WTF Monday - Christmas in July.

Robert, Gerry and Tony looking atypically glum at Breakfast Club on Saturday July 17th, 2021.

Take a look out the window.

Pret are selling Christmas sandwiches in July!

JULY!

I know I've said this before but I feel I am quite justified in repeating it:

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK?

Message ends …

The Second Coming … Er …

 And lo, it came to pass, that no sooner had Dawn left the room than Phil, Tom and Pete added some Force to her Nativity scene.

I rather like the expression on the cow's face.

Anyhoo … It's 2016; we've got a new year to play with so let's resolve to fuck it up spectacularly (a resolution that governments and religions will have no trouble keeping).

Thems Is My Kinda Pastries

Many thanks to the lovely Drew of "The Worst Things For Sale" for pointing me at this awesome Christmas gift for the kids.
Drew is the man who brought the world this …

Merry Christmas, one and all. I'm off to make some festive fuck-pastries.

The Miracle of Christmas

 A very merry drunken family feuding season from the patron saint of disappointing gifts: Old Dive.

Christmas Twerky

Ho Ho Ho

I usually make a sweary and inappropriate Christmas card for the blog, but this year, Non-Seq came up with such a glorious festive greeting I cannot resist posting it instead.

Wishing all my blogpals an unconscionably spiffy Saturnalia / Winter Solstice boozefest / Hannukkah / Christmas / whatever (delete where applicable), but this year with extra special greetings to two true heroes of freedom and democracy, Eddie Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

Not that any of this NSA business should have surprised anybody; we've known for decades …

After all, Messr.s Martin and Mitchell defected from the NSA to Moscow in 1960 and blew the whistle on the NSA spying on its friends and its own citizens.

And here's one of my own posts, from way back in 2007, entitled 'Fuck the NSA":

"Here's a bit of fun:
Some dumb fuck with a crew cut will be reading this up in Yorkshire today, thanks to the title of the post.
I just want to say "Fuck off. You are not welcome here."

Today's subject is the delightful Menwith Hill NSA listening station just outside Harrogate in Yorkshire.
This is the world's largest electronic monitoring station, run by the NSA and responsible for "the signals intelligence and communications security activities of the US government".

Ever wonder where your emails go?
Ever wonder what that faint click was on your phone?

In total violation of EU civil liberties legislation and basic common decency, the NSA use Menwith Hill to monitor private (yes, private) telephone conversations, mobile conversations, emails and faxes plus a whole lot more, listening out for key words such as "bomb" or "bush"
(in my more radical days I would often include the word "bomb" in email titles to make sure they read it, on the assumption that if enough people did that, the twats would eventually get bored and fuck off home to America).
We have demonstrated and lobbied against this outrageous violation of civil liberties (and EU law), but to no avail. Menwith Hill is unaccountable, unlawful and undemocratic and amazingly, very few people seem to be aware of its existence.

I can understand why they needed the nearby Fylingdales early warning radar station during the cold war (though that is now being upgraded to become part of the farcical Star Wars defence shield), but Menwith Hill is illegal and immoral.

In case you think they're not listening to you, they constantly monitor all European post, telephone and telegraph signals, together with mobile communications and such corporations as ITT and RCA in the US.
Say "Hi" to them next time you call anyone.
Then tell them to fuck off.

Now you know."

So Merry Christmas Blogville, Eddie and Chelsea and - as Tiny Tim said, "Gawd bless us, every one."•


•except the NSA.

So Much For The Sales

"Boxing Day Sales! British Public Set To Spend £3 billion!"
At least according to the desperately pathetic pleading of the news headlines this morning.

Consequently, I moseyed on into town to play Gawp and Giggle at the insanity.
Only it never turned up …
The streets have been about as crowded today as the river.
It was a beautiful day, too … the first without torrential rain since the end of the early December Ice Age, so no excuses for staying indoors. I've been walking for hours and it's been lovely.

Castle Mall is usually a lot more crowded than this on a normal weekday. There were far more staff than customers in every shop I visited.
The coffee shop was almost deserted. I sat chatting and laughing for three refills of coffee with a family who had come out for a walk to escape the dreadful misery of Christmas TV. They'd dragged their whiny adolescent daughters out for some fresh air and I regret to say we poked fun at the girls mercilessly as they blinked in the sunshine and whimpered at their mum to let them have their phones back so they could retreat from reality. Hoo boy, I'm glad I'm a non-breeder.

