Category Archives: Rant

TV relationships

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One of the most annoying tropes in TV shows and commercials is that of the man in a relationship sneaking away to do something he enjoys, like watch sports. Or the flip side of this, the woman in a relationship getting annoyed that the man in the relationship wants to do something. This is a horrendous example for people who want to have decent relationships.

One of the first things you should learn when you decide to commit to someone is that they are different from you. They have different priorities and likes. If they can’t pursue those priorities and likes, they are going to be unhappy. So you can either enable them to be happy, or you can be the reason they are resentful or dishonest.

This goes both ways. The trope always seems to show the nagging wife not understanding her husband’s love of sports (or whatever), but in real relationships you also see husbands not wanting their wives to have activities that don’t include them, or other such nonsense.

I think it’s better to let the other person in a relationship cultivate their own interests and life. That way they stay intriguing and unfamiliar, and they can pursue activities that you may not be interested in yourself. It can get frustrating sometimes if you don’t feel like you have enough in common, but I think that’s better than trying to make the other person feel guilty for having outside interests. In a relationship, you can support one another and continue to be your own person. I’d like to see more examples of that rather than the stupid cliches.

I prefer porcelain

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Today the mood to scrub out my bathtub struck me. It’s a rare mood, so I took advantage of it.

For some time I’ve been meaning to at least smack down the rust ring caused by my shaving cream can with some Barkeeper’s Friend. Today when I went to shave my legs I was finally disgusted enough by the ring to do something about it. And while I was at that task, I realized the entire tub could use a scouring.

Our apartment was renovated before we moved in. While we weren’t explicitly told this, I’m pretty sure no one lived in it before us after the renovation. The appliances were brand new, and there were no obvious signs of wear and tear anywhere. (A few non-obvious signs had been patched up and painted over.) Further, the bathroom tile, sink, and tub had the look of having never been used.

Another piece of evidence that makes me think we were the first to live here after the renovation is the fact that over time, whatever sealant the contractors had put on the tub and tile actually started stripping away.

It first started on the soap dishes in the tub. The act of simply keeping soap there apparently degraded the coating, such that it broke and flaked off. Then the bottom of the tub started to discolor; washing had no effect. Today, while scrubbing at the corner of the tub where my shaving cream usually sits to get at the rust ring, I realized my brush had knocked some sealant off the very tiles. Even the tiles had been coated over with something! (I also noticed that the inside front of the tub, which one doesn’t normally look at, is spanned by a line of dry drips from where the sealant was originally applied.)

I am not a fan of plastic tubs in general, and this rapid degradation–we haven’t even lived here a year and a half!–is really disappointing. If I ever own a home (which seems unlikely), I will eschew plastic entirely in my bathrooms. And renovations will not consist of simply spraying a coating over everything.

Seriously, Hunter x Hunter?

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Seriously?

Hisoka gets "turned on"I don’t even want to tell you the context of this image.

I mean, I guess people exist who become sexually aroused by fighting strong opponents (who are twelve years old), but do we really want to be normalizing that behavior? (What do you know, I managed to tell you the context.)

More importantly, who is the target audience? Hunter x Hunterfeels like a cute kids’ show with a tad too much emphasis on fighting for the most part, but then you get stuff like this. What are kids supposed to learn? That it is cool to have some older guy obsessed with you to the point of wanting to get off on hurting you? Or are adults supposed to learn a more sinister lesson?

Aw, look at the cutesy way Gon and Killua imitate Hisoka in the “Hunterpedia” portion of the episode! There’s nothing disturbing about this at all. :P

Gon and Killua do their own schwing

Bathtub lament

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I love baths.

Even before I went to Japan for the first time in 2001, I loved soaking in a tub, surrounded by hot, soothing water. My bathtub growing up wasn’t the most comfortable, but it had a slanted end I could lean against. In Japan, of course, I enjoyed huge tubs that covered me completely to the neck; in some cases I could even dunk my head, though I’m not sure you’re supposed to do that. Since tasting the joys of true, full-body bathing, I’ve dreamed of recreating the experience in my own home, wished that somehow it could happen.

On TV or in movies we often see women pampering themselves in huge claw-foot tubs, no matter if they live in mansions or dinky little apartments. In reality, even nice apartments like the ones I’ve been living in for the past nine years come with standard-issue low tubs, barely high enough to surround a smaller person with water. Larger people find up to half their body out of the warmth at any given time. These tubs are also often lacking a comfortable side to lean against. In these tubs, bathing is a cramped, cold, unsatisfying experience, hardly relaxing.

regular bathtub

Honestly, I’d prefer a sit tub to this–a round or square tub tall enough to sit in and be totally immersed. I don’t mind curling up a little if it means I can get all the way underwater. That would save space, too, and eliminate the need for an angled side to lean on.

Alas, I don’t have one of those, or a huge claw-foot tub, or anything. And so when I want a nice relaxing bath, all I can do is sigh, deal with my discomfort, and try to amuse myself looking at things like this and this and this and this.

Save Ferris?

