the everyday adventures of sabrina

i'm happy, hope you're happy too

i must admit that i prefer boxer-briefs too but please don’t lump me in with the rest of the cosmo audience

28 August 2004 at 00:30 Comments off
* niqui is *so* *glad* she has this copy of Cosmopolitan to impart groundbreaking fashion advice to her: “Excess caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol disturb your sleep and contribute to a sallow, washed-out appearance!”
HOORAY!!!
* twork channels mick jagger: well tha’s the ‘ole point, i’nnit?
also, according to cosmo, boxers are for high school students and briefs are for the … what was it, again? “skeevy.” but boxer-briefs are for real men.
* niqui is glad she has cosmo to tell her her opinions.
* twork does wonder why niqui is reading cosmo.
* twork was pretty sure niqui was already chock full of opinions.
* niqui is offended to learn that having hot pink in one’s hair is ‘skanky,’ and thus by association niqui is.
three cheers for skank!
ooooh. there’s a survey in back. they invite my feedback!
bah! they do not give me free space to write in.
they want your feedback, not your opinions!
cosmo:/dev/opinion is read-only!
* niqui was sorely mistaken about how interesting she thought she might find cosmo. i thought it was at least supposed to be slightly mature. it’s actually really sophomoric. i guess i can maybe excuse letters to the editor referring to things as ‘the mark of skankdom,’ but i really think that a professional fashion journalist might be able to find better phrasing.
well, consider the subject. we don’t exactly expect pullitzer-level reporting on the sports page either.
also, someone give paris hilton a fucking cheeseburger.

a few months ago i was randomly buying stuff online and ran across a ridiculously discounted subscription to cosmopolitan. since at that time i was rediscovering the joys of dressing in other ways than my ubiquitous baggy geek t-shirt + jeans, i thought it might be useful to subscribe to a fairly well-circulated fashion magazine so i can keep up with the joneses (at least in my head). and, if nothing else, there’s always the quiz.

how wrong i was.

my first issue came just before i went to defcon, so i slipped it in my carry-on. fortunately, my outward flight went smoothly and i spent the time reading novels. unfortunately, my return flight was Hell, and while i was stuck on the plane, on the tarmac, for three hours, with electronic devices — such as my e-book reading Clié — forbidden, all i had was that issue of cosmo.

in about ten minutes i was ready to start hacking people to death with the little fly-away subscription cards that fell out of it, just to have something to do other than read the magazine.

it truly is the most awful rag. i thought that cosmo was well-read because it was … hmm. because it was classy? it’s not classy. it’s not sophisticated. and it wouldn’t know elegant if elegance served it a cocktail. the only thing that saves it from being absolutely tacky is the fact that it reads like it’s written by fourteen year old girls who just don’t know any better.

also, those hot-pink zebra print stilettos on page 107 are in no way hot.

popular media none

first day of atkins.

27 August 2004 at 18:11 Comments off

for a very long time i’ve specifically avoided the atkins diet. i am really, really skeptical of atkins.

  1. i’m not vegetarian (although i do like tofu and sometimes make things with tvp or use meat-replacement products for variety), i eat meat … but, goddamn, that’s a lot of meat. i mean, seriously.
  2. i don’t see how it can possibly be healthy and sustainable to eliminate half of the food pyramid. i mean, sugar, white flour, okay, but … all of it? what did brown rice or sweet corn ever do to you?!
  3. i really like fruit. like, i eat apples all the time. apples are my friends. without my friends, i’m lonely and sad!
  4. i don’t believe that carbohydrates are inherently evil. and the low-carb craze drives me batshit. low-carb beer is just WRONG!

nonetheless, i’ve decided — many long years after first hearing about it, when my doctor recommended it to me in ’98 — to give it a try.

why? well, that’s simple enough: nothing else works well either. so i have nothing to lose anymore … well, except the funding that will go toward the massive grocery bills that accompany eating this much meat and cheese. that’s one good thing you can definitely say about carbs: they’re cheap. no one ever sold steaks in a jewel 10¢ sale next to the ramen noodles.

so here’s the deal. i committed to doing atkins for a month to see what happens. if it doesn’t work, fine, i’ll go back to what i was doing before and be happy because i can have beer again. if it does work, fine, i’ll decide whether to continue or not at the end of september… maybe it’ll work fine but i’ll hate it, so i’ll stop; maybe it’ll turn out that secretly i’m channelling piratedan and eating plate after plate of animal protein is exactly what i always wanted to do. who knows.

sw: 218
cw: 199.5
gw: 150

cross your fingers and wish me the fortitude to eat this frigging much meat.

diet none

God Bless Dan Savage (And His Readers)

27 August 2004 at 07:34 Comments off

funny shit here.

sex none

Oh Dear.

