Won't get fooled again (waaaaaaaaoooooooo!)

There has been a reorganisation at work, and us dumb grunts are blinking in the light of day and staring up at the faces of our latest batch over overlords.

Bossa nova similis bossa seneca, as The Who would have said if they sang in nearly-latin.

Except this time there was a tiny ray of light.

One of the bosses said "This new software we're rolling out, that we've said will solve everything? Well, it won't. Not everything."

Which is, in terms of comedy, the bit where Rowan Atkinson (in his guise as Edmund Blackadder) stops, looks worried and says "Ah." In that way that he does when the cunning plan starts to fall apart.

This might not seem like much to anyone else, but it's a big step for the managment. Here's why:

We shall call the software the Worldwidfe Stuff Deliverer, which is nothing like the real TLA but will suffice for now. WSD has been hailed as the solution to all our problems, problems which stem from an uneven IT strategy which can best be described as "Ooo! Shiny! We can make this work with everything else, right?" Eventually, someone got the senior leadership their ritalin and things calmed down, and they made the terribly brave move to scrap their previous plans for universal domination via 57 competing apps and settle on one - WSD.

WSD was marketed to us, the peons who will have to use it, as a Magickal Unicorn that will fart rainbows over our desks. We were wary; we have been promised unicorns before and they have turned out to be either intractable camels or irritated wolverines. Those who pointed out the lack of Unicorns were taken away and crushed to death between the pages of a very large book. Those of you wanting to know where all the props went from the 60s Batman TV series now know.

For the current batch of managers and leaders to admit, however tacitly, that WSD is not a Magic Unicorn and that whatever it might turn out to be it is unlikely to fart rainbows is a vast step forward. We now understand that all is not entirely Bowie Album in the world of Manager. This makes me feel vastly better about my sorry existence, and now I have reason to smirk.

The even better reason to smirk was the expressions on the faces of the line managers, who were all dressed up. Watching the "I'm a happy associate manager, please don't eliminate my grade" smiles crack as the senior leaders sent the "Houston, we don't have a Magic Unicorn" message was an absolute delight. The thing is, they have so much more to lose than me, right now (because if I am made redundant I will cobble together money and disappear back to the UK poste-haste), and I new there wasn't going to be desks littered with rainbow farts from the inception of the project. I've done these things, they're never simple. But they haven't, and they didn't know, and now they're worried.

And though it blacken my soul forever, I'm glad about that.

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Important Announcement.

Lucy McGough has an announcement which I believe affects us all.

Go read it.

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President Obama

I'm breaking in a new keyboard. Please forgive the spelling errors or odd typos.

I sat through most of the Inaugural address, even though I was at work. My company streamed it to our desktops. Oh brave new world, and all that.

I listened with the cynical ear of a Yerpie that has listened to too many politicians, and one that saw all the hopes we had for Labour fall apart, and I did a lot of grinning. Yes, Obama said a lot of nice things; he mentioned a return to diplomacy, a willingness to treat other cultures with respect, a desire to put science at the forefront of education, a reminder to the world that you still don't mess with the United States and expect no response, and a dozen other things.

He spoke about the need to grow up and face a world in which we can't always have what we want and in which we have to think about where the cornucopia is drawing it's bounty from. He spoke about fortitude, about the great strength of America which lies not in guns or missiles, or even in technology, but in the will of its people to do what is right. He reminded the American people that with that will, nothing is beyond their reach.

At about this point, my literary radar (my wordy-sense, if you prefer) started pinging away like mad.

President Obama was shifting gears between lofty rhetoric and simple, plain terms with ease. He was speaking to everyone at the same time. As Kipling said

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;"

then you have a simply magnificent speach writer, and President Obama does.

His name is Jon Favreau, he's 27, he's the youngest chief writer in Whitehouse history and the President refers to him as his "mindreader". Between them, they seem to have constructed a piece of rhetoric that is destined to go down in history. How it is remembered is for time to decide, but it lit all sorts of happy lights in my word-loving heart and, even as the message was driven home by the President's presentational skills, I realised that the days of stumbling Gerorge W and his overabundance of Common Touch were gone.

History will judge President Obama; we've had the words and the deeds are yet to come, but I can't help feeling a sense of optimism and joy. We have a man in the White House who loves words as much as I do. All of a sudden, I look forward to the State of the Union address.

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Battlestar Galactica - worth the wait?

It's been so long since the last episode that I had almost forgotten what BSG was like.

Luckily, within fifteen minutes the show put me firmly back on my BSG-feet.

It is dirge. There is no hope, no light, no joy and no cause for optimism in this entire series. Everything is broken.

