The Book of Genesis - Bill Gates Style

In the beginning Gates created Windows and 

The Windows was without form and void; and the darkness was upon The face of the computer and the spirit of Gates moved upon the void and said ...

LET THERE BE OFFICE! And it was good.

BUT! Not good enough apparently because we are now on version/incarnation 6, 355,567  10 and as yet there isn't a soul alive who holds the key to all its power!!!! 

Now a couple of days ago I was seen to be ranting profanely and in quite an unseemly manner at an integral component of Office, namely Word. I may well have jeopardised my initiation into British Mummy Bloggers (I am still pending approval!) with all my f*cking and fr*ing and all because WORD - the arch nemesis of any wannabee writer - was flagrantly disobeying me and putting images into my carefully crafted chapter willy nilly! 

Well I would like to take it all back because today I discovered something which has made me genuflect at the Alter of Bill Gates once more (see below) 

The Alter of Bill Gates 

(even though I am an "out of the closet" iMacophile but shhhh don't say anything - I wouldn't want to hurt Bill's feelings. Oh and please ignore the voodoo doll in that Picture - this isn't actually my alter - I stole borrowed it from Steve Jobs' blog - I think he is still a bit bitter!) 

I have lit a candle in his honour, retrieved the ubiquitous tome 'Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual' from the dusty corner in which it landed when I last hurled it across the study, and I have reinstated Word on my 'All Time Greatest Inventions' list! (Please don't ask me what's on the list - I don't actually have 'a list'; it's a rhetorical trope that we writer's sometimes employ to make ourselves sound far more interesting and erudite than we actually are - aka BULLSHIT!) 

All this has been helped by the fact that yesterday I managed to place the images correctly! YEEEHHAAAAAA!

So ...

Are you ready for this little gem which I am about to share - it could revolutionise your essay writing!

It is a bit of a breakthrough ... BRACE YOURSELVES! 

YOU CAN PUT BOOKMARKS INTO WORD DOCUMENTS!!!!!

You can actually put a little bookmark into your document, give it a little name and when you next open said document you can use the 'go to' function and locate the place you were last working!

Now this may seem a simple and ordinary thing for some of you out there who gloatingly know all there is to know about the behemoth of functions that is WORD... but when you have a document that is nearly 100 pages long with several sub headings and subsections, that you often have to jump back and forth to, basically using your scroll button, THIS IS A MAJOR REVELATION!!!!! Also by the time I finish I shall have approx. 80,000 words and probably around 500 pages to edit so this feature will be immeasurably helpful to me in the long run! 

Now the only problem is that once I discover a short cut to anything I tend to over use it ... so I must resist the urge to immediately insert 101 new bookmarks into my document, thus voiding them of any real useful purpose as a short cut!

In summary - from this post you can probably tell that I have actually managed to do some work on my thesis today! I deliberately stopped myself from blogging yesterday as it would have been an 'I did this, that and the other and blah, blah blah,' which is all very well but it is tedious to write and even tediouser  more tedious to read... Also I have a tendency to become obsessed if I haven't complied to that day's tasks (BLIP!) - of which blogging is threatening to become another victim. So I forced myself to go cold turkey! 

Should read I am an Idiot! 

Today wasn't without its major idiot moment, however. I had noted in the margin of my MSS that I should 'insert the quote from the letter X as quoted by Scholes  p.13' - so off I went to locate said quote - I looked on every page 13 of every book I have been using for the last few days - and no quote! I felt my irritation levels rising as looked again - I scoured p.13 of the Scholes book even though I had diligently scored out the name which to any sensible person would indicate it WASN"T in Scoles' book! 

Took me 45 minutes to realise I was referring to page 13 - OF MY OWN THESIS!!! 

Sheesh! 

To give you some idea of what I have been dealing with today get a swatch at this excerpt from Paul Edwards' Book BLAST: Vorticism 1914-1918 - if anyone can make sense of this sentence email me please ... because I'm f*cked if I can!

"Just as the conditions of 'life' prevent any self becoming, unalloyed, the true authentic self towards which it nostalgically aspires (wtf?) , so the condition of painting or any other signifying system prevents the work of art from becoming (it's about to get even whackier) the direct communication of that self or of any pure, transcendent world of spirit." (OK then?????? I want a shot at whatever he was drinking when he wrote this!) 

