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.

Greetings

Well I survived my massive trip and the process of moving is nearly over.

By "nearly over" I mean that I only have two car-loads of stuff left to collect from my friend's house where it is in storage. Then I'll start unpacking...

Oh and I need to write two papers in the next two weeks.

Oh and could I just sort out some feedback sessions for teaching, and if you're not too busy could you start your thesis.

And by the way, would you mind awfully compensating for the incompetence of others, selfish laziness, political machinations, office moves, monkeys with guns, elephants with typewriters and badgers with an axe to grind?

Mental note: destroy humanity.

I'm probably over sensitive and over tired. I'm probably over-reacting and over-the-top. But seriously people! Shape up before the foot of righteous justice, dons the boot of violent intervention, (complete with the toe-caps of remorseless metaphor) and starts kicking the arse of obstructing morons!

Message ends