Where is my shaking stick

I guess another reason to move in together is that you can pool your hatred and validate each other’s increasingly iconoclastic behaviour sets. Those with design backgrounds or even just a basic eye for aesthetics might now like to look away. I’ve added “smudge” to my tiny repertoire of outdated Photoshop skills. Co-habitation commences tomorrow; we have no fridge, nor, I suspect, many other necessary things.

I guess we grew up

This probably never happened to Simone de Beauvoir but on the other hand she put up with Sartre

Things I Loathe Thursday

Apologies to a certain famous blogger for ripping off and reversing her regular Thursday topic, but it was too apt to ignore. It is 10.30am, and already I have seen two things that make me furious:

W(h)anganui’s favourite self-infatuated bigot has sunk to hitherto unheard-of depths in deeming children  acceptable recipients of his ire. My favourite bit in all this is how, having dictated  an already pretty venonmous response to the group of 11 and 12 year olds, he had it printed, read it over, and then thought to himself, “you know what? My spleen is not quite vented. These children have not been adequately abused for exercising a democratic right” and added a lovely little handwritten postscript at the end: “PS Controlling your anger might be a start!” I am afraid there is only one person who needs to control some rage, Mr Laws, and you’ve made it quite clear who that is.

And item number two, my alma mater is doing what it does best and cutting humanities and arts research funding. Because Pat Walsh firmly believes that what we really need are more commerce students, and less of those annoying wishy-washy arts grads who care about lame stuff like, you know, publishing good research and writing, and knowledge for its own sake.

3.41PM EDIT: On the other hand, The Pixies are coming to New Zealand and as this will probably be the greatest gig of my life (not to build up unreasonable expectations or anything) the day is maybe not too bad after all.

3.48PM EDIT: Oooh and Briscoes is having a 50% off sale. Me and Chap, little does he know it, are going to go get us a vacuum cleaner. Didn’t think I was that sort of girl, huh? Well, we are moving in together at the end of the month and it’s done something weird to my brain chemistry. I am, dare I say it, nesting.

Yeah well and stuff

Look I got a job OK and turns I am useless at doing more than one thing ever, and for the past three weeks that one thing has been “be a policy analyst.” It is Friday and do you know what I am going to do tonight? All of you who guessed “sleep” may award yourselves one million points.

I will make a drawing soon and put it up, but it might not be this weekend because I foolishly said I’d give a paper at a conference on Monday; a paper that is currently entirely immaterial.

Here is something that is far, far better than anything I could dream up anyway.

Truth: stranger than fiction

A quick update on the psychometric testing. Last post’s cartoon was, I thought, a slight exaggeration of the truth for comic effect. Today I got home, euphoric from the successful capture of a three month contract at my former job, to find a package from a government department waiting for me. Inside, a letter informing me I had been unsuccessful in my application- and a copy of the test results.

If I thought that the test had somehow uncannily managed to see into my soul, revealing depths hitherto hidden even from myself, (as opposed to consisting of unadulterated nonsense)I would currently be preparing the hemlock. The person summarised is a monster. I wouldn’t want her at large and un-incarcerated, let alone sharing office space with me. I will give you a few of the choicest bits, and do bear in mind that these are quotes:

I am “indirect”, “passive”, “non-political”, “retiring” and a “follower” who “avoids attention.” However, I also “need attention” and to be “encouraged”, and I also “like politics.”
I am “sceptical” and “canny”, “solitary” and “non-talkative” yet I am also “advice-giving and patronising.”

I am “emotional”, “sensitive” and I “deviate” (I did not make that up) but I am also “closed and difficult to ‘read’, even though I “discuss feelings openly.”‘

Are you following this? I am a silent, anti-social horror who is at once cynical and politically naive. I require constant encouragement and support, but this must be done without direct communication since I abhor attention, and I regularly strafe with hideous, non-verbal rage the employee who dares talk to me. I only emerge from my darkened, slime-encrusted cavern on the full moon, when I sweep through the office, sneering at the mistakes of others before embarking on a rambling narrative about my PMS and my relationship with my mother, whereupon I burst into tears and slink back to my lair for another month.

I knew I should’ve said I would like to run a pet shop.

