I am so sick of perfect strangers always telling me to smile. It's usually young to middle-aged men. Sometimes it's on the street, other times, like today, it's in a store and they work there. I asked an Office Depot employee where to find something and he showed me. While he led me there, he said “I see you in here a lot. You never smile. You should smile more”. I told him the truthful response that I'm there on my break from work and therefore not happy about having to return to the office. But if I were the asshole that I am in my head I would have said “Don't tell me to smile. You don't even know me. You don't know why I'm not smiling. Maybe I just got dumped. Maybe I lost a family member or pet. Maybe I've just been fired or diagnosed with a terminal illness. You don't know. So don't tell me to smile unless you KNOW I have a reason to be happy.” Granted, I do have many reasons to be happy. But this job makes me a Grumpy Gus and I have every right to frown about it if I want to. So they should shut the hell up.
formalize Schirmer Tear Test Strips
So here's why last week was shitty. I have a new enemy here at work. I have nicknamed her “Demonella”. It's the marketing lady who takes long lunches, wears stinky perfume and asks me questions every 5 minutes. It turns out she's not only annoying, but also a bitch. She has nothing better to do with her time than to complain to bossman about EVERYTHING, not the least of which is me. She doesn't think I smile enough for a receptionist. OK. Fair enough. I should be all sunshine and light but it's so hard to pretend ALL the time. She thinks my emails to her are curt. Well, I'm sorry if I don't have time to compose a long, friendly email wherein I inquire about her personal well-being every other sentence. You ask me a question. I answer. That should be sufficient. She sees no reason why the interns should be doing work for me when they could be doing work for her. Well, first of all, lady, I am responsible for TWO jobs here. I have the interns to do the secretarial work for me while I do the portfolio admin stuff for clients. That stuff is very time-consuming and I SHOULD actually be getting twice my current salary for doing both these jobs. But instead, I get two interns to help me. They were plenty busy with work before you showed up. So if you want there to be 30 brochures at your next seminar, you best let the interns help me with that. Second of all, what the hell do YOU do with your time? Your office hours are an hour shorter than the rest of us and you come in late every day. Today, you didn't even show up till NOON. I KNOW traffic isn't that bad. Now, my boss explained this shit to her when she complained, but he thought I should know too because he said he's sick of having to deal with everyone's issues when they could be solved more efficiently if we just talked to each other. He's right, too. I guess I'm too scary for her to feel comfortable talking to me. She also pissed my BOSS off last week by telling him he was too “critical”. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your boss SUPPOSED to offer criticism? Furthermore, our boss is pretty damned nice about offering criticism. Anyway, I realise this is all pretty boring but I just had to get some of it off my chest. Long story short: The Lil'est Dictator is no longer the most irritating person in the office.
A GGood Boner Back in My Life
WEEKEND RECAP
Friday
After a hellish week for both Faye and me, all we wanted to do was chiiiiiill and watch a bad movie. We managed to rope Ben and Sherrard into watching it with us and we even pre-funked by watching part of the “Muppet Wizard of Oz” starring Ashanti. Well, not even Pepe the Prawn in a starring role could save that pile of excrement. So after we had a sufficient buzz going, we started the movie. The movie was “American Psycho 2”. Since Faye is going to post her review about it, I shant spoil it. I will only say this. It was in NO WAY a sequel to American Psycho. In fact, I'm pretty damned sure that it was only given the box office gold “American Psycho” title because after the producers saw the first cut of the film they thought “Well, we certainly can't sell this turd based on Mila Kunis's acting. And since she doesn't take her top off ONCE, we are fucked. Unless we can think of some way to tie this thing to another movie as a sequel. Hmmmm….what movies are about serial killers? Well, there's “Silence of the Lambs” but this isn't even on par with “Hannibal”. There's those “Urban Legend” movies but this doesn't have an ensemble cast and all the college student characters die within the first 40 minutes. Wait! I got it! “American Psycho!” Sure, at the end of the story we learn that Patrick Bateman didn't actually kill anybody but most people who saw that movie didn't even read the book so they couldn't be sure WHAT the hell the end of that movie meant. We'll just shoot one extra scene wherein Mila Pug-nose witnesses Patrick Bateman killing her cousin, thus fucking her up for life. Perfect! We may even make back a quarter of our budget on video sales this way.”
Near the end of the movie, Elyse and Gene showed up and were bored instantly. Luckily, Tobe was there to melt their hearts. After the movie, Faye and I couldn't bring ourselves to join people at the Rosebud so we watched the “Reefer Madness” musical instead (which we seem to be alone in appreciating).
Saturday
Faye and I decided to be girly and shop a little before seeing “Layer Cake” at SIFF. After shopping, we still had some time to kill and we went for some drinks. There had been some crazy street fair in the U that day. I don't know if that's what brought the freaks out or if it was the usual clientele. But at Finn McCool's we were annoyed by a young, obnoxious named Tyler (of course) who bet us we “couldn't shake his hand”. We were in no mood for this so we downed one drink and left, passing Tyler who stood on the porch trying to smoke a cigarette through 3 straws.
At Big Time, things were much more calm. The eyecandy was in effect and the enjoyment of the beer was uninterrupted by students. But then we were approached by an old man who's cheeks were rosy with drink. At first, we thought he just wanted a friendly chat. He asked if we were vendors for the art thingy. We said we weren't. He said he worked with wood but we could never quite pinpoint what he DID with the wood. He them told us that was his hobby. He really worked for the Seattle Storm. He assumed that we must be into the Seattle Storm too. At first, we had no idea why he would think this until it became apparent that he thought we were lesbians. Faye said “No, we're just best friends” which he thought was beautiful, but ultimately, not as interesting at lesbians would be. He asked us what we did and we told him we were filmmakers. This prompted him to tell us that he was a “multi-billionaire” and he tried to get us to tell him why he should give us money. We weren't really prepared to pitch but if he WAS an eccentric billionare, we didn't want to pass it up so I started into my shpiel. He stopped me saying “No! No. What do you WANT”. I told him we wanted to make films for a living. He said “NO! What do you WANT”. I said “We want money to make the films”. He said “YES! Ok. [to Faye] What do YOU want”. Faye tried the same tactic but it was too late. He turned to the girl at the table next to us and said something to her. She responded and he turned back to us and said “Now, SHE'S interesting”. And that's our cue to exit. I think the only reason we'd stayed around that long was because he'd offered to buy us drinks. But he never did. Billionaires are so stingy.
We still had time to kill before the movie so we tried to get in one more at the “All American Bar”. It was at that point that we realised we were in no mood to sit quietly in the dark for the next two hours. So we just picked up our SIFF tickets and bussed it back to The Hill. We met Sherrard and Borgia for a few more at the Lava Lounge and Belltown Pizza before calling it a night.
Sunday
Nothing exciting to report.
Effed by the Wind 