I'm going to pimp a blog on my blog roll, which I just spent a whole lot of my Saturday morning on (when I should have been studying). Go to beelzebug if you're interested in seeing some very cool photos which seem to be strangely alive and macabre and breathing. Go for the photos of the world that we know is out there but somehow don't manage to see for ourselves. Go to feel reassured and disturbed and feel untalented and mediocre. Go, go!

Scut Monkey Murphy

Been a while, internet. I’m reporting to you live from the eye of the storm. At least it feels like that today. (I’m also reporting to you live from work where there’s a super buff new piece of meat who keeps making nervous eye contact with me like he thinks I’m more important around here than a scut monkey. If only he knew, internet. Nonetheless I will use his ignorance to establish who’s the sexual alpha dog) It’s been one hell of a busy month (said the girl who blogs from work) with more happening than I can remember. And it’s only going to get infinitely more taxing as the triple threat combination of work, best friend’s wedding, and very difficult costing exam all come together as a joyful holiday season clusterfuck. We’re not including family and friends and luuurve in this list because that’s life and pretty much the list of things that give Murphy joy and purpose and no stress whatsoever.

I’m back at work after 6 days of travel and it feels very similar to the trauma of getting back to school after summer vacation, with immediate exams to boot. I’m cranky and irritable and want to just slouch in my chair and do no work and unabashedly be the worst employee ever. And make no eye contact and scowl if yelled at and eat lots of ice cream and jerk off in the loos and take very long smoke breaks. I’ve returned to classic bullshit passive aggressiveness from dudes with tiny wieners and it really doesn’t help. I have my CV made on Excel, internet. I need someone to format it for me so I may once again be excited about work. It doesn’t help that I’m getting mails from our ‘Women’s Network’ on stress management, which asks for 45 minutes of time spent on a weekday learning how to ‘meditate and do yoga to better handle the stress imposed on us by our busy lives and jobs.’ Will learning how to touch my toes without bending my knees not make me want to chain smoke at my work station, internet?

In other news, I was in Bangalore this past week, celebrating a birthday! Yay birthday! Celebrations involved crawling into the most comfortable cocoon ever and just staying put for the entire time I was in town. It also involved the consumption of copious amounts of pasta and mushrooms, some very gay sleeping with a very warm body, and a deplorable lack of oral and dental hygiene. That’s the problem with cocoons. They’re fairly dangerous. People lose friends to them, people lose perspective on their reality to them, they gain weight eating cheese and pastas in white sauce in them. But I’m out safe now, slowly regaining my tenuous grip on reality and I can safely tell you it’s a total bummer. I have to ask internet, is living in a cocoon an option? Is it healthy? Is this the kind of question crack addicts ask before their first time? My mood is strangely peaceful. I’m happy when I’m at home during the day and evening, impatient and cribby at work, reflective and bummed out during my commute and bummed out at night in bed. And the only way I can think of describing this strange status is as peaceful. I worry a lot, because I believe I’m guilty of treachery, I’m not thinking about consequences, I’m just cramming experiences and warm memories into some sort of box that I’ll store under my bed. Does love spoil? Rot like a fruit gone bad? I’ve had an apple in my handbag for more than two weeks and it’s still firm and crisp as ever and my bag smells deliciously like apples.

*Murphy is weighed down by her organs and fruit that she has no intentions of eating. Hopefully they won’t kill her, the organs or the uneaten fruit*

Correction. It's 18 pairs of shoes, since I forgot my sneakers. 19 if you count the silver shoes with 4 inch heels that leave me crippled in 40 minutes.

Hegemony smash

(written in the morning at work, but posted in the evening. For some reason IT feels the need to block blogspot while allowing facebook access *sigh* )

Do people think I’m rude for not replying to all the nice comments? I mostly believe I’m being trolled, so think it wouldn’t do to dignify them with responses. Plus I don’t even know what everyone is reading here, all I see are disconnected, abortive entries written in fifteen minute snatches of time. I woke up this morning to a massively long email on my blackberry from the friend getting married, explaining all the things that I didn’t ask, going on and on about how she’s thought through the entire quasi abandoning her parents and her country thing. She’s one of my two closest friends, but that was the worst possible way to start my day (and I’m saying this at 8:39 AM). And in true asshole style, I replied saying ‘let’s just stop talking about this, I’m completely sick of it.’

Don’t invite me to your weddings, folks. Unless you need a non supportive type around who’ll spot all your insecurities and weaknesses and press those buttons. And when you work your issues out in your head and try and explain, will say ‘we’re still talking about this shit? Bo-ring.’

I’m not completely sure whether I’m mad that she wants so little for her life or jealous. It really annoys me that I can’t get completely on board till I’m convinced. And because of my very comprehensive laundry list of reasons of why I don’t think this marriage is a good idea right now, I will continue to act like an asshole. If not in this clearly apparent way, then by not getting completely involved and excited. Which is heart breaking because this is one of the most important people in the world to me, and it’s all I can do to just get myself to behave. And not that I need to fill you in, internet, but I’ve had this conversation with her. When I was in Udaipur, that’s all we did, except our version of the conversation was full of shouting and tears (on her part) and lots of hitting below the belt. And now there’s 35 days left and I’m just going to continue trying not to be an asshole, okay?

