My Manager's 13 yo daughter and friend in the office (her Mum is in a meeting)
Everyone else in meetings/ out of office.
They are watching something hideous on YouTube - really squeaky-voiced thing. Like Alvin & the Chipmunks but I don't think it is.

I really don't want to tell them to turn it off (her Mum will as soon as she comes in) because I don't want to be a boring old square and make them hate me. It's not stopping me working (unlike posting here!) it's just irritating.

Do teh teens have different tolerance levels for annoying noises? I can't remember.

lol...my semi-amused anger state reached way back into my teenage years for that one.

I shore got a mouth on me! ;)

Yuck. Hope you get it swapped out soon.

Why, for me, that's half the fun of adulthood!!

I haven't slept in four days. I had a horrible cold and evil sore throat. was just starting to feel better last night but 2.0 woke at 10:00 crying and holding his throat. We sat up rocking while he sniffled and moaned until 6:30 this morning.:(

That sounds like what I had last week (not the baby, the other thing). I hope you didn't get if from me. You hear so much about computer viruses these days.

i always wear a condom in the cellar so I don't think you're to blame.

I have to drive an hour to get to the ortho doctor's office to "discuss the results" of a recent follow-up MRI (tentative diagnosis is benign bone tumors). Why not just tell me over the phone?
Good news: wasted gas and i'm mad all the way home
Bad news: wasted time and i'm sad all the way home

good luck! I hope you are really really mad the whole way home


meaning good news : praying:

Thanks! I appreciate that. :)

Bloody artists who think that they can behave like children when they're here.
I'm sure they don't behave like this at home. Damn - I remember when teachers used to say that and I thought it was pathetic...

The notice I have just put up on the bathroom wall reads:

A lot of people here must think their mom works here as well. They leave half-eaten foodstuffs in the sink, don't wash stuff they've used, or return it to its place. Someone else will clean it up, right? I've been known to toss a plate or whatever into the trash if it's been in the sink more than a couple days.

Other people's soggy food floating in dirty water = disgusting.

<stretches and snaps lookout's condom, just to see if I can get a rise out of him>

Which itself can also get zen-ified.

I've hit people with swords myself -- rattan ones. There may some day be some rebated-steel WMA studies in my future.

Works a lot like Shawnee's murderous rampage thingie. Settles you right down, really.

Dude. you're a dude. don't ever even think about my condom again, let alone touch it. that's like a major breach of etiket.

I kinda cringed just reading it.

Looks like it worked.

I can't believe I just got in an almost YELLING MATCH over four AA batteries.

These batteries control the keypad on the data center where my servers sit. Right outside the door are the hardware guys. Right inside the door are the operations guys, none of whom are here today.

I had to get a "hardware guy" to open the door with his key, so I could get to my servers. I determined that the keypad needed four AA bateries, so I asked the hardware guy if they had any AAs.

Flint: Do y'all have four double A batteries?
Hardware Guy: That's not my responsibility.
Flint: Well, how am I going to get to my servers today?
Hardware Guy: That's Operation's responsibility.
Flint: Nobody from Operations is here today.
Hardware Guy: That's not my problem.
Flint: [first name], you and I both know that I need in and out of that room about ten times a day.
Hardware Guy: It's not my responsibility whether you can get in there.
Flint: Well, if you want to get up and unlock the door with your key for me every time, we can do it that way...
Hardware Guy: IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM WHETHER YOU CAN GET IN THERE OR NOT.
Flint: DO I HAVE TO PUT IN A TICKET TO GET FOUR BATTERIES?
Hardware Guy: YOU'RE NOT GONNA TELL ME THAT I HAVE TO LET YOU IN THAT ROOM, THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM WHETHER YOU CAN GET IN THERE OR NOT. THAT'S OPERATION'S PROBLEM.
Flint: WELL, GEE, LET ME ASK THE OPERATIONS GUY. [looking around] OH, THEY'RE NOT HERE TODAY.

At this point, he has actually gone to the supply cabinet and gotten the batteries, and is putting them in the door; he just wanted to let me know that it wasn't "his problem" and that he didn't "have to" do it.

Asshole.

Union guy?

He used to work for the hospital, but our desktop support was outsourced to Dell. So, he sits at the same desk, but now he works for Dell.

Apparently that means he can't get up off his ass and get four batteries out of the supply closet without throwing a goddamn hissy fit.

tell him it's because of that attitude right there that he exists in the first place.

