Election

So Obama has won. This was certainly the decision that I had hoped for, but I do have one tiny reservation.

Maybe it's because I'm British, maybe it's because I'm turning into a bitter old cynic, but seeing all those millions of people, world-wide, filled with hope for the future makes me think one thing... it's about now when everything turns to shit and your high hopes give you all that much further to fall.

I for one am bracing for a nuclear winter.

Scandal

Am I the only person who is loving the fact that the man being identified as the victim in a taste and decency row is an actor who built his career on a marginally racist portrayal of a Spaniard?

Tidying

Well, the time finally came. After nearly 2 months of living in my house, I decided that it was probably time to unpack. I am now surrounded by empty boxes waiting to be transported so they can live out the rest of their hollow lives in peace at my parent's house, (much like my sister.)

All in all, it's not a bad gaff. Though we don't have a tumble dryer, so I predict that it's going to take me about 20 years to get all of my washing done.

Science Minister Announces Desire to Place All Eggs in a Basket

This news story worries me slightly.

The science minister seems to believe that its a good strategy to increase the profile of science by essentially buying into the cult of fame and getting us a nice figure head for "the kids" to identify with.

As a result I'm forced to question if the minister has ever seen the "Entertainment News" of any website. Allow me to highlight how this would go down:
1) British astronaut acquired
2) Government and slimy men in pin-striped suits who describe themselves as "Advertising Executives" spend more money than it took to get him/her into space, getting them into "Heat" magazine.
3) Impressionable children fail miserably to be impressed
4) The "Figure Head of Science" becomes increasingly a caricature of him/her self until they eventually have some form of personality crisis leading to a much publicised check in at a rehab centre.
5) The "Daily Mail" declares that it always suspected that those science types were no good and starts campaigning for the removal of anything rational from the national curriculum that would mean people would do anything other than blindly panic at the next health scare published by Dr Shit-For-Brains at the "Desperate for Cash Institute For Making Unfounded Claims Based on Dodgy Statistics".
6) The police round up science types and try to kill them with fatal doses of homeopathic poisons. When these fail to work, the national institute of homeopaths will claim that scientists "aren't like us" and have us drowned. We are strangely grateful.

Anger Management

This week I have to move offices.

Not a big job really, I don't have a great deal of stuff in the office.

However, it becomes a slightly bigger deal when the office I'm suppose to be moving into still has people in it. People who were not told that they should be moving. People who haven't been given a room to move to.

Now it is a political bun fight, with various supervisors throwing diva tantrums left right and center.

On top of this I'm in trouble for not attending a pointless course that I was supposed to. It turns out that despite not replying to any of their emails, despite not turning up to any of their previous courses and despite the course being on a topic totally unrelated to my work, they registered me and billed the university anyway. When I didn't show, they took it upon themselves to send an email of complaint to both myself and my admin people.

It is fair to say that I'm not entirely happy with the way this has all been handled.

And in a shocking change from form I actually told people this, in no uncertain terms, something that is likely to get me into more trouble, but it gave me a warm glow to tell one of our staff that in terms of useful output, the teddy bear that she has on her desk would make a more than appropriate replacement for her.

I may be out of a job soon

International Politics and You

As a single man I've become increasingly annoyed by the terms of endearment people use for one another. "honey", "sweetheart", "darling" not only are they sickly sweet, but they're not very imaginative. It used to be acceptable in cockney rhyming slang to refer to your friends as "chinas", (china-plate = mate). But I think that we should extend this idea and start calling our loved ones by using country-based metaphors.

"My little Easter-Island" for the partner who is mysterious but has a big head.

"She's my Switzerland" for your wife. Yes she's beautiful but the second there's a conflict she's going to end up amassing large amounts of wealth that's not hers.

"I'm your Iraq" is obviously for a catholic masochist, you're basically saying "enter me roughly and repeatedly, but each time pull out before you've finished."

Next year I want a card asking me to be someone's Palestine...

Apologies to people who read my blog via RSS - I've had to re-post this about three times to remove the horrible formatting errors that I introduced by writing it off-line and then copying it into my blog editor.

Inappropriate Behaviour

One of my old school friends is getting married and has invited my parents to the reception.

At first I thought that this was a kind gesture, but I'm increasingly concerned that it's a ploy to make sure that I'm on my best behaviour.

Training for Idiots

I just went on a training course that was aimed at giving advice to people about applying for research funding.

No-one had bothered to read the 9-page, big-print document that the organisers had sent out, but that was ok - they re-explained everything at the beginning in tedious detail.

The course then degenerated into people asking questions that either had common-sense answers, ("How do I estimate how much paper I'm going to use?") or things that they would have known had they bothered to either read the guide or listen to the first speaker.

The worst thing was, that there were so many idiots in the audience that they made the course over-run so I was sitting there, at the back of the room, eyeing up the sandwiches that had been praying for someone to eat them for the last 20 mins and hating each stupid person with a passion that I'm surprised didn't make me spontaneously combust. To make matters worse, two of the speakers started to nonchalantly graze at the sandwich buffet whilst answering questions!

They are now dead.