The inevitable beginning

So who are you?

I'm an Uga - A big blue coconut crab, living on a small island in the central Pacific Ocean. On this island the cars actually give way to the crabs, it's a far more civilized way of life.

Oh and I taste exactly how you'd imagine a crab that eats coconuts would taste, crabby with a hint of coconut, or is that coconutty with a hint of crab.

No, Seriously who are you?

I'm just an ordinary person, nothing special to see here.

So what do you do?

I work for a major and prestigious UK university (seriously, if you've only heard of two UK universities then it'll probably be one of them). My role there is not quite as prestigious, I'm distinctly back-office, departmental staff rather than faculty. My role seems to be to know things that people far more intelligent than me don't have the time or capacity to know, but wouldn't be able to do without.
Also to have psychic powers so that I know what they're thinking, so when they don't actually tell me what they want, I can still know what it is and do it. Of course when my psychic powers don't work, then my job is to take the blame for it.

Seriously?

Not about having needing psychic powers being in my job description, although it's not far off. You may notice that I do have, not so much a sarcastic streak, but a rather smaller not-sarcastic streak in a sarcastic whole.
I've been working for the university for a dozen years, and I've learned many times that intelligence does not relate to common sense, in fact the two are more or less mutually exclusive.

So tell me more about yourself?

I'm in my mid-to-late thirties, live in the UK, am happily married, no kids, three cats, two thirds of a house and a mortgage. As it stands I'm trapped in a job that I've well and truly fallen out of love with in order to pay for a mortgage for a house that's too big for us, but we're looking at moving to somewhere smaller in a cheaper part of the country. The only problem is trying to work out the order of things to make that happen.

I'm a light-to-negligible drinker, a moderate-to-heavy smoker and have the patience of saints, but that does mean that when I get wound up enough to snap it does tend to be spectacular.

I'm an atheist, who strongly believes in both social justice, human rights, law and order and personal responsibility. I'm a reformer rather than a revolutionary, I'm also firmly opposed to hypocrisy. I'm also a hypocrite at times, go figure...
I have all of the usual human failings, greed, jealousy, anger, lust and whatever the other three are in spades.

An Atheist?

Oh yes, in general I'm only inclined to believe what there is actual evidence for. This goes beyond religion, into general life. I mistrust politicians (whether with a big P or a small p). I've seen the level of idiocy that the big P politicians are, however I've also seen the flagrant idiocy of the small p's. My typical example of that is the gig to support Greek anarchists (who were protesting the reduction in the size of the Greek public sector) that I was dragged to by a friend of my spouse (who is a bit of an anarcho herself, in a "stick it to the man" sort of sense) only to discover that the British anarchists were happily enforcing the indoor smoking ban.

Social Justice?

Yes, I fully support equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, creed, sexuality, ability or any other criteria, in any direction (which is something that is often overlooked these halcyon days). I'm also a strong believer that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. I make no claims to be a feminist, an ally or any of the other terms that are bandied about with such glee, until someone says something that is only 99% "on message", at which point they go from being a valued-supporter-of-the-cause(s) to silencer-of-righteous-anger and enemy-of-the-cause. I've seen it happen too many times.
If I support a cause, then it's because I support the cause rather than the whole hierarchy that goes with the cause. I'm not an ally to your cause, I'm not altogether on anyone's side, because no-one is altogether on my side. I speak only for myself, for everything that I'm writing here remember that n=1.

So why the blog?

Somewhere to vent? Somewhere to say the things that I wouldn't say in the real world? Somewhere where everybody nobody knows your name? All of the above.