...and now the bad news:

see Q13.

Cargo. Feh!

...must break radio silence to post

this and this.

O happy day!

DoublePlusUnGood GnawingKnowingSkitterings

Why does it always have to be rats?

I'd put my head in the sand, but even the sand is watching me back: read 1984 a while ago, having already been put into a doubleplusungood funk by reading this and this and this; I was hoping Orwell could give me some hope and insight, but (duh!) it only helped to depress me completely...

It comforts me to think that there is a reversal to the propaganda that filters down, that there must be civil servants who spend their working days as I do: fooling their boss into beleiving every childish whim is being fulfilled, while in actual fact conducting business as fairly as possible under the circumstances.

My Boss has always been a control freak, to the point where people don't beleive the stories I tell -- being summoned from my desk to come into the president's office just to put a lid back on a box, for one.

Boss unconsciously initiates every new employee with a thorough hazing: demanding they do tasks that are pointless and/or impossible, motivating them via threats and humiliation, ordering them to do things a certain way then castigating them later for doing it that way, and eavesdropping on their phonecalls/email then running over to bitch them out about situations that don't exist because Boss characteristically makes uninformed snap judgements.

To be fair, the ability to make snap judgments without thought or regret is actually one of Boss' better qualities; I'm just continually dissappointed that she uses it for evil purposes. I agonise over decisions; I get that characteristic from my Mum, who like myself is very meek and self-effacing.

The day I was born was a school holiday, so all my five siblings, the oldest barely nine years old, were all at home. When, that morning, my mother's water broke, she didn't want to go to the hospital and leave the other children without a sitter; she couldn't make up her mind what to do about the situation, so she delayed and delayed.

"When I finally ended up at the hospital," she said, "I just sat there with one foot in the car and one foot in the parking lot, because I couldn't decide: do I go in there and have this baby, or should I go home and take care of my other kids?"

It's funny to me because I can see myself in the same situation: in practically in labour in a hospital parking lot, not sure whether or not I ought to go in. It's a great metaphor for my life, actually...

The Last Post

I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper and your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am at your command.

Who am I? I am called Habit.

I've never been able to get hooked on smoking, much as I've tried. My dad used to smoke; and though he suffered emergency double bypass surgery and had to be revived on the table, the smell of cigarette smoke still gives me a wickedly wistful & burning nostalgia for my childhood. Even so, I've no compulsion to smoke.

The requisite coming-of-age drinking binges never stuck either. I have a near reverence for alcohol and its properties; a kitchen is neither cozy nor complete without it, and my kitchen is replete with it. Even so, I rarely use it.

Most self-consciously artsy-fartsy people try to get at least one affair under their belt; my brief fling was propped up by copious amounts of ganja. Under its influence not only were all my insecurities alleviated, but I devoutly and sincerely believed myself to possess the sublime beauty of a young Deneuve and the raw animal magnetism of a young Bardot. :) Even so, I haven't partaken in years.

I've never suffered any physical cravings for these things. I've had plenty of opportunity to manifest a chemically addictive personality, and there's been nada.

But I do suffer from the bone-crushing inertia of habit; doing anything at all outside of my comfort zone makes me feel as if I'm moving against several g's of emotional, psycological and metaphysical force.

Once upon a time, an old friend who had recently returned from India explained to me why she kept rats as pets. Amongst all their other virtues, they were always depicted with her favourite god, Ganesh - a very Buddha-like elephant-headed god who is the god of Knowledge. The rat, she said, is an aspect of Ganesh, and it represents his ability to reach and bring enlightenment into the darkest and most inaccessible crevices.

Lately there has been a gnawing knowing scurrying through all my long forgotten crevices; and amongst other things, it is telling me: irrespective of whether I can actually *be* better, it is nevertheless crucial to work to *do* better.

But it means going up against bone-crushing, emotional, psycological and metaphysical Inertia.

Mind you, I'm open to inspiration and would willingly roll with any life-changing enlightenment that whups me upside the head; let that be a prayer to the Buddha/Ganesh. (Now I have an image in my head of being bodychecked by Babar carrying the hockey stick of Satori. Should I be careful what I wish for?)

