defive ->

And yes, Jess, I *do* want to stop dropping stone chess sets on them. I really want to. But it's like some terrible addiction - I can't help myself. PC, meet stone. Stone, this is PC.

There's a very satisfying sound and a buzz for a few seconds, then a nasty comedown. Maybe I should try PC Stoners Anonymous ...

Hi. My name is Cedric. I smashed my IBM Thinkpad with a lump of granite.

Yeah. Gerry. Two HPs, a Compaq, a Dell, some others, all done with marble. Italian marble.

Now I must cross the Twelves Steppes and find the Kirghiz Light.

"Pamela hit her head on the mirror
Mrs Walker got a bump on the knee
The man hit himself on the face and said
'Why does this happen to me?'"

- Fax it up!

"just the fax, ma'am."

If we stop cutting down the trees, they will have no natural predators, and so will eat up all of their food supply and starve to death.

This is why the <pulp and paper factory> is a key element to what we call the "food web" and the "balance of nature."

I will address the importance of <dioxin factories> next.

As all faculty members should be aware, times are hard. Only yesterday I whacked a laptop with a copy of the New York Times - which, unfortunately, happened to contain a 'free' gift, a sample of Kilkenny Black Marble cunningly disguised as a brick. You can imagine the result.

Even the Irish Times - once as soft and woolly as a newborn leprechaun - has turned hard and nasty. Though it hasn't quite got the hang of it yet, which results in 'liberal' columnists attacking their own paper.

This is treason and no other industry would tolerate it. Don't they understand that such people must be fired? And pronto. Sacked, given their 'marching papers' and - the Erse equivalent - something called a P45. If they're lucky.

Useful management tip: don't cuff 'em until they've cleared out their desks. Saves time and security guard salaries.

But these Times guys - they even got a *woman* editor, which is a standard liberal 5th columnist ploy - are weaklings. Weakos and wackos. They seem to think they're still in the 20th century or some such place - they actually recognize unions.

They could learn a lot from Rupert, whose own Times - the Sunday Times - is as hard as rock. The liberal so-called writers have been rooted out, and the only problem area is guys (one called McCarthy, apparently) who use big words that Grandma didn't know. They gotta be taught that big words are strictly for the online edition. What are Mr and Mrs Joe Reader in Scunthorpe or Skibbereen gonna think if they see big words like 'marmalade' and 'corrugated iron'?

They're not gonna think at all. Which is how advertisers like it, and how we like it too, both as publishers and managers of educational excellence. You with me here [Miss Smith - insert name *as above*], Prof Fischerquim?

As somebody famous [memo: google it, Miss Smith] once said: "Let the people go!"

Anyhow, Times are hard. Back in the day, that era which pinko writers everywhere yearn for, times were "a-changing". We put a stop to that. Now we got Hard Times.

[Miss Smith, I don't care what google says about Hard Times and Charles Dickens.] Dickens was a norious rabble-rousing liberal hippie, with a beard and a proclivity for extra-marital sex not sanctioned by the Lord. As Rupert once told me: "If it ain't sanctioned by the Lord, mate, no worries - just give me a call."

A truly wise, truly rich and successful man, and a great leader of ants.

I shall return to the implications of these hard times in a future missive. For the moment, just remember: no expenditure on anything; all 'liberal arts' departments are closed until further notice; if anyone can point out a 'liberal science' I'll be happy to oblige - this so-called 'environmental science' thing might conflict with our important dioxin research. And those guys pay the bills.

As a great scientist - renowned ant expert EO Wilson [no need to google him, Miss S. Me and 'EO' go way back.] - said about communism: 'Wonderful theory, wrong species'.

Staff here should be Wilsonites. Like EO, that is, not oddball conspiracy freaks like Robert Anton Wilson. Who, incidentally, could have been mega-wealthy if he'd been a worser writer - he could have churned out the entire output of Dan Brown on a Saturday afternnon without even lowering the ballgame volume. But the fool insisted on 'writing well'. Think EO, not RAW, everybody.

