It appears that a number of you did read the last effort all the way, thank you, that was a big ask.

A letter arrived yesterday from the doctor, regarding the recent bloodtest. They want to discuss the results with me. So will I make an appointment to see the doctor. However, when making that appointment, I find that I am unable to discuss it with the doctor for another thirty days. That pisses me off a little, because that ol' ring just may have a twitch or two in the meantime.

Anyway, in an effort to try and incorporate something sensible into my diet, I breakfasted on All-Bran and Weetabix. Dear God, it looks like some form of industrial sludge, something that builders might use for filling joints or worse. And it tastes not that different, too.

Work has been great fun. Well, tolerable. I'm getting an audience, so I can't complain.

The bloodtest thing all stems from the Long Purple Shadow, and it really does fuck me off today, I have to say. It makes me have an exaggerated appetite and a greater propensity to put on weight - great combination - it is a contributor to my baldness; I know that's genetic, but Daddy didn't start going bald 'til he was twenty years older than I am now; and it makes the rest of me look like a fucking werewolf. And I'm not even sure that it does quite what it's supposed to do, having woken up on Wednesday with an evil headache and having bitten my tongue. But they told me last year (I'd only been taking the bloody stuff for twenty-two years) that I'm going to have to take it for ever. That wasn't actually the original deal, but it appears that whilst the cons of taking it are poor, the cons of stopping or tampering are worse.

I'm watching athletics on the telly, which gives me an opportunity to quietly lust after Hazel Irvine, and knickers to you if you think that's wrong. Some of the athletes are alright too, though I won't go further on that subject, as frankly that's my business.

The weekend holds the prospect of going home to the ancestral pile, to celebrate the birthday of Mummy. This is a good thing, as I could do with a bit of tlc in the bosom of the clan. And the nosh will be excellent!

Anyway, enough of my witterings, have a good weekend all.

PS. This athletics is fine as long as they don't wheel out that awful Edwards man.

PPS. The pictures as promised last time around; no, actually, it still won't let me load then.

PPPS. It's worse, Lord Coe.

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

I began writing this on Thursday, it's now Tuesday evening. If you've been waiting with bated breath, I hope this is worth it, the site is fucking around with not letting me put pictures in so they'll come later. Sadly no hot new girlfriend to report - but at least a little holiday. To be honest, nothing worth saying, really, which is a shame, but how it's been for a while. Still, enjoy!

--

Phew! What a Scorcher.

OK, I thought I'd get that out of the way, although all those terribly original newspapers have been there already.

I'm writing on a Thursday afternoon because....I've got a couple of days off, which is ace. T is on his way down here, and we are going to a small event in Suffolk, with a view to getting pretty mellow and filling our ears with some good soundz.

You may recall from here and here that I have been getting pretty ratty with some associates recently. Well, Tuesday saw the day when me and my colleague got up on our big ol' hobby horses and took FN's ever-valid advice and told the fuckers, and the fuckers' bosses, and er, the message appears to have got through. There was a sort of stunned silence then much debate, then much agreement with what we had to say.

Hence I'm sitting here on Thursday arvo, sitting in shorts and t-shirt, sweatin' in the hot humid air and not complainin' cause it's great to have some summer, and aware that Pammy is complainin' 'cause I've had nothing to say. I've been busy, and I'm really in need of the chance to drop a few bits and pieces in here.

Firstly, where are we on the Breast-abet? To summarise;

areolas
armpit cushions
bazookas
boobies
breasticles
bristols
candybags
chesticles
chezzies
double ds
duggs
ewers
funbags

Have we all lost interest? Perhaps these will help...



This is from here, if you are interested in more.


This morning saw my visit to the phlebotomist for another go at the liver test. I was late for my appointment - it being a holiday I slept through the alarm, and woke up with a start ten minutes after my appointment, thus my first words of the day were "Shit, shit, fucking shit." Then I rang them up, apologised, they said don't worry, just get your lardy sick ass down here boy, then we can play darts on your arms, aah ha ha ha ha...So I motored as fast as possible, and was welcomed with the now more usual smile, and we began the inevitable routine of attempting to hit a gusher. First go hit a gusher. Great. It also hit a nerve. Not so great, as it is like an electric shock, with an added sensation of burning. So we abandoned that, and went for the other arm, and again, first go there. I have to say, the lady is pretty proficient, and very apologetic when it hurts and she struggles to find a vein, which isn't really her fault. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Last week saw a meeting with the Greek Genius and you will undoubtedly spot that there is a massive upturn in mood about the Bakery right now - yes the shit at work has been sorted, and anyone feels better for that, but the influence of that man on me is very healthy. And he hasn't recommended any further self-help books. Although he has suggested Marcus Aurelius - any thoughts anybody, anyone know whether it's worth the effort? You're a pretty well-read crowd, and I'm not going to ask at the bookgroup - which I missed last week on the grounds that I just couldn't face it - because frankly I don't want to know about it from the Leftie. Although if MA wasn't a Marxist Jew she may not have read it.

