Coming in here, stealing our cats...

I've never been comfortable with the Nimby Brigade living so near to me. I've felt a prickly sensation across the back of my neck every time I passed by a local news stand bearing the legend: "More immigrants to flood the UK" - a prickly sensation that might have been cooties, but was more likely to be caused by my inner fear of racists.

Moreover, I have been pleased to see Polish delicatessens springing up over South London. The Sausages! Oh my sainted aunt Rosemary! The Sausages - great big dripping spicy rolls of proper meat and herbs and chunks of fat... and the sweetmeats! Why have you never seen a fat Polish person, if all they eat is sausages and caramel-filled pastries! I know my waistline has grown proportionately to the number of Polish nationals that have landed on our far shore.

All this kerfuffle about "taking our jobs"... come on, who would you rather have: a hard-working Polish builder who comes in, wipes his feet, does the job and then goes, or an English builder who comes in, looks around, sucks air through his teeth and makes tutting noises, then goes out to make a call to "Ed...Ed... yeah... how much more have we got to charge for VAT...?"; one who drinks all your coffee and leaves coffee rings on your sofa arm, while dropping biscuit crumbs down the cushions, then has to pick up strange and expensive thingies from B&Q for 5 hours and then charges you £1000 more than the estimate cost for "additional time".... And that's if he comes back from B&Q at all.... AND when you go upstairs, you find the most enormous chocolate log in your toilet that can't be flushed away unless you break it up with a rolling pin? (I am aware that there should be a question mark there, but it almost seems inappropriate).

A further idiot's guide to spotting a Nimby is if you hear someone say: "England's full"... Is it? What a ridiculous thing to say... of course it's not full - people are not falling off the edges or being pushed into ravines because there are JUST TOO MANY PEOPLE HERE. Someone mentioned that there are 4.3m people coming in - and there are 5.6 million UK expatriates around the world. We're in Credit! We're 1.3 million people cheaper...

All this I know, and yet... if my polish neighbour keeps "accidentally" letting my cat into her flat and saying to me "he can stay" (no he flaming well can't), I might have to thump on her. Get your own cat and stop stealing ours.

what kind of lazy fuck throws a half full bottle of pop in the breakroom garbage can instead of pouring the rest of the pop down the sink that is 3 feet away and putting the empty bottle in the recycling bin that is right next to the garbage can?

I have to freelance because I have no money. So please do not give me the hairdryer treatment for doing freelance work when I am still in the office, still working, but it is after the time I am scheduled to leave and therefore is overtime.

Don't worry. It'll probably be the first and last time I do it.

estate agents.

you suck.

Lily Allen. Don't become a pop star and then complain that you hate doing press on tour and then cut it short and go home. You don't write your music, you don't write your lyrics, and if you don't tour, you don't do ANYTHING, so don't be a pop star. THIS IS THE JOB. Dumbass.

Marketers. Mr K, via Douglas Adams, assures me you will be first against the wall when the revolution comes and I pray every day that he will be right.

Broken bottles of nail polish. All over my hands, five minutes before an interview, with no remover in sight. FUCK!

people that call me on my cellphone asking for people who not only are not me but whom i also do not know and then when i tell them that they have the wrong number they call right back, get annoyed with me, and ASK ME IF I'M SURE THIS ISN'T SOMEONE ELSE'S PHONE

just do your goddamn job.

Don't whinge at me, don't pout your lip and play cute, don't act like the bare minimum of what is expected of you is an imposition. You cow.

The bank that likes to say YES

I piss myself off. I am like the bank that says YES. I keep saying yes to people when I should say no. I don't like saying No. But when I say yes that gives me more work to do and then I am rarely in bed before 1:30 in the morning these days. NO NO NO NO. Must say NO. and MEAN No.

So Charlie asks,

Who is The Little Punk?
And I ask why.
And he says, 'cause his business cards are sitting on my desk.
So I go to The Little Punk and slap the cards on his desk and call him a punk.
Later The Man and Deputy the Man receive their cards.
No cards for me.


Of course all of these cards have the wrong publication on them, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT DAMMIT!

I really, honestly cannot believe I was just bollocked for doing something without being told to do it. Something that was requested and is normally fobbed off to me. “Don’t do anything until I tell you to do it!”
“Sorry for being efficient. I’ll just drop those IQ points and be a robot to do your bidding. Better?”

addendum

Should I also be more offended by the fact I wasn't chosen for the unexpected desk-tidy windfall considering my annual pay increase was HALF of that my colleagues earned on the sister paper?

is it just me or

when someone comes over with a big ol' roll of American dollars and asks, WHO'S GOING TO AMERICA SOON?, and hands up oh I am oh I am, that you give it to The American, or to the owl-screechy Scot on the overpaid gak force?

