I’ve been on the early shift at work this week, which is about the nearest thing to hell I can envisage. “Early” in this context, means being at my desk at 7 a.m which, the more I think about it, goes beyond merely hellish to positively Satanic. This means getting up in the dark, and going out into a freezing, damp and miserable morning when any sane person is still curled up with dreams of [insert favoured sex-god(dess) here]. It sucks.

Admittedly, I’ve not exactly helped things, by averaging about six hours sleep this week. But you go to bed early on Sunday night, in preparation, and find yourself deeply acquainted with the cracks in the ceiling because you are, of course, not tired. But, boy, do you know the meaning of that word by about Wednesday night, especially as I resent having to go to bed when civilised society is still down the pub. So I don’t. Oddly, though, the most easily survived day was Thursday, when I got a mere four hours of kip: I think four is better than six, for some reason connected with sleep cycles.

Thankfully it’s only one week in four, but that’s still one week in four too much. And I was thus grateful for the following rant which appeared in my mailbox courtesy of regular TC contributor Lino. It saves me having to think up anything when my brain is curled up in a corner demanding large quantities of R.E.M. — and I don’t mean the dumb band. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

PUBLISH THIS!!

So, anyway, it’s 12:30am on Tuesday morning, and I’m downloading “blueprints” from usenet, surfing and with my third eye am watching “Late Show with David Letterman” on Sky One, an ad break appears… blah blah, small Japanese car, blah blah, Burger King, blah blah, usual bland crap… then… I see two men in lab jackets standing in front of a chimp… one of the men is holding a picture of a packet of sweets… not just any sweets… Opal Fruits, but you see, and this is where my world starts falling apart, they’re not marked up as Opal Fruits… the wacky duo are testing out new names on the chimp… the chimp getting excited and pushing the “OK” button when they show him the name “Starburst”…

Yes, the new name for Opal Fruits is Starburst… now, look, I love Americans, I love America, in fact I’m IN love with an American… and I’ve tasted Starbursts, and I like them (America having discovered that there are more than two fruit flavours…), but I will NOT accept this name change… ok, so a few years back, in the spirit of corporate greed they changed the name of my favourite nutty chocolate bar from Marathon to Snickers (In an attempt to make the world a happy place and flood the UK with these horrible generic advertising campaigns[*]), I accepted that (Although I do happily confuse stupid looking newsagents by asking where they keep the Marathons), because, while I enjoy them, my childhood wasn’t bombarded with mind altering ad campaigns for Marathon bars…

It was warped forever by mind altering ad campaigns for Opal Fruits… “Opal Fruitssssssss, made to make your mouth waaaaaaaater”… OK, I accept that they weren’t designed to make my mouth water, they were infact designed to be hard, then soft, and consisting of only a couple of flavours…. But they were Opal Fruits damnit…. OPAL FRUITS!!! Good God, I’m 32 on Saturday, I don’t need to have my rapidly dimishing grip on reality jarred by evil plans like this…. STOP IT NOW!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!! WHERE WILL IT ENDDDDDDDDD!!

[*] These horrid generic advertising campaigns get worse. The latest Doritos advertisment being the American one. The worst offender so far are the series of Eurodisney ads where they cleverly place cups etc, in front of the “actors” mouths, thus making it easy to dub a foreign voiceover on it and ship it Europe wide…

OK, that’s it, I’m going to find some Americans on IRC and abuse them….

Goodnight

Indeed. Now THAT’s a sentence I can agree with…

Goodnight…