I came across something that tickled me this week. We plugged a mouse into the USB socket on a Windows computer, and a message popped up to tell us that a 'Human Interaction Device' had been detected. I think that is a pretty interesting choice of language. There's an element of the probe about that, inserted into my mind.

I have to say, that would be a pretty stupid thing to do, insert a probe into my mind. You might not like what you find.

--

Right, that was all Thursday afternoon, it's now Monday evening, and I've been away for a few days to Suffolk. We went to something called Eastern Haze, and a lot of fun it was too, a small festival with a fairly specialist crowd, and the main attraction on Saturday night being...well, if you're that interested you'll go and have a look.

The weekend got off to a fine start, with Krusty having driven from the Western Suburbs to within thirty miles of Lowestoft before realising that I had come away without the tickets. There then followed some serious cursing on my part, with T being highly suspicious that I was taking the piss.

Sadly not, so all the way home and all the way back again. I have to say, I am very proud of myself, as I managed the drive without going apeshit. There is no way I would have attempted that alone, as I know I would go bonkers. Anyway, we got there and pitched our tent in the field, and got on with enjoying the gig.

As a matter of interest, this is the first original photo published on this blog. It is the view from our tent...

[Sadly, at time of writing, I can't seem to upload the picture.]

Anyway, we had a magic time; you can't complain when the fare on offer includes;

[or this one, which is a bit of a pain.]

I don't have anymore pictures, because a) other people photograph the lights better, and b) I wasn't really of a mind to be composing my shots with care. I do have some sunburn just above my knees, boy is that sore, but bearing in mind we barely had any rain, and what we did was just a spattering, I'm not going to complain about the weather. Au contraire.

The food was excellent, a wide variety, from falafels (particularly good) to a variety of the usual veggie fare and jerk chicken. We also were offered, although declined, 'doughnuts cooked in cholesterol', mmmm, but they did come with 'free oil'.

Apart from the main act, the reggae tent was where we spent most of our time, because the soundsystem had a cracking, boomtastic bass, which could be felt a long way away.

Anyway, it was ace, I feel well rested and I've had plenty to laugh about which frankly doesn't merit sharing here.

If you've read this far, which I know tests the patience of some, thanks, mostly for bothering, and I hope it was worth it.

Love Thy Blogger

I love this blogosphere thing, I come home from a day at the factory and find that there are a clutch of comments from my visitors, and I just feel so much better. We have a start to the Thesaurus of Breasts, and some friendly comments from some of the Krustians. And folks, that's what makes it good to be doing this, I just love all this empathy and warmth and stuff. Anyway, it's very welcome and very appreciated tonight.

In return, for those of you who are still recovering from the shock of last nights events in Berlin, here are some
highlights, which you can watch in your own time.

[I have since removed the unjustifiably self-pitying shit I put in this paragraph. As penance I will eat a Ginsters pasty.]

Right, that's enough for tonight.

Be good! At least, at whatever you do!

Rhapsody On A Flatulent Night

Wednesday saw me angry at the inability to understand who we're trying to sell to, and what they think of relatively simple concepts.

Thursday saw me angry at what is frankly just a disappointingly complacent bunch of idiots. I'm not amused that they put more effort into organising a night out to celebrate their failure than they do into discussing how they might stop failing. When I state my lack of amusement, I get an earful. And not of wax.

So when on Monday I get to interview a kid with a clear load of talent, and ability to really get on in life, and fast, there is a horrible quandary. Do we hire, and frankly exploit her for twelve months until she stops being quite so incredibly green and realises she can do better for herself elsewhere, but has as a consequence become at least as cynical as me and possibly embittered, and in the meantime we have failed utterly to invest in her and wasted that talent, or do we send her back to the agency who sent her with an instruction to do the right thing by her?

I challenged our HR people that if they wanted me to hire her they must commit to a proper eighteen month career development plan for her. It'll be interesting to see the response.

[It was interesting. Such a scheme is on the agenda, but not yet. So I told the agency what I thought they could do for her, and made it clear what I thought was their responsibility to her. I can be a bastard, but she doesn't deserve it, she deserves a lot better.]

God, am I in a dark place right now. The best I can hope for here is another twelve months of learning, but the capstone is to be set in place; there is nothing glass about this ceiling.

iPol and the Burrito Bros. are conspiring to offer me 'The Dark End Of The Street', and there's a tear in my eye. Thanks chaps. The next alley is full of whiskey and slow songs from Garcia and Pigpen, and if I get there, when I finally kick over the dustbins it will be to find the Black Sabbath and Rollins file, and that's just shit for all concerned.

