WTF?!

In the words of our favourite internet star of the moment (well... probably of 20 minutes ago, but since he's now featuring in TV advertising in New Zealand it's current for us) - WHAT DOES IT MEEEEEEEEEEEAN?!

 

GAH.
 

Dear Fuckwits Outside My Fucking House,

Look, I know you've decided in your infinite wisdom that the tree that used to live outside my house was a total inconvenience and that instead it might be nice to make a parking bay outside my window. I don't understand, but I know that's your plan.

I like that you gave me warning you were going to cut it down, you know, what with the RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW part, and the huge noise that would be made. However, I have to say it was kind of rude when you didn't actually stick to the dates on the warning letters - I WAS hoping that someone had seen sense to keep the pretty Eucalyptus trees up and down our street, that there had been some kind of Neighbourhood Curtain Twitchers meeting that was successful totally without my participation. (That kind of reinforced the thought that the neighbours think I'm a crazy lady and wouldn't invite me to their parties/bitch sessions/Important Neighbourhood Business, but that's OK since sense was acheived.)

Except it wasn't acheived, was it? Because randomly two weeks AFTER the period in your letter you turned up with your chainsaws! YOUR FUCKING BUZZY, BUZZY CHAINSAWS that reverberated through my entire house and set my teeth on edge and really, you might have wanted to put something in your letters along the lines of: "Dude, we're coming to cut down that tree outside your house and MAN the noise is going to FUCK YOU UP. Go stay with a friend or hit the beach or hide out in the park or something so you don't go batshit".

Also? The guy who didn't realise he left the petrol cap off the chainsaw and while he was turning the damn things over in his hands to work out why it wouldn't go BKRZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ in that endearing fashion? And therefore spilt petrol in a hilarious fashion all over himself and the ground and my garden? I kind of wish he'd fucking caught fire.

So having managed to EVENTUALLY cut down the pretty tree outside my window some time ago, can I just ask what the fuck you're doing back outside my house? The noise sounds kind of like chainsaws again. Are you SERIOUSLY cutting the mutilated stump out of the ground with.. CHAINSAWS? Are you fucking crazy? And the grinding, grinding, mechanical noise that sounds like some kind of hardcore steampunk robot groans of pleasure, what IS that? Because it's AMAZINGLY permeating, it is SHAKING MY FUCKING FLOORBOARDS, and since the handyman FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR in the spare bedroom because of bore beetles eating the floorboards I'm finding it a bit disconcerting that my floor feels like some kind of giant mobile set to vibrate. It's also juuuuust on the right side of the very low pitch that Mythbusters reliably informs me drives elephants insane. While there are no elephants in the petting zoo thing beside my house, I would like to point out to you that in human terms I am quite big, so this is likely why you are driving me OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND.

Did you purposefully pick the day I finally decided to stop procratinating and get on with my interview preparation? Did you KNOW somehow? Are you in cahoots with Company E to fuck me over? DID ONE OF THE OTHER CANDIDATES PAY YOU TO DO THIS? Because it's really super effective and I reckon you could make money selling this technique to any governments that are engaged in trying to weed entranched dictators out of their bunkers - I would GLADLY listen to STEPS or even fucking BOYZONE or something at earbleedingly loud levels rather than endure any more of your gnawing, oscillating BKRZZZZZZZZZTing.

So in conclusion, whatever the fuck you're doing out there, it better be fucking worth the fact that I have ground my teeth down to tiny gritty stubs, and am having to wear earplugs IN MY OWN HOUSE, DURING THE FUCKING DAY, when I ALSO have to wear them at night because of the snoring of Himself. I only have little ears and the earplugs REALLY HURT after a while, not that you bastards care with your fucking massive teacup headphones on to protect yourselves, you bunch of worthless cuntos. I hope you're fucking happy.

Oh, and you better get your goddamned truck and your fucking road cones the hell away from my driveway before I decide to vacate the premises, because I will totally make sure I swerve and take out as many of you as possible totally by "accident". And I WILL be able to get away with it on the grounds of provocation - any jury in the land will believe me, with my crazy hair and my eye twiching and all.

Cheerfully telling you to SHUT THE FUCKING HELL UP,

Wiggle
xxx

 Hey!

Hey, it's me! Been a while, huh? Forgotten what I look like? Christ, lucky you.

Yeah, so Things have been happening. And Stuff. And, very likely, Shenanigans. No wait, that sounds kind of lighthearted and fun. Shit. Let's go for Shit has been happening.

