31 jul
Squeak up, someone might just listen
Times are tough in the government department where I spend the daylight hours, to the point of being told by the senior manager to forage in cupboards for pens because there’s a heavily-reduced budget for writing implements and other luxuries used to communicate with the public. It gets a bit disheartening, especially now when I’m short-staffed and my peers have no capacity in their org charts to help each other and there’s no money for temporary staff or trained robots to steal me a new pen because mine’s running low on ink. And, of course, deadlines remain the same.
It’s rampant micro-management like this that makes me grateful for some of the benefits of the public service, like still having a say towards our collective employment agreement. Because there’s no money, employees have to find ways to change working conditions on a cost neutral basis. There’s a jaded ‘can’t be bothered’ feel because we’re tired, haven’t had time to take leave and we aren’t feeling terribly valued, but once we knew the meeting’s facilitator was listening, the atmosphere changed markedly.
We came up with ideas, and even if they never reach the lawyers and unions, someone listened. And allowed us to speak. And helped bring our warring factions together because we realised we are all in the same leaking boat with water up to our necks. One concern raised was how our department can reduce the higher-than-average amount of sick leave taken. We asked why it was so high, and no one knew because no one has asked — a bean counter wanted the number lowered so the statistical folk in Canberra would back off. An employee survey on the intranet log-in screen could take care of that question and save money by reducing whatever’s causing people to call in sick when they aren’t. The jaded think tank was warming up.
Having said that, a lot of public servants carry high sick leave balances because they’re given more sick leave than most of the private sector. How about we create a new form of leave called ‘wellbeing leave’ or similar and we can transfer some of the sick leave balance into wellbeing leave and use it to go to the gym, or go for a bike ride, or attend to preventative health care appointments so sick leave is used only when we’re broken. The powers-that-be will get a better reflection of its workforce’s motivation levels and staff will feel more empowered and healthy and take less unscheduled leave. And it’ll cost jack shit — hurrah for public service brain power.
We have an entitlement to training but budgets tend to be shuffled to pay for pens and paper — someone suggested a training budget attached to employees rather than the workgroups. Worth thinking about. And could be transferred from one department to another if staff move on so a higher-skilled public service benefits everyone. Throw us some more problems, we’re kicking butt.
And, funnily enough, not one point of consensus on the top priorities related to more pay or benefits. Everyone focused on work/life balance and accessing the benefits we already have but are becoming difficult to use because of lack of staff, time and support. It’s all stuff that can be fixed by people and not more money. And looking at it from my previous private sector experience, these ideas could be trialled in government as an example of ways to attract and retain people in private industry.
Consultation sessions like this are often like voting in elections because each person has a tiny voice that doesn’t seem to amount to much at all. But for just a few hours we roared like lions before returning to the rat race.
Crank-o-meter: squeak
29 jul
I couldn’t decide whether to post this. Commonsense was saying put the keyboard down but mischief was replying wow, this could be fun. A l’il cloud of depression has rolled in though and nothing seems funny, so read away while I go and hug a dog.
~~~
I picked up a block of chocolate and almost reeled at the distinctly sexual connotations of the seeping peppermint on the packet. The photo doesn’t do it justice and I am not (usually) a sees-a-double-entendre-in-everything person.
But if I were crazy enough to send feedback, oh, what to write?
Dear chocolate company
I am not a weirdo stalker and don’t look for Freudian slips in the confectionery aisle, however, the depiction on the packet of your peppermint-filled chocolate looks suspiciously like the end product of when a man loves a woman, or when a man loves a man, or when a man loves himself.
Your marketing and packaging design teams might be bitter about lack of quarterly bonuses, because I’ve conducted a survey and others agree with me. No, not others from the adult section of the video shop, but other guileless chocolate eaters. We all can’t be reading too much into it and no one is humouring me to make me stop the harassment.
Please explain. And tone down the glossiness and viscosity of the peppermint filling.
