What is wrong with going stir-crazy?

You start to look at staplers in a whole new light. Here's a review. Sorry for the funky formatting, Blogger is being a tad weird tonight.

====================================================================

Since the beginning of time, I have had many staplers. I have had a standard workhorse stapler that got the job done but didn't exactly set the world on fire with its ergonomic design. I have had a pop-culture referential red stapler that was a good for nothing layabout that jammed half the time, very frustrating when you can't find a paperclip, let me tell you! But none, have compared to the stapler I have in my hot little hand right now.

It's a Stanley Bostitch, for those of you in the know, you'd already be aware of it's competition leading efficiency, but this year Stanley have truly blown me away with a mixture of form and function that is hard to beat.

Yea, if God had a stapler, it would verily be a Stanley Bostitch. Yet there is something darker about this device that speaks to a more satanic origin, almost if it were calling to me to do unspeakable acts.

It's just so...sexy.

Let's begin with the essential functions and work our way up to the more elegant design shall we?

First of all, you'll no doubt be relieved to hear that it holds a standard 10mm clip so you'll no longer have to worry about getting to the specialty staples shop before it closes. If I had a stapler for all the times I've been caught outside the staples store at closing time, I would be in some sort of orgasmic nirvana.

It's spring loaded, so it operates quite like the standard stapler, which you would think would be something holding it back from greatness but instead I see it as a plus. Think back on all the great innovations of stapler loading mechanism history, and you'll find that the spring loaded is indeed the mechanism that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it's so simple to operate that a child could do it (ages 5 and up).

Once you have your staples ready to go, you'll want to know if the stapler can go all night long...by which I mean whether it won't fail you on sheet 999 of a massive stapling party.

I'm pleased to report that it can go the distance and more, its stamina was quite a pleasant surprise that it had me wondering why I ever went around that that stupid old paperclip...in my pocket.

You could literally staple all day with the Stanley Bostitch, it's that reliable, and the satisfaction you get from the crisp sound of paper being penetrated kept this reviewer up through many a lonely night.

But now, we come to the real sexiness, its design.

It employs the Strapford-upon-Hertforshire school of stapler design, and the Stanley Bostitch has all the hallmarks of veteran designer Thomas Scrote.

None of this smooth and sleek design that have you in two minds as to whether or not you're looking at a stapler, instead, the Scrote design leaves you in no doubt as to what you're looking at. He manages to capture the aesthetic of stapler deign over the last 50 years and condense it into something so pure, to typical of the beauty of the stapler that, I'm not afraid to admit this, I bawled like it was my first stapler all over again.

By God I'm glad I have my Scrote...umm...Scrote-designed stapler by my side!

In summary, if you appreciate the beauty and raw sexual power of the stapler, you have to buy the [i]Stanley Bostitch for you and everybody you know. Together, we can make the whole world cry with the sounds of a million sheets of paper being penetrated by the [i]Bostitch.

It's quite simply, a masterpiece of stapler deign and this will be the model that they study in classrooms for years to come.

20 BILLION STARS

P.S- I'm so lonely.

What is wrong with freelancing?

You have to fucking good at it to even get a call back saying that they won't pick up your article.

As you may or may not know, I've been enrolled in a unit called Freelance Journalism. Which is cool because there are no classes and we basically set our own work schedule. Anyhow, the first assignment is to write a profile article.

But who do I write a profile article on? That's basically the starting point for any piece, so I started looking at the webirverse to see if there were any up and coming or established authors or artists coming to town. Perth being the backwater hick town it is, nobody of note was coming here.

So then I started to do a search for stand-up comedians, and I noticed that Claire Hooper was coming to town soon for a show. Bingo.

Here's a person who's originally from Perth, has a good profile (she's the chick from Good News Week) and the more research I did on her, the more interesting her story became.

She started out in Perth doing theatre work, and was a bit of a jack of all trades. She wrote, directed, acted, designed costumes but what struck me about her background is that she did experimental re-working of Shakespeare. You know, stuff like reducing Hamlet to 90 minutes and 3 cast members.

So how does someone go from Hamlet to hamming it up?

I had my angle on a Perth girl and she was coming to town soon. This profile pretty much wrote itself, and I was sure I had a story I could sell.

So I got down to the business of arranging an interview, so I contacted her management via email. I got nothing back for a couple of days, until the woman who was arranging the comedy show that Hooper was in town for got in touch with me.

Now, what she told me was very interesting. She told me that she'd already pitched the story to editors of The West and Sunday Times, and they were nibbling at it. That is to say they were undecided on the story.

Now, being a freelance journo who was ready right then to conduct an interview and write a story, I managed to grab the interview.

So I'm now on the phone to Claire Hooper who's in Melbourne, and it's a pretty easy interview. It's one of those interviews that I can just stay silent for, and she'll answer two or three of my questions with one long-winded answer. She's very chatty, and I managed to get some great anecdotes out of her about her youth and how she got into comedy.

I have my research, I've transcribed the audio and I'm sitting with a blank page ready to write.

The words flow like fine wine, and within two days I have a 2000 word profile article that probably not going to win me a Walkley, but is a good yarn all the same. So now all I have to do it sell it.

I pitch it at two newspapers, two websites and two magazines. Only one got a definite answer back to me. What I did was this; I sent the story along with two hi-res images of Claire and a pitch to each of these places. I left my phone number and email address on the pitch.

Two days have gone, and I decide it's been sitting long enough, and I start to do a ring-around to the places I pitched at. I get the old, 'she's not in her office at the moment...' line, and there's nothing too much you can do about it.

The West though, to their credit actually got back to me when I rung them with a very nicely worded rejection letter that wished me all the best. When I rang PerthNow, the editor informed me that he had been on leave and was just catching up on his emails. Fair enough, he said he'd back to me at the end of the day.

I took him at his word and he didn't get back to me. Okay, so I called him again twice in two days and 'he was in a meeting'. FUCK!

So anyhow, I didn't end up selling the story to anybody, which sucks because I need the money for my new website I'm planning.

The moral of the story here is that you have to be a complete and utter nuisance to editors to even get a rejection letter back. This is doubly true if your relatively new and they have no idea who you are.

Next time on The Jaded Prime, the art of the market wrap.

Jimmy.