Jeebus is sick of your prayers.

Yep, my boss is into Jeebus.
She uses the company gear and staff to print off the weekly church bulletin.
Which means we get to read it... And oh what fun it is.

Now a brief bit of background.
I'm not into Jeebus.
I'm not into someone else instead, I don't know that there is an omniscient presence that sees over us and I don't know if I believe in any kind of theism.
At the moment, I'm pretty happy in making my own decisions on all things existential and I don't need a god or a text to define my morals, thank you very much. I'd say my self-defined set of values and morals are pretty good. I'm not a philanderer, I may be slightly greedy, I do get jealous from time to time, but I'm not harming anyone. I think Buddhism would be the closest an organised religion would come to representing my interests. Although I'm probably a tad too militant to be a Buddhist.
Come to think of it, science is the best option when it comes to explaining my world.
And I'm happy for you to believe in whatever it is you choose to, just don't try to recruit me for any of your nonsense.
Anyways...
So the boss uses work for Jeebus tasks.
And whilst folding the Jeebus pamphlets, we have a read of what's happening in the church.

Friday: Pray that Mr Johansson will find help with his current difficulties.
Nice one. Single out the bankrupt guy for prayers. I'm sure that's what he needs because his overdraft mainly consists of hopes and dreams, so surely enough prayers should be worth something, right? That makes the church like a giant ATM. Cha-ching!

Saturday: Pray that the Youth Group has more people return to hear about the Lord's word.
Wait, what? You're praying for more people to come and learn how to pray? This is getting a bit too 'meta' for me. And tell your damn godsquad teens to leave me alone. I don't want your brochure and your hymns are old and shitty.

Sunday: May we pray that Pastor O'Brady's sermon reaches out to those who need it the most.
Again with the praying about praying. Since when did prayers become so self serving? Oh what? Always? Ok... Amen!

Monday: Pray that the children have enjoy themselves at playgroup and that The Lord may reach out to all of them.
Ok, that's a no no. No touching the children. Even if you are a deity. Also, don't kids do this anyways? I didn't go to church playgroup, but by hell did I have some fun in the heathen sandpits.

Tuesday: Let us pray that Sanyan Patang's chemotherapy is effective and that his family are looked over during this testing time.
Sounds like Mr Patang's been a-sinning! Ok, that's just poor taste, but seriously praying for science? Isn't that like the old cliche of fucking for virginity? Or eating for famine? Or fighting for peace? Granted it's nice they're supporting the family during a rough time, but praying for the chemotherapy to be effective? I imagine the people of the church stood around Mr Patang's hospital bed, holding their hands over him going "Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow"
all psychic like.
You could call it Pray-diotherapy if you like. But I don't think it would help...
Maybe I'm just a pessimist.

And so the list of prayer targets went on.
This got me thinking that isn't it a bit selfish for this people to be praying over such minor things.?
And if you were Jeebus, or God or whichever one it is, wouldn't you be a bit pissed with people telling you about this stuff all the time.
It's be like being in high school again and having your mum constantly asking "Have you done your homework yet?"
No, but I'm about to, give me a chance dammit.
Likewise, Jeebus probably WAS going to help out Mr Patang, but you lot have been so damn annoying, asking him to do things every five minutes that Jeebus has cracked it and decided Mr Patang can sort himself out.
This goes for all of the suggested prayers. Praying for the children to enjoy playgroup? If I was Jeebus, I'd be like "Seriously you guys, fuck off. The kids can enjoy things themselves just fine. What you want me to do? Apparate or some shit? Is that what you want? You want me to apparate and do some baloon animals or something? Sheesh. Go find some real conundrums, ass-hats."

"Did you want a balloon animal or not? Now what's wrong? Oh your scalp is burning? Well go tell mummy to stop praying cos she's PISSING OF JESUS!!! God I hate kids... Hey, you there! What the fuck are those flowers for? Are they dandelions? God I hate dandelions..."