Yours
Cranky Chocolate Fiend
Crank-o-meter: funny or loony, the margin is fine
27 jul
Grid girls, le tour girls, other ornamental girls, put some clothes on and bugger the hell off
Some things about commercial sport shit me, such as the “You’re so unbelievable oh oh oh oh” music piped over the speakers after a goal or try or some other ‘you’re supposed to be cheering now’ moment, not understanding why male basketballers wear hideously baggy, shiny sack clothes yet women wear skimpy-yet-awful rainbow-bright skinsuits with flared handkerchiefs as skirts, and Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin are shithouse talking-heads-on-sticks cycling commentators who should be put to pasture and lots of people agree with me but the revolution is slow to start. And parochialism annoys the pants off me: why cheer for someone like Lleyton Hewitt just because he’s from the same country if he comes across as a raving yob? Oh yeah, green and yellow are bog-awful colours and please stop making Australians wear them.
When I’m not throwing empty tinnies at the TV, I’m also lamenting the amount of men’s sports that are supported by grinning women wearing very little and dishing out the trophies. For heaven’s sake, women, stop being the support act and start leading.
I cracked a sad attack about this a couple of years ago after watching the Bathurst 1000 car race and the grid girls and trophy givers were almost literally freezing their tits off after some bad weather rolled in. I sent a crankygram to the V8 Supercar organisation asking for an explanation of why car racing is stuck in the dark ages, how much of the crowd would really give a toss if the girls were replaced by — I don’t know — former event winners who have credibility rather than spray tans and nice hair, and did they know how many women they were pissing off who might want to pay money and go to events but the archaic sexism is just too much? I did not get a reply, but thankfully I didn’t hold my breath waiting for one. I might have turned blue like the spandex-sprayed vixens on their payroll.
This new flare-up of the grumps started yesterday when a cycling-mad friend said some of the Tour de France podium chickybabes weren’t as babelicious as in previous years. Granted, they usually wear dresses instead of swimsuits so the visual trash factor is lower, but the concept of women supporting men’s sporting glory is still void of sense and logic. The friend didn’t stop, and continued that it was better than the coverage of a race in Poland when the podium women looked like they probably kick-started trucks for a living. My response went along the lines of, “Good, that’s what you deserve for upholding stupid and irrelevant traditions of women standing back in skimpy outfits waiting to applaud men, for no real reason but to be stared at, or on some flimsy context that being on a podium will do wonders for their modelling careers, or that they really do enjoy being leered by drunken yobbos whose wives won’t have sex with them, and when was the last time you saw half-naked men supporting the women’s netball or arse-kicking hockey teams? ARGH.”
He said, “But weren’t there some grid boys at the Formula One Grand Prix this year.”
I replied, “Yes, a handful or two, but two lots of stupid still make the concept really f#$king stupid rather than right.”
I think he changed the subject. I hadn’t even got to the bit where trophies could be handed out by trans-sexual Daleks or a troupe of drag queens so there’s something for everyone.
Crank-o-meter: back to having the shits up again
25 jul
Or so the signs point.
The Stony Point seal hasn’t been spotted for a while by local people-who-wield-fishing-tackle and I was worried about his welfare (to the point of driving to the boat ramp on occasion and looking out to sea for a small, bung-eyed, cranially-dented pesky seal to no avail.)
The local newspaper reported sightings a couple of weeks ago with an accompanying photo.
Source: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24001659-2862,00.html
I dunno, he looks like he did in April except his whiskers might be a tad longer. At this lacklustre growth spurt he’ll hit his predicted adult weight of 300 kilos in 2050 and I’ll be out there petting him on the head and saying, “I knew this boy when he was a young ‘un” and trying to scruff his non-existent hair while he blushes and moans, “Awwwwwwwww, how embarrassing,” in seal language.
He’ll have graduated from nicking fish from pelicans to raiding Tasmanian aquaculture farms because the world’s oceans will be drained of sea life long before then and the Phillip Island penguins will be an historical hologram show for tourists.
I didn’t see the seal but I found another clue that he’s back scunging for food around town.
Crank-o-meter: arf arf
23 jul
Never work with immature adults or animals
One of my favourite winter treats is wrapping up in warm linen and towels when they’re fresh from the clothes dryer (I don’t do it that often and the Prozac causes night sweats sometimes and I have to use the dryer because it’s finally raining but have to stop feeling guilty each time I use electricity in case it causes the planet’s last breath because I just can’t sleep in my own ageing sweat and I am sorry poor planet). The cats also think napping on warm linen is their birthright in winter. And I have a new camera phone I’ve been busting to play with so, hey, why not combine the three?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Until the cat cracked the shits at me and the fun police walked in and said:
“What on earth are you doing, Princess Leia?”
