Thursday, February 02, 2017

Organised crime is looking for me

LinkedIn have jumped on the bandwagon of sending me stupid emails - today's has the subject line "Ben: National Crime Agency (NCA), UPS, and British Airways are looking for candidates like you.", and it lists jobs that LinkedIn thinks I'm suitable for, based entirely on the words 'finance' and 'analyst' being in the job description.

Second on the list (after an Executive Director of Finance in County Durham, which is the kind of job for rich people who know nothing about finance but have 'connections', so I don't think I'd qualify on any of the criteria) comes the intriguing-sounding Crime Analyst / Assistant Crime Analyst, with the National Crime Agency in Bristol.

Now, I've never heard of the National Crime Agency, and since I know they can't be the people who prevent or investigate crimes (because I've heard of the people who do that, and they're called 'the police'), I can only assume they're a national agency devoted to committing crimes. A Crime Analyst must be the person who analyses banks and jewellery stores to see how easy it would be to rob them (and an Assistant Crime Analyst must be the person who carries the Crime Analyst's briefcase so his arms don't get tired). I think I'll apply, it sounds like a good career move.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Baaaaaa!

Just to continue the sporty theme that this blog has developed lately, Federer beats Nadal in the final of the Australian Open? Just as if it was 2004 again? [Okay, technically he beat Marat Safin in the final that year, but I don't intend to let statistics stand in my way. Point is, Federer won in 2004 and again in 2017.] Clearly there's hope for me to come back and win the World Memory Championship in 2017! Assuming somebody organises a World Memory Championship in 2017, obviously, which doesn't seem exactly certain to happen at the moment...

But still, if Federer and Nadal are injury-free and match-fit, this is going to be a great year for tennis, isn't it! That pair, Djokovic and Murray, new bugs like Dimitrov... exciting prospect! And then there's the question of the greatest player of all time, of course. Or, as is trending on Twitter (because old-fashioned blogs that ramble on for pages and pages before they get to the punchline just aren't cool any more, you have to make your point in 140 characters or fewer, so you have to invent acronyms), the GOAT. Complete with emoji of a goat. The official consensus of the internet is that Federer is the goat, but all I can think when I see that is how reassuring this new term must be to good ol' Charlie Brown...