Sympathy

So Mr Aziz Spindle approached me in front of the King George Faculty Watch Shop, hands out towards me and talking 100 words a minute. He's a Marketing Madman, full of ambition, spikey, blonde hair springing in the wind.
An MM drone approached me about him a few weeks ago. Seems something's kicking off in the political-undercurrent department. Movements against movements. Those whose names are always mentioned in relation to a must-have role in the organisation better watch out this year. The story the MM was spinning went: "he's right up there - he knows what he wants - he can give us what we want - come join us.
I did what I usually do: I agreed. I'll refer you now to my previous lecture - many moons ago - entitled "Givers, Takers and Talkers." Until it happens, I'll agree with you, because placating you is all I can do until I can see the evidence that you're not completely wasting my time.
It did occur to me that the MM might not have previously been a true and faithful pal to yours truly. In fact the opposite. So fuck-you until I'm sure you've changed (you can fool me twice, well you just can't do that- GB).
So there we were - me, the next potential sure thing in the organisation - and his fan-base. Everybody happily sucking each-others proverbial knobs. Sweet, sweet joy. And me getting nowhere.
Well the reason Mr Aziz ran towards me was to proclaim his utmost, collegial sympathies and hollow offers of support regarding my recent Facebook-faux-pas.
Faithful readers will recall in my recent post "invasion," that I'd inadvertently managed to tell the whole of my university department and the "line-management" to "sod-off" if they thought that invading my Facebook Inbox privacy was just okay by me. My anarchistic tendencies came uncontrollably to the fore. Of course it was meant to be light-hearted, blah-blah, well that's my story behind the whole thing, etc.
Well Mr Aziz wanted to make it clear that I'd been treated harshly and that he offered his support by keeping out of it so he didn't get dragged into this whole, latest, debacle.
So I said "thanks a fucking lot Mr Aziz for your total and collegial support, that you've stood by your academic colleague in the midst of dark and isolated times, blah-blah, etc."
Just as one of us was clearly about to squat and begin gobbling the other's swollen member, etc., I ran away. It was getting far-too, far-too "bon-amis" for my liking.
It reminded me of the time I'd been a visiting Professor at an institute on the outskirts of Berlin, when I wandered into an emporium of porn with a sign which read "Sodomie Geschlechtsverkehr mit Tieren sind Uns". I imagined I'd kill some time there with the other, red blooded academic anarchists who were also waiting for their evening lecturing hour to come round.
Instead, there were all these guys, with huge moustaches and tinted spectacles hanging around the aisles and at one end I saw a huge flatscreen with an image on it that I'll likely never exorcise from my memory. I've never forgotten it - swimcaps, hairless and shiny nutsacks, male mouths everywhere etc.
It was the "gayest" thing I'd ever seen. That was until Mr Aziz and I had our mutual appreciation thing going on.
Good Lord. A think I might have put a tad too much coffee in that last latte. I'm going into anaphylactic shock.
Anyway, happy Saturday night from all of us here at Gonzo Towers, where we're just finishing up the final format for our Sunday Edition, before we go to press.
We'll certainly be rocking after that, til the morning-light cometh.
The headline currently reads "Professor threatens to give university open-day lacky a deadleg in front of a lecture hall full of prospective student applicants." Currently, it's not as catchy as we'd like.
In fact chaps and muses, I'm almost tempted to go with the "Prominent, lecturer sticks nasty note on unauthorised disabled parking space occupant after Sunday afternoon ether-binge" story instead. Again, that title needs a good trimming.
It's going to be a long night.
What are you up to?
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Rejection

So there was a bit of a fracas the other day in the faculty common room, as a visiting dignatory from a local "school of practical education" was receiving a showround of our new premises by one of the middle management "Head-Boys" as they've recently been relabelled.

Professor Menschenchowder was apparently perusing the faculty herb garden, which has been under the care Dr Wheedon since the unveiling of our new conservatory, when the dastardly incident occured.

The herb area is part of our new winter garden complex, established for the entertainment of our esteemed, retired or disabled faculty professors.

Using this facility, originally sponsored by the Depends Foundation for retired academics, we're able to spend our spare time between classes visiting those upon whose shoulders we stand, to learn everything we can from them, in order that our pedagogy might be the best it can be. Incidentally, please substitute the commoner expression "teaching" for "pedagogy" if that word in any way threatens you.

Professor Menschenchowder, a fine gentleman of good standing in our community was apparently in the throes of cramming one of Dr Wheedon's fabulous "Moon-face Brownies" into his fizzog when another of our once-esteemed colleagues ran into glasshouse number 7. We first assumed that this junior academic, Dr Free had come to collegially greet our visitor, but things turned very nasty, very quickly.

Before we knew it, Dr Free appeared to be kneeling on
Professor Menschenchowder's chest and had his hands clasped at his throat. According to our later review of the establishment's CCTV records, Dr Free trembled shouting "you fucking, conniving, power-hungry, hypocritical, pseudo-marxist jerk!"

At the time, Professor Menschenchowder seemed to be mostly gasping for air, clearly shocked by the sudden actions of his young assailant.
"I'm going to fucking kill you!" Dr Free continued, as Professor Clash and I grabbed him and began pulling him off as the orderlies arrived with the chemical cosh.

