4D Space

I was talking to someone today who teaches gymnastics to kids and he mentioned this book. He said his parents were religious adherents to that style of parenting and he tries to do the same with kids he teaches.

After reading the (fairly lengthly) preview of the book, I think I can say I agree wholeheartedly. When I was a kid I hated and distrusted that sort of attitude from parents and authority figures and I still do now. I think I was always a fairly rebellious child and I can't pin down why, but I have a strong memory from kindergarten - the teacher was teaching us to tie our shoes, and I said I already knew how to do it, and she made me go sit in the corner. I was furious. I think that was the beginning of a long trail of firmly believing authorities are full of shit. And that sort of punishment style is rife in schools - teachers who just punish for their convenience. I had to make so many insincere apologies as a student it's ridiculous. I loathed, loathed, LOATHED apologizing for things I was not sorry for, and saying please just because "it's the magic word". Why? Why do I have to do it? I always questioned why and found it lacking. I never had those moments as an adult where I look back on my childhood and think, "oh, they were right, and I was such a child." That sort of punishment never changed my behaviour. I still know I was right and that punishment is about the convenience of the adult and not the benefit of the child. I think this is the reason I became such an argumentative adult - I was always trying to argue down authority figures and explain the rationale behind what I did, but I was never listened to. "Just obey."

Ultimately I think children raised in this way will either becomes slaves for your approval with low self-esteem or just reject you entirely. My mother was (and still is) a very authoritarian abusive parent who saw her kids as little mini-reflections of her own personal achievement. She was only interested in having an ideal little academically achieving, violin-playing, ~artistic,~ polite and well-behaved pet to make her look good. Get a B on a report card? Easy way to start a shouting match.

She never supported things that I wanted and I learned quickly not to bother even trying to get her support. One of the longest points of contention we had was over computer usage. My mom is pretty old, almost 70, and completely technologically illiterate - she's convinced technology is the devil, basically. She was always railing on me for being on the computer "too much". And yet, she didn't even ask what I was doing! I would try to show her what I did - mostly I was writing and reading other peoples' stuff. I tried to show her some of my writing once and she told me it was trash. Ironic, considering she's a writer. I taught myself how to build websites - HTML, CSS, Photoshop. I tried to show her some early stuff I made but she would never even look.

You can't stop kids from doing things they really want to do, ultimately. They're human beings with their own wills. If you make unreasonable demands they will just sneak behind your back. I remember lying to my mother constantly about where I was - I wasn't allowed to have a sleepover if there were boys present, so I would just lie and say it was only girls or lie and say I was at a female friend's house and get my friend to lie for me. The source of the problem is that my mother didn't trust me - she didn't believe that my male friends were just FRIENDS even when I outlined to her very clearly that I was not interested in dating and why. I didn't date until after highschool because I felt I wasn't ready until then. And yet my mother was always convinced that I was an immature idiot about relationships for some reason and couldn't handle myself. She was constantly passing judgment on my friends and telling we which ones she liked and wanted me to spend time with and which ones she thought were a bad influence. She didn't even know these people!

And get this. My mom was also violently against videogames and anime. I wasn't allowed to play videogames when I was a kid - so when I was in elementary school I would just play them at friends' houses. When I was 10 or 11 I would buy them behind her back with my own money from my paper route and play them at night when she was asleep. I would do most of my anime watching while she was asleep so she wouldn't come in and harass me while I was watching. I would pretend to be asleep when she came downstairs at night so I could avoid a fight. I spent so much time trying to explain how videogames inspired me but it just went in one ear and out the other. When I told her I wanted to study Japanese at university she told me "But French is your worst subject (read: I got B's); you'd just do badly at Japanese." She's only pleased that I'm studying it now because she holds a university education in high esteem and what I'm taking is less important than me going to university. It sounds nice if she can tell her peers she has two children who have graduated from university so she can skim over the one that dropped out of uni and the one that dropped out of high school. I know her approval of me entirely hinges on academic standing and social status - I'm sure if I land a high-paying job she'll love to show it off as if it were her own job. Oh, I'm sure she'll tell me she loves me, and I'm sure she does in her own fucked-up way, but she's just too emotionally damaged to express it properly and frankly I don't want to deal with it.

