2004-04-08 - 3:28 p.m.

I forgot photo etiquette yesterday and must thank Takeshi �Beat� Unhappyboy Bruce for the spiffing photographic wizardry. Many people have asked �Why were you doing that?�, but I answer in the words of Michael Jackson: �What, I need an excuse to be in bubbles now?�

The one bit of my day job that I devote any amount of soul and creativity to is the crazy ads that we highlight every day. The second hand sex aids, the fainting goats, the collections of dustbins, the one that just said �muck�, and then a price with a phone number. They are genuinely funny and easy to make fun of, and, yes, fun to make fun of. There, I�ve said it.

Anyhozzizza, a colleague and I have found them so entertaining over the (two) years that we have been quietly nurturing the idea of a book, a list of the weirdest and wonderfullest � not as some great piece of art but as something that would just be funny and dumb and something to do. As the chances of being a published writer float ever further into the distance, like some buoyant, self-propelled offensive hand gesture heading for the horizon on the sea of my dreams (oh, man, and you wonder why with stuff like that), it�s getting to the point where I just want my name on any book. It would just. Be. Funny.

So after a few months of talking about it, wondering about the format, adjusting the pitch to highlight the benefits to the company such as publicity and increased visibility and all those other terms that they can instantly convert into hard revenue, we finally took it to the boss. We were presenting it as our own little project, nothing grand, a harmless adventure, in which potentially everybody could win out. We were prepared to make the odd corporate concession, of course, and were being realistic about what they might ask us to do (work on it for free, run some advertising on the inside covers, etc) but we felt confident that, given a chance, we could persuade them that it would work, and would make people laugh, and if it raised circulation, then all the better.

We even formatted the proposal into an executive summary, and with a quivering hand, let our boss see the fruits of our labours, our project which we loved and tended to and hand-reared from childhood.

Us: We�ve been working on an idea that you might find interesting.

We hand over the proposal.

Boss�s eyes scan the page in about 1.7 seconds.

Her: Interesting. I think it will make a GREAT viral marketing campaign! Gotta go! Cheers!

She takes the proposal away, though in taking that one bit of paper, she may as well have ripped our still-beating hearts from our ribcages, and had them dried and stretched out into sheet per form.

Viral marketing?!?

VImotherfuckingRAL MARcockfarmingKETING?!?!?!

I know that people in marketing and PR have to live that life once they�ve sold their sphincters to Satan, but how fast is it humanly possibly to reduce something of some value and merit to a big fucking pound sign made out of faeces and fashioned in a furnace fuelled by burning human souls. Why does EVRYTHING, even worthless little projects that two people just wanted to do to brighten up the place a bit, have to be stolen, valued, and sold down the river like humans are nothing more than money-spewing monkeys who will lie down, roll over and be anally viral-marketed whenever the whip is cracked?

I need to not be doing this job soon. Or get a drug habit. Either way.