I am a meme...

So, I have struggled this semester because of the ungrateful undergraduates and their masses of complaints--"Why are your tests so hard?", "Why won't you give us a better review sheet?", or "How do I get extra credit by eating this?". Bah. Research has gone slow, partly due to mistakes by my undergraduate research students (hereforewith will be referred to as Minions), and partly due to the infernal amount of faculty meetings I am required to attend. Like they listen to my ideas anyway. "No, Dr. X, we can't make a deprivation chamber in the morgue for students who don't turn their assignments in on time because they've offended you, just send them a strongly worded email like everyone else!" Bah, they have gotten soft, forgotten the intrigue and back-stabbing of the academic world, to say nothing of the research postdoctoral life. Aaahhh, that was the life, where it wan't a good week of research unless you had launched an attack on a rival postdoc of either a psychological or biological nature.

So, in my distraction this semester to the aforementioned reasons and lack of sleep, I accidentally befriended one of my minions. I emphasize, by mistake--I know very well that treating these things like a person encourages free thought, not to mention a vague sensation of loss when the minion eventually needs to be sacrificed. Anyway, the minion began to talk about himself and his background. I must have made some kind of grunting sound that sounded a bit like encouragement, for he babbled further, but I blocked it out and focused on the Chlamydia infection that I was starting. Temporarily blocked, for twenty minutes later, a couple of key words, "flying monkey", "costume" popped through my concentration. Curiousity got the better of me and a lengthy interrogation complete with flapping arms and what was described as the "evil monkey dance" later, I realized the full extent of what I uncovered. My minion was a flying monkey, or at the very least he still had the costume from high school, which he apparently brings out from time to time for wearing. I am now a living joke, I have an evil flying monkey as my minion. *sigh* Well played, Murphy. I am exactly one mountaintop lair and a shark with lasers away from becoming the joke of the fringe science community, the evil mad scientist.