I do find the whole prayer thing to be very self-centred. I mean, shit, you want something? Why not work for it like everyone else. Stop being a slack ass and do the hard yards. Stop asking for money to come your way. Don't pray that life will get easier. No one likes a pussy. Especially one that spends their time praying that Jeebus will make everyone stop calling them Monobrow Mary. Here's a tip. If you want a deity that will fix that problem, screw Jeebus, go get a Venus and shave your damn eyebrow lady.

I think if everyone who spent time praying did something actually worthwhile instead, a shitload more good things would get done. Think about that next time you're kneeling in front of your bed. Instead of sitting there, hands clasped asking god to help you pass your mid semester exams, why don't you get out a fucking text book and do some actual reading.

If I never post again, know that God came under the cover of darkness and stole my soul away.

So today was a day of rage*, blaspheme and generally unwholesome outbursts. Probably not to be repeated, so if I've offended you**, do come back cos it's likely my other posts won't be so offensive. Probably.

* Regarding today's ...errr... outburst. I realised when i got home tonight that I hadn't eaten any lunch. And when I don't eat, I get super grumpy.
So if I had eaten lunch, I probably wouldn't have had such a tantrum this afternoon.
Rage and Biscuits is a bit of a misnomer now I think about it. If I have biscuits or any food for that matter, I don't get grumpy/rage-y... Maybe I should call this Rage or Biscuits.
Meh...

**This post is all in jest, so please God, don't let anyone be offended by it. Kthxbai.

Vital signs returning to normal...

Apologies for massively furious vent.
Work is seriously shitful right now though.
After my little tantrum I spoke to my colleague about it and it turns out everyone (there's 4 of us) is feeling the same.
So i called a crisis meeting and now we're working on a problem/solution list to compile and take to the boss.

My boss is basically a 5 year old running a company. If she sees something shiny, then that's the new priority for her. Which means a fuck tonne of work then gets passed down onto me and my colleagues to 'sort out'. She has no people management skills and every time an issue is raised by myself or someone else, she turns the conversation into one about some new project she has in the works- the adult equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALALA"
I feel like I'm screaming at a brick wall most of the time. Especially when she insists she has the final say on everything anyone does, yet is only in the office fleetingly, maybe for a total of 12 hours a week.
It's a nightmare.
But anyways, something constructive is coming from it as we're all compiling a list of issues and proposed solutions which will hopefully bring about some change.
I say hopefully as I have been through this exact process 3 times in 15 months here and nothing has changed apart from half the staff quitting. Oh and they haven't been replaced so what used to be 8 is now 4.
Whew.... Life can suck balls sometimes.
Oh well, this time next week I'll be boarding through knee deep powder in Italy.
Hells yeah!


PS: Actually, considering I'm a world away from my home, have the opportunity to do things like go snowboarding in Italy and get to curl up in bed at night with the coolest girl ever, my life isn't all that bad. High fives to life!

Fucking shit fucking piss.

Just when you think things are on the up, your job turns around and decides to be a fucking ass-hat.
Dumbass co workers/bosses who can't even CREATE A FUCKING BASIC SUM to add up two cells in excel and have to get you to show them.
Yes, this from someone who's apparently a company director. Specifically in charge of budgets and the like.
This certain colleague is also asking that I create paper files of everything I do on the computer. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? I'm not slaving away just because you're too much of a fat lazy fuck to actually use the tools you have.
And when i raise concerns about certain schedules for projects we're meant to be working on, I get told to ignore it and concentrate on something else..

Me: But, I really think this is important and we need to do this immediatel....
Boss: Drop it... Two weeks more won't matter, we'll come back to it then.

Now it's been three weeks and the other parties involved in said project are becoming irate and I'm the one that has to field their angry phone calls and apologise for incompetence i was trying to stop. Which means in this other party's eyes, I sound like a completely useless wanker.
Fuck this. Seriously, this job can fuck itself in the ass.
I'm sick of stupid c-words that won't work or are completely inflexible in their ways.

