The World of Quark

Society: Time to Reboot?

2011-03-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

So: Capitalism has snapped, and the world - and specifically most Communists - has given up on Communism.

A little melodramatic? Well, at the very least, capitalism’s been shown to be astonishingly vulnerable as a way of doing that thing called society. After all, it wasn’t just a single sector, but merely a small part of one sector, that ripped up many of the world’s economies like out of date cheque books.

And what about the vast and growing inequality we blithely accept is part of how we live? Someone said to me recently, ‘The great myth of Capitalism is that wealth filters down from the top.’ It simply doesn’t, he added, just so that we were in no doubt.

Worse, western democracies should be in firm possession of the moral high ground at the moment, staring down at nascent North African democracies with a collective self-satisfied grin. But of course we’re not at all, because our governments have consistently propped up rank dictators solely to retain access to oil. Too late now to champion democracy in the region: it’s not so much happened without us, as happened in spite of us.

So what about communism? Well, quite apart from the fact that in practice – in the way it chose to treat its people – it was indistinguishable from fascism, we now have the world’s largest Communist nation glutting itself on bling and fat automobiles. So even they aren’t convinced. And who would be convinced by a system so lacking in self-confidence that in practice it typically tries to control how people think, and certainly what they say?

Apologists may say we’ve haven’t properly tried Communism; perhaps their pin-striped equivalents will say the same of Capitalism. But it strikes me we’ve tried both enough to know.

So where’s the new system? More to the point, where are the growers of new systems? Where are the thinkers we need now, now we’ve apparently tried everything else, and failed?

If the question is how to organise ourselves to the best advantage of the maximum number (which is probably as ambitious as it gets, at least to start with; Utopia can follow on later once we’ve got the hang of things), who’s considering this?

Personally, I wouldn’t know where to start, but then again there was probably a bloke in Croydon thinking the same thing just as Adam Smith and Karl Marx got their heads down. But where are today’s Smith and Marx?

And will they learn from the failures of previous systems?

Marx

Smith

Bloke from Croydon

Government to sell off air molecules

2011-02-20T07:54:00.000-08:00

It was announced today that the Government is consulting on whether to sell off the UK’s air molecules.

A spokesman said: “It’s madness to allow something this crucial to the UK’s economy to simply languish in the public sector. Instead we wish to bring to air the principles of fair competition in the market, and professionalization of services.” The spokesman added that he thought there would be “quite a bit” of interest in oxygen in particular, but that there would be less interest in methane and carbon dioxide, with specialist providers being the front runners, especially for xenon and ammonia.

It's thought that several large marketing agencies will bid for Neon and Krypton molecules and lease them out for big campaigns - 'Your Name Here in Neon', 'Not Even the Man of Steel Can Survive These Molecules - Not Without Murray Mints', and so on.

When pressed, the spokesman said he thought it was “highly unlikely” that one provider would look after all the elements that go to make up the atmosphere over the UK. It was unclear how all the different companies will work together, or even whether UK citizens will still be able to breathe after the sale.

Oh, wait, this just in, turns out the government has done a U-turn and has dropped the whole idea.

Bored Stupid By An Eight-Goal Thriller

2011-02-16T15:51:00.001-08:00

To Newcastle, a few Saturdays ago, for a stag do. Stag himself is no follower of the beautiful game, but despite this at half three we find ourselves in a strangely quiet bar where the local match against Arsenal is being played.

We squint at the screen for the score. Astonishingly, Arsenal are beating Newcastle 4-0 – and only thirty minutes gone. The bar is entirely silent. Grim-faced Geordies listlessly watch the action.

We get a round in, and sit in front of it for an hour. It’s very much a game where one team is in the ascendant, and the other’s utterly crushed. Diaby gets sent off, but it doesn’t make any difference – aside from supplying something approaching an incident in an otherwise drab game. About half four, one of the chaps suggest we go check into our hotel, so we slope off. Behind us, we hear a cheer – Newcastle must have grabbed a consolation goal. Some consolation.

By the time we get back, it’s Final Score – and of course Newcastle have pulled it back to 4-4 in one of the greatest fightbacks in Premier League history. We’ve managed to see most of the match, and still miss all eight goals in an eight goal thriller. There’s a certain kind of dumb skill to this – though I can’t think how to apply it anywhere else, or what its benefits could possibly be.

