Oh Blog It All

For the longest time I fought against getting an INtray on my desk. I learned from bitter and painful experience that INtrays are more then just weirdly shaped plastic receptacles (that may or may not communicate with all the other weirdly shaped plastic receptacles currently loitering on your desk). They are in fact the spawn of Satan and being the evil bastard that he is he’s made sure that every damn cubicle / open plan office dweller has one.

I know you think I’m over reacting. You’re sitting there all smug and sure of yourself convinced that I’m two screws short of an orgy. It’s a harmless little piece of plastic, it’s handy, you can put stuff in it and it makes your desk look organised. Well, if that is what you are thinking then you, my friend, are so far gone that you probably shouldn’t even read any further.

Of course some of you may be viewing your INtray askance – wondering just what makes it so evil. Well, pull your chair a little closer, I’m going to have to whisper, we don’t want this information getting out and causing a panic. (If you have to tell someone, only tell those you really love and give the asshole that sits next to you and always used your coffee mug, even though you’ve asked him like a million times not to, another INtray – he deserves it).

Your INtray is the reason you always have so much work to do and never enough time to do it in. It’s the reason you work hours and hours of overtime and completely miss the first 18 years of your child’s life. It’s the reason you don’t even realise that your spouse has run off with the maid, the minister, the gardener, the neighbour or all of the above.

See your INtray really isn’t an INtray. It is a breeding ground for papers. You put one sheet of paper in there and leave it alone for a while. Guaranteed when next you look at it that one page has become seven pages, all of them having something to do with more work for you.

But it does it so subtly that you’d never know if I didn’t tell you. Your INtray is cunning, it’s devious, and it ALWAYS operates in stealth mode.

I can just hear my Geek asking me how this is done. Really it’s nothing too technical, just watch an episode of Egoli* and pay particular attention to the Secretaries. What do those Secretaries do all day besides lunch, gossip and pause dramatically? Yip, copy documents**.

Copying documents would be harmless in itself but that’s where Satan comes in. To cut a long story short, Satan knows how to bend time and space to his will (before he went over to the dark side he knew some pretty powerful people, he paid attention, he picked up a few interesting tid bits, okay?) and has created an invisible portal between your INtray and the ‘office’ set on Egoli. There in full view of cast, crew and the nation of Egoli addicts, the Secretaries copy those documents. Bear in mind that theirs is a one of a kind copier (that most certainly is not made / sold / distributed by the Copier Company Sponsor of the Day). It doesn’t make exact copies of the original (duh, else this whole scheme wouldn’t work). It subtly alters every single copy in such a way that to the untrained eye it just looks like more work to you, the poor slob currently drooling over the keyboard.

The original and the ‘copies’ are then warped back to your INtray and suddenly you got a whole lotta more work to do. It’s so simple (apart from the whole bending space and time thing, which takes a few millennia of workouts in the gym) which is why it works.

Now of course you think you know all the answers, but try stopping the spread of this evil. It’s not as easy as you think.

You see, when I started my new job I didn’t want an INtray. When they made their first offer I said no, thank you. I declined the second offer politely but firmly. The third offer came with an incentive, no more liver and onions on the canteen menu if I said yes. Saying no then was the hardest thing I ever had to do. And then the bastards kicked it up a notch – they offered me a blue one. A lovely blue INtray that just so nicely matched my blue paper cube and my blue mouse pad and even my blue car. How could I not say yes, blue is my favourite colour.

I remember the old days when I did not have an IN tray. Every evening I would go home on time, my desk clear of every shred of paper, all my work done for the day. I’d come in the next morning and surf the net for two hours before someone thought to give me some work to do (their INtray was looking a bit full you understand). But now, now my INtray is so full stuff is spilling over the sides. I made the mistake of putting ONE folder in my INtray, now I have, count them - one, two, three, four of the bloody things.

My only hope is to win the lottery and thereby leave this sorry excuse of a job or get my sorry ass fired for spending too much time on the net blogging about inane issues. I need to get away from this desk, this office, this company, find something new and swear by all that I hold holy (i.e. my entire Depeche Mode collection comprising CD’s, DVD’s, Videos, Box Sets, T shirt and poster of Martin Gore going through his cross dressing phase – it WAS the 80’s ok) that I will never, ever, EVER allow an INtray on my desk again.

But of course he did not become the Lord of Darkness on edgy good looks alone. It takes a bit more then that. He knows I’m onto his evil scheme and Satan is up for the challenge. He’s reengineered the INtray. It’s got a new look, a new place on the desk, it’s bigger, it’s bolder, it comes in 256 colours.

It’s New and Improved.

It’s called an INbox.

