Shell As Hard As Steel

We are the underdogs

Drinking With Your Work Mates

Every so often I want to go to work in a striped blue shirt and shotgun Red Bull and drink at lunch time and fire off emails and make snappy banter and slap girls on the arse and Slamdunk the Henderson Account and reply to a dozen or so of my 500 emails and walk around my cubicle with my bluetooth and go jogging right before hitting the pub/nightclub/girlfriend/ATM/kebab stand/train station/bottom of what I thought was a bottomless well of despair.

***In my head I have this whole metaphor worked out about how the well is deep and it's full of water (despair) and you can float on water and when you (the well) are (is) full of despair (water) you float back to the top but mostly I want to go back to making rape jokes about Vice Presidents.

Pocketing my cufflinks and rolling up my sleeves and synchronising my Outlook Calendar and she didn't say no but she didn't exactly say yes and talking about clients and charging it to the expense account and eating Chinese and hi-fiving and dancing while always holding my beer in one hand and an ass in the other and still talking about work and walking home with my tie in my back pocket and my shirt half pulled out and punching the wall on every alternate step and saying i HATE (punch) myself i HATE (punch) myself .

Blaming the cuts on my fists to a fishing accident. Talking about that promotion. Getting that raise. I'm in hell.

Foxes in Steel Traps

You Feel Trapped You Feel
Nothing Cardboard Cell Cardboard Jail
The Process Has You

To Fight The Process
You Can't Help But Fight The Process
The Process Will Win

Complete All The Forms
Submit All Forms By The Deadline
You Lose The Forms You

Sign Where Marked Sign Here
Tick Marked Tick Here Check Marked Check Here
You Miss One Box You

Call The HR Line
Dial 1 For... Dial 2 For... To Hear...
You Are On Hold You

Lose You Lose Your Mind
Your Spirit Your Fight The Process
Has You It Has You

Grey Carpet Grey Suit
I Was Not Always Like This You
Know. Now You Don't Know.

Returning From Leave 2

You are the furthermost point from taking more leave. Suffer.

Preparing For The Interview With The Panel

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your time. We expect to shortlist in the upcoming week and GGGRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH

Returning From Leave

Returning From Leave.

Cons: Month-old emails, full voicemail, the orange in your drawer you thought you tossed, reading minutes of meetings you didn't attend, trying to find who borrowed your cup, adjusting your chair back to how you like it, explaining how your holiday was in one sentence, coming up-to-speed (sic) with new departmental policy

Pros: Jerking off in the toilet cubicle (again)

I Review Clinique Liquid Fash Wash Regular Strength !!

GQUK called this their face wash of the year (2008). GQUK called Clinique's entire range the best of the year (2008). I can never tell when GQUK is being completely legitimate. It is not to say that Clinique's advertising dollars buy more than ad space... or that 'articles' [http://tinyurl.com/ccsysy] on the magazine's website are little more than info stubs... (although the 30-odd words do get a byline. Way to strain yourself Jamie Millar. Must have stayed up night sweating over the hyphen in oil-free). But something definitely rubs the wrong way. Clinique definitely doesn't rub the wrong way (WHAT A LEAD IN!!!). Nice lather, lasts a suitable amount of time (about an office day), compliments other products outside of the Clinique range. Sometimes scents clash, or the intensity of one product overpowers another, but no such trouble with the Liquid Face Wash Regular Strength. But I don't know that Clinique's range for men would survive scrutiny on its own merit, without the Clinique range. The argument being that Clinique may stand for quality, but quality in women's products. So the transfer of authority and prestige is not so apparent. Maybe GQ needs to do a blind test. But then maybe they are afraid Pepsi would feel nicer as a Liquid Face Wash. I had this idea once that coffee in the shower was the ultimate start to the day. This was when I was trying to model my self as a late-twenties-vice-president. You know what I am talking about. Striped blue shirts. Red Bull. Take-no-prisoners, don't-bullshit-a-bullshitter. I am so busy I need to drink in the shower and change into my suit in my office. That's why I sleep with the secretary. Multitask. I figure she can buy the flowers she wants with the money from the harassment settlement (again, multitask). Anyway, drinking coffee in the shower meant I had to change to drinking long blacks. I need to be drinking coffee longer than the conditioner sits in my hair, otherwise what's the point. Might as well drink at my kitchen nook like all the other plebs. Two things always used to happen when drinking coffee. One was I would mistake my coffee cup for my shave rinse jar and end up scraping stubble off my chin with Fiori Single Estate Roast grounds. The other was inevitably I would spill coffee on my face while in the shower. I learned that people called me Two Face because one side of my face was always scalded (that is the reason right??), Clinique Liquid Face Wash Regular Strength is a better substitute than coffee, even if it cannot be said to be wildly better than other Face Wash products, and the Vice President life is not for me. Especially if I am not actually a Vice President.