Issue Twenty Six, this twenty first day of June, 2005
"Press the 'Fuck Off' key"
So, yeah.
I had a moment of true greatness a couple of weeks ago. Real glory. The kind of thing that would either get you a medal or a posthumous court martial.
Little Richard had been invited back to give a talk, by the assistant HoD. Interestingly enough, sauron knew nothing about this until I spotted the seminar notice in the corridor. What a tricky little Dicky, trying to sneak back unremarked. Your plan failed, didn't it? and we all turned up, mob-handed.
To the moment of glory; after a dead faascinating talk I asked a reasonably sensible question, and was a little surprised by LR's non-committal response. So I pushed him a little further and said "It's just an afternoon's experiment, you can do it as well as, not instead of" and completely corpsed certain of the Fellowship sitting in front of me. LR rallied magnificently, I must admit, and Sauron was as stony-faced as ever. Yet I lived to see this longest day, made yet more pleasant by the glorious sunshine and Sauron flying across the Atlantic to Florida.
Bloody hot in the lab, though: I came home and applied for a couple of jobs.
Ever onwards, a pot-pourri of happenings and personalities:
Lieselotte - everything happens 'like hell'. Bc9 expresses 'like hell'. It's hot 'like hell'. Her barbecue cooks 'like hell'. She gets precipitates 'like hell'. Beta ocyl-wotsit is 'like hell', whatever that means. This is the girl, not been here five minutes, strikes the CD machine bulb in 20% O2 - she'd been flushing air through the thing overnight ('like hell') instead of nitrogen, and wondered why it wasn't working. Not one, but two empty cylinders. She was popular 'like hell'.
The clock is ticking ('like hell') for the Doctor. He has to do things in parallel, but concentrate on one thing at a time. But fresh blood is coming to the lab - another German (argh!) but only for the summer. He's going to do synchronized gels; same time, every day, 'like hell', and we're going to feed him samples. I could turn this to my advantage. Talking of which, I remember complaining about Sauron's nutty same-password idea for all the computers. I have turned that to my advantage, you'll be glad to hear: I now have almost God-like power over the lab. Mwah hah ahem.
We did get thrown the 'dumb terminal' nonsense a lab meeting or two back, but my subliminal (i.e. a boot under the table) signals kept the other lab rats quiet and we quickly moved on. Power, see?
Do you remember Sauron going on about how we should mix with other groups at coffee? Well, we've tried it; we get up there, find someone to sit with, fill up the table 'like hell' and when Sauron arrives he looks like a little lost puppy who's been kicked. Doesn't like us mingling. I came back from a seminar once, talking to that Scottish lass with the lovely accent, and when we went our separate ways there was a buzzing in my ear,
"Who's yer friend?"
Doesn't want us being contaminated by other labs, that's what it is. Well, it's too late; I'm socializing 'like hell' and spreading dissent far and wide and up close and personal too.
The end is in sight and I'll be out of here soon enough.
Running 'like hell',
Richard