words are all I have

[freckles_and_doubt]

Two observations from billboards this morning: (1) context is everything, and (2) I am a sad geek. The headline "OS SAYS BOKS MUST IMPROVE" made me think vaguely, "but rugby isn't an operating system, and besides, that makes no sense." Which it doesn't, unless you know about the existence of Os du Randt, who is apparently the Boks's "scrum consultant." As far as I'm concerned, "scrum consultant" sounds like a euphemism for something incredibly dodgy, possibly along the lines of "fluffer". Also, there might actually be an argument for rugby as an operating system for lots of men on a field.

I spent two hours in one of those horribly postmodern committee meetings this morning, comprising a committee randomly constituted for THIS PERFORMANCE ONLY!, for the purpose of ascertaining how {issue} about {ongoing project} fits into {committee hierarchy} and {relevant managerial bigwig} for purposes of reporting to {high-stakes university committee}. Along the way I voiced a vague shadow of my problem with another, related, giant committee I sit on regularly, which is much addicted to terminology such as "stakeholders" and "way forward" and, as a result of an indecent plethora of stakeholders, tends to lose any holistic sense of a way forward in a morass of conflicting demands. I was extremely weirded out when the Temp!Committee immediately agreed, constituted a working group to investigate said committee and sort out its bloated and multitudinous tendency, and co-opted me onto said working group. I am not a political animal and, quite apart from hating them, generally consider myself very bad at committees of any description, but it is slowly dawning upon me that hideous power may well be mine.

In other news, am addicted to Echo Bazaar, in which I am an Observant and Intriguing Lady with an Araby Fighting Weasel, a tendency to hang out with Rubbery Men, and a growing interest in cheesemongers. I have recently loitered suspiciously with herne_kzn, who made my morning by greeting my efforts with the unsolicited encomium "A+. Would loiter suspiciously with again." I love this game, it's beautifully constructed and suitably wayward in its atmospherics, and attracts like-minded eccentrics with whom to play. Also, its designers are way more intelligent and articulate than they have any right to be, and their game-design blog is a serious pleasure to read. They talk about narrative theory! Swoon!

Speaking of which, must return to the bosom of Gothic plot structure. I cannot find anyone who talks analytically about the narrative structure of the classic vampire plot. I'm going to have to invent it all from first principles. Well, damn.

Comments

Scrummy

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Sad geekiness prevails. "Scrum consultant" made me think of SCRUM, the software development process.

Re: Scrummy

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too, but I'm afraid I immediately suppressed the thought, as for no adequately defined reason I find the prevalence of SCRUM-evangelism strangely annoying.

Re: Scrummy

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Me too!

Re: Scrummy

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

"Scrum consultant" makes me think of .. scrum consultants. You know, Ken Schwaber, Mike Cohn, Jeff Sutherland and guys like that.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that is a real innerestin' blog. *Real* innerestin'

Tempted to try to turn Fallen London into a RP setting. I would guess the developers have experience in that direction, based on the way they talk about stories (and on FL itself).

[(Anonymous)]

Wait. So the way to deal with over-committee-ing is to form a new committee? This is very meta.

scroob

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

It may be dealing with under-committee-ing, if the giant committee has a useful purpose but is failing to perform it. Depends whether you rate committees by existence or effectiveness.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Actually, the process was more "Oops, Big Committee A wants a report on this process. Let's form a temp!committee to discuss how it's going, thus discovering that Lower Level Committee B actually already exists and deals with this issue, although not with much focus because of bloating, so let's form a working group from temp!committee to reconstruct Committee B." In the meantime, the rest of us will simply get on with the process we're discussing, discussions of which will not actually affect it for the forseeable future.

My Cherished Institution works on a silo model, can you tell?

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

My public service does the same thing!

I blame the committee forming meme which is surely planning to take over the world--if it can just work out how to evolve human heads to be bigger and more roomy and still be able to fit through the birthing canal! I hear it is considering a sub-committee to investigate the problem.