En garde, finally

More than two months ago, I broke down and fed my lingerie demons again: I ordered the infamous Vargas Dress from Kiss Me Deadly, an item so popular that there was a waiting list for delivery.

After limping home from an especially brutal shaolin class, I saw that it had finally arrived. I'd forgotten about it, what with my mind so cluttered with newish job. No shiny objects at work, but I have to work in HTML nowadays, which has been a rather steep learning curve.

This didn't stop me from trying it on as soon as I got indoors. And while I don't think I look as good as the model , it's very much my style. Kind of retro, kind of black. A bit of lace at the top, but not too much. I'm very pleased with it.

(Some amusing trivia: I still have my mask from my foil fencing years, and it's quite similar to the one she's holding.)

Stone the bloody crows!

I was reading PR Wire today and spotted this:

Qantas today announced it will launch direct services from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) from 16 May 2011, giving Australians unprecedented access to destinations across the United States.

The route will see Qantas operate direct outbound flights from Sydney to DFW (as QF7), returning to Sydney via Brisbane (as QF8). DFW is the primary hub of Qantas' fellow oneworld alliance member, American Airlines, and the two carriers will soon seek to expand their commercial relationship.

Qantas will offer four return flights to DFW each week, featuring a three-class Boeing 747 aircraft. Direct Sydney-San Francisco (SFO) services will be discontinued on 14 May 2011, but SFO will remain part of Qantas' network as a codeshare destination.



The Poison Dwarf cowers at my presence

It's more like cowering at my emails, but that's cool.

For the last two weeks I've been attempting to order some new art for my departmental memos. These are called banners or mastheads, depending on where you went to design school.

In the past, my former department here - Corporate Marketing - handled and designed these. But after two weeks of my original request being forwarded all over the Marketing department, I finally learned that Corporate Marketing doesn't handle these anymore. Instead, they go up to New York to someone I've never heard of.

I've just penned an enjoyable, short e-mail to my ex-tormentor, P.D.*, and politely asked her why it has taken two weeks for me to learn about this change. Her apologetic response warmed me. Bwa ha ha.

Payback's a bitch, isn't it?

* See key to characters at right.

The wit and wisdom of Friedrich Engels

Sometimes I spend my lunch break reading books online at a site called Project Gutenberg. Everything is out of copyright, but this doesn't bother me; there's plenty of classic stuff for liberal arts majors to pore over.

Recently I began reading Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.  For those who tend to lump Engels and his buddy Marx together, spending an hour or two reading Engels illuminates how different they were.

This doesn't mean that they don't have their own strange little prejudices. Although Engels first appears to feel all proletariat are treated equally unfairly, he has this to say about my ancestors:

True, the Irish character, which under some circumstances, is comfortable only in the dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of Irish in every great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must gradually sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is nothing specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all great towns.

Comfortable only in the dirt? One could take this as a mild insult I suppose, although I prefer to think of it as describing bogtrotters as a race that prefers to live off the grid. Futuristic thinking bunch, we are.

While I'm not off the grid yet, I'm giving it some serious thought. One needs to wean themselves off of modern addictions gradually, so I'm going to break AT&T's heart next week and have them switch off my television and home phone.

Why Facebook is the scourge of the Internet

People send me embarrassing photos from elementary school. Like this one (I'm in the poncho).