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An internet subset, likely made up of Gen Xers, has been freaking out about this video:

At first glance, it might appear to be a teaser for a movie trailer. A more savvy inspection reveals it to be a teaser for a Super Bowl ad. And indeed, now there are reports that the ad will be for Honda.

I don’t really care. The premise is cute, I guess. But really, to me, today, with everything that’s going on with the economy, with unemployment the way it is (though apparently getting better), I really can’t get on board with a guy blowing off work.

Being something of a goody two shoes, I had trouble with Ferris even back in the prosperous 90s, when I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on TV and marveled at how much trouble his selfishness caused for everyone. But I enjoyed the movie, and it helped teach me not to take everything so seriously. (I went a little too far the other way my first year of college with some egregiously selfish behavior, and then, over time, found balance.)

I don’t know if the movie’s carefree attitude quite works now, though. We’re no longer living in prosperous times. There’s no economic safety net. Plus, Ferris was originally about the end of childhood. One final adventure before college. What would skipping a day of work symbolize? A midlife crisis? An inability to grow up and take responsibility? Or just being a normal person? Everyone needs a day off every now and then, and I support the idea of non-specific PTO. Regardless, none of these seem quite as compelling as the original story’s “last hurrah”.

I think what appeals to people about this teaser is the memory of what it was like in the 80s and 90s. Maybe they wish they could run and hide in the past. Maybe they think if they watch a Ferris Bueller Super Bowl commercial, or a movie starring the adult Ferris Bueller, they’ll be more able to pretend that things are the same now as they were then. That everything’s fine, nothing to see here, move on.

Do that, though, and you’re just letting things get worse. You’re giving up control. If you want things to get better, if you want a return to prosperity, then you need to work for it, not just punch your time clock and then distract yourself with entertainment. You need to observe, and you need to think.

Save Ferris? I say, kick Ferris to the curb. We’ve got bigger problems than just wanting a day off.

Edit: Here’s the full ad. Did you relive your glory days? :>

Browser woes

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I don’t have time for a proper post. I just wanted to share my frustration at the browser choices currently available.

Firefox is bloated. It eats up all my computer’s resources and hangs like crazy.

IE is slow. It doesn’t take as many resources as Firefox, but it’s not a huge improvement. Plus, I click something, hear the click, and then wait several long seconds for anything to actually happen.

I’ve switched to Google Chrome recently, looking for relief, but a plague of unresponsive tabs has made me wonder if it’s truly any better than the above. Plus, Chrome renders Japanese text horribly. To wit:

Hard-to-read Japanese textSigh.

The left lane: Not just for looking at

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On my daily I-20 commute, I am constantly flummoxed and frustrated by drivers who appear to not see that there is a third lane to their left. These drivers will tailgate the person in front of them, then zip into a tiny opening between two cars to their right rather than pass in the open left lane.

Are they afraid they’ll get pulled over if they’re in the fast lane? Not sure that reckless driving is going to help. Or is that third lane, opened towards the end of last year and therefore new, invisible to them?

Granted, it is annoying for someone to drive too slowly in the middle lane. Slower traffic should stay to the right. But there are times when it’s good to hit up that middle lane, like when there’s traffic merging onto the interstate.

These left lane avoiders will ignore the merging situation and plow right into whatever’s going on in the right lane, oblivious to the cars trying to join the flow of traffic, rather than oh, say, I don’t know, follow the law and pass to the left!

I really wonder how much of the road people are watching. Do they only pay attention to what’s directly in front of them? How many cars are they watching? You can’t avoid accidents without watching all the cars and paying attention to the speed in every lane.

I treat driving like a game, the goal of which is to avoid accidents and maintain the flow of traffic. I watch far ahead to see what troubles might filter back to me, I pay attention to how each car is moving to see if someone’s telegraphing a turn or lane shift (because people can’t be trusted to put their blinkers on), and, yes, I am considerate. If someone needs to merge into my lane, I let them, and if someone wants to pass me and there is no lane to the left, I get over.

But I am constantly trapped between a tailgating left lane avoider and traffic merging into the right lane. There is no good way to get out of that situation other than moving into the left lane–the fast lane–and letting the tailgater pass to the right. As you can imagine, this utterly offends my OCD.

The left lane is for passing, not for being passed! If you want to pass, for the love of all that is good and pure in this world, use the left lane!

Just in case any of you were confused, the previous post was written by my husband.

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I fell asleep sometime yesterday afternoon and didn’t get up again until this morning. I didn’t want to get up even then, but duty calls. Work is really annoying right now because I’m doing order-taking and dispatch, two things I never wanted to do, and which I told Robert time and time again that I didn’t want to do. He has invested some time in talking me into it; this happens every week or so. The last time, I got a $0.50/hr raise, which unfortunately doesn’t make it any more worth it to me.

It’s not that I can’t do it, I can–I just don’t want to. I don’t like having to drop everything and answer the phone in a cheery voice, and I don’t like having to try and figure out who’s where and how fast they can get whatever food to someplace else.

