Issue Nineteen, this twenty-eighth day of November, 2003

'We have a narrow tight-rope to steer'

Hello folks, and welcome to winter. Today's word is 'mental'.

It's been a long time since my last missive. I make no apologies. This is a privilege, not a right.

It's been a quiet couple of months. Sauron ('I hate travelling') has made about six trips abroad in eight weeks. And of course, they've all - with the exception of a meeting in Sicily, organized by the EMBL-H godfather, been his usual Friday-Saturday-Sunday US mental marathons. Yes, I know you have to stay over a Saturday night to get the cheap fares, but really - how much money is he actually saving? He claims that Gordon (is a moron) Brown's job is to waste money so we should be parsimonious but there comes a point where you have to say (hah!) 'my time is valuable' and 'my mental health even more so' and spend the Government's money.

I'm actually only complaining because by doing this he's only out of the lab on Fridays, whereas a more sensible approach might mean we'd only see him two days a week. And I'm wondering why he insists that he hates travelling, yet keeps on doing it. Surely if he spent longer away each time he wouldn't need to do it so often? It must be because the collaborators we have abroad are always so pleased to see him.

While we're thinking about money (mmmmmmmMoneymmmmmm), we have had a couple of particularly nasty missives from accounts & purchasing. You'll remember the fun we had a year or two ago trying to get a particular company on the DNA sequencing contract? How a certain person in A&P tried his damndest to make sure that this particular company didn't get the contract? Well, he's finally got his own way: Our particular outpost of the Made-up Results Council now has an in-house sequencing service that, admittedly, is cheaper than the outsourced contracts, but has been acknowledged to not be as good as them (in the very email that we are instructed to use them). And yes, he lied about the price we're actually paying, too. Nonetheless, we are required to send our sequencing to them. Unless the in-house service is exceptional I foresee a lot of frustrated scientists. We pay what we do for a number of reasons - speed, convenience, quality and service. Unfortunately, as the outsourced companies have been told they've been given the heave-ho it's going to be bloody difficult to get them back on board if the in-house service doesn't deliver.

Mental. Completely barking.

Lab Rats

I'd never thought I'd pine for the days of 'weird Beardy crap' on the stereo.

It's not that I dislike Studmuffin's choice of music. Really. I might even have liked some of the things he plays, once upon a time. It's just that I've heard each track he has, on average, thirteen times a week (every week) for the last six months. I bought Mrs Richard the Coldplay album, and - despite it being very good - I can not listen to it. I've heard it so bloody often it makes my skin crawl. Last week, I thought we were in for a change; Studmuffin played two tracks I hadn't heard before.

Of course, it was fucking jazz and I had to leave the room. It was almost a relief to hear the strains of the Star Wars theme again. Hell's bells man! My iTunes collection has over TWO DAYS of solid, uninterrupted music, and I'm careful about what I put on because I don't want people to get bored with the same old thing. Some people can't take a hint.

And my very young apprentice is nearly as bad. There's a collection of 'comedy' he plays. All right, it was funny the first time. Yes, the voices are funny and well done. And the second time wasn't bad. But how many times can you listen to one joke? (The Goons did funny voices but the voices themselves wasn't the joke). All right, so maybe two jokes. Funny voices and taking the piss out of non-WASPs. Feh.

Mind you, what do you expect from a nation that sings about being 'boundless and free' for all in its very national anthem and retrospectively changes immigration laws to stop the filthy foreigners claiming asylum?

At least we dicked them in the rugby. Hoorah!

Mental Emails

There have been a lot of these, so much so in fact that I think I'm going to collate them in a separate archive for the sake of posterity. Bear with me, okay? There is, however, one snippet that I must share with you at the earliest opportunity. This is verbatim from an email from Sauron to one of our collaborators:

Dear $TECHNAME,
             Before you cut your head off with a chain saw,
             

You've got to laugh. I don't think even he takes himself seriously anymore. I actually skived off the last lab meeting - it was an hour later than normal and I had a friend from the Continent showing up so I wanted to go home early, so I sent my apologies. Which in a way was a shame because I missed him telling Grasshopper that he should go to a particularly inane and waste of time meeting called by the UnSafety Committee, but that he needn't take any notice of what is said; rather he should 'indulge his wildest sexual fantasies'.

The last but one lab meeting I actually attended was a 'meeting report': Sauron had got back from Sicily and felt motivated to tell us, in excruciating detail what went on. In each and every seminar. And for a while it was funny because he raved about the 'comic relief' - grad students talking about nuclear actin, that kind of thing - but after one and a quarter hours of non-stop drivel I felt I had to say something - anything! - just to break the monotony. But he was undeterred and continued for a further forty-five minutes! My God, it's full of stars.

But this has set me thinking, and we are impaled on the horns of a dilemma. If he travels less, we have to put up with him more in the week; yet if he travels more we get longer and more brain-straining debriefings.

Rock <me> Hard place

You'll understand why I'm trying to avoid lab meetings. And I'm dreading the next one - should I go prepared with a box of Kim-Wipes in case Grasshopper does indulge his wildest sexual fantasies?

Yours in terror,

Richard

PS. That's not a Sauron quote at the top. Virtual prize to the first of you to correctly guess the originator.