Canterbury, the district I lived in until very recently, had a massive earthquake. There was damage. It was VERY traumatic for the people of the city I used to live in, Christchurch. In fact, it IS still very traumatic because the aftershocks have STILL not relented and given the people an unbroken night's sleep since. Mercifully, there were no fatalities and very few injuries, so all's good in that regard. But the Council's response has been... interesting. They've done well in some areas, not so well in others, and for a while got very bulldozer-happy with some beautiful historic buildings. I was fairly sure tragedy was looming large and the beautiful Garden City would lose a huge chunk of it's graceful character and become, god forbid, yet another bland concrete wasteland.

Not so! The people of Christchurch and many of it's Councillors have shaken off the shock and realised that this is the time to protect the city's history. Common sense may yet prevail.

In other news, I am finally a FULLY LEGAL migrant! My visa was approved THIS MORNING, a mere THREE MONTHS after my application. Three months of not working, living on meagre savings, not knowing if I was going to be booted out of the country at a moment's notice. It's been.... stressful. Just, you know, a tad. What with the not having enough money to live on much less find $5000 for flights home. Hmm.

Anyway, now I have a work permit! I can totally work and feel like I have some USE in the world instead of being a hermit! I can put those Kleenex boxes away instead of using them for shoes! I can have a shower with purpose as if I have somewhere to go! Hurrah!

Oh, except for the fact that I'm getting NOWHERE with my job applications. Here's a quick run-down:

Applications: 5
Interviews: 2
Job Offers: 0

Now, I KNOW that's not many applications. Bearing in mind, these are tentative applications I was making for jobs I thought were too good to pass up, despite the whole technically-not-actually-legal-to-work-at-the-moment issue. So, I fully expect the number of applications will rise. I can only hope the number of interviews will also rise, and that someone (dear god, SOMEONE) will make me a job offer.

The last application I sent I had *such* a good feeling about. I worked on my CV and covering letter for THREE WEEKS, tweaking and refining and shining my very best light on everything. I felt the job was potentially a little bit of a stretch in as much as it paid a little more than my last job, but that my experience was relevant and sound (and in fact, pretty impressive in terms of the results I've been able to acheive in my last two roles). I was pretty sure that, even thought the job wasn't exactly "in the bag", I would at least be called to interview. (Which I don't seem to do all that well in, so that was my main worry).

Yeah, I was wrong. First, I didn't receive the promised acknowledgement of my application. So I waited a week, and then used that opportunity to contact the recruiter to confirm that my application had been received, since I was really KEEN and INTERESTED and that would surely score me some points, right? Hm. They apologised for me not receiving an acknowledgment, and told me I'd be hearing at the end of last week if I was being called to interview.

I was not contacted at the end of last week.

<sigh>

So now I'm waiting for the rejection letter. Even though you know you've been rejected, since you haven't heard within the timeframe and blah blah blah - you hold out some kind of completely irrational hope that they might just be running late! You could still totally get a call! Riiiiiiiight up until the day you get that rejection letter. It's Beaten Puppy Syndrome - you're bad to me but I'm desperate and I love you. Please kick me again!

Bastards.

But now I'm LEGAL! I can totally apply for ANY AND EVERY JOB ADVERTISED ANYWHERE! Eeeeeeexcept of course I'm currently living in the arse end of the world, in the smallest population I've *ever* lived in, and there's kind of not many jobs if I don't know one end of a cow/sheep from the other. Which I don't. (Well, I shouldn't sell myself short. One end is bitey and one end is smelly, and I'd really rather not to be too close to EITHER, thank you very much. Rules me out as a candidate, I should imagine.)

So! Once more unto the breach, dear friends - to scry over a burning hot laptop, to analyse and berate and second-guess oneself again, to pour all one's hopes and dreams into a piece of paper or email, and face heatbreak yet again. ON!

Meanwhile, I have the pleasure of having my brain drilled by the most awful noise I've heard in a long time (besides Himself snoring). The local authority, in it's wisdom, is chopping down an enormous Eucalyptus tree which sits RIGHT outside my house. You might imagine that this is some kind of bleeding heart concern for my house - what with dreaded leaves cluttering up guttering. Or oh god, ROOTS totally getting it on with my foundations and we're all paranoid about EARTHQUAKES now, so dear GOD cut that dangerous thing down! It could even fall right through the bedroom window in a storm or something!