I am ninety percent sure that I should not be concerned about this, that these tests, as Chap pointed out, have no scientific basis. But a small part of me thinks, “what if that’s who I really am?” So please, dear reader(s), tell me. Am I truly a hideous psychopath? Is the reason that you haven’t told me this before that you fear the monstrous rages?

Tell us about a time when you demonstrated leadership/resolved an issue/improved your knowledge base/went batshit-fucking-crazy

I’ve been going to a fair few job interviews. As they have all been for public servant-type roles, they’ve all essentially been the same interview, and anyone who has ever interviewed for a job in the public sector will recognise the standard set of questions they ask, and the jargon in which they ask it. All interviews at some point devolve into a passive-aggressive bureaucratic bun fight between you and the interviewers as to who can use the most public service technicalese at once.

“Tell us about a time when you addressed a work-based interpersonal relationary challenge and what you did to restore that relationship going forward.”

(Tell us about a time when you had to work with a total fucking dickwad.)

“I consulted with the colleague in question and together we conceptualised the key planks of a strategy which would allow us to cooperate in a fully functional manner while delivering key Ministry messages in a timely fashion.”

(I punched him until his eyeballs fell out.)

Anyway, you have the jargon fight, and if your jargon is impressive enough, they offer you a job. Or so I thought. The other week I went to an interview which was concluded by a two hour psychometric evaluation, which was a surprising and unwelcome development.  Now, I am new to this thing, and just in case you are too, I will explain it:

Basically, a computer makes statements which you must rank, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Your responses to these ludicrous statements are then collated, and can be used, with, as the comic shows, frightening and chill precision, to determine whether you are a good team worker who will bring home-baked goods on Fridays, or  a murderous psychopath.

My thinking is that anyone who has sat through two hours of inane, ridiculous, poorly phrased and ambiguous statements being flung at them (sample statement: “I would like to run a pet shop”) will in all probability wind up in the latter camp.

Other statements included "I like the smell of lemons" and "I enjoy laughing at other people's mistakes"

Motherbitches I am Back

I finished my thesis, and to prove it here is an allegorical representation of that momentous achievement:

when tactics and skill fails it is time for machine guns says I

By way of explanation I might add that the wee boy who is thrashing me round the ring is a character called Diamond from a George MacDonald book called At the Back of the North Wind. As for the girl, well, you shouldn’t need any help what with the stockings.

Now you can expect many more delightful comics from me, as well as poorly knitted scarves, because I have no job. It is not a good time to be a graduate, especially one who specialises in Derridean criticism of nineteenth century children’s fantasy literature, to the exclusion of practically all else.

EDIT: Chap figured out how to make it so that you can click on the comic and it opens up bigger. So you can, y’know, read it. Then he tried to tell me how to do it for future reference but I refused to listen to him. It was an HTML thing, and I don’t like those.

Hiatus

Probably you’ve guessed by the silence, but Master of Arts will be on a break for the next one month and eighteen days while I make the final push to finish my thesis. The due date is June 16; you will know when that happens because the sound of me weeping with relief will be heard throughout the land. Until then, to willfully  misunderstand a wee saying of Derrida’s, there will be nothing outside of the text for me.

I’ll see you on the other side…

I Yearn For The Simple Life

Where there is no phone connection, no internet, no other people and no way out other than an hour long walk over tidal mudflats. And no theses, for that matter, either.

A place where if I feel like it I can dress like this:

And where we can hunt our dinner:

And where opportunities for harrassing the local birdlife are legion:

And surroundings like this make you feel like the whole concept of a city is just a really strange joke:

After one day at Awaroa, where Chap’s parents have a bach, I was convinced I had actually lived there all my life, living off mussels and pipis and the vegetable garden, filling my days with swimming and kayaking and taking photos. The return to Wellington at 2am last night was a cold, cruel blow.

Another Happy Birthday

This one is for a certain Chap, whom regular readers may notice has gradually gone from “the man who had to take me to hospital” to fully paid-up boyfriend the lack of which I would protest vociferously. He has also developed his own inimitable comic self, and with this in mind I drew the following for his birthday cake. I’m sure you will all note the easy, unambitious nature of this design:

…which, when translated into chocolate ganache and icing, looked like this:

I think we can all agree that this is FAILcake. Happy Birthday Chap, I have no skill with an icing bag but I do love you.