ariosto In a bus on Taharoto Rd. One of the windows is open and the bus is suddenly filled with the smell of KFC as we wait for the lights.
I’m private
So last weekend, my girlfriend Poppy and I broke up. I've known it was coming for a while. We've been having problems on and off for the last year (we'd been dating for about 3 and a half years) but we decided to tough it out and see if things got better.
I'm a lot less pissed off now than I was last week, when she had simply decided that rather than talk to me like an adult, she'd just spend the week avoiding me completely. We finally sat down, and I told her that I knew she'd been breaking up with me for a long while now, and it was time to end it.
I'm a little sad about it all, but I've had a lot of time to get used to the idea. I'd rather not be facing another Valentine's Day single, but hey, that's what the Internet is for, right? Bring on the cat videos!
I'm a lot less pissed off now than I was last week, when she had simply decided that rather than talk to me like an adult, she'd just spend the week avoiding me completely. We finally sat down, and I told her that I knew she'd been breaking up with me for a long while now, and it was time to end it.
I'm a little sad about it all, but I've had a lot of time to get used to the idea. I'd rather not be facing another Valentine's Day single, but hey, that's what the Internet is for, right? Bring on the cat videos!
One of the weird things about having done grad studies in philosophy is that when people find out, they suddenly have a whole new bunch of preconceptions about what I must be like. I mean, I know that every little factoid about anyone has that effect, but it's the degree to which attitudes change for this one specific thing that kind of pisses me off.
The major assumption people make, of course, is that I must be super intelligent. Um, no. Don't get me wrong, I'm smart enough, but I failed Introduction to Computer Science at uni because I didn't "get" OOLs the entire semester. (But fear not ladies-I taught myself later, and now I'm here for all your coding needs. Rawr.)
The real problem here is that people tend to see "intelligence" as just another kind of dick-size; anyone with a bigger dick is to be feared and/or hated, anyone with a smaller one is to be mocked and or looked down upon. But intelligence doesn't work that way-IQ, for example, only measures a very small subset of the skills most people actually use when they think about things. Even in something as supposedly as "IQ-oriented" as philosophy, the best philosophers aren't necessarily the ones with the highest IQs-every single philosopher does what they do differently, and brings something new to the table from their own perspective, whether it be a vivid imagination, a way with words, a facility for easy explanations, whatever. You can't reduce any of that down to an easily comparable measure, so the dick-comparing competitions are (usually) kept to a minimum.
The reason I mention all this is that over the last couple of weeks, I've realised that the source of a lot of problems I have at work is this intellectual dick-comparing bullshit. I have been in the same position-a secondment as team leader to a bunch of engineers in a phone/internet company-for about eighteen months now, and I've pissed my fair share of people off. I developed quite a reputation for being someone who knew his shit and didn't have a lot of time for people who didn't take the time to understand the services we sell (I've made a few people cry, which if you know me, you'll realise is pretty much the exact opposite of how I am out in the real world.)
The thing is, I earned that fucking animosity by doing stuff, by the choices that I made, and I can deal with it because it's mine. Recently though, there's been some different stuff come up-suggestions I make being shot down without consideration, requests I lodge being declined without explanation, and a whole bunch of schoolground stuff. Now if you're not a New Zealander you probably don't realise this, but corporate NZ is very, very hostile to anyone with a degree in anything except law or business. I mean, unless it's a software company, even the coders don't have degrees half the time.
Most of this crap has been coming from my boss, who I've had a rough relationship with for a long time-hardly surprising when he put me in charge of a team with less than half the people it used to have and a workload that has tripled in the last two years. But, it turns out, recently he's gone beyond thinking I'm a bad manager (which I am-to quote McNulty, "Fuck the bosses") but into also trying to intellectually one-up me at every opportunity. I didn't really get that this was what he was trying to do because, contrary to popular opinion, I'm neither a genius nor a mind reader, but a talk with the guy I replaced as manager cleared this right up. He's always had a reputation as being one of the few people in the company with a degree, and thus (supposedly) "smarter" than everyone else. He's known about my degree since he hired me, but recently the topic came up in a discussion between him, the CEO and several members of the board, who all suddenly went from seeing me as "that sucky manager" to "that really smart guy in a dead end position" when they found out I once spent my days arguing about whether or not we could ever be said to know anything.
Now, he's suddenly started seeing me as a threat, which is so ridiculous it's not even funny. I don't want to rise any higher up the corporate food chain (and actually fought against ending up where I am currently because I was happy where I was) but now, because I'm "the smart guy", he has to take the time to constantly show me up as being "not really that smart". Which, as we have established, I am not.
...fuck. I did not mean to turn this into a rant about work. Sorry! Have some Maru to make up for it:
Now, off to look at some tits.
