» The Boss

The memory still makes me shudder
He was promoted well above his limited ability levels and had no personal skills to speak of. He systematically set about destroying the branch through a catalogue of ill founded decisions and deteriorating relationships with customers and suppliers.

A typical example; he is in my office, a call comes through from a customer with an overdue delivery, I mouth the customer name he bellows “Tell the fat cunt I’ve fucked off home but make it sound good.”

Worse, he constantly scratched his balls through, and sometimes from within the confines of his pale blue sweatpants. Ate close to you, talking bollocks with his mouth open giving everyone a closeup of his saliva saturated cheese and jam sandwiches. Same lunch every day. He had no sense of personal space or personal belongings and picked up my keys to clean great wads of hard brown wax from his ears. The bastard didn’t even have the grace to wipe it off before dropping the keys back on my desk.

He wore white socks with black shoes and pale blue sweatpants.

Inevitably the company closed, I was responsible for calculating all unpaid leave and redundancy payments so did quite well out of it but it still rankled.

Three months later, unable to find work he decided to end it all by hanging himself in his loft. Twisted an ankle and put the other foot through the ceiling when the knot failed. Fucking typical.
(Sat 20th Jun 2009, 4:05, More)

» Beautiful Moments, Part Two

Backpacker Bingo
I live and travel a lot in South East Asia. I see a lot of backpackers and "mind the Gappies" is seldom far from my thoughts. I have a game, Backpacker Bingo, simply a list of typical gap year, traveler type attributes that I can only tick off after I take a picture of them. Examples: unfortunate beards, too many wrist/ankle/arm bracelets, dressing overtly like a local, gingers, tour t-shirts, walking with a staff, new dreds,studied boredom, matching outfits, overly large water bottles, misery, carrying your own toilet paper in public and so on. I saw this in Yangon international departures and grinned like an idiot.
www.flickr.com/photos/amasc/4868388358
(Tue 10th Aug 2010, 19:45, More)

» The most childish thing you've done as an adult

I live in Vietnam
I always try to order something that comes with peanut sauce because waiters almost always pronounce it "penus". Three years and the novelty hasn't worn off yet.
(Fri 18th Sep 2009, 1:05, More)

» Conspiracy theory nutters

Yeah right!
Like I'm going to tell you what I know. I know your game!
(Sat 29th Aug 2009, 20:26, More)

» Celebrities part II

Dissed
In the outer Hebrides, where I used to live, I saw a tall blonde man and his petite girlfriend standing beside their hired shopper bikes outside the local church hall. I swaggered in, nah I just walked in, to attend a clarsach concert, it's a small harp.

The tall blonde man looked as though he wanted to join me or at least know what it was all about, there were at least five cars parked in the grounds. But hey it was an under 12 gig and invite only so I ignored Robert Plant.

Did think "Who's the tourist trying to pull off the Robert Plant look on a shopper?" though. I spoke to him in the pub later that night, he was very nice. I said "excuse me" as I reached for my pint, he said "sure". I like to think it was tinged with jealousy.
(Tue 13th Oct 2009, 19:30, More)