I flipped after yet another phone call today, threw my phone down and shouted 'Fuck this bullshit. This place is fucked!"
Luckily everyone knows how much of a spastic boss we have and how retarded the situation in this office is so it was agreed that things were in fact fucked.
This doesn't make my life any easier though as I now have to endure a shitstorm of rushed work which I was on track to avoiding before people started making printing out unnecessary shit and putting it into lever arch files a priority. Fuck right off you dense bunch of fucking r-tards.

Grr... If anyone so much as looks at me on the tube tonight, I could totally punch them.

*Simmer*

End violent outburst.

Yep, today I'm putting the 'Rage' in 'Rage and Biscuits'
Normal blogging will resume shortly, promise.

My colleagues, on Australia:

You know when sometimes you're roped into something so absurd that it angers you because now you're implicated in a conversation that will go down as being one of the single most retarded things of all time?

Female Coworker1 (FCW1): Oh, I vomited once when I was underwater.

Female Coworker2 (FCW2): Oooh, gross! How?

FCW1: Well I was over in Australia (gesturing across the room towards me, because apparently, I'm Australia in it's entirety) and I was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and we'd had too much to drink the night before and I had the urge to throw up, so i pulled my snorkel out and vomited in the water.

FCW2: Oh that's disguting.

FCW1: Yeah i know, and then all the fish came up and were just eating it like 'chomp chomp chomp'. (Making chomping gestures with hand in front of her face)

FCW2: (Even more alarmed) Ewwww!

FCW1: Yeah they were like those little silver fish... (Pauses, shouts at me) Hey Jiminy, you know those silver fish that they have over there?(Placing hands about 30 cm apart which I assume serves to indicate the approximate size of the fish.)

Me: They have silver fish everywhere, FCW1.

Trying to identify a specific type of fish with 'silver' being the only descriptor is like trying to find a restaurant in India with 'unhygenic' as your sole clue. And no 'sole' wasn't intended as a fish pun. But it can be now I noticed it.

FCW1: Yeah, but you know the ones in Australia that swim around and then they'll be under a jetty in the shade?

Me: (Incredulously) Are you serious? It could have been a million types of fish. I mean, nearly all fish are silver and I don't know what fish you saw under a jetty. I have no idea what you're talking about.

FCW1: Oh well... (Then to FCW2) Yeah, well anyway., these fish were just swarming around eating all the vomit. It was crazy! (Doing 'swimming fish' AND chomping gestures with hands)


Oh. My. God.

Facelift, mofos!

I was sick of the black and white tube power cable photo in my header. It was too bland and boring.
I mean we're in the age of Web 2.0 aren't we?
I should have a plethora of shiny glossy buttons and loads of gradients and some kind of nifty widget in my sidebar that lets you book your holidays through your social network contacts whilst sms-ing your travel details and Flickr photostreams to your friends and family who can then use the included link to view the Youtube video of you dancing to your favourite Pandora station with your Myspace friends? I should have this! WHY DON'T I HAVE THIS!?!

Ah, where was I... Oh yes.. the photo
Compositionally, it was sheer brilliance and university professors around the world often emailed me to ask if they could use it in their textbooks.
I said no, go take your own pictures. They left me offerings of incense and small children and solemnly returned from whence the they came.
Ok, that's all lies. My photography isn't anything special at all. But at least this new shot isn't completely monotone.

I might post some other photos sometime soon too... Pictures make things pretty and I admit, the white and blue on black isn't the most engaging theme for my blog.
Until I wake up one morning and realise I have gained the magical skill of template production, I shall stick to adding pictures.

In other news:
Owing to a higher-than-usual influx of enquiries, non-blondie and I are working on a super secret awesome project, soon to be completed. We apologise for any interruptions to your service, but assure you its going to be vaguely interesting
SUPER SECRET!!!
But it shall be revealed soon...
Hold your breath! I dares ya!

