how much abuse can the English language take?

Ok, so most funeral directors can't spell, that's a given, but occasionally their crapness at the English language plumbs new depths.

Every day I'll come across several examples wacky spelling, usually I can put these down to the FD badly deciphering doctors' handwriting (admittedly some of the worst in the world), an example being the constant spelling of pneumonia as 'pheumonia'. Which is understandable - if somewhat stupid, I mean just think about it for just a couple of seconds would you? What the hell is 'pheumonia'? Oh, could that perhaps actually be 'pneumonia'? That common respiratory illness that elderly people often kick-off from?Dumbasses..

I've also had 'puemomia', 'pbunomia', and 'pnellmoria'. The inventiveness is astounding.

This one takes the cake. The damn handwriting isn't that bad either. They managed make 'Preomolia' out of it.

Morons. I am surrounded by morons.

I hope it's not catching...

daily whinge

I love having new excuses to hate my workmates. Not as if there aren't already So.Damn.Many reasons..

The woman that sits two stations over (yes, I work in open-plan cubicle hell - Dilbert has it easy) not only has an annoying speech impediment (I'm never above making fun of the afflicted) and a nasal drip which she deals with by constantly sniffing (which makes me want to KILL, with extra gore..), but it also turns outshe's a rabid right-winger.

Ahhh.. that's better, I can just relax into loathing her without feeling guilty that it's just about minor irritations.

I'm so tuff... I get my mother to iron my shrts - while I'm wearing them

Anyone still remember George Smilovici? Anyone? No?

Anyway..

I'm new to ironing, never before having had a job that required 'office-style' presentableness. Well, that's not exactly true - some of my previous jobs have actually required that but since they never enforced the rule I chose to ignore it. Perhaps they realised that getting me to look presentable was pissing in the wind so let me lapse into my usual scruffy decrepitude.

But this job, being an office drone, has a relatively strict dresscode (which is strange because we never need to actually see our clients). Hence my having to spend an inordinate amount of time every morning trying to get a shirt flattened. I think my near-death experience with an iron a few weeks ago was the universe's way of telling me to get a different job.

My issue this time is with the dially thing on irons. Y'know, the speed setting. Or at least I assumed it was a speed setting - and a discussion with my workmates lead me to realise that most guys see it as such. Jack it up to as hot as possible and the ironing goes quicker. Simple.

Apparently, I've been reliably informed by some of my female coworkers, this setting has something to do with different types of clothing. Which I think must be rubbish because there isn't a setting for 'shirt' on my iron.

If you're going to make an iron for the average guy there should a speed setting going from 'fast' through 'faster' to 'fastest', and another dial with 'shirts', 'trousers', and 'ties' on it. Perhaps another one for 'damp socks'. That's all we need.

the name game

One of my secret pleasures at work is renaming people. I'm so crap at remembering names that I often find myself making up nicknames for myworkmates.

Currently at BDM I work with:

Shrek (although he's not actually green, or that tall, he is pretty ogreish)
Mrs Doubtfire (not actually a female impersonator, just a female impersonator impersonator)
The Queen of Spades (so-called for her penchant for wearing only black and the fact she also works in deaths)
Mary-Tran (coz she *really* looks like she used to be a guy..)
Little Miss Giggle (c'mon, you must've read the Mr Men/Little Miss books as a kid)
The Gay-Pole (he's about the same height and width as a may-pole and he's gay. He's not Polish)
Mistress Marrianne (she lashes poor Stan all the time, but then he seems to like it..)

I'm working on the rest. Some of them lack enough personality to be caricatured, which makes the job a little more difficult...

work notes..

Possibly a bad name for a paediatrician - Dr Cuckoo.

Worst spelling mistake today: just had a dead guy whose pension details were given as 'Aged Penis'.. *sniggering* Yeah it's puerile but you gotta laugh at something in this job. Anyway, he was 95 when he karked, either spelling would be correct.

Inhumed a woman who'd been married to Ronald McDonald today.
Imagine that - having to deal with all those bright red hairs in the shower, huge tubs of red shoe polish, him stealing your lipstick all the time.. Not to mention when his mates come over for a barbie and the inevitable fights he'd get into with bloody Hamburgler.

Gawd, someone's put the SMH full-page picture of Princess Mary & her crotch cricket on the fridge here. I'm having to try *really* hard not to draw horns and a goatee on the spawn...

Peewee?! Who names their kid Peewee?!!

late as in the late Dentarthurdent

Anyone who knows me will be well aware of my congenital lateness. It's a genetic disorder.

I'm routinely 10 to 30 minutes late for work every morning, in fact I'm usually leaving the house at about the time I'm supposed to be at work. On the good days I'm only about 5 minutes late (happens about twice a month), on the bad days it can be as much as 45-50 minutes.

Remarkably enough this seems to go completely unnoticed by my bosses. Despite the constant reminders at team meetings (now there's a euphemism for 'complete waste of time') for everyone to stick to the 8:30 - 4:30 schedule, and warnings about fudging time sheets.

