Friday, November 14, 2008

Get under my desk and I promise you the earth will move

At 10am yesterday hundreds, nay millions, of Californians crawled under their desks, stuck their arses in the air and prayed for the end. This was not the result of some militant gaywise love-in to protest against California's recent constitutional ban on gay marriage, but a large-scale earthquake drill. When the sirens started, we all ducked and covered as prescribed by our 'earthquake awareness' sheets. Or at least we would have done, if we could hear the siren in our windowless basement lab.

The State of California is bankrupt, A Well-Known West Coast University is facing severe budget cuts, and a group of University-funded junior scientists are placed in a subterranean lab underneath a twelve storey building with no earthquake alert. I'm not the kind to cry 'conspiracy' willy-nilly, but, well, CONSPIRACY! I'm meeting with Governor Schwarzenegger next week, in the guise of 'student-leader in climate change'; I intend to take up the matter of our non-existent alarm then. If you want to protect genius it's no good whining to the oily-rag; one has to talk to the engineer.

Anyway, following advice from the emergency services I have developed my own 'earthquake action plan'. When my desk starts shaking for more than one second/10 mg of coffee I've had that day, my plan is to cry for mother and run helter-skelter for the nearest exit and not stop until I've reached the Pacific Ocean, sure in the knowledge that the resultant tsunami will be charging away from me and towards Japan. Ha, take that Japan, with your whalemeat and raw fish-heads and unusual sexual practices in YouTube!


A Professor shitting himself at a better-funded college. One with alarms and shit.
(Don't tell the fucker that it's only a drill.)

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Obama. Fuck yeah.  Just don't cock it up by banging your secretary, bombing a Chinese Embassy, or invading a desert with 3 troops and half a battle-plan.