It is a common word down our way...

Giggle!

Quote of the Day:  If I had any feelings, you would have just really hurt them.

No, I didn’t say it; it was New Guy, when we were teasing him about getting into (yet another) car wreck.  Ok…enough fun, and back to work!  :-)

I have a list of things to do that is literally a mile long…okay, maybe not *literally*.  But if it were double-spaced in eighteen-point font, it would probably wallpaper a small bathroom.  Maybe.

Oh, whatever.

Today after our meeting, I wandered over to our friendly Dep’t of University Rules, Regulations, and Nonsensical Bureaucracy to find out why one of my proposals had vanished into a black hole.  For the record, it was because I had changed the title (ummm…no), and they became confused (oh, do tell!).  So I have to reprint my addendum (which they decided was not an addendum, but a revision) with the “correct” title, and resubmit it ‘cos to do otherwise wouldn’t be bureaucratic enough.  Augh!  But I see the errors of my ways; I shouldn’t have assumed that I was dropping off the equivalent of a memo, and just stuck a header on there that was supposed to be an identifier.  But no.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And since I was there, I picked up a bunch of other people’s (from our group) that they’d not been notified about.  Or, well, they had.  Some of them had been told multiple times, a couple from as far back as July.  Good ol’ DURR has been emailing my TPTB, and the word hasn’t been being passed on.  *Why* it hasn’t been passed on is a whole ‘nother issue.  TPTB says it is because they weren’t received; DURR says they were received.  I don’t know, and I am staying out of it, although I have my theories.  Nevertheless, I rescued them from perdition, and their owners can now redeem them.  Or whatever.

And when I got home, I found that Squoosh had taken his tiny catnip-filled stuffed teddy that he beats the living shit out of, and drowned it in his water dish.  The poor little lifeless teddybody was just floating around.  This would have taken concentrated effort—picking it up in his mouth and carrying it into the room where the water dish is.  

Whyfor you do this, Squooshable?

So the DURR stuff was what I was working on until I got bored just now.  Ok, ok…I was fixing some of them.  Well, it is sort-of in my job description.  Sort-of; I am supposed to lend guidance, not do the whole damn thing, but some of the changes are piddling.  Plus, I felt like being nice.

But now I am bored and tired.  And laughing again…someone I work with has just sent me a list of “student malapropisms”, and they have me in tears.  One of my favourites (and I’ve not made it all the way through yet!) is, "The researcher in the lab coat told the volunteers to deliver shocks. The dependent variable was Millograms of obedience."

Oh, that’s really *quite* funny, and I think I’ve stumbled upon a new method of measuring blind obedience to authority—Milgrams!  LOL!  As in, “I finally had my hedge pruned back after our Homeowners’ Association applied about a thousand Milgrams of pressure”.  Oh, brilliant!  :-)

Oh, and another one:  “Subjects were randomly assigned to gender”.  

Ummm…I think I know that student.  

Another one:  “[The informed consent form] mentions that the study is entirely voluntary and that animosity is assured”.

I want to take that quote and nail it to the goddamned front door of DURR—I’m not so bad after all!  HA!  And didn’t they mean contrafibularity?  Though I confuse the two, as DURR keeps mentioning, so I’m not the authority to consult by any means with regard to the difference between animosity and contrafibularity.  Even if you’re gunning to be dead wrong, I’m not the girl to ask!  And as I told them, I am anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused them such pericombobulation.  Which, of course, I am.  Deeply.  Rilly.  

Butsoanyway.

Please to Rate as Most to Least Synthetic Dep’t:  “Next, subjects responded to questions on a Lycra scale.”

Well, I’m Single and Lonely Dep’t:  “I had a student define the independent variable as the "factor that the experimenter fondles".

Tukey the Turkey Wishes You a Happy Bonferroni Dep’t:  “I had heard of this rare bird, but only last week spotted it in the wild, perched innocuously in a doctoral student's comp exam on research methods: THE TURKEY TEST”.

…a Fud student?!?!  Shit…must be one of ours.  

Perhaps That’s What I’m Doing Wrong Dep’t:  “when the variables that are of interest to researchers cannot be easily observed, many times researchers will turn to surgery."

You Make My Brain Hurt Dep’t:  "Name three axes of the DSM", a student replied "Germany, Italy, and Japan”.

And If That Doesn’t Work, We Dose You With Singerin Dep’t:  "This experiment was about labelling emotions. The researchers administered doses of Schachterin."

STOP SAYING WORDS! Dep’t:  “If it wasn’t for people who didn’t want to confirm, imagine what America would be.  We would believe everything in the media, there would be no performance artists or courtrooms.  Even worse, we would still be England”.

Have You Been Talking To Sophie? Dep’t: “In Stage 2 [sleep], 50% of your body is asleep”.

Ummm…That Would Have Been Me, and It Was Just A Little Meth Dep’t:  “On Friday I attended a presentation given by a psychology professor on crack cocaine”.

I SAID, STOP SAYING WORDS! Dep’t:  “This is a field that I find very interesting for the fact that to my knowledge I never knew about it”.

And lastliest:

Out of the Mouths of Babes Dep’t:  “One of the primary goals of behavioural research is to get your work published in a journal”.

Don’t be ree-dik-u-luss…why in the hell else would one do it?  Although my secondary goal is to bring World Peace through empirical research, and my tertiary goal is to pick up hot chicks.  But that’s just me—I’m magnanimous like that.

God, if there is a god, save me from undergraduates, if there are undergraduates …or something like that.  

Lord, I’m addicted; I haven’t laughed this hard in…well, actually I laugh a lot, but I’ve got abysmally low standards.  

:-P