November 2008


Jelly

Do not touch the jelly!
Its wobbly goodness must not be sullied
By your insouciant prodding.

Do not touch the jelly!
You might have got away with that
With a blancmange.

Do not touch the jelly!
Better men than you have died
Assailing its quivering buttresses.

Do not touch the jelly!
Were I ten years younger, I would crush your fingers
Mangling them betwixt my teaspoons.

Do not touch the jelly!
Though it looks bejeweled and dazzling
It is not so transparent as you think.

Do not touch the jelly!
The gelatinous, glistening glory-pudding
Is no man's plaything.

Do not touch the jelly!
A child's curiosity is charming
But screaming results.

Do not touch the jelly!
Beneath the trembling surface
Dark foreboding resides.

Do not touch the jelly!
Though delectable to the eye
Digits will suffer its wrath.

DO NOT TOUCH THE JELLY!

Warned, you were, with many forbiddings.
Now, with anguished cries, you know the truth.
Without your questing fingers, how indeed,
Will you touch future desserts?






The 4-Track Demos [1998-2000]

Here's some old Snow Crash stuff I've recovered from old 4-Track tapes. We recorded these at university, between working in call centers and attending the odd lecture.  ...read more »

Artist: 




Nocturnal Urban Romance (well Dodgy) by Snow Crash


7:16 minutes (9.06 MB)

Well it was mostly an experiment, but we did record the whole thing so here you go... not my finest hour!





The Cave by Snow Crash


12:49 minutes (16.2 MB)




Kids by Snow Crash


13:37 minutes (18.3 MB)




It's Always You (and never me) by Snow Crash


10:02 minutes (13.66 MB)




Car Chaser (half of...) by Snow Crash


3:14 minutes (5.16 MB)

We just wanted to start with something funky, a sort of break to show off what we could do and wake everybody up before we launched into the plangent rock.  ...read more »





Graduation 2008

The actual ceremonies go pretty well, thankyouverymuch. During the events - of which there are three - I actually have one of the easiest jobs. I have to catch the prizewinners after they leave the stage and send them up in the correct order at the end to get their prizes. Oh how they laugh at the students who win more than one and I have to get them back in time to go on stage again.

There are a couple of awkward moments as the reader reads out a name that he shouldn't and no-one steps up. The same man panics as he realises he is about to read a boy's name and it is quite clearly a blond girl waiting in line. Eventually he sees me jumping up and down and gesticulating wildly at the student on crutches in the front row, who is now thoroughly confused about whether he should try to stand up or not.

The rest of the time I spend wandering about while people come running up to me in a panic demanding answers. This student is on crutches, so-and-so has disappeared and it starts in two minutes, I'm NOT reading this! Where is the lunch? Not on the list... debtors... they're dead... I battle with the security goons and a girl offers me a fiver for getting her a seat. But the bloke in charge said... the Goon splutters. I AM The Bloke in charge! I say.

All in all it goes surprisingly well, there are comments on how calm everything is this year. But I do actually have nervous butterflies all day. The Dean sends out a congratulatory email and most of the hilarious errors he mentions didn't happen at our event. Except for the Pro Vice-Chancellor knocking a glass of water off the pulpit, but who could prevent that? And the Pro Chancellor getting really upset when our staff kept calling her Pro VICE instead. She punishes us all by giving the most boring speech ever written in the most boring way imaginable.

The night before, I am home at about 8 because everyone else always works to 5pm, don't they? This means that I am sent the final list of registrations at 5, so that someone ELSE can go home on time with the knowledge of a job well done.

Except that she sends me the wrong list.

In fact, she sends the wrong list to the wrong person and goes home, so I have to phone someone else in her office, get them to log in to her machine, find the last thing she was looking at and send that to me.

And then send me the right list after I realise I will be here all night checking things the long way.

In an incredible twist of fate, I encounter someone in the kitchen this morning who is not only using the EXACT SAME cafetiere model as me, but also has the EXACT SAME tasty organic coffee! I worry about parallel universes until three month old minutes take over my life.





The Solitary Dream of Orson Spink

Orson Spink was fond of soup, his blistered feet were disparate, no one knew his hat-size and his beef was made of ungulate.

Beyond the chasms of the Moon, young Orson preened his onion-tin, his catastrophic pilchards made a hole to hide his hairpiece in.

Milk from his preposterous teats descended slowly to his knees, his navel filled with lactate which became a slow and pungent cheese.

A burning sun of lamp-like heat blazed down upon poor Orson's scalp, a hat he wove in Basingstoke could not exclude the photons out.

