In lieu of my rant about the upcoming elections...

...I'll let an expert do the talking.

In other news, can someone pleast explain to my computer iliterate ass just how one goes about posting Youtube videos on ones blog, cause this page doesn't want to let me do it.

Also, after some renegotations with the boss o' the school, I'll now be working until March 14th. then its freedom baby...FREEEEEDDDDOOOOMMMMM!!!!!

Limbo lower now.

(<---REALLY GOOD MOVIE)

So thanks to Emblita's perfectly timed shabuku, I turned in my letter of resignation from the school on Monday.

I then promptly fell ill and spent the next 36 hours in bed.

It felt great, printing that thing out, slapping the ol' John Hancock on the line and all, but the fact that the principal was so busy that I wound up having to send it to her via email and interoffice was a serious anti-climax. Like having your grandma walk in on you mid-wank.

I keep waiting for a phone call or an email or just to be called to the carpet, but nothing, nada, zilch.

Which I guess is a good thing, I mean, I'd hate to wind up in a shouting match or storming out or anything, considering thatI'll be working in the same buildling at least until March, but I would like to have it all signed seal and finished.

The thing is, despite applying for numerous other jobs, I'm kinda looking foward to next month, only working about 60% but earning the same if not slightly more moolah. Having time in the mornings to work on the place, to write, to swim, to fart around with projects too long delayed.

I can't wait.

In other news, during my feverish limbo on my new little couch (Thanks Embla and Klaus) I wound up watching movies like mad including Walk the Line (really good but short of brilliant) Kinsey (brilliant!) Hannibal Rising (complete and total shitstorm of badness) and Hellboy (which I've watched a zillion times and love).

I really don't know why I felt the need to tack that on to this post...anywho...

Update: I finally got the word, I'm officially on short-time now. They tried the whole passive-agressive bs with me ("we really want you here, why are you leaving us?") and so on, but its nice to know that I'm gone. Solid gone.

Not exactly bitching about the job per se...

...but I am hiding out in the computer lab with the door locked, trying to avoid the massive drama that has the janitorial staff at each other's throats, and the possibility of getting landed with more shitty grunt work.

I spent my morning doubled over in a crawl-space under the basement stair schlepping broken computers the school can't bring itself to part with into a microscopic storage area.

This is what I went to college for?

Not that it surprised me. Its parent-teacher day at the school. So yours truly finds himself, as usual demoted to "janitor's bitch". God I'm sick of it.

Thankfully there will be a little less of it soon. I talked to the various bosses and got it set up to split my day evenly between school and AST, which should pull in more money, and equal a bit less annoyance for moi.

Still, if I get a good offer from any of those places I've applied for, my ass is outa here so fast the sonic boom will shatter all the fancy-pancy new glass partitions they've slapped up all over the school.

I won't burn my bridges for nothing, but swear to Dog, give me 180-200K a month, an 8 hour day and free weekends, and I'll napalm those motherfuckers. Thermite. White Fucking Phosphorus. Burn!

OK...now that I've got that out of my system...

Less is More...

I'm still job hunting, but...

Turns out that the After School Thingy (longtime blogadytes, if such strange and wondrous beasts exist, will remember the AST) pays a considerably higher wage for considerably less onerous work.

So for the sort term at least, I'm thinking I'll hop ship and throw my lot in with them for 56% of my work, which will make me a lot more money, while sparing me the ongoing annoyance of middle-school kids. I'll try to keep the my mornings in the library...but start an hour later making it an 8 hour day. I already work an 8 hour day, difference being that I loose out on the better paid work by punching out at 4pm instead of punching in a 9 and working til 5.

Now I know the mythical creatures haunting this blog remember just how much I hated the AST last year. Of course, this was when I was 1:Basically running it myself for less money than the never-present boss got and without any of the resources at her disposal, and 2: Doing such a good (though maniacally tiring) job of it that the boss started to tell people I was a drunk and mentally unstable in order to keep people from asking the logical question as to why I wasn't running the place.

