Avoiding working on my thesis is hard, but it’s something I’ve given my full dedication to. Your average graduate students return to their work, metaphorical tails between their legs,* after only a few hours browsing the Internet, after having reorganized the books on their desk a mere once or twice. Not me. When I find that I’ve read all of the Onion, Slate, Salon, IGN, 1up.com, Boing Boing, the New York Times, Slashdot, Portal of Evil, checked my email a few dozen times, and reorganized my desk, the files in my My Documents folder, my office, and the Tupperware cabinet in the kitchen,** I don’t go meekly back to my work. I dig deep. Tonight, I found myself looking up websites that no longer exist, care of the Internet Archive. And that’s when I discovered that I’m a fraud.
Apparently, I stole the idea for my blog from TimmyBigHands.com, a humor site that I once read religiously–probably while avoiding writing papers as an undergraduate. One of the writers was Mike Nelson, of MST3K fame. Go, read this piece, a humorous review of The Rule of St. Benedict**** and you can see what I mean. It’s even got footnotes!***** Or, if you’re too lazy or too worried about getting back to your own thesis, you can just get the idea from this selection:
At this point I’m sure you’re all leaping to make the joke about the rule of Benedict being rather less helpful than the Rule of Thumb. This is patently not funny. Saint Thumb of Monte Cassino, Bishop and Martyr, lived a devout and shockingly painful monastic life, and was martyred in even a devouter and shockingly painfuller death, having been put to the spit like Saint Lawrence before him; only blessed Thumb actually was marinated first in the cellars of a Tuscan vineyard. They used the potent combination of an aged Barbaresco, a flagon of Modena’s famous balsamic vinegar, sprigs of fresh rosemary and just a bit of salt.[3] Thumb was a truly superior martyr, served with a very light sauce of saint drippings and porcinis reduced in more of the region’s fabulous red. However, this is a subject for separate commentary, and is thoroughly covered in Bokenkotter’s Culinary History of Medieval Saints, which also has some fantastic recipes.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go browse the Internet Archive for MST3K quote collections.
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*Possibly, the legs are metaphorical as well.
**If you happen to be my wife and you happen to be reading this, don’t get your hopes up. I was employing exagerration for comedic effect.*** I would never reorganize that cabinet. So stop asking.
***If you don’t happen to be my wife, you may continue to pretend that I am the sort of person who re-organizes my Tupperware. Especially if you happen to be part of a job search committee considering my application.
****Part of a series that included reviews of Saliva, the Granule, Happiness, and Pain.
*****And here I always thought that I’d stolen those from Terry Pratchett.