BenPaddon.co.uk

Here’s the second ficlet I ever wrote.

Death Of A Boring Call Centre Employee

“So I’m dead, then?”

Dave hadn’t been ready for this. He’d spent most of his life working in Customer Care for a Broadband supplier. When he wasn’t at work, he was at home buying rare playing cards on the web. This is how he’d spent his time, and now he was stood in front of God, he had to admit that he felt a pang of regret.

“Yep,” replied God.

“And you’re quite sure you’re God?”

“I was the last time I looked, yeah.”

“But,” and Dave tried to pluck the right words out of the air here so as not to offend the Almighty, “You’re only five foot tall. Your tee-shirt’s filthy. And you’ve clearly got bits of tissue stuck to your face where you’ve cut yourself shaving.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” grunted God. “Especially you lot. You ‘umans spent so much time tryin’ to make sure the afterlife is a good’n, you forget to live. Dun’t occur to you that might be it, does it?”

“So there’s… nothing?”

“Nope.”

And as he began to fade away, Dave began to wonder exactly what an eternity of nothingness would feel like…

Commentary…

This is, probably, a revised version of a short story I wrote a few years ago about a man who accidentally kills himself in his kitchen with a butter knife. He’s visited by Death, who turns out to be a short, dumpy man in a stained Manchester United shirt and tatty jeans. I guess it amuses me to take traditionally “epic” looking mythological entities, like Death or God, and make them completely and utterly unimpressive.

The recently deceased gentleman in this story might be me. I don’t know. I used to work in a call centre, and I used to live half a life before I realised I had a life that wasn’t worth wasting. Maybe this ficlet is symbolic of the death of my former self? The one who just worked in a call centre because he felt he was beneath everything else. The one who was in a relationship he didn’t want to be in because he’d settled. The one who had the same sandwich for lunch, day-in, day-out, because he was scared of trying something new. Or maybe it’s not. I’m sure I wouldn’t know.

In Retrospect…

I think God’s casual, rough dialect is perhaps a little over-the-top. I could have probably just got away with dropping t’s and g’s from the ends of words rather than dropping the h from “humans” and spelling “don’t with a u. Other than that, I’m pretty proud of this one.

The first in the two-part web-miniseries written by myself and Michelle is now online. You can watch it in HD here. If you like it, please Digg it!

With Ficlets set to close in a mere two-and-a-bit weeks, I’ve decided to post one of my ficlets up on this site every day for the next… well, for however long I have ficlets to post. So here’s the first one I ever wrote.

An Undesirable Happenstance

“People often make the mistake of assuming that monsters lurk in the darkness. This is not true. No, the real monsters are out there in the light for all to see, not lurking but walking proudly, triumphantly, among the people. They enact their deeds for all to see, and what’s more they get away with it, because for some inexplicable reason people are far more forgiving of a monster in the light than they are of the creatures in the dark.”

“Oh, shut up, Brian,” said Clive. “Bloody Hell, do you have to be so preachy all the time?”

“It’s true,” replied Brian. “We live in a corrupted world. People eating society from the inside out to suit their own ends. Corporations lyi—”

“Will you put a sock in it, please? For just two minutes? I’m trying to get a signal on the radio, and I’d have a much better go of it if you weren’t yammering in my ear like Che Guevara’s parrot.”

But he wouldn’t hear anything. He never did. They were alone on a desolate planet, and had been for decades. Plus the radio wasn’t plugged in.

Commentary…

The story behind this one isn’t particularly exciting. I just started writing the opening monologue. It was broody, and as I heard it in my head it sounded incredibly hammy. So I threw in a second character to tell the first character, now named Brian (because the more mundane a character’s name, the funnier it is), to shut up. From there, the rest of the ficlet wrote itself.

In Retrospect…

I think that last line about the radio is a bit much. Does it really make any difference? I don’t know.

Got back in LA yesterday, and almost immediately went to bed. I did a little unpacking but I didn’t have the energy to finish and so just conked out in bed. I woke up briefly at 2am to have what I will describe as a “noteworthy” nosebleed, but once that had finished up I didn’t have difficulty getting back to sleep.

I woke up at 7am, had a shower, and finished unpacking. Then I went to make sure the copy of Lips I’d bought for Michelle and Mandalyn would work on an American 360 (it does), and went to set up my new, shiny 120GB 360 Hard Drive.

I picked the drive up in England, taking advantage of the collapse of Woolworths and saving a nice chunk off of the cost of the drive. I popped the disc into the drive, and was presented with a lovely error message telling me that the region code on the disc di not match the console. Can you believe that? Lips, a karaoke game chock-a-block full of licensed music, has no region encoding, but a utility to transfer data from one hard drive to another does? Bloody Hell, Microsoft.

