“This guy’s insane.” “Well, he thought he was the subject of a secret government mind control project. As it turns out, he really was being given daily doses of LSD for 11 years.” “Well, in that case he looks great.” – R.E.D.(2010)
It’s going to be one of those weeks, minions. Know how I can tell? Because Lt. South came to me and started a conversation in this manner: “Remember this guy? The one who we arrested naked in the sauna and who tried to set fire to the student center?”
Keep off the drugs, kids, they get you banned from respectable universities.
“He looked around slowly at the grimy, squat white monolith, and that was the exact moment at which he realized without a shadow of the doubt that his fridge had begun seriously to lurk.” – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Don’t you love it when tiny little jobs that nobody wants to do, allow you to wrangle subversive concessions? For example, lacking anything else to do, I volunteered to clean out both of the department fridges, and asked if I could dress more casually in order to do it. Our department’s dress code is very professional, even student employees dress nicely, and exceptions are almost never made. But when one volunteers to exorcise/disinfect the more horrid lairs of one’s office, one can usually negotiate. Thus I’m sitting pretty in jeans and topsliders on this lovely Friday afternoon, feeling pretty good about it. Heck, I only put on mascara this morning!
I’m also in a bit of a mischievous mood today, so throwing away a lot of things (that could probably be successfully used to teach the theory of evolution…) is a little sneakily gratifying. The more so when some teenage student officer asks what happened to “that sour cream I had in there one time?” and I am able to retort, “Ah yes. As it turns out, it went bad in 2009. I may have just saved your life.”
As per usual, though, I fell into a bit of a scope creep vortex when I finished. My desk has been reorganized, everything I work with has been wiped down with antibacterial cloths, and I’m currently tackling some of the unnecessary files clogging up our server disk space (I’m not sure if that’s the techie term for it all).
So! I’m going to take a break from that and share some fun links from around the web. There is nothing like the internet to take your mind off of serious things, now is there?
New favorite tumblr: dogs riding trains around Britain. J. and I spend an inordinate amount of time wishing for a dog, so this doesn’t help, but we can all agree they’re pretty cute, huh?
Miniskirts and fascinators have been banned at Ascot! But what will we judge?!
And, in more Downton Abbey news, I may be cheering for the reform minded Lady Sybil and her Irish bolshevik chauffeur (and I may tear Julian Fellowes from my love and bury him forever if screws this one up), but my heart belongs to the Dowager Countess and her fabulous one liners.
“I wish you a tolerable Thursday. That’s all any of us can hope for.” – April Winchell
Susie and I had our mid-morning water bottle refilling and check in, and we both decided conclusively, that it should be Friday. My evidence:
Last week was a four day work week, which after two weeks off for vacation completely resets one’s work clock. Luckily next week is another four day week, thanks to Martin Luther King Day. As welcome as this is, I know that it will exacerbate the problem.
I didn’t have time to do my hair this morning, it’s currently twisted up on top of my head – universally recognized as a bad start to a morning, thereby consigning the rest of the day to grumpiness.
I currently have four feet of uniforms and gear (yes, this is accurate, I measured) stacked in piles to find room for in an already stuffed to bursting supply room.
I also need to unpack a pallet of reams of paper.
Tonight, I’ve been asked to give a presentation on personal safety and law enforcement resources to my Ladies Aid Society this evening. Now you may not believe me, ducklings, given my verbosity and general ranting abilities, but I hate public speaking. Hate it. I stammer, I blush constantly, I can’t make eye contact, I speak in spoonerisms, you name it. Not looking forward to it.
So, what say you, minions? Shall we collectively disavow this Thursday?
The following is a true story as told to C. Small Dog by one of the detectives. Some [tiny, practically unnoticeable] liberties taken.
It was a dark and stormy night* when this dame called up. She’d seen something horrible and thought she was being followed so she couldn’t squeal. I wasn’t in the mood to do the damsel in distress routine, I’d been drinking since noon and musing on the wretchedness of the human state for nearly as long, but she sounded desperate.
I thought about starting a doomed romance, but she was too perky and I like my dames to brood.
As it turned out, she did need me. She’s witnessed a kidnapping and had every reason to suspect the worst. One of ducks that lived at the campus pond had been snatched before her eyes, shoved squawking into a bag by gorilla armed goons and driven off in an unmarked car**. I suspected that the fowl had run afoul of the bootleggers and crooks who run this town – whiskey is normally involved. And if it isn’t, I involve it. I carry a couple flasks just for cases like this. You can’t see what I’ve seen and do this job sober.
