Dream Voyage


"We appear to have lost our sex appeal, Captain."
- Tuvok, Star Trek: Voyager.

Thursday:

Last night I dreamed my father was a violently abusive parent, threatening to castrate me if I didn't obey him.

But instead of running away or smashing something heavy over his head, we went on a cosy family holiday where I was desperate to make him love me.

Most odd, and not like me at all. Anyone would think I'd been reading Freud and eating cheese before bed.

Then I dozed off again, and dreamed I was a new member of the starship Voyager, where Tom Paris and Harry Kim were having lots of sex.

Back to normality then. Much more me.

When I woke up, my father was trying to repaint a room in his usual, um, thorough and unhurried way. And Voyager was about to start on TV.

Friday:

Spent most of the day taking apart a hi-fi system. No, not your usual GBP50 affair, the cheap cube of black plastic with flashing lights, mysterious buttons and graphic equaliser to make it look space-age.

This one cost GBP50K. Fifty thousand english pounds.

Each unit has its own stackable table, made of teak, tinted glass and chrome. It's the size of a large wardrobe on its side and each module made almost entirely of brushed metal.

It's got metre's and metres of cables so reinforced you could use them to tie down a family of rhinos. It's got sockets I've never even heard of, and speakers as tall as me.

It includes twelve separately powered pre-amps - for what conceivable purpose I've no idea - plus two astonishingly delicate turntables, and a CD player that looks like it's built to house radioactive waste.

There's no flashing lights, a total of six buttons, and the graphic equaliser is a separate unit, half the size and twice the weight of a tower PC.

And it's a big name brand: Namely Naim.

Oh yes, and it was my task to disassemble it for transport. Without an instruction manual. Got about a third of it done in five hours.

More tomorrow.

I've had a brilliant business idea.

Whenever you call up a call centre, you get put on hold for several minutes/hours/days, with either Handel's Water Music or Vivaldi's Four Seasons on infinite loop.

It's annoying, and makes you want to throttle the person who may or may not eventually take you call.

Now, there's also loads of bands out there who're so desperate to be heard they'll do pay-to-play gigs. You see where this is going?

The band provide me with their demo CD, which for a small charge I rip and insert "The next track is XXX by YYY." and "You just heard YYY playing XXX. Hear more on their myspace page."

The company with the call centre pay me a small fee for that month's song list, which gets played on shuffle to waiting customers.

Bands get exposure, customers no longer hate the company quite so much, and I retire to the Mediterranean. Where I'm waited on by Greek slave boys until my mysterious disappearance at the hands of Mossad and/or the CIA.

Almost as good a business model as this poor deluded fellow.

5 comments:

  1. If only someone had handed you a copy of Popular Prick when you were dreaming of trying to make your father love you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. On first read, I thought you said you dreamt of making love to your father. That would have been Freudian.

    Can I play my PS3 through your Naim? Is that the behaviour of a different kind of prick... a large car replaced by oodles of electrical gadgets?

    Popular Prick - I thought I was reading about Paul Mckenna to start with

    ReplyDelete
  3. MJ:
    That would have been spooky.

    Hardhouse:
    As I recall, Francis Bacon - the artist not the philosopher - fancied his father. Who was indeed abusive.

    I think a Naim would refuse to be connected to a PS3 on principle. Maybe that's why it's got such odd cable connections - to prevent...miscegenation with lower life forms.

    Paul McKenna - Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh.

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  4. Francis Bacon - I like his work because I don't like it

    *ignoring PS3 comment*
    I waste much time on Desmond Miles

    Popular Prick boasts a Psych degree which is a bit like admitting to trepanation 1000BC. Psychology is in its infancy and has no answers... yet!

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  5. Better hold off the Greek retirement plans...I hear there's rioting in the streets. You'll have a hard time buying slaveboys when the markets have been burned to the ground and the merchandise is doing the rioting. Try Iceland--I hear nothing ever happens there...except for Bjork; but you can shoot her and say you were hunting for swans and she strayed in the line of fire.

    The new tunes while on hold idea sounds good.

    I had a Star Trek Voyager dream once: 7 of 9 was assimilating me...over and over again.

    ReplyDelete