I’ve had just about enough of this. 9 months is normal I know, but I am almost 8 months in and clearly more impatient than I thought. Sorry for the silence people, but my life has not been the same since my forced “prank” conception. I’ve had it up to my lactating tits with ultrasounds and scans, patronising antenatal classes, badly-produced educational DVDs, painful probes and gels (I’m sore and very sensitive down there you bastards!), embarrassing weigh-ins, exhausting squat thrusts and the Dutch (nothing to do with pregnancy, I just don’t like them very much). It’s time to get this clearly very lazy human specimen out and into the world, so it can start living (and working) properly, rather than spoil it any longer in the warmth of my belly surrounded by chorizo and gin. I know babies don’t really grow inside the stomach, but it must be close enough to smell its contents. I’m a doctor and a bloody good surgeon when I choose to be – I can do this, I have some spare anaesthetic somewhere. If not, there’s always the dealer who hangs around on my street corner most Thursdays. He must have something that’ll occupy my nerve endings while I perform the necessary exit operation. I just need a bucket and a towel (for the sick and the sweat).

Watch this space folks, I shall soon be my own man again…

More exclusive extracts from:

THE DIARY JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC STUDENT CHARLES HUMAN

Dedicated to Darwin, Einstein and my future self.

THURS 15th NOVEMBER

Once more I am appalled at the ignorance of the teaching staff here at the University. I had come here in the hope that I might actually ‘learn’ something, but it is clear I am going to have to take matters into my own hands. I have taken to organising an after class ‘real’ science lecture – but so far there seem to be few takers. Well, if we were to be matter of fact about it – no takers. Still I don’t see this as a deterrent. If anything it is giving me a chance to practice my oratory skills in a larger venue than my meagre student dwellings, of which the other student I share a room with seems little keen on, especially when I deliver impromptu early morning lectures.

I still seem to be struggling with finding a social group to form relations with – this isn’t to say there isn’t a scientific society. There is a very fine and respected one, but my one and only attendance to said group lead to heated debate. The enquiry is still ongoing about quite how it escalated to three dismissals, five suspensions, a fire and one fatality…

MON 19th NOVEMBER

And then when all seemed lost, in SHE walked…

I had just about given up on my post lesson personal lectures, when this afternoon I saw the loveliest specimen of the female form enter the theatre and ask if she was still in time or had the lecture finished?

I was enchanted.

So much so that while clearly there was no lecture or audience I proceeded to invite her to sit while I continued to talk about the digestive tract and bowel movements of the common household hamster for a further three hours.

]]> http://professorcharleshuman.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/the-student-years-pt-2/feed/ 0 professorcharleshuman arch--miller lecture http://professorcharleshuman.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/the-student-years-pt1/ http://professorcharleshuman.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/the-student-years-pt1/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 11:46:50 +0000 professorcharleshuman http://professorcharleshuman.wordpress.com/?p=965 ]]>

THE DIARY OF ACADEMIC STUDENT CHARLES HUMAN

For the eyes of future historians and intellects ONLY!

SUNDAY 3rd OCTOBER

Mother accompanied me to the station today to see me away to University. I am the first Human to be attending an establishment of further education. She cried of course, although to be fair I don’t think it had anything to do with my leaving. Still this didn’t stop it causing me quite the degree of discomfort and embarrassment as she broke down in floods on the platform. Not for the first time I was reduced to holding her in the sleeper position until she passed out and I was free to board the train.

Father was as ever noticeable by his absence. I wonder if he even knows where I have gone. Still as I sit here and write this on the train, I feel free. Free from the shackles of my ignorant colleagues and friends back home. And free to engage with like minded scientific souls in a more learned environment.

MONDAY 5th OCTOBER

Dear diary – where have I come?!!? So there is something called Fresher’s Week. And it would appear to consist of boorish young drunks falling in and out of the student union,  usually in each others arms, off no doubt to try and copulate with each other, before another round of drinks and vomiting. Darwin forbid I actually came here to learn something.