You have been warned.

* Egoli – typical soapie set in Joburg complete with the obligatory obscenely rich family, the obscenely poor family that makes good and an assortment of pretty faces and paltry story lines that enthrals (on a daily basis) everyone from chain-smoking house wives to deported union representatives.

** When it comes to a scene set in the office where the Secretaries are supposed to be “working”, that “work” is copying documents. It just slays me that I worked hard on developing a pleasant telephone manner, learnt the alphabet so that I could file documents alphabetically, learned to type with ALL TEN FINGERS yet according to TV if you want to be the Personal Assistant to the CEO of a Large International Corporation then ALL you need to know is how to copy documents.

We are a two-fridge family. (We were almost a three-fridge family but the universe and my best friend plotted against us to prevent such an abomination from happening).

One fridge – the big one – is used to store the regular stuff like milk, eggs, margarine (although technically it’s low fat spread), the obligatory bottle of gherkins (blame my mother for this one), limp vegetables and the as yet to be named and identified species of plant / animal / intelligent life form (our people have contacted it’s people and they are currently in talks) that lives way, way in the back, where the light doesn’t reach.

The other fridge – the little one – used to be the drinks fridge. I say used to be. Currently the little fridge is housing a recreation of the South Pole. Or it could be the North Pole. Its’ so frozen up in there it’s hard to tell. (I understand that this an important question, one that needs an answer and so I’m keeping a keen lookout for telltale signs of elves and reindeer, if I spot any, I’ll let you know).

Now the little fridge shouldn’t be a problem. And it isn’t really, you know, apart from the danger posed by yanking open the door in a hurry and thereby dislodging the glacier that is the ice making compartment, having it fall on your toe and break it and then finding out that Discovery doesn’t cover skiing accidents.

The little fridge actually has several advantages. During an extended power failure ours will be the only household in the neighbourhood with cold beer. And we can take the concept of being a Linux Family all the way by adopting a penguin! For those of you thinking of following suit please note that they frown upon pinching penguins from Robben Island – apparently you’re to go to the zoo and wrestle a polar bear for one, just like everyone else does.

Yet despite all the obvious advantages to having the little fridge, the big guy in our house has decreed that the little fridge must go. I’m not too sure where to. The plan this weekend is to put it out on the patio and hope it just sort of wanders away by itself. I doubt this plan will work though and we’ll probably end up getting snotty letters from the Body Corporate about municipal bylaws, public indecency and the Geneva Convention (which may or may not have anything to do with anything else it’s just I hear the BC like to bandy that one about quite a bit).

So for now the little fridge remains where it is, in the kitchen, providing a handy storage for the cat food and the broken coffee machine and not to mention the door being a great place to display our St Elmo’s Menus Collection.

But we don’t plan on living under Body Corporate dictatorship forever and when we move, I suspect the little fridge will be meeting with an accident. Which is not so bad really, if it ends up in a nice home where people will love it and care for it and regularly defrost it.

I just hope Van’s wife believes him when he says “But Skat, it really did fall off the back of a truck”.

It’s an important question and yesterday the answer should have been “Not to Post”.

That I had something interesting and worthwhile to write about is not in doubt. It’s how I wrote about it that bothers me.

I was very much enamoured with “Just A Geek”, but worse, I was even more enamoured with myself. A few half decent posts and I thought myself to be the next Wil Wheaton, albeit in a dress.

I wrote that post partly from a fan’s perspective but mostly from my delusional notions as an equal to Wil Wheaton – published author.

The truth is that I wrote that post for Wil’s personal benefit, hoping through some sheer miracle that he would read it, be thrilled to bits about it, link it to his site and before you know it I’m on my way to Blogger Superstardom.

What a load of crap. I knew that even before I published but I went ahead and published it anyway.

If I’m lucky then I’ll have zero comments from people telling me that what I wrote was total overkill in the I’m so desperate to be funny department. And if I’m even luckier (and I am) then my fiancé will tell me exactly what I need to hear, that I can (and have) done better. I considered deleting the post but then what will I have to remind myself of what NOT to do? So the post stays.

And maybe one day I will get round to telling you about this book I read weekend past because it’s a good book and I do think people should read it. But not today, today I’m, what, going for total overkill in the opposite direction? Me thinks I need to ease up a bit before I loose sight of why I started blogging in the first place – TO END WORLD HUNGER, WIPE OUT THIRD WORLD DEBT AND BRING ABOUT WORLD PEACE.

Sorry about that, my inner beauty queen got out for a moment and typed some stuff (yeah, who knew she could type) that is totally at odds with the real me (said in my best tortured soul voice).