I've had an instruction to go back to the doctors following the last round of bloodtests, and frankly I'm bricking myself. The only question is what's wrong. I still have a bruise from the last bloodtest, and that was ten days ago. It took four attempts to get a tiny phial-full (try saying that with a mouth full of Monster Munch). Then we tried the other arm, and only three there before we struck a vein and did the biz. I don't blame the phlebotomist, it's always been like that. The worst time was fourteen attempts at a thigh, then twelve in the other. My legs looked like a seive. I have deep veins, apparently. But no fear of thrombosis - the reason that the bruise lasts ten days or more is that one of the consequences of the Long Purple Shadow is it fucks up my blood, thinning it like warfarin. Which precludes a number of common painkillers e.g. aspirin, and means that it takes bloody ages for a cut to crud over. (Geddit?) Anyway, is it my liver, kidneys or the blood itself which is problematic. Long Purple Shadow has a major impact on the liver apparently. When I was twenty-nine, a locum GP got snotty with me when I commented that I was looking forward to going out to party with some friends, because I shouldn't drink. I pointed out that I've been taking the stuff since I was eleven, shouldn't someone have said something before? My current level of maintenance is so poor that I wouldn't be surprised if cholesterol or diabetes were on the agenda. DVT-freeness is one of the few positives of LPS. It's negatives are that it makes me fat, bald, miserable and moody, and increases body hair. So I swap Legion for Mr. Hyde. I look like a particularly successful werewolf.

Or Tony Soprano. Without the money, guns or shags. But plenty of paranoia and self-doubt. I don't even get Carmella to cook up a meatballs for me.

--

But I do get attractive offers of lasagne, cheers FN. Honestly, you have no idea just how popular lasagne is with this Baker. I wrote all that stuff above on Wednesday morning. It's now Friday evening, and things have moved on. I 'phoned the doctors and asked that, if the GP wished to send me sphincter-twitching letters, could he also ring me to explain what is wrong. Apparently all is fine, other than one of the four tests on the liver, which is the one most likely to show an error, so they want to repeat, and I have no further need to fret. Phew. Honestly Doc, you can't just send out scary letters like that and not make some effort to help me through it, you know? Anyway, this was facilitated by the rather attractive receptionist, with the big eyes, lovely skin and, frankly, gorgeous breasts. Mind you, most breasts have some appeal at present. More on this later...

Another interviewee yesterday, and, er, no love, especially when you're telling me that your looking for a less challenging, easier life. Forget it.

Right, you may note that whilst the mood is still a bit mixed, there is a slight lifting, and I took FN's advice and 'fucking told 'em'. And they fucking listened. I have won a major victory, and have succeeded in banishing a number of marketeer phrases from the business this week, to the eternal limbo where they belong. They still seek their revenge, with two of my more intransigent and blinkered colleagues wasting a large part of my afternoon with their inability to understand my dealings with one of our larger customers, but we then had a Brian Clough conversation. Namely, we decided to discuss it, we discussed it, we had a full and frank exchange, and then we agreed that I was right all along. [It occurs to me that the Wendys of this world won't know who Cloughie was, well I'll encourage you to look elsewhere for further info, but he is virtually unique in my opinion of football, and football managers especially, in that he does not come up in mine and J's game 'Cunt Or Twat', because he was neither. Unlike, say, O'Leary or Redknapp.]

I'm disappointed that the video no longer works, for those who missed it, it was of course (oh, yeah?) Hawkwind at Stonehenge, with the Pied Piper in particularly good form. Regulars here will be aware of my enthusiasm for all things of a 'windish persuasion, and indeed descendants thereof, hence recent spate of Motorheaddery.

You may also recall that my enthusiasm for popular beat combos led me to propose a game some time ago, namely suggestions for worst song by another of my enthusiasms. The response was shit - was that Krusty-esque apathy, or my overestimating the number of people who might have a working knowledge of suitable material, I'll never know - anyway, it doesn't matter, and Effay, who did offer a suggestion, has shut up shop, mores that pity, ah, the Kurse of Krusty. [Sorry, I'm going to break off here and comment on the current sonic environment here at the Bakery, where Creedence Clearwater Revival are giving some on their cover of 'Grapevine', and I'm lovin' it, I've really enjoyed doing the records this evening, plenty of variety, from Fairground Attraction to ZZ Top, and some French electro-pop for good measure, Indochine for those who give a hoot.]

Well, it's time for a new game. What I'd like us to do, and we can all play, is see if we can compile an A to Z of words and phrases used to refer to breasts. Not that word itself, such a lovely word, no, I mean slang. Boy-words and girl-words, please, let's compare notes.

And on a linguistic theme, which do you prefer to describe the qualities of organic farming and produce; 'organicness' or 'organicity'?