27 August 2004 at 03:00 Comments off

i think i know why the a/c is broken.

it probably has something to do with all that ice and condensation on the side of the chiller, around the coolant intake pipe.

unfortunately i only discovered the ice and condensation after it was well into becoming water, and soaked through the cardboard box of laundry detergent i keep tucked away in the little space between the door and the chiller.

well, i asked the building to have maintenance stop by tomorrow to check it out. i guess that’s good timing. or something.

etc none

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

27 August 2004 at 00:33 Comments off

this morning started out like yesterday afternoon: surprisingly, much better.

see, i often find that once i’m resigned to a course of action, the tension — or, at least, a lot of it — surrounding that choice slides away. for example, i was really angry and irritable about mirapoint, until i decided that it was inevitable and i might as well just deal with it. now, i’m fairly laid-back about it … or as laid-back as i’m going to get considering it’s just problem after problem. in effect, mirapoint has slipped from being “this hateful thing being pushed down our throats” back to the “all computers and OSes are insecure, they are all buggy, and they all suck” category with all the rest of the crap i have to deal with all the time. it actually helped a lot to just give in.

might as well have fun
‘cos your happiness is done,
and your goose is cooked.

so, when max related the straw that broke the camel’s back yesterday, in a fit of pique i made my “this place has one year” declaration (although, in fairness, that was something i’d been turning around in my head previously, so it wasn’t like i came up with it on the spot), and then i actually put it in words, thus committing myself to a plan of action, … well, after that i felt much better.

maybe it’s something like being externally removed from a bad situation. now that i know i don’t have to deal with things that irritate me, i’m free to not be irritated by them.

then i get in to work today, and things started out well enough, but then bob asked me to make a managerial decision (because both max and becky are out sick, so there were no more chiefs, and only two indians — and as bob says, “It wasn’t like there was a choice. blair would have laughed and then booted me out of the office.”). it was a kind of awkward call to be asked to make in any circumstance — “i know half your team is out sick and you’re all way behind, but these people are even more behind so can you help them out so that they’re only moderately fucked instead of totally?” — but this was, i knew, going to aggravate max when he heard about it.

sure enough:

* mutch expects to be the victim of a coup
mutch needs more drugs
true
As far as I’m concerned Becky is the stand-in mutch for today and tomorrow, (sorry)

i have told max and told him, a thousand times, that i have less than zero interest in his job. i won’t take an advancement opportunity at the expense of my friends. but he persists in making these remarks all … the … time. it makes me crazy. and it’s really upsetting because it makes it seem that max doesn’t think that i’m actually telling the truth. so not only am i a political climber, i’m a backstabbing one. marvellous.

what’s more, i don’t know why so many people think that management is so fucking fabulous everyone wants to do it. listen: i did it before; it sucked; now i just want to be a system administrator. because i like being a system administrator. being a system administrator does not suck. being a system administrator is often fun. being a system administrator > being a manager. okay? is it clear yet?

i feel caught up in the tension between max’s unjustifiably low opinion of his job performance and bob thinking that since i’m organized, i’m really keen. if only one of them was pressuring me, i could probably deal with it. but both sides at once is really wearing.

and i really don’t understand why no one feels that it’s okay to exploit me for my organizational skills without promoting me into management. hey! i’m an employee! i’m supposed to have skills that differ from other people’s, so that i am useful to the organization as something other than a warm body! thus, it’s okay to ask me to do things that no one else can or wants to do! if max doesn’t want to deal with sales people and i don’t mind, why the fuck should he deal with them? why does it seem that people, including max, think it’s a black mark against him somehow when i do things like deal with the puremessage people? i mean, if he’s delegating efficiently, that’s good management! he’s supposed to do that!

so. yes. cheerfully optimistic this morning. by mid-afternoon, just as cranky as ever.

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. story of my life.

werk none
Powered by WordPress Web Design by SRS Solutions © 2024 the everyday adventures of sabrina Design by SRS Solutions