I'd love it if just ONE thing in the unholy mess that is my life - or lack thereof - was unfucked.


Just one thing.

Tony will be here on Friday!!   

Every time a church bell rings, Mr. T pities a fool.

Mr. T pities fools because even fools deserves their daily dose of vitamin T.

23. That's the number of people Mr. T has pitied in the time it has taken you to read this sentence.
Mr. T's pity for fools is used by mathematicians as a demonstration of the concept of infinity.

Mr. T once pitied the sun. An ice age followed.

The last time Mr. T went to McDonald's, Ronald McDonald greeted him. What occured next proved to be the most violent beating of a clown ever recorded in human history.


It took five women 2 years to give birth to Mr. T..


The wrath of God is outmatched only by the pity of Mr. T.

Mr. T's watch only goes to 10. The other four hours are normally spent on jibba jabba. Mr. T ain't got no time for that.

Mr. T once had so many fools to pity, he got bored with it and just started chopping the fools in half with his frohawk.

Jimmy Hoffa once tried to pity Mr. T. He has not been seen since.

More job rage coming up.

So. After a couple of weeks of every fucker in Ireland refusing to give me a job, I decided to suck it up and go enquire about my unemployment stamps. After all, I have been paying taxes for 3 and a half years, I may as well claim them back when I need them. I don't like the idea, but hey. Better than being poor and never seeing my fiance.

I arrived down at the office, and dicked around for half an hour waiting for Mrs Social Welfare to finish her tea and get the fuck back to her information window. Meanwhile, Eva and Shania, two extremely loud three year olds, raced around my feet screaming and giggling and basically being annoying kids. While their mothers kept trying to slyly skip each other in the queue.

Eventually, just when I thought I was going to crack - grab Shania (or was it Eva?) by her ginger ponytail and toss her across the room - Mrs Welfare called me to the window. I sat down and told her the sad story of how I was laid off two weeks ago and now I need to claim back my stamps because I can't find a job at the mo. She scrunched up her (ugly) little face and started typing all this shit into the system. "Are you living at home with your parents?"
"My mother, yes."
Scrunchy face, which I surmised was a bad thing. "I see. And do you contribute to the household?"
"Not since I've been unemployed, but before that, yes."
More scrunchy face. "But not in the last few weeks."
"No, my mother doesn't ask me to pay money I'm not earning."
More scrunchy. "I see. And does she work?"
"She's self employed."
Scrunch, scrunch. "Oh dear, I see... And do you have money in your bank account currently?"
I just stared at her for ages before I finally said, "Yes, of course I have some money. I was only laid off two weeks ago, I still have a couple of paychecks in there."
More scrunchy-facing, and a dirty look like I'm trying it on with her. "You know you'll be means tested for benefit? You don't just get handed a whole pile of money."
"Um... yeah, I'm aware."
Scrunchy scrunchy. "Well anyway, you don't qualify for unemployment stamps."
"Que?"
"You haven't been working long enough."
"I've been working three and a half years."
Scrunchy scrunchy. "Well last summer there's a few weeks' gap between your old job and your new one. You weren't paying then, so you've only been paying taxes since July in our book."
"I went on vacation. Vacation disqualifies me?"
"Not working disqualifies you."
"I wasn't working because I was on vacation, and my previous part time job didn't pay vacation."
"Well...." more scrunchy facing. "That's too bad. You worked the full year in 2007, but you only earned 7000 because it was part time and you were in college."
"So what you're telling me is that a full time student with a job is more entitled to unemployment than a graduate who has lost her full time job, and is not in college and has no other income."
"Basically, yes."
"You're a cow."

Okay, I didn't call her a cow. I just took the stupid forms she told me to fill out ("you'll probably qualify for a bit on the dole") and fucked off. But I am ANNOYED. How the FUCK can I work for three years and not qualify for reclaiming taxes that I HAVE BEEN PAYING?! Ridiculous!

Why the fuck does everything in my life have to be extra difficult? It's not like I don't work hard! It's not like I'm not a responsible person! Apparently, that's a bad thing, though. I guess if I'd spent all my paychecks on heroin and never gone travelling with my hard earned savings, I'd be more entitled to a little fucking help from the government I've been diligently paying taxes to.

So. No job. No job offers. No money. No summer trip to see Tony. No fucking unemployment stamps. No chance to get the hell out of this shithole of a country and never look back.

I would actually be disinclined to work here anymore, because the thought of those thieving gypsies taking my taxes every week and then refusing to give them back to me when I need them just pisses me off.

I'm fucking bored.
 
