ms crankypants

I was scouting around the webiverse looking for mind mapping software to create and keep track of – I don’t know, stuff. Do you have those lightning-flash moments of wanting something, not understanding or questioning why you want it, and obsess for hours over mindless detail until the perfect something is located?

And then, the next day, you wake all tired and bothered from staying up late looking for that something, and wonder why the hell it was so important in the first place?

It turns out I didn’t want mind mapping software; I apparently wanted bubbles. Look, bubbles. And maps. Bubble maps! Now that I have found what I didn’t know I was looking for, I am compelled to bubble my whole goddamn life!

To roadtest the software, I bubbled the storyboard for a short story percolating in my head. Imagine how goddamn huge the bubble map will be if I try to storyboard a book, a whole book I tells ya! I’ll have to interrupt the local cinema’s holiday schedule and plug the laptop into the big screen. Wall-E … me stuffing about with bubbles … Wall-E …

Slightly more seriously, size doesn’t matter because it’s easy to zoom in and out. Here’s a screen grab of a section of the big kahuna bubblefest in the first image. Let me know if you can think of a name for ‘The Woman’. She’s dreadfully successful, from a blue-blood family and has a serious crash — surname will be Reade, I think, and first name is I Don’t F#$king Know at this stage.

You can also keep track of ‘levels’ from their colours – below is a chunk of a bubble map of things to consider before accepting a job offer (denoted by the purple bubble). The burgundy bubbles are second-level ideas and they branch into the brown and then green (and this is when I remember I haven’t calibrated my monitor for ages and hope like hell the colours coincide with what you’re seeing).

If I were to marry the bubble software creator, I’d be bubble mapping the wedding – while wearing a bubble skirt.

Crank-o-meter: blop blop bubble blop blop. And Megsie, the third picture was inspired by you.

September 29th, 2008 | Tags: not cranky, technology | Category: not cranky, technology | Comments (2)

A woman called the office yesterday and had a long conversation with one of my staff. I picked up enough crumbs from one side of the conversation that I remained glued to the chair.

She wanted to visit our site to show her daughter around, who is applying for a government job and wants to familiarise herself with life here. Mumsy’s true colours came out when she was given what she wanted – an appointment, a hint of promise – which encouraged her to open up.

Her daughter is “no good at school” and needs to get a job.

But she is “really pretty though, a stunner, and that’ll help her for sure.”

Her 15-year-old isn’t eligible to apply for this type of government work for at least another year “but she needs to stand on her own two feet and start looking for a job.”

I’ve heard the opposing side of this story from several girls I’ve hosted on work experience. Mum gave birth early in life, raised a child alone or with a rotation of short-term ‘fathers’, and has met a partner with whom she’s still young enough to have children. Teenage daughter is a handful, a possible threat with her burgeoning sexuality, and it’s easier to evict her from the new love nest than try to salvage a patchy upbringing.

Each time I’ve wanted to give the girl a big hug and tell her things will be okay, but it’s not appropriate in the short-term and official nature of our meeting and I’m not sure things will be okay. One trait they share in common though is they’re tonnes smarter than they’re given credit for, and mess up at school for attention they don’t get at home – I can only hope they learn from their mothers’ mistakes and that boys aren’t a handier source of attention and affection.

Crank-o-meter: hopeless

September 27th, 2008 | Tags: feminism | Category: feminism | Comments (4)

I’ve had a long week, disturbed sleep and want to hurl heavy objects at fools.

Ducks are cheering. Here’s one beating the morning chill atop the heating flue on the office roof. A one-duck morning is cool but tolerable; four-duck mornings are fun when the office reverberates with duckies scuffling for positions on the chimneys.

 
Crank-o-meter: sleepy

September 25th, 2008 | Tags: animals are fun, general delusions | Category: animals are fun, general delusions | Leave a comment

I’m trying to write about interesting news stories stashed in my bookmarks, but can’t concentrate on anything but the carnival of weirdness around me.

Example: How many people’s mothers plan to have a family cat taxidermied after little Fluffy [1] has gone to heaven? Mine [2].

Updated example: How many people’s mothers have changed their minds, and now want three family cats taxidermied after Fluffy, Snowball and Kitty have gone to heaven? Mine.

I will support anyone wholeheartedly and sincerely with almost any venture: want to climb Mt Everest in bare feet and a bikini? Sure, I’ll help lug the camera gear to capture the journey. Date a professional footballer? Not so enthusiastic about that one, but I’ll be there with tissues and a, “Well, he’s a right bastard,” when the tears flow. Collect teaspoons of the world and arrange them in custom-made wall displays? My aunt does, and we get on great guns. But stuff a dead pet?

I went to the parental residence the other night for dinner and mum raised the topic again as a matter of family importance. My dad and brother have given up, so fighting the good fight is left to me. Mum always wins because she’s been drinking too much beer with too many prescription med chasers, and I can’t penetrate her circular arguments with gentle logic, like trying to remember a pet for the good things it gave in life, and not having to dust a glass-eyed reminder of the loss.

