Marking towards the low end of the scale

I love going to cafes to do my work. I find it strangely motivating to be surrounded by strangers, noise and bustle. It helps that leaving my home office usually means getting out of my damn pyjamas. I think I've conclusively proven that the flagrant and wanton wearing of pyjamas leads to procrastination of the worst sort.

I've got a beaker of lapsang souchong and a massive pecan fudge brownie in front of me, a pile of unmarked and ungoogled papers and a wireless connection. I have to google each of the papers because practically every one I've marked so far contains at least a modicum of plagiarism. It's a frustrating spectrum that spans from those who don't know how to paraphrase and really don't understand what they're talking about to those who pull highly technical info off the net and cut/paste verbatim. Sure, you're a first year college student who also moonlights as a doctor that writes articles on the complex interactions of anorexia-treating drugs. Why the hell not?

The red pen is getting proper exercise today.

In other news, a fly (the last tenacious little beast of its kind in the city) is repeatedly trying to use the pecans on my brownie as a landing strip. Why does everyone have to look at me the moment I try to swat it away? They can't see the blasted thing, so I look all "crazy professor" over here. For this, I give everyone at the cafe a "D". The fly gets an "F", just for pissing me off. Let this be a lesson: Don't mess with the red pen, for the primary export of the red pen is pain*.


*Unfortunately, to balance this all out, the primary export of the pecan brownie is heartburn. *groan*. The universe and I are now even.