Week 531 is now upon us.
I would like to start with a wee add-on regarding the subject of the Tech-Firms. There have been a few demonstrations and meetings this week regarding privacy laws that won’t allow parents to access what their kids have been looking at on the web. Sadly this is requested after something happens. Now, I might be making a tit of myself as I know less than nothing about all this, but is it beyond technology to remove the remove history application from domestic (For want of a better word) computers?
All reading this, ask yourself, would I access what I access if my partner or parents could see what I had been looking at????
I am a saint! Hand on heart, I never look at anything that I shouldn’t!!
…Okay, not so much a saint, I don’t know where the fucking button is!!!!!!!
More eclecticism this week as I move on to a totally different topic.
We know of a piece of criticism that mentioned cliché and stereotype. Admittedly, these are hard to handle well or with a fresh look, but what everyone needs to understand is that cliché and stereotype can’t be ignored, they are what we have known and seen and that is why they have become what they have.
There’s one time, especially when a writer should never be slated for using them. This is if they are stating something factual. Oh fuck!! Maybe I have created a new genre – Factual Stereotypical Fiction!
Please don’t take that genre as a prompt. You will receive your jotters with an automatic red-card very bloody quickly.
I think it’s when a writer uses stereotypes and cliches as a plot and makes sure they tick every box that they become an issue.
Ahh!! Now talking about ticking boxes…
We have mandatory training at my work which must be completed for legal reasons…What a lot of wank-stain!! You can’t fail. At one time, if you got a question wrong, you had to re-do the whole thing and they changed the questions! But the hierarchy soon realised that this wasn’t very productive as folks were away from their workplace too long. So now, all that happens is you are asked to answer only the questions that you got wrong. Oh and they are multiple-choice, so you have only four times before you get it right. I have my suspicions as I haven’t done any of these twice yearly legalities in around three years, so I reckon my management are putting them through for me. I really don’t care as the ‘Training’ is so boring it would induce suicide!!
The training means nothing, it is all about the government insisting that staff are trained so we are trained!! If you want me to do a test – Make fucking sure I can fail it as well as pass!!!!!!!!!!!!
On another but the same note – We have a ‘Mindfulness Room’ It’s a safe place which has a CD for playing music, smelly things and colouring-in books. It also has cushions. Sorry folks for me being un-PC or being stereotypical, but I could never be gay as I hate soft furnishings!!!
What I pray will happen is someone will slit their wrists in the ‘Mindfulness Room’ or even better, someone getting sacked for spending too much time in the ‘Mindfulness Room’
Box-ticking once again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If the firm was any good the last thing that they would need would be a ‘Mindfulness Room’
…I may use it…If the bogs are all being used!!!!!!!!!
Okay, I’m trying to calm myself down!!!
I’m calm….
Here we have the week’s stories. It doesn’t happen often, but we had a week of Newbies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We welcome everyone of them. We hope that they have fun on the site and we especially wish that they look at Tom Sheehan and want to bomb his records out!!!
As always, I’ll show our initial comments.
Monday started the week, as it normally does…Unless you get paid of a Sunday…But you know what I mean!
Kieran Wyatt got us off and running with, ‘Orders Of Magnitude.’
‘A challenging read that kept me off balance.’
‘This is more ethereal than vague.’
‘Some startling images.’
On Tuesday we had ‘The Man With The Frozen Clock’ by Georgia Xanthopoulou.
‘Peculiar but I liked it.’
‘Quite lovely to read.’
‘Strange piece but all good.’
Wednesday has a habit of breaking the back of the week. You may have noticed, I love that phrase!!
Our writer on that day was Lincoln Hayes with, ‘Manifesting Apple And Raspberry’
‘The mother’s guilt causing asides were very well laid in.’
‘In part, this was very sad.’
‘So well done!!’
The newbies kept coming!!
On Thursday we had Kathryn Hatchett with ‘King Arthur Is Dead’
‘You feel the sense of losing.’
‘The blind faith of childhood was well struck here.’
‘The descriptions of both mindsets, before then after were wonderful.’
And we completed the week with W.H. Forshee’s work of ‘You Can’t Take It With You.’
‘A very interesting story.’
‘Superbly well done.’
‘This catches you.’
That’s us for another week.
It’s so good to be boring as I am repeating myself with the all-good!
The comments are as brilliant as they have been and the visits to the site continue to flourish.
Keep doing as you are doing our fine friends!!
