Blue Saturday

too late now but keep copies of everything in future, yeah, they are evil for "losing" paperwork

It's entirely possible I have a scan somewhere, but my computer files are even worse than my physical ones. For a pack rat who keeps *everything* I sure am shit at finding things again.

i lost a bunch of v important work papers this morning and was right on the cusp of contacting HR to admit i was useless and unsuited for a position in management when i found them

never felt so alive for those 10 minutes

Think I need a Red Saturday (or possible Red Monday) thread. Just being in the office makes me constantly annoyed/irritable/sarcastic/a dick.

I need to focus on small mercies like being allowed to cut short my 3 month notice period in half, so at least I only have another 20 working days with these morons. And maybe anger management, but I'm about to start doing CBT next week so maybe that will help I dunno.

Argh, that "I've lost this important thing!!!!" panic, that was yesterday.

I went up to the Community Garden like I always do on Sunday afternoons. I dug up / turned over / pitchforked (we have 200 seed beds for you to weed, right?) this massive plot of earth then went over to drink tea with the other workers. And someone asked me about my bag, and I realised in the course of talking about where I got it, that the pocket where I normally keep my wallet is FLAPPING OPEN with no wallet inside. Cue massive panic because, well, I don't actually think my wallet has been stolen, I think that while I was working on one of the 200 seed beds, my wallet flopped out of the open pocket and got hoed down into the earth and bye-bye bank cards and bus pass and ARGH and I do not want to have to dig up 200 seed beds looking for the damn thing (like, have you seen the damage a pitchfork can do, for real.)

Anyway, they told me to go home and just check and ARGH PANIC RUN THE WHOLE MILE HOME and phew, it was in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing the night before when I'd gone to buy biscuits.

But yeah. Panic. And now I have eaten lunch and have no more excuses and have to go deal with the council. For real.

(Isn't there a "thread where we work out our notice period" for that sort of hell, but if there isn't, argh, Poo, I feel your pain, that sounds shit. Just remember it will be over soon.)

And lo, this is how I now become benefits scum. This country!

I paid my council tax a bit late last year, but I paid it in full. However, because I paid it by cheque, it cleared in a day past the deadline, and triggered an automated process whereby they took me to court for an amount that was already paid, and whacked me with £127 for the privilege.

And apparently no human being on earth, in the customer service centre, or over the phone, can revoke that charge once it goes on. "I can't pay this! I'm unemployed!" I moaned. "Oh, you're unemployed, you say? Right, then you can apply for Council Tax benefit, which covers the whole amount." I don't want to cover the whole amount with benefits. I want to pay my council tax, but not have to pay a £127 late fee for an amount I already paid. That isn't possible. I can go on benefits for the full council tax, or nothing.

So I am now applying for benefits I don't want to be on. This is fucking stupid.

Here you go. How much of modern management technique is descended from slavery:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/01/16/the-messy-link-between-slave-owners-and-modern-management/

Fuck councils and their 'automated processes'. Every time I'm £10 in arrears on service charges I get a computer-generated letter threatening the beginning of a repossession process. Imagine some mentally ill person getting one of those and having a fucking heart attack.

I've managed to get my way with the council over bullshit charges by adopting the 'frankly, you can whistle for it' line, but my borough still allows people to escalate issues direct with managers who can make decisions. That said, I always phone the automated payment line for my council and pay them that way, not by cheque.

oh god that sucks. I don't trust them with a direct debit after they fucked up once, so I do it online every month, but am not too precious about making sure it is cleared by the 1st or whatever.

They have fucked up far, far, too many times to ever get a direct debit out of me. And you can't even pay online with Lambeth. There's supposedly a phone payment system, but I'm not paying them in any way I don't have a receipt and a proof of the date I paid them. Guess it means going down to Gracefield Gardens every month until benefits (30 day wait) come through. :(

I preferred going to counters at the Town Hall with cash and a paying-in booklet, but they closed the counter in my borough late last year, and I only have enough wiggle room to have a few direct debits. Post offices should be able to process Council Tax payments if you've been issued a barcoded booklet. Phone payment systems do give you a reference number in lieu of receipt, which you can then quote in correspondence as proof.

"And lo, this is how I now become benefits scum. This country!"

