For all the people I know.
For all the people I get on with.
For all the people who seem to like me.
I still finish every day by myself.

BT customer service is an interesting concept.
Firstly, they advise you to do a whole series of checks yourself.
One the one hand, this allows you to disqualify anything causing a problem that is associated with something you may have done.
On the other hand, this somehow allows them to justify charging you £115 if they send the engineer out and it isn't their problem, including an extra £99 an hour for any work he's required to do as a result of your fuck up.

the last time they sent an engineer out, I didn't notice that his tools were gold plated, so I assume this extortionate sum must be spent on something else. Perhaps they keep the engineers entertained in their downtime utilising rare dancing pandas ferried over from china on the back of a dolphin.

I've had to book an engineer twice in the past two weeks because the first attempt at repair failed miserably.
Each time, they try and book it for a morning of a workday.
In fact, the last time I booked one, it was a tuesday.
"We've booked an engineer for thursday morning, between 8 and 1," the woman on the phone proudly told me.
"I have to work then"
"How about tomorrow morning, between 8 and 1?"
Deep breath
"I Have To Work Then."
she starts to speak.
"Look," I interrupt, "Is the weekend possible? saturday?"
"certainly, morning or afternoon?"
"Afternoon"
"OK, he'll be with you sometime between 1and 6"

I wish I could live in whichever happy world they reside in, where work is something you decide whether you feel like going to when you get up in the morning, and no one minds if you take time off at short notice.

Sea kittens?

Words fail me.
Who came up with this as an idea for a campaign?
Are they allowed out of the house by themselves?
Or do they have to be watched carefully to prevent them running into traffic, giggling madly?

Yes, OK, overfishing is a problem.
If you want to stop over fishing, you spend time drumming into peoples heads the negative ramifications of over fishing, eg; that in however many years you wont be able to fish any more and your livelihood will be gone completely.

I mean, consider who you need to convince of this.
Yes, you can convince all the cutesy people who think that the idea of sea kittens is absolutely adorable, but they aren't the ones who make the decisions.
The politicians and the fishermen are the ones who need convincing.
People who are considering things in the real world, such as a need to fish in order to make money in order to feed their families.
Or, people who wish to be reelected, usually by people who fish for a living.
Is calling fish sea kittens going to make them change their mind about fishing?
Or will it simply undermine whatever case you have and make you look ridiculous?

PETA bothers me.
For several reasons.
Firstly, I don't like vegetables, so I'm damned well not going to become a vegetarian.
Secondly?
The shortsightedness of their campaigns.
They want people to stop being "cruel to animals" but they don't seem to consider any of the long term impacts of what would happen if we stopped eating them.
I can understand the argument that we can grow more plant based food on the same area of land than we can support animals.
But, there are whole industries which would become defunct if we stopped eating animals. How many of these people would subsequently be able to find jobs to replace the ones taken away?
Most people can't manage a healthy balanced diet with meat & vegetables, are they really going to manage to tailor their diet to become a healthy vegetarian?
Most importantly however, what do they *think* will happen to the animals if we no longer farm them for food?
That people will adopt them out of the goodness of their hearts?
They'll be killed, their carcasses burnt, thus taking away the small mitigating factor of, yes we're killing them, but at least by eating them they weren't going to waste when we did.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?
This is not the middle ages.

The main problem here?
Rather than using their religion to better their lives and those of others, they're choosing to use it to dominate people.

I went into town yesterday, bought stuff.
Clothes, DVDs, CDs and books.
All the fun stuff.
The girl in the book store was especially cute, and very smiley which is always nice.
I'm curious about the number of businesses in town that seem to be paying people to stand in the street holding large wooden signs.
Old school advertising.
I've been entertained the past few days by the latest episode of GTA4.
Despite it's relative shortness, there's soemthing exceptionally fun about a game where you can cruise through a city on a chopper listening to wheels of steel by Saxon.

Last Friday was my last day working at my old job. It was a strange experience, I'd been there long enough to feel like I'd always be there. There was, as there always is on such occasions, a "presentation". People I worked with crowded into the office to hear a guy on my team say nice things about me. Far more of them than I'd anticipated. I'm not used to having so many people look at me. I think I started shaking. I had to give my own short speech, which I finished by asking if I could go for lunch. Which we did, at pizza hut. Then I spent the weekend with my ex-housemates, doing the usual things men do when gathered in close knit groups. We drank beer, played video games and watched porn. I'm going to miss a few people from that job. Some I may see again on nights out. Some I almost certainly wont, even though I'd like to. Ah well. New start on Monday.

I wonder if the Irish are proud that the world appears to have labelled them as drunks.
St Patricks day, the patron saint of Ireland.
Pretty sure he didn't become the patron saint by drinking all the time.
Yet how do people, predominantly Americans, I have to say, who appear to have taken the holiday as an excuse to indulge in excess in the way of halloween and valentines decide to celebrate it?
By getting pissed off their faces.
Because they think that's what Irish people do?

Why do they even celebrate it anyway? He's the patron saint of *Ireland*.
I'm pretty sure they don't all wander round with leeks and daffodils on saint David's day, or dress up for a spot of dragonslaying and a full English breakfast on st Georges day.

Is it really necessary to adopt an excuse for one of the largest nations on earth to get completely fucked off it's face?

I'm starting a new job soon, thus I have five days of work left.
In honour of this, and to celebrate the birthday of one of my friends at work, we went for a night out.
First time I've seen her outside of work since our other friend left.
Which made for a pleasant change.
She seemed very interested in my friends friend, who came out, which makes me wonder how he does it.
Perhaps if I knew how to be more open with people I might have a better chance with things like that.
Who knows.

Words are inadequate

I dislike the term god-given. It removes all the possibilities from life. It discards your choices as meaningless. It rules out possibilities. If everything we do is at the behest of some great plan, why do we bother at all, why do we agonise about making choices? Surely they have all been made for us.