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Apart from this being a very nice image indeed (and a smaller version of what is currently gracing my desktop), I include it here because it is all the proof I need ever provide that yes, Bowie has lips (Lauren has waded into this now with “Bowie has no hips” - but at least she has admitted that he has hair).

I’m just now looking at STYG picking out what needs to be culled as I’m finally getting around to setting that up as a photo log. There’s alarmingly little content as it is, so culling is tricky. I’m shedding the animals, “arty” photos (although kermit stays, that goes without saying) and - of course - Elsie must stay! Also, Elsie must be updated as her last jaunt was back in March/April and those photos are on my hard drive in unspraunced form and have been since then. You can blame TSO if you like, it’s become the scapegoat in my life as it is. The stitching I don’t know about. We’ll see.

My copy of Reality arrived yesterday so I’ve had a few listens and I gotta say I love it. The first impression was not the same as for Heathen which ripped my heart out, picked me up and threw me against a wall emotionally, but it creeps up on you. I love “Try Some Buy Some”, “Never Get Old” and “Bring me the Disco King”, but it’s a close call.

I’m multi-tasking at the minute, with TSO running underneath the browser so I can see if anyone arrives at the house. I was talking to Brenda (another roomie at Board to Death) on Yahoo today. She’s not been well and hasn’t been able to log on to help out as much as she’d like and feels so guilty about it. I know the feeling. I had to log off last night and there was no one to take over the house, so we closed. I hated that. I don’t know why this is even an issue. Despite the jokes in-game, it is just a game and makes no matter in the grand scheme of things. I think it’s the people. I have friends on there that are closer to me than some of my RL friends. I have friends on there I need more than I needed anyone in RL ever. Maybe that’s wrong, but I don’t care. I need JP cutting the bullshit for me, I need Lauren to make me laugh, I need Dash to talk it over with, I need Rudy to tell me to log off, I need Pam to sit with me in silence, I need Brenda to shoot me down. I need everyone :)

Above all, those of you I really trust (and you know who you are) - I need to thank you for making me a better person. I’m in a hallmark mood, for which I apologise, but really - thank you.

Today a lady called me darling. In context “Could you do me a favour darling and check my card for overdues?”. Normally this would be nothing more than a request to check a card and would not be filed away in my brain at all, but the use of the word “darling” reminded me of the time a friend and I were shopping for CDs and the girl at the counter called me “darl” (a shortened version of darling, for those who don’t know). I didn’t even notice at the time and it was not until we were on the street and my friend began to fume about the use of the word that I realised what had been said. According to this friend, it is wrong to call a stranger any of the following - sweetie, darl, darling, love, honey, hun and any other terms of similar nature. I disagree, to a point.

One example of my limited disagreement: One of our regular borrowers is a lovely old gentleman and once I have scanned his books he often calls me a good girl. Another of our regulars is a creepy creepy man who also calls me a good girl. From the first, it is a compliment. From the second it’s just creepy (over use of the word creepy, I apologise).

I think any expression like that should be taken in the manner it is given. It’s the same with calling someone a bitch. You mean it in a certain way, sometimes jokingly and sometimes in a rabid, snarling way.

I am finding the term “hun” has crept into my real life usage as well as my online usage. Of course, I meant it as a version of “honey” (and not in the maurading army sense). Of all the expressions used online (in TSO, of course) it is easily the most common in my everyday speech. It seems to be replacing “mate” which I used to use a lot. This bit is just waffle though, isn’t it?

I don’t mind being called sweetie, hun, darl, bitch, troll, cow… depending on who’s doing the calling, or how it was meant.

OK, so here it is: The Commonwealth Bank is going to “improve customer service” by sacking 3,700 people over the next three years - this amounts to 10% of the workforce. I like this bit:
[CEO] Mr Murray said meeting customer needs will be the focal point for everything the bank does. “Our customers tell us they need a better, faster and more responsive service,” he said. .
OK, now to take my own workplace as an example. We can’t cut 10% of the full time staff (for the branch) because 10% of 6 means someone needs to die, but let’s say we drop one staff member. It’s a harder day for everyone if someone is off for some reason and isn’t replaced. It’s harder to keep the service side of things covered. Apparently, in the case of the bank, this is streamlining. I mean I’m kinda flummoxed on this one to be honest. I would have thought that more staff (maybe with upgraded training) would mean better service. Am I being horribly simplistic?