The new boss-lady at AST is friggin' awesome though. So beat the old ones record for "Hopping up on a table to dance at a work party", not to mention that she runs the place less like a prison and more like a playground and *gasp* SHOWS UP AND DOES HER JOB!!!

If the school, who seem to think that I should be grateful for all the shit-work they continue to pile on me in excess of what I've been contracted for doesn't like it, I'll just work at AST and use my mornings for remodeling, working out, and writing.

Fuck 'em I say. Right up their academic little booties.

Be it resolved...

that in this year of our Lord (hey ya gotta admit, that's worth worshiping) 2008, I Sma the ageing expatriot punk hereby commit myself to the following:

1: Quitting the current job (if my overwhelming disdain for it doesn't get my punk ass fired first) and finding gainful employment that meets the following criteria:

A: No Kids, No Mentally Ill, No Geriatric or Handicapped Clients. Not because I'm callous, but because I'm burnt-out and can't summon up the necessary empathy to do the work properly.

B: Pays more than my current position, or, pays the same but involves less stress and shorter hours.

C: Is something I like.

2: Finish the friggin' apartment. I need a kitchen and a shower and I won't feel like I actually have a home until I have both. Bourgeois of me as all hell, I know.

3: Write more. More bloggin', more letters, more short stories, hell, even take a swing at something longer. Also get back into making music more...which with the help/threat of Jimmy, shouldn't be an issue.

4: Save up some cash so I can finally go visit people on the mainland. Ying and Ragnar, Nín and Anna Magda, Tatja and Lasse, Andres and Claudia, Myriam and Riitta and all the rest.

5: Keep working out, but not to the point where I get all psycho about it. I get psycho enough being a kiddy-jailer all day.

The Good, The Bad, and the Completely Fucked Up.

So today started off sucky.

The kid I tutor in English in the learning lab was so incredibly angered by my daring to request that he at least try to answer questions in English that he loudly and angrily told me to fuck off (fokkaðu off!) before going on a tirade about how he can't be expected to answer questions in a language he totally doesn't understand.

This coming from a kid who can quote The Simpsons Movie verbatum.

After yet another day of little or no help in the lunch room, which forces me to eat my lunch surrounded by screaming teenagers (though not the little delinquent from the learning lab...he eats three meals a day at the corner sjóppa) because my lunch break is taken up with cleaning the disaster zone that is a post 1-4th grade lunch room, I threw on my coat to sneak off to the store, both to down a bit of carbonated caffeine and have a well deserved smoke.

On my way off of school grounds, I ran into a kid hiding outside the playground. I told him to get his ass back to the school strax, but turns out he's hiding from another of our "special" kids, who I discovered stalking the playground with a fist-sized chunk of concrete in his hand, totally set on bashing in the other kid's head. When I finally forcibly disarmed him, and told him never ever to pull anything like that again, he told me to "steinhjálti kjafti helvitis pólverji þítt". There was also some commentary on how ugly, boring, mean, and stupid I am.

About now, I can hear my beloved blogadytes wondering where the "good" is in all of this.

Well, simply put, walking back from the store, I discovered a soaking wet, yet perfectly legal chunk of tender totalling 5,000 króna.

Apparently this was karma's way of trying to brighten my day. I just wish it had seen fit to make that lotto ticket I bought Saturday a winner.

So, needless to say, I'm considering my employment options again.

I mean, there are jobs out there where you can go months at a time without someone screaming obscenities at you! There are jobs where one doesn't have to disarm deranged individuals armed with improvised weapons intent on inflicting splatter-gore on their fellow man, and then deal with irate phone calls from their parents claiming that you're "bullying" said would-be assailant. There are jobs where one's ears don't ring from all the screaming all afternoon. There are jobs where spit and snot on the floor are exceptions, not the rule. Hell, I could get my Yankee ass a job as a security guard and I'd still have more peace and quiet at work.

Not to mention that there are jobs out there that pay a living wage...