75% Pissed, 25% Contemplative

Yes, this pic would more appropriately be positioned as a mood icon or userpic. But ya know what? I haven't gotten around to getting a paid Livejournal account or configuring such things (as in figuring out how to reduce the file size down to fit). It hasn't inconvenienced me enough yet. After all the time I've been a free LJ user, it's probably about time I coughed up the $20 for a year of use with all the fun added features. But it probably won't happen today.

Kind of like my 'locker' at work. I have a 1 foot cubic space I can actually call my own. It's gotten so gloriously full of messy crap, it would almost be like the passing of an age to clean it up now. It too has not inconvenienced me enough to do anything about it.

Nope, this is not the professional, airbrushed gem as some of the wonderful icons I've seen out there. When I've had years of practice and figured out Paint and Photoshop, then we'll see what happens. And if it doesn't look 'professional' to stick it in the body of the entry...well, I all I have to say is talk to the digit.

I have not one, but TWO hair-tearing earworms at the moment: Jean-Paul's 'Temperature', and Judas Priest's 'Turbo Lover'. And my brain, which is incapable of retrieving a piece of useful information when required is still somehow talented enought to play them both at the SAME TIME.

Hey, what's your local workers' union done for you lately? Dad used to say unions are nothing more than a symptom of bad management. I can't find anything about 3 decades later to base a disagreement of that statement on. To make a long story short, one of the large unions at the hospital decided to take it upon themselves recently to check out how the lab has handled MLT and MT job placement/hirings/numbers of each position. In very general terms, MT's have more schooling. MLT's have less. In our lab, both designations have been performing the same job for years. All the same complex tasks, running the same instruments, crossmatching the same hairy antibody problems in the Blood Bank. Well the almighty union now says that's wrong. Not only are MLT's suddenly less capable than an MT, they can't become an MT (through more schooling) until an MT position happens to become available in the lab. So they can go through 2+ more years of school, train to do the exact same job, but they will still have to accept the lower wages of an MLT until such time as an opening becomes available. Whenever that might happen.

No, it doesn't directly affect me. I've always been an MT. But I'm watching two coworkers going through a tough online program to get their MT degree in the hopes that they will some day earn higher wages. You know, better themselves? Like the American Dream? But the union says, no, they might have to wait even longer. I wouldn't blame them if they left to find jobs elsewhere because of it. But I like them both a lot, so that would suck.

This pissed me off to the marrow of my conservative, union-loathing, Republican bones. Does it take a lot of imagination to wonder why some people take to the anarchistic sheltering hills to avoid living under the government?

Next topic: Weeds. It has come to chemical warfare, people. For 8 years I have avoided spraying chemicals around my ground cover. But the surgical seek and pick method has utterly failed. So this spring I marched outside with a gallon jug of weed killer and went to it. The stuff stinks, and the bullshit spray pump assembly leaks all over the place, dripping on your hand (so I marched back inside the house and snapped on a rubber glove...something I don't mind doing at work, but hate having to do in my home)and other plants you don't want it to touch. But it seems to be working. Hopefully repeat applications will kill the evil dandelions and Satanic mystery weed, and not absorb through my skin and cause cancer.

Zits: Ah yes, a favorite old thing to hate. Twice daily barrages of benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid have made an improvement over the last few weeks. I can't deny this. Yet the zits keep coming. It's like playing that 'Bop-a-Mole' game. You whack one place and up pops the plastic mole in another. Only in this case, pimples. Surely every last square millimeter of my face has hosted a zit over the last few years. Can this please, please stop? With all these washes and exfoliating microbeads and renewing toners and acids and repairing lotions, I goddamn well ought to have the skin of a magazine cover model. Right this instant. Dammit.

I fired a volley in the War On Punctuation this morning. Oh, you didn't hear about that war? Sorry, the War On Terror gets so much more press. Anyway, I was browsing the hospital's home page looking for something, and in that brief browsing, I re-noticed a punctuation error that has become my lifetime, signature pet peeve: the apostrophe placed where it doesn't belong, in a plural form of a noun with no omitted letters. I'd seen it before, got pissed, and then went on to something else. Well, this morning I started writing. Not knowing where else to write, I went to the hospital's on line Suggestion Box. And figuring Housekeeping and all the other departments probably weren't appropriate recipients, I addressed it to Information Systems. It was simply a call to notice the error, why it was wrong, how it made the hospital look like an ignoramus, and a plea to let me volunteer to be the Home Page Proofreader. If they wouldn't let me be the Official Home Page Proofreader, then would someone please, please, please learn to use (or NOT) an apostrophe properly?

Yes, there are bigger problems out there in the world. And one should pick her battles. But I picked this one years ago, and now it's my mountain, dammit. For people who have been raised all their lives with English as their native tongue, who should be familiar with the rules, and in a position to be posting text in a *public* place...for cryin' out loud!

We'll see if I hear anything back. I dutifully wrote down the reference number and noted the obligatory canned 'We take your suggestions seriously and need some time to research your problem, yadayada..." comment.

I would love to find out who is responsible for composing the text of the hospital home page. If I do, I will take my copy of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' by Lynne Truss and whap them smartly over the head with it.