Random Thought #12983

Hypothetically....
If I was deaf, I'd organise dinner parties for non-deaf guests and after a tasty dinner I'd suggest we play some parlour games. I'd let one of my hypothetical guests choose the first game, after that we'd have a nice dessert wine and then I'd always suggest we play charades.
And I'd fucking win everytime.
Having sign language in charades is like having a waterbottle full of EPO in the Tour de France.
And provided you were swift with the hand movements, your guests would be none the wiser. Mind you, you'd need a hypothetical co-conspirator, but that wouldn't be hard to sort out. Everyone wants to be a winner at charades.
Especially when all it takes is three swift hand movements and you can be all: "All Along The Watchtower! Jimi Hendrix!"
Hell yeah! How you like that hypothetical guests? Lured here with the promise of dinner, you're now forced to bow before the charades talent of your deaf host. Mwahahaha!!

See, I think my 'positive outlook' thing is a pretty robust philosophy.

Although if your hypothetical guests whipped out the Playstation and wanted to play Singstar, you'd be fucked.

Phone-y Business

Another normal day at work chasing people for this and that, organising something or other, managing a new project and occasionally answering the phone trying to help people out.
And then I get a phone call.

jiminycricket: Good morning, Place of Work, jiminy speaking. (Yes I have good phone etiquette, you plebes should try it out some time.)

random phoner-innerer: Hi

jc: Hi. What can I do for you?

rp-i: I would like to speak to *mumble mumble mumble*

jc: Ah, sorry who were you after?

rp-i: Bai Long Tong

jc: I'm really sorry I don't think anyone by that name works here, what was the name again?

rp-i: Bai... Long... Tong... last name Tong, T... O...

jc: Yes, I understand. We don't have anyone here by that name, was it something I could help you with? What was it regarding?

rp-i: Nothing. It's personal.

jc: Ah ok....

rp-i: *hangs up*

Bai Long Tong!
Haha.. I though that was what you did at the homewares store when you needed utensils to cook something on a really big fire.
Or perhaps I misheard and he said Buy Long Dong. In which case I'm freaked out as it looks like spam has now made the jump to telephony. I'm perfectly happy with my dong thank you sir. I would not care to upgrade. Next they'll be calling and offering me cheap poor quality replica watches: Bai Rong Klok?
Then i wondered if maybe I was having a prank played on me. I mean come on... Bai Long Tong??

Later on today i received another call. This time to my mobile from a number I didn't recognise.
I answered it and it's some guy from some company who found my CV on monster (which was put up in April 2007 and hasn't been touched since).
He offered me a job working in strategy for their Point Of Sale division.
Which is based in Rome.
What the hell? Rome! Me! Work! Strategy!
I had to decline as I'm kinda locked into my current work and I don't really want to uproot from London now that non-Blondie and I are are sorting out all our travel budgets and finding a new house and everything else.
So it's nice to be able to say I was offered a job in Rome, but nicer to say I've got an awesome girlfriend that i can travel all of Europe with very shortly.
(That has to be worth at least 10 brownie points, doesn't it?)

There's some sense behind all this, I swear.

Screw memes, I think the best way to gain some insight into what someone is like is to record what they do as a part of their daily goings on. And I decided that for blogging purposes, the best way to do this is to record all the search terms you use for one day.

And so...

Things I have entered into google today.

- Russia potato
- Vodka wheat
- Google reader alphabetical order
- jiminycricket
- Melbourne dust storm
- bloomsbury bowling lanes
- Namco southbank
- Network config mac
- Sheep stomach
- Autobots breaks
- Salary calculator

Also for a little further insight into my life:

Random excerpts from The Girl and my googlechat nonsense:

The Girl: careful
Me: Careful of babies!

Me: STACK THE BABIES, STACK THE FUCKING BABIES! QUICKLY!

Some time later....