I called up Xbox Tech Support. Knowing full well that their call centres are staffed entirely by recently labotomized babboons with ADD and only three fingers on each hand, I decided to tell them I’d bought the drive but it hadn’t come with the disc. The first gentleman I spoke to wanted to take my console’s serial number. I started unplugging the console and when I’d finally found the number (hidden underneath the wireless network adapter) he’d hung up. The second gentleman I spoke to took the number, told me I needed to register my console, but hung up when I went to give him my address. The third took all the details, then told me my console was out of warranty and they couldn’t send me the disc.

Erm, what?

I asked to speak to a Supervisor, and it seems I was fortunate enough to speak to the one sane person in the entire department. I should get a new data transfer kit in about 5 working days. Success!

MIcrosoft actually let me win one. I’m gobsmacked.

I’ve been back in England since Wednesday visiting family and friends, and the past few days have already been much more interesting (and far less dramatic!) than my visit back in September. My sister Teri and her fiance, Mike, very kindly picked me up from the airport this time, so I didn’t have to endure the arrogant cockery of the National Express coach driver. Instead we only had to contend with a car that could only just fit both of my ruddy great big cases in it, and roadworks which caused us to miss our junction on the motorway and end up, briefly, in Slough.

On Thursday my Auntie Jel brought over a Surprise Guest - my cousin Daniel, who I haven’t seen since I was far too young to remember having seen him. I immediately knew who he was, though - his face has hardly changed from the sketchy half-memories lurking in my mind. Plus Mum told me Daniel was coming over. It was great to see him, though, and we swapped contact details (by which I mean I gave him one of my Swanky Business Cards).

Yesterday was arguably the first day that the economic recession impacted me personally (if you ignore things like, y’know, everything else). I went to the Smoothie place in the Arndale Centre in Luton and asked for a Cherry Frenzy.

“We don’t have any cherries,” I was told. “Nobody has any. They’re like sixty quid a box now, so it’s not really worth buying ‘em.”

I was flabbergasted, and my mind began to think about other fruit. What if the price of blackcurrants goes up? What happens, then, to the cost of a bottle of Ribena? I should drink as much here, then, as I can. Who knows when it’ll go away?

I’ve been getting up pretty early, like clockwork, so I’m about to bugger off for a walk. I apologise for what I’m sure has been a profoundly boring blog post.

Have you played Left 4 Dead yet? It’s almost, but not quite, the zombie game I’ve visualized in my head now for the past four years, and it’s definitely the best multiplayer gaming experience I’ve had since Team Fortress 2. Most nights I can be found playing L4D online on the PC, usually with Michelle, David and Mandolyn.

I mention this because a couple of weeks ago Michelle and I came up with an idea for a short Left 4 Dead parody/homage video, and we’ve spent much of the past week or so writing it. This weekend we polished the script (it’s very nearly done), auditioned an actor for the lead role, and checked out a special effects shop (Chiodo Bros., who worked on Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Team America: World Police, amongst others). I’m particularly excited because this is the first thing I’ve written that is actually going to get filmed.

Glee!

I’m at the airport as I type this. I’m flying back to England for two weeks to visit my friends and family, and heading back to LA just before Christmas (which promises to be an incredible flight). I’m not even on the plane yet and already I’m tired! I should probably go.

Things The IT Crowd is:

• Probably one of the best studio sitcoms in recent years.

 Twitter has a very spiffy API that allows people to write applications such as Twhirl and Twitterrific, so you can keep up to date on your Twitter buddies and stalkees without having to have a browser window constantly open on Twitter.com. Unfortunately, for some reason, the API doesn’t seem to work on my account anymore. I can access twitter via the website, but trying to use Twhirl on my PC, or Twitterrific on my iPhone, or even the Twitter Tools plug-in on this very website usually doesn’t work nine times out of ten. It works sporatically, and usually not for very long. What’s more I know it’s something wrong with my account in particular, not the software, because I’m still able to use these apps to access other my other Twitter accounts. Groan.

After a month or so of irritation, I opened a support ticket:

Ben   ·   October 9 2008, 11:28 PM 
This is what I DID:
I can’t seem to access my account using Twitter clients anymore. I have a second account which works fine, but my main personal account (this one) no longer works with apps like Twhirl.

This is what I EXPECTED to happen:
I expected it to work.

This is what ACTUALLY happened:
It… er… doesn’t.

I feel: Frustrated and inconvenienced.

I hoped that would be it - the problem would be fixed within a couple of days. My hope was, it seems, entirely misplaced.

Ben   ·   October 22 2008, 10:41 PM 
I’m still waiting for feedback on this. It’s becoming increasingly frustrating. Please advise.

That’s a good two weeks later. But it gets better.

Ben   ·   October 23 2008, 10:23 AM 
Very much still waiting for a fix.

Ben   ·   October 24 2008, 11:53 AM 
Any chance I could get this looked at? I still can’t use external clients at all.

Ben   ·   October 27 2008, 04:28 PM 
I’m beginning to wonder if this [Twitter Support page] is even working. Can someone SEE this at all?