Classes as usual on Martin Luther King day, btw. Prof Newton's idea of dividing it into 'Martin Luther Morning' and 'King William Afternoon' has been noted. But churches and royalty aren't where the financial action is anymore. We need rich alumni, not Renaissance-era hippie patrons.

[signed] *Miss* Magdalena Botwinnik Smith, dept sec.

OK, cut the Niagara routine. It doesn't matter. I'm sure Dan Brown can't spell either. If we hired good spellers, we wouldn't needs subs.

[memo to self: hire good spellers, let all the sub-editors go? Worth a try, DD - fotrune favors the barve!]

I need to send a follow-upper to Prof Fischerqueen. Apologize for getting her name wrong - but mebbe hint that if the first Fischerqueen in Ellis Island had stuck with 'Fish' things would be simpler. And no, I don't know the Finnish for 'fish'. Do you?

'Tyttu'? Are you *sure*? OK, let it go.

Anyhow, tell her she's a valued faculty member. But since funding from Forum University Colle Kibitzer dried up - well, you know the story.

No more environmental hippie stuff. Send oil shale tar sands Xmas cards to everyone, especially non-Xtians. We need to be nice to industry and stop scaring the kiddies, spooking the horses, and getting up the noses of royalty. We're a school, not a performance enhancing drug.

How do you 'enhance' a royal, anyway? The way Chas I was enhanced on Jan 30th 1649? Or the French guy and his missus in that revolution they had?

Jeeze. They really did that to a *King*? Even chessplayers got the decency to anoounce checkmate. Which is, like, Sanskrit for "Prepare to meet thy doom, thine Majesty. Doom, this is King Dom. Thy majesty, this is thy doom."

New to me, at any rate. The term in question is as common, in all senses, as LOL on many websites ... so I hadn't ever tried to use it before. But when you speak the voice you use the vocab, as mimics say. I don't know how Prince Charles impersonators do it.

"I don't know what the fellow means", roared Midshipman Dom. "That jib has been spliced thrice today, and a fourth may well see us in Davy Jones' locker!"

Seaman Tech Draw, meanwhile, was consulting the GPS on his anachronistic naval palm pilot. "Yeah, guys", he said, "pay no attention to his ETA. Five o'clock was bad enough, but ten before five is ridiculous. We never had a chance of landing by 16:50."

"ETA?" said Dom. "What have Basque pirates got to do with our estimated time of arrival."

You know that I've been banging on about a bizarre series of accidents, to computers and to self, resulting in prolonged absence. Well, I've had another.

Last night I actually got two laptops running at once. I shoulda known it was too good to last. This afternoon, about 17:30 local time, about two hours ago now, I walked out to visit a couple of nearby shops. It was getting dark. Midway between the off-licence and the pharmacy, while thinking about the intro to an article I was writing about New York City, I suddenly decided to go back to another shop I'd already passed. I wheeled around sharply, and smashed my face into a no parking sign with astonishing force. My glasses - which had survived about 20 years as my 'spare' pair because I thought they were unbreakable - broke into about ten pieces. I clutched my face and began to fall down.

Two guys - one Polish, one Irish - heard the smashing sound and came to assist. One found a surviving piece of glasses while the other helped me to my feet. I swayed, saying 'Wwoowww, that hurt'. They looked worried, as though considering calling an ambulance.

I told 'em I was OK, staggered away, made it home alive. Now I can't really see. I'm *very* short-sighted and that was my spare pair. Friends and family who'd been advising me to get new glasses are in told-you-so heaven.

Can't easily read or write or work or use the computer. I'll havta find other things to do with my time. Music? Drugs? Meditation? This is new territory.

I'm getting sick of being accident prone. Yesterday I posted a line from a song called 'the accident' - asking for it, I guess.

<"The man hit himself in the face and said, 'Why does this happen to me?'">

The great <Joe Wms> used to talk about 'bells and whistles' which helped the partially sighted to use computers, but I don't see myself - heh - rattling off 2000-word articles like that.

<Deffi> Thanks, I'm not really hurt. I asked the pharmacist cos I thought I was bleeding and possibly in shock, but he said it looked OK - just to expect a bruise and a bump. Like <Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dom>.