I demand a better future

Hah! Back in the day when I used to indoctrinate incautious first-years into the consumerist evils of Disney cartoons, the ickle firsties would never believe that Disney's primary ideological purpose was to make them go out and acquire screeds of consumerist junk. I submit in evidence this, proof positive that the young are being conditioned. "She's the pretty princess with the things." Tchah. Also pshaw. Also, beauty myth.

I am keeping my upper lip stiff and my chin up in the face of a maddening day featuring the random disappearance of my email access, owing to the ITS geeks having cottoned on two weeks late to my new job, and changed my login directory tree without changing the equivalent email one. I have about a zillion things to do, most of which entail digesting the timetable needs of academics for two separate schedules. All of this data-gathering is done by email. Also, my salary slip hasn't arrived, suggesting the usual HR hangups. Am soothing the savage beast with David Bowie. (Later period David Bowie is actually very soothing, even the cover of "Cactus". Also, is it just me, or is he doing insane self-referential injoke references in "Slip Away" by sticking the smoky background riff from "World Falls Down" over the lyric "in space it's always 1982"?).

Despite chins and lips and soothing, grrrr.