What's up, Chuck?

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There's two kinds of office politics. One involves office drones conducting intricate, internecine wars with each other on the basis of "He keeps his stapler on my side of the desk", "She keeps looking at me in a funny way" and "That bloke hogs the photocopier". This kind goes on continuously for years and consumes 73% of office time.

The other kind is all about keeping the boss elsewhere so everyone can do their jobs. This takes up 14% of office time, leaving 11% for going on social networking sites and 1% for the paid work. Which everyone polishes off at the last minute.

Our office politics is of the second kind. The boss has decided he wants the office to have a washing machine (for which there's no room), a second sink (for which there's no need) and a partition with a door (for which there is both no room and no need). The last would cost at least 1000 leva, which he can't spare.

So he wants to fly over to put up the partition himself, on the grounds that it would be marginally cheaper. So we have to find a way to get it done cheaper so he won't fly over and implement any more daft ideas. These are the tactical compromises you make in order to keep the boss out of the country.

We do need a fridge, but he hasn't thought of that.

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Tomorrow I get to teach my first proper lesson. I was going to go over the finer points of conditionals, but today I learned a new word - Anankastic.

Anankastic sentences are any with the meaning "To achieve goal X, do action Y". There's several different syntaxes used to express them, for instance:

* If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.
* If you want it, come and get it.
* To attain enlightenment, you must sit under a tree for seven years, grasshopper.
* To become president, get rich and believe in nothing, passionately.
* All passengers for flight number blah bleeh blom for Burbleblob should go to gate number blurgh.

So I think I'll try teaching that. Elementary students learn forms what functions they have, advanced students learn functions and what form are used to express them.

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The Tuesday Feature, with sardines a la pasta followed by chocolate biscuits with instant lemon tea: Seed of Chucky.

Or "Sperm of Chucky", as the title was retranslated back into English. With some prescience. You might have found it amusing if you like the idea of:

* Dolls having sex.

* A doll frantically masturbating to be a sperm doner. Followed by Doll sperm dripping from a turkey baster brush thing.

* Brad Dourif, who might one day not play a non-psychopath, and John Waters, who ought to.

* Britney Spears dying horribly in a blazing fireball.

* "You don't know me but a few years ago I killed your husband, and I am so sorry."

* Lots and lots of "Meta". Stuff like the killer dolls being found at the site of their previous murders and used in the production of a bad horror film about a killer doll called Chucky, and the female Doll Tiffany plotting to place her soul in the body of a slutty actress who can only get work in crappy movies about killer dolls - and who's played by the presumably non-slutty up actress who voices Tifanny. If you see what I mean.

* "If this is what it takes to be human, then I would rather take my chances as a supernaturally possessed doll. It's less complicated."

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