But I'm stealing stationary from work as a form of petty revenge. =p
 
*smirk*

So... ya. Manager calls me into his office on Friday and says the company is cutting costs because of lack of money and I'm now "surplus to requirements." So I'm working this week out, then I'm jobless. Three notably amusing things (and when I say 'amusing' you must realise my teeth are gritted at the time):
 
1. When he told me, he commented, "Wow, you're taking this well! I guess you don't mind that much." Oh I'm sorry, would you rather I kicked you in the nuts and stapled your head to a desk? Ultimately that would do nothing for me. But not freaking out doesn't mean I'm PLEASED you took my job away.
 
2. He also informed me that, due to the fact that they decided to pay me for holidays at Christmas that I hadn't 'worked off' I now owe them days. So instead he'll just take my paycheck this week. Nice. "You have no job.. and we're taking this paycheck too."
 
3. I discovered this morning that the packet of jelly sweets I had in my desk drawer have been polished off, all that remains is an empty bag. Aforementioned manager is the only one who knew I had them in that drawer, because he saw me take them out to go offer them around the office. So basically, he took my job, he took my last paycheck, and he took my candy.
 
But I'm over it. I cried on Friday, I sulked on Saturday, and on Sunday I got out of bed and cleaned the kitchen, had a shower, dressed myself in expensive lingerie for no reason, and started applying for jobs online. There aren't any, but I have to try.
 
I currently have just under 4k euro, and that's it. Tony has no job, and by the looks of it he won't til he finishes school in June. The job front in Ireland is looking pretty dire. The more time that goes by, the more I'm going to have to spend out of that 4k that I've saved for the states in June. I was supposed to have 9k by May, but obviously that's not happening. I don't want to NOT go in June, so we're trying to work off the assumption that that's not an option.
 
So. Any bright ideas??

Maybe it's just me, but I find the internet very tricky to navigate, socially.
 
I'm on a different social networking site, where the profiles can't be 'privatised' as much as myspace and facebook. So I find I often get messages - 90% of the time from guys - saying things like "I read your profile and you sound really nice and you're really pretty. I hope we can chat sometime," or "You seem like a really interesting person, can I add you to my friends?"
 
Perhaps on the surface, these are pretty typical, mundane messages to receive. But I just can't handle that kind of... I don't know, interaction. I mean, is it really so different from someone coming up to me in a bar and saying "Hey, I saw you from across the room and decided to come over and say hi"?? Not really, I suppose. But with the internet, everyone seems to make that giant leap from the hello to the let's be friends a lot faster. I find it peculiar. Let's be friends? Why would I be your friend? I've never spoken to you in my life, all I know about you is that you base your judgement of people largely off a picture on their profile, and perhaps a short list of their likes and dislikes.
 
I have "internet friends" on this other site that I've never met in real life, but who talk to me about their marriage problems, or their ex girlfriends, or being laid off at work. Friends who offer to buy me a birthday present when my profile announces my birthday to them through a feed. What? Birthday present? You didn't even know it was my birthday, but now you want to be me - a virtual stranger - a present? I mean, I chat to them from time to time. We shoot the shit in Games Forums or groups for people in LDRs. But I don't KNOW them. I've never SPOKEN to them.
 
So what it is about the internet that attracts these eager beavers? Is it just that people find it easier to open up about personal difficulties to an unbiased stranger? Maybe it's that the screen provides the distance and anonymity required to admit to being a bad parent, or a possessive girlfriend, or the husband who steals his wife's phone to check her text messages. Maybe it's the comfort talking to these people brings, that makes you think "yeah, I'm not that bad, comparatively." Maybe it's the notion that this hot girl (no, not me. random hot girl =p ) thinks you're funny and lavishes attention on you, when in the real world she wouldn't look twice at you.
 
It's a weird place. I've said it before and I'll say it again - after a few years 'online' I'm more convinced than ever that the internet is the worst possible place to make friends. Sure, I've been lucky enough to make a couple of really good friends. Thankfully (and ironically), the fates intervened to ensure I'd meet my fiance online. So I spend a lot of time online, talking to him, but I rarely communicate with others on any level that could be considered intimate. Myspace forums - complete strangers, News and Politics. I don't get involved in the in depth religion/love/sex/family/life forums. And aside from one exception, I've turned down every single friendship request that's ever come my way.
 
Yup... 86% of the time I'd choose awkward real life guy-in-bar situation over weird online private-message-about-hotness situation. The internet has it's good points, and it's of course possible to meet some of the best people you've ever known online, but I just think the 100 weirdos for everyone 1 friend isn't worth the hassle.
 
Thoughts?

So.
 
The overwhelming response from the Chris Brown camp (I know, I'm sorry; it's news) is "Rihanna must have provoked him, there's no way he'd slap her without her deserving it." As well as his cousin's statement that "He just feels bad that fans are looking down on him like he did something wrong."
 
