The Man In The Chicken Suit

Hmmm... Finishing 'The Disappearance' in one go seems to have backfired. The finale was kind of underwhelming, wasn't it? I'll rewrite it to be less of a hack job. The whole story really leaked its early noir-ish sensibilities to become far more generic in its silliness, which is disappointing. It's very similar to the way that the cowboy tropes leaked out of 'Night Trials' in the end. The exception is still 'Triangles', still probably the best story to come out of the Quirky Muffin. If I could motivate myself they'd all make good short stories once re-edited. Editing still has all the appeal of an angry shark after the thesis and paper ordeals though...

Have you ever been tired for so long that you can't remember what the other state is like? It's bizarre how that can happen, much like forgetting how good cabbage is after weeks and months of someone else messing it up. Presumably the huge load of things I've forgotten or neglected to do is hovering in my subconscious and cackling evilly as it keeps threatening to break through, and it's shrieking 'Boundary Condition!', 'Foams!', 'Ecology Models!', 'Poach A Stats Lecturer!' and 'Foams!' again and stealing so much mental oxygen that it's difficult to quantify what's going on. The only things that do get done relate to the Quirky Muffin and marking at the moment. Oh, marking... I've remembered marking...

I'm feeling very dull at the moment, as if all I ever talk about is marking, and the world has shrunk down to my very slowly picking my way through this endless pile of exams. My students were very good in general, but as with all things it is hard to not just gape in horror at some of the attempts. I imagine that every exam marking is like that. I think it would be more satisfying to mark each one and write it down and then burn the script in a specially installed furnace just for the task. Then there could be mad laughing and dancing with women in chicken suits. I deny all strangeness in the previous remark. Move along now.

Chicken suits... There were chicken suits recently... There must have been... 'Garfield and Friends'? No, that's an actual chicken.

No, no chicken suits. That's rather a shame as the world needs more people in chicken suits. Every academic department should certainly employ someone with that provision in their contract. One of their jobs should be to sit in on doctoral viva exams and recall to people the absurdity of what's going on. Please, everyone reading for doctorates out there, remember the absurdity and try not to worry too much, although I would not recommend you go yourselves as chickens as that might be counterproductive and should really be someone else's job. And now I can't believe it isn't already.

Please world, we need more chicken suits, and as a fallback gorilla costumes. I rest my case.

O.

PS 'The Glove' still resides in serial story purgatory, mathematics having eroded my creative faculties to folding paper and wondering about the origin of the word 'kitchen'.