friday by the fireside

[ian]

I thought I’d do a quick phone interview for this week’s Friday by the Fireside topic. So, I called up everyone’s favourite demon,  Finestre – the Demon of Such Things – who took a few minutes out from her usual rota of devising and carrying out exquisite torments for the damned and those soon-to-be.

So, at what point did you realise you were on track to run Hell?

Probably in my first senior management meeting. I murdered everyone else in the meeting. The promotion path after that was straightforward. Ruined the sandwiches though.

That’s it?

Well, there were a few more meetings, after that my calendar emptied out and my annual review was awesome, even if I did say so myself.

You’re renowned for your relationship with Microsoft. How did that come about?

Honestly, I was bored with the usual stuff. Hell had got stagnant, run out of ideas. Murder. War. Disease. Pestilence. Boiling damned souls in hot acid while pulling off their ears with pliers. The market for eternal torment was saturated. Have you seen US TV? We needed something new. Humans don’t exactly need the push to start slaughtering once another. Sometimes we won’t have even started and they’ll be at it. There’s nothing like planning a great slaughter and finding out they’d gone and started without you. And the quality of people turning up at Hell, honestly. Sometimes we pretended there was no one home, didn’t answer the door. Jimmy Savile was out there for a week before he wandered off.  Have you any idea how difficult it is to keep Stalin quiet for that long? Heaven takes pretty much anyone these days.

Anyway, Bill pitched me the computer thing. He didn’t think they’d catch on. I saw it then. People would spend their days like shadows in their glare. They would become the infernal machines. Better than TV, even after I did Fox News and defrosted Murdoch. So I offered him a deal. We had to argue a few of particulars. Red screen of death, honestly, that’s a bit racist. Everything is red with demons. Blue, Bill, blue. Anyway, the rest they say is history. I’m mostly a consultant for them these days, I like to keep my hand in. Have you used the ribbon? That’s a worse torment than an evening with Ballmer. Yes, the options do move when you’re not looking.

What the worst deal someone offered you?

Oh, so many. There was this one guy, Boris I think he called himself, looked like a bouncy castle under a haystack. Wanted all the usual things a man like him wants, the sex, the money, the adulation. He wasn’t going to get them in any other way. Reckoned he’d get a deal. He seemed very sure about that.

Did he get a deal?

Oh, funny boy. He got off lighter than Donald, I suppose. You don’t want to know what’s going to happen to him.

I do.

No, you really don’t.

OK, any other notable torments?

So many, so so many. I am particularly fond of open-plan offices. We’ve had them in Hell for an age. Literally an age. The clocks go backwards if you stop watching them and every day is Wednesday, except Monday which lasts to the end of Thursday. Bringing them upside to the humans, marvellous. I’ve never seen so much misery since the forty-two hour Eastenders omnibus. Admittedly, that was too much, and it didn’t get released.

Oh and Red Bull. You know why that tastes and smells like sick?

It is sick?

Yes, we squeeze it out of the damned. Squish them like grapes. Admittedly grapes don't squeal like that. Sometimes the simple things are the best.

Any tips for cyclists?

Wear a helmet and high viz. It makes you more obviously snackable to the bears.

[ian]

You can ask her for advice, she's a good problem solver. She can't get you out of prison after taking her advice though.

[rogerzilla]

Dear Finestre,

What can you do about the perps in the "people who park like fuds" thread?  Sometimes zip-tying supermarket trolleys to the door handles doesn't quite hit the spot.

[ian]

If they're parked under a tree, suspend a bin-bag full of human excrement over the car (check eBay if you've not time to fill your own). Recruit a crow to peck through the suspending rope when they return to the car and retire to a safe distance. The resulting brown tsunami as the bag explodes over the car and anyone nearby is both educational and satisfying.

[nikki]

the perps in the "people who park like fuds" thread?

Never mind them; any plans for the people who install hand driers too high* up?


*So your hands have to be higher than your elbows to use them and the water just gets blown along your arms.

[ian]

They install them too high because they are too tall. Reduce their height with a chainsaw at the knees so they have to live your experience. Walk a mile in someone else's shoes, they say. As a boon, they won't be needing those shoes.

[SoreTween]

Dear Finestre,

The WC in my accommodation has the delightful design feature of the u-bend right at the front of the pan. Thus all 'output' rather than dropping into the water drops onto the porcelain downslope from whence all odours can arise maximally.  Add to this an 'eco' cistern containing a tiny, tiny fraction of the water required to get the job done. 

First flush doesn't do much.  By the 4th flush the major items are heading towards the bowl. Around the 8th flush the downslope is clear enough one can bear to brush it provided you are careful to keep the brush out of the bowl. Flushes 9 through 12 rinse out the brush a bit.  By flush 16 the poo soup is thinning.  If flush 20 still hasn't brought the bottom of the bowl into view I usually fill the waste basket with water hoping like mad today's liner doesn't have more holes than the tap can exceed.  It's not a large waste basket, certainly not as large as a decent thunderflush but that usually brings clarity to the situation.