Compounding the issue are all the problems we’ve been having lately. We manage to pull it off, but it’s by the skin of our teeth. I feel that we are severely unprepared for what we’ve gotten ourselves into, and since I’m the one answering the phone, I’m the one who’s going to get to hear about it when we finally slip up. It’s going to happen, if something doesn’t change soon.

So far, people have been patient and understanding, and I’ve really appreciated that…but how long can it last?

A big issue is the fact that we don’t have enough personnel. This is especially annoying today because I am really not in the mood to be at work, but I can’t even have a lunch break because Robert is out of the office doing the deliveries. We need another delivery driver and we need another office worker.

In my dream world, we would have an order taker/dispatcher working during my shift, and not just coming in at 1 like Robert has planned. I would do backup order-taking only, and really I’d prefer that we have several people working from home taking orders during the day so that I would never have to it at all. I don’t even really want to manage the order takers, but I guess that would be better than having to take the orders directly.

I don’t know if my dream world will ever come to be.

The most hectic times are between 11 and 1, I’ve noticed. People seem to realize that they’re hungry at 11, but by 1 they have probably made their arrangements. So things have calmed down a bit now.

I missed a call earlier due to being on the phone with someone else. Fortunately, she left a voice message, so I called her back. I missed another call due to not being logged in to receive calls, and I was distracted trying to do something anyway, so I just let it go.

I hate shoddy service. But that’s all we can apparently provide at this point.

It just feels like we were never prepared to do this, and we’re still not prepared, and I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever be prepared for anything. Mom and I tend to over-prepare well in advance…I like that system a lot better. It may not be business-savvy, because I guess you’d lose money more often than not that way, but at least you would know what you were doing before you had to do it.

I hope 2go-Box starts turning a huge profit so that we can do everything we need to do.

And I wish today was Friday! :P

You could say that all of this stress is good because it’s distracting me from the issues weighing on my mind, and that might be true, but I’m not sure. I think it’s more likely that the issues weighing on my mind are adding to the phenomenal stress that already exists. There’s no way of telling for sure, because the delivery service and my “period” (or whatever) started at around the same time…but I think I would be annoyed and stressed about this kind of work regardless of anything else. I have never liked this sort of thing and I doubt I ever will.

I just want a job where I can work mostly by myself, maybe discussing things with a few others in person or through email/chat. I want to be able to do a wide variety of things, including menial tasks, because there are some days that I’m in the mood for that. I want to be challenged mentally in areas that are interesting to me. I want, ultimately, for my job to be a part of who I am–something that I do because I like to, and not because I have to because I need money in order to enjoy myself and take my mind off of work.

I thought I had that sort of job, but it sure hasn’t been that way lately.

A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day

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Today sucked.

I thought the period was over, but it evidently wasn’t. I hit the high point for emotionalism today, and then got some fresh spotting in the afternoon. By the time I made it home after my Workday from Hell, there was quite a bit of blood to clean up–fortunately I’ve been wearing a pad “just in case”.

If that was too much information…well, I don’t fucking care.

Work was just horrible–or, as I put it to AJ, “SUCKITY SUCK SUCK SUCK”. I have like three times the responsibilities now, but I’m still being paid $6.50 an hour. This week was especially stressful because of the new delivery service. I had to take orders and dispatch the driver, and every time something went wrong I would get really upset. I hate not providing good service, and I hate having dissatisfied customers. It’s our job to please them, so when we fail, I feel that we are just screwed.

Due to this perfectionism about customer service, I don’t think that high-pressure customer service jobs are right for me. But you know, I guess that doesn’t really matter when we can’t afford to give me what I’m worth, much less hire someone else.

Add to this my regular responsibilities, plus my boss throwing new things in my inbox all. the freaking. time. and you have a recipe for me sitting on the toilet in the office bathroom bawling my eyes out.

Despair transmuted

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Here I am at 6:30 am after staying up all night–as usual, with something of a nap to tide me over–trembling with euphoria, chest swelled, eyes smarting with unshed tears, because I actually worked hard at writing something.

I have had a pretty shitty night up until this point. The reason I went to take a nap was because I wanted to cry. Bawl, in truth. I was unable to do that; my sobs felt forced and pathetic as I lay wrapped in the covers, face buried in my pillow. But I did at least cry, and then fell off into restless, desperate sleep.

I am unsatisfied with my life and I am unsatisfied with the way I spend my days. I do not feel as if there is any purpose to anything I do. I want more, I want to stop feeling desperate. I want to be more than useful; I want to be thrilling, inspiring, necessary, adored. I want to Do Things that make people Sit Up and Take Notice. I believe I have fallen into despair because I can’t envision these things ever actually happening. I’m lost, jobless, a housewife who hates keeping house. I’m no good to anyone else and I’m no good to myself.

But I wrote something. Something I am outrageously proud of, something I revised until it flowed off my tongue with a rhythm that plows a clear path. I read it aloud, several times, and tweaked it far more than that. I worked on it, and it’s finished, and I can say that I am reasonably happy with it.

It’s only a post. But holy shit do I feel good about it.

I must have needed that.