Que?? Correct me if I'm wrong, but domestic violence IS wrong. The kid was hospitalised after he was through with her. So why is it that retarded little Chris fans all over the interwebz are posting blogs about how Rihanna is a bitch and deserved it? Why are his family taking the same defensive approach? I mean, I don't know about the rest of you but if I found out MY cousin had knocked his girlfriend around so much she ended up in the ER, I wouldn't be defending him. At the very least, I wouldn't say anything.
 
I like how domestic abuse awareness has taken five steps back this week with the Rihanna situation. Apparently, people will defend an attacker if he has a couple of hit records under his belt, or looks cute in a pair of Gucci shades. Teenage girls everywhere defending the scum sucking little asshole just proves what Awareness groups have been saying all along; like it or not, public sentiment is generally "what happens behind closed doors isn't our concern" and/or "nobody gets a punch in the face without asking for it".
 
Jesus Christ. People make me sick.

So Small - Carrie Underwood
[Verse 1]
What you got if you ain't got love
the kind that you just want to give away
It's okay to open up
go ahead and let the light shine through
I know it's hard on a rainy day
you want to shut the world out and just be left alone
But don't run out on your faith

[Chorus]
'Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand
What you've been up there searching for
forever is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
seem so small

[Verse 2]
It's so easy to get lost inside
a problem that seems so big at the time
it's like a river thats so wide
it swallows you whole
While you sit around thinking about what you can't change
and worrying about all the wrong things
time's flying by
moving so fast
you better make it count 'cause you can't get it back

[Chorus]
Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand
What you've been up there searching for
forever is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Seem so small

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand
What you've been up there searching for
forever is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Oh it sure makes everything else
Seem so small

Yeah yeah, optimism shmoptimism. You just can't be cheerful in a place like this. Why??
 
Example #1; It's pouring rain so I took the bus to work. The traffic was heavy because of the rain, and I was 10 mins late. I arrive to find one boss, J, opening up and I ask where everyone is. He says, "The question is, where were YOU?" Well I wasn't driving a sports car in, that's for sure, J. I was standing in the pouring rain. Then standing, dripping wet, on a bus. Then walking some more in the rain. Where were you, and your set of keys? Because frankly, I'm quite relieved I DIDN'T arrive in time, and have to stand on the step in the downpour by myself. Jerk.
 
Example #2; Also J, actually. He arrived in yesterday - in his spiffy sports car - and announced he had generously purchased some doughnuts for everyone. Seeing as he's a millionaire, I think he made more out of the gesture than he needed to, but yeah it was nice. I didn't get one, I'd already eaten. However, K went to get one, and then came back in a cranky mood and told me he had bought 5 - one for him, one for the other boss, one each for the 2 service managers, and one for a client with the other boss. NICE. He didn't SAY that's who they were for, but neither of us was going to claim one and leave the boss without. Then, after my vacuuming (I'll get to that), I popped my head around his door just to tell him I wasn't going to do the offices as well, and he said, "Did you get a doughnut?" I told him no, I ate one for breakfast because I always buy a doughnut and cocoa in a shop on my walk to work. He made this face, like, "what a selfish bitch!" Um.. hello? I'm the only one who buys sweets EVERY Friday for the office, I walk down to the shops to pick up his lunch even if I'm not going to the shops, I stand in queues at the post office to do errands like "renew my dog licence" or "weigh this, wrap it nicely, write a birthday card to my niece and post it all". Ass.
 
Example #3; The cleaner has failed to show up this week, and because there's construction work going on outside, everyone is dragging dirt all over the expensive carpets and tiled floors and mashing it in with big clunky boots. So I took out the hoover and set to work doing the lobby, halls, stairs, and upstairs corridor. When I was done - after the doughnut offer - he says, "Well that was pointless if you won't do the offices, we'll just track dirt everywhere again." Yes, the other phrase people often use is THANK YOU. I know I offered, but it's still not very nice to whinge about what I *didn't* do instead of thanking me for giving a shit about the floors and actually bothering my arse to clean them.
 
Example #4; Probably the worst thing about this place. Everyone's MEAN. They're all loaded, but they're stingy feckers. One example of stinginess is that M (the guy who owns the business) dropped a letter on my desk the other day, a donation to a children's charity. How kind of him, I thought. K wandered over to see what it was, made a horrified face and asked, "Why do THEY deserve this and I don't deserve a raise?? What a waste of money." Um.... que?? Then J comes past, asks what she's looking at and she tells him. He's like, "Christ, doesn't he have better things to do with his money?"
 
Like, WTF?! Better things like... buy a sports car? Maybe buy 5 doughnuts? Go on ANOTHER vacation - the third this year so far? These are all more worthy of someone's time than needy children?
 
It is very hard to be sunny and cheerful around people like that.