Me: Maybe if I do this well while I'm here I can chisel myself into it so well that they'll NEED me to keep it running. Which i can definitely do from back home for 400 dollars a month
I will be the WEBMASTER!!!! WEBMASTER!!!!
Whoa, nerd klaxon is going bananas
The Girl: hahaha
yeah, that works
easiest way is to just not give them the account details
so they can't get control of it
mwahaha
Me: eggsackery
The Girl: and threaten to write horrible things on it and send it to their entire database if they dont pay you!
Me: hmm... i like your evil ways
The Girl: YES!
I JUMPED OVER THE HOMELESS!
and kicked them when i did it!
Me: KA-POW!
The Girl: Also, i am now the proud owner of a laminated seating diagram. HUZZAH!
Me: v00t!

And then again, a little later...

The Girl: yes, it makes ACTUAL sense, not crazy jizzle sense
Me: lol
Crazee Jizzle
Lethal Bizzle
Dizzee Rascal
Kevizzle Ruddizzle
The Girl: kevizzle rizzduzzle
Me: lol, sweet
He pwned Johnizzle Howdizzle
The Girl: does the name 'davensac' make you think of something dirty
like, a butterflies testes?
Me: Like a man and his scrote...


Umm. what?
I don't even know what we were talking about. No doubt it was important...

Also I hereby trademark a term.
That term is 'capsident'.
Capsident™ is what you say whenever you accidentally bump the caps lock halfway through the sentence and stART TYPING IN CAPS FOR NO REASON.
If this happens to you, simply write "Sorry, capsident!" and any presumptions that you had begun yelling mid-sentence are waived. It saves you going back, deleting everything and retyping it.
I seriously own this term. I searched for it in google and it exists nowhere else on the internet. So it's mine.
™ Motherfuckers

In other news, my decision earlier this month to make an effort to be more positive has paid off.
At 5pm today, I received an email out of the blue from my boss with the subject 'Salary Review'
Fuck... I presumed bad news.
I read the email...
."..blah blah blah... We're very appreciative of your continued efforts and would like to offer you a 15% payrise, backdated to January 1st 2008."

Fuck yeah. So now I've worked myself into a position where my main repsonisbilities are the upkeep of our new IT systems and the development of our marketing strategy using a new corporate blog I've created.
The boss thinks what i'm doing is revolutionary. It's not. It's called Wordpress. But I'm gonna take all the credit I can get, cos it doesn't come around very often.
My boss also suggested I may want to maintain the blog after I've left England, which would be awesome. Getting paid in pounds while I'm back in Australia would be super awesome.

Will be interesting to see how it all pans out...

Good times... Things seem to be on the up for a change.

All Aboard the Douche-Train.