“Right, I’ll leave you to it.”
Crank-o-meter: cosy (and possibly crazy)
21 jul
Short-sightedness is an illness
The New South Wales Government has acknowledged a problem with the increasing number of injured, hypochondriac and other non-dying ill people placing more pressure on hospital emergency departments. The government’s solution is to run television ads to encourage garden variety sick people to visit their general practitioners rather than present at triage reception desks.
Hello, reality check required in aisle one, I can’t remember the last time I secured a doctor’s appointment fewer than five days in advance here in Victoria and the situation was similar when I lived in Sydney. That’s acceptable for routine visits like annual check-ups and prescription repeats but there’s still a gaping void of care between routine and emergency that requires a doctor’s attention. Has no one in the NSW Government had a suspected urinary tract infection or unusual lump for example? Or needed a medical certificate for a cold or flu because it’s required by many employers and cannot be backdated?
Curiously, the NSW Government’s research indicates that only a third of patients at emergency departments believe themselves to be in need of hospital care — potentially more than 1.5 million visits to its emergency departments are linked to a shortage of general practitioners or incidents occurring outside normal clinic hours.
If someone is in genuine need, no doctors in my local clinic will refuse to make time; my doctor has never been less than 45 minutes behind schedule even at 10 in the morning but that’s the daily overload GPs work with already. The nearest bulk billing clinic operates without appointments but it’s not an option for people who might need a medical certificate for gastro and can’t physically leave their toilets for more than an hour, let alone sit in a waiting room for three hours or more. And for folks like me with delicate mental constitutions at times, I am not comfortable going through my life history with a stranger when my K10 is off the scale and I’m not sure what to do except talk to someone who knows my background while I’m still okay and haven’t evolved into an urgent case.
Every other clinic within half an hour cannot accept new patients. A new clinic opening at the end of the year is already accepting names for its books because of the overflow at existing practices. And it’s worse in rural centres and towns.
Lazy people who can’t be bothered waiting for appointments and Medicare refunds will keep fronting at emergency regardless of government advertising. For the majority, however, I can’t see the sense in pushing people from one over-stretched part of the public health system to another. Both sides of the scale are broken and shifting weights won’t make an ounce of difference.
We need a lot more bolstering in the middle. I’ve heard grumblings that pharmacists can sign medical certificates for a small fee, which is a reasonable start. The federal government also needs to look at the re-qualification process for immigrants, preparing universities to train more doctors especially with our aging population, and encouraging doctors to want to stay in practice longer. And that’s just the start: doctors are useless without other health professionals including access to support services, specialists and facilities. Is there such thing as para-doctors like para-legals?
Crank-o-meter: healthy at the moment, thank goodness
19 jul
A workmate from another office bounds in for a chat occasionally. He’s always positive and someone I should encourage to drop by to counterbalance my grumpiness. However, I have urges to throw myself over the desk with stapler in hand to seal his mouth because he always opens with, “How are we?”
My responses over the past few weeks include:
“We? There’s only one of me. Had your eyes tested recently?”
“I am well, thanks, but I can’t answer on your behalf.”
“Have I suddenly grown a second head?”
“Why do you say ‘we’ when ‘you’ is easy and correct? My dad does that and it drives me nuts, and then I drive him crazy pulling him up about it, and then I can’t stop myself because I’m more stubborn than him, and then, hey, where are you going? Or is that where are we going?”
It’s a rare person who can ignore my smartymouthedness, yet he’s unbreakable and pops in for more. But this is a special breed of nutter — he’s gaining revenge by spreading the virus through his staff. One of his team members came in yesterday and asked, “How are we?”
“Are you fricking serious? Only my dad and your boss use ‘we’. Where did this insidious habit come from? Do not copy!”
“Um, OK *backs away from crazy person in the corner*. Would you like a home-made ANZAC biscuit?”
“Yes, we would. Give us two, please.”
The ‘we’ meme is spreading here so rapidly that I don’t know if I’m upholding standards or falling behind the times. Until then, I’m fighting alone for me, you, and us, but not we.
Crank-o-meter: narky but well fed
17 Jul
The cultural shift in America for the selection of presidential candidates is rather exciting. The previously immovable pillars of packing a set of testicles and being married, straight, white, religious and having a cute family pet are being questioned by the media and voters.
