Why is it that when you make a decent salary, don't have any kids, don't own a house, have a 13 year old reliable economy car you paid off 8 years ago and don't buy expensive clothes or go out for dinner all the time, so that you can afford to buy lots of books and CDs and an iPod and go to lots of concerts and take a trip to Europe, that people turn around and act as if you don't deserve this?
They're called CHOICES. You make them and then you live with them.

In times of stress...

This definitely helps:

Travellers Cheques

OK, so my mum swore she was sending me euros in cash. I open the package, and they're travellers cheques. UNENDORSED travellers cheques. I ring my mum to ask WTF.

"Oh no," she says. "I just picked them out of the box and put them in the bank, I thought they were cash."

Two clues:

1) Does it say AMERICAN EXPRESS across it in big letters? It is not cash.

2) Do you have to SIGN your money? Unless your name is Queen Elizabeth II, I don't think you do.

I am grateful to my mum for sending me the money. Very grateful. But blimey... I wish she'd done it in a way that didn't involve three hours of running around and half a dozen transatlantic phone calls to AmEx.

Switchboard

Why oh why do you send all general enquiries calls to the subs desk? What makes you think that we have any fucking idea? Press pitches go to the news or features editors. Ads go to advertising. There is no need to route ANYTHING to us. Please STOP DOING IT!

Photographers

Dude, how am I supposed to relax, and smile, and "give it some attitude" when you are sticking A GIANT BLACK THING six inches from my nose?

RuPaul, I am not.

To revisit this bus issue:

When you say "excuse me" to someone and they don't move, and you shove past them, right, like, do they not get that if they don't move, they are going to BE moved?
What I hate about this is, the way they act so imposed upon when they don't take off their rucksacks or move their handbags or make that little bit of effort to clear a path on a crowded bus and get shoved when I push past them, it's almost as though it's my fault for taking up too much physical space, and not their fault for being self-involved twats that can't stop their pointless conversation long enough to take a step to the side.

MHre:

Know what I hate more than the Damen Bus?
NOTHING!

dear mr supervisor

you're an hour late for work and the FIRST THING YOU DO is go on yahoo! messenger and chat to your little friend who is not your wife? and then start walking around checking up on what everyone else is doing and nitpicking at those of us who managed to show up on time and start working?

Internet Message Board Trolls

People say "just ignore them". So you try.

And then they hassle you and hassle you, and harrass and borderline stalk you, escalating (sometimes to the point of destroying whole messageboards) until they've finally pissed you off. So you explode.

And then it's all "Bad Kate for responding!" rather than "Bad troll for being such a stalkerfreak in the first place."

Update:

When you ask them not to post gigantic 1000px pictures on your threads, they respond with "turn images off ::insult:: or get a bigger monitor". When you ask them not to sploodge your threads with several hundred identical posts in a row, they reply "what's wrong with your scrollbars ::insult::?"

What's wrong is WHY SHOULD HUNDREDS OF OTHER USERS ADJUST THEIR SETTINGS, CHANGE THEIR HARDWARE, THEIR COMPUTERS, BECAUSE YOU CANNOT CONTROL YOURSELF ENOUGH TO FOLLOW A FEW GUIDELINES OF SIMPLE NETIQUETTE?!?!?!?

The arrogance and the stupidity is just staggering.

The Printer.

You really don't have to monitor everything on the printer and ensure it gets to whoever printed it. Really. I know I printed my document. I know where it is. I don't need you to stand up there and announce a document or ask the whole team whose document it is.
Just get YOUR document and go back to your desk and mind your own beezwax.

Last Minute Rehearsal Cancellations and Schedule Switcheroos

The reason we have a regularly scheduled rehearsal is so that we can PLAN in advance what our schedules will be. That way we can shedule social lives AROUND it. You know, like you do with any other work.

If you don't get to see your friend or go to this gig that you would have liked to have seen or jet off to Berlin - well guess what? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to be in a band! I manage to get my ass to rehearsal, even when I'm sick, even when I'm depressed, even when I get a last minute invite to do something social. I've just been invited to birthday drinks on the night of our rehearsal. So what did I do? Did I try to rearrange three other people's previously agreed schedules so I can go hang out with my friend? No, I said "sorry, but I have rehearsal". Life sucks like that.

Also... I live in South London. Deal with it. Three rehearsals of the month, I haul my ass up to North London (and trust me, it's just as far for me to go up there as it is for you to come down here) so one freaking night of the month you can you get your lazy ass down to my house.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Blowing off steam here so I can be nice and polite to my bandmates when I compose an emailed reply.

My God Woman will you shut UP!

I work next to the ad sales team. Not only have they been coming into work and spreading their germses around (knocking me on my ass today -- I slept until 2! I went to bed at 10! wtf?) the head of the team is So. ANNOYING! Her voice, it's rusty nails on iron right down my spine. All day long, "Cheerio, jolly good, buh-bye" in this godAWFUL British accent that makes her voice sound like it bypasses her mouth all together and comes straight out of her nasal cavity. Like running a cheese grater over an out of tune six-string guitar. Bloody HELL.
She is so grating I can hear her over my headphones from TWO AISLES AWAY.

