Bondage Fairy

A little poem what I wrote about Oxjam

It’s peaceful
Hear!
The music turned up high
Arms waving
Hearts banging
A guitar raging
Waging war on a crowd of thoughtful minds

But here, deep inside
It’s peaceful
A note of understanding
Passed between us in a smile
No different you and I
We live, we breathe
We cry sometimes

It’s peaceful just knowing
That what we do is right
So we count
We stoke the fire
We count some more
A little shame mixed with the pride
Safe in our knowledge;
There’s no shadow at our door

No danger in this war

It’s peaceful
Here.

So here I am employed, although not strictly at work at the moment... Working for The British Red Cross as a shop manager on a temp contract until October, it was all going rather well until the latest unfortunate incident... so who knows what next.

It's funny how life changing events can be. How easy it is for one thing to change the shape of your understanding of the world. I've always been a planner, looked ahead, saw where I wanted to be, even if it were three or four options, I always had sight of something... when they say one day at a time, I don't think people realise how scary that is for someone like me, not knowing tomorrow, not knowing next week, next month.

But I am embracing one day at a time, almost relishing it I suppose. Today I did very little, Sacred 2 for most of it if I am honest, and I always try to be so.

Tomorrow, who can say. Quite fancy Transformers II...

because each time I think of you
my heart breaks
four times for bad
and one time for good luck

she smiles for all of you
as only she can
such a big big weight
on solid happy shoulders

but time for each of you I have
close
in my secret heart

I love you all
my children

I never held you
But I carried you
I never met you
But I loved you
I never knew you
But I miss you

I'll never forget.

Happy Birthday
Mammy
x

So I got my leaving date today... 15th of August, that's next Friday for those of you too dumb or too lazy to do the maths. It's weird, I've worked at the Rock for 10 years, that's the whole of my adult life...

So new beginnings begin with a couple of weeks off, with nothing at all to do but clean, tidy, iron, dig, game, write applications. Some of which I actually enjoy.

Jeremy Kyle, here I come!

...except maybe fellowmartian , does he still play sometimes???

Who knows, anyway I'm going to see Batman the Dark Knight tomorrow.

Nuff said.

***WOO FUCKING HOO!!!!!!!!!***

Oxfam Campaign



Sign the pledge at

Well actually, I hate the people who buy from them more.

Ronnie has spent the past month trying to buy me Wii fit for my birthday, couldn't get one for a normal price, shops were only getting 3 in at a time and they were going straight away, no-one is even taking names for order lists.

So one question, if there is such a shortage, how com there are over 2,000 for sal on Ebay for double the RRP?? Why the hell do people buy them?!!

Is this really the society we live in, where people want something so much they will pay double the actual price for it. "Oh I got one, but I had to pay £130", no you didn't. If you just refused to pay that much there would be no touts, there would be no inflated prices you dumb ass!

Gig tickets do my head in just as much. They sell out in minutes then are on ebay hours later for stupid amounts of money.

REFUSE TO PAY IT!!! JUST SAY NO!

So I applied for voluntary redundancy last thursday, one of the many weights finally lifted from my shoulders. Applied for a job working for the council / museum as a project officer for a conservation database, that's conservation + database, couldn't be more up my street if it had my name written on it with a big arrow pointing and saying "Katie, this is the job for you". Not heard anything yet though, boo.

It's my birthday this weekend (I won't cry, I promise, but I could if I wanted to), and it's party night tomorrow. Room booked, band sorted, but who's stupid idea was it to save money by having me dj??? Turns out that I should have started a bit earlier setting up the play lists, maybe a week or two earlier. Actually started yesterday and am struggling a bit. Really can't put the Smiths on after Metallica can I... can I??

Anyhoo, once it's done it's done then I can plug in the ipod and dance away without too much worry (the wonders of new technology). And it's a bonus too, music that I love, all of it, played automatically without me having to stay sober, and it fits in my pocket. Nice.

So Happy Birthday to me, I hope you all have a great weekend, and I hope I do too!