Whether it was waking up to the stupid email or otherwise, I’m completely overwhelmed this morning *crosses fingers and chants ‘menses, menses, menses’* But I did see a truck full of soldiers on my way to work. Men in uniform, is there anything hotter? *’menses, menses, menses’* I’m terrified at the moment. I have this completely overwhelming horrible, irrational fear that I refuse to articulate till it’s safe for me to do so. It’s given me a lot of perspective and also made me realize the only person I think of in such times is my mother. That should indicate the level of debilitation we’re talking about, that all I want is my mother.

I’m traveling for a week in 4 days time and my productivity has completely plummeted in anticipation. I don’t think I can survive a whole 8 hours of ‘work’ but I also have a lot to do. I toy with the idea of allowing myself an entirely useless day, where I just fuck around till it’s time to go home. I constantly sense that my priorities are changing but immediately come back to craving the kind of serenity that comes with limited human relationships, barring ones cats and family. I really want to be able to completely switch off at any one aspect of my life, and keep wishing that could be work. This is a terrible thing to be writing before 10 AM on a Monday morning while at work.

As much as I love the completely silent hours in the office in the morning, I miss studying and having time to myself. I hate that I feel like there are things I can and can’t do for whatever reasons. I don’t particularly care for the self – doubt and laziness either. Fucking hell, internet! All I wanted was to say I’m sorry for not feeding the trolls and look at the epic of early morning whining that this post has become. To compensate I feel the need to tell you that a certain manager in my team is currently in the simultaneous process of quitting and getting hair plugs. I imagine the sex is very good in the short manager household as a result of this surge in self esteem.

Today morning in the loos at work there was a woman talking on the phone. She was saying things like ‘It’s a huge responsibility. He can’t expect you to not have reservations going in. I mean, it’ll change your whole life, everything will be about it! Everything will revolve around it! You won’t be able to hang out again with us, you’ll never have any free time!’ So I also thought, oh wow, she’s maybe having a baby, right? Turns out she was talking about taking on a new project from an existing client. I feel fettered by my gender here. Like lugging around labia and a vagina is fucking things up for me in some secret chimerical way that I can’t quite tell. The Murphy with ONLY 16 pairs of shoes longs for a genderless future of standard issue silver flight-suits and a blanket ban on free will and individuality.

Murphy is the last person on the planet who hasn't done it

My blackberry has sort of ruined me. I type ‘Im’ instead of ‘I’m’ and expect an omniscient auto-correct to swoop in and fix things magically. Today’s been a day of all sorts of things working out. A highly distraught friend who wasn’t speaking to me for no real fault of mine (and no real reason at that) is talking to me again. I suspect this is only because she’s so overwrought that she’ll settle for anyone to talk to, but I’ll take what I can get. My best friend is getting married in less than two months and I have an exam at about the same time. So up till today I was constantly hovering around the website, waiting for the date-sheet to be announced, because I couldn’t miss her wedding for some stupid exam. At the same time I couldn’t exactly not take it, it’s a fairly important exam and kind of a big deal (I’m certain my parents would at least think so). But today I found out that my exam is after the wedding, but during the wedding week. In fact it finishes a couple of hours before her reception starts, which should give me enough time to get to the venue in rush hour traffic and somehow change into a sari and heels and get my hair sorted and look super hot. But it’ll be one of those things where I need to have studied well enough to be able to take a week off right before the exam for some hard core, life altering shaadi prep. Did I mention it’s a really difficult exam? But I’m really really relieved that it’s not on the same day as the wedding, that’s a major source of stress avoided right there.

I’ve finally got around to telling my dad to get my book for me, I’ve managed to hunt down a document my aunt had been on my case for me to locate forever, I’ve booked my tickets (yay!), I’ve made up my mind to start studying, I’ve got an entirely black kitten at home, Bambi’s wound is much smaller and better, my hair is clean, the proposal I was working on seems to be *finally* over. It looks like a fair bit accomplished but it all translates into waiting and watching and monitoring progress. Almost all of it comes down to how work shapes out, what bullshit gets thrown my way and how much I can negotiate out of. I’m also secretly mentally completely prepared to quit if I need to, I can see myself getting the hell out of here as fast as a call girl who stumbles on to a client who wants to take a dump on her head, even though the thought completely scares me.

A very very dear friend is in love and it’s brand new. He’s been there before but it was so bloody long ago that it seems like this is the first time. And even though he doesn’t want me to ‘interfere’ (some people have some nerve, hmpf) I’m super happy for him. I feel like the mother who had lost all hope in her naalayak son, only to have him walk in while I’m toiling over some pateela on an open fire saying ‘ma main class main first aaya.’ (which is a very poor and unfair measure of how proud a mother should be of her kid, but what to do, I’m horrible that way) What is even cooler than him falling in love is the manner of the falling in love. I don’t know anyone who gets to do it this way, like some sort of being struck by lightning. The way I remember it happening is it being like a slow process. Where your skin gradually becomes transparent and your insides becoming brighter and warmer, till your veins and arteries and you are glowing brightly like the filament in a very happy electric bulb. Good times, all around.

I recently spent time with my boss’ secretary and I don’t like her at all. She’s a seemingly nice person but she pisses me off. She’s one of those tiny women who you can tell think they’re some sort of self sufficient combination of pretty and cute as a button and very prim and proper. Not only do I feel like an ungainly giant around her but I also feel genuinely bad for all dudes who end up with women like that who make it seem like they’ve won some sort of lottery being with these tiny humourless pygmies.

*Murphy hopes she hasn’t come off sounding sizeist and compensates with photo indicating what should be evident awesomeness*



:*