The Icon Faerie

There is nothing quite so unhappy as feeling superfluous and unheeded. This started last night when I got a reply to an e-mail I sent Steve on Thursday night -- or maybe Friday. Anyway, to set the stage, our New Play Development Workshop class is holding a ten minute play contest since apparently that seemed like a good idea. Well we're down to like the last ten or so plays we want to consider and so we want to bring in actors to do a cold reading, just so we can hear how it sounds. So this is the e-mail I sent him:

I have an actor for class! His name is Nicholas T******, he's in Joe Jeffrey's Theatre in New York class with Jackie and me. His e-mail is nicksemail@ic.sunysb.edu if you need/want to give him more info -- I told him Monday 12-3 but I'm not sure if you have any further instructions or not.

Have a good weekend,
Liz

And this is the reply I got last night:

Liz,

Thanks. If you have Nicholas T******'s contact info, and he interested, ask him to come to class on Monday.
I hope we get a few more.

WHAT. I just. When you get a response like that, you feel like you make as well be dancing around naked, beating a teakettle with a wooden spoon.

Jesus, what am I doing here.

I should flock this, you know, in case anyone at corporate at the Movie Gallery is cruising LJ looking for bitching employees to fire or some crazy stalker is going to come shoot me in the face. And even if they were, they would be doing me a favor.

Today I missed the Big Cheese, but according to J he was pleased with how the store looks which is apparently something -- not to mention a good something since we have all been cleaning like freaks. But they guy, turns out, is the manager's boss's boss, and so then I saw my manager's boss, which makes me nervous enough.

You know what, fuck it, I don't want to go through the details. I am just going to bitch. We started selling ~*POWER PLAY*~ also known as ~*LET'S FUCK OVER EVERYONE WHO WORKS IN A SMALL STORE*~. It's supposed to work like Netflix where you buy a package monthly (as in it is a MONTHLY CHARGE, this is important) and for each package you get a certain number of points which then you use to rent movies and games at a discounted rate. Except it's not like Netflix. Because with Netflix, it comes to your house, it really is unlimited, and Netflix probably doesn't face the problem of "What if the customers NEVER EVER BRING THESE BACK?" which is less of a big deal for New Release DVDs if we have 24503968 copies of them, but games? Generally speaking, the most copies of those we have at a time are three or four. And that's if it's going to be a really popular game.

So we have to sell these packages, and when I came in at two none had been sold. So I had three and a half hours, fine. Except Thursday afternoons are dead. I handed out the pamphlets and explained the program fees etc to a lot of people and just about everyone LIKED the idea but they said, "Not today" or "I have to talk it over with my husband/wife" and I said okay, that's fine, we'd be happy to sign them up whenever they were ready! *SMILESMILESMILE*

Well five rolls around and I have to call the DM and leave her a voicemail that we hadn't sold any. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, but short of selling one to myself I didn't know what I was supposed to do. THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH YOU CAN DO.

So she called back and reamed me out and said to push that, and presales as well. I told her that I had pushed, and offered presales, but nobody's buying. And then about ten minutes later (not even) I got a call from Linda saying WE NEED TO PUSH.

I AM WORKING ON IT I PROMISE YOU.

And then Linda came in because apparently if we don't have one by the end of the day, hours are going to be cut. I don't know how they plan to do that, but a good place to start would be having REALISTIC GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS FOR THE PRODUCT. People are not going to want to start putting a monthly charge on their credit card or account without talking to their spouse about it, and also, I am not going to sell the Power Play to a ten year old who is renting it on their parent's account. It's just not going to happen. I can give them the literature and say to talk to their parent about it (wait, what? OH I DID THAT ALREADY THANK YOU). This is not going to catch on, not right away, and probably not here in DeWitt. Yes there are savings on rentals involved but if they aren't sure if they're going to have the money month-to-month, they would rather pay that extra money in cash. And if they're going to ream people who aren't responsible, honestly, that just pisses me off.

I am so over this job.

I didn't mention this because it ended up falling through but at Lane Bryant one of the assistant managers was applying for a job elsewhere and if she got it and took it then my manager there wanted to know if I was interested in maybe filling the position. And honestly, I would have had to say yes.

I need to get into grad school. NEED.

And now I am going to go mix myself a drink and look for something to eat before SPN comes on.

I'm not feeling well today. And I'm hungryish but a) I can't get up from the couch to find anything and b) if I eat a big something I'll ruin dinner. If there is dinner. It's usually a 50-50 shot during the week in this house.

