Deadlines

I have students who have deadlines on D-Day and submit drafts on the midnight between D-1 and D-Day, asking for help. What is the point of that?

Listen up, ladies and gentlemen. Here are things to think about.

First, you need to know what you don't know. I suggest you attend lectures and tutorials, and if those are too boring, spend the time reading the material and making sense of it. Somewhere in all that, you will learn what it is about the material that is impervious to the razor-edged sharpness of your brain. Alternately, you might learn that you know it all. Good for you.

Second, you need to list the things you need help with. Don't come to me with, "I don't know anything, help me." I will proceed to spend time showing you what you do know. But that might not help you with what you don't know. And trust me, everyone knows some things. I can prove it to you.

Third, if you have not overcome the difficulties highlighted in the two previous paragraphs, and you come to me with only a day or two left, pray for miracles of cognitive blossoming. That might help. I can then help you blooming students in the confidence that not my will but the divine will shall be done.

Last, you really might be screwed, and it will certainly not be something I am to be faulted or blamed for. (Incidentally, you should know the difference between 'fault' and 'blame'. If not, search this blog till you find it.)

Self-Help Book Titles

Self-help books seem to have titles that follow a certain sort of template. One of these templates looks something like this: "Everything I Know About [ABC] I Learned From [QRS]" — where [ABC] is the topic which you might need help with and [QRS] is the source of the prognosticator's wisdom.

Just the other day I was pondering the sort of self-help books I might write using this template; titles like Everything I Know About Weasels I Learned From XYZ, or Everything I Know About Self-Destructive Actions I Learned From XYZ. Fortunately for humanity, I decided that writing such books wouldn't really help anybody.

Self-Medication

Today I took the brave step of scrubbing part of the old programming and replacing the nanobots. Years of caffeine dependency don't peel easily away from the walls of the mind, but once you begin to peel, all you have to worry about are scabs. I am no longer dependent on caffeine. Rather, I have weaponised it. My nanobots are continually destroying caffeine dependency plaques and replenishing caffeine levels.

I am now a stainless steel cafetierre. I admit that the image of being a stainless steel cafetierre is not as appealing to the rebel mind as that of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat, but it is a step up from being a mere vessel to both vessel and source (or at least, intermediary).

At the same time, I have scrubbed all semiotic greenery from my heraldic codes. All you people out there who think my heraldry contains any tinctures save azure and gules, and any metals save or, should go scrub yourselves too. I am not one for the vertical or viridian. Sometimes I despair at the intelligence community; signs and symbols are not so difficult to read.

Yes, it does seem as if the caffeine boost has made this posting a tad jumperitical, but I assure you I am not channeling the ghost of Robert Silverberg the Science Fiction Writer of the 1960s. I am just doing what comes naturally when one's blood as significantly deviant in content from the norm. Three cheers for serratiopeptides and capsaicin oleoresin. And another two and a half for the nanobot collection I inherited from my precursor entities. Hoo-hah!!

Face-Off

This is a useful link for some people. Heh-heh.

Give your loved ones more face time before you forget what they look like or vice versa. Don't lose face over it. And hit the books, my friends! Hit them real hard. Hit them till they hurt. Hit them in the goolies! (Err, sorry about that, got carried away.)