... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Monday, November 29, 2010

130: "...angry rant gradually slides into ineffectual dreaming of the future," it said.

Def Jam: Rapstar?  This game could make you famous; upload your video online now!  Who comes up with this shit?  Who are these marketing people paid so much to throw together random buzz words to come up with new artless products.  Objects that are simply ‘product’ and nothing else.  Where is the art, the love, the authority, the compassion?  No it’s all sick this and wicked that, or whatever the fuck the imaginary kids, that form the marketing man’s target, say.  When I worked in Ryman Sharpie pens were just something that illustrators and artists knew about.  We all know about Posca pens and uniball and all other pen brands that generate different lines and textures.  Then all of a sudden David fucking Beckham is inexplicably advertising them as fashion accessories; trying to sell them to people with no conceivable use for them.  

Like marketing petrol to fucking cyclists.  Yes it makes cars go, but it’s no fucking good for your bike, is it?  Like Sharpies are great for drawing with, but if you don’t draw and all you ever write is a txtmsg then what fucking good is a high end artist’s marker pen to you.  In Ryman we had a big promotional display of Sharpies; a cardboard structure with Beckham’s smug tattooed millionaire flesh spread down the side of it.  A typical ignorant no-nothing idiot (the kind of person it is impossible to be unfairly judgemental about, because no matter how low your opinion of them is, it is still accurate) looked at Beckham holding his pens, pretending to sign his name on a football, and she said “they are fucking top pens though, aren’t they”.  Yeah, they are, but you need to actually fucking use them to find that out, not just see some whore advertising them as designer label product.

It’s good to finally get that petty matter down in the written word.  Years after the event her obvious seduction by marketing annoys me still.  I have mentioned that story in conversation before but never really feel that things are out of my system until I have written them down.  No I can get on with my life; and two years after I leave my current job I might have begun exorcising the annoyances.  Anyway, I don’t want to become a full time I hate my job bore.  I am doing that in real life so perhaps I should make more of an effort to keep it out of this blog.  When I am not thinking about work I am not bothered by it.  But the second it comes up in discussion or I think about it I get so angry.  If you ever take a moment to really think about war or famine or genocide the only natural and healthy reaction is to be upset and angry.  These are the only reactions I have to thoughts of my job; that is certainly not healthy or natural.

On a positive note, I have planned the structure of my science-fiction novel, and written 863 words.  Not just any 863 words, but 863 words that have amazed me with their depth, width and breadth.  Now all I have to worry about is length.  Once length is sorted I will have a finished novel.  It will spring out of nowhere fully formed and will instantly be published, rising immediately up all the bestseller lists before all the big Hollywood studios are tearing each other’s foyers out for the movie rights.  The film, being true to the book, will be a critical and commercial success and I will be respected, admired and comfortably well-off.  And balance will be restored to the world (in my favour).

So for anyone keeping a tally I now have two novels sketched vaguely in plot/structure, a comedy/drama radio monologue half written, a sit-com idea developed from my dad’s working life, and some other ideas too unformed to bear mentioning.  All I need now is for those eggheads and boffins in the laboratories to medicalise my condition –laziness – perhaps calling it dysactivia, and formulate a handy over-the-counter pill or unguent to cure it.  All I want is reward without effort; is that too much to ask?

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