ART OF EUROPE

Week 2 - Wednesday

Did I say I liked my workplace and my colleagues and it was a good place to work? I lied. I hate them all.

Basically these people are discriminating against my human rights forcing me to get up in the morning rather than letting me work at night when there's no other bugger there. It really really makes me poorly to have to get up and do things and deal with people so early. I only come alive at night and to discriminate against my biorhythms in this way is body-fascism and downright genocide by other means and I am writing to Brussels to tell on them. Furthermore if I get drowsy on the job and staple my hand to one of the fucking z-b33's there will be a lawsuit. I will end up by owning them and will promptly close the place down. No. No. I will keep it going but force them all to kiss my hand and perform little dances and sing my favourite songs if they want to be paid. Reg the boiler man has a harsh croaking voice and will murder 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun' but I don't care.

If I do not get some proper sleep soon I will not be answerable for the consequences. In a deserted store-room at the back of the fourth floor I have found a rubbish chute leading down to a disused incinerator. I reckon I could stuff half a dozen bodies down there easily. No fucking around with fancy plans, just club the first six people I see over the head and say I was at the chip shop if anyone asks for an alibi.

Sex fantasy of the day: ____ _____ the cute receptionist comes into the third floor filing room naked and with a hand on her hip. I yawn. She entices me and waggles her boobies and that so I say 'Oh, go on then' and we start to have sex on top of Mrs. Prendergast's desk, having given Mrs. Prendergast some of her favourite biscuits to keep her quiet. But I am so tired I fall asleep on top of her and she cries. Mrs. Prendergast says 'Poor boy' and puts her knitting over me to keep me warm and then goes out in the corridor and shushes anyone who walks past so they don't disturb me.

(Oh, I meant to tell you about her knitting, it's fantastic, voluminous, on her lunch hour she sits in one of the kitchens and knits this endless fucking sweater for what appears to be a fourteen-foot grandchild, and it's like a bloody parallelogram and everything's in the wrong place as far as I can tell, I think there's an Addams Family cartoon where Morticia's knitting a thing that has two neck-holes and three arm-holes, it's exactly like that. Soft cow.)

I really fell asleep on the bus and ended up missing my bloody stop and was very nearly taken back to town again. Oh, oh, that wasn't the best bit, though - the past three days the workload really has been crazy, because _____ my boss pulled another reorganisation exactly as she promised me she wouldn't do, and I'm moving everything out of one store room and into another exactly the same, and people need to use these files now so if I don't finish it quickly they're fucked, and they're all nagging at me to hurry up or to find things that haven't been sorted yet, and I'm supposed to keep up with all the normal things to do on top of that. So I've been working my arse off from morning until night, and today in particular I have been very short on sleep and full of coffee - to cut a long story short, when I finally emerged blinking into the sunlight I was still so hyped up part of my mind wanted to file everything I saw. There was a bus queue and they were all higgledy-piggledy and I wanted to push them all straight, and I was going tree, T, lamp-post, L, lamp-post goes before tree, and walking through town I was looking at all the shop signs and thinking the shops were in the wrong order, baker should go before butcher, shoddy work, what are you thinking?

Was it for this? I am no longer a man, I am some dehumanised filing machine... Then I came home and had to write this nonsense. Who the hell does Jeremiah think he is, forcing me to work just in order to get money? If he really fancies himself as a patron of struggling writers he should just give me the money just for being me. Writing is really the least interesting part of a writer's existence. The hours of supine contemplation is why most of us go in for this line of work.

What would amuse me would be if I can con him into giving me ftp access to Art of Europe so he doesn't have to bother uploading these for me, and then I could replace all the art pictures with the same pictures but with moustaches and penises drawn on. That would serve him right. He'd probably sell more though, knowing my readers.

Oh. One other thing that's bugging me which I may as well mention. Last night I sent an e-mail to a book distributor, the last remaining possible distributor, asking them to handle my book, and at the end of it I put a bomb threat. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Tonight, I am questioning that decision. (Rutger Hauer, in Blade Runner, after killing every bugger in sight: 'I have done...questionable things.') Really. You won't believe me because of all the stuff I make up, but this is true. When I have more time I'll get a screencap. After a very professional pitch detailing all my plans and patiently listing all the reasons I'm sure this will be a bestseller the letter ended:

I hope to hear back from you soon. I think you should know I am a very unbalanced man and if you turn me down I will send you a bomb.

Best wishes,

Michael

It was a joke, obviously, and an attempt to be charming. But I haven't heard back from the miserable buggers. Now I'm looking forward to explaining to the police how my copy of How To Win Friends And Influence People was sabotaged by anarchists.

Remember me but forget my fate. I hate you all and am going to bed.

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