Friday, December 19, 2008

The sinister suspicions of an Invigeridoo.

Oh dearie dearie,

The last two weeks involved some gainful employment on my part, doing a spot of invigilating at the NUI Galway Christmas exams. Though I didn't catch anyone cheating, I did get to be a hardass and confisticated* several calculator covers, two mobile phones and also made inappropriate advances towards the males I escorted to the toilets. All of that said, it's a flipping boring job, where the only challenge is to try and keep your head someway level. The only way I retained some degree of sanity was to walk up and down the aisles slowly and purposefully pretending that I was Darth Vader (or at other times the Parish priest in a 1950's Irish village, it didn't matter which so long as I could pretend that I was wearing a fearsome black cape "Ah, Father Vader, is it yourself that's in it")

One thing that did strike home was that lefthandeders catch your eye and appear more suspicious than the righteous folk. I found myself invigilating up and down the venue and thoughts would wander across my mind like "Hah, I've got my eye on you lefty, not on my watch you won't", or "Looks like we got ourselves a lefty here boys, y'know what we do with lefties round these parts?" My mistrust of their kind has grown to the point where I started developing conspiracy theories that maybe some of those wily lefties are purposefully using their right-hands so as not to draw unwanted attention to themselves and get away with cheating. To check this theory, I would get a seating plan and mark them on it so I could see numbers and distribution. As 7-10% of the population are lefthanded, if only 5 or 6% of a particular group of students were lefties then I knew something was up.

The next course of action would be to go around checking for uncomfortably gripped pens and especially poor handwriting amongst the righteous folk, as they might well be lefties in disguise, and if they'll stoop to pretending to be right handed, lord only knows what else they're up to. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find a single one, which means of course that I'm not a crazy, suspicious, paranoid nutjob, but that those sneaky lefties are always two steps ahead.


*confistication is way more severe than mere confiscation, ask anyone who's had something of theirs confisticated and they'll tell you



Durty Grooves of the Poorest Quality
I recorded a follow up Durty Grooves mix, but as my styli are knackered, the grooves sound more durty than is humane. It's recordings like this that give vinyl a bad name. If you do download this, it's best listened to on big bassy speakers, where the bass will muffle over the excessive crackle and scraping. Fortunately I'll be in New York in ten days time, where they have an impressive needle exchange programme so I should be able to trade in these stantons of yesteryear for a new set of ortofons.

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