I didn't quite catch that...

Recently arrived from the HR department*:

Subject: Memo to all employees

NEW COMPANY POLICIES: SICKNESS AND RELATED LEAVE

We will no longer accept a doctor’s statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

SURGERY:

Operations are now banned. As long as you are an employee here, you need all your organs. You should not consider removing anything. We hired you intact. To have something removed constitutes a breach of employment.

BEREAVEMENT LEAVE:

This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend to the arrangements. In rare cases, where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early, provided your share of the work is enough to keep the job going in your absence.

YOUR OWN DEATH:

This will be accepted as an excuse. However, we require at least two weeks notice as it is your duty to train your replacement.

TOILET USE:

Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. In the future, we will follow the practice of going in alphabetical order. For instance, those whose names begin with ‘A’ will go from 8:00 to 8:10, employees whose names being with ‘B’ will go from 8:10 to 8:20 and so on. If you’re unable to go at your time, it will be necessary to wait until the next day when your time comes again. In extreme emergencies employees may swap their time with a co-worker. Both employees’ supervisors in writing must approve this exchange. In addition, there is now a strict 3-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm bell will sound,
the toilet paper roll will retract, and the cubical door open.

PAY SLIP GUIDE:

The following helpful guide has been prepared to help our employees better understand
their pay slip:

Item Amount
Gross pay ?1,222.02
Income tax ?244.40
Outgo tax ?45.21
County tax ?11.61
National tax ?61.10
County tax ?6.11
City tax ?12.22
Rural tax ?4.44
Back tax ?1.11
Front tax ?1.16
Side tax ?1.61
Up tax ?2.22
Down tax ?1.11
Tic-Tacs ?1.98
Thumbtacks ?3.93
Carpet tacks ?0.98
Show tax ?0.69
Flat tax ?8.32
Surtax ?3.46
Corporate tax ?2.60
Parking fee ?5.00
S.A.Y.E ?81.88
N.I. ?9.95
Life insurance ?5.85
Health insurance ?16.23
Dental insurance ?4.50
Mental insurance ?4.33
Reassurance ?0.11
Disability ?2.50
Ability ?0.25
Liability ?3.41
Unreliability ?10.99
Coffee ?6.85
Coffee Cups ?66.51
Floor rental ?16.85
Chair rental ?0.32
Desk rental ?4.32
Union fees ?5.85
Union don’ts ?3.77
Cash advance ?0.69
Cash retreats ?121.35
Overtime ?1.26
Greenwich Mean Time ?54.83
Central European Time ?9.00
Off Centre time ?8.00
Mountain time ?7.00
High time ?6.00
Time Out ?12.21
Oxygen ?10.02
Water ?16.54
Heat ?51.42
Cool air ?26.83
Hot air ?20.00
Miscellaneous ?113.29
Sundry ?12.09
Various ?8.01

Net Take Home Pay ?0.02

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. All questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplation’s, consternation’s, or input should be directed elsewhere

* – not really

Mix comic strip skill and photoshop, and what do you get?

One of the best comic strips ever. I particularly like Charlie Sheens advice to the battling monsters:

I just wanted you to know: If you’re drilling a girl in the ass, move the coke off her back first, or it gets all over your cock, and it stings.

Things that make the work day worthwhile: sitting in the sun, with a cold beverage and a few slices of watermelon.

Mental note: do thing more often.

Are men better drivers?

You decide

Sorry, you can place your opinions there. I’ll state, for the record, the official statement from I didn’t quite catch that…: Yes, they are.

And the study agrees with me. When science and me agree, you know it’s right.

I’ve linked to Knowhere.co.uk before. And, through a convoluted set of links I won’t bore you with, I arrived there today. To see that there is an entry for the first glen with a harbour.

Yes, people. Portglenone is moving up in the world. First they get internet connections (hell, I didn’t know that they had phones. Or electricity, for that matter). Now they have an entry on a sk8r site. Dude, I wish my town was that cool.

