All quiet on the Western Front.
Issues to ponder from this week . . .
Just because it’s Prada, does it make your night more fun?
With our thoughts we make the world.
How does one let contacts know one would be interested in a new job, without actually saying it?
It is better to have a lover or a true friend?
And why do I never have a matching bag?
Is writing a hotline to the self or just another brick in the wall?
28 November 2003
18 November 2003
14 November 2003
Mystic Me says: {insert ooohhhhhh dream-sequence sound effect}
{and another sound effect here}
Thus spake Mystic Me.
Glass represents a barrier that protects you from the things you are scared of (blue things, lasers) while still allowing you to see them. I suggest that you are trying to confront the outside world (the street) and finding it pretty scary, but you’re determined not to turn away. Sometimes the things you’re scared of get out of control. You have mechanisms for coping with them (like putting on music) but that doesn’t always work in the way you expect. You are also puzzled as to why these things are scary – is life always like this (an accident) or are these scary things deliberately being placed in your way (malicious intent). You also feel that you’re alone in confronting these things, because in your dream you’re always by yourself.
{and another sound effect here}
Thus spake Mystic Me.
And off the topic somewhat ... Aunty B’s abstract representation dreams of the last week:
#1
Upon being in a ground floor room, possibly a bar, with polished wooden floorboards and large plate glass windows right across the street frontage. I was the only person there. One by one, several, blue, solid, capsule-shaped objects slid along the outside street, and through the front door (left ajar) to skitter around in the room I was in, and bump into the leg of a grand piano. They were about the size of a blackboard eraser.
This was quite creepy, so as a dreamer I switched on a soundtrack to make it more cheery (“Hello” by Cat Empire to be precise), and then the objects were dancing instead of skittering menacingly. So then I closed the front door, and the objects kept appearing and started to pile up against the glass. The weight became enough that one at a time they were pushed through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the glass doors. Just as the pressure had gotten enough and was about to force the door back open, I woke up.
#2
Upon waking on a Saturday morning to find that something had punctured both the outside windows to the sunroom (facing onto the street), as well as the inside glass door between the sunroom and my bedroom. The hole was circular outside and the inside door was all smashed to smithereens, curtains were blowing in and it was looking or getting rainy. Your Aunty B spent the rest of the dream trying to workout whether it was a branch, a thrown object or a laser (?) that has made the hole, and whether it was accidental or malicious. Also the room had shifted to the first floor in the dream, and the windows were higher up. The inside was the same as in life.
So. Glass, and street facing rooms. What say the girls-who-make-use-of-the-mind?
#1
Upon being in a ground floor room, possibly a bar, with polished wooden floorboards and large plate glass windows right across the street frontage. I was the only person there. One by one, several, blue, solid, capsule-shaped objects slid along the outside street, and through the front door (left ajar) to skitter around in the room I was in, and bump into the leg of a grand piano. They were about the size of a blackboard eraser.
This was quite creepy, so as a dreamer I switched on a soundtrack to make it more cheery (“Hello” by Cat Empire to be precise), and then the objects were dancing instead of skittering menacingly. So then I closed the front door, and the objects kept appearing and started to pile up against the glass. The weight became enough that one at a time they were pushed through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the glass doors. Just as the pressure had gotten enough and was about to force the door back open, I woke up.
#2
Upon waking on a Saturday morning to find that something had punctured both the outside windows to the sunroom (facing onto the street), as well as the inside glass door between the sunroom and my bedroom. The hole was circular outside and the inside door was all smashed to smithereens, curtains were blowing in and it was looking or getting rainy. Your Aunty B spent the rest of the dream trying to workout whether it was a branch, a thrown object or a laser (?) that has made the hole, and whether it was accidental or malicious. Also the room had shifted to the first floor in the dream, and the windows were higher up. The inside was the same as in life.
So. Glass, and street facing rooms. What say the girls-who-make-use-of-the-mind?
The Women's Ettiquette Manual would probably suggest that you should only write such material to please your husband or perhaps so that you have a shared interest. As for filing, I would leave that up to him - he's so much better at saying the alphabet and counting to 100 than you are!
I had a bad dental experience yesterday - why are these things so damn expensive?
I had a bad dental experience yesterday - why are these things so damn expensive?