Was Hillary man enough? Is Barack white enough? Is Michelle Obama patriotic enough? The little things are easier to critique in a political looking glass filled with nasties like economic downturn, rising unemployment and continued instability at the warfronts.
Now there’s a new question that’s more important than the price of oil: Is Republican nominee John McCain e-mailing enough? Or, as quipped by a bitchy correspondent and sub-editor: ‘McCain, complete and utter nitwit,’ because he is a bit of a tech newbie and is receiving lessons on e-mail and web navigation.
Putting McCain’s Republicanism aside (let me just nudge it to the left for a moment), the man has trained and served as a fighter plane pilot, survived five years as a prisoner of war, has written and co-written several acclaimed books and risen close to the top of American politics. And he’s managed to do all that without calling the help desk, but apparently not knowing how to delete his web surfing history is more important than his views on foreign aid or the environment.
Leaving the one-eyed box switched off works because he can use telephones and staff to communicate and delegate, and he won’t ever have to read ‘Is e-mail taking over your life?’ articles in magazines. His staff won’t fear leaving work on a Friday night and returning Monday to a full in-box with tasks sent by a hyperactive workaholic who thinks timestamping e-mails on the weekend is a clever motivational strategy. I got seven from my boss a couple of weeks ago and ignored them all until after lunch Tuesday to take a passive-aggressive stance. If something’s exploding or the place is burning down, call me. Otherwise, bugger off and follow McCain’s lead.
And White House staff will never get ‘read receipted’ and called 10 seconds after opening a message to ask why they haven’t responded. Lordy, lordy, I hate that.
Obama might be tapping away on his BlackBerry in front of the TV cameras, but it doesn’t mean he’s working on changing the free world; it could be a to-do list for ‘milk, bread, peanut butter’ for Thursday night’s shopping or placing a bet on the fifth race at Belmont Park. All McCain needs is a phone list and the day’s Dilbert left on his desk in the morning and he’s good to go.
Crank-o-meter: the US election is how many months away?
15 jul
I have tried my hardest to shut up about World Youth Day and my alternate plans for World Agnostic, Athesist and Apathetic but Having a Great Time Before We Go to Hell Day, but my head has become a pressure cooker of anger.
If I hear the word ‘pilgrims’ on a news service once more, I’m throwing the nearest Margaret Atwood book through the television screen. The remote control doesn’t have a mute button – it’s an old TV, but what merchant of aural torture wanted me to have to hear pilgrims three hundred times a day and the festival of virtue hasn’t started yet. Screw you, Panasonic designers.
I lost control last night when a news reporter was holed up in a bus with Catholic tourists and asked a young man about his views on protestors.
He said, “I will pray for them.”
Please don’t. Like the majority of the world’s population, I have well-considered reasons not to adhere to your religion, but most of us shut up and let everyone get on with life. Do not take the patronising moral road with those who think differently or I’ll walk up the Hume and join the protests. And on the way I’ll be flashing a browneye in front of every church and taking photos and you can pray for my sinning white butt. Two wrongs don’t make a right but free speech is for all of us regardless of ignorance.
And, Cardinal Pell, either do something about living in the real world or get your arrogant face away from the cameras:
“There is a crisis in the Western world. No Western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable, no Western country,” Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell said.
Sure thing, George, as soon as more than 800 million inhabitants of our earth have their hunger problems fixed. Is it okay for dozens of poor children to die today while you push for an increase in Western populations? How is this fair under the auspices of any religion?
Crank-o-meter: sickened
13 jul
I am the first to admit I don’t know what entertains kids these days. My dad sometimes tells the story of when I was small and gurgling and portable, he’d plonk my carrying basket on the bench of his workplace and play cards with his workmates while I did whatever it was I did. Once I grew legs I managed to crawl upon whatever horse was closest or run riot through the streets on my first BMX. It was red and went faster than the other bikes.
Today’s kiddly-winks seem harder to please on the surface, with mastery of computers by the age of four and Facebooking themselves silly between banging out killer riffs on Guitar Hero. But I see enough young ‘uns walking dogs and riding bikes and kicking footballs to see the simple pleasures never die.
