Ode to Monday, October 24th, 2005

Ode to Monday, October 24th, 2005

ya know, the office people here.
They mismanage money
They make it your fault
They lie about paperwork
and generally cock around for 8 hours
until eventually they agree to do what you originally thought,
but by that point you feel so guilty and wrong for having thought it might be their jobs that
you end up thanking
Them profusely and apologise for wasting their time
and then you feel like a 2 day old tubesteak

I mean, dear lord, they want you to write papers
but woe betide if you want to use a fax machine to respond to a publisher's request
and then you are asked for page charges
of obscene amounts

who is to pay?

well, of course the university will pay (this is a lie)

who will pay?

don't you have an expense account?
can you tell me if there's any money in it?
I can't do that today. who is paying?
I'm paying. I'm the martyr. grad school is about suffering and grief.
I am prostrate, here’s a check...
and perhaps there will be a pdf
as a remaining symbol
of electronic proof
that I suffered here
one single electronic blip in the annals of science
barely semblant of the original thought
(love the copy editors - hope you don't mind that we changed everything for our own purposes)
hardly reflecting even a tiny iota of the effort and struggle
laid down
in pen
nay, in Word
and carefully crafted, tracked, revised,
with statistical proof

that here be beastes.