Oh My Good Lady Gaga!

Holy. Guacamole. Seems i created a bit of a shitstorm and i didnt even realise. ( As an aside, this post will contain swearing so if you're adverse to that kind of thing, avert your eyes now ).

See, almost 12 months ago i wrote a post entitled " 7 Reasons Why I Hate Lady Gaga ". August 11th of 2009 i wrote this post and, today, i had reason to check back on it ( prompoted by a question posed by Kylie at A Study In Contradictions ) and...... there are 146 comments on that post. 146 FREAKING COMMENTS. I know some people found the post by Googling " i hate lady gaga " but i'm thinking someone must have linked to my post somewhere because the most recent comment was only made on July 15th of this year so - what the hell? So I decided i was going to sit and read these comments and boy oh boy did my little post cause a ruckus.

I imagine this is the look the Lady would shoot me from atop her throne after my last Gaga post...

The majority of the 146 comments are from rabid Gaga fans, baying for my blood. ( ok, not quite, but after reading some of those comments i'm suprised i didnt score any death threats ). I got called, in no particular order: a fat whore, a jealous bitch,a stupid retard, a cunt and, amusingly, a tranny ass. None of which has actually hurt me because i understand that these people are only trying to defend a woman that they fanatically love. However, i would like to give a very special shoutout to Anonymous, who was brave enough to post this in reply to my original post:

Get toxic shock syndrome and die you stupid cunt. You're ridiculous, you feign intelligence, and apparently you have something against teacups -- hopefully your uncle molested you during one of your tea parties as a kid. You're a moron.

Thank you Anonymous, well said. If i only i were intelligent as you quite obviously are, perhaps i would understand the utter brilliance of Ms Gaga. and would never have had the gall to express my quite offensive opinion in the first place. I would also like to thank those commenters who agreed with me, and understood that freedom of speech allows me to say i dislike someone ( especially when one of the primary reasons is because she carried around a teacup. Which she's stopped doing. Thank Gawd. )

So, i'm hoping that this post draws out another 140-odd comments. If you are a Lady Gaga fan please note that everything in this post and the original was intended as tongue-in-cheek. I dont " hate " Lady Gaga - sure, she annoys me for the aforementioned reasons, but truth be told " Telephone " is quite the catchy song. Oh, and before any of you tell me to get a life, or stop hiding behind my computer screen, i implore you to stop and think that you are taking the time to bite back at me ( thus taking up moments of your life, same as i have ) and you will be doing it from behind your own computer screen. That being said, try and remember not to take everything so seriously - some of us don't, and my regular readers certainly understood the " humour " behind my original post ( for further evidence of said humour, please scroll down the page and check out my campaign against jeggings... ).

Viva la Gaga!

A Sad State of Underwears

No, i'm not talking about me - although lately all i get to wear is nursing bras and cute stretch cotton knickers ( shut up! They're comfy.... ). Nope, i'm talking about what i assume is the universal sad state of mens underwear.

What is up with men keeping their underwear until its literally falling apart? I've folded quite a few baskets of washing lately and i've come across at least 3 pairs of Mr Gil undies that are in dire need of throwing out. You know the ones : i like to call them the " Hole-y Undies ". Not because they're similar to the particular y-fronts that Jesus favoured back in the day, but because they're full of holes. And not jus the holes for your legs to go into, no - i'm talking about extra holes in the crotch, or in the behind, or the side seam coming apart. I dont know how you boys can wear them, what with the risk of inappropriate bits and peices falling out; and if your junk coming "untrunked" is not the issue, then why arent you just going commando?

And i know its not just Mr Gil. When i was a teenager and made to fold the households washing as my share of the chores, my dad and my brother did the same thing - insisted on wearing underwear that was just barely holding together until the point that some kindly woman in their lives ( wife, mother, sister, whoever it may be ) decided to throw them away. I mean the typical woman gets a even the whiff of a seam coming apart and her knickers are straight in the garbage. But a dude? He insists that the holes mean the undies are only just being " worn in " and thats the way they are most comfortable.

