girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's a long and rambling entry, from which there are two links. So paranoia quotient running quite high here as my boss mentions for the second time in two days that he wants to turn a regular column I write for the website every Friday into a weblog. A blog. An online diary. As far as I'm concerned, that's his way of telling me: "I know that you write in your diary when you're supposed to be writing about the latest ad campaign for cat food." Only it seems I was being paranoid, because he's explained to me what a weblog is and even pointed me in the direction of an article about them. So from Monday, I'm keeping a blog about brands. Great. He just used a really really awful piece of jargon too. He said that sometimes my column lacked a "killer app of a story". I mean, I know we work on line, but frankly all of that kind of talk has gone with the large expense accounts and share options and belief that you will be able to sell domain names for millions of pounds. What the whole dotcom thing has left us is with some really horrible abuses of English and of grammar. For example... company names stopped using lovely lovely letters with lovely capitals at the beginning. They turned into things like: AUGUST.ONE COMMUNICATIONS (Why are you shouting at me??! What is that pointless full stop for??!) TBWA (What the fuck is with that fucking pointless fucking backslash that I can never ever find on my fucking keyboard... the same applies to the company B|Com3... and if you were being really fancy, you'd make that "3" superscript) cdp-travissully (oh, just because I've no trouble finding the fucking space bar on my keyboard, you decide to leave out the space. And the caps) While I'm ranting, I'd like to mention this. When the fuck did every company in the world stop producing goods or selling services and start "providing solutions". I mean, I write about companies, I try to find out what they do. And invariably, companies provide solutions. It fucks me right off. A bookstore doesn't sell books anymore, it provides solutions to your empty shelf problems. Coca-Cola, a soft drink maker? Noooo... they provide solutions to thirst problems mate. Do you see what I mean? DO YOU? .......... I wasn't always a cynical journalist. I used to be a cynical bookseller. I have also been a cynical secretary. I read other people's diaries, people whose jobs involve them dealing with the dreaded General Public. People like how-i-lie and distracted girl. I used to think it would be so much fun to have a literal day. Where you really politely answered every stupid question literally. - Do you know where the crime section is? - Yes, yes I do. Thank you for asking. - Can you look up a book for me? - Yes, I successfully completed that part of the training. Thank you for asking. You get the picture. My other great customer service initiative for the store would have been a sign, written in 27 different languages saying: "If you can't ask for the book, you won't be able to read it." 10:23 a.m. - 2002-09-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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