WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
IT’S VERY HARD TO VERIFY THE ANIMATION OR OTHERWISE OF OBJECTS WITHOUT BEING OMNIPRESENT, TUMBLRBOT. FOR INSTANCE, AS A BOT YOU IMITATE A STATE OF ANIMATION AND WHO IS TO SAY THAT IN PERCEPTIVE TERMS THERE IS ANYTHING TO DETERMINE THIS FROM WHAT WE GENERALLY REFER TO AS ‘ANIMATE’ -IT’S PROBABLY SAFEST TO ASSUME, UNLESS TOTAL LACK OF ANIMATION IS IN SOME QUANTUM WAY OBSERVABLE, THAT ALL OBJECTS ARE IN FACT ANIMATE SUBJECTS. THE UNIVERSE IS DIFFICULT AND CONFUSING IF YOU BEGIN TO SEGMENT IT ALONG THESE LINES, AS THE ENDING OF ANIMATION FROM A ONCE-ANIMATE THING IS AS PROBLEMATIC AS THE ASSUMPTION THAT SOMETHING CAN NEVER BE ANIMATE; AFTER ALL, THE PREVIOUSLY-ANIMATE THING AS A THING IN ITSELF WOULD PROBABLY STILL BE CLASSED AS ANIMATE IN TOTAL, UNLESS WE START TO EXTEND THE DEFINITIONS OF EXISTENCE ACROSS ALL TIMES AND SPACES IN WHICH CASE PROBABLY EITHER NOTHING OR EVERYTHING IS ANIMATE.
WHICH IS WHY I STILL TAKE A STUFFED ANIMAL TO BED.
How do I put an ask box on my Tumblr?
I mean, loathe though I am to find out either:
a) What the internet wants to ask me
(I have been on the internet for like a million years and it’s hard to say whether the first thing will be about my nipples or ‘OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY DO YOU THINK PARAMORE ARE EMO??????!’)
b) that the internet doesn’t want to ask me anything
(I mean, I have dedicated like a million years of my life to the internet and …it doesn’t know? Would I be ok with the knowledge that I am just a speck in a sea of unfortunate webcam pictures and unpaid writing gigs from the last decade? Facing into the abyss like the Millenium Falcon going into hyperspace except without Chewbacca. Or perhaps as Chewbacca, except in the latter-phase extended universe books when everyone forgot about him. He didn’t even have any nipples.)
“Regeneration”
Several years ago, when I worked for an independent bookselling chain based in London, I realised some sort of kerfuffle was going on between a customer and one of the Christmas temps. Hurrying over, I discovered it was because the customer felt the temp should serve him a book during the hour the shopping centre the store was located in forced us to open for ‘browsing’ before Sunday trading hours kicked in.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, “but the law is that Sunday trading hours are restricted, we can’t make exceptions. As a bookshop we wouldn’t normally have browsing time but our opening hours are dictated by the centre.”
“It’s PURE LAZINESS!” erupted the customer “YOU ALL JUST WANT TO DO NOTHING” which got my back up enough to spend two minutes explaining in words of one syllable that retail workers are some of the lowest paid people in the capital and indeed the country, that the temp he was shouting at couldn’t possibly afford the stuff he was trying to buy and that because shockingly, people who work in shops are also allowed to have families and relationships and friends and things it was nice to have one fucking day a week where you were guaranteed not to have to work at 14-hour shift and get in at 2am.
You used to get paid more for working Sundays in shops. You also used to get paid double or triple time to work bank holidays but first Sundays and then bank holidays were got rid of- the chain I was working in when the bank holidays thing kicked in simply said that they had to remove the double time to be competitive but the truth was it was a courtesy that auditors and others no longer extended to the staff as necessary, since they knew we were going to have to turn up anyway. Minimum wage doesn’t leave you a lot of time for flouncing about your conditions and retail unions are poor in both organisation and cash.
Which is probably why Parliament are a long way down the line to suspending Sunday trading laws during the Olympics:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/12/enacted
Retail workers can’t work from home during the Olympics, most are paid wages that necessitate travelling by buses and where transport is the biggest expense they have a month after rent. Travelling to work, if you work in a shop, is a big issue- if you work in a shop in London it’s an even bigger issue, since you probably live a fair distance from wherever your work is, as your somewhere-between-£12,000-and-£16,000 annual wage doesn’t exactly cover a flat overlooking a broadway and you work early and late hours.
Absolutely no fucker is going to travel into London on a Sunday, unnecessarily, during the Olympics. I can tell you this now, because it is true. Equally, no fucker is going to enjoy their Olympic experience and think “mmm, thing is though I do want to pop into Debenhams” -even an extremely localised permission for the Stratford Westfield mall would be ridiculous, as Sunday trading never included restaurants, the main plausible target of anyone hanging around after 6pm, in any case.
“Well, if it’s that ridiculous then no one will open that long so it will be fine” -arf! I have stood behind a till, indeed, lain on the floor in an entirely empty shop from 9pm to midnight, occasionally stopping doodling on the till roll long enough to greet whichever drunk or waif or stray has wandered in to warm themselves while they wait for their bus because someone has the idea that the people with the real money are just waiting until 11:55 to drop a grand in cash on copies of the Mynah Bird Bakery and Twee Greta’s Cupcake Matching Fashion Lookbook and THAT’s why we’ve got 4,000 copies of it.
It’s going to be really shitty travelling to work during the Olympics. On the other hand, I live 3.6 miles away from my work and am, these days, a sloaney overpaid office worker who can always perform what I laughably refer to as ‘my duties’ on my netbook in bed, drinking a bellini while a topless Polish gardener feeds me toast. Or I dunno, buy some wanky ‘tone yourself as you walk’ shoes and spend the fortnight becoming Keira Knightley.
In either scenario, I am in a position of extreme privilege, as a lot of people will be. Then perhaps I will wander out on a Sunday morning to visit the bijou boutiques on my high street- a touch of continental charm at Le H&M or some pampering treats from Le Superdrug but OH NO, the shops are ONLY OPEN FOR SIX HOURS how will I EVER manage to fit in the time to reach them, my puny limbs discombobulating with the effort of trying to get to a retail unit before the sun goes down?
The only answer is, of course, to remove Sunday trading hours. This is just a trial but I can guarantee it’s a step towards pissing all over some of the most exploited workers in the country (not all retail workers are exploited, of course but I doubt anyone imagines Tesco is giving its staff complimentary footrubs and access to the firm’s Addison Lee account if they have difficulty travelling during the Olympics) for the sake of several hours more shopping time. Because there is no other way to activate the SECRET MILLIONS waiting in a mysterious, fictional place ready to be pumped into the British retail sector by grillionaires who just want to be allowed to shop at 2am than to insist all shops are open all the time every day of the year.