A couple of contacts of mine down at the botanical studies buildings tipped me off about the car and I knew enough to trace it to a run down part of town infested with the scum of humanity and broken dreams***. I’d been there more times than I cared to count, but I had a job to do. I had to break a few ribs, but eventually I found the guys that had been hired for the job. A couple of drinks, some moody dialog and veiled threats and they squealed. They told me that this guy they called The Mallard**** came up with the plan to get back at this other guy, The Loon, by using the duck to stir up trouble. They dumped the duck at The Loon’s joint, leaving it to wreck the place and its crap all over the floor (an apt metaphor for life) before returning it, a broken bird, to its pond to live out what remained of its days.
This Mallard was the kingpin of duck trafficking, with the law in his pocket, justice as his dinner guests, and sinister butler to boot. I had to be careful.
I found this Mallard and let him know how many federal laws he’d violated, ducks were protected in this town and he knew it. Turns out he’d had his way with ducks like this before, but I wasn’t going to turning a blind eye to it. His laugh ended when I plugged a bullet in his brain***** and walked out, leaving the assorted persons and waterfowl to contemplate my anti-hero behavior and debate the wisdom of cheering a guy like me on.
I left them there, stuck in moral ambiguity, and went to the bar and let some of the boys from the precinct know I’d been doing their job for them again. They reacted with the usual disdain of the establishment when shown up by an outsider.
“Good job, Duck Tracy.”
“You quacked the case.”
“Any evidence of fowl play?”******
I didn’t care. I’d done my job. I knocked back the whiskey and headed back out streets where I belonged.
Someone's got to clean up this town.
*About 3 in the afternoon
** Partial license plate
***Students
****The idiot whose idea this was
*****No one was harmed in the making of this noir
******Actual puns unleashed by our witty, witty staff
“They might in the future more than ever before engage in hunting beavers.” – Samuel de Champlain
We have a bunch of feral cats that roam campus after dark and periodically leave their kittens in bushes for us to find, we had a young bull moose on campus that trampled two cars once before being tranquilized, we have tons of deer that come down from the mountains and graze the lawns and landscaping in the early hours of the morning (once when walking to a class I heard a snapping of branches to my left, looked up and not three feet of me was a young buck munching on acorns, as placid as a cow). You get what I’m saying, right, lovelies? We attract the wildlife at Undisclosed University, we are pals with Mother Nature, we can deal with the fluffy and furry.
But every once in a while something weird happens.
Oh, hello! Could I hitch a lift?
For example, when a beaver crawled into a truck engine like a cat and road to campus from parts unknown. When it arrived outside the student center and the truck came to a halt, the beaver shot out and began running around looking for a new place to hid – prompting our dispatchers to be flooded with calls of, “There’s, like, a huge rat over here!” and “Kill it kill it kill it kill it!” and “My daughter just called me and told me there was a rabies infested rodent terrorizing students, and I want to make a safety complaint.”
Our officers were on the case. Armed with long poles with a lasso like loop on the end of them, they chased the beaver around campus until in Animal Control moved in to take over, by which point the beaver had retreated to another truck engine and was stubbornly refusing to budge.
We were simultaneously setting up a sting operation for stolen electronics and dealing with a domestic violence incident that required most of our on duty officers to diffuse.
“This is what fellows always run up against in the detective novels–What to Do With the Body. They manage the murder part of it all right, and then stub their toes on the body problem.” -P.G. Woodhoues
The other day, Susie was taking a break and walked around the office when she came up short at the copy machine station and froze with a sort of irritated sound.
“C., is this yours?”
In her hands was a photo of a particularly grisly murder scene that our department investigated some years back. After even just three years working here, and murder hardly a typical event, this is utterly unfazing to me. Even less so for Susie who has a good decade on me. We’re excellent people to have around in emergencies.
“Ah,” I squinted at it, “no. Definitely not. And it absolutely should not be laying around.”
See, apart from being inappropriate and gory, it’s rather a huge records protection issue to leave sensitive stuff like that just hanging out on a work table.
“Do you know the case?”
I did, from my adventure in the media lab last year.
“Would you mind – ” she thrust it at me with a wave to indicate my general responsibility and returned to her regular, less gruesome duties.
Of course, this sort of surreptitiousness (unusual in our gossipy office) aroused considerable interest on the part of some of the student employees as I went from department to department with the large photos pressed tightly to my body trying to keep them from seeing as they begged, cajoled, and outright tried to bribe me for a peek. Eventually Lt. Citrus claimed them. He had no idea how they got where they did – which seeing as it’s Halloween season, doesn’t inspire confidence as to whether or not our campus is located on an ancient burial ground filled with restless spirits.
There are days, ducklings, where the weirdness of my job is thrown into sharp relief. Most of the time it’s notarization, stolen bikes or backpacks, or basic receptionist work. Every once and a while, I’m skulking murder documents around the office like MI5.
Weirdest thing that’s happened to you at work recently, kittens?
“Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.”