Dickhead: ?

Flint: You're dad kept bitching that birth control wasn't his problem and some poor prostitute had to deal with the results.

UG is teh ghey.

I went to bed at midnight knowing I had to wake up at 4am because I was enjoying great conversation with my boyfriend of a year... Then at 2:37 I woke up to the sound of the kitchen ceiling leaking. Drip, drip, drip... The water hitting the "in case it happens again" pot on the ground was so loud and it pissed me off. Plus, why is it that nothing seems to ever wake guys up? I woke up at 4 yesterday morning, worked 12 hours, then had plenty of wine with my friend, and was still lucid enough to be disturbed by dripping water while my boyfriend, who woke up at 11:30am slept right through it.

We have evolved.

So now many women get schooled, have careers, care for a family, cook, clean, AND have to listen for things that go bump in the night?

"I blame the feminist movement." That's something I say jokingly to my friends about why there are so few real men left. What's next, us holding the door open for you? :rolleyes:

I always hold the door open for blokes -I love seeing that "castrated" look on their faces as they realize they must accept graciously rather than insisting on holding it open for me :lol:

I think the worrying about things that go bump in the night is going to kill you faster than the things that go bump in the night.

And the things that you mentioned? All self-imposed, all self-imposed, all self-imposed.

America is spoiling you! I hold the door open for whoever is behind me - I haven't yet seen a man who reacts to the fact that I'm a woman! Although occasionally a polite man will step back from a door to let me through first - I always blush as I say thank-you, it somehow feels a very personal thing to do!

yeah, sadly there may have been an element of artistic licence in there :lol:


(very few people do say thank you either, these days... I must have reached the next generation :rolleyes:)

Am mildly irritated by the driver who overtook us on our bikes as we overtook a parked car this morning without even slowing down and then beeped us -in a dead end residential neighborhood at 7am. asshole.

When a woman holds the door open for me, I always say "thank you," and give her a little pat on the head.

We're just used to holding it open ourselves so we can check out the women's asses as they go in. Speaking of which...

Well, I don't pat her head. It's a great conversation-starter.

I have a complaint.

I just started fall quarter at Wright State. Most teachers use an online system to communicate, post extra stuff, provide syllabi, etc. Well, there are two available for use. One is called WebCT. One is called Course Studio. They are completely separate, though as far as I can tell, they do the same thing.

Why the heck can't they just make up their minds which one to use, and everyone use one or the other, so I don't have to remember which teachers use which one and go back and forth to both of them? GRRRR.

OK, I have another complaint.

I was up till 2 a.m. working on my homework. I got 4 hours of sleep. See what it says over there under my name? I'm tired. Now I am REALLY tired. Too bad my day won't end for another 5 hours, at least. I have dinner to make, a client project to finish, more homework, kids' homework to supervise, a sink full of dishes, and I'm sure something else will be required of me as well. Yawn.

Give up on the housework. I did. It eventually reaches a point where it just can't get any worse :D

:thumbsdn:
I seem to have decapitated a bit of my finger. It's dripping sticky blood on the keyboard and making it hard to type.

So instead of seeking first aid and/or medical attention, you're posting on The Cellar?

<sniff>It's beautiful. I'm just so damned proud . . .

Are you going to super glue the piece back on, or should we start discussing recipes?

It's alright. I rubbed some dirt in it.

It seems that whenever I need the superglue it has permanently sealed itself shut. I guess that's what superglue does.

Someone has taken the lighter out of the tuck box.
Cheers, mate.

It's there for everyone to use - in fact I wanted it to light some incense this morning as the meeting room was smelling a little stale.

And no, they haven't put enough in the money to actually buy it, they've just taken it.
Grrrrrrr. Bloody artists. I'm going to go and work in a kindergarten next, it can't be much worse.

I don't have my lines down as well as I should. Its nice being one of the bigger roles, but, shit there's a lot of lines to learn. fuckin' shakespeare.

Alas, poor Ibram!

Which play are you doing?

Juniper!!! I go to Wright State!!! KEWL!

midsummer.
i'm lysander!

I had you pegged for Puck.

nah,
when I auditioned, i figured I was cool with any part, even chorus, but
if there's any one part I wanted more than the rest
it's lysander.
i've always fancied myself the
witty, smart, handsome male romantic lead.

The day started with my boss dropping off his laptop. "It's really slow, especially trying to open my email."

After poking at it for a while, I went to meet with someone to figure out some database stuff. ~2 hours.