Really? When did some Mail columnist hack your account. I mean have sympathy for your dealings with fuckwitted LA's, but you should be better than that.

You know that thing where Imago posted something that was ambiguous, about whether it was actually ableist, and he claimed that "come on man, it is so obvious I am taking the piss out of this attitude, rather than expressing it" and everyone jumped on me for even asking, saying "jesus christ, how tin-eared and unaware of imago's personality or politics or whatever would you have to be, to not understand that this is not the usage he intended?"

Maybe you could show me the same benefit of the doubt.

But... naaaah. This being ILX of course not.

<3 at you BB

thinking about moaning about boredom to beguile the morning's boredom into boring words but god i've not even got the wherewithal to do that much i don't think altho it's interesting (to me) to see how long i can keep this sentence going just for the sheer boredom of it

i recommend a short trip to the wdyll thread where you can see djp's baby twins.

Boredom, boredom, boredom... BOREDOM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoYiQ8Qsozk

x-post to NV

i've been lying awake for four hours at the early stages of a panic attack, neurons circling in the distance like sharks a mile out, typing post after post and "saving to draft"

estela i saw them last night on Facebook and yes so beautiful yes

Goon Tie, the idea that you have bad days and panic attacks and awfulness... I know. It doesn't make any difference when your brain decides to send you on a crazy neurochemical trip. But it's like, you're so funny and so smart and so elegant and so talented and such a beautiful human being and you have the ability to make things so astonishingly lovely that they make the whole ugly world go away and instead become a sparkling place of joy and beauty for like 3 minutes and 20 seconds or whatever. The sense of unfairness is overwhelming, like, you should be sitting on a golden throne surrounded by cherubs feeding you stuffed grape leaves or delicious food and leaving no room for panic or badness.

But I guess the same cracks that let in the joy and beauty also let in the panic and badness.

I think you're going to get up and get through it and things will happen like they happen, to the best of your abilities, and mostly it will be fine (maybe some of it will be a mess, but you will survive the mess, too, and laugh about it when it's over). And this isn't any help when your brain decides to send you down the panic and freak out path, but I think you're a good guy and you deserve good things. <3 to you, dude.

^^^

A cook was butchering an ox for Duke Wen Hui.
The places his hand touched,
His shoulder leaned against,
His foot stepped on,
His knee pressed upon,
Came apart with a sound.

He moved the blade, making a noise
That never fell out of rhythm.
It harmonized with the Mulberry Woods Dance,
Like music from ancient times.

Duke Wen Hui exclaimed: "Ah! Excellent!
Your skill has advanced to this level?"

The cook puts down the knife and answered:
"What I follow is Tao,
Which is beyond all skills.

"When I started butchering,
What I saw was nothing but the whole ox.
After three years,
I no longer saw the whole ox.

"Nowadays, I meet it with my mind
Rather than see it with my eyes.
My sensory organs are inactive
While I direct the mind's movement.

"It goes according to natural laws,
Striking apart large gaps,
Moving toward large openings,
Following its natural structure.

"Even places where tendons attach to bones
Give no resistance,
Never mind the larger bones!

"A good cook goes through a knife in a year,
Because he cuts.
An average cook goes through a knife in a month,
Because he hacks.

"I have used this knife for nineteen years.
It has butchered thousands of oxen,
But the blade is still like it's newly sharpened.

"The joints have openings,
And the knife's blade has no thickness.
Apply this lack of thickness into the openings,
And the moving blade swishes through,
With room to spare!

"That's why after nineteen years,
The blade is still like it's newly sharpened.

"Nevertheless, every time I come across joints,
I see its tricky parts,
I pay attention and use caution,
My vision concentrates,
My movement slows down.

"I move the knife very slightly,
Whump! It has already separated.
The ox doesn't even know it's dead,
and falls to the ground like mud.

"I stand holding the knife,
And look all around it.
The work gives me much satisfaction.
I clean the knife and put it away."

Duke Wen Hui said: "Excellent!
I listen to your words,
And learn a principle of life."