Later, on ‘Match of the Day’, Alan Shearer says what a good match it was. It blinkin’ wasn’t if you missed the goals, it was dull as hell.

Nope, didn't see that either

It was like going to a comedy festival and being in the Gents for every single punch-line.

Still, could have been worse – we might all have been Abou Diaby.

I Am Wearing The Hat Of An Alien Nobleman

2010-12-16T02:23:00.000-08:00

At the Football Christmas Dinner-Dance this Tuesday friend Terry arrived sporting a rather handsome winter hat. It was one of those Russian jobs, all fur and flaps that make you like Muttley. Fantastic.

I asked Tel two or three times where he’d got it from, to the extent that he (understandably) ended up squawking, ‘I don’t know, all right?’ And even, ‘Leave me alone, stop ringing me, it’s 4am! Right, that’s it, I’m going to call the police.’ To be fair, the central tenet of the average Football Christmas Dinner-Dance is to sufficiently indulge yourself that you’re only dimly aware what your name is, let alone where you once bought a hat.

Undeterred, I set out last night to find my own Russian Muttley hat. I’ve blogged at work about how shopping for me - as with many right-thinking people – is essentially a race to the finishing post, rather than a pleasure in itself. This time, though, The Hat Had To Be Right. If I was going to look ridiculous, I was going to look my kind of ridiculous. Oh yes. It’s a distinction, though admittedly not an honourable one.

Ten shops later, I found it. Fizzing with fur, flapping with flaps, and strappy with under-chin straps. Arctic winds, I Am Ready For You Now. ‘Aaaaaandsome.

However, I feel obliged at this point to explain my purchasing decision. It immediately occurred to me as I stuffed it on my bonce in River Island that the hat was very much in the style of the Graff Vynda K, a character in the 1978 Doctor Who adventure ‘The Ribos Operation’. So much so, I was half-expecting some really dodgy special effects to creep up behind me and flop onto my shoes.

I’m convinced this comparison would have occurred to almost anyone, once they’re tried the thing on. I mean, it was pretty obvious (see photo above of me trying the hat on, ably assisted by a terribly helpful member of staff).

In fact, I can’t believe this wasn’t intentional on the part of River Island’s buyers. I can see the marketing meeting now: ‘Right, let’s start. Everyone got coffees? Good. Now, anyone seen ‘The Ribos Operation’ – Tom Baker, 1978? No…?’

The whole shopping trip was so successful that I’m determined to base all future retail decisions on the style choices of fictional alien noblemen from doubtful late 70s science fiction. After all, it’s a proven formula.

It also enables me to write a blog with a title that sounds like a really bad translation.

The Unmistakeable Reek of Nostalgia

2010-11-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

Coming back from a curry last night our local station opened up a platform it never uses and a stairway to the Exit which emerges, Danger Mouse-like, from a doorway in a wall you never realised was there.

Man, that stairway took me back.

Long disused, it had managed to dodge yellow paint on the steps (obviously, I stumbled down them); helpful notices telling you to be careful on stairs (without which I was reckless, and even took two at a time – you simply can’t replace good advice when it’s gone); and no signs offering a call centre number to deal with all those late night stair-descent emergencies (“Hi there – I’m having trouble putting one foot in front of another. I think this is probably more my fault than yours, but can you help?”)

Best of all, it smelt like stairways, telephone boxes and car parks always should smell: of male piss. Ah, the nostalgia! Ah, those heady days, when no wall laboured without graffiti, and no street thumped to the bass from No 47 without black bin bags and dog turds!

And all the other long-gone strengths of this proud nation. People in what we would now call customer service jobs genuinely enjoying being snappy, dismissive and dumb. Trains with ripped seats in desperate need of a paint job. A general feeling that helping other people is basically suspect, and a bit weak.

Things ain’t what they used to be. What a stairway.

Canute of the Hair Waves

2010-11-15T15:42:00.001-08:00

So, how do you deal with the stuff?

I mean, it’s a battle, isn’t it? There’s the shaving, for a start – that’s another tiresome pointless daily routine to add to teeth-brushing, operatic indigestion and pretending not to recognise people you work with when you see them on the train.

And I don’t know about you, but my hair hits a point for about two days every two months when it’s in between ‘Quite short – looks faintly thuggish’ and ‘Misshapen – quick, alert his Carer.’ Two days, people.

