LOOK OUT / I'M ON A ROLL
A aysi post.
A colleague announces he's "not really a morning person" and then arrives at 8:55 with a lanyard, a flask and a plan. The whole office is expected to stop what it's doing and take notice. Your mate has just finished one week of the gym. He mentions it at dinner, in the pub, on the group chat and again in the lift. Nobody dares touch the bread basket while he's talking. Someone at the barbecue has turned the sausages once and is now being addressed as "chef". He holds the tongs like a sceptre. You are fairly sure they're still raw in the middle. It's the 2nd of January, and a person who owned a gym membership for three weeks in 2019 has bought a protein shaker. The sarcasm writes itself, and you let it. **Why it caught on:** the picture is a black-and-white line drawing in the rage-comic style: a moustached man in a suit and waistcoat, both hands raised, eyebrows up, looking half impressed and half mocking. It was captioned with mock alarm at anyone suddenly acting important, and the shape suits any language, which is how it ended up with Dutch captions and Maury jokes as well as the English ones. Anyone who has watched someone big themselves up over very little has needed it.