...way out on the corner of fucked up and evil...

true love is when you drop ypur carton of earbuds on the floor n your partner spends twenty minutes picking up the onds that didnt touch the ground so ypu have something to poke your gross oozy ears with

its not that I need a pair of trainers with unicorns with googly eyes on them. its that im.sick, and my bday is coming up, and pooey work isnt letting us dress up for halloween (because our directors have made a shitty business move that pissed all our customers off and now all the staff are getting slaughtered for it and theyre worried that having us dress up will be bad publicity,but NO YOUR TERRIBLE ACTIONS BROUGHT THE BAD PUBLICITY FUCK YOU) and,honestly, I want unicorns so im getting them.

why yes, period, smack bang in the midst of an ear infection the likes of which I havent had for years is the perfect time for you to show up in all your bloodstained glory.

oh my GOD I am in so much pain, I am literally ready to watch the world burn if it gets me out of this nonsense. im not totally sure.but I think the other ear may be infected now too. AFJGVHRIDOCNEGNGWMCNGIBJSM IDDKDGNDKDWKVNGTJ fuck you real body. I would trade you for a robot shell in a heartbeat.

STOP HURTING ME EAR I FUCKING HATE YOU

Well dudes, that's it. I am officially leaving the House of Gas. I'm going back to the Rock tomorrow, emailing in my resignation, and getting signed off sick for my four-week notice period. And if they don't like it, they can fucking well fire me, except, OH WAIT, I will already have quit.

2011 has been a fucking nightmare for me where my job is concerned.

First of all, I had to change from a shift where I worked Monday to Thursday, 10 til 8, to a shift where I worked Monday to Friday, 11.30 til 8. And in case you're wondering how I managed to have any kind of social life during that time, the answer is that I didn't.

More annoying is the fact that I was forced to change shifts to provide support for a manager with a new team, despite the fact that I already had a team doing the same shift as me, because the only advocate who didn't have a team is shit at his job and can't be trusted to look after new starters. So he gets rewarded for being rubbish with a three-day weekend, and I get a piece-of-crap five-day shift with an 8pm finish as punishment for my ability to not suck.

Because all my holidays for this year had been booked on the assumption that I wouldn't be working Fridays, I didn't bother booking these off as holiday. When I told our call centre manager that, she told me, to my face, that it wouldn't be a problem to get those booked off for me. I even put it in writing and got the response back agreeing that she would sort it.

January rolls around, and oh wait, we're predicted to be busy on those Fridays, so suddenly I can't have them off. I point out that a) I changed shifts to be flexible and accomodate the needs of the business, b) she promised me at the end of 2010 that it wouldn't be an issue, and c) I arranged these holidays in early 2010 and all my plans are already in place, and suddenly it's my fault because I "shouldn't book holidays that far in advance." Yes, she really said that to me, and no, I did not give in to the urge to spit in her face.

February rolls around, and oh joy, Ear Thing pops up again. I spend Friday afternoon in agony, but still finish up my shift, and of course I can't get an appointment over the weekend and the walk-in clinic closes at 7pm on Friday so thanks to my shitty working pattern, I end up going three days without seeing a doctor and without getting more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time.

Monday morning, I call in sick, and get my managers ansaphone. I leave a message explaining that I won't be in, and call the duty manager phone, since we're supposed to make sure we talk to a real person rather than leaving voicemails. Two hours later and I'm getting a bollocking for calling in too early and rining the DMs phone as well as my managers.

I finally get to the doctor, he loads me up with antibiotics and ear drops and pain killers and writes me a note saying I won't be in for the rest of the week. I call my manager to explain this, and she tells me that the House of Gas doesn't accept doctors notes and that a doctor cannot advise me when I'm too sick to go to work. Incidentally, if any of you are studying medicine, you should just drop out of school right now, since apparently you don't need years of training to tell if people are ill, you just need to be a manager at the House of Gas.