And she's still like that, even now that I'm an adult. And so I just started ignoring her and lying to her. Those are your two options, really - you can either blindly attempt to please an authoritarian parent or just tell them to fuck off, and the latter option is really the only option available if you want to maintain your sanity. In a way I suppose I should thank her - I learned fairly young that attempting to gain approval from authority figures is pointless and I cultivated a very independent lifestyle. I dreamed of moving out and getting my own place and supporting myself ever since I was 10. I was always trying to do things by myself, but my mother would always tell me "You're a minor! I'm responsible for you! You can't do it by yourself!" I was so angry that I couldn't legally do it even though I knew I was responsible and capable enough to take care of myself. Now that I am an adult? I LOVE IT. I never had any difficulties and I never felt homesick. I love working and setting my own schedule and buying my own food and managing my own time. It was just an incredible relief. How the fuck did I survive being a child? It was like being in jail, it was so stressful. I'm pretty sure the reason I developed colitis in high school was from the stress of living at home. I was really miserable in high school because being at home was like being on high alert all the time. I would frequently go to the mall or the library and find a big squishy chair and sleep in it - I could relax there like I never could at home. At home I knew a screaming fight could break out at any minute. When I moved out of the house... my acne immediately cleared up, too. It started up again when I began going to university so I think my acne is very stress-related.

And honestly it was boggling how much reading this book re-affirmed my ideas about parenting: you don't tell kids what to do, you listen and work out solutions with them. You figure out what they want, and help them get what they need. I don't plan to have children, but I think these strategies are also applicable to teachers.

My course schedule is such a clusterfuck right now. Part of this is my fault (should have dropped this miserable class earlier); part of it is school (y u cancel classes on me at the last minute!) and part of it is just cramming everything together so I can graduate.

I hate. All. Of my courses. Literally everything I'm taking right now is a miserable graduation requirement. I'm just picking things to fit into my schedule at this point, too - I need time to work.

I really, really wanted to drop this one class because I hate it so passionately (20th Century British/Irish lit) but it's past the drop date so I'm fucked. I just need to do it. And for a set of complicated, stupid reasons I need to take another class for no reason other than to keep my minimum credit requirement up for student loan reasons (even though I'm taking five classes, two of them are two-term classes and so the credits only count for first term even though I'm still doing the work for them now ARGH). So I need to find a course that I can both stand and fits into my schedule and isn't too much of a workload. I registered for an English lit class in hope that I could drop that other lit class, but alas I cannot drop it, and I don't really want to take three lit classes at once, so I'm looking for something else. There's an upper-level Japanese class that I could take (newspaper Japanese, yey) but technically don't have the requirements for, but maybe I can bust in and wheedle and say "I can take this shit" and get in anyway (perhaps on the basis of exchange credit or passing N1...). I mean, I can read Japanese newspapers. They're not that hard.

So off to the Asian Centre I go! If I can't get in this class I can take art, but then I'd have to re-arrange my work schedule again and I worry my boss will get annoyed.

This last term is going to be hell. Such an awful workload. But I'm so close! So.... close... to graduation!

You know, I think this is the first time I've ever had something that can be described as an epiphany.

The a few weeks before Christmas I was dumped by a guy, and I was pretty miserable for a while, culminating on Christmas day me calling him up and saying "dump your girlfriend and take me instead." His answer was a mostly-no sort of answer, but I think I could have harassed him into cheating on her if I'd been really persistent. I know he's a cheater already; it wouldn't be hard.

This morning I woke up and sat down and watched a bunch of Revolutionary Girl Utena (nostalgia trip) for a few hours and after a few episodes I had to wonder, "Why was I so upset again?" Epiphany.

Utena is like... my life. (This is not a new conclusion; I've known it for years.) I am so much like Utena that watching that show is embarrassing. This guy... let's call him C. - is Touga-grade. He doesn't even have the seduction power of an Akio. And I don't particularly want to wear the dress he sent me for the dance party (Metaphorically speaking).