Or at least the men that i've washed for do. Please tell me its not jusy them....

Uncle Steve the Big Red Alligator and introducing the Doormat Branch

So heres the thing - i dont sleep too well. Most nights, i wake up four or five times, i toss, i turn, and by the time the alarm goes off i am back to being tired again. Its that whole " I'm so tired of waking up tired " thing for me. The other thing is, the more tired i am and the more restless my sleep, the weirder my dreams. And i'm talking weird. Crazy. Like, wake up in the morning and go " What the forking beejesus was that supposed to mean ?!? " crazy. Let me elaborate:

For those of you who are either new here, didnt already know or who may have forgotten, i was once an au pair in the United States. Instead of having to explain what au pair actually means - i was a nanny ( to three very wonderful boys... but i digress ). Anyhoo, so last night i dreamt that i was a nanny again, but it wasnt for the same family. Some members of this family were white, but the parents and one child were dark skinned ( i'd be politically correct and say African-American or Aboriginal, but truth be told i dont know where this dream was taking place ). Weirder still was that the youngest child in said family was my neice, Hannah. And there i was, nanny to this family, brand new into the job and off we go to visit their Uncle Steve. But Uncle Steve was no ordinary man-uncle - no, Uncle Steve was a big, red, alligator. And by big, i mean HUGE. You remember Clifford the Big Red Dog ? Well Uncle Steve was the alligator equivalent of Clifford. He was a monstrous, red, reptile and he lived in a huge pond. With a lid. Like a coffin lid. On a pond. Uncle Steve could also speak - in English suprisingly ( in a dream like this you would have thought it would have been some obscure Russian dialect or something ) - and he was really sweet. The kids and the family got in the pond and swam with him. I sat on the edge and gave Hannah a marshmallow from my handbag. There were other kids playing nearby the pond and when one of them fell in and started crying, i pulled him out and gave him a marshmallow too. Just as Hannah starting yelling out " Amma! Amma ! " - the name of a Finnish exchange i knew in high school - i woke up.
Seriously - can anybody else say what the ?!? Perhaps the combination of bad sleep and brain altering medication is pysching me out....

But enough with dreams, and on to reality. Yes, we all have to wake up sometimes, and that kind of sort of, happened today. My colleagues and I all came to the conclusion that we are the Doormat Branch. That is, we are the branch of our company that everyone else takes advantage of and, frankly, we're sick of being walked all over. But what are we to do? Find new jobs? Conduct a walk off and picket outside the store? Fire off an aggressive email to management ? Or just take a cup of cement and harden the fuck up ? Our branch has been understaffed by at least two people for almost a month straight now. We have been coping the best we can, some of us even taking on roles and duties that do not come under our job description. One of my workmates came in to work sick as a dog, dying of the lurgy, ill to the point where she had lost her voice and couldnt talk, because she was the only person to fill that role that day. And we soldiered on. Sure, some of the paperwork got backed up, but when you're short staffed and ( some of you ) are on deaths door step, that cant exactly be helped. Management, however, thinks it can. No " Thanks guys, you're really doing well down there ", no " Job well done in a hard situation ", no " Can we send someone down to help you guys? ". No, only an email from our area supervisor querying why some paperwork had not been put on and questioning our priorities and understanding of our job. Even though she was aware of the no staff and the dying of the lurgy bit. Are you freaking kidding me ? We spent a good half hour following the arrival of managements email bitching about how unappreciated we are. Whenever someone else at another branch is sick or needs holiday coverage who do they get to go ? Someone from our branch. One of us goes away, say for a week long tutorial, and we dont ask for a ring-in, we just buck up and get on with it. Management even sent one us away to another branch for six months ( which is why WE are now short staffed ) to begin a job looking after some agencies and when a new agency opened, one that my workmate had been working on for months, did he get to go to the opening? Nope. Some other douche from some other branch who had little to nothing to do with it went. What a crock of crap.

Perhaps i should get my good buddy Uncle Steve the Big Red Alligator to rock up to management and tell them how we really feel.....