I will never understand men. Ever.
A mystery, wrapped in an enigma, inside a convoluted riddle.
Absolutely bloody mystifying. The whole pack of ‘em.
In another news, I can climb a pole. Shimmy right up there. I haven’t been able to climb anything since I was 5. I’m feeling muy proud of myself.
Sometimes, I wish I were a lesbian. Or, even better, assexual. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with this nonsense at all.
I was having a conversation with one of my Best Girls about relationships (because that’s what chicks do when they get together – that and try and stop each other from going stark, raving mad from the sheer insanity that is the dating world). She made the point that some people find relationships – or getting into relationships – really easy. Other people do not. We both fall into the ‘do not’ category.
I struggle to determine exactly why it should be so difficult to me: I’m a cute, young thing with brains and a great sense of humour. Surely, some man out there would actually seek to step up to the plate and try and take me off the market? Nope. Plenty of them try to get into my pants but none of them actually seek me out because I’m nice company or they’d like to get to know me better or any of the million other things one human being would like to acquaint themselves with another human being.
What doesn’t help is how perplexing men act. Take the potential romantic interest I alluded to in the last post. Two weeks ago, I asked him out for a drink. He accepted. We then spend almost 7 hours chatting. I’d call that a successful date; wouldn’t you? And yet, he has made no effort to contact me since. We have spoken a couple of times since then but I’ve initiated all the contact… he hasn’t bothered to pursue me at all or show in any way that he would actively go out of his way to meet me again.
Now, to my mind that sends a fairly clear statement: he’s just not that in to me. And yet, why would you spend 7 hours with anyone unless you dug them a little? If he really isn’t that into me, why not just make your excuses after the first hour? Why stay for another six and buy me dinner?
I DON’T GET IT.
In the land of my birth, there is no such thing as a ‘bank holiday’ weekend. Yes, we have public holidays but they’re for a purpose – the birth of a royal, the celebration of a war, the fact that a calendar from 300 years ago states that we’ve ticked into a new year, based on the flawed calculations of when some guy thought a baby in the Middle East might have been born according to a two thousand year old mythology (in that light, the Gregorian calendar seems a bit bullshit, doesn’t it).
But, in this strange land I find myself in, we’ve got a bank holiday, seemingly for no purpose other than the banks, in all their wisdom, decided late August was a pretty good time of year to skive off work. Not that I’m complaining.
So (inspired by K) what are the plans for this long weekend?
How about you guys?
Bored.
Borrrrrrreeeeddddddddddddd.
Boooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedddddd.
I took this job with high hopes. It was a busy role they said. You’ll be piled with work!
Either I’m monstrously efficient (potentially true) or they lied (or, more likely, overestimated how much work there really was).
The problem is, my job has grown out of another’s role. Bascially, she was too busy… but there wasn’t so much extra work that it needed another full-time person. Or, it did, but someone who’s way slower at working than I am.
I can’t stand boredom. It does dangerous things to me. Like trawling the company’s e-learning site and thinking, hmmm, macroeconomics sounds interesting!!
*danger, danger Will Robinson*
About three minutes into the course, I started getting sleepy. Five minutes later, my eyelids became very heavy and I started nodding off. Ten minutes later and I was struggling to hold on to consciousness.
In theory, I should enjoy macroeconomics. I enjoy politics and things of an international nature… GDPs and all that are part of the ‘big picture’ and, even more interestingly, has a direct effect/is affected by everyday life.
Of course (and I blame my mind-numbing boredom on this), I didn’t think about how much mathematics would be involved.
GDP = consumption + investment +…
*thunk, snore… drool*
Boooorrrrring.
Big picture is fine. Big picture is interesting. Mathematics structured as word problems just makes me die a little inside… mostly through neural petrification. You’ve reached the city limits of Snoozeville.
It’s amazing the effects: I’m about to become unconscious doing the tutorial and, taking a 5 minute break and treating myself to writing this here and suddenly, I’ve perked back up again…
*consciousness returning… will to live restored… *
Huzzah!
And I’m going to keep reminding myself. It’s important.
My name is Incognitrix. I download music and I don’t pay for it. My actions are considered “illegal” by many and condemned by most in the industry.
Why?
I download music for three reasons:
Number 3 is a particularly pertinent point for me because it’s why I haven’t switched to paid downloads (which would legitimately solve issues 1 and 2). We record off the TV, we record off the radio… it has never been an issue before. I am recording to keep for my own personal purposes; I am not selling it on to anyone else and so I don’t see how I could be found in breach of copyright.
I suspect the reason why it’s suddenly become an issue is two-fold: because digital recordings are higher-quality than than the old analogue ones we did on cassettes and because we can now download what we like at any time we like, rather than waiting for something to appear on the TV or radio. Both reasons have resulted in a dramatic increase in people recording (or, these days, downloading) content and a resultant drop in sales.
