Just Another Friday

   in which our antihero overshares about first world problems and
   Beethoven

   This text was dumped from starbreaker.org/personal/just-another-friday.html with lynx.

   It’s my last day on my current project at my day job, and I was asked
   to update the product documentation, which is a Microsoft Word document
   roughly 170,000 words long. If I had had any sense I would have
   refused. What are they going to do, not extend my engagement? (Don’t
   threaten me with a good time.)

   It took ten minutes just to open this abomination in Word, because this
   version of Word is part of Office 365 and the document lives in ‘the
   cloud’. It bogs down for 30 seconds at a time if I type a single word.
   It has crashed three times on me. Now I know why so many professional
   writers seem to have problems with substance abuse. They’re
   self-medicating to cope with having to deal with Microsoft Word because
   nobody in the New York publishing cartel seems to understand that plain
   text is a universal interface.

   I think I’ll quit early today; I already have two weeks of paid time
   off approved starting Monday, but with all the unpaid overtime I’ve
   worked on this project, I think quitting early today is my rightful
   due—and a gentler revenge than what I might take if I could bring
   myself to shed what little in the way of ethics I possess. 😼

   Frankly, the reason Microsoft products suck so hard is that nobody ever
   gets fired for buying this garbage—and they damned well should. Et
   putain de merde!

   The damnable app just crashed again. Fucking Microsoft Word has me
   cussing in French (which I barely speak) because English profanity is
   simply inadequate to express my frustration with Word’s sheer inability
   to cope with long, complex documents. I don’t get paid enough for this
   bullshit.

   Besides, if I quit early I can focus on ripping the absolutely massive
   13 disc Deutsche Grammophon box set of Daniel Barenboim performing
   Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations. I got
   my copy in the mail last night.
   cover art for a classical music box set cover art for Daniel
   Barenboim’s 2020 recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas and
   the Diabelli Variations for Deutsche Grammophon

   Yeah, I’m not joking. I grew up on this music, as well as prog rock,
   jazz fusion, and heavy metal. And heavy metal is just Romanticism in
   rock; like much of Beethoven’s work, it’s all about the Sturm und
   Drang.

   If it helps, think of me as a grown-up Alex from Anthony Burgess’ A
   Clockwork Orange; my passions are consensual sex, ultraviolence in
   video games, and Beethoven.

   I should have tried charging this box set to the company; it’s music I
   can leave on in the background even if I’m on a conference call.

   I can’t say that about the likes of Alicia Cordisco, Gold Spire, Fires
   in the Distance, Ghost, Transgressive, Fourth Dominion Firmament,
   Spell, Thank You Scientist, or Mortiis... But my bosses are lucky I
   don’t listen to Body Count on the job, let alone Otep or Cattle
   Decapitation.

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   in Tanelorn.
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   starbreaker.org is © 1996-2026 Matthew Thomas Cambion, and is available
   under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

   love metal 🤘 — hate fascism 👊
   death to rapists and rape culture 💀
   trans rights are individual rights 🏳️‍⚧️
   antifascist action is not terrorism, but leaderless resistance to state
   terror 🏴
   if a purchase doesn’t confer ownership, then downloading digital media
   isn’t theft 🏴‍☠️
   the United States of America 🇺🇸 was founded in defiance and is thus a
   Satanic nation 😈

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   intertextual violence, crime of literary shock — in nomine meo, amen