On shiv-ing work

Curiously, whenever I am at work (and I use this term advisedly), I have the strangest urge to read things I shouldn't. Not pornographic things. Nor musical things. Not even deliciously caustic things. Just things which can only be described as academic methadone.

Things like this

Or this (which I am foolishly going to discuss later)

But the question is: why?! This isn't part of what I'm paid to do, in fact it's a mile away from the dreary world of open plan desks (and the partitions which seperate them); and I wouldn't classify it as recreational reading because, in this respect, I adhere to the strict proposition that reading isn't recreational until you are either in a hammock or getting quietly drunk on a cheap cleanskin. Nonetheless, there is something strangely compulsive about the need to do a different kind of work at work. Whether that be catching up on primary results, getting into some legal theory or reading epidemiological reports from the World Health Organisation - there is a strong desire to sneak a few minutes of illicit knowledge-gathering on the boss's dime.

Potentially, this is a form of 'status anxiety' for the pretentiously academic - who are always fearful that there is some smug prick in an office nearby who is getting his learnin' on better than you are. Or worse, a PhD student somewhere who had the capacity to withstand poverty that you didn't have, and is now eagerly eating up some obscure Finnish political philosopher on their way to a Valhalla of tweed. Call it: "Keeping up with the Slavoj's".

Well, if I meet this nemesis - I'll be able to vanquish him with my new found knowledge of the 'illocutionary potential of the speech act' and will definitely impress with a CFR or two.* Until tomorrow - when it will be back to square one...

*For those of you looking to get a leg up in this game, pulling out an obscure acronym is like delivering an intellectual shuriken to the frontal lobe. Beware though, if your opponent is, or was at one time, a public servant, it is likely they will have mastered the art of acronym combat....in this case: flee the scene.