11 November 2003
Workplace surveillance, hmm. I don’t think business expectations are keeping pace with the changing ways we communicate. Sure, you might designate email as for business use only. But how do you enforce that with a generation of workers for whom email has always been free (whether those old black-screen-white-text PINE accounts at Uni, or hotmail or whatever)? The same goes for phones. When offices had only one phone, it made sense that it was for business only. When every worker has two phones in front of them, they aren’t going to limit themselves. And if work provides the newspapers for you to read, who’s to say there’s any difference between reading the paper at work and reading something on the internet? Are they going to start blacking out all the stories that the ABC says are “not reasonable for personal use”?
Here is an interesting article about personal emails, which implies that anything written on a company email account is equivalent to a letter written on company letter head. Scary.
My etiquette bible, Women’s World 1958 says “the business girl should not write personal letters during business hours, nor write them on company stationery”. It also advises that should you be unfortunate enough to attract the undue attentions of your boss you should “firmly ignore them, but should he persist, you may have no choice but to resign your position”.
As for our Pauline, I have naught to say but this: I have been searching for years for adequate words to describe her, and read the perfect description the other day “old fashioned barmaid appeal”. Exactly. EXACTLY. She’s the barmaid at your local with the tough exterior and the heart of gold, reminding her constituents of the days when men had schooners in the front bar, women had shandies in the lounge, ladies had Bex and tea at home, and blacks had metho on the creekbed.
Here is an interesting article about personal emails, which implies that anything written on a company email account is equivalent to a letter written on company letter head. Scary.
My etiquette bible, Women’s World 1958 says “the business girl should not write personal letters during business hours, nor write them on company stationery”. It also advises that should you be unfortunate enough to attract the undue attentions of your boss you should “firmly ignore them, but should he persist, you may have no choice but to resign your position”.
As for our Pauline, I have naught to say but this: I have been searching for years for adequate words to describe her, and read the perfect description the other day “old fashioned barmaid appeal”. Exactly. EXACTLY. She’s the barmaid at your local with the tough exterior and the heart of gold, reminding her constituents of the days when men had schooners in the front bar, women had shandies in the lounge, ladies had Bex and tea at home, and blacks had metho on the creekbed.
10 November 2003
Hey Ladiez - Aunty B is now officialy paranoid about workplace surveillance. Will be looking for some internet geek assistance to get low cost computer/software upgrade at home in the coming months. Now off to find a single, handsome IT expert, hardy har.
Go ahead and post any media that's caught your eye recently, if you feel so inclined. Any one got thoughts on the lovely Miss Hanson's phoenix-like reappearence from an Aussie gulag? I would have thought Costello and co. would have been savvy enough to recognise the risk of matyrdom in the political arena. Silly boys. Is she just even more "one of the ordinary folks" now?
Sydney Morning Herald - November 8 2003 By Sue Lowe (extracts)
Watching where employees go on the internet used to be something companies did discreetly, but no longer. Big Brother is coming out of hiding.
Staff at the ABC are among the first to face pop-up dialogue boxes, telling them: "The ABC does not regard the material contained in this site as reasonable for personal use and, if requested, you must be able to justify that your use of this site properly relates to ABC business. "Breach of this policy may result in disciplinary action including the termination of your employment."
The pop-up is prompted by a wide range of sites, not only porn, gambling or poor-taste jokes. "It caused a lot of aggravation to begin with," said one employee, who asked not to be named. "People felt they were being treated like three-year-olds."
At the end of each month, departmental heads get a print-out of apparent violations and can request a confidential report that drills down to an individual. Mr Palmer said one staff member had been sacked over a severe violation. Others had received warnings to "get back to work".
Under a workplace surveillance bill being drafted by the Carr Government, all employers would be required to be similarly open in any surveillance of staff.
Go ahead and post any media that's caught your eye recently, if you feel so inclined. Any one got thoughts on the lovely Miss Hanson's phoenix-like reappearence from an Aussie gulag? I would have thought Costello and co. would have been savvy enough to recognise the risk of matyrdom in the political arena. Silly boys. Is she just even more "one of the ordinary folks" now?
Sydney Morning Herald - November 8 2003 By Sue Lowe (extracts)
Watching where employees go on the internet used to be something companies did discreetly, but no longer. Big Brother is coming out of hiding.