People That Don't "Get" Pop

Sorry to link to Another Blog but DUDE!!!

Seriously.

People who can't understand that some of us actually like and *enjoy* pop - the way that it conforms to and transcends a formula, the way it sounds, the melodies, the presentation, the artform of good songwriting and good production. People who try to give some kind of psuedo-political post-No Logo rant about "commercialism" instead of judging music on the one criteria that matters:

DO YOU LIKE THE WAY IT SOUNDS?

::bashes head against desk::

Get your fictional characters right, people

It's Rip Van Winkle, NOT Rumplestiltskin.

I've just outed myself as a dork, haven't I?

little things

Blogspam. Dammit, now I have to change the settings to get the comments to have word verification. Fucking. Hell.
That little knob on the panel of my cupboards that looks like a drawer handle but isn't a drawer handle because it's under the sink and there's no drawer under the sink. My headphone cords get caught on this muthafucka ALL THE TIME when I'm doing the washing up or baking. Pisses me off. WHY IS IT EVEN THERE? THERE'S NO DRAWER THERE!
Bus ticket machines. Fucking bastard machine ate my £1.20 yesterday in the middle of a downpour. Next time I won't bother, Transport for London. Go fuck yourselves.
Homemade corn bread. No, sorry, that's actually quite a good thing.

Fox

The fact that FOX is going to pull Arrested Development off the air and may not return.

God Forbid there's anything smart of the air.

Just freaking TRY to find a better show than that. I dare you.

Everyone at FOX can go make love to themselves.

Screw you and your guinea pigs

While Deputy The Man toiled away doing freelance overtime work for another publication across the office for the upteenth day, Waterloo mumbled to herself about her £200 shopping spree last week, and how she needed to get some veg for her guinea pigs, and how she must have the only guinea pigs in Britain that get their food from M&S.
Hey, it's great that you're sneaking around the south east on a Freedom Pass you're not supposed to be using when you use it and that you own your own home because you inherited some money when your Auntie Grizelda kicked it and since you have no interests you probably don't even pay for a TV license but really, nobody wants to hear about how you feed your rodents organic overpriced Channel Island veg because you can afford it while the rest of us open tins of beans for dinner.

Sneezerella

Tomorrow I have to record vocals. As in, properly record vocals in a studio that I am paying for as part of the demo that we intend to be first-single-release-ready.
And what happens? Head cold! Bunged-up beaks! Snuffly snouts! Coughing! Itchy, watery eyes! Well, no itchy watery eyes.
But still. I have yet to record a demo, even in bedrooms, that wasn't sung under the duress of hayfever.
Must I forever be damned to sound like a dripping nasal cavity on record? MUST I?

As Stupid As...?

Okay, so, like, what does ASAP stand for in your language?

Bank Managers

Excuse me, Mr. Bank Manager, but I have had an account with your institution for SEVEN YEARS now. Over that time, I've kept an average monthly balance of 4 figures. I earn more than you do. I have never even bounced a check, never run an overdraft. I have never been in debt. I should have a PERFECT credit rating.

So why, oh why will you not give me a SINGLE FREAKING CREDIT CARD?!?!? Kindly take your "Qualifying Tests" and SHOVE THEM UP YOUR ARSE because I am closing my account and moving it to another bank.

Ageism! Ageism!

Dear Marks and Spencer,
You may have noticed that the Harry Potter series is quite popular with adults as well as children. So popular, in fact, that there book covers designed to appeal to older readers. You might want to consider this the next time you launch a "visit the set of the new Harry Potter movie" contest and cut the age limit at 16. You fuckers.

Bendy Busses

While we are on the subject of busses...

Although I'm not that much of a nostaliaist for the Routemaster (yes, they are lovely works of design and engineering, but they are bloody noisy and often badly maintained and dirty) I simply must reiterate my utter loathing for the Bendy Busses with which they are being replaced.

Take a long, wiggly bus, designed to function best on the wide, spacious and straight boulevards of European cities, and plonk it down in the narrow and twisting medieval lanes of London. Yes, THAT is a brilliant idea.

For a start, they're just too bloody long! Two to three times the length of a routemaster. If one stops at your bus stop, god forbid you should want to get on a bus behind it, as there's just not the room. I've seen 3 or 4 double decker busses crowd and twist into the space that just one bendybeast takes up.

They take up multiple lanes of traffic when they turn, so woebetide you if you get stuck behind or beside one as it turns. I've seen one 18 take up the entire four lanes of traffic coming out of Euston Station. They're dangerous, they trap bicyclists and small vehicles in their coils like a vicious snake. And on narrow streets with sharp corners... what pedestrian hasn't laughed with sheer schadenfreude to see the lumbering reptilian 73 stuck and pinned at the corner of Stoke Newington Church street.