So what can you do there? Well…

Clubs (Dance Music)

• The only club you’ll get may be over the head
• clubland in cookstown is bonkers the elk in toome which is crap the met in armagh is lethal
• Line dancing clubs possibly
• i go 2 portrush, kellys cos the clubs round portglenone r 4 gypsys
• there are no clubs as such but most of the teenagers of the town head (every friday night) on a bus to slaughtneill hall for the best disco to hit northern ireland yet

Music Venues

• Giggin the Bann volume 4 in september ’03
• Hanna’s Factory was converted for the gig’n’ the bann festival.
• The Main Street when the local corsa gang has their Ministry Mix on too loud
• the flagh but its utter rubbish

Cinemas

• One is now selling tyres and the other is a bethel temple
• maghera cinema or ballymena all withinm 20 minute drive
• Used to be one beside the chinese over the bridge – but there is a local video shop and I hear home cinema TV’s are very popular!
• ballymena cinema is ok

Now I know where I’ve been going wrong all these years. I thought that the best night out would be away from the country. I realise now that I should have headed deeper into it for the best craic.

And slaughtneill? Please god, let this be a pisstake. It’s a GAA hall right in the arsehole of nowhere. With a CD player and a bottle of white lightning.

Network downtime this morning (for essential maintaince): 30-odd minutes

Time between network comming back up and some bright spark noticing that they didn’t restrict net send to administrator use only: about 30 seconds

Time between above and first message being sent by users: about 30 seconds

Time between above and first silly message being sent by users: one New York second

Time between above and someone being offended by some silly message: about 10 minutes

Speed of news of complaint reaching managers and then IT dept: c

So, net send is now restricted again.

Office politics. Not good.

Engaging in office politics about what we should do for our christmas do is also not good.

Christ, people, it’s a couple of bevvies in five months time. Calm down.

Everyone heard about the revelation in the news that there is to be a gay wedding in the Simpsons?

Yes? Good. So I’ll begin.

I’m going to stick my neck out on this one and take a guess at who it is. I don’t think it will be a hugely infulential, popular or frequently appearing character (ie, any of the Simpsons) because that would be a major deviation from the formula for the show. I also don’t think that it’ll be the Bouvier sisters or Smithers unless it’s a tounge-in-cheek, over-by-the-end-of-the-episode thing, because the chemistry with those characters is spot on as it is. Moe is another name being thrown up, but I think that straying too far from the bar would kill him. So who then? Groundskeeper Willie? I hope not. Principle Skinner? Nah, because that would mess up life with his mother (although, that may be a clue to something, there).

No, my money is on Milhouse’s dad. Recently split up with Milhouse’s mum. Milhouse is harbouring homosexual tendencies (according to his confidential school files). His dad has been living in a YMCA type hostel. So, there’s the guy I figure is getting hitched. In January, I will of course be proved wrong, but until then, I am right. Oh yes.

And I can’t find a single picture of the guy to show here. Damn.

UPDATE: Ollie found me a picture. Then tried to put it in the comments. Where pictures aren’t allowed. Mwhahaha.

After a couple of days hard work at being an hardcore drug pusher, I’ve reached the pinnacle of my game.

No more of the pathetic $4,000,000 earnings in a month. No, that’s just crap.

None of your slightly more impressive $16,000,000 in a month either. Sure, that’s only about half a mil a day.

Nah, I’ll take this:

$68,743,189. Yeah, baby, 2 mil a day earnings. I’d settle for that.

… is a worrying thing.

However, so is unintentionally marrying someone. Or having someone fill marriage certificate saying that you are married without letting you know.

Reasons not to live in South Africa, #2,319

An old favourite from the dark, dirty days of the internet: Dope Wars. People should probably stop sending me lots of games during work hours.

Work hours which are considerably shorter today than normal, as I’ve got to be heading over to a garage to pick up me uncles car, after it broke down and he stole mine to go on a tour of the west of Ireland. Leaving me with a buggered Clio. Which the AA, wonderful people that they are, arranged to be fixed today. So, as soon as flexi core hours finish, I’ll be over picking it up.