Public Transport.
Now there's a topic no one EVER has anything to complain about!
But seriously, today was different. Tube journey was fine. All the way until I was a few stations from home.
I thought we stopped at Earl's Court, but apparently we stopped at Douche Park.
Captain Ass-hat and what I assumed to be his long-suffering girlfriend/wife boarded the train.
The guy was an arrogant South African who wore a pleather jacket, corduroy jeans and brown brushed-leather shoes. Oh, and his hair was slick, centre-parted and so greasy it looked like he was secreting enough oil to warrant a 'war on terror' on his scalp. (Ooh, political!)
Upon sitting down opposite me, he began his rant.
As you're all probably well aware, I'm partial to a bit of a rant myself. However I don't rant with a captive audience. You can click away at any time.
But I couldn't get the fuck away from this guy. He spoke at his partner, but for the benefit of everyone else.
"Don't expect anything in England. People are useless. Everyone does the bare minimum and don't ever expect anyone to have your back. It's disgusting. People are so lazy and I'm the only one who does anything at work. That Jodie, she's absolutely useless and I'll be the first one to laugh upon her demise after the boss reads my email about her. She makes terrible decisions and I hope she gets fired."
Way to alienate everyone within earshot, chump. I bet you have heaps of friends.
Moving to England and insulting English people on the tube is like going to Mardi Gras and complaining about street parades or going to Utah and picketing against mormons. You're gonna get hated at.
So while his voice boomed throughout the carriage, his wife sunk her head and nodded in embarrassed silence. I felt so sorry for her. If this guy was an egg, he'd have a little red ink dot marking that read "Class 1 free range asshole"
Now, before you go calling me a hypocrite, I'm conceding that I too sometimes have similar views on the English work ethic (except all you super English people that read this, you're ace.) but I usually air my grievances to The Girl in the comfort of our flat or to you guys over the internet and I don't publicly criticise the people I'm immediately surrounded by.
The worst part was, you could see this guy took some great satisfaction in knowing everyone could hear him. He was so smug and sure of himself that I wanted to vomit on his poncey brown shoes and press little wrinkles into his corduroy jeans, so he looked permanently disheveled.
In his head, you could see he fancied himself as a master orator. A modern day Marcus Antonius if you will. In reality he came across as a complete fuckwad.
The guy was such an asshole, I could imagine him taking great satisfaction sneaking around at night eating kids' dreams and wiping his sweaty, greasy palms on his corduroy pants.
Unfortunately I've been in London too long and my only reaction to this jackass' shenanigans was to stare at him disapprovingly.
So many people seem to validate their existence by making shitty remarks on public transport. You know when the station manager announces "Due to a signaling fault, the next train is delayed. We suggest you move to the Northern line platform and continue your journey from there." it's almost always followed by a middle-aged suit or a mad cat-lady yelling "Yeah well WE suggest you fix your damn trains!" as they look around nodding, expecting their fellow commuters to be applauding. This is always followed by everyone staring at the ground and quietly hating on the loudmouth. Wow, you're such a genius suit man/cat lady. You're voicing your opinion on things. Ooh and you're using mimicry to comic effect. People must think you're hilarious. Nice one. Go fuck a dog.
It's getting to the point now where I'm sick of people being idiots and I'm going to start saying something.
I'm not going to say just anything though. It'll be something incisive and witty like "Pull your head in" or "Pipe down" or "Go fuck a dog" or something.

Yeah, I'm gonna change the world.

Fear not, I'm going insane!

At work today I was talking about Jaws from the old Bond movies. And the discussion went that people of extreme size, be they extremely tall or extremely small have a shorter life expectancy. Danny DeVito's name popped up and I concluded that he should be dead already because he's a tiny tiny midget.
Which got me thinking... Is there a guideline around when someone stops being short and starts being a Midget?
So I did me some research and apparently there is!
4 foot 10 inches. That's the cut off limit for being a midget.
This in turn got me thinking about people like Danny DeVito. He's five foot neat. Which means he's two inches off being a midget, and as such, is not entitled to all the benefits midgets are privy to, like entry to the Carnival of Little Folk, which is a tiny fairground made from Lego, in which midgets can ride the matchbox rollercoaster, enter the shoebox of horrors and look at the freak show, which is made up of even smaller midgets with moustaches.
I would be super pissed if I was four foot eleven. An inch away from midget-glory. Err... No innuendo please.

Someone at work also put on a cd entitled 'Songbirds', which unfortunately wasn't a new-age relaxation compilation with tie-dyed sleeve art. It was a collection of boring music by female singer songwriters which is meant to be soothing or something and possibly stop your ovaries from drying up as menopause approaches and making crackling sounds when you walk.
Anyway, it wasn't really to my liking and there was one particular song which came on that I found particularly annoying.
Now before I go on, I have to admit I have this amazing gift (or as The Girl would say, a fucking annoying habit) of having a kind of 'verbal shorthand', where I leave out important parts of what I'm saying and throw out seemingly random words.
So when asking who this particularly annoying song was by, I said "Is this the dead girl?"
Which in my head was a more concise form of "Is this artist Eva Cassidy, who after a battle with cancer, passed away leaving her music to be more widely recognised and a top selling album posthumously released?"
Needless to say, my colleagues, all of whom are female thought that calling her 'the dead girl' was highly insensitive.
Oh well... It made sense in my head.

I'm tired... Need sleep.
Pay day tomorrow. Fucking sweet.
Monthly pay is a shitbox idea.