As if that isn’t enough, there’s also white nostril hair to contend with. I mean, what am I, Santa Claus? How come I’m only an albino nasally? And what’s the point of ear hair, and why does it sprout like the tops of carrots?

It’s as if some weird internal coat of hair is slowly being pulled through my skin by invisible fingers.

Back, I command you. Hell, there goes another pair of shoes. Drenched by a hair tsunami.

And you know what really makes me parp the vuvuzela of righteous indignation (yes, I think you’ll find there is such a thing)? There’s not a single scrap of evidence that hirsute men are more manly, or cleverer, or sexier. Not one. Can you believe it?

I mean, what’s it all for?

Hmmm?

Jacobean Space Programme

2010-09-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Few years back, BBC History Magazine had an article on the Jacobean space programme. One of those articles where the title’s slightly better than the read (something you could never accuse this blog of), it concerned a seventeenth century gent who wanted to open trade routes to the moon, and designed a machine to get there.

The machine didn’t work. ‘Zounds, can’t understand it. I mean, it’s hardly rocket science, is it?’ ‘Wot’s “rocket science”?’

Better still, ‘Jacobean Space Programme’ is clearly the prog rock band that never quite happened. Everyone in the band with pointy beards. Lots of frilly shirt cuffs and long harpischord solos. The lead singer insists on signing autographs with a quill. People in the audience playing Air Lute. Jokey ‘B’side ‘You Never Look Tough When You’re Wearing A Ruff’ roundly hated by the fan club.

Jacobean Space Programme: for everyone who can’t be arsed to start a band, and is perfectly happy just making up the name.

Next month: we review difficult second albums from The Zippy Tortoises, Stalin Henderson, Cumberland Rat Station and The Flat Earth Surfers.

Snuffing Out Ghost Trains at Spencer Road Halt

2010-09-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

Just inside the less obvious entrance to Victoria station is a map of the Southern Railways network which I would guess was painted onto the tiles in the twenties. It’s a handsome piece of work, and includes a number of long-dead stations local to The World of Quark such as Selsdon, the outline of which can still be glimpsed from Sanderstead trains, and Bingham Road Halt, where Tony Hancock filmed a scene for ‘The Rebel’.

More bewilderingly, it also mentions a mythical beast called ‘Spencer Road Halt’. This rather marvellous website reveals Spencer Road to have been only fleetingly in use, between 1906 and 1915; but rather than being pulled down, it seems to have been left to rot – and can still be found, just about, between two streets of houses, one of which is Birdhurst Rise, best known for a series of notorious murders a decade or so after Spencer Road Halt closed.

A footpath links Birdhurst Rise and the eponymous Spencer Road. Weaving behind houses, flats and a Scout hut, you suddenly come across a large metal bridge which looms improbably up at you, as if someone’s left it there by mistake. It’s impossible to tell it was a bridge over a railway track – nowadays, it overlooks a long stream of large trees, which have dramatically reclaimed the area.

Endearingly, someone at Southern Railways has taken the instruction ‘Catalogue everything we own, Nigel’ to an extreme and even though Spencer Halt is now just an inappropriate bridge glub-glub-glubbing under waves of foliage, the bridge still has an official number and the edge of each step has been carefully painted yellow, so that very lost people, the phantoms of commuters and Scoutmasters don’t come a cropper. Thoughtfully, someone has even dumped some bags of rubbish to give that authentic ‘old station’ feel.

And then out onto Spencer Road, with a slight feeling of: ‘Did that really happen…?’

Constructing the Dustbin of History

2009-11-30T15:53:00.001-08:00

I think it’s time to stop dilly-dallying consigning fascism, communism, shoulder pads, teletext and most iterations of facial hair to the dustbin of history in merely a metaphorical way. Where’s the sense in that?

I think it’s high time we actually built the blessed thing, located it somewhere central so everyone could reach it and then got on with the business of consigning things to it in a very real and rather satisfying way.

Perhaps there could be litter bins of history too, to save people the journey if there were local things they wanted to consign. So for instance, the people of Barking might want to consign the fascism in their area to their litter bins of history, as distinct from fascism in its entirety, which of course would still have to be deposited in the main dustbin of history, sorry, DUSTBIN OF HISTORY™ .