So, yes, horray for the AA.

So, as I was finish work last night, encouraging the last few people to finish up and that, and ushering people out, three cops came jogging up to the door*, asking who hit the panic alarm.

I didn’t know we had a panic button. The other door staff didn’t know we had a panic button. None of the three managers on knew that we had a panic button. The wee girl who hit an innocent looking button while picking up her coat didn’t know that we had a panic button. It seems that the previous manager had had it installed and neglected to tell anyone. Which was nice of him.

So, that was nice, a wee bit of excitment to end off the evening. And we now know that we can get a three minute response out of the cops when we want. The possibilities for mischief are endless….

Mwhahahaha. Or not, as that would be wasting police time, which is a criminal offence, so I won’t be doing that.

* – Yes, jogging. The PSNI aren’t noted for their running abilities. But then, to be fair, I haven’t really seen them moving at anying other than a sedantry walk in a long time.

The always excellent (though rare of posting recently) Seldo.com links to quite possibly the best cover version of any song, ever.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, Captain Kirk covers Common People

Gotta love it.

Resulting from an unpleasant experience in the US (people refused me beer, because they didn’t accept a NIrish driving licence as valid ID), I have a totally unreasonable and pointless boycott out against an unnamed US restaurant chain. And it’s stuck, for nearly a year now. Of course, the other week I had a couple of drinks in the local outlet, but they were bought for me, and I returned the favour in the next bar. And tonight I worked in said outlet. But I spent no money there, I took money for them. So the aforementioned boycott is still in effect, still pointless and still unreasonable.

I only say this because it may have appeared that I was suddenly becomming a reasonable person; this is nothing but a horrible rumour that I reject in the strongest terms.

And I forgot how easy it is to be an absolute perv on the door. People expect it of you. Its great!

Unrelated to my previous Pratchetty linking, here’s some of the bearded one’s quotes (which I think are rather good):

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil…prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon…

Yea, and forsooth the tradition of shooting monsters with pump action weapons was born. And there was much rejoycing.

I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occured to him.

What a charming way to refer to the wealth destruction wealth redistribution fair and progressive tax policy outright theft of government.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

A subtle reference to Terry’s own site, which hasn’t any content save an “under construction” that’s been there since 2000…

old magical principle — it’s even filtered down into RPG systems — that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be ‘stored’ — in a staff, for example. No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course.

Because, as is well known, a Wizard’s Staff has a Knob on the End…

Mandy’s back!

And I think that question we all need to ask is, why? What dirt does he have on The Right Honourable Anthony Lyndon Blair? It must be something really juicy to enable him to boomerang in and out of power like this.

Come on, Mr Blair, the public needs to know.

So, I decided to check when the next Practchett would be out, because, well, it’s been a while. And it seems that the next book is about setting up the Ankh-Morpork post office, and will be on the shelves on October fifth.

Which is nice.

Also nice is the announcement of the Science of Discworld III‘s release, on May fifth. Written by the esteemed Mr Pratchett and two Warwick lecturers, the tSoD series are fantastic ways to get into science without dying from technical overload. So I’ll be having that.

And announced for October 5th, 2005, is Untitled Discworld Novel 29, which can be preordered. Despite not having a title, or being written.

Read the reviews:

Utterly brilliant, July 8, 2004
Reviewer: culture_mind from Ankhmorpork

Mr Pratchett’s best so far…”Untitled Discworld Novel 29″ is possibly the best work of Mr. Pratchett to hit the stores (in a couple of months). Admitedly I had to resort to clairvoyancy (and an overdose of dried frog pills) to properly peruse the inner workings of said authors’ mind. However, the breadth and scope of this story left me speechless. A Discworld book far darker that Mr Pratchett’s previous work, with sad overtones (especially when we find out that the Librarian is ailing with Simian Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), yet at the same time jubilant and hilarious (the chapter where Rincewind confronts his 23rd century alter ego is marvelous). An excellent work.

telepathy at it’s finest, June 22, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Southampton, Hampshire United Kingdom

Once again Terry Pratchett has excelled where none thought possible! Even without a title and with the paper just a twinkle in the sap of the sustainable forest-dwelling tree, this latest insight into the minds of Discworld’s finest is a riveting daydream of epic proportions. I shan’t privide any spoliers, but beware – theyre be Dragyns!

