my own personal hell...
You walk in to building, and approach the front desk.
"Hi, I'd like..."
"Oh, I can't help you here," the girl at the desk interupts, "you need to fill out a 67c, then I can help you."
"Alright, do you have any?"
"No, you need to go to room 340d, they'll have them there. It's down the hall, up the stairs and your fourth door on the left"
half an hour later, you arrive at the room only to find a line of about 20 people being ignored by the fellow at the desk. two hours later you're at the fron of the line.
"I need a 67c form."
"here you are," he says as he hands you 30 sheets of paper, "you'll need to fill this out in triplicate" I think I'm gonna shoot someone. I fill out the sheets and return to the front desk.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say 67c? I meant 64d" lovely, so you march back to room 340d stand in line again.
"64d? no problem, I just need you to go over there fill out this 32-45 form and I'll get you the 64d right away." you return with the form filled out. He finally gives you the proper form. You fill it out, and return to the front desk to find that the girl has left for lunch never mind that it's 330pm. In her absence there has grown quite a large queu. you get in line like a good little boy and wait. She returns and begins to proces the unlucky sods and send them on the course or at least something similar to the gauntlet you've just run. You reach the front desk, you hand her the completed form. She looks at you, smiles.
"Wonderful, now you just need to go to desk 33 in room 279f. They'll be able to help you there." You remember that you haven't actually had the chance to tell her what you're looking for, but before you can get much more that a grun out, the fellow behind you pushes you out of the way and crowds up to the desk. You find your way to the affore mentioned room only to find youself in a washroom, and the desk mentioned happens to be a stall. You knock on the stall door. All you hear is a distant moaning. You push the door, and it swings open. There's a computer sitting there with the word DAVID written in bold print across the top of the monitor. You're thuroughly confused. It askes for your customer number. You never actually were given one. The monitor then advices you to return to the front desk and to enquire about recieving a 67c form. You return to the front desk, you're mind is becoming little more than aggrivated oatmeal. The Desk is closed, it's actually 730pm. And all you wanted was to borrow a pen.
This is what England is about. Yesterday I was at the Liddell-Hart archives. First I was chastised for not having an appointment then when I wanted to make a photocopy of an artical in one of the collections I was told that first I would need to fill out the form, second I would have to pay 30p a page(roughly 60 cents) and to top it off that it would take 3 weeks before I would recieve it. I only needed 5 pages photocopied, it would take longer for her to retrieve the article a second time than it would to photocopy the item. All I could do was bite my tongue, it wasn't worth telling them where to put their precious Liddell-Hart(who wasn't that great by the way, infact he has no historical merit all together outside the curiousity of an incredibly tall man with an obcession with women's waist lines and the classic british obversion to conceptual ideals ie Absolute war) I felt that I would need use of the archives again before the end of my stay. And for some reason, although they have five copies of his book(the most important book that he wrote) and that it's a requisite of the core course that we at least have some familiarity with it they refuse to place it in the Maughn Library(the Strand Campus Library) other than in the short loan section so that it is imposible for us to take it out to read at our leisure in a place other than the library. The great part about the book is that other than the final conclusions that actually just reword what Clausewitz said is that his basis for his thesis is almost completely untrue, and actually verges on fraudulent. Any where else in the world no one would give a damn about B. H. Liddell-Hart. Other than the curiousities of his life all he did was try to convince a government to adapt more modern thoughts in war(which turn out to be old ideas) (also which he failed to do) there isn't much to the guy. But that doesn't change the fact that I said I'd write a paper on his misconceptions. ugh
It stillwon't let me put pictures up, I'm starting to run out of ideas as to how to fix it other than something requiring more work than I'd really like to do.
"Hi, I'd like..."
"Oh, I can't help you here," the girl at the desk interupts, "you need to fill out a 67c, then I can help you."
"Alright, do you have any?"
"No, you need to go to room 340d, they'll have them there. It's down the hall, up the stairs and your fourth door on the left"
half an hour later, you arrive at the room only to find a line of about 20 people being ignored by the fellow at the desk. two hours later you're at the fron of the line.
"I need a 67c form."
"here you are," he says as he hands you 30 sheets of paper, "you'll need to fill this out in triplicate" I think I'm gonna shoot someone. I fill out the sheets and return to the front desk.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say 67c? I meant 64d" lovely, so you march back to room 340d stand in line again.
"64d? no problem, I just need you to go over there fill out this 32-45 form and I'll get you the 64d right away." you return with the form filled out. He finally gives you the proper form. You fill it out, and return to the front desk to find that the girl has left for lunch never mind that it's 330pm. In her absence there has grown quite a large queu. you get in line like a good little boy and wait. She returns and begins to proces the unlucky sods and send them on the course or at least something similar to the gauntlet you've just run. You reach the front desk, you hand her the completed form. She looks at you, smiles.
"Wonderful, now you just need to go to desk 33 in room 279f. They'll be able to help you there." You remember that you haven't actually had the chance to tell her what you're looking for, but before you can get much more that a grun out, the fellow behind you pushes you out of the way and crowds up to the desk. You find your way to the affore mentioned room only to find youself in a washroom, and the desk mentioned happens to be a stall. You knock on the stall door. All you hear is a distant moaning. You push the door, and it swings open. There's a computer sitting there with the word DAVID written in bold print across the top of the monitor. You're thuroughly confused. It askes for your customer number. You never actually were given one. The monitor then advices you to return to the front desk and to enquire about recieving a 67c form. You return to the front desk, you're mind is becoming little more than aggrivated oatmeal. The Desk is closed, it's actually 730pm. And all you wanted was to borrow a pen.
This is what England is about. Yesterday I was at the Liddell-Hart archives. First I was chastised for not having an appointment then when I wanted to make a photocopy of an artical in one of the collections I was told that first I would need to fill out the form, second I would have to pay 30p a page(roughly 60 cents) and to top it off that it would take 3 weeks before I would recieve it. I only needed 5 pages photocopied, it would take longer for her to retrieve the article a second time than it would to photocopy the item. All I could do was bite my tongue, it wasn't worth telling them where to put their precious Liddell-Hart(who wasn't that great by the way, infact he has no historical merit all together outside the curiousity of an incredibly tall man with an obcession with women's waist lines and the classic british obversion to conceptual ideals ie Absolute war) I felt that I would need use of the archives again before the end of my stay. And for some reason, although they have five copies of his book(the most important book that he wrote) and that it's a requisite of the core course that we at least have some familiarity with it they refuse to place it in the Maughn Library(the Strand Campus Library) other than in the short loan section so that it is imposible for us to take it out to read at our leisure in a place other than the library. The great part about the book is that other than the final conclusions that actually just reword what Clausewitz said is that his basis for his thesis is almost completely untrue, and actually verges on fraudulent. Any where else in the world no one would give a damn about B. H. Liddell-Hart. Other than the curiousities of his life all he did was try to convince a government to adapt more modern thoughts in war(which turn out to be old ideas) (also which he failed to do) there isn't much to the guy. But that doesn't change the fact that I said I'd write a paper on his misconceptions. ugh
It stillwon't let me put pictures up, I'm starting to run out of ideas as to how to fix it other than something requiring more work than I'd really like to do.
posted by Brett at 2:34 p.m.
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