I’m a little bit cross today, gentle blog trotters, and – although it’s unlike me to burden you with my problems – I’m going to tell you why.
First off, you should know that I employ the services of an accountant, for the simple reason that I am not an accountant myself, and I cannot be doing with all this numbery business. What I didn’t cop on to was that, in the eyes of the law (quis aliem facit, facit per se), if you employ an accountant to do your numbers, you are effectively doing them yourself. It’s a great gig (for accountants), as – in the (obviously) highly improbable scenario that they should f*ck it all up – they are not responsible. Nope. You are. Because – get this – you should have checked their work. Which, to my mind, kinda implies that everyone should be qualified as an accountant. Either that, or accountancy is such a piece of piss that anyone can do it, in which case, why are we paying the horrible f*ckers so much money? Eh?
Anyway, long story short, yadayada, my accountant f*cked up, I got hit with a £700 penalty by the revenue. Accountant ‘fesses up. Accountant agrees that I am in no way to blame and says that accountant will pay the 700 notes. Payment day was last week. Accountant now refusing to take my calls. Hence I am cross. And poor.
Anyway, today’s post is about a piece in the FT this morning, which I cannot post a link to because I do not wish to register with the paper and therefore cannot view its content. And no, Mr FT, I’m not going to buy a copy of the paper either, so, in both ways, you lose. That’s the thing about the internet, d’you see, you can’t eat it. What I mean is, that you can’t have it and eat it. It’s free. So you can’t post your content and then expect people to pay for it, either on-line or in the crinkly newsprint. No. What they’ll do is ignore you.
Anyway, in the FT. The headline ‘Sean Parker Unveils Facebook Video Site’. Apparentky he’s launching some video chat site to counter the ‘dehumanisation’ of social networking. Sean Parker is the President of Facebook (no, all you foursquareys, that’s not like being the Mayor of the Copacabana Club in Leighton Buzzard), which, given that, with its many hundreds of millions of slaves users, the ‘book is the (I think) third largest nation by population on earth, is somehow quite appropriate. Anyway, Seanio has obviously come quite late to the party and realised that spending half your life in front of a computer or glued to the tiny, twinkling screen of your handheld of choice, is – or could be – quite isolating of the human condition, rendering one – yes – almost dehuman.
Anyway, he seems to think that videochat will solve it. Poor deluded soul. I also hear he’s thinking of opening a chain of ‘meeting places’ – where the dehumans can go and interact in real time. Places with smells and sounds and warmth and three dimensions. And, probably, coffee. I came up with a name, which they’re free to use, if they like. Try this. (Ready?) “Facebucks”.
See what I did? It sounds a bit like ‘Facebook’ and a bit like ‘Starbucks’, but, in melding the two, you’ve got the unwritten promise that you too, yes, you, the retail investor, can make some easy money out of social networks…er….when they…mmm…..d’you know….when they…er…like….float?
On second thoughts, how about Faceb*ll*cks?
thewordmonger 