Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 18 March 2008

18 March 2008

For the Diary the worst thing about slow news days - or indeed slow news weeks, as this one is turning out to be - is having to seek out material in the dreariest and least inspiring non-stories imaginable, which in normal circumstances I wouldn't even deign to click the headlines of, let alone trawl through every tedious sentence. One example is a profoundly soporific press release from the sponsors of the Dulux Cup, reproduced word for word on the Mariners' superb new official website. Here, proving that the current era will be forever remembered as the zenith of Western civilisation's achievement in the pursuit of sheer boredom, we learn that the trophy now has its own profile on Facebook. Oh, sorry, I seem to have forgotten my clichés; I mean social networking phenomenon Facebook. If you haven't got any other friends, then, you can now go online and pretend to be friends with a shiny metal cup. "The trophy is reshaping the way football reaches out to the wider community," wrote some desperate PR and comms drone as the minimum effort necessary to satisfy their boss and pass a few more moments until they can go home and fall asleep in front of Hollyoaks as one more day of their eventless life passes until they can get joylessly trashed at the weekend and repeat ad infinitum until at last a horrific realisation dawns that their decades of life on this planet have amounted to nothing, nothing at all, and even as this chill terror pervades their marrow they can only submit mutely and in paralysis as confronted by the vacant awful mesmeric countenance of Death himself.

"Can you thank all those folk who have ordered CA T-shirts for me, Mr Diary?" writes Cod Almighty's T-shirt man. "We have orders for 200 anti-franchise ones. Not bad in four days with little publicity. Our T-shirt supplier, after tearing his hair out because of the upcoming bank holidays, is flat out getting them printed to meet our posting deadline. I have updated the T-shirt order screens so you can see what we have in stock, and if anyone wants one they can order up until Friday to get delivery before Wembley. I've got a little house elf helping me now, but don't worry, folks - we are a fully paid-up member of SPEW. Sure thing! Thanks, everyone!