Just to finish.
At time of typing, there was no new pope.
I have the very man for the job. He is the Nottingham Forrest Football Manager. His name is Nuno Espirito Santo. He is very qualified as he would never need a prayer, he could just wing it and repeat his name four or five times, changing the order!!
Just thinking though, no matter what religion wee Greta is, she will always cry at the announcement of the next pope. As that pollution changes from black to white, it will be all too much for her!!
Only one song would do.
And the harmonies in any of their songs are as good as it gets!!!!
Image: scented candle – You can’t smell it but trust me it is vanilla and lavender and stuff like that – very soothing.
literally stories 
Hello Hugh
Ah the Platters, so smooth. Still a hit nearly seventy years on.
Training stuff in the workplace, for longterm employees, is usually a trap. Dunno why that is so. You need the squirmy mind of a managerial insect to understand it.
It appears that stereotypes exist only in fiction. Justification for preconceived notions and instant antipathy rule reality, nothing as gentle as being typecast the same way Gilligan pretty much ended Bob Denver’s attempt at playing Lear.
Excellent energy as always. I say we call the next pope George Ringo since we have had multiple John Pauls.
Leila
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My Dear Leila
THANK U again for your BRILLIANT 16-line POEM “Anne and Kathy” yesterday on Saragun Springs! It haunts the mind and sticks in the heart for a million different reasons, including Lady Gaga’s classic, brilliant song “Million Reasons.” Best in the live video on the Dive Bar Tour Nashville which lasts for 3:48. In this single LIVE performance, Lady Gaga becomes as good a singer as Elvis at his best for three minutes and forty-eight seconds – and that’s enough.
“D”
PS
She starts her performance by saying: “My name is Lady Gaga…tonight if you could just call me Joanne.”
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Hi Dale
Thank you for the great compliment! Read somewhere that Gaga has an IQ of 140 or so. That makes sense, because she built herself in a truly unique way.
Leila
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Were I not so lazy, I’d check it out, but I believe the Platters lost popularity after one of the male singers did something with a woman, which may have been particularly “bad” if the woman was white. Lots of bad racist stuff happened including Chuck Berry, a black heavyweight champion forgot his name.
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Jack Johnson? James Earl Jones played him in a movie.
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Yes – see separate comment if I remembered to write about his biography.
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Yes.
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Hi Leila,
In-House training puts me in an extremely bad mood. It bores me and I hate it. It’s pointless, insulting and child-like. I normally have a rant in there sometime throughout whether it be an exclamation of ‘This is pish!!’ or making sure any log-ins that I use are filthy!!!
Pope George Ring has a ring to it which could be kissed if required!!
Thanks as always.
Hugh
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You make an excellent point, If the workplace was pleasant you wouldn’t need a wellness room. I guess I’ve been lucky in that apart from on the job training I never had anything like team building or whatever. I know I would have ‘got it wrong’ and hated it. Hey Leila’s idea for the Pope is pretty spot on. Just off now to have a listen to the Platters. Just the thing for a sunny afternoon after a morning working.
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Dear Diane
Just wanted to say thanks for all the cool images this week. I wasn’t able to comment on stories as much this week for a variety of reasons, but I did check in and read, and see your images.
I’m with Leila about the statue with the sword and the cloak hooding his eyes. If I came upon it unawares I would probably turn tail and head for the hills, but it sure is a cool image.
Thanks again!
Dale
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Thank you Dale
I had seen the statue of Arthur on another occasion and when I read the story it seemed to me to be a perfect fit – there but not there. I enjoy looking for the pictures but it is very time consuming and sometimes I am not happy because of the restrictions imposed by time and cost but it’s lovely that you notice them. Thank you – dd
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Hi Diane,
I was made go to one team building pile of shite. I hated every second of it and advised my managers that there would never be a next time and I’d be happy to take any consequence.
What made my stomach go into knots and my fist clench was a continual phrase. After every exercise (For want of a better word) all we heard was ‘You know this is just like the workplace.)
Best story I ever heard about team building was six poor souls out on a boat on a lake when the instructor shouted the scenario of the boat being on fire.
‘Follow me! Swim away from the boat and form a circle!!’
He dived into the freezing water. Each staff member looked at each other and stated, ‘Fuck that!’
The instructor continued to shout and coax. Eventually he swam back as the staff lit up their cigarettes.
As the instructor struggled back onboard someone asked him, ‘And how did that work out for you?’
