ranty ranty ranty wheee! I feel so much better now. :D

[dragonlady7]

So.
More on King Arthur, and hover your cursor over the phrase Barry Lyndon moment if you haven't seen that movie and wonder what I'm talking about, because I did a Stupid HTML Trick and it was fun:
Having reflected upon it a while, it did have several things going for it. It was very close to being a good movie.

1. The hawt.
   Whassname's green eyes: Hawt. Ioan Wossname: Pretteh. I could gnaw on Mr. too-many-letters-Welshman's cheekbones all day long. Dude with bad wig (Gawain?): Tasty. And Kiera Knightley? Even emaciated as she is, there's definitely some hawt. God can she pout. Oh the pouting.
2. The shiny.
   Lovely scenery. Beautiful photography. Excellent visuals. Pretty horses. Oh my.
3. The atmosphere.
   Much of it was too, er, soundstageish, but occasionally one did get a Dark Ages kinda feeling, and I am such a sucker for the Dark Ages. Oh so heavily. ('swhy two of my novels are set then, tho' one is fictionalized/fantasyized.) OK, the random peasants with random agricultural instruments suckzored, but the concept appealed to me. Even the inexcplicable "celts" with their odd paintwork.

But.

HIRE SOME GODDAMN WRITERS. There were entire conversations wherein each line of dialogue not only had nothing to do with the next, but also nothing to do with the previous.

Arthur: The lands are green.
Guinevere: What are you afraid of?
Arthur: My duty is to my pants.
Guinevere: This land is my penis.
Arthur: God, I love sandwiches.
Launcelot: I am so totally opposed to homosexuality.
Guinevere: You are living a lie.

I swear to God, Zippy the Pinhead could've written better, more coherent dialogue. My example there actually flows better than the real dialogue. I mean, Guinevere's right, with her last line, there. I was disappointed: Hawt and Pretteh could've had such great, great homoerotic tension, but they had absolutely no meaningful dialogue, and while the writers did take a stab at it, they totally missed. I think the writers for this show were het-loving (but only on principle) asexual chimps. And there wasn't much the actors could do about it, unless perhaps just ad-libbing a snog or two. Ohh, that would've totally saved the movie. It totally broke my heart when after the big climax Hawt comes running over and Pretteh is lying there totally dead and he doesn't even have a Barry Lyndon moment (or even an Aragorn Boromir moment) and snog him. Nothing???!!! NO SNOG???!! It broke my heart, it did-- was the only reason I was still watching the bloody film, besides curiosity as to how that belt was supposed to remain covering all of Guinevere. UGH! No snog, but instead a really wordy and totally stupid "why god why" exclamation that didn't even look cool. (Silhouette shot, could've been cool, but he was all kinda slouchy, had poor posture, and the line was pretty weak, and so it just wasn't... wasn't worth it.)
Ugh.
In conclusion: Next time, dude, when your best friend's dead, just snog him. It really is the only right thing to do. God, Hollywood, I should not have to be telling you this. My disappointment knows no bounds.

I'm not even that dedicated a slash fan. It's just, way more interesting than the usual Band of Brothers crap.

So yes. Had they Hired A Fucking Writer, this movie would've kicked ass. As is, it was dumb. Sad. And so close. (Give it to meee! Give it to meee! I will write you better script in two days! For cheap! I am so totally serious! And I've never even written a screenplay!)

In other matters, work was tiring, but I stayed late just to spite my one co-worker. When I was hired, she was all, "People always say such terrible things about me! I say, you have to make up your own mind about people! Don't judge me based on what other people say!"
I said, "I usually try to form my own opinions," which is true.
I have formed my own opinion. My opinion is a poor one. She is a very inefficient worker, and spends a lot of time chattering to her customers. While she chatters (unlike me) she does not clean up, and so she doesn't do any dishes. The result is that when I go to pour a beer, there are no beer glasses. So I wind up spending a great deal of time behind the bar, doing dishes, so that I can pour drinks.
In the interim, customers sit down at my tables, and when I don't come over instantly (because I'm busy behind the bar doing my co-worker's dishes so I can use one), they stand up and come up to the bar and order drinks, and my coworker waits on them cheerfully and without hesitation even though she can see fine well that they're coming from my tables.
So I finish the dishes and go out and look around and all the tables are full of people drinking beers. Which I didn't pour them. ARGH. (The worst is that then these people will continue going up to the bar, even if I ask them if they want another-- well, they feel like they're her customers now, and it worked last time. You're in my goddamn section! The only time she'll say "Oh, go sit down and the waitress will come to you" is if they're Spaniards, because Spaniards don't tip. Bitch please.)

Today I did a load of dishes because I urgently needed three beer glasses to pour three beers just ordered from me. I turned the dishwasher on, went to my register and rang up the beers, and when I turned around, the glasses were already gone: the coworker had taken them while my back was turned. I discovered that she didn't even need them: she had taken them and hidden them in the ice at her pouring station. (THERE IS A GLASS COOLER TO PUT THEM IN.) That was the final straw, so when I went to the cash office at the end of my shift I reported that she's been ringing up food on other people's registers so that they don't count in her sales totals (apparently we're taxed on a percentage of our food sales because that's how the gov't estimates our tips for their withholdings). Which she's not supposed to do. But. Still, nobody likes to be a tale-bearer.
I don't really care. Bitch stole a lot of business from me today. That's my pocket. That's my groceries. That's whether I can pay my student loans, rent, and car payments. That's not funny, woman. And that's me forming my own opinion on you. And my opinion is that you need to be fucking fired, and funny enough, that's the opinion of almost everyone else. Huh. Weird. (And yet... they can't get rid of her. Weird. Eerie.)

