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Saturday,
April 03, 2004
A fit of panic During a late-night fit of terror over my prospects for a future as an American citizen who lives indoors and eats food, I went online jobhunting, and have just applied for, among other things, a copy-editing position with GameSpot.com in San Francisco. My letter of intent was a tirade against haXX0r netspeak and a promise to do my part in combating it. It contained the line, "The only thing I love more than my laptop is my AP Stylebook." If I get this job, I will not be able to accept it. Because I will be dead. Because upon receiving a letter of acceptance, I will die laughing. I just want to be able to eat food and live indoors, people. That's all. - declared by Liusia @ 1:21 AM Friday,
April 02, 2004
joie de vivre After yesterday's sadsack entry, I think it's time for a cheerful one! No, I'm not caught up on my neverending mound of essays and readings; no, I don't know what I'm doing after I graduate two months from now. But it was sunny out today! Huzzah sun! I'm a big fan of the sun. From what I understand about astronomy, it's what keeps us all going around in circles, instead of flying off into the Oort Cloud. Also, it's a good source of Vitamin E! And while the sun and I may have our disagreements from time to time (being absurdly pale and slightly photosensitive, I am just too much of a genetic wussy for the sun's rollicking radiation), the sun is always a welcome guest around my place. The grass is also turning green (hooray chlorophyl, way to be friends with the sun!), which also brings me a silly sense of contentment. I like to walk around on springy grass with no shoes on and dig my toes in. Yay, springy grass! After Russian class today, some classmates and I went down to Library Mall (which is not a bookstore, you philistines, it's the UW campus's main square) and had a picnic on the steps of the State Historical Society. I ate a really drippy gyro from the Greek food vendor and drank lemonade. We made terribly academic (read: dorky and unfunny to people who don't read an excessive amount of books) joking small-talk and watched a guy in the middle of the mall reinact the life of Caesar Chavez in interpretive play form. We made fun of the girls in skirts trying to play frisbee. I like my Russian class, as I've liked all my Russian classes at UW. The Russian department here seems to attract people with whom I can get along. The classes seem to form automatically into cohesive little units. You could say that the Russian department is filled with a sense of comradery. Ha! Ha! It was sunny out today! - declared by Liusia @ 7:48 PM Wednesday,
March 31, 2004
YAAAAARG!  Discworld: Which Ankh-Morpork City Watch Character are YOU? brought to you by Quizilla I took this quiz a while ago, but now seemed like a good time to post it because I AM ABOUT TO CRACK, people, I'm about to come unhinged. "WWMVD?" I asked myself, as I always do in times of great difficulty. "What would Mr. Vimes from Terry Pratchett's fine novels do in a time like this?" So it looks like it's time for me to get drunk, set my notebooks on fire and go werewolf hunting. But I don't know any werewolves! Yeah, I got like four writing assignments due tomorrow, and a raging case of, if not Writer's Block, Writer's Unremitting Apathy. Yaaaaaarg. I want to go home and lie on the ugly sofa and watch a Rob Schneider movie and drink beer and be a total white trash loser, and instead I'm sitting in the library surrounded by emo kids who think they are so damn brilliant with their stupid emo hair and their actually studying for exams. Hosers. So I guess I'm just gonna keep sitting here and waiting for graduation. And after graduation I'm moving to WALDEN POND, people, I swear. Except that I bet Walden Pond is all touristy now, so I guess instead I'm moving to RANDOM POND NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT WHERE NO HOSERS LIVE. Yaaaaarg!  - declared by Liusia @ 4:43 PM Tuesday,
March 30, 2004
Dante and Randal! The Flying Car: A View Askew Production A bit of a load time on this video. Suck it up! - declared by Liusia @ 9:22 PM And now for two totally unrelated links which inordinately amused me How I love WWII film cliches. Nazi Generals This kid is an even bigger dork than me, and he's awesome. Mario! - declared by Liusia @ 12:39 PM "Title does not dictate behavior. If title dictated my behavior, as a clerk serving the public, I wouldn't be allowed to spit a mouthful of water at that guy." Clerks is a brilliant movie. Now, bearing in mind that I think that Clerks is a brilliant movie, let's go discuss a fellow online journaller's entry about customer service. (Because, as goes another line from that fine film, "There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?") I happened across this entry a few weeks back, and I said to myself, "Self, what the?" Backstory: I was a drudge, I am a drudge. It is drudgery that has not only fuelled my college education monitarily, but motivationally. There's nothin' quite like cleaning a public toilet to make you say, "I want a degree, dammit. A degree in something theoretical and silly where I shall never have to interact with the public again." Thankfully, my current drudgery is a pleasant sort of wage-slave existence. Mostly what I do is shred stuff. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half shredding papers. I shredded seven - count 'em, SEVEN - garbage bags full. To occupy my mind while I am shredding stuff, I like to pretend that I am on Richard Nixon's office staff and the investigators are on their way. Sometimes I pretend that I am receptionist to a 3rd world dictator and officials from the Hague are on their way. Sometimes I listen to books on tape. My superiors are nice cheery people and seem happy with my ability to shred and photocopy and shred the things I've photocopied. But my drudgery was not always this idyllic, no no no. In my callow youth, I worked in a horse stable, shovelling shit. Then I got a job at a fast food restaurant, and thought I had moved up in the world. But I was woefully mislead, as I soon found. A horse will shit all over the place and expect you to clean it up. After a few days slinging burgers, I discovered that fast food customers will do the same thing, but with more bitching. And I've never had a milkshake thrown at me by a horse. So, anyway. Back to this other guy's quiz. Now, I was a polite cashier. I didn't smile much, because I'm not about to whore out my teeth to any asshole who throws a couple of bucks at me, but I observed the common social niceties and, showing great restraint, I think, refrained from telling any of the customers to give themselves a Pepsi-cola enema. In fact, my supervisor used to make me deal with the bad 'uns, because unlike some of my coworkers, I was neither liable to attack (verbally or physically) a truculent customer, nor was I about to start bawling upon being demeaned a bit. But this quiz, yo. I'm chill with the "right" answers to 3, 4 and 6, 'cause word up, you got to give the customer what he paid for. But 5? 