Squeak’s blog

I'm bored today.  Very, very, VERY bored.  It doesn't help that I'm tired, nor does it help that my ovaries are trying to stage a military coup but I'm still bored.  Work is dragging today; people are just dumb enough to annoy me but not dumb enough to generate any interesting rants.  Even the Labradoodles aren't in danger of incurring my wrath because I can't muster  up enough energy to give a flying fuck about them (although if they both burst into flames I might feign interest).  Here are a few of the ideas Bopper and I have come up with to relieve some of the boredom;

-answer people's questions in song or by using song lyrics. 

-grab a broom and start thumping on the ceiling to shush the parts boys.

-plot an overthrow of our manager's office using Nerf guns; hold manager hostage until we get a raise or sent home.

-attempt to explain the rules of "rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock" followed by trying to actually practice it.

-sitting around and reading stories from My Life is Average to each other

Now, what the hell am I supposed to do for the next 55 minutes...no, "work" isn't the right answer.

Dear idiot customers,

Since moving back home, I've noticed that I've gotten into quite the rut.  I come home from work, eat dinner, watch TV, noodle around on the computer, bitch that I have no social life and a double digit pant-size, sleep and repeat.  I would always TRY to convince myself that I'd go to the gym, but if given the choice between curling up on the couch to watch Food Network or dragging my ass out of the house to go and run on a treadmill... let's just say that I've seen all the episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  Twice, in some cases. 

Dear Morons I Work With,

As thrilled as I am that you've somehow stumbled into jobs that allow you to earn the same amount I do for doing half the work, could you do me one little teeny-tiny, insignificant favour?  Could you all yank your heads out of your respective asses and start actually DOING something to earn a paycheque?  Because there are poo-flinging monkeys who accomplish more over the course of a day.

As always, I hate you.

Squeak

Dear Uterus and all associated girl-parts,

Seriously?  Knock off the theatrics already!  If I want to cry like a little bitch I'll watch the Notebook again.  If I want to be overcome with an all consuming rage I'll go in to work.  If I want to spontaneously gain 5 pounds on my ass, I'll start eating McDonald's again.  But until I go ahead and decide that's what I want, quit trying to get away with these shenanigans!

Too bad Tylenol does more damage to my liver than to you,

Squeak

Dear Old Man who decided to comment on the fact that I was eating a few M&M's,

Bite me.  You don't know me, which means that you have no say in anything I do, say or eat. 

Go and sit on a flaming cactus,

Squeak

What's your favorite thing about fall?

(Blah blah, usual disclaimer about not following the rules.)

- snuggly sweaters

- suede boots

- scuffing my feet through piles of dry leaves

- vibrant colours on trees

- Thanksgiving and all associated pie-baking

- Macintosh apple season

- pumpkin flavoured baked goods at Timmy's

- small children in Hallowe'en costumes

Welcome to the second review of my non-Cannonball Read.  I had about 8 books I was going to review before this one but I happened to pick it up as a quick read and I figure now is as good a time as any to talk about it.

Coraline Movie Tie-in Edition

Neil Gaiman

Today's post is inspired by FML because that's pretty much what I was chanting for the majority of the day.

So, in my never-ending quest to distract myself from the mundanity of my job, I stumbled across the Cannonball Read over on Pajiba  (follow the link for details and macho chest thumping).  I thought it was a cool idea, although I don't think I'd ever be able to conform to all the rules they laid out because I am both bad-ass and lazy like that.  I'm not limiting myself to books I've never read before and I'm certainly not racing anyone to 100 but I guess I'd just like to spur myself to read more, watch less TV and stop a lot of the mental stagnation that accompanies working with the general public on a daily basis.  In addition, the more time I spend reading, the more inspired I am to write, so there's almost no downside to this (other than the fact that my bookshelf is already overflowing).  

I probably wouldn't have know about the existence of this book if it weren't for the CR, so I suppose it's only fitting that it gets to be my first review.  

Fool: A Novel

Christopher Moore

I've read Christopher Moore before (and I'm sure I'll be reviewing more of his work later) and I generally have two responses to his books: I'll either love them and recommend them to everyone within earshot or I'll finish the book, put it down and make the conscious decision never to pick it up again.  Fool left me a bit divided; on one hand, I'm enough of an English nerd to be thrilled by a retelling of King Lear from the perspective of a marginalized character (the titular Fool) done by one of my favourite authors.  On the other hand, Moore has a tendency towards the pubescent when he doesn't have to come up with the story.  Ever wonder what Regan and Goneril's tits looked like?  You'll get your answer here.  Curious about what the protocol for screwing a laundry wench is?  Look no further!  Sure, there's 3 daughters, one doddering old man and all the dramatic irony that Shakespeare intended, which keeps the story from becoming a total wankfest.

