Nico's Journal

I've had my hair cut, and I like it! It's quite a bit shorter, rather like a 30s shingled bob: all thick and glossy looking. :-) I took it in to get a third set of passport photos. [rolls eyes] The place I went to for the others didn't know that people have to put their hair behind their ears to show them. WTH? Why would they want to see my ears? Anyway, this set is the best of the lot; I don't actually look like a wanted killer. It's lucky I wasn't in a hurry for that passport.

I haven't posted much lately, but I am doing picowrimo again this month, which is a great way to get me writing. I decided on part 4 (of 5) of my Lynx series, and this one's all about mutoids, which canon didn't tell us enough about. I'm deciding on my own fanon as I go.

What else? Oh yes, my sister of wetter water fame, continues to pursue ways of being as loose a cannon as she can. She has been through astrology, vibrations, special plant sugars "scientists" got in a vision, the wetter water (which I think had something to do with the sugars, but I may be wrong) and now it's eclipses. [flails] She's now part of a sort of Jewish fundie group that follow some weirdo online who claims that eclipses always fall on Jewish holidays and can predict major events. I don't want to know. Hasn't she known me long enough by now to realise I don't want to know about her latest craze? I was considering going to see her when Greg's away in December, but that last phone call has convinced me to stay well away.

If it's not bad enough I feel crap about myself and my life anyway, RL is out to get me.

• Our water main is leaking again. The plumber is coming this afternoon and maybe we'll need a whole new one since this is the second time.
  
• I have to get someone in to replace all the window rubbers. Yeah, that's what they call them.
  
• I also need to get someone to replace the handful of rotting planks in our deck
  
• Oh and someone to fix the leak in the guttering and the roof
  
• And then there's the courier:
  
  • I ordered something to be delivered last week, forced to use a courier with signature required because that's the only option the company provides. Even though I order clothing from Ezibuy all the time and they just leave it in the letterbox or at the front door and I've never had any trouble.
    
  • The courier came during the 45 minutes or so I was out taking Jasmin to the eye specialist last Monday.
    
  • I rang them and asked them to send it to our local post shop (Meadowbank) for collection, an option they offer. They couldn't find it on their system, so I said, "Fine, send it to Eastridge then."
    
  • It wasn't sent to Eastridge.
    
  • Furious, I rang up and asked what had happened. They had taken it there, then brought it back. They didn't know why. Is it all right if it's redelivered to my place on Monday morning? Yes.
    
  • It's Monday morning and I'm sitting here unshowered and trapped in the house waiting for it. I suspected it wasn't coming, so I rang them up. What a surprise. It's at the bloody depot. I lost it and swore at them, pointing out that I'd been forced to pay for a signed delivery, and something taking more than a week to get to me is a total waste of my money and time. Ordinary mail would have got it there by last Tuesday. "I see here," she said, "that you want it to go to Meadowbank post shop." WTF? They couldn't even find that in their system last week. I slowly told them the process I've been through and they said they'd ring back. The new person (the third I've spoken to today) offered to get it to me by an urgent courier. I accepted.
    
  • I bloody hope they actually do because I'm still unshowered and contact lens-less, and the water guy's coming early this afternoon.

The people at theatrical_muse must have to take lessons in being annoying, humourless, and sticklers for huge numbers of rules, or be selected from personnel departments of large corporations. I already withdrew Kerril and Dayna because of officious e-mails, but I left vila_restal in to keep his journal active.

I did a topic a couple of weeks ago, and for once didn't cross-post to Vila's LJ because I chose to use a story written from his mother's POV in third person. I just got the rude standard e-mail telling me that unless I wrote something ASAP I'd be removed from the community. They cited rules 5, 6, and 7 of 21 Yes, 21 rules. Oh, joy.

[rolls eyes] When we started, all you have to do was post to TM itself. I always cross-posted and a while ago started adding the TM topics to memories to keep track of them in case I was accused of slacking. Somewhere along the line this became a rule along with giving the topic number. I can't keep up.

To the anal mods at TM: this is supposed to be fun, not a duty. I owe you some loyalty for sparking off an RPG which gave me great enjoyment, but there's not a hell of a lot left.

One of the finance people at work went on holiday on Wednesday and set her e-mail to give an out-of-office reply listing all her colleagues who can deal with what she does. A nutter who objects to the tax being taken out of his dividend payment (as is the usual practice) promptly sent in an abusive e-mail to everyone she listed.

( Said nutter's rant and the excellent reply )

I'd just like to express how much I loathe 'it was all a dream' stories. I feel I wasted yesterday evening watching a British TV play called Promoted to Glory. It was brilliantly acted with strong and likeable characters, but I felt very pissed off and cheated when the bloody thing ended and none of the characters but the dreamer were real. [stabs at writer with a spork]

The play starts with an alcoholic being entranced with the smiling face of a female Salvation Army officer singing Christmas carols. He crosses the street to her and gets knocked down by a bus. Cue a very involving story in which he has partial amnesia, is taken in at her detox centre, gets to know some interesting characters there, dries out, and pursues Annie, the officer, with whom he's in love--so much so he gets his life in order, becomes a Sally Army officer himself (learning all the articles of faith etc) and starts his own detox centre. He then has what appears to be a heart attack just as Annie realises she loves him and not her humourless but in the end sympathetic fiancé, and goes to him.

Then we replay the first scene and he's back there dying on the street with 'Annie' smiling down at him. Except that she's really called Margaret, her 'fiancé' is the bus driver, and the 'other alcoholics' he got to know are just random shoppers in the street who stop to look. This is just a kick in the teeth to the viewers. People we invest in are just figments in the mind of a dying man, and this isn't even logical: no-one dreams a year's events complete with scenes they weren't in, complex characters, religious instruction, and psychiatric assessments.

Like the clichéd sexist alien society, this plot device should be stamped out

I acted without thinking and asked astrogirl2 for a rant, and now I have to do the meme as punishment fair exchange. So here goes.

1. Comment with any subject that you would like me to rant on, with possible swearing involved.
   
2. I will reply here with your rant.
   
3. Post this in your own journal, so that you may rant for others.

Bush (or any other president) is not the leader of the free world. That's not just an oxymoron, it's an arrogant lie.

I want to do some severe physical damage to the bastards at sky tv (I can't bring myself to capitalise it).

They've cancelled SF Saturday.

No more Farscape. In fact, no more SF bar SG1 (no, not even Enterprise).

I don't believe it. This program isn't just the best SF on TV here, it bloody well has some of our NZ actors in it, yet we're not allowed to see it. These fuckwits might lack taste and intelligence, but have they no patriotism? No, of course not--this is an intelligent program, not 15 brutes in black on a rugby field.

I'd cancel my subscription if it wasn't for the Rialto channel (quality films) and UKTV (old but great British programs). Without them I'd have almost nothing left to watch.

Now I have to start ringing round to see if I can hire Farscape tapes or DVDs somewhere. They've treated it so badly here almost no-one watches it, so I'm not sanguine about my chances.

On top of that, my car's aircon has packed up in the middle of summer, and I live in the wrong timezone to play on b7_rpg during weekdays unless some kind American is insomniac enough to play with Vila.

Shit shit shit.