5. Due to some bizarre clerical oversight, you have been promoted to assistant manager of a fast food delivery establishment. You should: a. Do your best work with a smile on your face. Be sure to follow company standards and policies. Remember, you set the tone. b. Make the best of a bad situation. Follow the rules when you can. No one's perfect all the time. c. Ignore your employees and the customers. You're the boss. Why should you have to do any work? d. Whine loudly and incessantly to anyone and everyone who will listen. You are so put upon. How dare people expect you to do your job and supervise others at the same time. You're not God. Good lawd. If any of my supervisors had pulled that answer A kerfluffle, I probably would have quit on the spot. Oh, you want to be all faux cheery and chipper, do you? You want to follow every single rule to the exact letter, even the ones some corporate ass in NY made up and don't make any sense? Boy, I am covered in grease, some obese mofo just threw french fries at me, I'm wearing an ugly hat and I've been standing up for eight hours. I ain't about to chirp like a cheerleader. B is good. C&D deserve to be beaten with spatulas. Then there's 8: 8. The oft-touted golden rule of life is: a. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. b. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. c. Look out for number one. If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will. d. Life's a bitch and then you die. Fuck you. I don't think A and D are mutually exclusive. I'm actually pretty sure that A and D are both pillars of my religion. Holy martyrs, yo. But I hate it when people act like big put-upon martyrs, so the "fuck you" is a necessary addendum. Bitching is okay. Whining is not. And don't even get me started on 7. So, I guess I fall into this category: If you answered 'd' to any or all of the questions above, you are a scourge upon humanity. You may think I hate you, but my hatred is nothing compared to the loathing the customers have for you and your ilk. Get over yourself and quit being such a spiteful bitch already. Yeah, baby. So I wondered, naturally, whether this fellow has actually worked in retail or fast food? And amazingly, the answer is yes. And he quit, in large part due to the negative customer service atmosphere, despite the fact that "[he] wanted to stick it out and show the management that their poor attitudes and leadership were not going to affect [his] loyalty to the company and its standards. [He] wanted to produce a quality product and satisfy the customers." Maybe it's a shortcoming in my character, but I just can't work up loyaty to some suits on the other side of the country who make big bucks while I slave for minimum wage. And while I'll do my job, I won't strain myself kissing some customer's ass if he's being truly unreasonable. Service employees behaving like sychophants just reinforces negative customer behavior, and the idea that it's okay to be an asshole to someone if they make less money than you. Polite but firm, yo. Polite but firm. And then a hidden flipping of the bird as they're walking away. - declared by Liusia @ 12:22 PM Monday,
March 29, 2004
This is the best news brief ever! It's like something from The Onion, except it's real! Wonderful. Wonderful! Theron Slams Beauty Jibes - In a See-Through Dress Oscar-winner Charlize Theron has criticized people focusing on her beauty - even though she appeared at a charity event yesterday in a see-through dress. The South African star is furious at suggestions she won her Academy Award in February because she vastly altered her appearance to play dowdy lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. She rallies, "Anybody can make themselves ugly. Do you think the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences is going to give an award to somebody just because they made themselves ugly? Do you think Nicole Kidman just put on a fake nose and got an Academy Award? She was really f***ing good in that movie (The Hours)! People forget the work, the performance." Theron - who attended the Green Cross Millennium Awards in Los Angeles in a daring see-through black dress, which showed off her breasts and g-string - continues, "Somewhere along the line we forgot what actors do. All of a sudden, somehow, the fashion industry crept into the movie industry. Celebrity has really taken over and over-shadowed what actors do. Actors aren't supposed to be beautiful; actors are supposed to tell human stories, but that kind of got lost." Postscript: And because you, my readers, are awesome, here's a present: I say what's, what's cooler than being cool? Creative video editing! - declared by Liusia @ 2:14 PM The AP, God love 'em, does tend to produce mostly formulaic, dull stories... So, good on Shawn Pogatchnik for disguising a story about hanging out in a pub as a story about current events. Heh. Ireland's s Workplace Smoking Ban Starts Snippet: "This is the worst idea any Irish government's ever had," said Gerry O'Connor, 32, a prison guard sitting sullenly in a corner of John Doyle's pub. He'd just been busted trying to sneak a smoke in the pub's lavatory...[snip]... The moment O'Connor started to bemoan the oppression he was suffering, his prison guard colleague Sean Donaghue, sitting at the next stool, bit his head off. "You're talking a load of bollocks, Gerry. This is the greatest day Ireland's ever seen," said Donaghue, 55. "I've already had one bypass operation, a coronary stent in an artery, I've got diabetes - I'm living proof that cigarettes are killers," added Donaghue, who quit five years ago. He said the smoke in pubs had forced him to give up his favorite recreation, playing guitar and banjo in a traditional band. Heh. I would so hang out with these guys. - declared by Liusia @ 2:11 PM |