There are also harsh and insensitive arguments that I daren’t use, such as what to do if the pelt is ransacked by moths. Or, heaven forbid, my dogs think the kitties are stuffed toys and ‘play’ with them. And one day my parents will meet their maker and my brother and I will be responsible for their estate and nick-knacks: we’re both kitty-hugging animal freaks and couldn’t bear the guilt of either keeping or throwing out the preserved pets of old. Even the stuffed fighting cobra and mongoose she brought back from Asia years ago creeps me out, and there’s no personal connection to either critter.

She is not thinking this through. I think she loves her animals more than my dad loves her, but healthy affection doesn’t come from keeping a physical hold on the dead. She’ll bloody well kill me though if I say that’s why I think she’s plotting this madcap scheme. Damn you, father and brother, for leaving me at the front of the firing line.

[1] All cats’ names changed to protect the innocent
[2] No use protecting whose mother I’m referring to; she’s almost famous around here (one day I’ll tell you about the toilet seat garden display in her front yard)

Crank-o-meter: a little confused and a lot scared

September 23rd, 2008 | Tags: embarrassing stuff | Category: embarrassing stuff | Comments (4)

Avoid this now. Ask me how!

Opera is a lovely web browser, and the new Firefox 3 is a ripper: let’s start with increased security information about web sites you might surf and want to check security authenticity quickly, such as shopping and banking. Just wave your mouse pointer over the logo in the address line, and presto!

How about easy-as-piss favourites and blog feed management, a new doodad that remembers those web sites you shut down and forgot to bookmark, hit CTRL+ and CTRL- to make the text size bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller at whim; it’s got the lot! Have I convinced you to change over?

Check out the bookmarking! Adding, sorting, filing and deleting can be done from the web screen without going into another set of annoying menus. Lovely!

Convinced? Damn, because crankypants displays on Opera and Firefox, but not on any version of IE. I have given up the sybarite’s lifestyle for nights spent in software support forums, CSS coding help sites and turning the internet upside-down to work out the glitch. I wish I could afford to be an alcoholic, but I can’t because my swear pig is full.

If I create and modify posts in IE, they’ll appear on all browsers so that’s what I’ll do from now on. But try another browser and check out the pirate day post on 19 Sep. There’s a picture of a little dog wearing a funny hat.

Hmmmm, Firefox.

Crank-o-meter: Firefox Firefox yeah yeah yeah!

September 21st, 2008 | Tags: shittypants, technology | Category: shittypants, technology | Leave a comment

It’s 11am and I still haven’t decided what to wear. Oh, how to dress up for International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The beauty of being an adult with no children is that a parent has no right to say, “You’re not going out like that,” and kids can’t say, “There’s no way you’re going out like that.”

And the dogs can’t say a damn thing because I’m bribing them with biscuit chunks.

Crank-o-meter: YAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR

September 19th, 2008 | Tags: animals are fun, embarrassing stuff | Category: animals are fun, embarrassing stuff | Comments (2)

It’s a crappy week in the public service.

I am now the state-wide contact for a program that doesn’t exist, and the other offices were advised except me. I enjoy dealing with people who have been call forwarded around the countryside and are crankier than me; I get to play See if This Member of the Public Thinks I’m Bullshitting or Genuinely the Village Idiot.

And very pushy representatives of very senior people in Canberra let me know that I’m organising the launch of the very important program that doesn’t exist. They know it doesn’t exist and want the shit to spatter as far away from them as possible when the very senior people realise a whole lot of nothing’s been going on. I’m not sure how I’ll make everyone happy on this one. I’ll invite you all though and see if I can get funding for scones with jam and cream.

Today I caught up with a contact in another government department and he outdid me with his story. He’s in charge of a site undergoing extensive renovations, and building works must adhere to the state’s energy efficiency guidelines of incorporating solar energy or water tanks.

Excellent, he thought. It’ll be a good opportunity to design the building sensibly for the long-term future and make it a showcase site. He approved the architect’s plans for solar-powered gas heating and hot water and sent them up the chain for the final green light.

His plan was refused because solar panels cost too much at the initial outlay. He responded with the cost/benefit analysis that demonstrated how solar energy would save money.

He received a reply that he had to have a water tank. The architect, a sympathetic fellow, patted him on the shoulder and said, “There, there, you can wash your company vehicles with the tank water.”

He shook his head and replied, “That’s not possible because car washing has been sub-contracted and cannot be done by staff on site.”

The ever-helpful architect suggested using the water captured to irrigate the landscaping.

“Look around you,” said the hapless public servant. “There’s nothing but a dustbowl, bitumen car park and some straggly gum trees.”

The water tank was delivered because he had to have it, and it is collecting cobwebs in the car park, unconnected and taking a car space.

Crank-o-meter: it’s not just me

September 17th, 2008 | Tags: work | Category: work | Comments (2)

I had to go to a bank twice the other day.

The first time was to discuss re-financing the roof over my head and after a few minutes of discussing products, fees and charges, I felt like the ‘personal lending manger’ was rogering my arse with a giant carrot while convincing me to sign over my last dollar for a few drops of lube. And the entire time she beamed one of those artificially-installed, all-teeth-but-no-eye news presenter smiles without blinking. I was scared she wouldn’t let me out without frisking my pockets for change in case I really could afford the ‘premium package’ to pay more for things I didn’t know I needed.