Ben   ·   November 7 2008, 07:56 PM 
Whoever said “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” obviously never used Twitter Support.

Ben   ·   November 10 2008, 08:37 AM 
So it’s been one month since I reported this problem, and over two since it first manifested. Can someone pleeease have a look at it?

About this time I got bored trying to get their attention and decided to try and post some potentially useful information about my problem.

Ben   ·   November 10 2008, 08:38 AM 
Sidenote: It works intermittently. I get occasional moments where I can use a client, but most of the time it’s non-functional. It did work for quite a while yesterday, and I thought you’d fixed the problem. Now it doesn’t work again.

Then I got bored with that and decided to become flippant again.

Ben   ·   November 10 2008, 08:03 PM 
Anyone…? Bueller…? Bueller…? Obvious 80s reference…?

Ben   ·   November 11 2008, 10:37 AM 
So a Twitter User with a broken account walks into a pub… stop me if you’ve heard this one…

Ben   ·   November 12 2008, 10:00 AM 
i can has account fix plz?

Still nothing. I’ve given up posting every day. Two weeks ago I posted this:

Ben   ·   November 26 2008, 10:52 AM 
Hello? (lo? lo? lo?) Can anybody here me? (me? me? me?) I need some help! (help! help! help!)

And today I remembered that the ticket existed and got all gooey and sentimental.

Ben   ·   December 4 2008, 11:20 AM 
I can’t believe we’ve nearly reached out two-month anniversary. I feel so overwhelmed with emotion. Maybe we should go out tonight, just the two of us. I know a great little Chinese restaurant in Burbank. Then we can wander over to the AMC 16 and catch a movie (I’m hearing good things about Bolt!). Then later, back to my place for wine and, well, who knows?

I’ll wear those shoes, and you can wear that dress.

Will this problem ever get fixed? Who knows? I’ve moaned about it occasionally on my Twitter feed, and I even wrote a short Nerdcore ditty about it on the soon-to-close Ficlets, but nobody seems to care. Heigh ho.

Please keep this Handy Diagram (admittedly pilfered from a thread over at Ganymede + Titan, where it was probably pilfered from somewhere else) into consideration the next time you want to express just how little you care about something.

Well, shit.

I knew this would happen. I even wrote a post on Ficlets about it a month or so ago, and as recently as today made a promise to myself that I’d back up my stories. I’m a bit pissed off about this, but I’m not going to whine about it. Instead I’m going to copy my ficlets down and re-post them somewhere new. Probably on this site. Probably on this very blog.

Very disappointing.

The New Xbox Experience went live on Wednesday, and I’ve had an interesting experience with it. I couldn’t give a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys about the new menu layout, the Mii “Avatars”, or the ability to install games (especially when some A-List games don’t react well to being HD-installed) . No, my key feature of interest is the addition of the Netflix “Watch Now” feature, which allows Netflix users to link their console to their account and stream films to their box. Which is very nice.

What is less nice is the implementation of the feature. The first problem, and it’s one I anticipated, is that the Netflix option doesn’t appear on my Menu when I’m logged into my UK Xbox Live account. The solution: Log into my US account (a non-paid Silver Account) and choose Netflix from there.

Only it’s not that simple, is it? No, because Microsoft like money. They like your money, and so the Netflix feature is only available to people who are paying for an Xbox Live Gold Membership. Accessing Netflix using my US account brings me a lovely little pop-up menu asking me to choose a Gold account to log in with. Experimentally, I chose my UK account.

It works fine.

I can use my UK Gold account to watch films on Netflix. I have to jump through a hoop to get to it (and I reeeeeeally hope it’s not a hoop Microsoft plan to close any time soon) but I can now finally stream films to my Xbox with ease. I choose the films from the list on the scr–…

Wait, no. Sorry. There is no list. Not yet, anyway. No, you have to log on to the Netflix website from a computer and build a list of films you’d like to watch. The list then populates on the Xbox. This seems silly to me - why not just show su the list of films that we can Watch Now, and let us… y’know, watch them now? Having to manage the list on one machine to then watch it on another seems incredibly counter-intuitive.

Nevertheless, I’m away for the weekend. As this Sunday marks the 45th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who in the UK, I decided to add every single Doctor Who serial Netflix have to Watch Now to my list so that my Dad can watch them, should he want to. It wasn’t difficult, and my concern that the website would let me add the same item to the list twice was thankfully unfounded, but it’s still an additional irritating step. If my Dad wants to watch a film, he has to ask me to find it and add it to the list first.

 I’m glad the feature is there, but it definitely needs some fine-tuning and polishing. I appreciate that adding Netflix functionality to the console was no small task, but in its current form it just feels half-finished. Hopefully that’s something Microsoft and Netflix will remedy in future firmware updates.

Dear America,

Thank you for not fucking this up.

Lots of love,
~Ben