Of course, before you knew it, a small industry would spring up around consigning things to history. Inevitably there would be a large outsourcing firm, probably called ‘Consign’, with distinctive purple dust carts (branded: ‘When it comes to rubbish, we’re history’). Maybe the ‘operatives’ would wear a different uniform each week from a different age – this week deerstalkers and capes, next week periwigs, another week doublet and hose. All topped with a bright orange vest, obviously.

Excellent. I’m thinking something gun metal, perhaps with bright lilac bunting. And maybe with a crack team of trombone players playing comic fanfares whenever there’s a new consignment.

Next week: genetically engineering the mother of all lottery wins.

Suicide Isn’t What It Used To Be

2009-11-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

I was standing at the station this morning when quite without any advance notice a little old lady walked up to me and said: ‘Those rails are there to stop people jumping in front of the trains. Wasn’t like that in the old days.’

Tactfully, I bit back the temptation to say: ‘No – then people were free to jump in front of trains as much as they liked. Shocking abuse of our liberties.’

I stared obediently at the railings in question. As it turned out, they were smack in the middle of the platform. So would-be suicides would have had a spectacularly wonky sense of spatial awareness to let the railings come between them and train-shaped death. They’d basically have to run away from the onrushing train as if their lives depended on it, which sounds like a pretty poor definition of suicide to me.

The railings also looked Victorian to me. How old was this little old lady? What ‘old days’ was she referring to – the middle ages?

She might have had a point there: people threw themselves in front of trains a whole lot less then.

The Daily Quark: Always First With The Obvious

2008-12-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

Here at The Daily Quark we grasp with both hands our responsibility to bring you the knee-jerkingly obvious, presented as news.

Our award-winning coverage of the hedge funds scandals, for instance: People Everyone Always Thought Were Dodgy Turn Out, Inevitably, To Have Been Dodgy.

And our eye-catching coverage of the economic crisis, which took our reputation for being ‘wise after the event’ to brave new highs: Even Though Nobody Could Possibly Have Known This Was Going To Happen, How Come Nobody Knew This Was Going To Happen…?

Next week we start a ground-breaking retrospective, blowing open the sordid world of media and the cartel of woolly liberals who seek to bring down western civilisation by producing programmes like Antiques Roadshow and Country File. First part: Contemporary Comedians Who Are Paid For Their Brand Of Offensive, Edgy Humour May Sometimes Be Offensive. And Edgy.

Constructing New Ghosts

2008-11-25T15:25:00.001-08:00

The drool-flecked shadow of Beeching still looms large over the UK’s rail network. Beeching’s talons did for some 3,500 railways stations, of which choo-choo expert Christian Wolmar reckons a third would be of real use today. There goes the environment.

Beeching created a host of ghost stations. As your freshly rebranded 8:14 swishes past, there it is - an incongruously flat space, overgrown with grass, reclaimed by creepers and brush. A tell-tale car park space, maybe even a derelict waiting room and ticket office. Hell’s that ticking sound?! Nothing more sinister than phantom commuters, tutting like metronomes as their own 8:14 is announced to be five minutes late.

And perhaps we are in the business this year of creating new ghosts up and down the country. Just as ghosts stations haunt our suburbs and villages, so on the high street, I guess the new ghosts will be the forgotten branches of banks…

Expect high streets otherwise lively with debt collection agencies, discount supermarkets and charity shops to be blighted by desolate former banks, five pound notes blowing disconsolately, leaf-like, across deserted counters before settling on yellowing cardboard cut-outs advertising the latest 0% credit card.

That’ll do nicely.

The Silent Death of John Smith

2008-04-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

Recently a pal from University, who I’d lost touch with, tracked me down through a couple of Google searches and a hopeful phone message. The mobile number he left didn’t work, so I retaliated and searched for him in turn. Two hits later, turns out he’s now married, to someone from Southampton; is a hotshot lawyer; and is still the handsome devil he ever was.

It’s a familiar story. However, both searches were helped by the fact neither of us have particularly common names (makes you wonder how effective similar searches are in Wales). Which, coincidentally, is an emerging trend. As the lust after individuality which began in early modern times now licks its own mirror to the tune of our celebrity culture, parents are opting more and more for less obvious names. It’s thank you and goodnight for John Smith, and hello Sunshine Turtle-Harrison.

Which in turn will feed Facebook, Bebo - and whatever comes after them and makes them look like electronic post-it notes. The balloon of social networking gets punctured by the pin of a common name: put in ‘Peter Williams’ and you can hear it pop and deflate. Fortunately, even surnames are changing, probably more than they have for five hundred years. There are far more double-barrelled names, either through divorce, or a more equal divvying up of parents’ monikers; the double barrelled name now has nothing to do with class. Has it, Kylie Duncan-Flap?