~ James E. Starrs
A curious thing is happening, pumpkins. Driving around campus on various errands the other day I noticed that on a very few trees, a very few leaves are starting to look…not quite…green. Was there a smattering of reddish, yellowish Fall starting to creep through the chlorophyll? Yes, I think so! And the sun, which has been well above the mountains by the time I manage to pull myself out of bed all summer, is now not quite peeking over the crags.
The other way I can tell is the reemergence of weird phones calls to show that Autumn Term has indeed kicked off. For example:
“Uh, police? Yeah, we’ve, like, found this bike in this tree? Can you come get it down?”
Fall is coming, kittens.
What signs are you seeing – or indeed not seeing – that Autumn is near? There’s a crispness in the air this morning, but it is entirely likely that the temperature will shoot up into the 90s again before the day is out. Mixed signals, much, Mother Nature?
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” – Kurt Vonnegut
Possums, I have abandoned you lately and I prostrate myself before you begging forgiveness.
By way of explanation, two weekends ago we went hiking in canyon country and I managed to roll one ankle, strain the opposite calf, and capped off the whole performance by blacking out – which was a peculiar experience. Angel moved to Hawaii and therefore a last hurrah was in order. All last week, you may recall, I was swamped with work, and this past weekend was spent with J.’s family as a sister and brother-in-law were in town and nieces and nephews must be played with!
Also, we are officially in crunch time. J. heads off in three and a half weeks and life just got the tiniest bit hectic. We had to get him a new suit plus fittings. We just bought my ticket home (boo!) in addition to tickets to the East Coast (as the original plan was to drive out there, but that was scuppered pretty finally). We have to register the car for this year (more money), store all of our books and fine china, and try to find J. a place to live in London.
In other words, I’m stressed, tired, not sleeping well, and getting obsessive compulsive about some really ridiculous things. More on that later. In the meantime I have a tic in my right eye, an odd twitch in my leg muscle, and apparently I’ve started grinding my teeth in my sleep. Send something distractive my way, please? Update me on your life and times!
“Yes, I’m very busy and important…” – Love Actually
I’m doing nearly 200 raises at once. The next person who disturbs me will be marched into the parking lot and shot through the lung, Iamnotkiddingyouguys.
[Dumplings, it’s that week of the year, when the campus is invaded; it’s also the week that I am processing nearly 200 raises. Ergo, I’m dead to the world. Please enjoy this re-post of this time last week, and be assured it’s just as relevant this year. Upon reflection, this is also the week where my optimism about humanity at large takes a beating…]
As if we were not already desperately busy, especially with Fall semester looming, this is also when the University hosts a conference open to the public. For a mere $44 dollars, you can come spend week going to classes about academic topics, theology, personal development, and probably basket weaving for all I know. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the people.
And we're not leaving without our commemorative mugs!
It is impossible to convey how boorish these invaders are. You’d think they owned the place! Office supplies go missing, we have to lock classrooms so that they can’t get in, they knock people down rushing to classes, they yell at everyone…genuine menaces to society. However, it’s their propensity to complain about everything, usually consequences they’ve brought on themselves by their rude behavior, that really bleaches us of all sympathy. Some favorite complaints:
I couldn’t find a parking space so I had to park in the road against oncoming traffic.
No. You didn’t. That’s like saying, “There were no cigarettes so I had to smoke crack.” Not at all. The circumstances are probably aggravating and cause withdrawals and make you irritable (not unlike frustration with parking), but the solution you propose is still illegal.
We paid good money to come to this conference, get out of our way!
We pay much, much more money to go to school here for four years. Full time. And do you think any of us get our way?
We paid good money to come here [again, please note $44], so we should be able to park wherever we want.
Hm…not really. This is, in fact, a fully functioning university 365 days a year. Which means that we have anywhere between 20,000 and 60,000 people here on a daily basis who are actually working and taking classes who need to park. To put it simply, we trump you. You are visitors, we are permanent.
We can’t find anything on this campus of yours. Don’t you label anything?And where are we supposed to park?
Yes. You will find them on those handy maps you were given on your first day. And you can park in any one of the half-of-the-entire-campus-lots we took away from those mentioned in the complaint above this one and gave them to you to use. For a week. For free. Ingrates.
The bishop encouraged us to come so, since the bishop sent us, you should give us food for free, because of the bishop.
This is not the parish potluck!
We drove a long way to come here, why can’t we leave our car in a handicapped stall?
I don’t care if the Vatican called you personally and declared all your sins would be forgiven if you invaded campus. I don’t care if we get an email from Mecca declaring this the site of this year’s pilgrimage. I don’t care if St. Thomas a Becket re-capitates himself and orders Chaucer resurrected to write another masterpiece about our humble university town. You do not, under any circumstances, get to get away with such unpardonable behavior!
(Cutting in front of whole lines of people, including one in a wheelchair, to buy things at the campus store and then snapping at the people who ask you to move to the back of the queue, “We’re with the conference!”)
Who raised you?!
Small Dog Syndrome 