Category: Communication

Annual Leave

When I first started work (no jokes about horse drawn carriages please), we took holidays, and days off from work. Looking forward to a holiday, or a day off excited me then, it still does now (the picture above is of Carole and Keira enjoying a bit of shopping in Nice last summer). Over time this horribly robotic term of Annual Leave crept in to the workplace dialogue, yet another clunky cog in the lexicon of dehumanisation. Holiday sounds fun, Annual Leave sounds empty, soulless and completely unfulfilling. I don’t know where it comes from but I wish Annual Leave would sod off back there.

I’m taking a day off today to go and watch Keira’s school sports day. Later this year I’ll be taking some holiday with the family.

Annual Leave? Leave me alone!

Smart Phone

Are you one of the burgeoning number of doofi (plural of doofus) who practically lives for their smartphone, oblivious to the real world around them? You’re not sure? Well take this simple test and find out.

Question 1

You’re walking down the street trying to check in on Foursquare when you bump into someone. They’re not too happy about it, do you:

A) LOL?

B) ROFL?

C) Hand them your phone so they can slap you Foursquare in the face with it?

Question 2

You’re sitting on a train playing music on your smart phone through a crappy pair of ear buds that leak sound like a paper bag leaks water. The dude (or dudette) opposite nudges you to complain. Do you:

A) Ask them to BGWM?

B) Suggest they BOB?

C) Hand them the earbuds and ask if they’d like to plug them where the sun don’t shine

Question 3

Farmville, Mafia Land and all that crap. You’re kidding right:

A) PMSL

B) UGTBK

C) Can’t talk now, my crops have all failed and da boss wants to pop a cap in my ass

Question 4

You’ve just beaten David Cameron’s high score on Fruit Ninja. Does that make you:

A) The next Prime Minister?

B) Who is David Cameron?

C) Totally detached from reality?

So how did you get on? If you picked mostly A, or mostly B, or C – you need to get out more buddy. And try using your phone just for calls for a day or two huh? I know – talking to people eh….it’ll never catch on 😉

PS – if you don’t understand all the answers, look ’em up here.

 

Steal With Pride

Nothing is original so why not steal with pride? You get the drift. I just googled ‘Steal With Pride’ to see if I could attribute the quote to someone, and it turns out I already wrote a blog post with the same title back in July of last year. Well whaddya know – I stole it from myself, and doubtless from others too.

I read a really funny post by Laurie Ruettimann last week called ‘Unwritten Blog Posts’ in which she came up with a list of 50 titles for blog posts as yet unwritten. The list is funny and well worth a read. Laurie also said ‘If you are a blogger, you should blog on a daily basis.’ so in her comments suggestion I said ‘Love it! Man, I need to up my game, thanks. That’s not a blog title – but it should be perhaps? I’ll think of some, meantime consider some of these stolen for future use!’

I thought on for a bit, got excited by the idea and went back to say that I would try and experiment this week with a post a day, taking titles from the list. I was so enthused, I even threw in a swear for good measure, ‘Laurie – fuck it – next week I’m going to blog Monday through Friday stealing five of your 50 titles. Thanks – Doug’

I went away for the weekend, fired up the laptop this morning and went back to Laurie’s place to look at her list again. Underneath my reply Laurie had written ‘FUCK NO’. That’s pretty clear, so for the record there won’t be any blog posts appearing here with titles stolen from Laurie’s list.

This dialogue has got me thinking about the whole ‘steal with pride’ ethos. I reference other people’s stuff all the time in my blogs and elsewhere, and I never knowingly don’t credit them. I used to make a point of contacting people in advance, ‘Is it OK if I quote you on XXX/link to your blog’ etc etc and the responses were always positive. So I stopped asking.

After what’s just happened do I still feel the same way about ‘steal with pride’? I guess operating in this connected world, yes I do. And I’m also mindful that theft is a crime, so if you are gonna steal something, maybe it is best to say please first?

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