The Art Of Hate, The Joy Of Despair

When life feels like one long hangover anyway, you tend to stop bothering about how much you drink.

How anyone works in a call centre I will never quite know. It's a brutal, joyless, mindlessly repetitive job that gives no satisfaction whatsoever. For every person who tells you you're a wonderful human being, there are a dozen graceless, hateful bastards calling you a lying, vindictive, unco-operative, incompetent cunt. They aren't interested in the fact the new system is badly implemented, barely tested rubbish. They don't care that garbage in means garbage out. Simply put, it's your fault and you're filth on a stick.

Not that I know from personal experience, and not that I work as a call centre agent, but God help me, working in an environment of constantly raised voices creates it's own stress by proxy. I do outbound chaser calls (pussy work!), and going on the off call confidences of my colleagues, I hope it remains that way for as long as I'm trapped on the 4th floor. I need their hell like I need a 2nd arsehole.

Just some of the chancers you have to fend off:

Solicitors who think a 1988 Sharp fax machine will be sufficient to send large amounts of documentation to ANYONE!. Then complain like the retarded public schoolboy tossers they are when ignorant fools such as ourselves cannot accept a legal document that has several pages missing or distorted and the Mortgagor names ommitted. N.B. Solicitors who cannot spell are an interesting sideshow, but are easily humiliated into compliance.

Or how about the modern day Del Boy twats from the branches who tell the customers they will have their funds in five minutes flat, leading to the most almighty clusterfucks at our end, as we chase the ever fading shadows of prior lenders, guarantors, 3rd parties, 3rd party solicitors, Alistair Darling and the Fucking President of Fucking Ethiopia. Some people do need money in insanely tight time limits, but for the most part, I theorise that someone out there just wants to get their monthly bonus in.

Finally we have the customer. The rube, the dupe, the fool, and possibly the hardest to deal with as you do actually feel for them. Being led up the garden path by a solicitor & a business manager can't be much fun, so it's lucky there's a call centre somewhere in Jockoland for them to call up and vent their frustrations at. After all, we're not human beings and it doesn't really matter, does it?

Does it?

Nah, 'course not.......

Beautiful. Just Beautiful.............

Now this is how you do violence. No running about like a fanny, arms flailing, kicking wildly at anything that moves.

Just get the guy turned then knee the fucker in the back before decking his fat pal.

This is the wonderful, heartwarming story of two two aggro merchants in a busy town centre getting the pasting of their lives from a pair of dragged up cage fighters.

It should really happen more often than it does.......

Swells

As if last week's Michael Jackson/Farah Fawcett '2 for 1' deal wasn't fascinating enough for a rubber-necking scumbag like me, the news comes through that SHOUTY MUSIC JOURNO Steven Wells has also relocated to a quieter suburb. I don't really remember much of his writing in the NME, though his by-line meant you'd get a few laughs if nothing else. I was more of an Melody Maker chick to be honest. In the intervening years since I gave up reading the weekly music comics, it seems he'd relocated across the Atlantic and was plying his scabrous, contrarian trade over there when he fell ill with cancer. Och! Anyway, just a thought God, but any chance of a similar run this week, but on slightly more deserving targets? I'm watching the Glastonbury coverage on BBC just now, and I can think of at least three of the presenters.........Or possibly the whole of Blur. That would be nice. As I said, just a thought...

People Were So Much More Attractive In 1993

Dedicated to mania inducing bores everywhere.

Picking At The Edges Until They Fray A Bit

Due to being unable to blog with much frequency, I've been reduced to doing a sort of round-up of stuff that's taken my interest. Very dull and a bit 'rote', but until I get my arse in gear, it's all you'll get.

First up, I found this awe-inspiring message board. Let loose on the object of your loathing in the workplace and have readers rate your rage. Please visit the rest of the site too. My favourite was the chap whose wife "looks like Lorraine Kelly, but ten years younger"

Beautiful!

Next up Kelvin McKenzie. Ok, who's first to kick the fat faced cunt in the arse? I must say, rising to the bait is never a good idea, as the outraged complaints to the BBC illustrate. People were falling over themselves to call him a nasty racist so & so without realising that the words dribbling from pudgy lips are the utterings of a total simpleton, and the alleged racism was probably the least risible thing to emanate from him (I found him quite amusing in a 'panto villain' kind of way). Kelvin, poor soul that he is, still thinks the streets of London are lined with gold and that on every corner there lurk a dozen wide-boys and spivs, just waiting to turn a buck and rocket the economy into the stratosphere.

Mr McKenzie reckons we 'sweaty socks' just aren't 'entrepreneurial enough'. If you say so Kelvin. I wouldn't know of course, having spent the past thirty years suckling on the teat of the state and piggy-backing off hard working 'Del Boys' and used car salesmen in the south of England with my miserable tax paying existence. Oh yes..........