Is this materpiece of sanitaryware your work?  If not, can you suggest what should be done to/with the designer?

[Blodwyn Pig]

Dear Finestre,

The WC in my accommodation has the delightful design feature of the u-bend right at the front of the pan. Thus all 'output' rather than dropping into the water drops onto the porcelain downslope from whence all odours can arise maximally.  Add to this an 'eco' cistern containing a tiny, tiny fraction of the water required to get the job done. 
First flush doesn't do much.  By the 4th flush the major items are heading towards the bowl. Around the 8th flush the downslope is clear enough one can bear to brush it provided you are careful to keep the brush out of the bowl. Flushes 9 through 12 rinse out the brush a bit.  By flush 16 the poo soup is thinning.  If flush 20 still hasn't brought the bottom of the bowl into view I usually fill the waste basket with water hoping like mad today's liner doesn't have more holes than the tap can exceed.  It's not a large wate basket, certainly not as large as a decent thunderflush but that usually brings clarity to the situation.
Is this materpiece of sanitaryware your work?  If not, can you suggest what should be done to/with the designer?

Can you not sit ‘back to front’ as if riding your bike, and thus grab the cistern manfully with your hands, whilst whistling ‘ she’ll be going down the bend, when she comes’

[SoreTween]

Can you not sit ‘back to front’ as if riding your bike, and thus grab the cistern manfully with your hands, whilst whistling ‘ she’ll be going down the bend, when she comes’

Now that's exactly the kind of top practical problem solving advice I come here for    Regrettably, it is a compact pan for a compact bathroom.  I have just seated myself in the suggested manner and find that in order for my aim to be true I would need to knock knee holes in the wall.

[Blodwyn Pig]

Can you not sit ‘back to front’ as if riding your bike, and thus grab the cistern manfully with your hands, whilst whistling ‘ she’ll be going down the bend, when she comes’

Now that's exactly the kind of top practical problem solving advice I come here for    Regrettably, it is a compact pan for a compact bathroom.  I have just seated myself in the suggested manner and find that in order for my aim to be true I would need to knock knee holes in the wall.

In which case , you just need to raise your ‘saddle’ 

[Blodwyn Pig]

Alternatively, one could line the slopes of the Fjord with a 'soft cushioning wipe all'  so that when the 5th Airborne leave the bomber hatch, and miss their target, they can land safely of the sloping hillside around, and await the first snow melt ,to thenst be sluished down to the waiting cargo ship in the Fjord below. Simples innit.

[Jaded]

Start the first flush just as the load falls from the bomb bay.

[TheLurker]

Buy a galvy bucket.  Hang it in on a hook from the back of the privy door.  When required fill said bucket with water and use same to effect movement of excreta in the desired direction.

[ian]

Dear Finestre,

The WC in my accommodation has the delightful design feature of the u-bend right at the front of the pan. Thus all 'output' rather than dropping into the water drops onto the porcelain downslope from whence all odours can arise maximally.  Add to this an 'eco' cistern containing a tiny, tiny fraction of the water required to get the job done. 

First flush doesn't do much.  By the 4th flush the major items are heading towards the bowl. Around the 8th flush the downslope is clear enough one can bear to brush it provided you are careful to keep the brush out of the bowl. Flushes 9 through 12 rinse out the brush a bit.  By flush 16 the poo soup is thinning.  If flush 20 still hasn't brought the bottom of the bowl into view I usually fill the waste basket with water hoping like mad today's liner doesn't have more holes than the tap can exceed.  It's not a large waste basket, certainly not as large as a decent thunderflush but that usually brings clarity to the situation.

Is this materpiece of sanitaryware your work?  If not, can you suggest what should be done to/with the designer?

Asteroth, so Finestre tells me, is the architect of effluvial torment. From cursed escaped during meetings to the eternally unflushable turds at a friend's house to the toilets at festivals – those noisome calderas of seething intestinal distress and late lamented vegetarianism, a beanburger too far, a daal of distress – to laundry basket shame, and everything to do with German toilets, which he designed with an eye for detail to which even Finestre will acknowledge some admiration. Add to this the ecoflush and cruel variants of plumbing that seek to embarrass and distress. He revels in traumatic egesta and unfortunate feculence, and makes it a mission that it's made public and put on display. This is your bottom and portal to the foulness within, and all shall know the activity of those mephitic coils of intestinal shame, the shameful spatters, and the stalking miasma that attaches itself to you like an unwanted friend.

I'm not sure picking a fight with Asteroth is a great idea, he's boss level enough to have survived this long through innumerable boardroom reshuffles. If you manage to get the toilet into a clean state, I'd dynamite it. Be very, very sure that nothing is lurking around that bend, otherwise the all-engulfing beige haze and a rotten neighbourhood-razing pyroclastic cloud will be something even Asteroth would celebrate.

[rogerzilla]

Asteroth once did a summer internship at the Saniflo design office.