In short, when it comes to names, you’re going to need something a little bit more individual if you’re going to play any part in mainstream society in the future (*licence for dubious argument pending). But never fear, largely because we’re more self-obsessed, vain and increasingly rubbish at marriage, individuality can be yours (in name, at least).

It’s often said that today’s “selfish society” could never fight a World War. Once conscription was announced, too many people would explain that war “wasn’t right for them” or that it “didn’t fit with their personal brand”, which of course would be fair enough. On a brighter note, assuming that were true, with our funky names and our social networks, at least it would be easy to make contact with the few survivors.

Anyone Seen My Chesterfield Sofa?

2008-02-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

Every century has a genius for something. Our century has a genius for the fatuous.

This week’s jewel of irrelevance is the announcement they force train drivers to make on pulling into a major station: ‘Please ensure, when leaving the train, you take all belongings with you’. Who does that help, then, apart from box-tickers at the train company?

Do amnesiacs spring up on hearing such a reminder and yell, ‘Cripes! Nearly forgot the parakeet!’ Have the terminally absent-minded, perhaps lugging a Chesterfield sofa around with them, hastily leapt back on the train following such an announcement, to rescue the offending piece of furniture?

Has the train companies’ token thoughtfulness resulted in a net increase in marital bliss, perhaps, as couples heed the advice and, on average, forget each other less?

When leaving this blog, please ensure you take all your belongings with you.

Office blocks to lift the spirit

2008-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

I note with a real sense of jubilation and relief that the new development outside East Croydon station (pearl amongst commuting stations) will include ‘Grade ‘A’ office space for 500 people’.

Thank God for that! At last. After all, if there’s one thing Croydon needs, it’s more office space. Some skyscrapers would be nice, for instance - some tower blocks and some office blocks to lift the spirit and gladden the heart.

Perhaps we can finally make ‘Croydon – the quaint, rural village’ the thing of the past. Perhaps we can finally banish our town’s reputation as a bucolic backwater and instead lurch, sorry, leap into the ‘white heat’ of the twenty-first century.

Gone will be Hobbledehoys, the Croydon village blacksmith. Away with Gristlegums, the village butcher, and Silas Snout, the wheezing village tobacconist. Away with PC Humble, the village copper; perhaps now our notoriously crime-free idyll can embrace the kind of fashionable crime levels you would expect from a twenty-first century metropolis!

As for the ducks in Croydon village pond, they can sod off as well. Let’s build some sort of dual carriageway through the village green, that’ll settle their hash (as they used to say in ‘Warlord’).

Vive la concrete revolution! More offices means more ‘thinking outside the box’, doesn’t it? And that can only be good, can’t it?

Can’t it?

Low Quality of Clouds Around Here

2008-01-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

When water droplets condense, notoriously, something interesting happens. It’s possible that birds see clouds as nothing more than traffic jams. Birds are wrong.

However, if the sky is nature’s monitor screen – and I think we can all agree it is – then winter is a hell of a dull screen saver.

After all, one of the great pointless pleasures in life is to piddle about staring at archipelagos of clouds and imagining in them the faces of traffic wardens we have loved, or favourite doorkeys, or different parts of your own intestine. We've all done it.

You’d think that because winter, with its featureless grey skies, precludes such distractions, we’d all focus instead – ironically - on higher things; or at least on more obvious things. But as everyone’s too knackered, cold and broke to concentrate on anything other than sleep, and perhaps the odd slice of cake, higher things, whatever they may be, don't stand a chance.

So conjure up elusive spirits: cumulus, stratus, nimbus, cirrus...

New Year’s Resolutions for sale

2007-12-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

It’s a pain in the cracker thinking up new year’s resolutions. Here at Quark Inc., we take the pain out of the process by creating some for you. Why not go for a bulk deal, and buy your resolutions for the next five new years? Volume discounts available.

Choose your New Year's Resolution from:

1. Invent a new jam
2. Launch new ways of pronouncing own name and convince 80% of friends to adopt them, however ridiculous, by 30 April 2008
3. Promote campaign for worldwide ban on middle names
4. Save World - or failing that, save £5 a week
5. Cure flatulence, but refuse to tell anyone on the grounds it amuses small children
6. Do one thing different every day (but maintain horrendously high levels of tea-drinking throughout)
7. Take up smoking in flagrant defiance of government legislation and prevailing cultural norms.