So. This will be my last post from work. I'm beginning to suspect that if it weren't for procrastination on the job, I wouldn't bloody blog at all.

Financial superstitions edeuced; the Quiddity continues

A spent force. Money seems to evaporate, rising up as taxation to the rare air where government resides. Or perhaps it's better defined as evaporation through heat resulting from the friction of being handled -- every time money moves, it slows down and a bit of it rubs off.

I earn a dollar; the gov't gets a piece of it. I spend what's left; the gov't gets a part of that. The merchant who gets what's left of that dollar has to pay taxes on revenue. What's left of that is spent, or paid, or invested, and the gov't reaps taxes from that.

Wherever that dollar travels, a fraction of its impulse is removed; like infintesimally dividing something in half, it never quite ceases to exist, yet for all practical intents and purposes is as good as Zero. I'm beginning to think that's what really ought to be meant by "a dollar doesn't go very far."

My health is not so good

My health is not so good; saw Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, and am now suffering from an acute dearth of Severus Snape. Mulling over pros & cons of pursuing a new hobby; alas & alack, poor muggle that I am, Snape would likely prove to be somewhat more vulpine & elusive...

With apologies:

Chapatti.

It had to be said.

pangs of ISO

You'd think I'd've written more about the pangs of ISO while I was in caught in its throes -- like how a chain reaction of paperwork gets set off every time something is instigated/amended; or how, after being submerged in ISO headspace for weeks, I saw shmutz on my shirt as a non-conformance; or how the momentum of organization would compel me -- me, pack rat and queen slattern of frowzy splendour -- to tidy up where the comfy anarchy of my omnium-gatherum normally reigns supreme.

At the very least you'd think that I'd've griped about how all that paperwork, while necessary, is also now utterly obsolete because ISO has changed its system and we must comply, which means brand new paperwork and more shredding.

But no, for some reason all I wrote about in that huge constipation of a backlog/backblog (which still has yet to be completely expressed) was: money.

Probably because my S/O thought that during ISO hell week would be a good time to bring up the subject. Surely he thought that offering to have the two of us live on his salary while I sock away all my salary into my student loan would take some pressure off me... but it doesn't.

I don't want to simply change indebtedness from one source to another. And while in theory it would save having to pay off scads of interest, it will still cost me.

I have made it quite clear that I have no intention of marrying; and I will not share a joint account, which has been another heated and tearful source of argument.

I am normally malleable to the point of spinelessness; but there are a few stands I will make, and this is one of them: If one is not willing to marry someone, then it is absolutely verboten to merge finances.

They say the thing couples argue about most often is money; oddly enough, I think at its essence, this argument is less about financial security and more about the emotional security of having somebody to depend on (or depend on you) financially.

Frankly, I'd rather be paying through my nose to my government (think brain being drawn out for mummification so I may join my money in its afterlife; see below) than be financially obligated to a current or ex-S/O. Nothing personal. :)

So. There we are then. Comprende?

This blog has been brought to you by the letters O,S,A & P.

I used to write cheques to pay off my student loan; the Student Loan Dep't mucked up by forgetting to cash them, which made me look derelict. So I allowed them direct access to my account; now they muck up by withdrawing money when they shouldn't, which leaves me actually derelict. I'd be better off with my money in a sock, but none of my socks do direct deposit.

I wrote a cheque to pay off the accountant who sorted out my taxes - his bank released the money to him, but my bank took two weeks to take it from my account. Is that normal?

Paranoid, yes, but I was ready to swear the bank was waiting for my account to drop below the cheque amount so they could charge me a bouncy bouncy fee. I envisioned empty suits, Magritte-esque, spiraling like vultures over the carcass of my chequing account, swooping on its remains to gorge themselves stupefied; and this against the background of vast desolation that is my state of finances. I was somewhat comforted by the idea that, in Zoroastrian terms, the bankers were carrying the spirit of my money directly to heaven.