I realized why I'm attracted to him - he's very much like me, but all the worst traits. He's so damn arrogant, has no sense of empathy, he's self-centred and he has the same view on relationships as I did when I was like eighteen - all take and no give. He's not very perceptive either - he tends to project a lot. It took me a while to realize this because he's like... five years older than me (and I tend to find older guys intimidating) and he has this veneer of adultness but ultimately I feel like he's less mature than I am. Which is all hilarious, because part of the reason he thinks I'm "not girlfriend material" is because I'm apparently at an ~earlier stage in life~. He used to be a nerd when he was younger but ~grew out of it~ and he feels like I'd be holding him back - I find that attitude to be dumb, personally. I don't spend as much time watching anime or whatever as I did when I was younger because I've found fulfilling things to do with my time, but I see no reason to give up my hobbies entirely because I have to ~become an adult~. (I sorta respect that he wants to stay away from gaming because he went through a depression where he dropped out of university and played a lot of Counterstrike, but a) it's pretty clear that his issue was not Counterstrike, but his family and b) I did the same thing for a year with RO, and I don't feel the need to stay away from games foreverrrrr because the problems I had at that time I don't have anymore.)

He's with an older woman now, a doctor - I think he wants someone who will push him to do more with his life because he's having his "I'm almost 30 and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life" crisis. Apparently since I'm still a student I can't push him into shit. And honestly even if I were a doctor or whatever I wouldn't be interested in pushing him into doing anything - that's not what a relationship is to me. He wants someone he can use, imo. He's also way more emotionally needy than he lets on. I think he wants a relationship to solve his problems, as opposed to solving his problems first and then finding a relationship. He's the kind of guy who isn't happy unless he's in a relationship. /armchair psychology

My idea of a relationship, I've found, is not what most people are into. I'm very un-demanding - idc about seeing each other often or buying each other things or monogamy or commitment or anything of that nature. All I want is sex, respect, and common goals. My personal romanticized ideal is not someone who you live with but someone you see when your lives cross paths many times over the course of however many years. You compare notes, see how you've both changed. Keep in touch. Kind of like a close, long-term friend that you also fuck, actually. The idea of "WE MUST BE TOGETHER FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES" turns me off. That kind of relationship is only necessary if you want kids, imo, and I'm not interested in those at all. I'm not really interested in being tied down by kids or a commitment... it would take way too much time away from things I want to do with my life. I doubt I'll find the kind of ideal relationship I'm looking for, but I can live without it, too. It's more important to be happy with yourself than seek an SO, imo.

So basically, I do like this guy a lot, but I can't stand his bullshit and I don't really want a relationship with him. Epiphany.

"The pseudocouple is in this respect a kind of holding operation, in which impulses are at one and at the same time rigidly checked, and yet exasperated by an oscillating movement in which they find no satisfactory symbolic outlet. The new libidinal apparatus of the transindividual forces of the great ideologies, the forces of cultural corruption, the Time Cult, the corrupt intelligensia, the essentially collective dynamics of feminism or homosexual militancy, now makes for a grid in which psychic forces can know analogous figuration and are freed to capture and to expropriate narrative systems of which they were hitherto merely the bound components."

You know, I think I'm fairly literate and I read a lot of this bullshit for school (and sometimes for fun!), but I just do not understand what the fuck this is on about. It's from this book that's basically talking about what an asshole Wyndham Lewis is and his character Kreisler from his book Tarr. I suppose this paragraph is supposed to explain why Kreisler is such an asshole but I just do not get what the fuck this paragraph is on about. Actually, the entire book is like this.

I hate pretentious, incomprehensible, long-winded academics. Just make your point clear and concise, fuck.

Oh and while I'm at it, I can't fucking stand Wyndham Lewis. Why do I have to read books by this misanthropic douchebag again? He was clearly a miserable man who wrote books about miserable people. I get it, he's emotionally repressed and hates everyone and has anger issues and sabotages all his relationships and treats women like shit. Why do we keep reading his goddamn books like there's something to be learned from them besides "Wyndham Lewis is a douche"?

Actually most of the books I have to read for this British/Irish lit class are fucking asinine. It's all wealthy white men whining about how haaaaard their lives are, fuck. Joseph Conrad had a few things to say and he gets political at least, I'll give him that, but Joyce and Lewis and Lawrence? Ugh, STFU. They're all terribly self-involved narcissists whose characters are either flat-out semi-autobiographical or mouthpieces for their own views - and their views are fucking awful. Either they're mooning about being misunderstood artists or mooning about women or, in the case of Lewis, just hating everybody. Was that just a thing around the turn of the century?

I really want to burn all of the books I have to read for this class. It would give me so much satisfaction.

