Song, by Toad

One drink, home early, not staying out, want to take it easy tonight… it’s just never going to bloody happen, is it.  Pure fantasy.

Last night’s escapades mean that I had far too little sleep last night, and something of a hangover this morning.  This puts me in no fucking mood to piss about with my cunting colleagues, who seem to have decided that answering the fucking phone is beneath them.  Our receptionist is off today, which means that we all have to take turns answering the phone, but apparently ‘taking turns’ needs to be explained in really big letters, and preferably with pictorial aids.  Apprently some people simply don’t hear and some people ‘have a deadline’.

To put you in the picture, there are only about twenty of us in our office in the first place, and we are a consultancy – every single fucking one of us is working to a fucking deadline, because that’s what our damn clients pay us for: to do their panicking for them.  I actually had to reach over some cunt’s desk this morning in order to answer the incoming call on his fucking phone.

“Hi, SuperdesignCo…  yes just a moment, who’s speaking please… yes I’ll put you through.”  Hardly enormously time consuming or intellectually fucking challenging you would fucking well think.  It reminds me of those cunts who are forever boasting about how many emails they bloody well have.  Yes, don’t worry, we all know how jolly clever and important you are.  There’s time for a chat, time for a coffee, time to fanny about pissing and moaning about how fucking busy they are, but not enough time to spend a minute answering the fucking telephone.

So for the rest of the day, I am far too busy and have decided that I am going to be pointedly too important to answer the damn phone.  Fuck it, it isn’t going to be for me anyway, so if anyone wants me I am going to be having a nap in the loo.

1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?

The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Clem Snide – Don’t Be Afraid of Your Anger

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Divine Comedy – A Drinking Song

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

John Cooper Clarke – Twat

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This podcast is unconscionably late once more and again I am going to plead that there is a perfectly good reason for this.  Today has been taken up with constant recording here at Toad Hall, and I myself have been finishing the video for the Honeytrap Toad Session which finally, finally will be making an appearance this time next week.  My job is virtually finished, and it’s messy, but it will be a corker.

This podcast has no real theme, but I did let Neil choose most of the songs, so that gives the podcast something of a character of its own.  I did make him be on a podcast with a Noah & the Whale song on it though.  Ha haaa!  That’ll teach the trendy little bastard!

Toadcast #89 – The Latecast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Sunset Rubdown – I’ll Believe in Anything You’ll Believe in Anything (02.09)
02. King Creosote – Homeboy (09.14)
03. Rob St. John – Domino (Live) (18.13)
04. Noah & the Whale – The First Days of Spring (23.05)
05. Melanie – What Have They Done to My Song, Ma (31.35)
06. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Stop! (39.42)
(Interlude music: The Divine Comedy – Theme From Casanova)
07. The Notwist – The Devil, You & Me (45.53)
08. Mum – Green Grass of Tunnel (49.26)
09. Sol Seppy – Hafiz, a Mime (60.18)

[After unfairly raising my expectations with the saucy title, Mrs. Toad has lapsed into something of a furious rant about mobile phones. She walks it the way she talks it too - I can never get the old bat on the bloody phone when I need her. Anyway, she's erm, gone a bit mental and good luck to you...]

Mobile phones are useful. Even an anti social fuck like me has to admit that. However, they also have the unfortunate side effect of turning amiable people into annoying, rude fucktards. And that is why it fills me with dismay that mobile phones will soon be allowed on planes.

Mobile phone rudeness provokes me to the point of apoplexy. People sit in the pub with phones in front of them, peering at it and fiddling with it, holding up a finger to cut fellow drinkers off in mid conversation so that their phone can be answered, texting and chuckling at incoming texts mid dinner. Strangely, no-one hits them (though I am available for random acts of violence and children’s parties if anyone wants to outsource). Remember when even having a mobile (and before that the carphone) was the mark of a total tosser?