I returned later in the day to hand over the completed paperwork, signed with the blood dripping from the kidney I surgically removed and sold on eBay to fund the re-finance. Luckily, Robo-Smiling-Butt-Rogerer was locked up with another hapless victim, but no staff were at the front counter to deal with simple matters such as dropping off my application form.

I joined the snaking teller queue because I could see two women behind the reinforced screens in the distance and perhaps they would accept my paperwork without ripping out a heart or lung in exchange (f#$kers wouldn’t take the brain; they only accept working organs).

A couple of metres behind me in the line was a large man with a small human attached to his arm. The child of should-know-better age was screaming as if his ears had been removed as collateral for his dad’s new car loan. The boy decided to take flight from his father’s clutches and ran to the front door, blocking  customers from coming inside and getting himself jammed in the automatic door when the sensor gave out. It squashed him not too hard, not too soft, but just enough to increase his wailing to make the rest of us beg to have our ears lopped and blocked. Dad didn’t want to lose his place in the queue and reasoned with his child from his place in the line. Didn’t work. Kiddlywinks screamed louder when the door opened and shut on him again and the father reasoned at an even higher volume in a battle of who could get murdered in the bank by the customers first.

Is there a protocol to ‘correct and direct’ rowdy offspring belonging to others, or take frustration out directly on parents who let junior get away relentless screaming as a form of attention seeking? My theory is if a child is of the age he or she can talk, he or she can listen. I make sport of pulling up queue-jumpers and morons who can’t park their cars in the white lines, but get nervous dealing with unruly kids in case the parents smack my chops. And I don’t want to deal with the parents directly because they’ll take offence at having their parenting skills challenged; the kid will continue to get away with blue murder while mum and dad smack my chops anyway.

Crank-o-meter: frazzled and broke

September 15th, 2008 | Tags: manners | Category: manners | Comments (5)

I’m staggered that a single word brought back memories of a never-to-be-spoken-of-again few hours of my life.

I have been to a Manpower show.

I swear it was many years ago and against my will, even though I can’t remember how I was manipulated from saying, “Never in this lifetime, even if I live to 750 years old will I be seen at a Manpower show,” to, “Bloody hell, all right, just shut up and stop nagging.” My mother and some of her girlfriends were the main perpetrators, so I imagine some large-scale familial subterfuge and kidnapping techniques were brought into play.

Picture a large square dining room of an outer suburban hotel with a small elevated stage at the front, surrounded with several hundred members of the female species who haven’t seen a semi-naked man for decades without accompanying sprouts of nasal hair and the porch hanging well over the toolshed.

To any women who poo-poo men for perving at strippers, I’m sorry, but I have never seen such feral displays of overt leering, catcalling (if “Heeeee’s miiiiiiine” and “Showusyadick” can be considered catcalls or mating calls) and voracious groping than this bunch of local women. I can’t believe the stage wasn’t surrounded with a high fence, razor wire and a team of crack police snipers in case the ladies got a little frisky. I think the male publican went into hiding in the likelihood that innocent civilians with penises were going to be dragged into the war zone.

Strippers are waxed and oiled for very good reason: not to accentuate their perfect, muscular forms under the spotlights, but so they have half a chance of sliding to safety when the talons of half-drunk, shrieking banshee women try to capture and drag home the last juicy remains of the entertainment.

The non-stop din of yowling females on heat interrupted my attempt to build a time travel machine out of beer coasters and cheap cologne fumes to fast-forward me to another continent. So I sat there and sulked and took all the, “Well, YOU’RE no fun,” comments with passive-aggressive vows of gory revenge.

Magicians, comedians and strippers go to the same school of How to Select an Audience Participant. Of course, the person who expresses the least interest gets the most attention. During a particularly long grimace, I didn’t see the rapid approach and landing in my lap of a tanned and glistening brute clad in nothing but a hot pink g-string. It’s hard to escape with 007 style when there’s a bulging groin in one’s face.

I begged the improvised time machine to do something, anything, and it time travelled the stripper’s hand towards his abdomen in a pointing gesture for me to remove his underwear.

The laughing hyena family at the table screamed at me to RIP HIS CLOTHES OFF OR WE WILL. The three hours or 10 seconds I froze in horror were enough for the nearly-naked chappie to determine that my hands were vice-gripped to the arms of the chair and not moving an inch. He pranced off to the next reluctant member of the audience, expertly dodging the spears and harpoons launched by the starving jungle women.

I can’t believe the Manpower show is back. As much as I need to stop dwelling on this and make the pain go away, I wonder if it’s a newer and younger set of shiny pecs and deltoids on tour, or the former dancers like the now ‘favourite gardening guru’ Jamie Durie, who tried for so long to hide his entertainment beginnings. The audience wouldn’t notice anyway.

Crank-o-meter: scared of what else is lurking in my chamber of secrets. Thanks to the kindly soul who listened to my story *and* drove me back to the billboard to take a photo

September 13th, 2008 | Tags: embarrassing stuff | Category: embarrassing stuff, entertainment | Comments (2)