In March, it emerges that we are to be honoured with a visit from King Gas Himself. He wants to see how our team is responding to a new billing system. Of course, He will only be present from 9 til 10 that morning, and we don't start til 11.30, so now we have to come in three hours early. It's not all bad though - we don't get to leave three hours early, so instead we get the unearthly delight of finishing at 8pm the day before, then coming to work at 8.30 the following day and working an eleven-and-a-half-hour shift. And for this treat, the call centre manager tells us, we will be paid time-and-a-quarter and given an extra fifteen minute break.

Wednesday dawns, and 8.30 finds us all at our desks, all dressed in bright blue House of Gas slave tunics specially handed out to us for the event, lest King Gas be confused into thinking of us as human beings rather than an anonymous mass of lowly peons who labour for His enrichment.

And King Gas doesn't even come over to us. Not a single one of us is blessed enough to hear a word that utters from His holy mouth. And for added glory, we don't get our extra fifteen minute break. When we challenge our call centre manager on this, she tells us dismissively that we will "get it next time". I don't know when "next time" is. Perhaps it is when King Gas will descend from on high and sweep us away in the Rapture, possibly sporting a new set of colour-co-ordinated manacles to go with our slave tunics. I can but dream.

Last Monday, our team has a supposedly-daily performance review, our first one in weeks. Our manager asks how we coped while she was on holiday for two days. A particularly slow-witted and rancid hag takes the opportunity to lambaste me, in front of our manager and the rest of the team, because I had the audacity to ask her to get the details of a newly-installed meter before she passed it to me to update said installation. The sheer nerve of me, asking her to tell me what it was the customer needed updating before I updated it!

And my manager says nothing. My team say nothing. I am alone with the shame of having asked someone to do her fucking job instead of doing it for her and perhaps wiping her arse at the same time.

So yes, I quit. Fuck you, 8pm finish. From now on, when 8pm rolls around, I'll already be at home watching Supernatural reruns or writing a script for a second Constantine movie.

Fuck you, shitty advocate. Enjoy your three-day weekend while you can, because someone is going to have to take my place.

Fuck you, predicted-to-be-busy Fridays. I hope the call queues stretch for hours and every customer who gets through spends twenty minutes bitching about the wait time. I'll be on my holidays that I selfishly booked over a year in advance.

Fuck you, managers-who-apparently-are-better-than-doctors. I will never again plague you by phoning in too early or ringing another number in order to comply with our sickness reporting policy. You will be so relieved to be rid of me and my moronic assumption that a trained health care professional knows more about what's wrong with my body than you do.

Fuck you, King Gas. Keep your fucking time-and-a-quarter and your shitty slave tunic. You can build the Great Pyramids of Gas without my help, you twat.

Fuck you, call centre manager. When the Rapture comes, I'll be taking my fifteen minute break on another fucking continent.

Fuck you, rancid hag. You will never again need to take a customers meter details, because there'll be nobody there to update them for you.

Fuck you all, House of Gas. I hope you fall into the fucking sea.

Blargh! i have been off work the last two days with an ear infection and it is utterly horrible. Not being off work, obviously, although given the choice I would prefer to save my sick days for times I don't feel so awful, but the ear infection part of it. I get them a lot, so I pretty much know what to expect, but that doesn't make it less shitty.

So, I'm sat here trying to eat this bowl of cereal, because I'm starving but also kind of nauseous from the pain in my head, and I'm watching Power Rangers (because I've finished the third season of the Tribe and damn it, I'm ill, I deserve more Dwayne Cameron!) and you know, off your face with pain and exhaustion and sleeping pills that don't fucking work for moer than an hour at a time, it becomes strangely compelling. Dwayne Cameron will now be known as Pretty Soldier Sailor Bray for the rest of his days, due to his excessively sparkly transformation sequence. No kidding, it's approximately 98% more sparkly than any of the other Rangers. He even does the Sailor Mercury staff-twirly-around thing.

There was something else I came on here to say, but I can't remember what it was. Pretty Soldier Sailor Bray and Falcor should totally team up though. FALCOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Oh my God, I am so out of it.

You know, I could sit here and complain about how my Fucking Ear Thing has come back just in time to screw up a mock exam, the deadline for a research project, Bonfire Night and my birthday, but instead I will say only this:

Holy shit, Chloe had sex with Jimmy Olsen.