The Forum was so quiet I could faintly hear the screams of stock market analysts and retail shareholders as they plummeted to their deaths from the nearest tall buildings.
I did my best for the economy by buying a new jumper (four sales ladies to one customer … yay!) reduced from £45 to £5.
The high street stores have seen the sign saying "This Way Down The Shitter" and they're trudging wearily after it.

The teeming hordes thronging Tombland bear mute witness to the fact that the rich have bled us so dry that we have nothing left to give.
Look out, 2013 … you're fucked.

Merry Christmas, One and All

Feck This

AUGH!
The boss is playing crappy Christmas songs through the PA system.

The world has definitely ended and I'm in Hell.
Frankly, I'd expected it to be warmer, though the music is spot on.

Lunchtime in the Garden of Good and Evil

Bleah …
Yes, it's that most hateful time of the year once again: the dreaded office Christmas party.
I predict a low turnout at work today.
If last year is anything to go by, a few people will drift in during the day, shuffling like zombies and moaning, others will be missing, some may never be seen again.

A different venue this year, and as I'm still hicking about on my stick I made sure I got the end seat near the door, well away from the more boisterous parts of the room.
The food was good: the usual spicy parsnip soup followed by what was referred to on the menu as a chartreuse but which turned out to mean "wrapped in cabbage". It was yummy: puy lentils, butternut squash and celeriac baked in a cream sauce and then wrapped up in a crisp savoy cabbage parcel and steamed just long enough for the cabbage to soften and go bright green; accompanied by roast potatoes and parsnips and a great dolloping of pickled red cabbage baked with sprouts and chestnuts.
Yum
Oatcakes, Stilton and coffee for afters.

Most of the others went for roast suckling peeeg followed by chocolate cheesecake. Inevitably they were pretty drunk by the time that came around and here's Erin adding a "lemon curd jus" to Dale's cheesecake while he was in the loo, except that she used stingingly hot English mustard left over from her peeeg.
Piquant!

After that, things took the inevitable slide downhill, as the consumption of a combination of beers, wines and sickening kiddie-sweet comedy cocktails accelerated at the usual alarming pace.
I didn't bother taking many photos this year as I was Mister Grumpy on painkillers and just wanted out of there.

They chose the venue this year for its close proximity to the places they would be spending the next twelve hours: strip joints, nightclubs, curry houses and other vomitoria.
Luckily, some of the staff have kids and had to leave early so I slipped out with them. Apologies for no chocolate willies and penis racing this year, but I don't have the stomach to stick around for that stuff any more.
At least I can enjoy a soupçon of schadenfreude today, watching them suffer.

… Unless of course the world really did end and this morning is the afterlife … Oh, fuck; the afterlife is precisely the same crap I had to endure during life. Sigh …

Merry Christmas everybody.

Singing In The Smegging Rain

Today is the day of the office Christmas Party.
Veteran readers will know just how anguished is the howl that accompanies those dread words.
Here is last year's again, for anyone who wants reminding that we'd drunk the bar dry by mid-afternoon or who wants to see Kellie with a chocolate penis on her nose.

For those - like me - who don't want reminding, here's a teensy festive distraction.

I was in London yesterday and - as Londoners know all too well - there's nothing that dampens the festive spirit quite so effectively as a piss-miserable lunchtime of freezing rain in Regent Street.

For some reason I had a bloody Christmas song stuck in my head all the way from Margaret Street down to Mitsukoshi.
And now you will, too …

Hum and Bug

Fuck it! I hate snow with a passion; a passion so intense that the like of it is rarely seen outside of Mexican TV soap operas.
You guessed it. Hiver est arrivé and with it the swearing.
Outside my window this morning the fields are as white as week-old dogshit.
If I had any money I'd get the hell out of this miserable shithole and move somewhere warm.
Donations gratefully accepted.

While I wait for the cash and plane tickets to roll in - and because I know you like that sort of thing and I'm a kindly soul - here are some of the Christmas lights from my second spiritual home of Piccadilly.