Thanks BB. I've always thought that it's the sign of a good creative mind to have one foot in sane, one foot in crazy, but sometimes it gets super hairy

The twins are super cute but DJP and Mrs. DJP's beaming faces are even cuter

I really mean that, BB, thanks, you totally brightened it

Maybe you could show me the same benefit of the doubt.

Sorry late night drinking sake response, so much genuine BS contempt about right now sometimes one can develop a distorted view of peoples comments. I suppose it doesn't help that I am in a very misanthropic condition right now. Good luck with yr council tax problem, don't let it become a bigger problem.

Hey, no, I'm sorry that I used such ugly and offensive language. I don't get a free pass on that shit, either.

From my perspective, I'm coming from a place of such huge fear, and such self loathing that this does happen; ugliness that I think is directed firmly at myself ends up hitting other people, and that's not fair and that's cool.

I'm in a pretty shitty place myself at the moment (I try not to talk about my unemployment woes, what brought them on, illness and disability and all that shit, too much around here, because I don't find ILX and understanding place for these issues, for me, for whatever reason) so I certainly understand the whole thing where being in a shitty place and being surrounded by *real* specious bullshit makes a person unable to deal with "jokey-jokey" or sarcastic or even well-intentioned iterations of the bullshit. I don't know that I'd call that "misanthropy" but it is a real thing I understand very well.

It's much easier to take a grrr blah blah jokes bruv snarky tone, on ILX as in life, than it is to say, flat out "I am really fucking scared right now. Most days I am pretty much one beautiful guitar solo* away from thinking suicide is a preferable option to where I am at the moment. A council tax bill I can't pay is the latest lead straw on a flattened camel." I pick myself up, I go on.

*Today it's Listen Snow Is Falling by Galaxie 500.

"being surrounded by *real* specious bullshit makes a person unable to deal with "jokey-jokey" or sarcastic or even well-intentioned iterations of the bullshit"

You nailed it perfectly there BB and I wouldn't expect less from such an incisive poster as thee.

paperwork so piled up i don't think it can be done, like the washing up piled up in my sink except i know that can be done, work till half past 8 tonight then back to my empty house, time for bed, get up bright and early so i can fail at stuff again, comfort starving didn't pan out so back to food even tho the taste doesn't innerest me at all...people round me take on an uncomfortable, faintly menacing tinge and beneath it all my brain up on bricks, burnt out and it's cold outside and i don't see so much human warmth right here now

and somehow it feels just the tiniest bit okay, to feel aloof and blue and look at the grey world thru blue lenses, there's a crumb of comfort in retreating from all this booshit

Blue is better than grey because at least blue is a feeling, and grey is the absence of all feeling. <3

Emperor Bu of Ryo asked Great Master Bodhidharma,

"What is the highest meaning of the holy reality?"

Bodhidharma replied,

"Clear and void, no holiness."

The emperor said,

"Who are you in front of me?"

Bodhidharma said,

"I don't know."

Make Him Fall In Love

havetherelationshipyouwant.com

9 Powerful Words You Can Say That Remind Him Why He Needs You.

i mean, this isn't this but one eyebrow raised way up

feel like the protagonist of a Huysmans novel but with higher anxiety

Does "relationship advice for women" play upon the same anxieties as "management speak for the office" or a different set. I feel like there's a whole universe in there, but it basically boils down to "don't be you, be some idealised of notion of what society tells you 'he' wants."

(But also, I now can't stop thinking about zen and cool and status and cultural capital and effort.)

((And what tie I should wear tonight to see my friends and whether I should iron my shirt for tomorrow. Like, I think "going to see Interpol" is one of the few occasions in my life that probably would require ironing my fucking shirt, but really: fuck ironing a shirt. And now I am wondering who irons Interpol's shirts. Like, what a shitty job.))