I tried to engage one of these oafs in conversation earlier – your standard discussion about the DNA double helix consisting of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides. Apparently this was enough to warrant labelling me a ‘homosexual’, clearly wrong, although in all fairness he was correct about the ‘Speccy’ aspect of my appearance.

I fear my dear journal – that perhaps University life is not what I had hoped it might be. If only  somewhere  in this vast institute, there should be some single like minded individual…

TUES 6th OCTOBER

Apparently not.

However, this imminent arrival of a fresh young life, or Subject CH03mk2 as I planning to name it, has led me this week to look back, somewhat nostalgically at my own formative years. A carefree child, with none of the pressures and responsibilities of my adult life – I thought it might be of interest to you my dear blog reader to get a brief insight, into the early musings and development of my soon to be superior brain. Indeed this very blog is by no means the first record of my thoughts and genius, rather precociously I have been keeping a journal since I was two and a half, although here for you I shall limit disclosure to my teenage ramblings, before being mostly crayon drawings of estranged father figures and red fire engines .

So for the first time outside of the elegant scribblings of my own fair hand in a number of catalogued and indexed moleskin notebooks – I present over the course of the next few days, extracts from CHARLE HUMAN: THE STUDENT YEARS…

It has come to my attention of recent that I might be BORING some people. That my only chosen topic of conversation is Science, and that I find it difficult to converse with people regards absolutely any other subject matter.

The simple fact is of course, that I don’t fill my brain with the inane things that seems to make up a large part of most ordinary peoples heads.

I don’t watch TV. I don’t watch films. I don’t read fictional books. I rarely listen to music. I can’t and won’t cook. I don’t spend hours worshipping some false God. I wear the same set of clothes constantly (much like Einstein I believe you will find – however I have one over him, instead of a wardrobe full of the same set of clothes I have limited myself to one set and one set only, to restrict absolutely any chance of wasting precious brain power on choosing one pair of identical shoes over the other).

The great discoveries of humankind aren’t made by idiots who spend half their time watching the X-Talent. Anyone who is a regular reader of my blog knows that I value Science above and beyond anything. Frankly to make conversation about ANY other subject would be a waste of yours and my time.

This has in the past undoubtedly lead to my somewhat solitary existence. I tolerate fellow academics (at best) and am not above admitting that the number of lovers I have performed upon count less than fifty.

As an aside I find the term ‘lover’ one to be grossly inaccurate, certainly in relation to myself. I love science of course, that is a given. But have never considered myself a ‘lover’ of women. I prefer any partners I take to think of me more as their ‘sexer’ – a far more appropriate, and accurate description.

So anyone wishing to hear me pass comment on politics, sports events or popular culture – I can be no help – I have nothing to bring to the table on any of the above. However, should you wish to tell me, for example that – the human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year, well then there we have a subject matter I can engage in!

Ah science, my wonderful muse…

I understand your concern. I have been offline and it has been some three weeks now since my last post. And in a time of crisis such as this, who would I ask are you most likely to turn to? A government dissolved so they can beat a campaign trail in search of your vote, gurning occasionally from your TV screen. The very sight of David Cameron on last weeks first televisual debate, where the topic of science I noted was not bought up once – and they want my vote – was enough to make me smash my TV to pieces. Bag it up,  take the car, and dispose of its electrical remains over a bridge, to the bottom of a watery grave.

But in this dark hour, with the Earth its very self turning against us, who of course do they all turn to for an answer. It’s not an amateur like Brian Cox I’ll tell you that much. So it may come as little surprise to you, that my absence from this regular posting board has been because my presence has been required abroad – at the very heart of our current ecological and geological phenomenon, affecting so much of the country.

Indeed I have spent the last three weeks in Ecuador, studying a large ant migration in the Amazon basin and whether inducing some with small dosages of alcohol, will in any way affect or limit their progress. I am sure your in agreement how you might see that research such as this has incalculable value to human understanding of our planet.