As usual, I never know when to stop. So, what I really need to do is get back to what my employer pays me to do. Those cardboard burgers won’t supersize themselves you know :-)

So, I now have access to the joys of the internet. And, once the novelty of porn had worn off (okay, so I never really went to the “heavy” sites, more like the “free spirited, free thinking, run around naked in the moonlight and we’ll tell you how to give a decent blow job” type – and just so you know, you don’t blow and it’s not a job unless you’re a professional in which case you don’t need to read sites like this), I started looking around for other things to check out and read.

Someone suggested I read www.wilwheaton.net. Wil Wheaton, the same dude who brought Wesley Crusher to two-dimensional life of the small screen in Star Trek. I was sceptical, I was most certainly not a Wesley fan and through no fault of his own, a Wil Wheaton fan either. But a few visits to his site made me revise my opinion.

I read his blog regularly and am rather disappointed when more then 48hrs goes by without something new being posted. Mr Wheaton is, indirectly, the reason that I blog. I just want to be clear on that. He did not tell me to “blog it and they will read” or anything.

Anyway, this weekend I finally got the chance to read “Just A Geek”, Wil Wheaton’s latest book (this is his second). What follows is my totally biased review.

My biggest problem with Wil Wheaton’s “Just A Geek” is the four-whole-double-sided-totally-blank-except-for-some-weird-stain- resembling-my-auntie-bess’s-purple-butt-birthmark-pages RIGHT at the end. Bastard. He could have written more, he should have written more. Dammit, I so wanted him to write more.

The thing is I read books for entertainment. I don’t seek some deeper and profound meaning that may or may not lay hidden between the lines. I do not hope to come away from the experience with some mantra that will make me thinner, richer and a better person to boot. I read for entertainment and Mr Wheaton delivers.

Forget Robbie Williams, this Saturday past Sweet Uncle Willie entertained me!

He made me laugh. He made me cry. He made me write this favourable review! Actually he didn’t make me write anything, it’s just that once I read the book, I had no choice (can I please have my kitten back now). It was well written and inspiring. I figure if he can go from being an actor to a writer then I can go from being a clerk to a stripper. Or maybe not, don’t think soon-to-be Mr Geek’s Girl will be too impressed with that.

You know what, I’m trying so hard to make this a serious review, the kind they print in newspapers but I just am not getting it right. Ah well, at least I tried.

So, in summary, I loved the book, I think you should read it – preferably your own copy that you bought yourself and not the library’s copy because you’ll want to read it again. (Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I think you may just learn something about Wil Wheaton and about Life – but you didn’t hear it from me).

There. That’s it. I’m done.

Except for one more little thing: To quote Mr Wheaton, quoting himself, “Jesus. By the time we get there the kid won’t be dead anymore” But that’s okay, because what you will find in the not-dead-anymore kid’s place is Wil Wheaton – Just A Geek.

Thank you God. Amen.

Okay, so if you’re in Cape Town and you’re reading this, well you know all about the water restrictions currently in place. And doubtless yesterday’s rain won’t make a drop of a difference.

Warning – this post is a bit potty. If the mere thought of someone (especially a woman) admitting out loud that they don’t just go to the toilet to powder their nose or wash their hands offends you – stop reading now. I am a woman who uses the toilet on a pretty regular basis (Kellogg’s High Fibre Bran does it again and again) which is a damn sight better then squatting in the garden. Which I have never done, mind you, my name is not Ferdie. Point is there was a time in humankind’s history when toilets did not exist. I for one think the world is a better place since their invention.

Getting back to the issue of water restrictions.

I’m really keen to help, do my bit or not do my bit rather, so I’ve stopped watering the garden. Okay, so I never, ever watered the garden to begin with but that’s because the moss growing on the paving doesn’t seem to need watering. I haven’t had a bath in months and shower only when my co-workers complain about the smell. So it would seem that I am co-operating fully with the authorities and at this rate I’ll certainly meet the 20% saving the EXECUTIVE Mayor is convinced I can manage (she has high hopes, our EXECUTIVE mayor does).

But then I go and flush this 20% straight down the toilet – and I mean that literally. See my rule is if there is anything left in that bowl after flushing, you flush again. And again. And again until that bowl sparkles like it’s filled with spring water. And without going into any crappy details, I think I’m doing the right thing here. However, my dilemma involves that bit of toilet paper that just doesn’t want to move on.

I don’t have this problem at home, probably because I buy the nice, soft two-ply and infinitely water soluble type. Leave a piece of the expensive paper in the bowl and in 10 minutes it’s totally disintegrated, like it was never there to begin with. But the cheap, tough, doubles as sandpaper, 10 000 rolls for a Rand type that my employer insists on buying just does not want to co-operate.

