Right, I’ve had enough. Enough of weather which has depression and grey tedium incorporated into every raindrop. Enough of a job where we are now operating with half the staff we did last month, but with no reduction in the workload. And, in particular, enough of the imbeciles employed by W.H.Smith’s. Yesterday, I go in, on my way home, to buy a book of four first-class stamps. Nothing too taxing, really. Except for the moron behind the counter, who decides that what I actually want is four books of ten first-class stamps. “Ten pounds forty”, she says. I calmly point out that is, oh, 1000% of what it should actually cost, and repeat, “a book of four first-class stamps, please”.

She fiddles with the till, attempting to wipe out what she’s charged, by waving the stamps under the bar-code reader, which beeps plaintively. Eventually, she realises this isn’t doing anything, and decides to start again. This time, by selling me not one, but four books of four stamps. Right size this time, but still the wrong number, I sigh. “A book of four first-class stamps, please”. This isn’t rocket science, after all. She tries the bar-code thing again. With admirable consistency, the till beeps plaintively. She starts again, for the third time. Right goods, this time, total cost, Ł1.04. I hand over Ł5.05. She punches it in as Ł5.04. I briefly debate whether to mention this, and decide that while it might be amusing to reduce this “care in the community” outpatient to tears for the sake of one penny, it’s not worth the effort.

By the time I reach London Bridge, I’ve missed my train. I wait for the next one, which leaves ten minutes late, and is packed so tight that Heinrich Himmler would have balked at sending Jews off in it. Thank you, W.H.Smith’s. The only thing which stopped me from going postal is the knowledge that tomorrow, I depart for a well-earned break, far away from idiots in newsagents, work colleagues whose mobile phones play the theme from ‘Star Wars’ (I kid you not. Believe me, I wish I was joking), people who wield golf umbrellas on crowded city streets when it’s not actually raining, and a media telling me how ‘The Blair Witch Project’ is the scariest movie ever made. It’s not, unless you are frightened by really bad camerawork.

As mentioned, work staggers from bad to worse, there is now me, and the aforementioned idiot with the mobile phone, together with a bunch of people whose actual jobs are a mystery to me. They spend half the time out of the office, and the other half on fag breaks, coffee breaks, or merely whistling the theme to ‘Black Adder’. Oh, plus the relentless repetition of tedious catchphrases like, “Lovely, boy”. After the first two hundred times, no jury in the land would convict. Hey, I might not do any actual work, but at least I have the good grace to do it quietly.

So, I head off to America, the warmth of Arizona, Halloween, and far more completely personal pleasure than I will even dare to document here. At least I’ll avoid the “climax” of the Rugby World Cup, perhaps the most tedious single event ever invented. The only thing worse than those who play rugby, is those who watch it — for of the 33 games so far, 31 have gone entirely as predicted. What is the point of matches that finish with scores like 101-3? No-one can ever criticise baseball’s “World Series” again because, let’s face it, only three countries have even the slightest chance of winning the “World Cup”.

So, the rest of you, stuck in this wet, cold, badly fucked-up country, have my sympathy. I’ll think of you. From beside the swimming pool…

A particularly irritating document turned up on everyone’s desk at work last week: entitled Managing for Value and me (italicised exactly like that), it’s one of those corporate idea things, based on the concept that we should go through our working lives asking ourselves fatuous questions like “Everything I do today will create or destroy value. Which is it to be?”. Just in case we haven’t grasped the concept there, it’s illustrated with a hand clutching a bundle of money (dollar bills — welcome to the 51st state of the USA), and money in flames. Ooh, scary…

The tone of the document is wildly uneven, swinging between the fatuously obvious, aimed at backward seven-year olds i.e. “We all face alternatives and make choices in our daily work”, and paragraphs which can only be understood by those with an honours degree in the sort of economics which only work at the sub-atomic level. Ah, we do love delicious examples of jargon-laden nonsense:

“At the core of the Group’s strategy lies a clear statement of intent: we will beat the mean Total Shareholder Return performance of a peer group of financial institutions over a three-year rolling average.”

Well, that’s cleared that up. I’m so glad. There’s a whole double-page spread, populated by the sort of happy, smiling “workers” (posed by models, no doubt) that you only see in promotional rubbish like this, surrounded by the sort of questions we are now apparently to ask ourselves:

• Am I spending time performing tasks that don’t add value?
• Is there other work I could do that would be more productive?
• Can I find better ways to use my time at work?