Make Him Fall In Love
9 Powerful Words You Can Say That Remind Him Why He Needs You.

catapulted into Snow Crash universe where I regain one final chance at finding love by learning to hack and write love-viruses for people's cybernet-jacked branez, and then realising, wait, that is basically what PUAs think they are already doing, right?

sigh

had my penultimate CBT session today, given a sheet to fill in with Helpful Things We Have Covered, was torn between the desire to look attentive and get pats on the head by filling in everything we ever covered and going yes, yes, Helpful Things, gold star for me in my final homework please, and the giant cloud of "actually all this stuff is vague as shit and is this all I have to help me out there in the Big Wide World?" which actually descended over me while thinking about it

feeling you on the pileups of stuff, obv

further to love-h4xx0r daydream, at some point 10+ years ago I had been playing a lot of Nethack and also reading Snow Crash and totally had a whole imaginary cyberpunk roguelike in my head on the realisation that Neuromanceresque upgrades were basically the same as scrolls'n'potions

if I had written it then perhaps I could bask in reflected coolness of the recent roguelike revival

then again it would have been terrible and generic and not very convincingly synthesised and anyway there was already a Neuromancer text adventure in thee 80s where you could upgrade your brain, right? never played it but remember reading the walkthrough serialised in ZX Spectrum magazines every month

(things unique to my generation: the ability to say "I grew up reading magazine-serialised walkthrough solutions for text adventures I've never played")

still spend the odd hour reading those now :/

speaking of reading, i just had the horriblest epiphany whilst reading a book, something about feeling the lives of the other people in my life, and experience them within the web of their relationships and the isolation of their being in themselves, and this is maybe good, a little step outside the cell of solipsism, but it felt overwhelmingly sad (no doubt that was just the solipsism reasserting itself) and i am now pretty secretly weepy for the next while

i pictured myself inside my own family members' heads, i guess, in short

Our little Egyptian cousins are the descendants of one of the most ancient races on earth, but they are very wide-awake to-day in more ways than one.

Little Egyptian boys and girls are as keen and bright as their cousins of any land, and though their religion is that of Mohammed, the same as of our little Arabian cousins, their principles are most upright and correct.

Of recent years many, many thousands of little American and English cousins have visited the banks of the Nile, and frequent intercourse with strangers has given our little Egyptian cousins a very broad and intelligent outlook on life.

They have learned scraps of English, and indeed French and German too, almost unconsciously, and if the donkey boys of Cairo and the other great tourist resorts are keen little fellows in their efforts to get coins from strangers, they are equally desirous of pleasing and give good value for their money.

The Egyptians of to-day are a cleanly, progressive people, and if they prefer donkey or camel back in preference to automobiles and railways as a means of travel it is because their country is not as yet developed to its full possibilities.

Some day things will be different, for the railway on land, steamboats on the Nile, and electric cars running from Cairo to the Great Pyramids are bound to somewhat change things.

It is safe to say, however, that for long years to come little American cousins visiting Egypt will look upon riding donkeys and camels and sailing upon the queer dahabeahs on the Nile as one of the pleasantest recollections of this old historic land. If, too, they can make such warm friends of their little Egyptian cousins as did George and his uncle Ben the people of modern Egypt will remain ever in their hearts as the kindest, most likable of folk.

Maybe I am unable to even relate to other solipsists at this point.

My life just got a whole, WHOLE lot weirder at this point.

i'm guessing weird's not wholly bad

Weird as in my presence being requested & required at a certain band I'm seeing tonight's aftershow weird. Most fans, well, they stalk bands. Me, I am stalked *by* bands. (Not really, there's a family connection which accounts for this. But still.)

I'm just having this weird disparity where I'm too shy to even talk to people in shops, and have to psych myself up for 20 minutes to ring the Council, but here I'm just going to go to some party and chill with international rock stars and... I don't like leaving the *house*. How is this my life?

Like, obviously I'm stupidly excited. But also, at the same time, this is deeply deeply weird.

i find it way easier to talk to people with whom i have something to talk about than random business-of-life interactions tho

Ugh I just wrote out a post in response but it looks name-droppy and dumb so argh.

I'm trying to find someone to go with, but it's like... I feel like such a shit person in general, that I can't even persuade a friend to go "hey I have a plus one to a rock concert and you can go for FREE but the catch is, you have to hang around all night with depressing, selfish, solipsistic me" and no one would want to do that.

Also, rock stars are NOT REAL and I want them to remain unassailable, perfect, Olympian figures, not people you have to interact with. Because people are *terrifying*.

just dont mention fingerbanging

You have just guaranteed that fingerbanging is the first thing I will talk about!

Oh phew, one of the Orcadians will go with me. She's pretty no-nonsense so she'll keep me in line.