Each resolution costs just £7.50 (incl P+P).

You’ll be glad your new year started at Quark Inc!

Editing Love Songs for Sense and Style

2007-12-17T15:31:00.000-08:00

When an author finishes a novel, typically the publisher then employs an Editor to go right through it, blowtorch together any gaping plot flaws, hammer out infelicities and shore up the more rickety of the metaphors. The novel’s then published, and despite this attention to detail, will probably be read by a few thousand people at best.

Songs produced by recording artistes, some of them destined for the orifices of millions, get slapped out into the market, their weakly thought-through lyrics preserved in all their inconsistencies and inadequacies for all of us to cherish. Why are there no editors in the recording business?

For instance, when John Farnham wrote his lumbering 80s pop anthem ‘The Voice’, why wasn’t there someone on hand to point out that ‘You’re the voice, try and understand it’ sounds an awful lot like ‘You’re the voice, dumbass, try and wrap your misfiring synapses around the concept, if it isn’t too much TROUBLE.’

And only lack of an editor meant Band Aid could get away with giving Bono the line ‘And tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you’. Unedited subtext: ‘Millions are starving in Africa. On the plus side, at least it’s not you or me, eh? Cup of tea? Slice of cake?’

Editors could also recommend that writers of love songs avoid on principle references to nesting birds as, like it or not, doves play only a very minimal part in people’s lives, and not nearly enough to justify their regular appearance in the bespattered streets and fetid public squares of Love Song Land. Doves: you only got the gig because you rhymed with something. If mankind had turned out differently, and enjoyed songs about say, kitchens, rather than love, you’d be nowhere, and we’d all have a thing about pigeons instead.

Altogether now: ‘I adore you as any man would his kitchen/Outside on the window ledge, there’s a ruddy great pigeon.’ Which is why this is a blog, and not a song.

Next week: why gloves aren’t any good as a metaphor, either.

What Technology Should Be For

2007-12-05T15:12:00.001-08:00

The obvious drawback to highly advanced digital technology is that it often can’t be bothered to work. The more arcane drawback to it is that its principles, disappointingly, can’t be exported into real life.

How many of us, having said something crashingly tactless, or twatty, have searched in vain for the back button? How many of us, on the twentieth back-breaking press-up, have moaned to just cut and paste the last five?

And if only daily conversation worked like the shuffle does on an iPod. You’d never know what conversation you were getting – it’d be satisfyingly random. You might pop into the newsagents, ask for a copy of ‘The Daily Quark’ and perhaps a bar of tasty ‘Caramac’ – and instead be treated to a short verbal treatise on, ooooh I dunno, The Glorious Revolution of 1688. In meetings, when it came to the Ops Report, instead the ‘conversation shuffle’ might throw up a debate about ‘Photography – is it an art, or isn’t it? And either way, are my holiday snaps ready yet?'

After all, most of us seem fated to have the same conversation over and over again throughout our lives – or, at best, the same few conversations. ‘What is the point of this job?’ and ‘Why do I support this team again?’ and ‘You’re definitely sure this will support my weight?’ We need, my friends, the ‘conversation shuffle’, and I’d be grateful if one of you could invent it.

That said, I was sitting on a tube train last Wednesday when a complete stranger turned to me and tried to start a conversation about The Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Naturally, I told him to f*** off, the pointless freak.

Wanted: Job Title Jockey (good hours)

2007-11-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

Job titles: we’re not being imaginative enough. My friends, Something Must Be Done. We owe it to that bundle of unused business cards crunching in your pocket to develop their potential. It’s not enough to be a ‘Client Manager’ any more; our own personal brands demand more than merely ‘Services Operative’, or even the slyly deceptive ‘Publishing Executive.’

No, what we need to see on business cards is: ‘Saviour of the Planet (Mon-Weds only)’. Put aside ‘Business Manager’, let’s see ‘Product Panjandrum’. Forget ‘Internal Marketing Manager’, let’s have ‘Mission Statement Messiah’.

