Ninety percent of SF is shite, but that's because ninety percent of *everything* is shite.

The title of this blog was, of course, a simply hilarious reference to the fact that me and young Stripey are a tad on the indolent side.

Great stuff.

The problem being that me and young Stripey are a tad on the indolent side, which has tended to mean that this blog has been on the quiet side.

However! This all changes today! I have a new job and am all fired up and fizzing with energy.

I thought I'd get things going with some nonsense about good old Science Fiction.

I have, over the last few months, been indulging my love of SF possibly a little more than is really healthy. I've taken in literary SF, audio plays, TV SF and SF-infused gaming.

There was a point, a few years ago, where I'd kinda stopped reading new SF books. That was a mistake, I missed out on some excellent stuff, which I'm only just catching up on just now. Ian R. Macleod was someone that I hadn't read until recently, but I'm a convert now. The Light Ages is excellent and his recent Song of Time is as worthy of praise as any vapid and enervating so-called “literary fiction;” this isn't to suggest that lit fic is inherently bad, far from it. It's just that I do tend to feel that it is as much a genre as SF, crime or romance and is far more self-regarding than any of those mentioned and, much in the way of American indie films, it can produce hollow and tedious art. Anyway: my other discovery (or rather, rediscovery) has been the excellent Paul McAuley. I had actually read 400 Billion Stars in my beard-free days and not, in truth, really enjoyed it. I also read Fairyland about a year or so ago. Again my response was a little “meh.” However, I finally decided to give him another go as The Quiet War had been the subject of much positive spluh on the web (mostly from authors opinions that I trusted) and, wow, can that man write. Fantastic prose, believable, rounded characters and (haha, as with all good SF) some nice commentary about how we choose to live our lives.

I've also been watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now disclaimer: I am far from a Trekkie. My interest is pretty dilettantish, in truth. In spite of (because of?) that, I feel that I can safely say that TNG is a far superior beast to the original series and Picard pwns Kirk every time. Yes, yes, there's no Spock and there are far fewer orange swirly blob episodes than the original run, but it doesn't have that slightly embarrassing campy feel to it that the original series had. Although I did like the one where Kirk had to fight Gorn.

My other recent(ish) discovery has been the Doctor Who audiobooks, featuring the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th and 8^th Doctors. In fairness, part of my good disposition to these is based on the fact that Peter Davison was my first Doctor and hearing the theme music from then does have the usual reminder of more carefree childhood days. That said, the standard is generally pretty decent. They get a chance to do some stuff that probably would be hard to do for telly. I like the character of Evelyn Smythe, she seems to be a bit more of a match for the Doctor, intellectually and emotionally, which one tends not to find with the youngsters that usually trail around after him.

And finally, "SF gaming?" you say? Indeed, yes! Dead Space is as much as part of the SF quilt (hmm...I want one of them) as a book or a film, I say (actually, so do lots of people). Multi-platform geekery got even better when I heard the excellent news that Richard Morgan is involved in writing for some games just now.

Listening:

Agitation Free – Malesch

The body parts phone call

I hate answering the phone in the office. More often than not it leads to trouble. Trouble from arseholes that can't be bothered to actually come down and visit and instead want me to do all the running around for them. A sure-fire sign of such fuckwittery is the opening phrase of "I've been trying to call you for ages." Yes, sorry about that, idiots keep seem to calling with problems of a trivial nature.

So when the phone was ringing off the hook [A hook? Is Abu Hamza holding your phone? - ed] earlier at lunchtime, I was in no hurry to go and answer it. An excellent commitment to customer service. Except that there were no customers in front of me. After letting it ring around twenty times, I finally decided to answer it.

"Hi this is Paul from the [name deleted on legal advice] Garage in Renfrew. We have a woman going absolutely mental in the shop here."

So why the fuck are they phoning me? Last time I checked we weren't negotiators trained in psychiatry.

"Oh right." I said.

"Yes, it's because your cash machine swallowed her card."

Pisskidney.

"Well there's not really a lot we can do about that. She'd need to wait until the card was sent back to us at the office before we could give her it."

"No you don't understand, she needs the card, she's got body parts in her car."

I blinked a good couple of times. "Sorry, did you say body parts?"

"Yeah." he said.

"Right. That's what I.. feared."

"She's going crazy here."

I started to wonder where she acquired these body parts. Had she butchered someone that didn't give her a receipt in Tesco?

"Umm these body parts you speak of.... wait, what?"

"Hang on, i'll put her on."

Oh Christ.

So he does. He puts me onto the psycho. "YourmachineswallowedmacardandIneededthatmoneyanIcannaepayforthepetrol!"

Mmmm that is quite a predicament that you're in. "Right... yeah."

"I mean, what am I going to do?! I've got body parts in my car."