Looks fun. I look forward to the Dragyns, and the revelations about the poor health of the monkey Librarian. I’m confused about the chapter where the 23rd century Rincewind is mentioned, though, because (as we all know) centuries on the Disc are named, rather than numbered. Maybe he meant the century of the Lesser-Spotted Lemur.

And it is common knowledge that Pratchett doesn’t even write in chapters.

… selling thousands of copies – a complete amateur – doesn’t even write in chapters – hasn’t a clue.

Tom Paulin on BBC2′s Late Review

What’s the universal consensus about the military in Iraq, among people who have eyes to see? That boots on the ground are the most important thing.

What went on in Kosovo? NATO went all high tech, but kinda missed most of the Serb forces they tried to bomb. Only when troops on the ground went in did anything happen.

Sierra Leone? The UK made a difference when they dropped men in, and let them do their stuff.

Afghanistan? Bombing allowed the Northern Alliance and their ground troops to whuup the Taliban.

Will troops go into Sudan? If so, I don’t think that the technology will be as important as the men on the ground, with guns.

But that doesn’t matter. Nah, let’s just get rid of a load of them. Sure, the Jaguars aren’t the best in the world, but there’s fuck all to replace them yet, so best hold on to them. A half dozen ships lost may not sound like much, but the same tasks will need to be done, plus guarding two fuck off carriers will be added*.

Yes, technology is vital in warfare. But please note that it’s worthless if you don’t have people to use it. If you (yes, you Mr Blair) will insist on stretching the armed forces so, don’t expect a drone to do the job of a soldier, or a ship to work without support. Remember, the most vital of battles are sometimes fought with the most basic of equipment. It’s not the weapons that will win wars, it’s the hands that wield them.

* – I suggest rowboats with machine guns in them for security of the carriers, because there won’t be a lot else left. Of course, you won’t have anyone to man the guns, but they’ll be there, and will scare off any french people who pass by.

Some silly Norn Irish person has got a collection of cult cars. Which isn’t terribly cool, and may be a sign of a personality disorder lurking in the background somewhere. What is cool, however, is what he does with them.

Yes, you can rent them, along with a chauffeur, for special occasions. Which is a fantastic idea. Imagine turning up for a school formal in the General Lee?

No? How about KITT?

Not your cup of tea? Why not look like Starsky & Hutch for that 70s ball? Or would sir perfer to impersonate Bullitt? If sir is attempting to say somthing without actually saying it, there’s ye old Pink Cadillac. More comical, you say? How about Herbie?

None of these to your liking? Sure, they may have movie star connections, and be hugely recognisable, but I think that there’s something missing. Something that I could relate to. Maybe a local connection.

.
.
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I know. How about a very special deLorian?

Me wants.

The third series of 24 finished last night (on the ever-ahead RTÉ). Again, a bit odd to watch, with a big lull in the middle, but it ended well. And a full two days before Sky showed it (even though Sky had to show three episodes on Monday to catch up).

Anyway, it’s all good. And there will be another one:

FOX PICKS UP FOUR PRIMETIME SERIES FOR 2004-2005 SEASON

“THE BERNIE MAC SHOW,” “24,” “THE O.C.,” And “MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE” To Return

Late-Night Comedy “MADtv” Also Picked Up For 3 Additional Years

FOX Broadcasting Company has ordered an additional season of four of the network’s hit primetime series for the 2004-2005 season. THE BERNIE MAC SHOW, 24, THE O.C. and MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE will all return with a full complement of episodes for the 2004-2005 season, it was announced today by Gail Berman, President, Entertainment, for FOX.