u/MrGrubbycuddles

Maybe they accidentally skipped one trailer

I think this will work

I use Spotify for music maybe 3 times a day, usually to hear a specific song or two. I thought this was enough to necessitate Premium.

I tried doing a month off in an attempt to have a more conscious relationship with my financial outgoings (multiple subscription services that I've always assumed I needed). I thought it would suck, but it was absolutely fine.

Typically one 30 second ad at the start, while I do something else. Then another 15 seconds ad a few songs down the line. Then it gets more and more sporadic - and the ads are so non intrusive and forgettable and for things I would never purchase (like a new car? I'm not going to be swayed by a Spotify ad lmao)

Also - I mainly listen to podcasts. And those are pretty much unaffected - I think one batch of ads for each 1-2 hour podcast.

If you're using it heavily or using all the features - then I can see the appeal of paying. But I would strongly recommend considering if your usage really warrants the ever increasing price. I casually assumed it did after years of usage - and I may still swap back at some point - but for now, free version is still excellent.

Ps this isn't a rant - I'm just muttering - but that's the closest flair I could find. They need a muttering flair.

Norm describing an interview where Bob Hope is asked secret to marriage, Bob says "I golf... We've got the dogs."

Bonus points if you can find the Bob Hope interview he's talking about

There's a clear link between lots of products that have taken over society in the last 10 years. On paper they should all be wonderful innovations, but something about them feels so hideously creepy and demonic that it bothers me.

What links them all? I can't even tell. They just seem like something is off, creepy, unreal.

I'm not religious by any stretch, but the feeling I get around each of these is the same sort of spiritual unsettling feeling you hear about from people who have encountered psychopaths. And they're everywhere, and everyone I know loves them. And the feeling keeps getting worse.

So I had an interview today (CFO position at a well known blue chip company).

Anyway the dude asking me questions asked me as his icebreaker:

"If you had to eat any object in this office, what would it be and why?"

I chuckled. The lady next to him cocked her head at me and narrowed her eyes, and made a little note on the paper.

My eyes darted around the room. Nothing looked edible. There was a stapler, which I imagine could maybe fit down my gullet. But it was hard and metal.

The panel were sat in Herman Miller desk chairs. They looked delicious, but way too big for my gullet.

There was a pot plant in the corner, but I quickly identified it as a nerium oleander, deadly poisonous.

Eventually I said: "well. None of the objects in this room look the least bit edible..." The woman exhaled through her nose with incredulity.

"But...." I made a fierce corporate face.

"I think maybe you guys look delicious AND nutritious."

The room went silent. Then me and the janitor who was stood in the doorway burst into laughter. Then the interviewer. And eventually, the woman who was sneering at me burst into tears and fled the room.

What kind of weird question was that. Had almost nothing to do with corporate financial leadership

I was sat on a small table out front. It was just me, my solitude, and a big cup of hot frothy milky coffee. I had one sip and I wasn't particularly ensorcelled by it (it tasted like 90% milk, 8% coffee, and 2% woe).

Anyway I was sat there. It was just after 8 in the morning, I was the first customer through the door, but a few other patrons had since arrived and taken their seats with their own solitudes at their own separate tables. I sat with my phone in my pocket, and my earbuds still at home. I'd resolved myself to not spend the day reaching for my phone, or drowning out the sounds of the world. So I sat and smiled a welcoming smile at nobody in particular, at the summoning pigeons and at the day slowly unfurling itself out front.

The sun was catching the leaves in the big tree out in the middle of the pedestrianised high street and the dancing green shadows cast down on the people walking around each other. Townsfolk I supposed you'd call them. None of them stood out except a small woman wearing a sunflower lanyard, who paced very slowly about with downcast eyes, moving very deliberately from one piece of litter on the ground to the next, picking each one up with care and carrying it to the big metal bin.

I had taken an unusual amount of care in my appearance on this morning, having woken with an unexpectedly light mood about myself. I'd put on an actual shirt with green stripes and buttons, and I had found some clean trousers, and I even had my nice green jacket than complimented the shirt. In the mirror my hair was strangely tidy, my face curiously uncrumpled, and everything about me haloed with an inexplicable glow.