The reason I still watch is, of course, that it's really really well done. Compelling, in fact. I could wax lyrical about the cast, but it's best to say that the cast are superb. I don't think I could have stood the mood of the series this long unless the people doing the acting were something special, and they are. Even Jamie Bamber, sometimes critiqued for being a bit wooden and for Apollo being a bit...bothersome...is interesting to watch.

The revelations are dealt with simply. We sort of find out what happened to Earth. We definitely see who the Final Cylon is. We deal with the mystery of Starbuck's Shiny Viper. Are you watching, LOST? Look! This lot answer questions! It even tells us what's going to happen now that they've been to Earth, giving the writers plenty of time to sort out some other loose ends. Of course, a couple more questions are asked and there is still a big mystery or two to unravel but this is very much the opening to the last run that I had hoped it would be.

Although, it's only fair to say that having watched this episode and been rivetted by it, I then had to watch some Doctor Who to remind myself that life is, in fact, worth living.

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The Stock Market! It's happening again!

People who cannot understand the relationship between cause and effect should not be allowed out.

The latest reason to sell all your shares and move your money into 1980s era survivalist bunkers and dried food is...retail sales were down in Quarter 4 of 2008!

Of course no one could have seen that coming. There were no indicators in 2008 that it might be a bit of a lean christmas or anything, so the news that in the face of potential job losses, the struggle of the auto industry to do anything resembling sensible, general panic and mayhem leading to tumbling share prices which crash the value of a company and force it to look really hard at it's bottom line...none of these things might contribute to nervous Christmas punters believing that a sock, or a mattress, might be safer to put money in than a bank, and certainly important to save.

So, in the face of expectations that sales would be down, because we've all seen that happen in uncertain times before, and it was predicted by any amount of financial pundits, what we're looking at is the shocked response of a market to news that it has been expecting for at least a month.

Oh no! It's exactly as we believed it would be! Run to the hiiiiiiiiiillllssss!!!

Does that strike anyone else as illogical? Even...skittish? Stupidly so?

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The return of insomnia

I can't sleep.

I'm getting by on a couple of hours a night, which isn't enough, and everything has started to get difficult, and emotionally dark, and unhappy.

I need to sleep.

Instead, I'm hanging on to being awake as if I had my fingers at the very edge of a precipice and was dangling over great depth. Not that I want to. I just can't slow my head down. And the worst of it is, athough I can get it together to write a blog post or a mail, I can't string words together to write a story because I can't settle on anything other than first person present tense.

This is the third time in as many months. What's going on in my head that won't let me sleep?

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The Brightonomicon

Robert Rankin is the man who has taken the telling of the tall tale and turned it into novels. BBC Radio 7 turned his novel into a thirteen part radio series, in which the man himself cameos, and it is wonderfully funny.

The story centers on Hugo Rune, the Guru's Guru, played by David Warner. Warner is well cast, oscillating between grandiose arrogance, mysterious pronouncements and sleaze with effortless charisma and charm. As a bit of a Rankin fanboy, I have to say that he sounds much as I had imagined Rune would. Rune himself is based on the likes of Aleister Crowley, so if you know Big Al's reputation, you know what to expect from Rune.

In this instance, Rune has set himself twelve tasks based on the Brighton street zodiac which forms the Brightonomicon itself. Further than that, explanations of the plot are pointless since Rankin's works often seem to meander from bizarre situation to surreal circumstance until the author sees fit to bring everything together in one mystifying finale. All of this, all of the running jokes, the asides, the digressions into so-odd-it-could-only-be-real forteana, the sometimes chilling conspiracies, all of these things are present in the radio series. Including the continuing gag about the General Electrics minigun, which is a personal favourite.

In the Brightonomicon you will find weeping statues of Queen Victoria, Morris Minors forever cursed to wander a one way system, the terrible truth about the National Health System, the multifold dangers of Spaniels and many more things besides.

You will also find Andy Serkis as Count Otto Black, the most evil man in the world and the nemesis of Hugo Rune, and Mark Wing Davey (better known to fandom as the original (and best) Zaphod Beeblebrox) as the literally ubiquitous barman Fangio.

Characters from other Rankin books pop up - Danbury Collins (psychic youth and world pocket billiards champion) and Lazlo Woodbine both show their faces.

It's worth finding, if you can, and listening to. Also, it speaks rather highly of BBC 7 that they would include this as part of their science fiction and fantasy hour. 13 thirty minute installments allow you to gasp with awe and shock at the powers of the legendary Rune and his apprentice Rizla, and gasp you will as the Guru's Guru, the Lad Himself, the Hocus Bloke does his stuff.

Highly recommended, as are Robert Rankin's books.

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