The definition of madness

Madness, according to Einstein, is repeating the same experiment again and again, and expecting different results.

I do believe that it may actually be the result of telling someone the same thing again and again, and then deciding that a lobotomy (for them) is the only way to get them to fucking.listen.to.you. Percussive maintenance often works on electrical equipment. Why shouldn’t it work on people’s heads? Some argue that this desire for “violence” stems from madness. I think they are misguided: it is an active desire to bring order to a world populated by idiots.

People, copying-and-pasting from Wikipedia is plagiarism. It was plagiarism when you copied those words and then pretended they were yours. It is STILL fucking plagiarism, even when you say it is only Wikipedia.

Those thoughts are not yours. Are you so bereft of original thought that you need to take other people’s?

Someone deserves a lobotomy, but, even though I don’t think it is me, the constant thumping of my head against this here desk might offer the same results. On me.

The centre cannot hold

This is what happens when I take a week off work: the world falls apart.

There I was, whistling while I tended orchids, when I got the call: retrenchments. Some of the worst Work News any person can get. I should be used to it by now. This will be my fifth round of retrenchments in two different organisations (aka. the reality of working in journalism). Somehow I’ve survived the previous four unscathed (except emotionally and mentally — I worry that they eye twitch from the second round will never go away), and this has made me wonder: am I the cream that floats to the top, or the shit?

But what gets to me more than anything is the injustice of an “organisational restructure”. The Big Dogs, the head honchos, they never worry about their jobs. Their employment and paycheque (which is substantially bigger than everyone else’s) are secure, but they were the ones who fucked up! The Little People, the lilliputians if you will, did their jobs to the best of their ability.

Take me, for example. My job is to write, and so I write. I write new things, I make sure I’m on top of the news in my field. I dance for my nefarious overlords, giving them boasting rights, but I don’t sell advertising. I don’t manage a company. But I’m the one whose job is at stake.

What is that? That’s injustice. I suffer, while the people who actually GOT us into this situation in the first place stand in front of us, with horse faces and mouth full of teeth, saying how much it hurts them to do this.

Well, you know what, buddy? Fuck you. Think about the 55-year-old white man with two children who is probably going to lose his job. He didn’t take sick days, arrived ready to work at 8am and left after it was dark. He’s the person who is going to pay because you can’t do your job.

And, yes, it is all your fault.

Quoting Wikipedia is still plagiarism

I am sitting with a story to edit. It sits in front of my eyes as a bloody tableau of red corrections.

I can handle that. I can handle making changes, and helping someone form their story. It’s part of my job.

But how do I engage with their plagiarism?

Not even “smart” plagiarism — I know that I shouldn’t make distinctions here, but “stupid” plagiarism just seems so much worse than “smart” plagiarism — WIKIPEDIA plagiarism. Did you really think that you’d get away with it?

How stupid do you think *I* am? How stupid do you think your reader is? Why are you wasting my time — when I am trying to help you — with writing that is not yours??

These are all questions I should ask you, but just worry that you’ll plagiarise your response.

It is theft! How can you not realise that stealing someone else’s words and passing them off as your own is THEFT? You are an academic. Your job is to disseminate knowledge. You know how important words and thoughts are. How can you take other people’s, and think that it is okay?

In my mind, I’m going through the possible punishments to fit the crime. I could dismiss your piece outright, and say that I don’t let thieves write for me. I could sneak into your house in the dead of night, and leave paper cuts all over your bleeding and stinging body, or I could tell you off for being a thief and tell you never to do it again. The last option is probably what I will do, and I wonder if you know that I will never accept writing from you again because in my mind you are a thief.

* Note: Many years ago, I tutored first-year English literature students. Someone once referenced plagiarism.com, but no one thought to plagiarise Wikipedia. Perhaps they were more scared of me in person.

The slow death by admin

It’s a rather ignominious way to die.

I thought it would be in a burst of fiery rage, a shoot-out from roof tops, a high-speed chase through the city in helicopters.

But no. It would appear that Death-By-Paper-Cut is the fate that awaits me, bones stripped clean through piranha-like admin. Unfortunately, in the digital age — while paper cuts are something that occur substantially less frequently than they used to — the mental paper cut from over exposure to email is a real thing. Each email that lands in your inbox takes a tiny bite out of your brain, and en masse they do some real damage.

Email is also more insidiously economical: you can fit more emails into an inbox than you ever could pieces of paper into a physical inbox.

Yesterday, I wrote thousands of words. Literally thousands of words. Not one of them was in aid of a story. No, they were in emails, responding to the minutiae of other people’s problems.

I once had a boss who used to say, “You know what we really need to do?” First, fuck off on the rhetorical questions. Second, she never actually meant “we”. She meant “you”. “You do this, oh minion, who has nothing better to do than respond to my every whim.”

That is what the hundreds — yes, hundreds — of emails felt like. “Dear Angry Science Girl, You obviously have nothing better to do than devote all of your attention to the things I want from you. Pay you? Of course not. This is for the good of your [insert here*].”

What they also fail to mention is that it isn’t for my good. It’s actually for theirs. So that they don’t have to drown, gasping for breath under a pile of administration that is actually their job.

* country, reputation, company, democracy, unborn children, planet.

A little game: Your Job, My Job

Let us play a little game. I like to call it “Your Job, My Job”.

Organiser person, your job is to organise. Writer person, your job is to write. See how nicely we can play our little game, with you working to your strengths, and me to mine? Look how we frolic. Oh, the smiles, the joy, the laughter. This is such a lovely game.

So, why for the love of all things holy, are you asking me (the writer) to do your job (organising)?

I am not your friend. I don’t want to give up hours of my time out of the goodness of my heart. I chose to be a writer, not an organiser, ’cause — wait for it — I like writing. And they pay me for it. Do you know what I don’t like? Doing your job too.

You think that I’m smiling with acquiescence, happy to be given the chance to take the weight — of the job that you are paid to do — off your shoulders. No. That isn’t a smile. I’m baring my teeth at you, wondering if — one day — I might be gifted with the ability to set you on fire with my eyes.

Just do your fucking job.