The newest in kids’ toys though, ladies and gentleman, must be stopped. It’s the Bindi Irwin doll.
Source: The Age
I do not care if a portion of profits will help endangered animals – send a donation to f#$king Save the Dodos and Quokkas or whatever. I do not care if she’s an ambassador for instilling environmental sensibility in kids – do a weekly podcast or something instead of fossil fuel-using materials and transport to make and circulate these hideous travesties around the globe.
Think of the poor recreational boaters going for a Sunday sail and a container ship-load of Bindi dolls has run aground. Remember the episode of The Simpsons when a consignment of hot pants spilled and the townsfolk ran amok? The Bindi doll is the horror movie version of that skit – imagine going to adjust your spinnaker and you’re surrounded by thousands and thousands of Bindi doll heads bobbing up and down on the surface as far as your eyes can see. That’s the scariest f#$king thing I’ve imagined all week. The news coverage will be prefaced with warnings that the story could scare all age groups and offers of counselling after seeing the footage. The very sealife Bindi is trying to save will die of shock when it swims past and sees pods of female Chucky dolls in the water.
Save wildlife. Do not buy this doll for Christmas.
Crank-o-meter: I am going to have nightmares tonight, I tell you
11 jul
I appear to be the last person in the online world to read JK Rowling’s Harvard commencement address. I happened upon it and was so humbled that I did a web search to check its authenticity or if it was one of those heart-rending moral tales that do the e-mail rounds. Of course it’s real, like my runaway scepticism, and the search came up with 729,000 results so I feel both embarrassed and behind the times.
Rowling weaves threads of her life with the importance of failure and imagination, and pulls it all together with underlying themes of the gifts and shackles of family, the deliberate or unintentional imprints we leave on others and a healthy dose of the realities of life. She has quoted some of history’s greats but many perfect sentences in her text will stand alone and be quoted by generations to come.
After reading the text again — slowly this time — I felt an overwhelming humility like when I discovered To Kill a Mockingbird and George Orwell’s short stories. I don’t know if I cried more in selfishness when I learned Harper Lee didn’t write more books, with envy that Orwell could craft masterpieces with such simple language and ideas, or weeping from Rowling’s gutsy brutality when she sentenced Cedric Diggory to an early death.
Retaining a sense of reality and control over one’s life also strikes a chord. Rowling touched on the supposed fairytale resolution of her writing success — certainly, she doesn’t have to fear the concept of poverty in the second half of her life, but the impact of that reward must form the basis of many life decisions. She doesn’t have to write another word, but her writing was never motivated by money. She doesn’t need to work, but hard work and discipline have formed the foundations of who she is. In her address she notes the strength of long-term friendships but graciously omits the downside of so many wanting her attention and a piece of her time.
I don’t know what the Harvard graduates might gain or retain from Rowling’s journey; for me it’s a reminder that every life is — and should be — an unfolding story, faced with strength and told with conviction through its highlights and depths.
Here’s the link in case I’m not the last person to read it.
Crank-o-meter: head in a book
09 jul
The Tour de France is taking its toll and I haven’t ridden a kilometre or even written ‘wash me’ in the dust along the top tube of my bike. The pins-and-needles feeling in my backside from being glued to the couch could considered be a cycling-related injury though.
My body is at work perched before the computer and my brain is stretched across a timezone somewhere between Vladivostok and Madagascar. Last night my plan for the day was to get out of bed, ride the bike, chow down some breakfast, check the news online and head to work early to accumulate some flex leave and possibly do some work. I got out of bed and found clothes to wear to work. My shoes seem to match.
Somebody won a stage. French chappy.
Today is a day. Ah, Tuesday. Crap, lots of days until the weekend.
Ooooh, a meeting soon. They may want me to talk. Handouts, yes, print handouts to deter people who insist on interaction. I think I was the subject matter expert on this stuff until last week. Perhaps they’d like an alternate presentation on the early stages’ tricky uphill finishes, the group dynamics and intricacies of timing breakaways and how I really wish the team time trial was reinstated. They’ll love it, whoever they are.
Crank-o-meter: ZZZZ Z Z Z z z z z z z z z z
07 jul
It’s 4.30am and I woke with a start, realising I had toilet photos to upload and see if they were usable for today’s blog entry. Now who’s the crazy one, hey? Hey?