"No!" I gestured to the orderlies to stand back. "We must first find out what has happened here!"

To be continued...
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Special Repost: The Faculty: Givers, Takers and Talkers

It's bizarre that in thinking about this post, it's almost exactly 2 years since I wrote this, and in that time, a grand total of fucking zero has changed.

Now if you'd all like to fuck off now, I've got writing to do. I appreciate it, lotttssss.

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Apparently your chance of publication in leading journals doubles if you put a colon in the title. My mate Phil was very clear about that. I received a mail one day from that fellow traveller Ron Mexico, with the outstanding and totally recommendable Totally Gonzo blog, which you must check out right after reading this piece. We recommend things here because they are good, not because they generate commissions.

So back to Ron's comment. It was:

A "Gonzo Lecture" is something that I often think about, especially the ways a lecturer could introduce some Gonzo methods into the academic world. In my own twisted sense of humour I have to admit my thoughts have yet to go beyond setting off fireworks at the back of the lecture hall and denouncing the rest of the faculty as a bunch of pigf****rs. (ed)

It seems wrong that the one place where fun is totally killed in college is in the lecture hall. Maybe if it started there, the students might actually turn up for a change. As The Good Doctor often said - "When it stops being fun, it is wrong."

Wisdom indeed. I've thought often about this comment when dealing with some of my esteemed colleagues. I was describing the situation just today on the phone to my colleague Jimbo Kalashnikov. We were discussing how some people meet deadlines and do their part and some people don't. Realising that success in my work depended so much on being able to predict likely co-worker productivity when entering initially into any substantial collaboration, the new taxonomy suddenly slipped out with glistening suprise.

"Jimbo," I said "there are three types of faculty. Givers, Takers and Talkers."

He agreed.

I continued. "The givers are the ones you want. Stay well away from the takers, but they after all only ever contact you in order to further suck you dry, offering nothing of use in return. The real problem ones are the talkers. They appear cooperative, productive and collaborative, but in fact are just finding new and exciting ways to waste more of your precious time and sabotage any possible achievement you may aspire after."

We paused in astonishment for a moment. Just two academics together on the telephone-line.

Check out the latest from Totally Gonzo

Gonzo Summer Tips

Some things you can do to keep you and your colleagues amused over the summer period whilst the teaching time is over and the office is quiet:

1. Take the staples out of their stapler.
2. Start a 600 page printing job with no paper in the printer. When they rush into the office to print an urgent document it'll take hours before their's comes out.
3. Use all the toner in the printer and don't order a new one.
4. Break the paper drawer and don't report it.
5. Press "Print" on the risograph with the lid up so it produces a single, black, sticky sheet which jams the rollers and then walk away and leave it.
6. Put a half-eaten sandwich to ferment all summer in a dirty coffee cup in the staff room.
7. Cook a jacket potato in the staff microwave until it explodes and then leave it for someone else to clean up.
8. Unplug your colleagues' comput screens so they return from summer thinking their comput has crashed.
9. Misfile colleagues' mail in boxes for other departments, particularly those marked "urgent". An even more amusing variation is to simply throw them away.
10. Tell the office busybody you've decided to leave and you're not coming back in September. Leave a vague "out of office message" on your email and ignore any subsequent desperate attempts to contact you when word finally gets round.

More to follow...if you can think of any other ideas to liven up this quiet period, please feel free to contact me on thegonzolecture@gmail.com


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Collegiality

C is for "caring", "o" is for...couldn't think of an "o" so we'll drop the "Sesame-style" approach to the new word of the day. "But surely," most of you cry "this is a word that's been around since the Roman empire came tramping across Europe!" And you'd be right about that! So why is it that this particular word has lost its use, and when it is used, its sniggered at as being outdated, or dismissed as not being what we do. I met a PhD- qualified academic the other day who told me straight-faced that she thought "Faculty" was an American concept. Shows how long she's been teaching in a University. It's true though that these words have been pushed out of fashion by the new market-driven emphasis of the new world of the business University. Paying for your education no longer makes you a student, but a consumer. The fact that some of us die-hards still believe that education is a basic human-right still denied to many in developing nations and now too by the government policy makers who want it to pay for itself as part of the new extra-competitive, Competitive Market. Sure cuts the bill down for the tax payer, so that their hard-earned reddies can now be poured out on more deserving causes, such as dishonest banks.

Back to the point - "Collegiality" - part of professionalism and very well defined - Wikipedia gives us:

Colleagues are those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose. A colleague is an associate in a profession or in a civil or ecclesiastical office.

So:

Thus, the word collegiality can connote respect for another's commitment to the common purpose and ability to work toward it. In a narrower sense, members of the faculty of a university or college are each other's colleagues; very often the word is taken to mean that.

The main point of this term is to denote the opposite of bureaucracy. If you make education profit-making, you need finance specialists, marketing agentsand managers to run it in order to meet the demands of a business-goal model. This means that Faculty Members are then forced to respond to these outside controls which are technically in opposition to their duties. As a result, we need to consider carefully whether to actually ignore collegiality defeats the basic essence of the Faculty.

See the link