I'm almost finshed with the first season of Supernatural, and I love it. I love all of the Winchester boys together, all three of them. I kind of know what happens because I've been very casual about avoiding spoilers. I figured I'd see the show eventually, but I didn't know when. So yes, I love the three Winchesters, and how even though they haven't had too much screen time together, the relationship between the three of them is crystal clear -- I mean, details and all are somewhat more fuzzy. ( Cutting because I'm starting to ramble. )

Currently I'm breaking from watching Supernatural to watch Dr. Phil, and they are talking about ~*teen trends. Currently it's text messaging. This one girl sent 14,000ish text messages in a month and the parents are at a loss. HERE'S A CLUE, SHE'S THIRTEEN AND YOU'RE HER PARENTS. TAKE THE CELL PHONE AWAY. God, even I can tell you that. Honestly, I think if parents took a little responsibility for the things their kids had access to, half of the problems we have would solve themselves. Like take these questions from the mom of a teenaged boy who texted 120,000 times in three months.

"Is texting the teenage form of alcoholism?"
No. Alcoholism is the teenage form of alcoholism.

"Is this an obsessive-compulsive behavior that I should worry about?"
Seriously?

And now here's this one twelve-year-old girl who's sending nearly naked photos of herself and sending them to her boyfriend and inappropriate text messages, etc. They're worried! Of course they are.

TAKE. THE. CELL. PHONE. AWAY. Does she keep finding the phone and take it back? DESTROY IT. TERMINATE YOUR CONTRACT WITH THE COMPANY. WHATEVER IT TAKES.

Maybe this is just me speaking, but if that were me in my teenaged years -- hell, if that were me NOW -- my phone would be gone before I could even start explaining myself, and I would probably also lose other privileges. I mean, really.

GFD, Grey's.

( Spoilery AGH for this week's ep. )

This has always bothered me, but for obvious reasons it's become more prominent in recent weeks. And after my dad fell for the crap and I finally had to say this out loud to him, I thought I'd just FYI. (This is a general you, by the way.)

Because you're an American and probably don't know better, you think socialism ---> Soviet communism (Stalinism). You are, however, missing a lot of steps in there.

It looks something more like this:
Socialism ---> Karl Marx ---> Communism ---> Marxism-Leninism ---> Soviet communism (Stalinism).

I know it's hard, but learn about all these terms and retrain the way your brain thinks about economic systems outside of capitalism. You don't have to agree with them -- as for me, I'm not sure I do, but I think we could all do a little more sharing in general -- but being able to tell the difference is a good thing. I promise.

I will never for the life of me understand what the basis of appeal for blow-drying hair is. I just spent thirty minutes blow-drying and attempting to style mine after a brisk towel-dry, and the only result I can see is that my hair is still not dry (but I refuse to spend more time in the bathroom, I have better things to do), it is slightly bushy and unstyled, and I sweated so much that I should probably take another shower.

Ugh I feel gross.

So not that anyone cares, but my brother is a selfish asshole. It's not even like he does things like take the car without even asking me if I have plans to be mean, he just does it. Which is almost worse.

(I did have plans, by the way. Which are now canceled because he's not answering his damn phone. What is the point of having a cell phone to get a hold of you if you are not going to answer it. Unless he's seeing my name on the caller ID and senses that I am PISSED at him.)

Dear Parents:

DO NOT send me your children to baby-sit under the guise of her visiting my sister who is a "friend". If you do this, please send a twenty dollar bill USD or a personal check to me for the same amount pinned to her shirt.

KTHX4NUTTINBAI,
Liz

To the Internet community at large:

All right. I've had enough.

Let's get one thing straight.

FANFICTION.NET IS NOT OUT TO "GET YOU". It is a website. It does not have the ability to be pissed off, offended, or vengeful. The adminstrators of the website, however, are people, and I am sure they LOVE reading about how "fucking crappy" their site is that they spend lots of money and time running EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MONTH.

So instead of whining to your Y!Group about how ff.net is being slow again, let's consider that it is not out to get you, it is trying to do what you want it to, and if it can't at that moment THEN IT CAN'T. It didn't pick you to not work for, I guarantee that you are not so special that the administrators of the site would specifically say, "Hey, let's make ______'s day a little more difficult by making the website not work."

Next time you go to complain about ff.net, consider if you could do better and if you find that you couldn't, shut your trap and if you think you could, shut up and try.

No love at all from a very cranky, tired, and ill,

Me