But I say to you: so what? So the hell what? I don’t feel sorry for music executives and, after 50 years of peddling us with cds filled with 90% filler gunk and inflated prices, I don’t have much of a mind to shed a tear that they’re seeing cd sale losses. And don’t get me wrong: that’s the only losses they’re seeing. Sales are up on concerts and merchandising. The only thing that’s going down is cd sales and they’re bleating like pouty kids because they came so late to the download party (clinging as they were to that old corporate model ‘make the dumb-ass public pay for shit’) that they can’t get in the front door. So now they’re saying we shouldn’t be allowed to have a party in the first place. Talk about sore losers.
But what about the artists, I hear you ask? They deserve to get paid for their work! Of course they do… in which case, the last thing they should do is sign up with a record company, who have been screwing them for years. Screwing them HARD. From the £15 you paid for the cd, less than £1 would go to the artist. The internet may mean people pay for less cds… well, so the fuck what? Artists weren’t getting much out of that anyway. It was never their main source of income. But what does the internet give artists now? How about the means to reach the public directly? This gives them the first, the only, opportunity artists ever had to be able to make music, reach their public and make it big, all without needing a record company. The internet has given artists power like they’ve never had before and the only downside has been a drop in cd sales for record companies.
People pay for concert tickets. People pay for merchandise. The internet has not changed this. In fact, as I said before, these merchandising sales have risen. An artist’s main source of income is doing just fine. The only people who are hurting are record companies and, like I say, I’m not ever gonna feel sorry for them.
To my esteemed colleagues:
1. Please understand that the purpose of a Powerpoint presentation is to visually represent only the basic details, which you then elaborate on verbally. There is no point in putting everything you want to say on a slide because A) there’s not enough room and B) it makes you redundant, since you’re just saying what they can already read.
I.E. GET IT INTO YOUR THICK SKULL THAT THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH I CAN SQUEEZE ONTO THE DAMN SLIDE
2. When you set up a new system of how a particular document should be treated, I always find it helpful to advise others of any changes in procedure.
I.E. I’M NOT A MIND-READER ASSWIPE, SO LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND FOR THOUSANDTH TIME SO I’M NOT NEEDLESSLY DOUBLE-HANDLING WORK
3. In order to promote efficiency, it’s always appreciated when you remember when documents need to be submitted.
I.E. WHEN I SAY 4PM TODAY, I MEAN 4PM TODAY JERK-OFF. DON’T GIVE ME SOMETHING AT 9AM THE NEXT DAY WITH A STUPID ‘SORRY’ LOOK ON YOUR FACE. I NEED TO GET STUFF OUT AND WE CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO REMOVE YOUR FINGER OUT OF YOUR ASS EVERY BLOODY TIME.
4. When you ask for a meeting to be arranged, please try to keep in mind that many elements need to be brought together in order to ensure you have a productive time.
I.E. DIARIES DON’T MAGICALLY CLEAR THEMSELVES, ROOMS DON’T MAGICALLY BOOK THEMSELVES AND THOSE BISCUITS AND COFFEE YOU INSIST ON AREN’T PUT THERE BY THE TEATIME FAIRY. ’MEETING AT ROOM 2 AT 9AM’ IS NOT CODE FOR ‘SHOW UP AT 10 AND INSIST ON ROOM 3′. WHY THE HELL DID YOU EVEN WANT ME TO ARRANGE THE STUPID THING IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Thank you for your co-operation in these matters.
Fuckers.
Question: why does the letter ‘z’ represent sleeping? When did zzzzzz become the accepted symbol/word for a sleeping someone? I wouldn’t call it an onomotopaeia because I don’t think snoring (and certainly not sleeping) really sounds like a ‘z’ sound to me. So, what’s up with that then?
When you think ‘evil dictator’, what do you see?
Face of Evil is an interesting take on the concept of “dictator”. As the blurb says, it strips them of everything; all the accoutrements of their power. The uniform, the propaganda… everything is stripped away until you have a collection of old, sour-faced men.
It’s that last word I wanted to highlight: men. It’s notable in that all the most feared dicators in the modern world have been men. What I want to know is this: is the fact that they’ve all been men suggest men are more likley to get lost in an ideological fantasy and have more of a thirst (and stomach) for power and brutalism in order to achieve it… or is it more suggestive of the fact that women still rarely find themselves in positions where they could realistically grasp that kind of power in the first place, as the result of an enduring patriarchy that never seems to die, no matter how much neo-feminism we all pretend to subscribe to?
I work with a girl called Dimple. She’s foreign, but I don’t think that’s any excuse.