Okay, so for most of the game I thought Vincent was a turd and the plot was irritating. The entire game gave me a "marriage and babies is what mature adults do" vibe. I had to wonder why Katherine never even considered getting an abortion; like it's never even brought up. Catherine is rather psychotic but I found her and her relationship with Vincent more interesting and Katherine clearly deserved a man who is not a turd like Vincent. As you might guess, I went full-on Freedom.

And I kind of wanted all the characters to stfu about their problems. I'm sorry, but 30 is the limit for complaining about your parents, no matter how abusive they were. You're an adult: get the fuck over it. And I had no sympathy for that rich adopted guy. I honestly never understood what his problem even was.
( Spoilers for the Freedom ending of Catherine )

The gameplay is solid, though. Really addictive and it had lots of challenge and variation.

Today the professor for my majors' seminar told me I'm one of the best students in the class and I should go to grad school.

...wut.

I was doing a group project that was supposed to be three people, one of whom dropped the class and the other of whom became suddenly ill, so I did an hour and a half presentation on this medieval Passion Play on my own. The prof was pretty impressed.

I've been told by professors before that I should go to grad school but I never really took it seriously. Academics love academia and encourage others to go into it, big shock.

But something about the way this professor said it kinda hit me, though. I told her I'm double-majoring with Asian Studies/Japanese language and that I'm probably going to teach, and she suggested a bunch of stuff like a combined masters-teaching degree or a masters in international relations or international law or a PHD for a professorship and whatnot, and talked about possibilities as a diplomat or at an embassy or something. I've never really thought about any of that stuff, to be honest, and grad school seems like one of those things that... I just think I wouldn't do for reasons I can't quite define. But now the cogs in my head are beginning to turn. I wonder if I should go to grad school.

...regardless I won't do it immediately if I decide to do that. I'm already applying for JET. I need a break from academia right now. I also need money.

But I suppose I'll consider it and look into it.

I just crashed into the local all-night cafe for seven hours belting down Lee Maracle's "Ravensong." Let me save you the trouble of reading it: it's a womens' studies essay in novel form. Unsurprising. I actually read some of Lee Maracle's essays for my Womens' Studies class over the summer (don't ask; I basically took it because it was correspondence and I needed electives credit) and they were pretty much the same thing.

And I guarantee if you're white reading it will make you want to curl up in the corner and sob your little cracker heart out from white guilt, and then it will lambaste you for experiencing white guilt. There's actually a scene in the novel where this white guy experiences white guilt and then the narrative wails on him for having no dignity. Ow.

The book seriously systematically hammers out every Native/feminist issue one after the other very unsubtly while spelling out in no uncertain terms how awful white people are (though often unintentionally or ignorantly so) and how corrupt white society is (and by extension how socially elevated Salish culture supposedly was Before the White Man Came) and ends on a huge downer that can basically be summed up as "Natives have been fucked up the ass for centuries and it's ALL YOUR FAULT." ...which is all true. And I know this. But staying up all night reading 200 pages of it is still depressing.

As valid and true as all the points of the novel are (though honestly I'd rather read this stuff as non-fiction essays rather than some didactic novel, and in fact I already have) it really taught me nothing new except new ways to experience more white guilt. And it's not as if I personally can do anything to right any of the wrongs that are lined up in the book. I don't know what kind of point I'm supposed to take away from the book (and as didactic as it is, I'm sure I'm supposed to take away something from it) other than "white people suck and your culture is poison". Which is pretty much what I got. It was all just really... embittering. I got the impression that Maracle is just (justafiably) bitter and angry and crammed all of that into a semi-autobiographical novel. And I have no idea how to react to that other than, well, white guilt. Maybe reading it feels empowering for Native people, who knows.

Agh and I just know there's going to be more of this for the CanLit class. It's going to be 100% books about great Canadian wilderness and French-Canadian identity and oppressing Natives and Margaret Atwood, I just know it. I mean it's not like Canada has anything else of note to offer the literary world, except perhaps "The Hockey Sweater". /mildly sarcastic zing

My reading list for fall is obscene. I have one class that requires I read fourteen full-length novels. FOURTEEN. And that's not counting the short stories or the plays! And it's Canadian literature to boot. Yey Margaret Atwood?

