I asked someone to send me a brief CV in relation to something I was doing for the day job. They took me at my word, and sent this haiku:
I sit on my butt
Hiding from controversy
Dispensing wisdom
So this perp is evidently some kind of administrator. But some of you have much more exciting jobs, and now it’s your turn–please, let me have your job description in haiku, limerick form or rhyming couplets. And to make it interesting, I’ll buy a pint or two–or another, equally appetizing prize–for what I deem to be the best.
Go to it!
[UPDATE 13082011] I’ve decided to raise the stakes. A signed copy of Jenny’s book (either/or) is now on offer for the very best, and there may be runners-up prizes too.
From my Twitter bio: “Former lab rat, now professional friend of lab rats.”
Poetic?
I’m far too busy and important these days for such stuff.
http://blogs.nature.com/henrygee/2009/01/26/the-modern-nature-editor
Studying French while dreaming of future intellectualism
Reaping the benefits of my linguistic expertise:
Vous voulez des frites avec?
(That’s, “would you like fries with that?”)
An early, learning on the job, grant wrangling limerick:
When working on multiple grants,
I fly by the seat of my pants.
When it comes to the budget,
Please let me just fudge it,
Or suffer from one of my rants.
Blogging limerick:
I’m more often silly than not,
And some of the feedback I got,
Said to keep being ditzy –
It seems that it fits me –
So VWXYNot?
Takin the chromatin, G
To the I to the M-F’in P
Those sucka reviewers
Suckin live hoovas
Won’t let me M-F’in be
….and so on and so forth. Peace out.
Fo’ shizzle, Benoit.
So… are you going to reveal the identify of this mystery administrator?
Oo, some nice ones there.
R’pus, have you not heard of professional courtesy? For shame!
The following should be sung to the tune of ‘My Name is John Wellington Wells’ from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer.
My name is Professor AD.
I’m a lecturer, a scientist, DBE.
I teach lots of fun things,
About waves, light and springs,
To students who want a degree.
My research deals with things that we eat
And how proteins react to the heat.
Soft matter’s the name,
It’s not just a game,
Physics is fun, it’s all such a treat!
Ha ha! Athene is the one to beat, everyone!
I Moose
I fear that might take some explaining…
I respect the right of the host to decide the winner.
However, I think Henry’s was better than anyone else’s, definitely including mine.
While it wasn’t explicit the spirit of the competition demands new material, I fear.
The visual phenotyper
Who am I? Who am I? Who I am’s irrelevant
When sixty billion knockdowns crave my yes or no consent
Round cells, square cells, long ones, thin ones; cells shaped like Cambodia
After weeks and weeks of this I’m seeing Christ in lamellipodia
I offer nothing iambic
And no punning limerick
No clever clerihew
No hack at a haiku
I’m a scientist
Not a poet
Which by my sense of scan
Should be obvious
There’s code for life,
in those letters that my code
builds some sense of life.
(Computational biologist. I’m an independent consultant. Originally I was going to call my consultancy Code4Life – there’s an explanation of that in the About page of my blog. If I had I’m come up with something better, as it’s an easy theme to play with, really – am I allowed second-shots at this?)
I knit a sock for art
So useful shall I be
To those who have cold feet
And those who wish to see
viv in nz
@Stephen–that’s brilliant, but unfortunately not a real job description or CV.
@viv in NZ, excellent!
@Grant—of course you are!
HENRY GEE
No shrinking violet he
Just popped along to say
He’s fond of things that happened long ago, and far away.
Better with the opening line as ‘There are code for life,’. But whatever, it sort-of works as it is. What I get from lazy typing (and no proofing!) late on Saturday nights…
prostituting skills
rocks, bytes, words, sports nutrition
a john of all trades
Pt 2 of a 17 part series:
I take out of the hearts of mice
It’s not a Mayan sacrifice
I’m trying to understand
what makes a heart, what makes a hand
Come on now y’all
It’s transcription y’all
Start at the beginning
Pol two is elongating
I’m writing up that Sh*t
Gonna try to publish it
If M-F’in Nature
won’t put it in their paper
Then bye bye to my M-F’in tenure
/giggle.
(OK, last one , I promise)
Trying my hand at evo…..
To the M’F-in devo
Not Devo the band
How an animal grows a hand
Or a heart, don’t start
I know what you’re gonna think
He’s going to go
and try to show
The Missing F’in Link!
I’m an animal-doctor
Who left it all for cell-culture,
And some knock-out mice,
Added in, just for spice,
Oh, to be a PI,
Was always in my mind’s eye.
It’s just around that corner,
Just a little further..
But now, a decade later,
Am I a fighter or a quitter?
