2004-08-19 - 12:59 p.m.

(�this might be slightly ranty, so you might want to skip it and go for lunch or something�)

Looks like I chose the wrong week to give up alcohol (for a bit). I really was on the dream hat-trick, what with the award and then getting two succulent commissions meaning I can go and see my little brother in Sydney in a couple of weeks...all I needed was that trifling, poxy little book thing to come through and everything would be alright.

I was pretty confident. Confident like there�s no way you�re not going to enjoy that next slice of pizza, confident like two more shots of sambuca and I�ll feel like complete monkey ass in the morning, confident like there�s no way this can miss, it�s like lowering a coffin into a freshly dug grave. The odds were just too good, the fates were on my side, Uranus was definitely in the ascendance.

But then the pizza was deceptively stale, the shots had no effect and the body spilled out onto the waiting grass as the casket took an unexpected hit on the side of the hole on the way down.

Blown out, just because they could. Not even because they wanted to say no. Just because they could say no.

(�please, no sympathy. don�t send any flowers�i�m just having a fit of pettiness, and it will pass, i know� i just need to get it off my chest, and then I�ll go back to being happy at how good life is...)

Among the gold-plated excuses on offer tonight: �shallow� marketing opportunities make it not worthwhile, that it would affect future revenue streams, that content could not be given away, that it was not �core activity� (are we working in a nuclear power plant or something?), that it would cost the company money, that the brand might be damaged. Four words: Utter pigshitting pigshitty pigshit.

Translation: We wish we had thought of the idea, wish we had the apparatus to publish it ourselves, wish we weren�t such automatons that if we can�t take every last drop of money out of something ourselves then there�s no way we will allow a situation where anyone else is even going to get a microbe of anything back, no matter that you thought of it, you wrote the copy, you put the work in. Get back to your desk and assume the position. Your (and I quote) �little idea� was cute but since we unquestioningly put a fucking pound sign in front of, oooooooooooh, everything in this life, it�s no dice, but thanks for playing. Didn�t he do well, ladies and gentlemen? Give him a round of applause.

I�d like to give them a round�of live ammunition right in their core activity modules. Of course, I�m just spitting as I miss out on some easy money and a chance to write for a living, but hey, that�s life.

So I sent back an angry e-mail, copied in everyone from the MD down. It was like my own personal mission statement, like that scene in Jerry Maguire, except without the cheekbones, or the good looking administrator supporting me, or that devil infant in the wings, and done from behind the coward�s shield of a computer, but apart from that it was near-identical. It was rip-roaring, incendiary, provocative and would send shockwaves down the company.

24 hours later? No reply.

You�re so caring. I feel so valued as an employee. It�s like pissing into an erupting volcano to stem the lava flow.

You crazy bosses! You have such empathy. And you know what? You had me at �shallow��

(�.inhales�cheers up�come, come now�gets on with things�)