Creating The Emperor

My new job is of questionable veridicality. On the one hand it is almost certainly real, but then I float through my days in a technopiate haze and stumble out at the end of the day a little unsure.

On the average day I enter my state of the art workplace through the security system (to keep out undesirables presumably) before whizzing up to the 21st floor and taking my seat in this glacial tower. I then undertake my two jobs, which are;

- Cross referencing people's scanned identity documents with the details on their scanned application forms looking for anomalies and scanning errors.

- Checking other verifiers flagged scanning errors and deciding whether they were right or not (meanwhile someone does the same with mine)

This sort of job is as menial as it sounds and consequently I spend a lot of time gazing out across the city, thinking of ways to improve it, like an admin Le Courbusier. Conversation is kept to a minimum so I often listen to ambient electronica whilst working, adding to the general sense of cyber-unreality.

One of the plus points though is that no-one keeps track of my work rate any longer, and I am free to net surf for quite ridiculous amounts of time (hence the now regular updates here). I seem to have landed a George Costanza role.

Anyhow, during this morning's shift I came up with an idea for a new type of condom called 'The Emperor'.


- It will be manufactured in purple, the colour of the Roman emperors, which will make it a more visually attractive. The company will use the profits of condom sales in the west to finance the distribution of Emperor condoms in Africa along with a sexual education anti-AIDS programme to counter anti-contraception propaganda by Christian groups.

- In the African context the purple will also represent the democratisation of protected sex, since this once most elite of colours will be available to the world's poorest people.

- The packet will have a symbol of Imperial Rome on, the Colosseum or whatever, to represent Rome's pre-catholic past and set the product aside from catholic intervention in Africa on sexual issues.

- Finally, Bono and Bob Geldof will not be allowed to endorse the product.

But to whom does one go with a product like this? And does Bono have your legs broken if you don't polish his halo?

I don't know but I shall try and find out or lose my kneecaps trying!