Be Excellent To Each Other

Fuck's sake. Applied for a job that seemed pretty good and I felt I had a decent stab at getting an interview, only to receive an email today explaining that the position has already been filled "but we'll keep you on file". Why have the fucking thing on your website, then? It's still on there now!

They're keeping me in their "talent pool". The best bit is, they even referred to their "talent pool" in quotation marks.

Data harvesting

Heh! Full disclosure - I actually have a friend who works at the firm and who alerted me about the position, and would "put in a good word for me". Seemed to work.

I'm now at the point of applying for positions that don't even exist. Speculative emails. Great!

That's how i've got a few jobs in the past.

"Hi, I see you are advertising for a job. I don't want it that shitty one, but this is who I am, and i'd quite like to work with you doing something different to that"

That's heartening. Hopefully someone will take pity on me before long!

I got my new job through Twitter. Hipster.

I thought that was just a hobby.

Just been reading this 'Cracked' article on horrifying theme parks. I'm pretty sure my parents took me to one of those Singaporean hell parks when I was a nipper. Not sure it put the fear of eternal torment into me though.

I sent Sainsbury's this eLetter via their website. I hope they respond.

What happened to Sainsbury's Italian Arrabbiata Sauce?

Hello Mr J. Sainsbury,

I used to buy Sainsbury's Italian Arrabbiata Sauce[1] for all my pasta-saucing needs. It went particularly well with Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Lumaconi. To me Sainsbury's were the de-facto standard when it came to pasta and pasta-sauce producer and retailer.

However it seems that this sauce has dissapeared from the shelves? This has greatly upset me as I feel that most of the other brands available were crap and tasted bad, whereas this one tasted really nice and had a lovely consistency. It's much better than any sauce I attempted to make by myself and is completely superiour to trash such as 'Dolmio' or that one with Jamie Oliver's face on it (Maybe this is Pasta bake? Can't recall).

It used to be the case that the 'Sainsbury's own' section of the pasta-sauce shelfing area, in the pasta+pasta-sauce isle, would consistently only have a jar or two of Arrabbiata left, but loads of the other Sainsbury's flavours and a hellish amount of Dolmio. I think this Arrabbiata hole was because everyone snapped those lovely Arrabbiata sauces up and consequently I was FORCED to buy 3 or so jars at a time in an effort to prevent a pasta-sauce drought, or worse, being pushed to the dark side due to having to buy one of those tarty Loyd Grossman sauces. To my mind the Arrabbiata sauce was a BEST SELLER and was probably the sole product keeping Sainsbury's afloat, along side the 2 for £4 pizzas.

The other 'flavours' in the Italian sauce range are Emiliana, puttanesca, some scilian basil one, and that clam one which I once bought about a year and a half ago but my girlfriend then refused to eat, so I had to throw it out the other week (Vongole?). Shame. Anyway these other flavours used to be acceptable replacements, mostly tending towards Emiliana, whenever the other lucky shoppers had snapped up all the Arrabbiata. But it now seems that they too are being put out to pasture as the Sainsbury's website now only lists Emiliana[2] and no others?

Sainsbury's, I'm worried about the future of your pasta sauce products.

So what happened to Sainsbury's Italian Arrabbiata Sauce? Does it still exist? Does Italy no longer export this substance to the UK? What does it mean for those nice Taste The Difference Pastas? Are they too to dissapear? With what looks like an extinction of the Sainsbury's Italian Pasta Sauces I don't know where to turn to for my saucing. I tried the 'fresh' version of the sauce[3], but to my caveman like tastebuds it was really bad: it's very watery and bland, aside from an overall basil taste; I don't really like basil all that much, it mostly makes things taste of medicine. My girlfriend and I have tried the Seeds of Change Arrabbiata and the Loyd Grossman one. They're okish, but eating those is akin to a King having to sleep in a barn. I want my four-poster Arrabbiata bed back, please.

So I'd really like it if you could start making and selling Sainsbury's Italian Arrabbiata Sauce again.Is there anyway I can get my hands on some more Arrabbiata? I just need some. Only a little bit. Just a small amount. Anything you can spare? I can stop at any time! Really I can. But right now I'd like some Arrabbiata, even just a little bit, so could you please give me some, please??!

PLEASE?!

Thanks for your time, Mr J. Sainsbury!

