The Thessaliad Redux

* A cat peeing six inches from your face is not a good way to wake up in the morning.

* Music hath charms to make mornings not seem quite so bad.

* I should not swear in Mexican Spanish without practice and tutelage from actual Mexicans. However, despite this, I can 'speak' in the voice of a foul-mouthed, overly opinionated, rather stupid Mexican rock musician. Who knew?

* The best laid plans of mice and PCs often get left by the wayside in the face of plot. However, they're still there, waiting to be picked up.

* Too many books, not enough decisiveness to pick one to read on the way to work.

* Caffeine is a godsend.

People's attitudes to office phones bug me.

Look, it's fairly simple. You spend the majority of the day -- nine 'til five at least with a lunch break anywhere between half an hour and an hour -- sitting at your desk. On your desk, there is a phone. While personal calls on office time are frowned upon, it's not exactly verboten either. And it's a fuck of a lot less annoying than mobile phones blaring every thirty seconds. Don't I get this enough on the train? Simple message: GIVE PEOPLE YOUR OFFICE PHONE NUMBER, DUMBFUCK. I don't care if you've got the latest polyphonic ringtone. I know there's always stress in the workplace, but surely there's enough without a .midi of the latest chart ear-rape bugling at you from half a dozen different points around the office.

Even if the one you want to talk to is one of those people who's apparently never at their desk, there's no excuse for the constant mobile phone ringing. If you're that concerned that your party may not be at their desk, for fuck's sake, text them! Find out where they are and then ring them! It will save us the endless hassle of having to listen to someone's abandoned but still switched on mobile blaring a cheap, tinny rendition of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" until the phone finally gets the idea and voicemails your dumb arse.

Oh, and incidentally, pick up your phone when it rings. Simple concept? You'd think. But noooo; people don't get the idea that you can stop typing, or opening post, or doing your nails for the second or two it takes to pick up the handset from the cradle and wedge it between your ear and your shoulder. Some of us would like to hear our phone when it rings, thank you. And if you're away from your desk, set it to voicemail. Set it to pick up after two or three rings. People won't get their hopes up about speaking to a human being if you follow this simple piece of voicemail etiquette. (I know how it sounds, but in the NHS, the longer the phone rings, the more likely it is that a human will answer you at the other end. The only things that pick up in less than five rings are the electronic switchboard voice recording, the occasional voicemail, and me.)

I'm beginning to think that Alexander Graham Bell -- or whoever really invented the telephone, because there was that whole patent war thing on one of the edutainment channels awhile back -- wasn't a genius at all. I think he was an evil mastermind put on this earth to end communication on the planet. Phones gave us an easier way of hiding behind the sofa when undesirables like Jehovah's Witnesses, double-glazing salesmen and ex-girlfriends come calling. When the answering machine came along, we started screening and playing voicemail-tag. Caller-ID and mobile phones allow you to see who's calling and reject the undesirable right through to your voicemail without even hearing the other person's voice. Text messaging ... well, the only phenomenon that's been more damaging to the English language is AOL. And e-mails can be marked read and just trashed with minimal effort -- hell, we have filters and address block so we don't even have to see the e-mails we don't want. You don't even have to communicate with any specific person anymore -- with LiveJournal, you can spew out a generalised rant about, say, the decline of communication with the introduction of higher levels of communications technology and have everyone you know and care about -- and a lot of people you don't -- knowing exactly how you feel. That's not communication; that's an editorial page.

In short, communications technology has destroyed communication.

(Yes, I do have a mobile phone. It plays Puddle of Mudd. I'm accusing myself along with the rest of you. Except I do turn out text messages that use spelling, capitalisation and punctuation in all the right places, and correct grammar. So nyah.)