My question is this: If I have flushed and there is nothing else left in that bowl, is it okay to leave the bit of stubborn toilet paper? Normally I would not ask but understand, we have water restrictions and I really don’t want to see my neighbour’s petunias peg because I flushed too much.

I considered asking my fellow bathroom users here at the office but most of them are Muslim and I don’t know if I would be causing offence. Also, they’re currently all fasting which means they’re doing more then their fair share of cutting down their water usage – if you don’t drink, you don’t pee.

So, the dilemma remains but until I find a solution, I think I’ll continue to flush.

Hey, maybe if I’m really lucky, the EXECUTIVE Mayor reads this and has some words of wisdom. Then again, this is the same EXECUTIVE Mayor who sends me a personal message that starts off with “Dear Fellow Water User”. I am neither a fellow nor is my name Water User – I know this because I called my mom to check.

So. Apparently I now have my own domain. Am I the only one whose mind goes on this whole S-M bend when I see the word “Domain”? Probably. But I have given some thought to my ‘welcome to my world’ little ramble, it goes a little something like this:

Welcome to my Domain. The next whipping will commence in 30 minutes. Please report to the dungeon where your personal dominatrix will handcuff you to the wall. Please ensure that your persona dominatrix knows your safety word, phrase or signal. Please note that the following words are not suitable for use as safety words:
No
That tickles
Please Stop
That doesn’t tickle anymore
I’m begging you
What the hell is that!
You’re gonna put it where!?!
I feel faint
I see stars in front of my eyes, is that a good thing?
Oh my God I can’t breathe

Please note that passing out cold is not an acceptable safety signal and your personal dominatrix will continue punishing you because you’ve been a bad, bad boy.

If you really can’t come up with your own safety phrase, we recommend using “Gary Moore”.

No, I’m not really a s-m freak, just figure the pseudo porn allusions should get me some extra traffic. It’s a sad, sad day when you’re grateful for the glances of balding, 50 year old men sitting around in their aerated green underpants who visit your domain (I just love this word) in the hopes of seeing pictures of naked anything (male, female, canine, bunny rabbits, whatever, they’re not fussy).

Maybe my welcome needs a bit of work, huh?

I have big plans for this domain (there’s that word again :-), want to make it a freaky, funky cyber-place to hang out in for those people, like me, who don’t have a life.

And you can tell I don’t have a life because I do have a blog.

So there I was at approximately 08h20 on Saturday morning, buck naked, hair dripping wet, totally horizontal hanging in mid air for the obligatory split second before landing with a resounding SLAP! on the wet, bathroom tiles.

I gotta tell ya - it’s a great way to start the weekend. Honestly, my biggest worry at that moment was that I’d need medical assistance and I just couldn’t see myself being very dignified lying naked on the bathroom floor while strange me look at me. Yes I know, not all medics are men but with my luck, the all girl crew will be out attending to some male Hollywood celeb like Nicholas Cage (celebs seem to be popping up a lot in Cape Town, must be something in the air) who got a splinter or something.

Mind you, here in SA, where road accidents are as common as my best friend’s ex boyfriend’s latest shag mate, my biggest fear is being involved in a car accident. And no, its not because I worry about the injuries, my car being wrecked, the loss of transport or even a limb for that matter. No what I really worry about is my shoes.

See every time they show one of these really bad accidents on the news (South Africans have seen so many that they have to be really gruesome to make it to the evening news), there will be this shot of a victim / corpse on a stretcher, always missing at least ONE shoe. If the poor blighter is really unlucky, it’s both shoes. I don’t know how that happens. I’m pretty sure these people set out each morning wearing a shoe on each foot, unless they only have one foot in which case they’re wearing a shoe on their only foot or unless they don’t have shoes or they don’t have feet which means their problems are so much bigger then mine.

Yes, I know, I’m an insensitive clod.

Okay, so where was I before I side tracked myself to offend footloose, I mean, footless people? Oh, right, anyway, so I don’t want to be one of those people who ends up in hospital minus a shoe or two. I don’t know how it happens, I don’t care how it happens and if I ever find myself the victim or a serious car accident I’ll be the woman with the serious head injury - must be a head injury, the medic’s thinking, when the conversation goes something like this:

(Apologies to my granny for the language, if this situation ever really happens I’ll be under a lot of stress and will probably swear and I’m sorry Gran but considering the circumstances, it might just be a tad justified)

Medic: Ma’am are you in pain?
Me: Where the hell are my shoes?
Medic: Ma’am, can you move your arms?
Me: Where the hell are my shoes?
Medic: Ma’am, can you move your legs?
Me: I can’t feel my fucking legs - where the fuck are my shoes?
Medic (examines me further): Ma’am, you don’t have legs anymore
Me: Yeah, whatever, where the fucking hell are my shoes?
Medic to Traffic Officer and anyone else listening to this conversation: Boy, she’s had a nasty knock on the head, we’d best get her off to hospital now.

