Friday, October 13, 2006

Patroclus 0, Editorial Policy 0

Everyone knows my editorial policy by now: no sex, no blogging when depressed.

But you know, hypothetically speaking, what if I suddenly really wanted to tell the whole world about what the lovely Mr BC and I have been getting up to?

Sensible approaches might be:

1. Start a juicy anonymous sexblog (advantage: may also result in massive book deal).

2. Whisper it into the ground, in the manner of King Midas (disadvantage: office is very quiet and open plan, people might hear what I'm saying and then wonder why I'm lying on the floor saying it. It might erode the air of professionalism and gravitas that I like to project in the work environment).

3. Write it in an actual diary book thing (disadvantage: years of bending my fingers back to 'impress' people with my double-jointedness have left me unable to hold a pen).

A not-terribly-sensible approach would be:

4. Write about it in the company newsletter.


So naturally I chose option 4.

The company newsletter is distributed every Friday to hundreds of people in the technology industry, including all of my clients. My 'column' is written under my own real name. Within minutes of receiving it, a client sends an email to the general company email address saying "good to hear Patroclus is getting some!"

I hide under my desk for the rest of the afternoon.

11 comments:

FirstNations said...

and so it is.
but if only for my sake, please reserve the real 'squishy squishy mmmyeah oh damn baby' type stuff for the company newsletter.
i bet new hires have increased there.

patroclus said...

Don't you worry FN, there'll be none of that sort of stuff on here.

epikles said...

option 5. find one of those mailing lists used by spammers, and just send it off to all those lucky winners. better yet, include an attachment called "boobs.gif"

patroclus said...

That's an uncannily accurate description of how we issue the company newsletter, Tom.

Arabella said...

Put a pinnie on, head for the hills, do a Julie Andrews.

Anonymous said...

Your company newsletter is obviously very different to 'Primary Care Update' which is the rag I have to contribute to at work. Not sure how an account of my sex life would go down with my readership, no I am sure, he'd drop dead with shock.

Tim F said...

Was the hiding-under-the-desk thing part of the sexual revelation?

James Henry said...

lalala I can't hear any of this

cello said...

Now we know why you're not watching any telly.

Del said...

Down with this sort of thing!

patroclus said...

Careful now.

Actually I was merely trying to explain the Google/YouTube deal through the medium of personal anecdote, but I got a bit carried away.

The same thing happened once with a review of the 1991 Reading Festival that I wrote for the student magazine. Luckily that time the editor stripped out all references to anything that wasn't strictly about Nirvana's first live UK appearance, or the bloke from Nitzer Ebb's cycling shorts. Unfortunately this time I was allowed to get away with it in its entirety.

Still, if I continue to leave 15-year gaps between editorial indiscretions, everyone should be OK.