Disabled with boredom
hands sticky with distraction
My screen is my sandpit
into which I stick my mind
Outside my window
the green and grey
Click and drag, click and drag
the squirrels laugh at me
Shoulders back in apathy
throw good posture to the wind
Attention tentitively tortured
pay rise
On my way over to the park near where I work this lunchtime, I noticed something dart into the bushes. Stopping to look I noticed it was a mouse. Another mouse a few feet down was less self-concious and was gnawing on a nut or something. So I crouched down to watch. Living with four cats it’s rare to crouch down next to a mouse that hasn’t had all its limbs chewed off and its intestines spread around.
It was at this point, with me crouched next to the bushes close to the entrance at work, that my boss, and his boss, and some important visitors walked by. They later told me they just explained I did stuff with Linux security and the visitors understood completely.
They asked me later what I was up to, but I was worried that if I told them that they’d assume we had an infestation and call some professional rodent murders (as apposed to hobbyist rodent murders like our cats) so I lied. I told them I was checking for midget wireless network hackers.
We put down pringle can traps.
The nearest kitchen to my office here at work is shared by a number of different departments. We all supply our own milk and there is an informal arrangement where anybody uses any milk they find on the assumption they’ll eventually buy milk themselves for others to share. I’m sure what results is a small number of people always buy milk and other people drink it. I try to buy some once in a while, though I use very little.
2 weeks ago I bought a 2 pint carton of milk and put it in the fridge. It was gone in less than 2 days. This didn’t bother me as this is, of course, the point. This week I bought a 4 pint carton but this time clearly wrote “drink me” on the side of it with a marker pen as an experiment. This milk hasn’t been touched since Tuesday and there is no other milk in the fridge now.
I’ve inadvertently stumbled across some kind of advanced milk protection system. I’ve filed a patent.
UPDATE: The milk remains untouched but someone has added the words “go on, please” on the carton.
A guy at work has turned up this morning wearing blue mirrored sun glasses. He’s wearing them at his desk at the moment. Everybody is whispering about him.
I’ve managed to do a couple more strips of “Everybody Loves Eric Raymond” on time now (each Tuesday). Although it’s hard work coming up with something topical and (hopefully) funny, and then putting it altogether each week, it’s getting easier each time. I’m building up a little library of heads, bodies and backgrounds now, have got a good system for making speech bubbles and perfected my font usage. I’m enjoying it. I wonder how long I can keep it up on my own.
Me and the New World Odour team are working on reviving that project too, so I’ve been a busy and productive chap. Especially since I broke my new radio control car and have been awaiting the delivery of a replacement part (Another new expensive hobby I’ll write about another time).
John Leach is a human being living in Leeds, UK.
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