In his mind it's still 1987, and maybe it always will be.

Finally, a requiem for Berti. Whatever you say about Berti Vogts, he did one thing that neither of his successors would have had the stomach to do had they become national coach after Craig Browns departure. He put youth first, he gave young, talented Scots footballers a chance in the national side and encouraged the development of youth already underway at club level. Unfortunately, he got enough wrong to justify his eventual sacking (too many friendlies, not a great tactician, especially with relatively limited talent, maybe a wee language barrier, especially with the more bullish elements of the Scottish sporting press corps and wee fuds like Barry Ferguson).

According to this wonderful piece of populist revisionism, Berti left the national side (and by implication the game itself) at it's lowest ebb. Scottish footballs lowest ebb was actually prior to the entry of herr Vogts, not after it. I mean, the fact that Scotland almost made it to the 2004 Euro Championships under Vogts, only bowing out in a play off against the Dutch (another example of received history for another day) has nothing to do with anything, and you'd be a liar and an SFA lackey if you were to suggest otherwise.

Alas, it was beyond Vogts to build on this, but what he bequeathed to Walter Smith was the basis of the team that seems to be firing on all cylinders (touch wood) at this moment in time. What Alex Mcleish inherited from Smith when he smelled the prospect of a return to Rangers was phase two of the rebuild. If this is a work in progress, then I have no worries for the future.

Phase three begins after the next Euro championships, regardless of whether Scotland qualify or not.............

Ok. Zep time. This is for Flying Rodent




Ok, so the sound is horrible and the audience look Keith Moon's got to them with the elephant tranks, but it does rock like nobodies business.

Don't Fuck With Me Asshole, I'm Ten Times As Boring As You'll Ever Be!

Office bores. They bore you and bore you and then as if that wasn't enough for them, they bore you a little bit more so that come five O'Clock, you don't get yr coat and go out the door, but instead open a window, perch above the traffic below and convince yrself that pavements really are made of mattresses and marshmallow. I of course have a stronger mind than that. I counter fire with fire and deliver a few salvo's of my own. Todays topic was Scottish Cup winners and old footie teams. Office bore gives it big licks with how he once stored the OVD Junior Cup in his mothers back room to prevent it getting damaged, before telling us that he's handled every domestic football trophy in Scotland. Fact and fiction are one and the same to this clown.

Solid, who sits opposite me is partly culpable, mainly because he believes absolutely everything you tell him, so OB gets his jollies with little or no effort. Thing is, I know as much as OB does, if not more, about the arcane elements of Scottish football and he didn't like the fact that I knew St Bernards had never won the Scottish Cup*. I later informed him about things he didn't know about Stirling Albion and their previous incarnation, Kings Park. The final straw came when shortly after he claiming St Bernards were a Glasgow team, I turned round and stated that they were in fact an Edinburgh team. He didn't seem interested then........

Yes, I am a jumped up little prick, but theres nothing better than pricking the bubble of conceit and pomposity with some of your own.

Anyway, it's come to my notice that I have neglected to post on this fair blog for a full four days. Not like me really, I've always got some tedious guff to impart. So where have I been? I'd like you all to think I've been Drug Running On A Panamanian Schooner, or maybe Running Wild With The One I Love or possibly Living In A Trailer At The Edge Of Town

Alas, none of them are true. If only life conformed to carefully chosen song lyrics...................................

Adios my sweethearts.......

*Little known fact. St Bernards did actually win the Scottish Cup in 1895. So I was wrong.........

Where's My Egg You Bastards?

Well, the sailors are home and the nation unites as one to say............. "Fuck off you traitorous cowards". That's if the BBC 'Have Your Say' board is anything to go by........ And it's probably not. The mind boggles at what the lunatic right have to say on the matter. No fan of the military, no lover of war, but these people are doing something that 99% of the jumped up little keyboard warriors(TM Flying Rodent) of this nation would run a mile from. Myself included. Ignorance, arrogance and bluster from people who either still think we're fighting the Jerries or who genuinely believe that life plays like an action movie.

Cunts!

Ok, on the subject of cunts, my employers handed out easter eggs to everyone in the company with the exception of my department. Why? Are we naughty children who don't deserve choccie treats? Ok, so I wasn't too bothered, most easter eggs are gruesome, but hells teeth, it pretty much tells you all you need to know about how you're valued within the company. I just contented myself with a bar of Bournville from the vending machine. Of course, they'll all get scoffed and the fucking moron that comes to fill our machine will take this as a sign that they can't be very popular and never stock them ever again.

FridayYouTubeNonsense.....

Ooh! Zeitgeisty.....