I had the pleasure yesterday of toddling along to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Deco 1910-1939 exhibition and meeting an interstate friend from the online world. I knew we’d be instant real-life pals when I spotted her dressed in traditional Melbourne black with lips coated in the cheeriest shade of trollop brightening a winter’s day. And while we were wedged in the piano-accordioned admission queue her astute opinions on the lack of scene setting and atmosphere at the exhibition’s entrance were spot-on (while my inner grump mumbled, “Why don’t they put more bloody staff on duty and be welcoming rather than as if we’re returning shitty Christmas presents to Target on Boxing Day?”)
I read an academic’s review of the exhibition and found it high-brow for my instinctive but uneducated palate, but after shuffling a mile in his shoes when trying to glimpse some glassware, I adjusted my attitude and did my best Wayne’s World “I am not worthy” in deference.
After the unwelcoming welcome, I didn’t like the linear set-up of most of the collection and we felt like naughty schoolkids escaping the conga line to view pieces in our order rather than the gallery’s. The lighting was shithouse and created ambience akin to trudging through a discount Persian rug showroom — get some frigging solar panels put on the roof if carbon emissions are a concern. My heart purred at the stitching and detail of some achingly beautiful women’s gowns in glass cabinets, but the men’s wardrobe was bare except a brigand’s outfit made of chaff sack and daubed with a ringworm motif. Not quite the Fred Astaire look that characterised the era in my mind.
Overall, the rooms bulged with high-society bits but suffered a lack of overall theme and slices of everyday life to hold it all together. I’m glad I went but left feeling a bit hollow, like eating flashy hotel food for a few days and wanting nothing but a cheese sandwich to feel sated.
Next, we dashed upstairs to the Black in Fashion: Mourning to Night hole-in-the-wall exhibition focusing on the history and use of the colour black in clothing. I didn’t know what to expect apart from Vivienne Westwood’s spiked heels in the print advertising (if they are size eight and there’s a hole cut in the display glass, um, don’t come to my house looking for them).
In 20 minutes I had ogled an intricate and pretty-as-all-hell mourning apron from 1875, learnt a tonne about Victorian-era dressing rituals for widows and how much work earlier feminists did to give us freedom to wear what we like, grieve for as long as we need and associate with whomever we please. Every information panel was beautifully written and the range of garments from bustled dresses to 1970s structural Japanese design to corsetry to classic Chanel to a beaded scrap worn by Kylie Minogue showed great care in their assemblage.
I might return for another peek at Gaultier’s Mardi Gras-esque renaissance soldier outfit — the deco exhibition may not have fed my appetite for menswear but a fitted black uniform with gold epaulettes dented my craving in an instant.
After drinkies and lunch ended (as in I ate too much and spent too much in bookshops again and got the guilts), I had that familiar I have a long trip home and I’m not sure my bladder will stretch much further feeling. Oh oh, the only option at hand for the second time in a few weeks was the Flinders Street Station public toilet.
Sunday must be family day in the women’s dunnies and after elbowing some small humans out of my way, I urinated and reviewed the art installation in the last cubicle on the left. Like Mourning to Night, it was a free exhibition that maximised use of the small space allocated by the curator. The artists remained anonymous but appeared to be members of the Gen Y modern expressionist movement, using widely-available materials in bold but minimalist strokes denotive of the current economic downturn, and using the ‘less is more’ philosophy in their protest against consumerism and the complexities of modern life. Well done, girls, you made me smile in this shithole.
Crank-o-meter: bit tired now (and vive le Tour!)
05 jul
My first post here lauded the praises of Wordpress’s simple and easy-to-cope-with installation process. I’d erase it right now if I could get back into my control panel without breaking shit.
I have more new reasons to avoid upgrading because I didn’t understand the instructions. Today I got home from work early, had some time and motivation up my sleeve to fight the spammers, so sat and upgraded slowly and carefully, one instruction at a time.
It’s five hours later and I’ve reverted back to the old version. Thank christ I didn’t trust the batch file back-up and made two longhand back-ups where I knew I’d find them. I think I’m back at square one after rescuing the ‘upgraded’ blog from a white screen of something to do with fatal errors. That’s five hours I’ll never get back. I could have been reading, knitting, masturbating, eating chocolate, writing angry letters to government, buying shit online, drafting a novel, watching Bold and the Beautiful, petting the dogs and cats, or sleeping instead of getting narky about the living nightmare this upgrade has become.
