is a probability of 1 in 6 that he will play football for a living and a further chance of 1 in 2 that he will go on to represent his country.
Richards become artists, as Misters Dadd, Long, Prince, Hamilton, Wentworth, Serra, Phillips, Avedon, Artshwager, Wright and many others whose surname escapes me right now, can testify.
Call your daughter Margaret and she’ll do well not to become an author. Atwood, Drabble, Forster, Mitchell, Walker, Bourke-White had no choice but to write.
If, in a moment of blind or drunk hysteria, you chose the name Danni for your girl, she’s a dead cert for page 3 which will make her dad truly proud.
FORCE QUIT (# 74,885)
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of working with a bunch of feral-thinking students at UCF, an art school in Cornwall, UK.
I set them 7 exercises in 7 hours, the first of which was to write a leaving note to their tutor (may I take this moment to applaud them all for writing with their enteric nervous system – the brain in the gut).
This mass exit made me imagine the consequences of the teachers strike over pensions on 30-11-11. What if they resigned instead? What if every teacher in the land and their public sector comrades chose to quit their jobs as the greatest statement of solidarity since Gandhi led the Salt March. If you’re one of the 3 million possible candidates who could bring this slow motion economic genocide to a head, don’t think twice.
Trust your gut, it can’t lie.
THE FT – UPDATED MOTTO IN KEEPING WITH AUSTERITY MEASURES (# 74,886)
We lie in Financial Times
We die in Financial Times
PRESENTEEISM (# 74,887)
Yes, it’s a word.
No, it’s not my word.
Presenteeism is a term to describe the way we come to work early and leave late when we don’t need to. It’s the modern employees’ way of over-compensating for their sense of worth in the workplace. The trouble is that bosses the world over are wise to this scam. They can smell your desperate flag of indispensability.
If you’d really like to demonstrate your indispensability, hand in your notice tomorrow. Whether you have a plan b or not, you can bet your boss will think a whole lot more of you.
It’s something Steve Jobs would have admired, god rest his ebullient soul.
THE CUBE CODE TO SAVE CAPITALISM (# 74,888)
I accept that parallel lines would eventually run out of ideas on how to arrange themselves once they’d reached 45 trillion variations, but did they have to bloat out to such monster proportions as this:
The Bar Code Cube or Cube Code as it should probably be called now the bar has done its time, is big. And square. And ugly. Like the bastard offspring of a Tetra Pringle sweater and a game of sudoko gone badly wrong. The designer of it will defend it as the first 3D scan-happy code, a notch for man to look back on and tell his kids about just before the world ends.
All to help us buy more shit.
Zap me senseless at the checkout please, and while you’re there, tie that polythene bag over my head.
Most kind.
THE UNOBTAINABLE CAULIFLOWER TAMBOURINE (# 74,889)
Tonight was a lesson in listening, something I do so badly it’s a wonder my ears don’t divorce me. But listen I did and something sank in.
The title of this post is not an anti-Dylan song. Nor is it a child’s essay after drinking a litre of Red Bull.
So why write it and why read it?
For the peachy feeling that all 3 words contain all 5 vowels.
Just like ‘eunoia’.
And if this is a new word to you but you’d like another peachy feeling, search its meaning on this site (because after nearly 3 years on this long hand blog I still can’t figure out how to tag a word from one post to another).
If you can help me tag on wordpress, please tell me how.
I.O.U.
Love
E-oaf
x
JUDGE ME BY MY PICTURE (# 74,890)
An online dating agency specialist was pimping her racket on the radio today. She swore by the photograph and claimed it gives you ten times the chance of someone saying “Yes, let’s meet up.” Most people will show an old vain portrait where they’re looking half their current age and distinctly pre-meltdown. There are however some braver people around who just happen to be single and are willing to take a risk on humour or kookiness without feeling it might lead to perennial misery.
My question to you readers is: would you meet someone whose calling card looked like this?
BEFORE YOU’RE AWAKE (# 74,891)
This might read like a blues song.
I woke up this morning (da nuh nuh nuh nuh)
With a thud in my head (da nuh nuh nuh nuh)
Rode a bike into a tree and I’m now double dead.
What this proves is how long it takes the various parts of our bodies to awaken from a drink the night previous. It also proves that the rhyme takes us to places we’d not have gone on our own. Joseph Brodsky noted this and I’d like to thank him for telling us so via the work of Jonathan Safran Foer. What I’d like to know was who invented the rhyme? Which man first came about the melody of words sounding alike? Was he a she? Was she listening to a bird at the time? Was that moment as epic as the apple falling upon Newton’s head which strangely brings us back round to bumping into trees.
Better go now. I’ve got a train to crash. I mean catch.
THE GIFT OF BEING/GOING CROSS-EYED (# 74,893)
We’ve all tried it. I’m trying to write this post by going cross-eyed but I can’t sustain each attempt for longer than a couple of seconds and the keys are swimming around on the keypad like small invisible jellyfish who have been drinking too much tequila.
Our mothers would say we’d stay that way if we pulled a cross-eyed face, which made us do it even more – especially when Daktari came on the TV with the remarkable Clarence. And just in case you’re feeling nostalgic, here is the lion with the crazed expression:
But what if cross-eyed actually enhanced our sight? Tonight I came across a story by Buckminster Fuller who was born cross-eyed. He discovered at the age of 4 that this was not so much a disability as a gift in that his cross-eyed condition was caused by being abnormally farsighted. He always considered himself lucky to be born cross-eyed, Lucky Bucky if you like.
As I write this last line with my eyes crossed, I too feel a surge of fortune swing my way in time for the morning.