How much longer do I stay?
Stay no longer, they all say.
Dreams shattered, hopes squashed,
Do I hide, under the bed?
Who am I? I don’t know.
If you do, please tell me.
I rather liked stephenemoss’s contribution… 🙂
Jenny deserves a special award for the use of “lamellipodia” I think.
Benoit’s are good too, but hey keep tripping my parental control filters. 😀
Twelve cranial nerves:
those who search for them in vain
are the angry ones.
Knock out one GAP and
neurons will survive without
their neurotrophins.
What have I started?
Richard 1: sorry about the implied crudeness; science brings it out in me sometimes (and rap just doesn’t work quite as well without it, despite what that goody-two-shoes Will Smith would have you think)
Richard 2: a bucket of creativity; awesome.
Tempted to tell you – Go to Hell.
My mind is full of other stuff:
Instead I write this villanelle.
So little space, so much to tell.
Accommodation will be tough.
Tempted to tell you – Go to Hell.
These manuscripts have cast their spell.
I have to judge them, fair enough.
Instead I write this villanelle.
Books to read, ideas to sell.
I haven’t time for all this fluff!
Tempted to tell you – Go to Hell.
And fictional ideas must gel,
Not clog, as so much tawdry guff.
Instead I write this villanelle.
I waste my time, on Mac, or Dell,
With Facebook, Scrabble, blogs – it’s rough.
Tempted to tell you – Go to Hell:
Instead I wrote this villanelle.
I am The One
Who likes to have fun…
Call me – oh, yeah! –
The Fun Guy.
No time to mope;
Under the ‘scope,
I watch me some
Nasty little fungi.
I see in my work:
Fungal spores lurk
Inside the lungs
Of the host;
The host doth protest.
How, that I test,
It saves itself
From being toast.
Have some ersatz e.e. cummings. Yes, I know I’ve done this before.
—
1 day in the life
daytime
& then it is not
(I write more)
socio-economic benefits of
(ethical implications)
implied infrastructure
twenty-seven FTE
23% fringe
and no overhead at all
broken down into fragmentary pieces
individual lines
activities one through seven
typing, typing
always typing
please come back later
(I close the door)
What I do in a Haiku? Challenge accepted…
New biologics,
Therapeutic antibodies
Regulation
Man that sounds dull…I suck…Lemme try again:
Antibody drug,
May cause immune response
I develop tests
Hmm, oh well, at least this makes me chuckle:
Haikus are easy,
but sometimes they don’t make sense
Refridgerator
I guess I should wind this up… any more?
@Henry — nice villanelle, but I sniff, just a whiff, of plagiarism. Do you want to tell us something?
I could bore you with a longer version? –
There are codes for life,
in those letters that my code
builds some sense of life.
Programming codes about life
fill many working hours, code
testing ideas about life.
The genetic codes for life
give RNA, proteins, and all; codes
from which biology builds life.
Critical thought codes guide life:
honesty and accuracy, a code
for studying the science of life.
Writing codes describe life;
letters, words, articles code
explanations of phenomena in life.
These are codes for life,
that I wield in my code
to build some sense of life.
make it stop…
(j/k)
Not specifically about me, but when the electron microscope breaks, I often let our users know via poetry to draw the sting. Here are two poems, from last Winter one when it broke (it wouldn’t form a sufficient vacuum and timed out after failure), the other for when it was fixed:
Broken:
The microscope has stopped working again
Affected by this snow, just like my train
Or maybe machinery can go insane
So with this simple rhyme let me explain:
On start up our dear scope must first pump down
The pump begins its work with usual sound
The pumping cycle then goes round and round
But in the buffer tank still air is found
And running out of time the pump’s released
From cycle after cycle work is ceased
Microscopist’s frustrations are increased
Fault messages aren’t helpful in the least
And so we call our trusty engineers
Hoping that they will have better ideas
Hoping against all hope, against our fears
A fast repair won’t leave work in arrears
Fixed:
As Winters dark fades slowly from the skies
the sunshine brings fresh light, a brand new dawn
and scientists rejoice and let forth cries
the microscope repaired, has been reborn
The vacuum pump restored to former state
now like The Bruce’s spider tries again
the buffer tank now does evacuate
at last, sufficient vacuum is obtained
Microscopist sits hunched at the controls
checking all the functions, always looking
he then declares to all the waiting souls
“The ‘scope is now available for booking!”
@Richard – all my own work, guv. The problem is that the villanelle is rather a precise form so that all villanelles come to read like Dylan Thomas’ one about raging against the dying of the light.
Yeah, fair enough.
On a creaking chair
I sit to write my emails.
An academic.