As the ambulance drives away into the sunset, Piet the traffic officer - actually he prefers the term speed kop - turns to the 20 000 or so vultures gathered around the scene and says: OK, which one of you okes got the shoes?

Dawie, from Dawie’s Dad’s Panel beaters puts up his hand.

Piet: Dawie my boy, it’s been a long standing tradition that whichever vulture, I mean tow truck driver, gets to the scene first gets to take a victim’s shoes as a souvenir. But really, taking the whole damn leg - my boy it’s not done.

Dawie: Sorry Piet, but I had no choice, she had her bladie shoes superglued to her feet!

After my mediocre start at a first entry, I felt it time for another.

The question is though, do my legions of Lone Readers (all two of them) want to read about my minor day to day crises - like, you know, should I wear the red shirt or blue blouse to work today or what the heck am I going to cook for dinner, or, what I would do if I won the lotto. Considering I absolutely hate reading stuff like that on other people’s blogs, why should I inflict the same crap on my Readers?

So what the heck do I blog about? You know some days my life is really made up of the mundane. Disappointing I know, but not every day can be fabulous unless you’re a God, but even then fabulous gets a bit boring now and then (so you liven things up by causing a hurricane, a world war, Microsoft - some days the Gods can be cruel and this all in the name of fun). Of course it does not help that I have been spending time with the Child Goddess Aphrael (refer David Eddings’ Sparhawk books) who seems to be all about fun and kisses. But Aphrael is a change from American Odin (Neil Gaiman “American Gods) so I’m not complaining. Yet.

I do seem to be reading a lot of books lately that involve a lot of Gods. What strikes me about, could be, maybe, might not be, fictional Gods is that they are not all knowing and omnipotent. They make mistakes, they do stoopid things and sometimes they are not nice. But they are Gods and can fly and do all sorts of other freaky stuff. And they come across as being so much easier to love and more of a pleasure to serve - of course this would be the Good Gods as opposed to the Evil Gods (I have been reading A LOT of David Eddings lately). And the Gods, Good and Evil, are more direct and accessible, unlike the Christian God I was raised to believe in. Whom I haven’t necessarily stopped believing in, by the way. Rather I’ve just given up on religion which is a whole other and rather dangerous concept in my humble opinion. But I don’t want to go down that road.

What I will say is that there seems to be a very deep need in human nature to have Gods that are more accessible, tangible. Or maybe it’s just me. My reading choices lately do seem to involve Gods a lot (which is really a step in the right direction, I used to only read Barbara Cartland - which makes me wonder about what deep and abiding need I had then, big dresses, stupid, penniless, orphaned teenage girls and rich older men with big houses and a things for statutory rape - thank Gods I got over that).

And this is about as far as I can get with this particular train of thought - now do I post this or wait till this train has make all it’s stops and is at the station? I don’t know, what I do know is that I’m stretching the train analogy.

I’m sure I’ll have some more Godly thoughts in the future and I’ll be sure to share them no matter how inane or pointless they seam.

Have a good one!

Oh wow, “My First Post” now if that isn’t the most original title you’ve ever read :-) At least you know what you’re in for, you have been warned.

Anyway.

So, this is it. My first post - what the heck do I type here?

You know, I had this draft of my first post - a deep and profound statement about what my intentions with this blog are and how I plan to use it for the power of good (or evil, don’t know yet which side I want to be on. Good always seems to win but Evil seems to have way more fun). However, having read that draft I think it’s more a case of pretentions then intentions.

I did have the thought that Bloggers are a bit like “Midnight to 3AM” DJ’s - prattling away, never really sure that anyone at all is listening, or in this case reading. Yet, we do it anyway and choose to believe (deep, DEEP down in the bottom of our pancreas) that someone, somewhere is reading. Yip, our one and only Lone Reader whom we wish to impress, excite, amaze and astound.

Blogging is to adults what imaginary friends are to children.

And on that note, I’ll end this, my first post.

Have a nice day now. Well at least try and have a nice day or if you can’t manage that then do something nice for someone. I dunno, something like helping a little old lady accross the street or something - but make sure there’s no oncoming traffic, little old ladies make a HUGE mess when they go splat because they challenged a bus and lost.

I just don’t know when to quit, do I? Obviously not. Okay, am going now. Bye.