All of the books are titles and authors that are vaguely familiar in an "I know this is literature but I never previously gave a fuck" sort of way. Things my mom would read, i.e., pretentious CanLit. (My mother is a great affectionado of local arts. I think every book she every bought me was YA stuff about rural Canadians but some obscure Canadian author. I generally read them and enjoyed them in a mild middling sort of way, but I think she never caught on to the fact that I like and have always liked fantasy. F-A-N-T-A-S-Y. Not contemporary YA, not historical YA, FANTASY. I suppose that sort of thing is too trashy for her tastes. I think the only thing I ever picked up that she approved of was C.S. Lewis, because he counts as "literature" I suppose.) In fact I'm pretty sure half of the books on my reading list are things my mom owns. Too bad I don't live with her so I have to buy my own copies.

The British Lit class isn't so bad, but it still burns. Between those classes and my English Language Majors Seminar (which involves reading the (Middle-English) Bible and a lot of Middle English plays. In Middle English, obviously)... I basically have to read about 400 pages a week of Literature. I guess I won't have any more time to read trashy vampire novels. (Goodbye, Sookie Stackhouse. It was a fun ride while it lasted.)

My major is technically English Language, so there's a lot of linguistics and sociolinguistics stuff in there (which I genuinely enjoy and tend to not complain about), but somehow I ended up taking all these lit classes. Oh yeah, I remember why I'm taking this. Because you need it if you want to get accepted into the Education program, and I'm still toying with the idea of getting a teaching certification/keeping my options open. So I have to take a bunch of awful modern literature classes (I thoroughly enjoy the old literature stuff. Old English yey! I can even roll with Middle English. I enjoy the cultural/social study that comes with the old stuff, and overall there's just not as much reading and shit is more concise. But novelssssss ugh).

But all of this Reading with a capital R just reminds me how much I can't goddamn stand legitimate literature. I really, really don't have any taste in books. I love trashy bullshit. I enjoyed Twilight, for god's sake. But I can't stand anything with class. And I think it's because "real" literature tends to be a) hard to read either because it's old or because it's James Joyce, and b) completely emotionally uninvolving.

Does anything with depth and meaning have to forsake any kind of emotional depth? I have always read books because of the attachment you can form with fictional characters. But Literature is just so alienating. I can never identify or sympathize with any of the characters. Their problems and thoughts are just so distant and foreign. Yeah, I'm sure Virginia Woolf had a lot of things to say about the Victorian Woman and her work is relevant and educational to that time, but I am not a Victorian Woman and her ideas mean nothing to me personally. And I swear everything on my reading list is like that. I think the only thing I've ever enjoyed from a lit class (aside from Old English stuff) is like Oscar Wilde because he's legitimately hilarious.

The reason I like the Old English stuff is because it comes from an earlier, more primal time with more universal values. Beowulf? A hero goes out and kills a goddamn monster. That's pretty entertaining! Any one from any culture can relate to a story about killing a monster, I swear. You read poems about men going out to sail on the seas and having adventures but also freezing and starving and coming out barely alive. That's exciting! Those are... sort of heroic things that are going to appeal to any age, think, which is why Beowulf has been made into like three different movies. But fucking... I'm reading The Secret Agent right now, and British politics in the late 1800's? What? How the fuck can I relate to this in any way? Why is this stuff so dry and uninvolving? Why do I fail to give a shit about the story or the characters? I've spent a long time thinking that maybe it's my fault for not liking this, like maybe I have no taste or I'm stupid, but I don't think that's the case. I think most of the stuff you have to read for lit classes is socially relevant to a certain period in time and there's a certain academic and historic value to reading it, but that most should not be expected to actually enjoy it because it was Not Written For You. It was written for people of another time and probably another place and it's probably boring as fuck to the modern reader.

I actually don't understand people who enjoy this stuff. Like, if there's someone here who DOES enjoy Literature, explain yourself. I had a professor for this Milton class who clearly adored Milton with all his heart (like crying over the beauty of it, I'm not kidding) and had read Paradise Lost cover to cover countless times and I think I will never understand that. Maybe you have to be religious to enjoy Paradise Lost, idk. And who the fuck actually enjoys Shakespeare? I just do not understand people who like Shakespeare. I bet most people who say they like him don't even understand half of his goddamn work, ffs. I can't understand half of what Shakespeare writes; I need the Sparknotes to make sense of the Early Modern English. It's barely even the same goddamn language! I swear most people who say they like him are just trying to look smart. Fucking seriously.