Staff at the ABC are among the first to face pop-up dialogue boxes, telling them: "The ABC does not regard the material contained in this site as reasonable for personal use and, if requested, you must be able to justify that your use of this site properly relates to ABC business. "Breach of this policy may result in disciplinary action including the termination of your employment."
The pop-up is prompted by a wide range of sites, not only porn, gambling or poor-taste jokes. "It caused a lot of aggravation to begin with," said one employee, who asked not to be named. "People felt they were being treated like three-year-olds."
At the end of each month, departmental heads get a print-out of apparent violations and can request a confidential report that drills down to an individual. Mr Palmer said one staff member had been sacked over a severe violation. Others had received warnings to "get back to work".
Under a workplace surveillance bill being drafted by the Carr Government, all employers would be required to be similarly open in any surveillance of staff.
7 November 2003
I honestly wouldn't have minded if you had to go home early! Honest.
Also: Fake tan just makes me feel orange. I reckon people are looking at it funny.
So much for "thinner, younger, richer"! Actually "younger" fits, because it feels a bit like being 7 and being caught playing in the shed and ending up with one of Dad's varnish tins upended, that insead of coming off with an old rag, just manages to spread it from head to toe, inculding my eyelids. I really don't need to look like I have tanned eyelids.
Also: Fake tan just makes me feel orange. I reckon people are looking at it funny.
So much for "thinner, younger, richer"! Actually "younger" fits, because it feels a bit like being 7 and being caught playing in the shed and ending up with one of Dad's varnish tins upended, that insead of coming off with an old rag, just manages to spread it from head to toe, inculding my eyelids. I really don't need to look like I have tanned eyelids.
6 November 2003
The Shock of the Few
Arriving at the pub, we were hustled upstairs fairly promptly in order to secure good seats. We had our pick – an audience of 4 in front of 7 comedians. Not their fault that publicity had broken down, but it made things more than a little awkward. Kind of like going to a dinner party where some of the guests insist on performing loudly and out of tune, and the others tell stories that end in “well you had to be there really” and you don’t know anyone but you can’t go home because the hostess would be insulted.
You pays your money and you takes you chances with stand-up. You don’t expect to laugh at every joke. There’ll be some that you don’t get till hours later. But, someone needs to make it known to the middle aged men of Sydney that jokes about feminists having hairy armpits are terribly passé. And funny songs need to be funny, and based around a real joke that everyone understands otherwise the audience will just shuffle their feet and look at the ceiling till you’re done.
But it’s not all bad – there were some piss-funny jokes and you had to give brownie points to the second wave of comic boys for having a go. And I’d forgotten all about that bit in Where Do I Come From (surely by now a classic of 70’s childhood popular culture?) that describes an orgasm as being “something like a hiccup and something like a sneeze”. You what? Who’s touching you, Mr Author-of-Birds-and-Bees-Books? I’ve had a cold all week, and it feels nothing like sex.
Next time – bring more friends and drink more beer – if there’s anything worse than pinning your smile muscles in place to cover an awkward hour or two, it’s doing it sober.
Arriving at the pub, we were hustled upstairs fairly promptly in order to secure good seats. We had our pick – an audience of 4 in front of 7 comedians. Not their fault that publicity had broken down, but it made things more than a little awkward. Kind of like going to a dinner party where some of the guests insist on performing loudly and out of tune, and the others tell stories that end in “well you had to be there really” and you don’t know anyone but you can’t go home because the hostess would be insulted.
You pays your money and you takes you chances with stand-up. You don’t expect to laugh at every joke. There’ll be some that you don’t get till hours later. But, someone needs to make it known to the middle aged men of Sydney that jokes about feminists having hairy armpits are terribly passé. And funny songs need to be funny, and based around a real joke that everyone understands otherwise the audience will just shuffle their feet and look at the ceiling till you’re done.
But it’s not all bad – there were some piss-funny jokes and you had to give brownie points to the second wave of comic boys for having a go. And I’d forgotten all about that bit in Where Do I Come From (surely by now a classic of 70’s childhood popular culture?) that describes an orgasm as being “something like a hiccup and something like a sneeze”. You what? Who’s touching you, Mr Author-of-Birds-and-Bees-Books? I’ve had a cold all week, and it feels nothing like sex.
Next time – bring more friends and drink more beer – if there’s anything worse than pinning your smile muscles in place to cover an awkward hour or two, it’s doing it sober.
5 November 2003
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