No. It's so they can put a parking space in it's place. A parking space. Right outside my bedroom window. Now, let me be TOTALLY clear - this is not a parking space for me. Or Himself. We only have one car, and even if we had two we actually have two-car garaging (currently half occupied by exercise equipment, but we could totally move it to accommodate a second car), and an enclosed courtyard which could easily accommodate ANOTHER two cars.

The road outside is a main road. There's a school further down, which I believe has a car park. And there's free parking on the very wide side streets leading off the main street. So, naturally, there's a clear need for another car parking space RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW. 

Not only are they using a chainsaw (possibly the most irritating noise since nails on a chalkboard) to cut down every. Individual. Branch. One-at-a-time. They also, in the interests of... being tidy? Pissing me off? ...are running a mulcher. To turn the branches and tree into sawdust. Which is giving a lovely kind of reverberating, house-shaking, psychological warfare generally used against entrenched dictators bass counterpoint to the buzzy chainsaw. Yay!

Futhermore, last night while eating a bar of chocolate (as I do), a crown on my front tooth came out. Himself has been to pharmacies all over town this morning looking for one of those little temporary cement fixy kits, to no avail.

So I might be a totally fully legal alien and can leave the house with my head held high for once - but I'll look like a goddamned hillbilly.

AWESOME.

So! Doubtless you'll have seen the story of the "Too Hot To Handle" bank chick? And you may have noticed that the story has hit the papers again, now renewed and a little sharper due to the revelation that Ms Lorenzana has had - shock! horror! - PLASTIC SURGERY (dun dun DUUUUUUN!)? If not, where have you been? Go read and associate yourself with the story so that you may rant along with me:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/3865079/Too-hot-banker-claims-human-rights-violation

Now - I myself fully cop to having my reservations about Ms Lorenzana and her story, from day one. The photographs... they were so... Facebook-worthy. Posed, contrived, emphasising a very attractive woman's.... well, attractiveness. It smelled a bit like attention-seeking to me, and I wondered if Ms Lorenzana were attempting to launch herself a modelling career off the back of her employment "trauma".

I still have those reservations. I wonder where the new footage that I'm seeing (three times in this evening's new bulletins since tea-time) has come from. Her change of lawyer from one with some interesting sexual harrassment baggage of his own to one so closely associated with Scary Hardcore Feminism is an interesting strategy which is surely not just happy coincidence. The comments attributed to Ms Loranzana re: "Playboy models" (assuming of course that she DID make them and hasn't been taken out of context and blah blah blah) make me roll my goddamned eyeballs in horror over, you know, how far we women have come now that we have decided to sell our OWN bodies rather than have them sold for us! Yay! Go us! <makes empowermenty hand signals>

The revelations that the lady in question has had three breast augmentations (amongst other procedures, but there's evidently nothing news-worthily sexy in - blerg - tummy tucks) presents me with some interesting dilemmas of the Mental Gymnastics variety. On the one hand, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and there was nothin' but whites for a good few seconds when I read/heard/saw that particular factoid. Because, of course! I want big boobs! But I don't want people LOOKING AT ME LIKE A SEX OBJECT, OMG.

However! I have a few problems with writing off Ms Lorenzana's complaint based on that.

1. She never actually claimed that she didn't WANT people looking at her. I guess from her modelly shots that she's quite comfortable with people looking at her. The sexual harrassment suit she's pressing isn't about the men LOOKING AT HER (whereas she had BOOB JOBS and therefore is a total HYPOCRITE, etc etc), it's about the fact that she was singled out for treatment that other workers were not subjected to because people were projecting sexual attitudes/behaviours on her. Let's not start suggesting she was "asking for it" because of the way she looks (and that she paid cash money to look that way), shall we? There's a slippery slope for ya right there.
2. My mum had plastic surgery. Recently. It included - OMG - a BOOB JOB. No, not of the 32-DD proportions reportedly acheived by Mx Loranzana, but still - there's not a chance in hell my mother had her boob job so that people would harrass/project/sexualise her. Therefore I really need to stop myself making that assumption about Ms Lorenzana, no?
3. So she had a boob job. From what I've seen (selective imagery, media manipulation notwithstanding, etc etc blabbity caveatness), Ms Lorenzana wasn't popping out of her shirts. She wasn't wearing micro minis and low-cut tops and god knows what else. She is a bloody good-looking woman, and she was dressed sexy. SEXY, not slutty. She would look very sexy in most of the clothes I prefer to wear. I choose to assume that this is what Ms Lorenzana means with her unfortunately worded "Playmate" comments - she looks good. Her body looks amazing in her clothing - where's the damn problem in that?