Puri is Georgian for “bread”, and this is our closest puri shop.
You can’t go in, you shout, “Gamarjoba, erti (or ori) puri” through the window. That means “Hello, one (or two) bread.” Easy.
I’m also sporting a brand new haircut from our local beauty place. courtesy of a Belarussian lady called Ana.
It’s not what I asked for.
It doesn’t look like the photo I showed her.
So this week I’ll be learning how to say, “A haircut like the one in this picture, please.”
I’m working my way through the third and final big round of edits for The Squared Circle, after which I’ll give it a polish, leave it for a month and then send it off to the first editor. Then more edits and editors.
Then I’ll be sending it off to advance readers… hint, hint.
This week’s story is not fantastic, but definitely dark, even nasty, so be warned.
My list of recommendations rounds off this week’s email, but I’d love to hear from you. What was the best thing you watched, listened to or read recently?
Hit reply and let me know!
Robots Can’t Replace Us Quickly Enough
We needed someone for the marketing, because neither of us wanted to do it.
We held interviews and picked Lisa. She looked like she’d do what she was told: small, hunched shoulders, and a bruised eye that her makeup didn’t quite cover. Pretty, but in an annoying way.
Not as pretty as some others, so we expected her to work extra hard to make up for that.
It was a small team: I was the programmer, and Jamie brought the contacts and worked the spreadsheets. And Lisa, if she turned out to be useful. We told her she’d never work again if she wasn’t. Just to motivate her, but she hid her face behind her long hair.
We made apps. Like computer programs, but cooler?
Our latest one used AI to calculate when your shoes would wear out. Nike loved it, because their premium customers don’t want to be seen wearing busted footwear, so they added the app as a perk for their members.
And it sucked up all sorts of personal data, which we could sell to other people.
Lisa was there when we signed the deal, but I had already talked to Nike, so it didn’t count. She was on very thin ice, if she wanted to keep her job.
The next app sold better. It put injected real-time targeted ads into emails, so if you read an email near a Starbucks, it’d say, “Hey, how about a dark roast grande Americano with cinnamon sprinkles right now?” Lisa talked to Starbucks, but one win didn’t mean she could be part of the team.
She needed to do something about that long hair and her air of being a doormat. Nobody likes a goddamn doormat.
She cried when I called her a doormat, which made me feel bad, which made me angry. Things got awkward.
Tears trigger me, you know?
I told her she had one more chance, then she was out.
She came up with a winner.
An app to help victims of violence. It was genius, if I say so myself. There was a support forum, emergency call numbers, and location tracking, so people didn’t have to worry about taking taxis, or whatever. Basically, the users and emergency services did all the work, but we made it An Experience.
And everyone was talking about toxic masculinity, so this was marketing gold. We were the good guys, and the money poured in to develop it.
And with all that data pouring in, we knew exactly where to find all those victims.
That data would be worth a fortune to the right people.
Oh, and…
Watch!
If you enjoyed (my spiritual comedy animal) Stewart Lee’s Snowflake last Sunday, make sure you catch his Tornado this Sunday at 22:25 on BBC iPlayer!
Read!
If you still haven’t jumped on the Witches of Woodville bandwagon, and you live in the UK, then now is the time. Get the first book in the series, The Crow Folk, for 99p. Hurry, Google has already switched back to full price, but Apple, Kobo and Amazon, still have it on offer. Get it here!
Look!
While checking what my favourite weirdo-metallers, Old Man Gloom, are up to. I discovered that “duck face” is still a thing. This is what it looks like when #MetalDoesDuckFace.
Research!
Annabella “Bell” Plumptre was a British writer and translator born in 1769.
That’s right. Although her family name was “Plumptre”, “Bell” obviously seemed to think it was her first name that people were having trouble with.
Chat soon!