In fact it has cost me quite a few tax payers pounds to ensure that I can keep planes illegally in the sky to import more alcohol from the UK out to me here in South America. What with that volcano thing happening over in Iceland it is costing me a fortune in bribes!

Still science marches on…

Who in the name of Darwin is this overnight science sensation??!

This-this-this…Brian Cox.

Where has he come from? I follow everyone, EVERYONE, in the science world closely. Some extremely closely, and consequently have a few pending restraining orders to show for it. But this Brian COX figure has literally materialized from nowhere. One minute, there I was (me, Professor Charles HUMAN) together with a few of the usual suspects – leading the UK if not the world in scientific observations, discussions and elaborate experiments, our collective faces etched in the zeitgeist, like a modern day Mount Rushmore only in the UK, probably Dover somewhere – the next minute, a young SPERM of a professor surfaces and all of a sudden is heralded as the next best thing in the science world: flavour of the year by the looks of it, at least with the B-B-Bloody-C. I don’t know if this sudden detraction from REAL science is linked to a recent bout of criticism directed towards my apparently ‘unnecessary’ experiments – for example, my successful training of a chimpanzee to photocopy, fax and collate documents was mocked in the February issue of “Live Science 2010″ – or last week when I produced a tasty new cheese using rabbit’s milk, nobody showed the slightest interest (except Tesco’s who have yet to reply).

Anyway, as for COX, I’ve yet to see the little pre-pubescent fellow demonstrate anything of scientific value…to me anyway. We’ll see what the future brings – only time will tell… (unless he plans to reinvent that too!!)

First there are the e-mails to check and reply too. Followed by  the morning browse of  news websites to keep abreast of current affairs. I like to take a quick check of the weather satellites. Then catch up on last nights television with the various replay services that now exist. I often browse You Tube, holding a particularly strange fascination for amusing videos of dogs driving cars.

None of this begins to include the daily download of music, which can require some trawling through various file sharing websites to find exactly what I am looking for. (This week I was pleased to finally track down a copy of 1987′s Keep Your Distance by Curiosity Killed The Cat – ah that takes me back to some happy times!)

And of course somewhere in amongst all of this, I also have to have a massive masturbate over the substantial amount of free erotica, found in every corner of the internet and that caters to just about every known perversion and sexual quirk mankind can possibly dream up. And frankly some we couldn’t have envisaged even in our wildest dreams – or indeed nightmares.

It’s a wonder I have time to finish writing this blog…

Perhaps it’s the fact that I currently have my very own brood residing within – being that I am not usually the sentimental type – however I could hardly let this moment pass.

Congratulations to my work colleague Dave, and his wife Laura, on the birth of their new baby daughter Maya. She was delivered at 1530 on Saturday 27th February and came in at a whopping 9lb 1oz. I didn’t deliver her myself, despite my offering – for some reason Laura doesn’t appear to trust me!

Still I look forward to welcoming their healthy new test subject to the institute within the next week, I already have her cage on standby.

As I’ve previously detailed here over the previous few blogs – what with my workload, not to mention my being pregnant, I have had my hands quite full of late. And if I am to be honest – I tend to thrive under such pressure cooker conditions. There isn’t a job or task too hard or  too busy that I can’t make infinitely harder and busier.

So when things do finish, when I do find myself, as I do now, with little to do – this is of course where complacency can set in. I know there is probably some more worthwhile stuff that I could be getting on with, some way with which I can be more creative with my time, but I find that I just can’t be arsed…

I have developed a marvellous technique of staring off into the middle distance, focusing on nothing in particular and nobody disturbs me because they think I’m in deep thought. I’m really not. I’m not thinking about anything. I can sit like that for hours. I do. Until it’s time for lunch.

The problem however, now is, when people do come to me with genuine and important jobs to do, my enthusiasm is dimmed. If I can actually be bothered to lift myself up from my desk, I tend to do it rather half heartedly. So as it stands after yesterday’s little ‘incident’ let’s just say, I’m off the operating theatre rota for the time being…