Upon his langorous Chesterfield his scabrous bulk was slowly tanned, imperishable orchids danced a tango in his fiery hand.

An avocet of timely mien was gallivanting in the ash, it rose upon young Orson's chin and acted like a small moustache.

Denied a golden tricycle the avocet was much dismayed, it leaned upon the quivering lip and softly smelled of marmalade.

An orange-blossom acrid scent pervaded Orson's weary snout, his olfactory senses told him toast was somewhere hereabouts.

Descending from his Chesterfield our hero whines and casts around for edible comestibles which may have fallen to the ground.

His wobbling anterior dislodged a chunk of navel cheese, whose friable aroma caused the avocet to cough and wheeze.

The opulent fromage was incandescent on the sun-bleached floor, and burned a small and potent hole through which it sank a little more.

The pilchards were as envious as curtain-twitchers stuck inside, and whirled the Spink-boy's toupee from the place it was supposed to hide.

Squealing in it's mincing flight, the wig was crazed and filled with dread, it instantly sought sanctuary upon the top of Orson's head.

The sunbeams sought in vain thereafter for the balding Orson-pate, and once denied a victim the all-scorching heat would soon abate.

Orson Spink found not the toast for which his chubby fingers sought, and slowly clasped his onion-tin, regained his seat, and sat and thought.

He ponders on his sofa, pendulous, his eyelids start to droop, and Orson Spink drifts off to sleep, and snores a bit, and dreams of soup.






Seven Days

I am not sure where all this anger has come from, I knew what to expect when I took on the job, pretty young colleagues quitting on you for no reason1, recycling temps til the cows come home, academics who really should know better NOT knowing better and for some reason being quite happy to appear utterly gormless...

  • Me: Hi everyone, please let me know if you want to come to the VIP lunch at 12pm
  • Prof. X: Hi, I can only come before 1400, what time is the lunch?
  • Me: Hi everyone, please see the attached list, people marked in red have told me they aren't coming and I don't know who should be taking their place?
  • The head of Postgraduate Programmes: David, have the staff marked in red let you know of any substitutes?
  • Me: If you don't come and empty your boxes by the end of the week we'll do it for you!
  • Them (two months later): I am dismayed to hear that anything has been removed. Who authorises anyone, other than the module leaders, to do this?

A student gives me SEVEN DAYS to retrieve her certificate, which was signed for by someone at an address which is apparently now empty. I changed my address online, she says - only for some inexplicable reason she put it down as a placement address, so naturally I assume that HOME would be best. I have given out her Personal Information to a stranger. She has emails to prove that we said it was all okay. She sends us the emails:

  • Us (8/05): Can you confirm what date you will be moving?
  • Her (8/05): I will be leaving my current home address ([...]) on 29th May...
  • Us (21/05): Please be advised that I will be unable to update your student records, until the actual date that you move in to your new address. It would be ADVISABLE FOR YOU TO UPDATE YOUR HOME DETAILS ONLINE.
  • Her: Okay, can you update my address?
  • Us: ...

There is nothing after this, but I am sure that the highly paid solicitors investigating this Traumatic and Important case will question why she replies to an email saying she has to do it online with a request for us to do it, sent to someone who has just said they are going on holiday? And how is this proof that we said it was all okay? Why does it even matter - I narrowly manage to stop myself going door to door to get it back... I have SEVEN DAYS to PREVENT FURTHER ACTION.

I suppose the small point I am making is that this is really all I have to deal with. Yes, there's rather more incompetence than I can politely deflect, but that is all there is. I was IN CHARGE of coordinating the graduation ceremony for our School2, the hard work is done - the programme was written in good time3, all I had left was making lists and hoping that people turn up on the day. Which they did.

Now of course I have to catch up with all the things I put off doing because I was doing Graduation. My job is once again coming to an unsettling time as this maternity cover ends and nobody knows what to do with me, although they all assure me that I'm not going to lose my grade, or my job. My three years here make me one of the three most experienced people in the office, and they are trying to bully me into doing the timetable again because everyone is leaving.

One of our new members of staff puts up a big notice by her computer with the alphabet on it.

  • 1. I DIDN'T TOUCH HER! I protested hilariously. More likely she got another job where everyone doesn't just tell you that everything is fscked.
  • 2. The School used to be a Faculty, now it has merged with another Faculty - now School - to form a SuperFaculty. We are all supposed to be getting on fine, but you know people...
  • 3. Yeah yeah, nothing is perfect, I have to send out a few 'amended' copies...