Anyway my point in a can is that I find the vast majority of Literature does not speak to me and is not relevant to me and I hate reading this crap but nghhhh if I finish these classes it will all be overrrr

...so this guy refused to sell his family's genealogy book in order to save the life of his son who was dying in the hospital.

FFFFFFF

So you'd let your son die to keep a piece of paper describing how your ancestors oppressed the peasants, awesome. And he's crying about it because his father died to protect it - he - get this - LEAPT INTO A BURNING BUILDING to rescue the genealogy. What an idiot.

And then Dan-ah jumps in and is like DON'T SELL THAT I'LL PAY YOUR SON'S HOSPITAL BILLS

I gotta say Dan-ah really irritates me. She is literally perfect in every way with like no character flaws. It makes her really stick out because the rest of her family is dysfunctional as hell, but no, she's a little angel and can do no wrong.

I get that the big theme of the show is like Rich Traditional Family of Good Lineage vs. Nouveau Riche, and this is probably just my Western perspective speaking, but the Traditional Family is full of asshats. Yeah, Nouveau Riche are kinda tools and Kang Suk is a ruthless bitch, but he's a helluva lot more effective at life in general. I get the feeling the reason he's so cutthroat is because he's Nouveau Riche and his family gets no respect so he has to do anything to succeed and can't just float off reputation. Not to mention he's basically the one running his dad's company and taking care of his (probably mentally ill) sister by himself.

On the other hand Traditional Family has the old hidebound grandpa running everything, and he forbids his son (WHO IS LIKE 60 YEARS OLD HERE I think there is a point where you just have to make your own gd decisions in life) from marrying the woman he wants because she's had three husbands already. She's 50! What do you expect! Not to mention grandpa kinda makes bad business decisions and is running the family company into bankruptcy.

And omigod Dan-ah I just can't stand her and she's the gd main character. She's like the perfect obedient granddaughter who just takes everything and waits on her family hand and foot and never complains and everyone loves her and she's morally upright and kind and perfect. I want to slap her in the face. I will only like her if she has some grand emotional breakdown halfway through the entire thing and shows at least one character flaw because thus far she has none.

...the best character is the alcoholic aunt.

I seriously need to stop watching stupid dramas, Christ, I whine about this stuff but it's terribly addictive.

Employment not get.

I failed their evaluation period. I couldn't sign up enough people. I have no problem with being people-y and chatting up people and memorizing the rap and rebuttals, but honestly I can't make people do something they're really insistent about not doing.

And honestly the work was kind of depressing and makes you hate people a lot. You watch people come out of fancy clothing stores with hundreds of dollars of new clothing and then wave you off saying they couldn't afford to donate to charity. Bullshit.

Honestly I found the people most likely to listen to the charity spiel were the ones who came from countries with a lot of poverty. I talked to people from Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, India, whatever about the poverty they saw in their countries and they were all like "yeah I'm donating to three charities already and I'd love do give but I'm seriously at my limit" and I completely believed these people. It was totally the white people who walk by pretending you're not there. I actually ended up trying to flag down all the black and brown people because I knew they were more likely to give me the time of day. Three days of that and maaaaan I'm starting to hate white people. (While I'm racial profiling: east asians wouldn't give me the time of day either, though they would never blow me off in rude ways like the whites)

The hypocrisy inside the canvassing staff was pretty bad too, though. I mean, of all the staff I knew of only one who was donating to the charity we were promoting. I don't; I'm already donating to two other charities (Unicef and Save the Children), but I would have signed up if I'd have gotten the job because then I'd have the income to support it.

But basically I came away from that experience thinking "Wow, Canadians are really selfish assholes." Oh and I have some nice statistics I had to memorize, too. Did you know only 6% of the money Canadians donate goes to international charities? And like half of the money Canadians donate goes to churches and religiously affiliated organizations. So yeah, most Canadians apparently don't give a shit about the rest of the world, awesome.

Anyway so I'm looking for a job again. God, I've been looking for a month and this is fucking asinine. I went to the youth centre today to ask for employment help and they helped me make my resume look prettier (same information, more words that make me sound cooler than I actually am) and set me up with an appointment with a youth employment agency.

I'm just so damn sick of looking for work I want to punch everyone who hasn't hired me in the face. Fuck everyone.