And so it was therefore with a pang of shuttering disappointment that I watched as my hand - on the way into my pocket to reach for my phone - knocked the large mug of hot brown milk off the edge of the table and all over my torso, my lap, my legs, my shoes, and even into my socks. Scarcely a drop made it to the floor.

I made some sort of involuntary "Ahhh" noise, I lept to my feet and in my automatic embarrassment affected a great big chuckle for whoever might have seen. But as I glanced around - at the other customers, at the townsfolk, at the cafe staff - I realised that nobody had noticed. Nobody had heard, or seen. Either the loud shatter of the cup and my hubbub was much quieter than I'd realised, or they were all each lost in the tangle of their lives.

And so I stood there. Next to my table. My white and green stripey shirt now brown from south of the solar plexus. My legs and everything else all hot and wet. And everything about me with a rich roasted coffee smell. I sat back down.

I sat there for a few minutes and wondered what next to do. I had not been so enraptured about the coffee that it felt any worse upon my person as it did upon my tongue. So I just sat. The initial emotions had subsided. I no longer felt disappointed, or embarrassed. I had a fleeting emotion of indignant blame before I realised that - no - this was not somehow anyone else's fault but my own. I sat, and felt the coffee in my underpants getting cold.

Eventually, I realised that the brown puddle on my table top was a tattletale sight to anybody passing by. So I went inside to the cafe counter. The young fellow working the steam machine was like an octopus flustering around at a workbench building an eight legged chair. I asked if he had any blue roll (in Britain where I live that's what you ask for to mop up big spills. Asking food staff for this is code for "I just made a big liquid whoopsydoopsy"). So he obliged me with a big wad of blue roll.

As I was walking toward the door he called after me whether I wanted a new one. I said no no no, waved him off. But after a beat I stopped, and I swivelled like Columbo and said well now actually yes maybe I would. But this time could I have a much smaller coffee? He said yes. And that he'd even bring it back to where I was sat.

I headed back to my table. I dabbed the seat, the tabletop, and with the last bit of roll I started dabbing at my saturated crotch, then realised what a futile and disquieting gesture that was.

I stood with the dripping wad. I looked about for a bin, then saw one about fifteen paces away on the high street. I squelched over to it. The woman with the sunflower lanyard was still picking up pieces of litter, and placing them in the bin. I tried to offer a smile of civic appreciation by her eyes remained locked on the pavement. I squelched back to my seat, and waiting for me on the clean tabletop was a tiny cup with a coffee that had a beautiful dainty swirl of milk frothed into the shape of a teardrop. And it was delicious.

Eventually I squelched home. Squelched back to my room, and I changed out of my nice ruined outfit, back into my normal clothes, then I went to work. For the rest of the day I carried with me the smell of roasted coffee.

So I had an interview today (CFO position at a well known blue chip company).

Anyway the dude asking me questions asked me as his icebreaker:

"If you had to eat any object in this office, what would it be and why?"

I chuckled. The lady next to him cocked her head at me and narrowed her eyes, and made a little note on the paper.

My eyes darted around the room. Nothing looked edible. There was a stapler, which I imagine could maybe fit down my gullet. But it was hard and metal.

The panel were sat in Herman Miller desk chairs. They looked delicious, but way too big for my gullet.

There was a pot plant in the corner, but I quickly identified it as a nerium oleander, deadly poisonous.

Eventually I said: "well. None of the objects in this room look the least bit edible..." The woman exhaled through her nose with incredulity.

"But...." I made a fierce corporate face.

"I think maybe you guys look delicious AND nutritious."

The room went silent. Then me and the janitor who was stood in the doorway burst into laughter. Then the interviewer. And eventually, the woman who was sneering at me burst into tears and fled the room.

What kind of weird question was that. Had almost nothing to do with corporate financial leadership

"The name's LeBrond. James LeBron James Brond."