10 Mar 2003

Comic Relief

Red nose day looms.

No doubt I will be drawn into the annual enforced fun that hits the office every year. Somebody will bungee jump off the side of the building; someone will shave their head; some freak will be trying to crack jokes while the rest of us will be working to hold the business together.

I read today that a woman was photographed with her bare feet in a bowl of beans. A guy said that it was for the benefit of comic relief. It was only later, when she worked through the logic of the request – he didn’t ask for any money - that she realised that he was after another kind of ‘relief’.

It reminds me of a time when a guy in accounts was caught down–loading pictures of men in trunks. There was some debate on whether or not it constituted a breach of the ‘Internet Policy’ as there was some ambiguity surrounding his motives. While many had him down as a screaming queen, he insisted that he was merely checking out the latest cut of speedos ready for his holiday in Grand Canaria.

They got him on a double-entry technicality, but it serves to illustrate the ambiguity of some sexual practices. Why does it need to be so complicated for some people? Women standing in a bowl of beans; for god sake!