Failing that, perhaps we could go the opposite way and have refreshingly frank job titles instead. ‘Panic Merchant.’ ‘Consummate Politician’. ‘Director of Own Personal Ego.’ For the colleague on whom good ideas tend to snag, and never progress: ‘Ian Briggs, Corporate Barbed Wire Fence.’ For the fussy colleague who prefers detail over activity: ‘Rose Humphries, Niggle Tsar'. And for the colleague quick to snuggle up to senior managers when they heave into view: ‘Anthony Williams, Apple Polisher.'

Quark: you’re fired.

Quark’s English for Commercial Travellers No 2

2007-11-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

‘Henderson’: Former schoolmate or work colleague who forces you to get back in touch via Facebook or similar, even though you knowingly cut all contact with them years ago (source: Kevin Henderson, Class 4B, Trinity School, Croydon – the original and worst perpetrator)

Killer Ladybirds threaten the galaxy

2007-11-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

Quark Towers has come under attack. Ladybirds of every description are everywhere. You can see them, small black dots clinging to the curtains as if someone has shaken all the full stops out of a novel.

They’re marching across the carpet in highly drilled formations, and the more fanciful amongst us fully expect to see a diminutive brass band bringing up the rear, playing ladybird MOR classics, with one eye on the Christmas market for an iTunes only download. In short, they’re aware of technology too.

Oh sure, they seem cute. Oh sure, they seem harmless. But Quark can assure you this is nothing less than an invasion. Don’t be fooled: those shells are helmets. And they can fly. Be prepared to be divebombed by ostensibly cute, ultimately deadly small insects.

One of these days we’ll wake up and St Paul’s cathedral, St Peter’s in Rome and Sacre Coeur all boasting domes coloured scarlet with large black dots. And then, my friends, you’ll remember my words; but by then, it’ll be too late.

We need to rearm now.

‘Daily Quark’ campaign for warmer weather succeeds

2007-11-01T15:28:00.001-07:00

The ‘Daily Quark’ campaign for warmer weather has succeeded. Temperatures are soaring into double figures as our quarktastic campaign sends the cold fronts packing. Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister, said yesterday: ‘I fully support the Daily Quark’s inspired campaign to stop cold weather coming into this country. And I will continue to do so as long as there is any chance of such support delivering me votes. Brrr.’

Without the ‘Daily Quark’ campaign, Britain would have suffered early morning frosts as early as October, icicles would have appeared on the noses of any goblins who happened to be in the area and glove sales would be up again for the second year running. Thanks to the ‘Daily Quark’, foreign cold fronts have been banished from our shores, and Britain has been kept for British weather. [See page two of your warmfrontderful ‘Daily Quark’ for our new campaign to stop the sea coming in]

Quark’s English for Commercial Travellers No 1

2007-10-25T15:32:00.001-07:00

‘Soup magnet’: insurance industry slang for ‘tie.’

The effect of leaves on a post-industrial economy

2007-10-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

Trains in England have begun broadcasting warnings that they may not necessarily run on time due to excessive leaf-fall. The leaves fall, and the trains shudder to a halt, like cartoon elephants terrified of cartoon mice. Is Autumn really that stark an innovation, or so profoundly unpredictable - coming as it does every year without fail, around October - that this couldn’t have been guessed at by the timetable boffins, working their dark, macabre arts?

It’s a crisis. Knowledge workers are being kept from their memos, marketers are being kept from their USPs and positioning statements, business managers everywhere are being kept from leveraging whatever they’ve taken it into their heads to leverage. The economy must be wobbling like a jelly.

It’s hard to imagine the Victorians, who bust sinews and bored through hillsides to create the damn railways in the first place, giving in this easily to excessive foliage. Then again, as the railways were probably built with child labour, amongst other things, maybe where we’ve failed isn’t as significant as where we’ve improved.

On utterly unnecessary frost

2007-10-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

Fine, if you're in an 80s pop video, I can see the point of lavish amounts of cold: bit of a brisk wind, epic seacape in the background, in come the swirling synthesisers. Makes sense. But for the rest of us, why bother? Why stand shivering on train stations, when there's clearly no danger we're collectively going to pop up in a Flock of Seagulls video - but instead are destined to freeze our (in many cases, metaphorical) nads off? I've already broken out the duffle coat in the manner of a hunter in the Canadian wastes breaking out the last pack of cartridges as all around the wolves howl (and no, I'm sorry, I don't think that's an extreme comparison). If God had meant us to be this cold, this early in the autumn, he wouldn't have given us ears.