So.
Sigh.
Club tomorrow. Glorfindel and Ecthelion are speaking to one another again. I have some hopes that they'll help me pass the time constructively.
I also have chapped lips, and have every reason to believe that I am pretty damned dehydrated. But I am too lazy to drink anything.

Oh, today I had a customer bark like a dog to get my attention. I fixed him with an alarmed stare and said, very gently, as if I thought he were crazy, "Can I help you?"
"Uh," he said, obviously a bit embarrassed because his joke had fallen entirely flat, "I was beggin' for a beer."
I continued to stare at him as if he were crazy. "A beer. Okay." I did not smile.
He left a reasonable tip. But really . What kind of a fuckin' monkey actually barks at a waitress? One who wants shitty service, that's who.
Oh, other Bad Customer moment: Woman orders some tea. Husband orders coffee. I ask him, cream or sugar? He says two sweet-n-low. OK. I go get the drinks. Give him his sugar packets. Woman stares at me. "Where is my sugar?"
Um, you didn't ask for any.
I bring her three packets.
She snaps her fingers when I come by again. "I need two or three more packets."
I bring them. She doesn't thank me. "You're welcome," I say sweetly.

Sigh. Ranting keeps me sane. Otherwise things were not so bad today. But nothing like yesterday, when everybody was just so nice. Why can't everybody just be so nice all the time?

And seriously-- all you foreigners, why are you always so goddamn rude when you're travelling? Really truly! It's weird. Say what you want about arrogant US foreign policy, but I do believe Americans are the best tippers in the world.

And oh, Dave moment of the evening:
"You make me sad," I said, in response to something he'd just said.
"You're always sad," he answered.
"What?"
"The whole car ride you just complained about work," he said.
"That's mad, not sad," I said.
"I can't tell the difference," he said.
"What, all my emotions are the same?"
"Pretty much."
"I'm so sad now that I'm going to kick you in the crotch."

Comments

[lorelei-sakti.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the Barry Lyndon movie. For a while, I thought you meant there was kissing in the King Arthur movie, and I was all confused. But you are right, Arthur and Lancelot are teh hawtness. I like that movie even though the dialogue was simple. The acting was good; they did the best they could. Clive Owen made a good King Arthur. He and Lancelot definitely had this "bosom buddies" vibe going on. It was sweet. Guys aren't usually that close.

I like the new spin they put on that legend. It was more Dark Ages and less Magically Merlin.

Keira Knightley rocked. She was good in that fighting scene; I don't care what Jeff Simon says. (He's a movie critic up here.) But I was also wondering how that, erm, outfit was staying on her body while she was moving around so much.

That's the end of my attempt at being a movie critic. Anyway, it's too bad about your coworker. She sucks. She'll get fired eventually. Or you could find out some deep dark secret and blackmail her with it. It always works on soap operas, at any rate.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> "bosom buddies" vibe

Ugh. They tried to have the vibe. But c'mon. Their dialogue was like,
Arthur: I am a Christian.
Lancelot: I think you're a fairy. I am dark and brooding and snarky.
Arthur: Let's hang out. I'm going to stare past you and look tortured.
Lancelot: Why must you do this to me?
Arthur, staring vacantly: I love my men.
Lancelot: *gurgle*
Arthur: Why, God? That was most terribly unkind of you!
Lancelot: *is dead*
Arthur: *doesn't snog him*


Barry Lyndon: urgh, terrible movie: by Stanley Kubrick. Ugh. But there's a bit where Barry's friend gets shot, and he drags him off the battlefield, and the dude says, "Kiss me, me boy, for we shall not meet again." And Barry just leans over and snogs him, mouth to mouth, like a serious kiss. (Mom shows the movie to her students in class and they universally go "Eewww!" during that scene. It does kinda come outta nowhere.)
This is a movie from the seventies that won awards for its eighteenth-century historical accuracy. And there's just this big ol' battlefield death-snog. It rules, just for that. Except neither person involved is in any way attractive.

Kiera Knightley, in concept, rocked, but had no decent lines. Bummer.


As far as my coworker goes, she's been working there seven years (a very long time; most have been there less than five) and has been fired twice, at least once for stealing. They can't get rid of her. I think she's related to someone higher up. Or something.

[lorelei-sakti.livejournal.com]

That's so funny! That could've actually happened. Lancelot: I think you're a fairy. I am dark and brooding and snarky. LOL

Seven years ? Yeesh. She must be related to someone. I used to know someone who worked at the bar in the airport. I don't know if he still works there. He has a big alien shaped head and he studies math.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Well, I know she's actually the sister-in-law of one of the office employees...

Worked with her today and she was just as sweet as honey. It wasn't busy, so I didn't really have to complain. She is very nice. She's just... So weird, and oy, with the customer-grabbing and the, oy.

> studies math

Brian Whipple. Oh yes, he still works there.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

My huge sympathies concerning co-worker. If she's related to someone, her tricks aren't going to stop, but maybe you can emulate her - hide the glasses yourself and stop doing the dishes.