Time. It’s all about time.
In my job, I deal with people of a different culture from my own. They don’t see time the same way I do. This has caused some serious problems here in the office, and this was a banner week, culminating in today’s near-cliche “Five O’Clock Suprise”. You know:
“Um, yeah. We’re going to be in town on Monday only. We’re going to need to have meetings scheduled with Senator X, Congressman Y, and Various Other Important People.”
That’s not the fucking problem. That’s my job. You see, I’m an expert on such things. How I discovered I’m an expert on this subject is… the… fucking… problem.
After the fun and games ended today, I got the bright idea that our office could use a little bit of outside help, namely from a book about time perception in different cultures. I wrote a research paper on the subject once in college, heavily citing a particular book. I can remember the author, but I can’t remember the title of the book. That’s okay, I thought, Google will find it for me.
Well, Google got pretty close.
It found my goddamned research paper. FOR SALE. First damned hit. And the second.
Same title. Same length. Same subject. Same number of sources. I can find out for certain if it’s my paper if I’m willing to cough up $9.98 a motherfucking page plus $20 shipping. From one of TWO separate research-paper purveyors.
Allow me a moment to reflect upon the perfidy of this operation. I’m talking about an Internet service which has stolen my work and is re-selling it so that college students worldwide can plagiarize me. I wouldn’t plagiarize me. I’m not that good. The funny thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen my own work pop up on the Internet.
This time, however, they’re making shitloads of money off of me, not a dime of which I will likely ever see.
At the risk of sounding modest, almost a hundred bucks is a fuck of a lot more money than that pissant little paper is worth, and it’s almost as much money as one would need to buy all the books I cited in the paper. There’s more than one author out there who ought to want these pricks turning on a spit.
I am disgusted. And I’m more pissed than a panther with gasoline on its asshole.
I do know this. I work for a law office. If there is a way, any way, that I can figuratively slide a series of fluorescent light tubes down these motherfuckers’ throats and then kick them into powder I’m going to do it. They caught me at the wrong time. Here’s another time-related term: pro-motherfucking-bono.
(Shaking fist defiantly) That’s why it’s all about time, you bastards. Because I have it, and because yours is about to run out!
(Yeah, right. And I still can’t find the title of that damned book. Sheeeeit.)