Wishing that when I set my account up I hadn't just typed my name in, everyone has cool tags, I want one...

So you think everything is pretty much fucked, you lose a baby, then your place of work goes tits up, then you lose another baby, then your place of work announces 2000 redundancies are coming, then, just in case you felt like climbing out of the hole and having a stab at getting on with it all they introduce a 'Job Assessment'.

So my department was absorbed by IT last March, that's 15 months ago for those who can't count. IT are on a different pay scale. You think JOB ASSESSMENT means they'll ASSESS your JOB, but no, you are effectively demoted two positions, same money, mapped directly across to a technical grade with no thought gone into the actual role and the responsibilities you have. I was a manager, a project leader, I led projects, now I'm a business analyst, a numpty, but I'm getting paid the same, hell I got a £60 a year pay rise so FUCKING SMILE!!

Oh, and the best bit "we don't expect you to go out there and do anything different from what you were doing yesterday", WHAT THE FUCK! So I'm to do the same management job, even though my job description says I can 'analyse business requirements', perform with 'some autonomy', but require 'general supervision' and am expected to refer upwards for guidance on major decisions.

Last week I was making all the decisions!!!

I realise these posts are getting more and more aggressive, but, shit, that's how I feel. Get me out of this corporate shithole pronto!

Watching the news last night.
Up pops a picture of children starving in Ethiopia, because they have no food. And I'm not talking a lobster dinner here, I mean basic rations, NO FOOD!!

Up pops a picture of some rich bastard who is buying a cricket club for a couple of MILLION POUNDS, I bet he's got food, and plenty of it.

Discuss... (cos I can't without going completely off on one and ending up in the Prozac Nation)

A colleague sent me this, I love it.

> >A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented
> >the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took
> >him to catch them.
> >"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
> >"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the
> >American.
> >The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs
> >and those of his family.
> >The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
> >"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with
> >my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a
> >few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."
> >The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you!
> >You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra
> >fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
> >"And after that?" asked the Mexican.
> >"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one
> >and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.
> >Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate
> >directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You
> >can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or
> >even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."
> >"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
> >"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
> >"And after that?"
> >"Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting,"
> >answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you
> >can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"
> >"Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the Mexican.
> >"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the
> >coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta
> >with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
> >And the moral of this story is: ......... Know where you're going in
> >life... you may already be there.

Sitting around doing sod all at work after a manic morning re-coding an Access database got me really thinking what the fnck I'm doing with my working life. Bored, I was actually bored, and I love coding, it's one of my favourite things and I don't get to do it that much these days.

I just can't stand the corporate machine any longer. I look out to the car park and see the Aston Martins and the fncking awful Porche Cayenne, and I just HATE IT!!! I work my goddamn arse of so the fat cats who make all the bad decisions that got Northern Rock where it is now more fncking money. Done a bad job? Collapsed your bank? Here's a 800k payoff.

So I'm facing redundancy and the closer it gets the more I am willing it to happen. I've started trawling CharityJob.com looking at stuff with a 10k paycut, thinking that they sound perfect for me, I want to be an Admin clerk for Help the Aged, I actively want to sell second hand books.

So NR are in the shitter and it has given me the push I need to say fnck off society, I can't fit myself in anymore. I'm gonna take a job that I am way over qualified for, for a pittance of a wage because I WANT TO. Because it's worthy and all that crap, but really, because I WANT TO. We don't need to buy food, my allotment will keep us in potatoes!

I really think that if I didn't have my husband tying me to reality (mortgage, child, school run) that I would just drop out altogether, of society I mean. Buy some windmills, stop giving the extortionate electricity companies any of my money (I really hate those guys), get another allotment, and some chickens, buy a wind up charger for my PC (less likely, but I could live without lights if I had to use all the electricity from my windmills to power my computer).

Maybe I'm more than a bit of a hippy, maybe I should think about this some more, I feel a protest of some sort coming over me...

I went to see Guillemots last Tuesday at Newcastle Uni... WoW!!