And finally - I have added a few extra features to the feedback/comments are of the blog - please feel free to express your opinion but if possible try to be kind (you can swear as long as you are swearing with me not at me!)  I may look like I have the hide of a rhino but that's only because I can only afford Nivea face cream! 


 And on that note I shall bit you adieu and go and play (sparingly I promise) with my bookmarks! 

Today's expletives were brought to you by courtesy of the letters 'F' and 'B" and the symbol "*' ! 

Putting it out there...

... for all to see is a scary business.


A couple of days ago I changed my settings and made myself 'public' ... my cyber 'room of one's own' has become an open house; I should really have been serving canapes and champagne to make all visitors feel welcome (and to want to come back!). Up until now I had kept myself to myself and felt as though I was just blogging for me.


But that is the thing isn't it - you can't really just blog for yourself - can you?
Anything you do on the tinterweb is a form of display or exhibitionism, so surely to maintain the claim that I am doing it 'just for me' takes on a disingenuous tone?


Sooooooo,  this is why I have ripped off my security settings and laid myself bare to the public gaze - Lacan (le voyeur extraordinaire) would be proud!

As a result of this exposure I picked up a few followers yesterday (which makes me sound like some kind of cyber streetwalker but never mind) who seem to be in the same boat as me. We are all bobbing along on the Oceania Academia and I feel all pleased and smiley. Don't worry fellow passengers it's five star all the way!
The good thing about this is that I can now also cherry pick their blog listings for ones with similar interests to mine... I have a confession to make at this point; I am a very lazy cyber surfer, with a tendency to take whatever shortcuts are available to me ( as fellow blogger Typecast will confirm) so in order to repay a kindness check out Student Mum - because I shall be browsing through her entries for sometime. Ohh errr!


I have also become a member of British Mummy Bloggers. I am awaiting approval!


*heavy sigh*  I am slightly disgruntled that any parenting site or agency aimed towards mothers seems inclined to use the term 'Mummy' in its title! The only person licensed to utter the word 'Mummy' in my opinion is a child of said mother, who is still under the age of puberty! (Possibly an exception can be made for hairy Continental men involved in sex role play but let's not get onto that just now!)  However, needs must when the devil drives I suppose ... 'tis my own little bugbear and it will just have to fester silently whilst I reap the rewards of being affiliated, (let's call it a consequence of studying feminism and gender for so long) ... I am beginning to understand why Faustus was so easily led astray! 


However it looks like a very good site full of useful information and I am keeping my fingers crossed that they allow in renegades like me!


**THIS NEXT BIT MAY CONTAIN THE WORD F*CK - BUT AS A STUDENT OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE WITH A FIRST CLASS MA (HONS) AND AN MLITT (WITH DISTINCTION) I AM QUALIFIED TO USE SUCH WORDS AS F*CK SO DO NOT WORRY YOU ARE IN SAFE FUCKING HANDS!**

Now enough about that - more about ME! Yesterday after spending hours on Facebook, blogger, discussion forums and surfing the internet whilst quietly neglecting the housework and what to cook for the kids tea, I actually did some work - I edited at least 39 pages of this section - I am about to edit the rest which is in slightly better shape so should take less time...

But I hit a snag! I decided (oh why?? WHY???) to remove the typed versions of BLAST excerpts and insert page images instead. Bear in mind that I am inserting them into text which I have already gone through about a gazillion times for spacing issues .... yup! You have guessed it. They have sent my carefully aligned prose to the dogs! TO THE DOGS!


I said - well shouted - the word F*CK! a.lot. I do recall calling Word  - look away now if you are likely to be mortified at the use of the 'C' word (so mother that means you!) -  a...




 B*ST*RD W*NKY C**T FACED WHOREMONGERER! 


Several times and often to be creative I put the words in a different order! I am clever like that! (I wonder how many of my new followers have just reached for the 'unfollow' button??) 

I even threw the  Office 2008 for Mac guide book (which is the size of a mature goat) across the room when I tried to do the sensible the thing and read up on how to insert pictures into text!

You would think that as I have written more papers than I care to remember (all of which I have filed neatly for posterity. Just in case fame should come knocking and some future scholar wishes to trace my tentative steps towards genius, that's the only reason you understand!) that I would have got a handle on WORD! I have only been using it professionally for best part of a decade. 

But no - I now have squinty pictures and squinty text and I know that the rest of the day will be said quietly muttering 'F*CK' under my breath whilst I try and sort it out!

Let's hope for those of you who have got this far, that your today is a lot better than my yesterday was!