Note the hordes of Christmas shoppers. Having taken away all of our money, the government now begs us to "spend our way out of the recession."

Yeah? With what, you fuckwits? We don't all have a forty million pound personal fortune like "Call me Dave; I feel your pain" fucking Cameron.
You've taken everything we have, you utter bastards. You've given it to your friends (£9 billion in UK bankers' bonuses this year alone - and all this mess is their fault) who have hidden it offshore.
Spend your OWN way out of the fucking recession.
Gits.

Can you tell that Christmas is coming? If you're new to this blog, don't worry; it's like this every year.
Bah, and a great big dolloping side-helping of Humbug.

Jingle Your Bells; It's That Time Of Year Again

Regrets … They've Had A Few

I was amazed yesterday morning to find Kellie still alive. Very pale and exceedingly fragile but alive, albeit moving verrry slowly and occasionally sipping water and groaning softly.

Others trickled in during the morning, the trashed detritus of the office Christmas party. Some didn't make it. Those that did avoided the sunlight and the coffee and indeed any unnecessary movement.

As the morning wore on videos and photos began to circulate (mine were merely innocent fun from before the BIG DRUNK took hold).
I saw horrible dancing. I heard chronic karaoke caterwauling. I saw Dale's trousers split wide open and wished I hadn't. I saw things no sane man should ever be required to look at.

Those survivors who could remember vague snippets of the night before regaled me with tales of sexual deviancy, stinking alcohol vomit and drinking the bar dry so the poor staff had to run out to the pub across the street and buy more.
After that, they hit the night clubs for more drinking and falling over/dancing. At some point in the early hours two of the partners remembered that their wives were due to pick them up at the restaurant at eleven. Those two didn't make it in yesterday.
Rather than face the music they hauled the entire crowd off to a curry house to try to eat the alcohol out of their systems.
No chance. Several tales emerged about the taxi rides home, interrupted by regular stops to redecorate roadside verges and fall over.

At some point in the proceedings Emily's camera went AWOL for a while. It wasn't until late morning when she managed to download its contents onto the server that the penis portraits were discovered.
"My memory card has been violated!" she wailed across the office.
Many were the suspects but none came forward to fess up and Emily wisely declined an identity parade.

You've heard me moan and swear about office Christmas parties for way too many years. Having witnessed another one I shall not be letting up.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

Some Sensible Architects Share A Meal

After the moustacherie madness of Movember came the Office Christmas Bake-Off …
And after the Office Christmas Bake-Off came the Office Christmas Lunch.
And immediately after the Office Christmas Lunch came the Office Christmas Party, but fortunately (being Dive … see old Christmas Party posts) I managed to skip out before that happened.


First up: the winner of the Office Christmas Bake-Off:

Hail the conquering hero comes! Yes, Adrian (he of the Christmas Village) did indeed walk away with the coveted chef's hat for the 2010-2011 season. Luke (he of the poo-covered dog biscuits) proudly lifted the wooden spoon. Cassie's gingerbread witch's cottage took second place and Erin was too confused and flustered to announce the rest of the results but I shall try to find out where I came later.

After that, things became pretty much of a blur …

There was booze …

Lots of booze.

Things started quite sedately with a nice lunch.

The parsnip soup was yummy.

But then Santa came, bearing gifts and … er … elastic band guns.

The man in the Santa hat is a senior partner and my immediate boss.

Staying sober was tricky, but somehow I managed it. This was lunchtime and they'd booked the rooms until eleven at night and a lot of them were then going clubbing. I think it's going to be pretty quiet and lonely in the office this morning.

Girls will be girls.

Some more than others.

Give an architect cranberries and a couple of scoops of ice cream and inevitably there will be boobs.

We're a classy bunch.

Sophisticated humour is our forte.

That, and aeronautics.

Secret Santa shares our exquisite taste.

Willie racing was still going on when I left.

Girls and Guns …

… and booze.

As the cocktails went down the boys got boisterous.

"The name is Bond …"

Those mischievous young scamps decorated their boss's jacket.

Tastefully.

And then the serious drinking started.

And so the more elderly and sedate (and sober) of us left early …

… before the karaoke, the dancing contests and the forfeits got started.

Sheesh … Merry Christmas everybody!