I read this book at least 3 times over the course of the summer and every time I reach the end, I'm left with the feeling that I enjoyed the book in spite of itself.  Are there flaws?  Of course there are.  You're getting the story from the Fool's perspective and he's as unreliable a narrator as any other.  There are aspects that I can appreciate, such as the Fool getting a name (Pocket) and a backstory (raised by nuns and taken in by Lear to cheer up Cordelia).  There are hilarious footnotes and the inclusion of the term "fuckstockings" which I have adopted as my new favourite curse.  As far as things I didn't like about the book... they're harder to pin down.  I just kept putting the book down with an underlying feeling that I was being blatantly manipulated the same way Regan and Goneril were.  

Overall, it's an easy read that kept me interested and laughing.  I think the best way to sum this book up would be to paraphrase Chocolat:  "It's delicious... but it's not my favourite."  

I know I bitch about work A LOT.  An awful lot.  But in my defense, I work with some real f***ing morons.  Like MUC-W, who transfers oil change calls over and then walks over to apologize for transferring such a stupid call over.  If you have time to walk over and chat about how you would have handled the call yourself if you hadn't been so crazy busy, I'm inclined to believe that you are in fact full of shit.  Or that you would have booked that appointment yourself but you decided to send them into my office because your cell phone just won't answer itself and your Pampered Chef book is sitting there with NOBODY appreciating the cookware.

(Go watch Little Britain.  I'll wait.)

Guh.  Yet another foul mood today, but at least I'm in the office by myself so there's nobody feeling my squirrelly wrath at the moment.

There is a mouse that has set up camp somewhere behind my bookshelf.  It's that time of the year and I know he's just trying to avoid freezing his little mousy ass off in the comfort of my room but if I wanted a furry roommate I'd get a dog.  Or a very hairy boyfriend.  What's annoying me most about this is not the fact that I literally have a bookmouse in my room, it's the fact that my mother has installed not one but TWO electronic mouse and spider repellants.  The idea is that they emit a low level vibration that irritates pests and keeps them away.  The reality is that they emit a low level vibration that gives me the sensation of constant ringing in my ears, screw up my wireless internet connection and don't seem to have any apparent effect on mice. At all.  I can hear the little bastard laughing while he poops on my windowsill.  So unless he suffers a cardiac arrest mid-snicker, I think I'm going to pick up some real traps.

The two useless tits in the cash office have finally done it; they've finally started a war to see who can do less in an attempt to make the other one work.  It would be funny if it didn't mean that I now get even more calls fired over to me.  Doesn't seem to matter to them that they're tripling everyone else's workload or that if they could handle a single call themselves I'd be willing to throw them a parade.  With balloons and clowns and cupcakes!   Although they're both so damned useless that they'd just fight over who got to go to the parade first and who had to stay and answer the phones.  Crap.

I have to order new work shirts and I dread this every time.  The dread is not lessened at all by the fact that on a Friday night in mid-July, as I'm standing at the sink doing the dishes my mother walks by and says "when you order your shirts for next year, make sure you go a size up.  The ones you ordered this year really didn't suit you." *blink*  Where the hell did that come from?  Not only has my mother just walked by and told me that I spent a year looking horrible in my work shirts but she's done it totally out of the blue (we don't order new shirts until September).  So when the order form came around, all I could do was hear that statement over and over and OVER, to the point where part of me wanted to order my shirts in the same size just to be spiteful and the other part of me wanted to order shirts two sizes bigger so that there's no way in HELL that my mother can tell me I'm too fat for my shirts.  And after damn near biting her head off this morning when she asked me about them AGAIN, I compromised and ordered 5 shirts one size up.  She didn't deserve the amount of attitude I gave her, but I can only tolerate so many little jabs at my appearance before I'm ready to starve myself just to get her to shut the hell up about my weight.  Yes, I'm chubby.  Yes, going to the gym instead of Bulk Barn would be a step in the right direction.  But Bob help me, I'll drop down dead if she ever offers constructive criticism instead of  making me feel like a tub of lard.

Yep, that's how emo I am today.  I'm off to buy some Simple Plan CDs and black nail polish and adopt a surly attitude towards any and all authority figures who I feel don't understand me.