[1] Here's an image of Sainsbury's Italian Arrabbiata Sauce incase you've forgotten what it looks like:
http://images.mysupermarket.co.uk/Produ ... 6266188753
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/#/sainsb ... _340g.html

[2] Emiliana
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/s ... eric_event

[3] Sainsbury's 'Fresh' Arrabbiata Sauce 350g
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/s ... eric_event

Does anybody remember those little rubber circle things you'd get in cereal boxes? You push it inside out and put it on a table and it would jump up into the air? What were they called?

Poppers. Google 'poppers' and 'bottom'.

From work.

Oh dear.

Battle of Endor Scalextric!

Why don't you get free toys in cereal any more?

Something to do with kids eating them wasn't it? Health and safety gone mad and all that...

In a related note, I tried to order a free cereal bowl last night but the rubbish Kelloggs website wouldn't recognise my postcode, my Mom and Dads postcode or my work postcode.

Mom?

Yep, my mother.

I'll tell you about my mother.

My mother was a mother you insensitive prick.

Mom?

Why are lithium coin cells so expensive? I thought they'd be about a quid.

Do you mean like these?


Nip to your pound shop and get ten a time.

It will still be costing him a pound a day to run his Dreamcast VMU.

I just got told I sounded posh.

I'm so bored I've turned data roaming on, yay for the EU clampdown because it's under 70p/MB.

I used to have a Chao on a VMU which I thought I'd be able to take everywhere and treat like a Tamagotchi.. That's until I realised how they ate batteries. Why they didn't use triple As I don't know.

fuck me this is difficult. There's a good chance I'll be back almost immediately. Hotel WiFi now, woo. Sorry, 'ftw'.

Last day of 'summer'. Hmmm.

I always take the Last Night of the Proms to be the official end of summer, and that's not for another week or so yet.

Dogs stink. Not amused.

Irie.

Me dog also be clever.

Have you tried putting water on them? They smell great then.

For best results add sea water.

Fucking thing jumped in the fucking canal.

s144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act comes into force today, making squatting a criminal offence. I can't recall what the law was before and what action could be taken against people squatting.

I think they can be evicted but only after a load of faff.

I wonder how many people are actually living in squats. If it's huge amounts then surely this is going to cause other problems isn't it?

GENIUS.

So, rather than being paid money for being a vet in her normal life, my mother decided to be a vet for at the Olympics/Paralympics for free. So today we travelled into London together.

At Harlington, a Chinese couple walked up to her - a couple of people had talked to her already, as she was wearing her eye-searing "games maker" uniform. Amusingly, everyone so far had asked her for directions, which she had no idea about (she only knows how to get to Greenwich). I helped out by DISPENSING TRAVEL FACTS (using my phone if I had no idea).

Anyway, the Chinese man points at my mother's tits and says "hung wrong". The train, quiet anyway because it's a commuter train, went silent (save for the creaking of chairs as people turned around). Mother does what any normal person would do in that situation, and says "Sorry?"

"Hung wrong!" repeates the nice man, more sternly. I laugh, most people on the train go a bit and mother says "Sorry?" again.

At this point, the nice man pokes my mother's boob and says it again. My brain starts shifting into "agressive" mode, but then my mother puts me off by laughing at him, then puts me off more by saying somthing along the lines of "是的，我从香港来的。我可以帮你吗?", which could either be Chinese or Decepticon.

Turns out he wanted directions but spoke no English, and had spied my mother's uniform and various Olympic badges on her coat, one of them being the Hong Kong flag where she was born. That's what the chap was trying to say (and pointing at)

I don't understand.

Beer can sandwich?

I figured it might have been some kind of patois, but couldn't work out what I was meant to have said. I dunno, I'm tired and sneezing and itchy due to stupid dog.

Heh. I liked that. If you see MrsA's father wandering about, say hi. He'll be at the velodrome later. I'm afraid that when he uses the underground his foursquare is going to check him in at Baker Steet once an hour.

I'll probably say "what are you doing in my office?".

my fear is seeing this on Foursquare:

10am "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
11-15am "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
12-30pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
1-45pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
3pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
4-15pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
5-30pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
6-45pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
8pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
9-15pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
10-30pm "MrsA's father has checked in at Baker Street station"
11-45pm "MrsA's father is the mayor of Baker Street station"

That's only twelve times. There are thirteen in a Baker's dozen…

Blackpool illuminations are switched on tonight.

Weekend! Funsters next...

I ehard about this on the radio this morning. I was racking my brain as I couldn't work out what "eliminations" had to do with art.

Ha!

I am having a lads weekend in London. Should be a good jape.