I think the word “than” is missing from the last one. I’m sure some company has been paid a huge amount to come up with this strategy, not to mention printing and distributing this full-colour, glossy publication, but everyone here just sniggered and tossed it — except me, of course, who’s always keen to find a new target for a quick pot-shot at Korporate Kulture. Because it simply has no relevance to our everyday lives, and indeed, is not unlike going to the Mako Shark Petting Zoo. For we know the company has no loyalty to us, and would toss the entire department for the sake of the bottom line. So why should we bother?

There are a couple of nuggets buried in there that make sense: at the very bottom of the line leading to “increased shareholder value” is “employee confidence”, and increasing that should be the engine which drives the whole process. Yet it’s barely mentioned anywhere else in the brochure, and the company perpetually shoots itself in the foot by, for example, forbiding half of its employees from having a dress-down day for charity. Yes, only half of us, thereby neatly managing not only to piss them off, but also give the general impression that the left-hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. This kind of thing yanks the carpet out from under “Managing For Value” before it gets off the ground.

Another of the “basic questions” we’re supposed to ask ourselves is “Can I find new ways to eliminate waste and reduce cost?”. There is a very obvious answer to that one, which can briefly be summarised as “not producing bullshit like this.” Maybe if they started by sorting that out first, the prospect of jacking the job in and heading for America might be slightly sad…

Slightly late with the editorial this week: I was too cut up about the Paddington rail-crash to write anything…

Nah, who am I trying to kid – though I imagine it’ll be a while before anyone on that line complains about BR sandwiches again (got that line off a guy who’s written stuff for ITV, which says a lot). Friday night, I was out in the wilds of Chelmsford, bravely braving [er…] the Essex club scene, while yesterday, I got engrossed in the baseball playoffs, watching my potential $700 fall to earth like a fly-ball misplayed by a substitute right-fielder named Tony Womack.

But that’s getting ahead of myself. The TC launch drink on Wednesday was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, meeting friends old and new as well as TC contributors and those whom are yet to write for us, while Chris bought the most geographically-disparate round of drinks I’ve ever experienced, from Phoenix to New Oxford Street. Also met James Wallis, ex-Bizarre dude, who is now editing Crazynet, a new Internet publication. Yep, I can hear you yawn, but blow me, it’s rather good. First issue: James Woods, Buffy, Denise Richards on the cover. If some fairy godmother gave me a million quid, this is what TC would look like. It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever read every page of an Internet mag. Ł2.99 from W.H.Smith’s. Go buy.

After sobering up from the first serious drinking session post-September’s sobriety, it was off to the wild blue yonders of Braintree + Chelmsford. Yes, Essex: previous experience there = one day in Southend and a job interview at Marconi. Going clubbing in Essex was always, equated in my mind, with the kind of place where they ask if you have any offensive weapons, and if not, offer to sell some to you. Yes, an old joke. but when the first club you has a large sign proclaiming itself “a violence-free zone” alongside pleas to “leave your ego at home”… Ulp. Things weren’t helped by the search at the door. You go to Heathrow, you set the metal detector ringing like Big Ben, you won’t get a search like this. I’ve had lap dances which were less up-close and personal. Even my Hello Kitty key-fob was examined for its potential use as an weapon; I guess it could choke someone perhaps? Actually, once inside it was pretty good, with music which took “non-specific” to wild extremes, Kenny Loggins sitting next to Nirvana. I just kept waiting for World War Three to kick off, but it didn’t.

Got back here on Saturday, intending to catch some Z’s, then listen to the baseball later on while updating the site. However, suddenly discovered a) the game has started at 1pm, not 7pm, and so was in its 5th innings, and b) my RealRadio connection wasn’t working. Frantic attempts to download a new copy were crippled by their demands I give them my credit card details (for a supposedly free product? Get out of here!), so I was forced to resort to frantic hitting of “refresh” on the CNN play-by-play screen. Finally, I cracked and phoned Chris, so that she could hold the telephone up near the TV, and I could hear the Arizona Diamondbacks fall apart, yet again blowing a late-innings lead. Still, 100 wins in their second year, the biggest turn-around ever in baseball history, last-place in the league to first… and one fly-ball into the sun sums up the entire season. Baseball is truly such a heart-breaking game.

