Sunday of my Life

Dorothea has recently been putting up on Caveat Lector a series of posts on fighting referer spam and bandwith hogs that endlessly trawl your site with bots (ignoring the stringent rules you, or she in this case, laid down in the robots.txt file, of course). Find linkyness below:

Killing Referer Spam

Latest Bad Referer

Brandimensions

Raft Of New Blockees

More To Ban

Hell, if this interests you, then I’d suggest subscribing to her Spam Specific RSS Feed with your news aggregator. There will be much goodness to come in this section, I can feel it. It’s already got some invaluable stuff in there that I am using to protect Sunday from these bastard sons of a bastard’s barstard’s barstard. (Guessed I don’t like spammers of any kind yet?)

Sign up, read. Play, fiddle, learn (as one of my friends says). You’ll be glad you did, trust me.

OK, so this post is a little on a friend, a little bit on music and alot of a rant. At least, I think it will be. It’s very late right now, but I want to get these thoughts down out of my head before I close these world-weary eyes and try to forget my life in sleep’s sweet oblivion.

Had Filmmaker Extraordinaire’s 21st Party tonight. Me there for moral support, Agent FareEvader providing music. Good music, in my opinion. The Agent knows what he’s about, knows what appeals to different crowds and how to mix it up very well. Best spinner I’ve heard in sometime. ‘Twas not to be for this crowd though. Agent pulled every trick out of his bag, but no one was buying. Such a diverse crowd, with such diverse tastes in music. It’s a daunting prospect to any seasoned vinyl-spinner to face a crowd such as this. Normally at least something can be accomplished, but not so this time.

Yes, I’m well aware that you can’t make an audience enjoy themselves. But really, this gig was hellish. At any given moment of the night we were told these things, usually in this order:

“The music is too loud.”

“The music is too quiet.”

“We want you to play [Insert Random Song Not on Advertised Playlist Here]”

“This music isn’t the right sort, we want something we can dance to.”

Aha! That is what we had been trying to get to all night long. Very well, what kind of music would you like to dance to?

“Heavy Metal.”

Errrrr…. riiiiiight. Well, we don’t have any heavy metal in the mix tonight (don’t have it in the mix ever. Full stop. Underline. Circle in red ink. Go over with a fluro-yellow high-lighter. Underline several more time. Reproduce on… well… you get the picture). We do however have this large selection of other styles, is there something there that interests you?

“Sure, play ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica”

*sigh*

We’ll see what we can do.

Over and over and over. Again and again and again. Meanwhile one increasingly drunken guest continually comes up and tells us to turn it up with an upward-spiraling motion of his hand (one of the basics of becoming a DJ is, of course, learning to read drunken sign-langauge, didn’t you know?). Meanwhile the party’s organisers are telling us to turn it down. Then we’re told to turn it up again, and are assured that this has been confirmed with the party’s organisers. Then the party’s organisers want to know why we turned it back up after they asked us to turn it down.

About this time I began to have one of those oh-so-lovely manic moments my anti-depressants give me.

So, retreating to the bathroom after a while of uncontrollable hand motions and face-rubbing, as well as some fierce biting of my knuckles (I think I told you all about this already. It’s a nervous habit I have whenever something has me frustrated in some way. It does serve to calm me somewhat. The pain brings me back a little closer to focus). Well, after managing to bite deep enough into one of them to break the skin and draw some blood I thought maybe I’d better go away from everyone before I made a scene. Spent a while running my hands under cold water to relieve their ache. Brought out some truly spectacular bruises. Lucky me. It was a great spisode, I can tell you. Eyes darting all over the place, hands doing what they pleased, never ceasing thier movements. Body trembling with energy, and my mind totally incapable of rational thought. Almost like having a panic-attack, without the panic.

I just had an attack
Really though, the party itself wasn’t too bad. I did enjoy myself, to a certain degree, probably as much as I can in a large group of people I don’t know. Got to see GalaxyStar again, that was cool, I missed her like crazy. Must visit the Ponds of the Moonee more often. Endured Filmmaker’s friends making snide remarks behind my back, didn’t even thump any of them once, much as I wanted to. Realised that this post is increasingly sounding like one of those flat, emotionless list-of-thought posts, and really doesn’t care.

The Agent is one of my oldest friends, and I really do think he does wonderful work on his deck, it’s just a shame we didn’t have a more responsive audience tonight. I don’t think I can accurately portray exactly how frustrating that is in this simple medium of text on a screen, and it is 4:45 AM, so I think I’ll break this off there for now. Might write more on it later. We’ll see.

My hands hurt. Well, that’s my own fucking fault. Suck it up and live with it.

Just a quick note to say that yes, I am nearly done with the other styles. So sue me, school’s started back and I’m busy
And also to wish my friend Filmmaker Extraordinaire a very happy birthday. Finally 21… phew, and also 21 days before I myself turn 21.

Heh, how’s that for coincidences? Happy Birthday Mate, and here to many more fruitful years of collaboration

Bosses from Hell. We’ve all had them in one form or another, especially Dorothea. So, what the hell, I’ll tell you about mine.

Like Dorothea’s, my Boss from Hell was the boss in my first real job. Straight out of high-school, a fresh faced eighteen-year-old with a headful of knowledge and an empty basket marked ‘experience’. The boss was a guy who spoke like someone straight out of ‘Pointy-Haired Boss school’, spouting business jargon all over the place, talking about quantifying our spatial debilitativeness and making sure to touch base with some individual or another. I’m quite sure he made some of those terms up on the spot, and to this day I can’t hear such jargon without shuddering.

He really did make my first job a living hell. I was constantly reminded how lucky I was to be given this job, how they didn’t have to take me on, and I wasn’t their first choice for the position. Everything I did was endlessly revised and revised and revised, and my methods of doing things were either questioned to the nth degree or openly criticised in front of the rest of the staff. He would appear in my office at least four times a day to check up on me, and I would be called into his office for meetings twice a week. Security cameras were installed in sixteen locations around the school and the monitor in his office seemed to be permanently stuck on the two that were in my office. However, despite him having this direct view link into my office, he would call when I wasn’t there, and thne later on ask me why I wasn’t there when he called.

Needless to say, the year that I spent there under contract weren’t fun, and serve as another layer on the onion of my psychological problems.

Looking back, perhaps working at my old high-school wasn’t the best decision I ever made.

Hell, I’m not even sure if that’s a word, but if it isn’t, then I shall insert it into the Urban Dictionary and damn well make it a word. Becuase someone has said something nice about a friend of mine and damn if I don’t agree with them!

When someone compared Dorothea to an oragutan most would not think this a source for happiness. But that’s not just any orangutan she’s been compared to. That’s The Librarian of Unseen University. The Ultimate Librarian, which is very nearly what I feel Dorothea is.

So here’s with a resounding ‘hear, hear!’

Or, should I say ‘ook, ook!’