Sigh....

Um, I realize what I'm eating must be fascinating to you. But I'm reading a book and eating quietly for a reason. You know where you buy Cookie crisp? At the store. Yes they still make it. No, you don't have to be 7 to eat it. Leave me alone.

pointless queueing barriers

I just spent three minutes navigating a pointless porta-barrier in marks & spencer's. Now usually I think these are a good idea, especially around Christmas when you want to avoid some miserable pikey family coming up and stealing your place in the queue, or something out of your bag, the bastards.

But when the shop is empty, why oh why the hell do they have to have those stupid things up? It's not like the bloody Krypton factor, we don't get a gold star for being the fastest around the mini-maze. There was no-one in the queue ahead of me, but instead of being able to nip round the side to buy my salad, some pimly-faced student worker/numbskull oik said I had to go through the barrier-maze. "But there's no-one in the queue!" I protested. "No, but there could be and then you would be pushing in front of them". WTF? Where do they find these quality jobbers? Care in the Community?

But by the time I went back to the barrier, several people had of course then started on their long trek to the counters. So pimple-head then decided to be helpful, and undid one of the barrier things, and stuck it in diagonally across one of the four (YES, FOUR!!!) line demarkations.

Of course, the bloke in front of me ended up stuck at a dead end. He then tried to turn round, but there were too many of us in the queue behind him. So the man tried to dodge under the barrier, whereupon the red-neck commie pinko Nazi bastard just pissed off, probably to have a hand shandy over the WI calendar somewhere. In the end, I undid the stupid barriers and just went straight up to a till. A SALAD should NOT be this much trauma.

So I picked up a bag of chips and a blueberry muffin as well. Hey, I needed something to calm my nerves.

http://mermaidofmoorgate.blogspot.com

staying home sick

If I have to stay home sick from work, can I at least not actually be sick, as it makes staying home much more fun than nursing a tummy ache. A tummy ache! I'm thirty-four years old! That's just stupid!

make up my mind

All week I've been hearing Zod bang on about what's it gonna take to turn me into a chief, I've got it in me, but I spend too much time pissing about with websites (this coming from the man who was to read NME.com each morning and spends all day Wednesdays playing shockwave puzzle games on fhm.com). So this morning I say, I'm going to teach the newbie to do graphs in Illustrator and he goes off his nut about how that's his or Deputy The Man's job.
So what's it going to take to let him turn me into a chief sub? Christ.

Letter to an idiot

Yeah, pardon me for spending the last 3-4 months basically depleting my savings and my checking account and working a temp job where I made barely over 300 bucks a week while looking for, you know, a JOB so I could support myself and not put all the burden on my girlfriend....rather than worrying about your frail, fragile ego and how you need people to telepathically figure out when something is troubling you.

No wonder your supposed "best friend" packed up and moved out of town without saying goodbye. You're a clingy, co-dependent nutjob. I was nothing but nice to you and listened to you whine and vent about how mean the world is and how no guy will have you. Well, face facts, sister. No guy in his right mind would willingly hook up with some chick who constantly pines for the acceptance of people who treat her with disdain. Or, for that matter, one who accuses someone of being out to fuck them over when quite frankly, they've had more important things on their mind.

If your life is crap, more than likely, you made it that way...so do everyone a favor and either quit feeling sorry for yourself and taking out your anger on the rest of the world, or go work an actual nine to five job and then see if you have anything to whine about. Oh, but it's more important to keep your cushy condo and show everyone what a great life you have than actually get off your ASS and fix the problems in your life, right?

Fuck off.

Death cab

I hate it when people try to tell me about early Death Cab. Um, I know. And you're wrong.

MUMBLER!!!!!!

You know you really should stop mumbling, it's starting to bum me out!
Dude. I only hear you when you shout, why do you think that is? Could it be:
A. You talk with your hand over your mouth
B. You only enunciate when you're shouting
C. You talk with your mouth full
D. All of the above

How Do You Think It Feels?

When you revealed your betrayal, the ONE THING that I asked you was not to bring him to gigs, so as not to rub it in my face.

So I turn up to the gig last night, and who is the first person I see, but HIM?

How do you think it feels, for me, to watch you, standing onstage, singing the song I wrote about how much he hurt me, singing those words "I know you felt that click when our heads aligned, but did I make you sick, when our bodies intertwined" with him standing up front, oblivious, staring at you like a lovestruck puppydog?

How the FUCK do you think that feels?