Mr Author Type

I sit beside the fashion editor at the newspaper. Now I'm not saying anything about exorbitant profit margins in the cosmetics industry, but she gets sent shitloads of stuff for free.

Absolute shitloads of stuff. We're talking everything from perfumes and face creams to chocolate cakes and calculators. She's got drawers full of shoes. Designer handbags turn up on her desk. Every day more packages are turning up.

I've only had one letter delivered to me since I started working here three years ago. And I think that was from the tax department.

Fortunately the fashion editor works on a principle known simply as: Share the love.

This means that every now and then she will load up a table with crap she's been sent and we vultures in the department will pick the bones clean. I haven't had to buy shampoo in more than two years. I've got high priced Baldessarini eau de toilette sitting on my desk in case I start to waft during the day.

Of course I also have a tin of gravy, a rice steamer and a martini glass. I have no excuse for these. Random stuff just gravitates towards me.

Anyway, under the principle of "share the love" I was this week given a small, blank booklet. It's about 20 pages long and only the left-hand pages are lined. I didn't know what to do with this book and vaguely considered writing some poems in it.

But poems are difficult to write when you have nothing to say. I mean, you've read this much of my blog posting and I haven't actually said anything, right? I am soooo wasting your time right now.

But I love you for it.

So, my solution to my blank book dilemma was to go back through three months of tweets and pick out what I considered were my best ones. Then I either copied them or developed them a little. It was fun.

I managed to fill the booklet, despite Internet Explorer posting a warning saying I was running a script that might be causing the system to run slowly and would I like to stop running this script (ie, Twitter) now, yes or no? *Click no* By the time I got back to February tweets, it was displaying this message three times before it would show me more tweets, and then another two times afterwards. Which was a pretty passive-aggressive way for Microsoft to tell me: "Please will you stop running this fucking script!"

Anyway, I've titled the booklet "Laze Against The Machine!" and I will actually publish it one day when I have some money. But here are a few samples of what's inside (apologies if you follow me on Twitter and have seen them all before):

• I'm so boring that this morning I tuned out of a conversation I was having with myself.
• I was nearly killed by a freak Mexican wave.
• Yesterday I accidentally set a ratite trap. This morning I'd caught two ostriches and a moa.
• Beware of puns! It can be dangerous when a phrase turns on you.
• I went to a bulldozer fight. The matador didn't stand a chance.
• You can't drive me insane. It's not far; I can walk from here.
• I called the suicide hotline. The guy was fantastic. Told me exactly how to tie a noose. Took me through it step-by-step.
• When Evolution comes, I'm going to be first against the wall.