So here I am, late Sunday, finally catching up, and wondering where the weekend went. Drinking, clubbing, travelling, sleeping, and mourning gently. Just another weekend in Tulse Hill: roll on the next one…

• Name: Jim McLennan
  Actually, James Hay McLennan. I kept the middle bit quiet at school, obviously. It’s my mother’s maiden name. Could’ve been worse…
• Date of Birth: 16th April, 1966
  One day after Samantha Fox. So much for astrology.
• Place of Birth: Forres, Scotland
  A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there…
• Height: 5’8″
  Er…172 cm for those, unlike me who can think in metric. Though I actually work in a bizarre mix: size in Imperial, weight in Metric.
• Weight: 72.6 kg.
  …see what I mean?
• Employment: Integration analyst/programmer
  Y’know, one day, I really must get round to finding out what this actually is. I think it involves sitting about not letting people release software unless they beg.
• Unwatched movie pile: four
  Not bad going by my standards: Bottle Rocket, Mallrats, The Matrix (commentary version, off the DVD — maybe they’ll explain the plot), and Wild Things, which I’ve seen twice before, but hey, sue me.
• Undrunk beer pile: four
  Spooky, huh? Is this significant? Actually, they’ve been there for well over a month now, being a hangover from our lodger’s farewell booze-up. Then I went on holiday, came back, and hit sobriety for all of September… Hmmm…
• Undrunk beer pile (revised figure): three
  Nope, they don’t seem to have gone off.
• Non-beer contents of fridge: One pint milk, jar of jam, bottle of chocolate sauce
  About average. Food tends to come in, and progress from front-door to stomach, without ever pausing. I believe the technical term for this is ‘zero inventory nutrition’.
• Current bedside reading material (no, not that sort): My Tiny Life, Julian Dibbell
  Bit of a mind-stretcher this, about the virtual worlds of MUDs and MOOs. I can relate to some of this, having played back in university days on the first MUD at Essex, which ended in me getting charged with hacking by the authorities there and almost losing my degree. A bit of a pisser after four years study: it is thus with great glee that I now ignore and tear up all pleas for donations from my alma mater. Dibbell’s book is pretty philosophical, discussing mind-warpers like how computer commands are true magic, in that they are language which make things happen. I’ve just stared at my computer screen for five straight minutes trying to think of something to say about this, but can’t.
• Undrunk beer pile (re-revised figure): two
  Maybe if I drink enough, this computer magic stuff will make sense…
• Currently playing CD: Various Artists, Tranceformer
  Though wild horses wouldn’t drag me within a million miles of Ibiza, I admit to a certain growing fondness for techno as background radiation when on the computer or Playstation. The exception is when playing Grand Theft Auto, which has to be accompanied by Kid Rock’s spectacularly non-PC thrash rap, a lethal mix which usually leaves me with a disturbing desire to mow down columns of Hare Krishna devotees with buses. It’s probably a very good thing I don’t have a car.
• Currently wearing T-shirt: New York Yankees #46
  Though I really support the Arizona Diamondbacks. Back in February, on a whim in Vegas, I stuck $20 on them to win the World Series. The man behind the counter openly sniggered, and at odds of 34-1, who can blame him? Except that, seven months later, they’ve just won their division and are into the last eight… Expect to hear more about this over the next month. In an increasingly hysterical and high-pitched tone, with any luck.
• Plans for the weekend: somewhat fluid
  I have stuff to do, but most of it is “fit it in sometime”, which usually means “leave it to the last minute”. I think the problem is that I prefer more structured weekends, containing carefully scheduled periods of inactivity, alternating with frenetic spells of doing nothing at all. Be it shopping, socializing or cinemaing, I tend to do more during the week, simply because everyone else does it at the weekend. The prospect, for example, of queuing to get into a pub is simply…I dunno, words fail me. Time to call Stella for some inspiration…
• Undrunk beer pile (conservative estimate): one
  Thought for the day: no pub which charges admission is ever worth it.
• Last film seen: South Park
  Like the TV series, a mix of the gloriously sick and the wildly misfiring. Except they can say “fuck”. And, boy, do they ever. Best line, regarding menstruation: “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”
• Favourite TV show: ah, now there’s a question…
  The problem with TV these days is that you just don’t know where you are. I mean, take Buffy [the merest mention of whom will get the hit count soaring. Hopefully…]. I saw most of the first series on BBC2, which got gradually better. What I’ve seen of the second season, sucks: way too much drippy Angel. The third season, with evil slayer Faith, has been seen largely thanks to the kindness of TCs American Ambassador (currently hoping for a post in the Cayman Islands, but that’s another editorial!), and kicks arse. So is it a good show or not? It may be a symptom of the increasing fragmentation of popular culture, that there are no longer any good shows, only good episodes. And there are no longer good films, just good moments. South Park is a perfect case in point. But do you know what I think?
• Undrunk beer pile (definitive answer): none
  I think I’ll have another beer…