I always make up the time at the end of the day or at some stage in the week and, since I generally work through lunch hours and breaks, my conscience is never troubled. Despite the occasional hour & a half lunch break with friends... I'm of the opinion that if you do the work well, keep up the stats (gah.. fucking numbers) and are generally professional in your dealings with clients it doesn't really matter what hours you work.

This view tends not to be held by some of the higher muckety-mucks: those who're all about the numbers usually. But so far I've managed to avoid any kind of censure, or have my work habits even questioned.

I was having lunch with an escapee from BDM (she works as a lawyer now - step up or step down? hmmm...) and one of my superiors the other week and gossiping about the weirdos we work with (as you do) when the subject of time sheets & hours came up. She mentioned that things were getting pretty strict and everyone had been limited to working only their exact hours these days. Then she looked at me and with a puzzled expression said "All except for you.. Why is that?"

Fortunately I managed to steer the conversation elsewhere before she had a chance to think it over.. *whew*

I think I must have Stealth capabilities at work. Long may that last...

I hear the words screaming in pain..

Of all the crap I have to deal with, the semi-literate funeral directors are perhaps the most annoying (if least important). I *hate* it when people mangle the English language..

I can understand people getting the spelling of atherosclerosis a little wrong, and hyperkalaemia, myelofibrosis, lymphoblastic leukaemia, and hypercholesterolaemia are perhaps difficult to the untrained eye. But the number of them who manage to misspell simple things like 'accident','severe', 'disease'. or even 'arrest' is mind boggling.

As a hair-tearing example (well, scalp scratching in my case) this FD managed to spell the relatively straightforward 'Non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus' thus:

none- insucin dopondont diabotes mercitios

WTF?!

What LANGUAGE is that?!

Stop it! Just STOP! You're driving me INSANE!

*bangs head on keyboard*

bloody typical..

You are Pig Pen!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

But I'm really not that dirty. Honest!
Well, perhaps a little - but only in the good ways... ;)

screw you guys, I'm going home..

Why is it that when they ask me to work overtime I say "Oh, sorry - I can't tonight" and look pained as if I would if I could? When the fact of the matter is that you'd have to threaten to hold my testicles over a Bunsen burner whilst forcing me to watch a Hilary Duff movie to get me to stay late..

I should just get honest and say "shove your pus-filled carbuncle of a job, I'm getting out of here before I go Columbine on you alllllll!!!".

tragic? sweet? don't think about it..

Just had an elderly couple who died within days of each other:

He'd been sick for years but she died fairly suddenly, then within 3 days he shuffled off after her.

I can't decide if it's a beautiful thing, well - as beautiful as death can be.

Does it mean that they were so close he couldn't live without her?

Or perhaps that she was the only thing keeping him alive, actively or passively, and when she died he had no reason/drive to carry on.

Perhaps this means that he was holding on, possibly in pain (pulmonary fibrosis isn't pleasant), until she was gone. So death was a release..

Or perhaps the shock of having his wife of 65 years die was too much for him.

There's so many ways to read the scant information we receive here, so many ways it can be spun. Most people I'm sure want to put a rosy, happy tint on it - of course, since death is upsetting enough without trying to ponder the disturbing or ugly possibilities it raises.

There's always the possibility that theirs was an abusive co-dependent relationship and her death robbed him of the reason to live, having been in their cycle of hate for so many years there was nothing for him to live for, nothing to do, no-one to torment...

But then, perhaps theirs was one of the great true loves, ordinary people with an extraordinary bond. He was a draughtsman, she a dressmaker, theirs a happy long life, the two inextricably entwined..

Perhaps I think too much for this job.

inner/outer

I'm an introvert generally. And intensely private, guarded about my neuroses.

Which begs the question as to why the hell I blog, really.

I made a half-arsed attempt at anonymity when I first began - the whole 'fishboy' moniker, etc. But it didn't last long, people found out, friends and family began visiting the site. Which lead to inevitable self-censorship. Well, more accurately, even more censorship than I normally perform.

Then I started to get a fairly sizeable readership. Well, by my terms at least: I'm no Avatar, Sarsparilla Vanessa, or Fraser. Not even as well visited as ysengrin, Michelle, or Claire. But having even 15 to 20 returning visitors a day is freaky enough for me. The imagined pressure is too much for me.

Hence my lack of anything resembling a 'real' blog post on Effing for months.

The knowledge that people are reading my words and knowing, even a little, about the workings of my mind and my view of the world is a little terrifying. Add to that the fear of being misconstrued, of people not really understanding my PoV.. it's all a bit much.

The scariest bit is the possibility that they might actually figure me out. That I'm not as complex, conflicted, twisted and interesting as I think I am. Heh, that's all bullshit really, I don't consider myself that complex, although I appear to be more interesting because I conceal so much of myself.

I don't know where this is going.. Just another dissection of my neuroses, except this one's a lttle more public than the usual introspective self-flagellation.

Don't worry, I'll go back to commenting on dead people's funny names and bizarre occupations shortly.

daily diversions

Working in the shitty city and spending my day interacting only with other office drones (on the whole - I have a small selection that I invest more time in) I like to play a few games with people.