Meanwhile the fiber link to one of our buildings was down. We almost couldn't get it back up because we didn't have a fiber to ethernet transceiver. I put together an ungodly hack involving swapping spare parts on some old equipment we should have gotten rid of. We could have finished a half hour sooner if my brain had been functioning, or I could have put my hands on a null modem serial cable--preferably both. Oh yeah, the boss had the Bagle virus, and 24.000+ emails in his Thunderbird inbox didn't help either.

I was about 45 minutes later leaving work than I had planned. This made me 5 minutes late to orchestra rehearsal, even though I rushed the whole way and gulped my dinner.

The piece we're doing is one I really hate. It's also a very complicated one, and we had a stand-in conductor who didn't know it very well. (Hard to blame him--he only had one week's notice--but it still was brutal.)

The worst part of my day was
Analyzing, in lit class
A poem
by Anne Sexton
Titled
The Fury of Overshoes.
I'm not a poet.
I do write poetry
But it is rarely free verse
(this is not a poem, but a mockery)
And it rhymes.
I like Shel Silverstein.
And Robert Frost.
Not mind-churning ramblings about
Plastic boots
And thumb-sucking
Which means
God only knows what, it's like a friggin' onion
With all those damn layers.

I like your post, Juni.



Why doesn't it rhyme?

It doesn't rhyme
Because
Um
Because
I
Uh
Ran out of thyme

I hate free verse, I don't see how its can seriously be categorized as poetry. It doesn't take any real skill or planning.

Free verse - when it's done well - can have a simplicity about it which renders it beautiful in its own right. Like a single tulip in a vase as opposed to a huge bouquet.

And sometimes it contains lines and images that stay with you for days.
Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings is free verse, in that it doesn't rhyme.

It starts:
What? Where's the skill in that? My Mum might write that in an email - why is that poetry?

But a few lines later you have:
With its wonderful dragging vowels to describe the breadth of the sluggish river.
And:
Something I always think about on train journeys.

And my absolute favourite (which again I always think about when approaching London):Sorry. Poetry fan.

This poem, so simple, has been described as more painting than poem. What makes it beautiful is the simplicity.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
--William Carlos Williams

I pre-ordered the new Metallica CD as a download earlier this week. Yesterday afternoon, I got an e-mail saying it was ready for download...whoohoo!

I'm still trying to download it...motherfuckers. I could have already fucking went out and bought the damn thing at the store.

Free verse is worth what you paid for it. :cool:

No, I see the value in free verse - it's all very artsy and out there and open to interpretation, much like modern art. I just don't care for it. I don't want to have to work that hard at understanding something. Life is hard enough, why do we have to make it worse?

I do like structured poetry, like cinquains, haiku, etc. That is FUN.

Ogden Nash, E.B.White, Dorothy Parker, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Benchley. These are some of my favorites.

I am having the foreshadowing of a sciatic event. Too much car travel lately.

But you don't necessarily have to work hard at free verse. Sometimes it is simply beautiful images that make perfect sense and don't rhyme.

This poem stayed with me for years because of the wonderful image of an Autumn day being able to keep you warm in Winter. This one because it ties in with the embarrassment but also sly excitement of a love-bite, and the wonderful image of being turned inside out by desire. This for the sheer cleverness - it amazes me - one day I will write a similar poem, but it will be hard work. And finally (although I could go on all day!) this lovely one from U A Fanthorpe, who writes proper, structured poems with great care and detail, which just don't happen to rhyme. I know most of My Brother's House by heart - it just has lines that stay with you, "I regret the passing/ Of my brother's house. It was like living in Rome/ Before the barbarians."

(all links are to poetry posted in the Cellar)

I will stop now. Tastes in poetry are as individual as tastes in music and there is no right and wrong. I just wanted to put some structured non-rhyming poems your way.

I love Anne Sexton! I'm taking a seminar on the Confessional Poets this quarter. We are studying Anne, Plath, Snodgrass, Lowell and Hughes. YAY!

I lovelovelovelovelove it!

I'll be quiet now.

ahahahaha
snodgrass!

our midsummer night's dream script is the one edited by Snodgrass (including a 'modern' english translation on facing pages). I have no idea if its the same snodgrass, but I would assume its not so common a name.
totally a great name though. snohdgrahss.
not quite as good as slartibardfast but it ranks up there if you throw in the haughty british accent.

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter by Robert Bly (the entire poem)

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.