I've seen them before, last year, and they were pretty good, but one more album under their belt meant a good two hours of truly class entertainment. I danced and danced and smiled my little heed off, championo.

If you've never seen them, and you like tight bands with a dancey avant guarde kinda style, then you should go buy a ticket right now. They really are something else.

Trains to Brazil is still my favourite, I just love artists who dare to be popular and political, and the new album is more of the same. First listen I found it a bit poppy, but the more I hear the more I like. Poppy overtones with weird undertones, lyrical perfection and good for any mood. Black Dog is a clear favourite so far, with Clarion coming in a close second ("...it's like covering a bird in solid steel...", awesome).

So, Guillemots enter my top five live acts with their brashy hardcore weird pop chunes, s'all good.

"I'm Luke, I'm 5 and my dad's Bruce Lee, he drives me round in his JCB"

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGkseGFQLh4

Possibly very boring indeed to the rest of you, but is there anything that www.videojug.com can't teach you?

I love it, check out 'How to Kiss Someone Passionately'  ("step one, you will need a pair of lips") or 'How to Undo her Bra with One Hand' ("you old devil, you're a love machine").

There is also lots of lovely tips on how to clean wooden furniture (which is how I ended up there in the first place, red wine, unvarnished table, drunken women...), how to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds, or indeed make a t-shirt folder out of an old box.

I dropped by for 3 mins, and stayed a whole hour, classic stuff.

Start Again

It’s a blank canvas
there was something there,
once
but the words have been erased
faced with the possibility of losing it

Every piece
floating
in a place I once occupied
it’s not enough to say you tried
but failed,
you have to make the pieces fit

So think
and make them happy thoughts
for wading in is not a choice.
there’s more at stake than this head,
this body
this tired, wired mind

I joined Friends Reunited first, thought I wanted to speak to old school mates.  I quickly learned that I was wrong and that online social forums sucked me in and suddenly I had lost 4 hours without even trying.

Facebook came next, my bestest mate went travelling for 6 months and it was the perfect way to keep in touch.  50,000 applications later, and about 6 messages to Jill in 6 months and I am fed up with it.  People whom I barely know want to add me as a friend just so they can hit 100, or 200 or some other unbelievable figure.  And I accept their request, just so I can hit 50!  I've hugged and bitten and poked and scrambled, I've had YuoTube videos of dwarves and babies and chinese prisoners dancing, and all of it a complete waste of time.

So then came MySpace, and this one I actually like, apart from random women with no clothes on sending friend requests.  MySpace has a blog, and I like to think that I am some kind of eco/social injustice warrior, so I have started posting links to stuff that I think people should read, in fact I think people should me made to read it, forced to, it may prevent the apathy which is descending on the western world like the worst virus ever seen... but that's a different rant altogether.  So, yeah, I can rant a bit, get on my well used soap box to a wider audience, a whole 56 views have been made on my blog in the past month(!!), I'm pretty impressed, I don't even know 56 people!!

My space also has decent apps, I can add a playlist so when people (i.e. me) go to my space they can hear my bestest chunes.  I can't however manage to add a full size picture because I am not a computer programmer, well actually I am a little bit, but it's not written in VB.  I still think MySpace is pretty cool though, excellent place to find new music, get heads up on when your favourite new band is playing, for new bands to get their music out there, I like it.

Anyway, now to Live Journal.  One of my mates lives in London (you know who you are), so I said, join Facebook, we can keep in touch better (I was really into Facebook at this point) and, well... insert rant here.  Of course he was too cool for Facebook (I see it now), or MySpace etc, so now I have a Journal.  Have to say I'm not really sure what to do with it all.  Can't imagine anyone would be very interested in me blogging my life... went to work, came home, fed family, watched Heroes/Lost/CSI blah blah blah.  But we'll see, I do like a bit of a rant every now and then, maybe I'll subject LiveJournal to my soapbox too.

OK, so that's my first post, long winded and not all that interesting, a perfect representation of me!