That's not even getting into how uncomfortable to ride they are, how they never have enough seats, and the few seats they do have are often blocked behind stupidly placed poles. Standing up for ten minutes on a bendy bus that pitches and rolls like a ship is one matter, but for an hour's commute? Intolerable! Not to mention that terrible habit their engines have of exploding!

The only good thing about the bendy busses is that they are, functionally, free. But given the choice, thank you, I will happily pay my £1.20 to ride on a REAL London bus. One with TWO floors on it. Now if only I don't get stabbed up there...

Is it really so much to ask that a movie theatre that advertises itself as being at 600 N. Michigan (to the extent that this is even the NAME of the theatre) would actually have an ENTRANCE at 600 N. Michigan? Not around the corner (with no signing pointing the way) at 601 E. Rush? Which is actually on Ohio street?

Bus riders.

When someone says "excuse me" on a crowded bus at a bus stop, it means s/he wants to disembark. And it means you are in the way. Therefore, MOVE!

Memo to Mother Nature:

Bitch, do you not know what month it is? Let me tell you. It's November. Meaning, it's fucking NOVEMBER and that means it's AUTUMN and it's supposed to be COLD! I can tolerate the wet but I can no longer stand by and allow this ridiculous heat and humidity to continue. It's not MAY for fuck's sake. Do you think the UK is so overloaded with Aussies that we need to refect the weather down under? Well, we DO NOT! So knock this shit off and cold snap already. I'd like to have not-frizzy hair again in this lifetime. Cheers.

Addendum: the right-leg ache you're making me suffer as a result of this wet air is NOT appreciated.

incorrect use of quote marks

the other day, while watching 'west wing,' on the little scroll thing in the corner (that's another post), it said 'next week- 'live' debate episode'

so, i thought to myself, 'oh, its not really a live episode. they just want us to think it is.'

no! its really and truely a live episode of west wing! its not a real and true debate, so it should have said: live 'debate' episode. or use no quotes at all, because we know the west wing is not real! altho i do think sometimes that it is west wing's fault that bush won, because liberals are like 'well, at least we have bartlett on tv'

i am used to incorrect quote marks on hand written signs. but on nbfreakingc?

when the cat throws up on your phone

Thank you, small furry creature that lives with us. I now know that *you* are pissed off about something. I wish you would throw up on IT to let me know what it is.

record industy

Ashlee Simpson's cd entered the billboard charts at Number One. Kill Me.

Social security.

I hate it how they scare us always with how much we need to invest to have any money when we retire. Damn baby boomers are taking the social security, and it's somehow our fault becasue we don't save hard enough. So by 2045 it'll be gone and we're still going to have to say, "Nah, I can't go I have to work. I'm 75." We know! Okay, I'll open a savings account!!!
Jesus!!!

Slow Walkers!

Hey, tourists....I live in the 'burbs, and I don't walk like fifty hobbits crawled up my ass! Here's a suggestion: don't hold hands and all walk slowly in a line. Although it makes it easier for a sniper to pick you off from 500 yards, it also makes me VERY ANGRY and keeps me from getting where I need to be on time.

Because, you know, I got important stuff to do.

Fuckers!

Naked Baby Photos

There was a reason your infant dropped the digital camera, you know. To spare my inbox from a never-ending torrent of photos of her dressed in Dior halloween costumes. I know there's no polite way of saying "I don't give a fuck" but when I suggest to you that you could upload these photos to a blog or something, could you maybe take the goddamn hint already?

Bus drivers.

London bus drivers are the most sadistic bastards on this earth. They don't stop half the time, they shove doors in people's faces without apology, they kick people off arbitrarily and decide where they're going to end the route rather than following it all the way to the end, even when they have to drive that way ANYWAY to turn around.
The other day, a blessed miracle happened. I ran for the bus and it stopped for me. This NEVER happens.
I get on, out of breath, and show my pass.
The bus driver starts yelling at me. "I wouldn't always stop!"
Well, no shit, asshole. Why do you think I said "thank you" when I got on?
Way to completely negate the nice thing you just did.

Lift.

You're waiting for the elevator. It arrives. People wander out. But not all the way out. Just out enough to keep you from entering, just out enough to keep the doors from closing.
Then they stand there like lost sheep while realising this isn't the floor they want.
Then they stand there s'more.
And then they look at me.
"Are you going down?"
No, fuckwit, I'm going UP, hence why I hit the UP button and why your car, which is also going UP, STOPPED HERE!

Attention customers!

I do not work for FedEx. I work for the book bindery that is making your books and CDs. My responsibility is to make sure your books and CDs are made to your specifications and shipped when we say they will ship using the shipping method you choose to pay for.
Believe me, this is enough on my plate.
Once the FedEx shipper picks up the boxes and puts them on the truck and I send you the tracking numbers, it is not my responsiblity to make sure FedEx actually takes the boxes where to the address on the box by the time they say they will.

ok bitch, it's office work, not a quidditch match, and everyone does not need a fucking play by play on every little thing you do every fucking second of the day.