Not in any big way, I don't pretend to be a secret agent, put on accents or anything too weird. And not with my workmates, I have to spend too much time with them. Just little things: like making eye-contact with people I pass on the street, seeing who will hold it as we pass each other and seeing the change of expressions on their faces as they do.

I always flash them a big smile and it's endlessly interesting to see how people deal with complete strangers smiling at them. There's a psychology thesis in there somewhere..

cliche

Oh no, that's just too much:

Dead guy right now called Gerald Stiff.

Takes all the fun out of it when they make it that easy..

Turns out his occupation was 'beaterman'!

there's a Dire Straits song in there somewhere..

I'm suffering from industrial diarrhea: work is giving me the shits.

Oww! I feeel... dead

In celebrity name-alike news: James Brown is dead!

That wife-beating sweat machine, famous for such poignant lyrics as "Good God!", "Huhh!", and "I don't know karate but I know ka-razy", died of respiratory failure.

He'd also recently suffered a fractured neck of his left femur. Possibly from doing too many splits on stage.

my karma ran over my dogma

One of the main problems with my job (apart from the stultifying mundaneness) was driven home to me today.

After spending quite a lot of time over several days sorting out the details of a particular death certificate: getting the original returned & amended, finding the correct address, verifying details, placating agitated funeral directors, etc (and doing several dodgy things with the databases that aren't strictly allowed but that with any luck won't be noticed..), I
finally got the thing straight and sent off. At no extra charge to funeral director or bereaved.

What occurred to me, as the funeral director was effusively thanking me and telling me I'd made an old woman happy (the wife of the deceased)(which I doubt much since part of the problem was her advanced dementia and inability to remember anything coherently for long) and that they appreciated it too, was (sorry about theses sentences - they make sense in
*my* head), that no matter how good a job I do, how many extra miles I go, or paper-cuts I sustain in the course of my duties, my work *never* makes anyone happy. The best I can hope for is making a bad time slightly less awful.

Mine is a job of minimising pain, reducing negativity. Never actually increasing happiness.

easier to call them to dinner..

Strangest detail of a deceased today: the woman who had three children all called Pasquale.
There was an elder sibling called Francoise, but after that misfire she obviously hit upon the name that fits all.

Still, it doesn't quite top the previous record of having 5 children named Jacques..

name your pests

Apparently, according to one of my weirdo workmates, all ants are called Lucy and all cockroaches are called Neville.

I don't know if this is going to make it harder or easier to kill the little buggers:

"Die Neville! You disease carrying swine!"
etc..

fun with the deceased

*Best* occupation for a long time:

Mulder.

I think they meant to put 'moulder' but I like that one better. I wonder what sort of things are involved in that job? Formulating wild conspiracy theories, investigating weird things and hanging out with beautifulredheads...

Sounds like a hellish job.

worship the units?

From BeliefNet (who knew such a thing existed?):

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all sharedby this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in the order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears onthis list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

Rankings:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (99%)
3. Liberal Quakers (84%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (79%)
5. Nontheist (70%)
6. Neo-Pagan (69%)
7. Theravada Buddhism (69%)
8. New Age (57%)
9. Reform Judaism (54%)
10. Taoism (52%)
11. Bahá'í Faith (49%)
12. Mahayana Buddhism (48%)
13. Orthodox Quaker (44%)
14. New Thought (44%)
15. Scientology (43%)
16. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (42%)
17. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (41%)
18. Sikhism (39%)
19. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (31%)
20. Jainism (27%)
21. Eastern Orthodox (22%)
22. Islam (22%)
23. Orthodox Judaism (22%)
24. Roman Catholic (22%)
25. Hinduism (19%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (18%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (16%)

So there you go. I'm a Unitarian. I've inhumed quite a few of them but I never knew what the biz was before now.

I still think it's all just a bit of a fantasy..

Props to Krimsonlake.

soul fire

Top of the list of awesome bands/performers I've missed this year: Lee "Scratch" Perry.

I'm kicking myself so hard.

I didn't even know he was down this way until Eroica called me from the gig in Christchurch the other weekend: she just held the phone up so I could get a wee taste of the Upsetter, live.

It wasn't enough.

And, dammit, his New Zealand dates were after his Australian ones so I'd already lost my chance.

You'd think, living in Sydney where all the bands play, I'd manage to get out and see more. But no: so far this year I've managed to miss Moving Units, Interpol, Spoon, Bo Diddley, Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, Nick Cave, etc-farking-cetera.

The bugger about it is that I don't see much change in the near future due to extreme penury...

City-living is arse if you're not into the whole sell-your-soul-to-the-rat-race thing. Worst of both worlds: proximity to all the cool shit but no resources to experience them, too far away from the quiet areas to get to them in your meagre free-time.

I need to go home.

RIP Frankenstein

Who knew Frankenstein's bride was called Vera?

Or that they got married in Paris?
Ahh, how romantic: I can just see them strolling through the Arc de Triomphe, spring sunlight glinting off the bolt in his neck..