His enthusiasm returned as he shivered and said, ‘Brilliantly! You all stuck together.’
Cheers for everything Diane!!
Hugh
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Workplace training unrelated to work and box-ticking bring back unpleasant memories … and smoke to my eyes. Fun post with pointed commentary and a good roundup.
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A few of the Platters songs are among the top rated on my itunes, so I hear “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” frequently. One of the top oldies that the Platters did. Harbor Lights, more. Songs with emotional weight.
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Hi Doug,
I need to listen to more of ‘The Platters’ and Buddy Holly for sure.
Hope all is well with you and Sharon!!
All the very best my interesting friend.
Hugh
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Re BuddyHolly – The title “That’ll Be The Day” comes from a line in a John Wayne movie, “The Searchers” I think.
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Ha! I swear the Duke said it to Jeffery Hunter in that film five times.
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Cheers Dave.
There should be a special place in Hell for the twats that come up with all of this!!
Hope all is well with you my fine friend.
Hugh
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Hi Hugh!
That is a truly brilliant image of someone offing themselves in “The Mindfulness Room.” So brilliant that it deserves its own short story even!
It reminds me of Franz Kafka’s short story “In der Strafkolonie,” “In the Penal Colony.”
In this tale, prisoners are executed by a machine which carves the name of their “sin” on their body for twelve hours as they die in raging pain.
During the last half of their extended, and yet fast in the end, death, they are somehow allowed to have a mystical experience for 6 hours. This is their compensation for being tortured to death by “The Machine.”
“Sins” which will get you sent to “The Machine” for your not-so-just punishment include failing to arise every hour on the hour all night long and salute your superior. That’s all you have to do – salute your superior. But you have to do it every hour ON the hour ALL night long – or you’ll be sent for your experience with “The Machine” which will teach you the lesson you were too stupid to learn on your own as it simultaneously inscribes this into your very flesh, AND gets rid of you – forever.
No wonder they call Kafka a LITERARY PROPHET, that and the fact that he had ZERO power in the literary world of his own day. He wrote this short story over a hundred years ago, revised it four years later, and published it in a very small, very limited edition with zero fanfare or publicity. In the last 100 years, obviously, this fictional tale has become a lot less fictional and a lot more realistic than maybe even Kafka knew it would become. But then again, I think he knew. And all his sisters were murdered in German death camps, as were the sisters of Freud. Now “The Machine” is coming to an abandoned strip mall near you, whoever you are and wherever you are. Salute your superiors when they tell you to, or else!
A word to the wise!
Dale
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Hi Dale,
That is an interesting thought that can be used as a metaphor for so many things in this day.
Adulation is something that should be personal and not insisted on. Kissing the popes ring, bowing to royalty, calling the elite by their title is all nonsense and hidden behind the three words of protocol, etiquette and respect. The protection that is given to those examples may show what is actually thought of them!!
Much appreciated my fine friend!!
Hugh
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When I heard mindfulness room it made me think it isn’t just the USA. Our perfect leader preaches mindless continuously though.
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Hi Doug,
Nope, not just the USA. We have also rode that madness train!!
All my very best my interesting friend.
Hugh
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Great post as always. Another great week of stories too, many with a slight fantasy / otherworldly slant I feel.
Isn’t the term ‘mandatory training’ one of the most miserable we hear at work. I just wish the bastards would stop using ‘mandatory’ for certain things and be honest and call it ‘extra work’ – ‘extra work training’, ‘extra work reports’, etc.
Beautiful choice of song – I love Bryan Ferry’s version too.
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Hi Paul,
I’d add a wee bit on to the ‘Extra work’ idea. If they were totally honest it would be ‘Extra work so we can appease the governing bodies who don’t give a fuck about you and allow us to continue not giving a fuck about your petty problems like death or terminal illness. We pay you so get it into your heads – We own you whilst not giving a fuck!!’
I’d probably respect that more than the posters stating what a wonderful place it is to work.
Bryan Ferry’s version is excellent – He has a strange voice, in a way I think it’s terrible but for whatever reason, it works!!!!
Mentioning him has put me in the notion to listen to the ‘Flesh And Blood’ album.
Thanks as always my fine friend, your input is always appreciated!!!
Stay happy and healthy.
Hugh
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Stay happy and healthy too – and hope I haven’t lit too much of a nerve there! Although, you do write with ‘ire’ incredibly well!
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