The burning! And a Proust update.

So I'm reading my Gmail and I see this in the right hand ad column:



For God's sake, what words were they picking up in my email anyway?

Meanwhile, Proust is at page 462, and he spent the three pages before then building up to an elaborate pun about "Teaser Augustus." Aaargh!

I swear I'll post about my kayaking trip soon. How is it I'm doing so little at work and yet not getting around to such vital things?

My official start date has changed

I am now starting work on September 17th.

I am getting caught up in work politics today and it is making me hate being here. Aargh. I left yesterday in a huge rage about working with dumb monkeys and I can still feel the knots in my shoulderblade from how angry I got.

Tonight is the Bacchae. That, at least, I am truly looking forward to.

I decided last night I want to dress as Greed for Halloween this year

The key element, of course, is a nice gold lamé dress.

So I search for it, and find this number (sort of work safe), which looks like it would, er, leave you a bit chilly.

But check out the "coordinate with" section. Those things are so small! It's like saying if I held a large golden coin in my hand, I would have a coordinated "outfit."

And I am seriously wondering what kind of "club" wear this is. I suspect pole dancing is involved.

Any suggestions for where to find a shiny gold dress, preferably floor length, in London or on the internet? (I like this one on Ebay, but the shipping charges to England are a joke.)

(And this was all inspired by all of the gold clothing in the play Venus as a Boy I saw last night.)

For Alan Cumming to lift my spirits, we would have needed our own room

I left work in a terrible mood today. Politics, politics, politics. Some pissbucket in another department is angry that I've taken one of my team members back for the duration of my departure. Is he really so ballsless that he can't tell me to my face but has to go running to Daddy about it? Having my boss bring this up the minute I walked in the door was not good. Neither was being told about having my paycheck reduced by "extra vacation days." Even if I was able to change my start date to accommodate it, I'm mad that I can't spend that time doing what I want to and instead am chasing the Filthy God Lucre around the block.

And another young moron promoted to manager has no appreciation for adult employees. He wants people with enthusiasm. I wanted to go yell at him about how stupid he is. Everyone on his team has left, someone who know the challenges is willing to accept them, and he wants someone "enthusiastic." I'd rather have skilled and willing than young and dumb any day. Idiot bastard.

And my boss has come up with this great plan for replacing me, which is to not replace me. Instead, the QA people will report to dev leads. "But sir, to whom will we report our QA issues?" "Why, to the developers - they will represent both!" Right. That's like having the foxes represent the chickens' interests when it comes to coop security.

That said, we went to see The Bacchae tonight. The production values were really good, Alan Cumming was convincing as a sexy, arrogant, gold-lame-kilt wearing god, and the themes of "we must control the women's sexuality" and "there are times when you need to move beyond society's limits" resonated with me. But ... the songs the women sang did didn't make sense (they didn't add enough to make it worth the effort, even if their voices were good), and the entire, painful, ( plot spoilers )

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. That said, it's not even 2 hours long (no intermission), so if you rock on Alan Cumming and you're clear that you're going to see a Greek tragedy, and you're still interested, well, by all means, go. Otherwise, please go see Venus as a Boy just right away because I was NOT doing my budget in my head while I was watching that show at all.

And thank you to the lovely interior_lulu for joining us for dinner and a show at last minute, and to itsjustaname for coming WITH me (because, well, it was Alan Cumming, so we did have to hope, but there's Sir Ian later in the year to clear the taste away, eh? - and I should have just got a drink with you), and booklectic for having good taste and enthusiasm and making me glad I live here, as do all of my guests (especially wechsler) at the show tonight, none of whom will be particularly angry because, after all, as a preview it was only nine quid.

Three more fucking days, I can't wait.