Part of the bank overhaul is resprauncing the branches, which would be nice I guess if I ever went into a branch which I don’t because banks hate it when you actually turn up and want to talk to a real person. Perhaps they could put some photos of plants or something on the website and little carpet swatches on the ATMs.

Apparently, most of the jobs to go are “behind the scenes”. I think this might be ‘coz someone at HQ (where they light their cigars with $100 notes - not a great idea since they went from paper to plastic, but you get the idea) must have finally realised that having enough staff to have 2 windows open during peak times isn’t exactly over-spending on the staff front.

If you’d please forgive the lack of multicoloured goodness, please cast your eyes left and take a look at the pic. It’s a bit from the cover of a CD called The Wiggles which, as you may have gathered was self titled. But look! Just look! See? Count them! There’s five! This CD came out in 1991 and that man is Philip someone who then went overseas and came back to find the other four had recorded another CD without him and he’d been given the boot. This information comes to you via me searching the web in an obsessive manner. What has me most ticked off is that if you go to The Official Wiggles Website there is no mention of this bloke! Isn’t that just sad? In the sad way, not the pathetic way. This CD doesn’t crack a mention even as it was re-recorded.

Jackie says he probably got the boot because he was a prick, but apparently he was just a bit shy (and Jackie shouldn’t jump to conclusions! Jackie gets lots of mentions today because she’s just been told she crops up here from time to time and despite the fact that it’s just me “whinging about work” she may pop by).

Damnation! I just reinstalled the scanner to scan that (I did a clean install on the weekend, so am installing what I need as I need it) and it’s doing that thing it used to do where the whole system hangs for 10 seconds every 10 minutes. I thought the new driver had stopped that. Anyway, I’ve uninstalled it because I can’t be dealing with that anymore. I’ll go back to saving up all my scanning and doing big batches.

Remember how I said I wasn’t cranky about working today? I am now, but only because I’m here. I have a double strong caffine hit beside me which is going part of the way to helping me cope with the complete foulness of the banana. Bananas may well be good for you, but not when they are that shade of brown (and the skin looked so perfect - I can’t take any more fruit related disappointments).

Normally Saturdays do not involve unpacking the branch run, but Grant (our trusty branchrun driver) was off sick yesterday so today we got the full glory of boxes. Since the morning staffer is unused to this, I got a running commentry on what she was doing (”Oh, this is on hold. Oh here we go, a hold. Hey, this isn’t on hold, I thought it would be”). Since she drives me ever so slightly mental anyway, this was not a helpful state of affairs. However, I’ve found that she won’t ever take me seriously which means I can let the bitch out right at her and it doesn’t make any difference. This is a good thing.

At this point in time I have just under 4 hours to go, which I guess isn’t so bad really. The thought of a 4 day weekend is helping me through. Tomorrow I intend to catch up on all that sleep I haven’t been getting around to recently. Then I’m going to have a little look at my priorities regarding sleep and TSO and TSO will, if we’re honest, probably hit the top of the list again anyway. :P

Today was very still and sunny. The council men had finally cut the grass around the library so when i went out for my lunchtime cigarette I was able to stand in the sun and smell the cut grass. When I closed my eyes I could hear the birds and, for some reason, not the traffic from the bypass about 300 meters away. When you close your eyes in the sun with cut grass on the air, the whole world is good.

The council men have a large toy monster on the front of their truck. It is purple and looks like it might be a cheap rip off of Taz. This is how I know it is the same crew that cuts our grass each time, although it’s possibly just the same truck. Then again, maybe the monsters are standard issue for council trucks these days and although it would be a shocking waste of ratepayer money, i kind of hope that’s true.

This is a webcomic I would like to read more of, were it still updated.. It’s called Zwol and if you start at the start it takes you all over the place and back. Plus Bowie is in it from time to time, which can’t be bad.

I am currently in a state of musical bliss having finally latched on to Kazaa and finding a wealth of Paul McDermott/DAAS music. The original plan was to grab some of the music others have recommended to me, which i promise I will get around to eventually, once I get my DAAS fix.