You know, I just... I have no words. I'm gonna go watch Onyx and giggle at how silly Evil Lex is again. "He's thought about killing you all!" I love Silly Evil Lex.

Oooooooh.

So, last night I couldn't sleep at all, and after hours of tossing and turning and getting nowhere, I eventually gave up and went to stare at the TV for a few hours. It's about 6am and I'm flicking through the channels, when I see a cartoon owl covered in cement sitting on a branch.

Hmm, thinks I. This image seems vaguely familiar.

Curiosity aroused, I continue to watch for a few more minutes before it hits me: it's Animals of Farthing Wood (or possibly Animals of White Deer Park - did they change the name after they got to the park?). Maybe it was sleep deprivation walking, but Plucky looks so much like Johnny. You know, if Johnny was a fox. Same pointy face, same thick black eyebrows, same weird little fangs.

And the male Adder has a Gomez Addams moustache!

There are no words for how cool that is.

Okay, so you know that bit in the Gravi manga where Yuki is at the hospital and he's talking to his psychiatrist, and he's like, "Why can't you just do your job and fix me?!", only with more swearing, since this is Yuki we're talking about? Yeah. I'm starting to feel like that.

This thing with my ear is getting fucking ridiculous. Just when I think I'm finally rid of it, it sneaks back in again. It's like having a deatbeat Welfare son with a drug problem. So today I went back to the doctors, got a new prescription for some different antibiotics, and then spent two hours trying to find a pharmacy that stocked it, since apparently it was discontinued two months ago. Back to the doctors, to be told that I'd have to make another appointment to get a new prescription, and that they wouldn't be able to see me until Monday.

Grr.

Grumblegrumbleparentalunitsgrumble.

Picture this: it's after twelve on Monday night. I've been up since 8 doing boring-as-Hell uni stuff. I'm in bed, asleep. Paul McGann and Yukimura are providing background noise. I'm probably dreaming something indecent involving hobbits.

The phone rings.

A single, malevolent eye appears in the narrow gap between pillow and hair. There's some incoherent muttering and a suggestion of movement under the mountains of duvets.

The answering machine clicks on.

Ears are half-cocked, expecting the sound of whiny Bisexual Wiccan complaining about the latest dramas in her painfully uninteresting life. Instead, I'm hearing the nasal drone of my mother's Irish accent. I stumble out of my cocoon of precious warmth and over to the computer desk, just in time to hear the answerphone beep as she hangs up.

Hmm, thinks I, as I press the replay button.

Through my sleep-befuddled mind I catch the words "emergancy", "need to speak to you" and "call my mobile as soon as you get this". Oh noes! I think. Some terrible calamity hath befallen the Clan Froodle. Perhaps Buzz's gigantic head has eclipsed the sun, bringing about the second Ice Age. Perhaps Wilhelm - or indeed, Pa Froodle - has been arrested for Intense Stupidity. Perhaps Johnathan has impregnated some teenage whore and needs to know where I stashed a supply of wire coat hangers and rubbing alcohol*. Perhaps Mother has finally realised that she's Irish and plans to kill herself from the shame, in which case, this could be my only chance to say goodbye!

So I immediately ring back, and am instantly harangued over a letter from my dissertation supervisor demanding to know why I missed my first meeting. Bear in mind that this letter is addressed to me and dated November 3rd (thus proving that the Leeds Law Dept. could not organise a prayer in a nunnery, since even on the IOM, it doesn't take 12 days for a letter to arrive), and did I mention, it's almost 1am?! What the fuck?! If you insist on invading my privacy by opening and reading my letters, and then calling me up to bitch about the contents, can you at least do it at a reasonable time?

Got very pissy and explained that combination of computer account being locked due to some fuckwittery on the part of the ISS, and being busy enjoying the throwing up and writhing around on the floor in pain aspects of life thanks to goddamn ear infection had caused me to miss not only the meeting, but the emails preceeding them. Parentals eventually placated (some time around 3am) and said goodbye, leaving me to sit up until 5am fuming about thier idiocy.

In future, shall unplug phone before going to bed.

*Fun Fact: there is nowhere to get an abortion on the Isle of Man. You have to go to Liverpool to get one.