Screw you, Wordpress, I’m staying on version 0.0.0.1 or whatever it is. Or buying one of those old hand-cranking duplication machines that printed in purple ink that made everyone in a 20-metre radius as high as kites. Who needs technology anyway? Not me, I’ve broken the blog, my mobile phone won’t send pictures and my portable music player of choice has started turning itself on and pressing its own forwards and backwards buttons – fast forward another Red Hot Chili Peppers song and I’ll throw you in the f#$king bin.
Crank-o-meter: motherf#$king piece of shit crap f#$kity f#$k waste of f#$king time and effort that could be used drinking instead of going f#$king berserk blah blah f#$k you blah
01 jul
All the best in your new job, Bill
Bill Gates finished as a full time Microsoft employee last Friday but, remaining as the company’s chairman, I doubt his ID pass and computer log-in were killed the second he was ushered out the door with his Dilbert calendar and pen holder in a cardboard box.
The company put on a farewell attended by 800 of his closest work buddies who won a lottery draw to attend.
Where I work, the person closest to the departing employee gets bullied, sorry, delegated, into e-mailing everyone to bring a plate of food for a morning tea and contribute to a gift.
Tracking the progress of the money collection envelope has a higher degree of difficulty than avoiding the dudes who take their squeegees to car windscreens at traffic lights. By morning tea time minus 24 hours the envelope is missing in action somewhere between finance and the printroom, and the person buying the present wants nothing more than to tell his or her former best workfriend to f#$k the hell off and never come back.
And what could Bill’s gift buyer get for someone who has more than almost everyone on the planet but is giving almost everything away? Tricky. Something personal but practical, perhaps? I’d give him an iPhone but my sense of humour doesn’t always tickle the funny bones of the majority. But Billy boy would love it, I reckon.
I don’t know the food and refreshment arrangements for Bill’s farewell but, where I work, there are no lotteries; farewells are invaded by human seagulls bred with sniffer dogs who can smell corn chips from a mile away, fly in, feed and fly off. It’s okay for a few ring-ins to arrive empty handed because if all the rent-a-crowd brought food, everyone would have to eat the equivalent of a plate’s worth or there’d be a mountain of leftovers to finish (here, people organise farewell morning teas in other buildings so they don’t have the responsibility of cleaning up and washing plates — public servants are a cunning breed and I can only hope to learn from my grey-shoed elders).
I suppose at Microsoft there’s a few dollars in the budget to pay for catering when the boss retires or there’d be 800 plates of food if everyone brought something. Again, if it were here, 400 of those would be plates of f#$king Tim Tams. I don’t like Tim Tams – so there. Tim Tams are an over-sweet amalgamation of fat stuck together into greasy/crunchy mud bricks and there’s not even as many in a packet as there used to be. Everyone is banned from bringing Tim Tams to my farewell when I have enough energy to leave here. I’d have taken a packet to Bill’s farewell though as they’d be pretty darn special among the 400 plates of Oreos or whatever the ubiquitous farewell morning tea biscuit or cookie is in America.
What would one write in Bill’s card, or find space to scribble anything after the first couple of hundred ‘Sorry to see you go’ or ‘Thanks for the job, Bill’ messages? ‘Oy, Gatesy, will be thinking of you whenever I get the blue screen of death’ or ‘Thanks for leaving us with Vista, arsehole’.
Morning tea small talk would be awkward because his equivalent of the office rumour mill is every television network on the planet running stories of his kick-arse benevolent work. “So, um, boss, are you having a break before you start your new job?”
Pity the work experience student who gets lumped next to him by the tray of carrot cake and struggles for topics of conversation. “What’s on for the weekend, sir?” “Oh, I’ll be having lunch with Nelson Mandela on the way to delivering loads of malaria vaccine in Ghana. And you, young person?” “Getting hammered on party pills, trying to pick up anything wearing a boob tube and robbing the local 7-Eleven, sir.”
All I want to know before he leaves is where my document went yesterday that disappeared into a black hole of ones and zeroes and won’t recover.
Crank-o-meter: cheers! and leave me a slice of passionfruit sponge