Right, I've written reams tonight, time to go and order a take-away. Well, more of a bring-to, really, but you know what I mean. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy a bit of 'Dirty Deeds...', which rather illustrates my thoughts regarding a recent post elsewhere - we don't have the Clash in this house, whereas we do have Bon Scott.

See you soon, friends, and remember....


...what was I going to say? xx

Why Do They Do That?

The question refers to pigeons. Why do they do that with their heads, you know, when they walk? I know other birds do it, but pigeons just seem to do it more so.

I don't often get animated on the subject of football, but I was angered on Saturday; I felt great sympathy for that young man Rooney, he has every right, in my opinion, to feel aggrieved. That's all I will say on the matter, others will no doubt have offered plenty.

I spent a large part of the weekend sitting around doing little other than drinking rather silly amounts of Pimms, as it was just too hot...I did also manage to motivate myself into walking up the road to the second-hand record shop, where I did part with some hard-earned cash.

I watched 'The Sky At Night' tonight. Sir Patrick Moore really ought not to be wearing a red Hawaiian shirt. When I want colour-shock on that scale, with cosmic references and bizarre sounds, well, we know where I go;



On a lighter note, having some time ago bemourned the departure from this blogosphere of this individual, I am delighted to report that he is now making efforts to appear as an e-thereal voice and is available here. I totally recommend you listen to him; he wouldn't have bothered if he didn't want people to listen, and frankly he's worth it. Besides, it's his fault that I'm here, so go and vent your spleen at him. Then hope to any god that you believe in that I don't take up that lark, 'cause you know enough about my taste in records to know that you really don't want me to be having a black cloud day.

Which I have been since last Wednesday, after just being pretty bloody knackered, and working feverishly for the last few weeks, despite the Meerkat's assertions that I'm wasting my time, and making myself a tad poorly. But what brought over the clouds was a really scary revelation.

If you are a brand manager, the purest form of marketeer (oxymoron? morons, anyway), don't you owe it to yourself to know what your 'consumers' think about the type of products you're attempting to flog 'em? Indeed, perhaps even to know what they call it? After all, you might even then be able to flog 'em something they actually want, which makes it a lot easier to persuade them to part with their money. And even more, if what you're trying to force upon them is being resisted with the ferocity of an MRSA outbreak during a janitor strike, then there is even more urgency in understanding why they think your stuff is shit?

Apparently not. No, Krusty, you're being, frankly, fucking naif there. No, what you do is pretend that you know better, and make up more bollocks to justify your latest round of mistakes. You ignore your punters, 'cause they don't know what the fuck they're on about. And then, when you eventually bring your head out of the sand, you make sure that every fucker in town chirrups about what a great outfit the mini-emperor's wearing this week.

I'm not prepared to let that happen again, so I got a bit rude with someone, and I'm not talking in a 'Let's make some honey like the worl' ain' ever seeeeeen, let me buzz on in yo sweet hive' sort of a rude, more of a 'can't you fucking read, why do you fork out large quantities of cash for research then ignore it you idiots, are you planning to fail, is this just a fucking insurance scam? Mel Brooks was taking the piss, you nobs, that's a film, it's not a fucking business plan.'

Anyway, I have brooded, darkly, upon this; the Krusty-doubt returned, should I have said that? Do I have a moral obligation, and indeed a professional duty to myself, to not be dragged down by the lack of imagination and courage of 'them'? Or should I continue to be as career-hamperingly honest as I have been for the last three years? Just as I've got my big break? In the short term I opt for honest - essentially, I like to look myself in the eye each morning as I commence passing a blade over my chin, and even more so when I have finished passing the blade and am admiring what a stunningly handsome fellow I'm looking at. The darkness has lifted a little, but I do really want 'them' to acknowledge some reality, and understand their responsibilities.

Right, enough of that. An interesting conversation today with one of my more favourite ladies at work, which concerned her differentiation of Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. The latter is handsome, and a good film star, the latter is 'beautiful, and a great actor'. I sort of empathised with this; some women are beautiful and some are upper-right-canine-bites-into-bottom-lip hard-on generating... Yes, another element of the recent visit of dark clouds is the lack of action, and the familial honesty of my Mummy and sisters that a sudden increase in my bulk isn't making that any more likely to change. What I should be doing is eating lots of lettuce and other combinations of water and not a lot else, rather than eating the huge amounts of shit I have taken to eating in recent months. If I'm really a good boy, I can permit myself a piece of fish.

Jeez, cheery prospect.

Right, spleen vented, I think I'll just fuck off until I feel like crackin' jokes again, which won't be long, as I have booked an emergency visit to the Greek Genius, who will focus those eyes on me and in exchange for staggering sums of moolah, will advise me to read a self-help book and also proffer some pearls of wisdom derived from amongst others, Socrates. That's what Brazilian footballers of yesteryear do for you.