I still have two more days of work this week as I am on the Saturday shift, but on the other hand next week I get a four day weekend which for once is actually stopping me from complaining about having to work the weekend. Normally I spend the week in a state of crankypantsness but for some reason I’m just taking this week as it comes. I really need to get to bed earlier tho, this run of 1am bedtimes is finally catching up with me in a big way.

What a massive line of people! That’s what i thought when Alicia and I wandered out of Borders bookshop (I just realised that’s funny - boarders and Borders. OK, but TSO friends will get it) and back to the cinema showing the Bowie concert thing. I had just spent $90 on CDs - whoo hoo! Couple of Bowie (I know you’re shocked) and a Little Feat double CD. Anyway, we lined up with everyone else and then sat about for an hour waiting for Richard Wilkins to shut the hell up - who picked him? he’s a total king of Prats.

Anyway, the show itself was a blast (although it’s weird watching that in a cinema, you want to clap but wonder what the point is). The new songs sound brilliant and at the end he did Cactus and Hallo Spaceboy among others but those were my faves. The between song chat was fun too and basically I had a huge amount of fun and lots of little weak knee moments because I don’t care what you say Bowie is a very sexy man (and JP, having now seen Bowie’s face 40feet tall I can say - He does so have lips!). GAD is my new hero too.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved that. I loved it a lot and have been having smiles all day. Dates for Australia to be announced in November, and I expect to pass out shortly after.

Just did the Thinker Quiz over the the BBC and got this:

“You are a Linguistic Thinker
Linguistic thinkers:
Tend to think in words, and like to use language to express complex ideas.
Are sensitive to the sounds and rhythms of words as well as their meanings.
Careers which suit Linguistic thinkers include
Journalist, Librarian, Salesperson, Proof-reader, Translator, Poet, Lyricist”

Hmmm. I don’t think I’m totally surprised at this to be honest (although, to be totally honest, how much clout can an internet quiz have if it doesn’t provide you with a spiffy graphic and align you with a cartoon character?). Rudy mentioned last night that I tend to treat language better than most - TSO being a world of shorthand - which is a fair comment. I wonder if it is the early reading my parents did, I’ve always been a shade on the bookish side (and lookit that - I work in a library…). Playing with words is one of my ideas of fun (the other I can’t mention here for libel reasons). I also tend to over use brackets (I know, can you believe it?) and hyphens - but not without reason. Sorry, just noticed I was doing that! One day I’ll sit down and put loads of words together in a meaningful way. Yeah, I mean novel. I have a few ideas, most of which don’t have enough meat in them to be anything more than glorified short stories. I would also appreciate at this point if JP could refrain from pointing out that i can’t spell the longer words. :P

Does this mean I’m tempted to wander off and qualify as a Librarian? Nope. I’ve thought about doing the Tech course, but I didn’t think about it for very long. I’m just not studenty enough really. I don’t mind the learning, it’s the proving that I learned stuff that is tricky. Perfect example - my Info Tech exam in year 12 which I grabbed a D on. It was on spreadsheets. I can do spreadsheets. I knew all the information, I just had better things to do than spend 2 hours proving it to some stranger. Perhaps this is why my education career was less than stellar. Although, I got lots of As in English and Eng. Lit. so stick that up your jumper. LMAO.

Borrowed a keyboard from work on the basis that my old clunker is too old and clunky but that i won’t get around to replacing it. Am about to swap them back and return this new and possibly funky one because, although it is quieter and has a windows key, it is also not very nice to type on. Despite being able to wake the house when I get some momentum up on the old one, i do like it deep down even though it weighs a ton. Looks like this one is going back to sitting on my desk and waiting for one of the others to cark it.

Now it comes to something when you offer a free ticket to see the David Bowie Cinema thing and can’t get anyone to go with you. I do not wish to be on public transport alone for over an hour in the late of night, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that really. I don’t want to go alone, but don’t want to miss the show either. Alicia got an attack of the guilts about taking the night off (maybe I’ll suggest she swap shifts with someone) and Deb is busy busy busy and ill also. Everyone I know in RL is busy busy busy. Sometimes I wonder if I’m making enough of my life, then I think “Oh who cares?”

This keyboard hurts. I’m not a big fan of that.

I have full faith that the computer pixies will flock upon my place of work in the night and fix the 4 PCs that fell over today, plus make the printer work properly and not like it is now plus make the network nice and fast and speed up the general response time of all PCs.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

What a crappy day I had. LOL.