In public places, phones constantly chirp with loud, irritating ring tones; if 666 is the Mark of the Beast, the Crazy Frog is the Mark of the Cunt. This noise apparently lets the phone’s owner know that it’s time to stop dead in the middle of a busy thoroughfare like a crippled bovine retard and engage in long conversations that make Paris Hilton sound positively intelligent by comparison. The truly inspiring knuckle grazers also manage a muttered “fucks sake” or martyred look when the hordes behind try to push past them as they exchange their bons mots. I admit that, as a Blackberry addict, I am not immune from indulging in a form of telephonic twattery, but at least by obsessing over e-mail, I’m quiet about it and rarely park myself right in front of busy escalator in the mall to engage with my addiction.

Like a car, where the cocooned environment seems to provoke a “me versus the rest of them”, attitude in otherwise placid people, the mobile phone seems to inspire truly remarkable selfishness. People turning down or postponing the demands of a strident phone in favour of their human companions is the exception rather than the rule despite the existence of voicemail. The relationship between phone user and phone is needy, slightly anxious and immediate. For the truly afflicted, the phone constantly in their hands is a sad physical manifestation of their insecurity, like those sad fucks that used to leave the Hugo Boss labels sewn on the sleeves of their suits in the 80’s.

And now, even 30,000 feet won’t be far enough away from these mongers. I travel regularly on planes and already, without mid air usage, there are particularly annoying phone patterns associated with air travel. The Touch Down call – the people who are so important that the instant the planes lands, they must whip out their phones and make a call (loudly, otherwise what’s the point). The Terminal Bore – the men (usually) who strut up and down the terminal bellowing into phones, often on a Nathan Barley headset, checking to make sure people are watching them (FYI quickly belming or making a silver quick wanking gesture knocks them off their stride). The Telephonically Immune – the people who in, defiance of all the rules that render plebs like you or I un-contactable for 10 minutes, have the unique and god given right to make and receive calls in the security areas and the customs hall. I have actually seen one of these spanners do the finger holding up thing to a customs officer who asked him to terminate his call. Funnily enough, he got pulled aside for extra immigration checks and I do that hope KY and a vigourous rubber glove were involved. Actually, fuck that, I hope they were out of KY and let the day release trainee use meths and a wire brush to have a good root around his jacksie.

Will it be popular to use mobiles on planes? A hippy view might be that since it is so annoying to have other people make phone calls on planes, considerate people won’t choose to make calls themselves, in the advancement of the mutual good. Well, fuck the hippies. No-one seems to give a shit about the mutual good since it stopped involving sitting under bushes at open air festivals, whacked on acid and indiscriminately banging people called Leaf, Wind and Moonbeam. In fact, I suspect there will be more than a few former such hippies, now encased in Brooks Brothers uniforms, among the first to bray into their Motorola flips about the S&P as the seatbelt sign pings off.

And even if it is common, surely people will be discreet? Hmmm, no.

A former (and very slight) acquaintance used to have his mates call him and then hang up when he was in trendy bars in London. The purpose being that he could stand next to hot chicks at the bar and bark into the mute handset about holding out for another million, yeah, Noel and Liam are lined up and, yes, Kate Moss should be guestlisted but that that kraut boot Claudia can fuck off. This bellend actually worked for an insurance company in the ass end of the auto claims department (until he was fired for sheer uselessness). Now, there’s no fucking way that a total cocksmoker like that isn’t going to use his mobile on a plane and there’s also no way that I am not going to want to ram it up his asshole sideways before beating his face bloody on the back of the chair in front.

I am the avenging air marshall for those who enjoy dozily relaxing on an 8 hour flight, being served hand and foot and watching movies in peace and quiet. Be warned. I fly a lot. I might be on your plane. Think before you use that phone.

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone – Don’t They Have Payphones Whereever You Were Last Night?
Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone
The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

[You know why I love this post?  Because I have been so busy all weekend with the Alela Diane session and Mrs. Toad took it upon herself to write a little something because she knew I would be struggling and I looked exhausted.  So a foul-mouthed old harridan she may be, but she's a sweet lass in her own way.  And I wouldn't be without her for anything, silly girl.

Oh, and she only touched on it, but there are monumental levels of Blackberry hypocrisy going on here which are really quite hilarious- T]