"Yeaaaaah, so I heard. So uhh.... what's the deal with that?"

She sighed short and hard like she was clearing a bit of phlegm from her throat. "I'm a government official, i've had to pick up body parts from Glasgow Airport and I need to deliver them as they're in ice. But now I can't pay for petrol because your machine swa-llowed my car-ddd. I need my card right now."

I said i'll see what I could do and would phone her back on her mobile.

Christ. That's a good one to explain to the ATM department. And while I was on hold to them, I was wondering what kind of body parts she had. Did she have arms? Legs? Breasts? Or was it internal organs? Perhaps she wasn't a Government official. Maybe she had the bodies of small children and their bones were going to ground down and taken as a cure for impotency?

So I explained what was happening. Naturally, because they were miles away, they didn't care about the situation and would do nothing to open the machine. This meant that I had to phone her back and tell her this. Aaaarrrgh!

However, a back-up plan was just to take her the money.

She wasn't too pleased that she wouldn't have her card. In fact, she did scream at great length down the phone. Charming. Once she calmed down, I said we'd be on our way with money for her.

Before we were about to leave, we got another call from the garage. She'd left! Hah! Done a runner with bits of body in her car!

Later on in the afternoon.... some email correspondence from my boss went like this...

Boss: "Did you pay the money back into the body parts woman's account?"

Me: "Yes, I didn't want to be out on a limb."

A reply hit my inbox a couple of minutes later...

Boss: "I torso."

I torso? That doesn't even make sense!

Me: "Now, you can do better than that? Do you need a hand?"

Boss: "I don't finger so."

Now, i'm kind of seeing what she's doing here. It's still not on the same level as mine though.

Me: "I was hoping for a comment that would make you stand head and shoulders above the rest."

I was praying that she wouldn't think that I was talking about shampoo and conditioner. A full tweny minutes later...

Boss: "Are you going to have a leg of lamb tomorrow night?"

Me: "I think i'll just have a light finger buffet."



Photo: A picture I took a couple of weeks ago of a body part belonging to the blonde one....


only blondie could have a quote written on his hand in Latin. In pen. On a Saturday night. Apparently it means "there is a middle course in all things." Interesting way to sit on the fence.

~Raccoon.~

He has a fantastic work rate!

Evening!

As you'll be aware, my fellow work-unit has already entered a couple of posts to introduce this new blog, which will, in years to come be spoken of in reverential, hushed tones (hey, it's possible, I'm going with the multiverse theory. Actually, you're probably better looking at the fictional side of parallel universes, "SF you lied to me" is a rant for another time though.)

Anyhoo...this is just a short post to say "hi". You won't hear too much from me over the next couple of weeks as I'm currently sequestered in a tiny cell trying to complete my Masters dissertation, which will go some way to determining whether I get to have a proper, intellectually fulfilling career or continue to languish in one-step-up-from-McJob hell. Unfortunately, and this is the real killer, according to my tutor, it isn't sufficient just to bash out 20,000 words at random. For some reason they expect logic, coherence and evidence of critical thinking. It's staid traditionalism like that that is holding back humankind!

It has to be admitted that I'd probably have finished weeks ago if it weren't for my unfortunate habit of commenting on various blog posts and lurking while pressing "F5" every couple of minutes...

Toodle-pip!

~ Chimp-unit.

The comb and the car

As so often is the case, a customer will have to provide me with identification in order for me to process their request. Although when I ask for this, they sneer that they "don't have their passport" with them or "what do you mean you need the paper part of the driving licence?". Of course. How silly it is of one to hope that a customer has identification to conduct a financial transaction. What was I thinking?! I should just take them at their word and give them all the money that they have without so much as a question.

Today, however, a man did have his driving licence in with him when he wanted to make a withdrawal from his account sans le carte. So i'm looking up his account details and he passes me over his driving licence and I look at the picture on it. In the picture, a moustache is furnishing his top lip. I can clearly see that this is still the same gentleman. That said, it was at this point that the gentleman pulled out a black comb and brought it under his nose. I half-expected him to make a Nazi salute at this stage. "It is me!" the man doth protest. I then wondered if he carried the comb around on his personage just for this particular purpose. Wonderful.

Photo:




It's not every day you see a car like this right outside your front door...


~raccoon.~

Greetings!

Salutations!

Peace to the nations of Zion and Islam!

A brief introduction to the point of this website. Actually, there isn't much of a point to it. It's more an update to this blog when we can be arsed on a regular basis. We wanted to start a photography page where we can take photographs of random nonsense that we see. We could have made a flickr account! [In fact, we probably should do that too.] But then, we thought we also wanted to rant and vent a bit about the grim reality that is working for a fascist corporation. So expect some strange photographs followed by a bit of gibberish.

Enjoy!

~raccoon.~