EDIT: On review, I have decided that what this blog post actually needs is more Brushie:
The major assumption people make, of course, is that I must be super intelligent. Um, no. Don't get me wrong, I'm smart enough, but I failed Introduction to Computer Science at uni because I didn't "get" OOLs the entire semester. (But fear not ladies-I taught myself later, and now I'm here for all your coding needs. Rawr.)
The real problem here is that people tend to see "intelligence" as just another kind of dick-size; anyone with a bigger dick is to be feared and/or hated, anyone with a smaller one is to be mocked and or looked down upon. But intelligence doesn't work that way-IQ, for example, only measures a very small subset of the skills most people actually use when they think about things. Even in something as supposedly as "IQ-oriented" as philosophy, the best philosophers aren't necessarily the ones with the highest IQs-every single philosopher does what they do differently, and brings something new to the table from their own perspective, whether it be a vivid imagination, a way with words, a facility for easy explanations, whatever. You can't reduce any of that down to an easily comparable measure, so the dick-comparing competitions are (usually) kept to a minimum.
The reason I mention all this is that over the last couple of weeks, I've realised that the source of a lot of problems I have at work is this intellectual dick-comparing bullshit. I have been in the same position-a secondment as team leader to a bunch of engineers in a phone/internet company-for about eighteen months now, and I've pissed my fair share of people off. I developed quite a reputation for being someone who knew his shit and didn't have a lot of time for people who didn't take the time to understand the services we sell (I've made a few people cry, which if you know me, you'll realise is pretty much the exact opposite of how I am out in the real world.)
The thing is, I earned that fucking animosity by doing stuff, by the choices that I made, and I can deal with it because it's mine. Recently though, there's been some different stuff come up-suggestions I make being shot down without consideration, requests I lodge being declined without explanation, and a whole bunch of schoolground stuff. Now if you're not a New Zealander you probably don't realise this, but corporate NZ is very, very hostile to anyone with a degree in anything except law or business. I mean, unless it's a software company, even the coders don't have degrees half the time.
Most of this crap has been coming from my boss, who I've had a rough relationship with for a long time-hardly surprising when he put me in charge of a team with less than half the people it used to have and a workload that has tripled in the last two years. But, it turns out, recently he's gone beyond thinking I'm a bad manager (which I am-to quote McNulty, "Fuck the bosses") but into also trying to intellectually one-up me at every opportunity. I didn't really get that this was what he was trying to do because, contrary to popular opinion, I'm neither a genius nor a mind reader, but a talk with the guy I replaced as manager cleared this right up. He's always had a reputation as being one of the few people in the company with a degree, and thus (supposedly) "smarter" than everyone else. He's known about my degree since he hired me, but recently the topic came up in a discussion between him, the CEO and several members of the board, who all suddenly went from seeing me as "that sucky manager" to "that really smart guy in a dead end position" when they found out I once spent my days arguing about whether or not we could ever be said to know anything.
Now, he's suddenly started seeing me as a threat, which is so ridiculous it's not even funny. I don't want to rise any higher up the corporate food chain (and actually fought against ending up where I am currently because I was happy where I was) but now, because I'm "the smart guy", he has to take the time to constantly show me up as being "not really that smart". Which, as we have established, I am not.
...fuck. I did not mean to turn this into a rant about work. Sorry! Have some Maru to make up for it:
Now, off to look at some tits.
EDIT: On review, I have decided that what this blog post actually needs is more Brushie:
This is epic, but it only works if you watch the top video first. It might be a bit boring at first, but trust me, it's worth it. First, the original:
Then, the REMIX:
Then, the REMIX:
I fucking love this song so much. Always have. It's one of the few songs I can sing along to and not sound completely out of tune (I can drop my voice down that low too-not bad for a non-smoker, I guess.)
Oh, what a weekend. Stayed in, kept quiet, watched some Space 1999 with the flatmate (and yes, it sucks as much as you remember) and now I'm still feeling like crap from this cold!
(However, the theme music did kind of rock. I very nearly started dancing on the table, I had to be pulled down before I took off my shirt...)
(However, the theme music did kind of rock. I very nearly started dancing on the table, I had to be pulled down before I took off my shirt...)
At this rate I'll never get my computer to recognise me saying "I would like some fish'n'chips". Tragedy, I tell you!
I also have this really funny relationship with 30 Seconds to Mars. I should hate them (after all, nearly everyone else over the age of 15 does!) but I got hooked by "This Is War" when it was used as a promo for Dragon Age: Origins, and I like to play it when I'm feeling less than perky. It makes me want to go out and kill dragons. (Plus Jared Leto actually seems kind of decent.)
I'm not sure whether this makes me a hipster or not. So confused!
