You've heard of Murphy's Law? We like to refer to it as Sod's Law in England, I'm not quite sure if that was an attempt to manoeuvre around a blatantly Irish name on our behalf or just a need to spice things up with our rather dry sense of English humour (if you're not sure about what this means you should probably look up where the term 'sod' comes from...), either way whomever's law it is was in full effect today. The law, by the way, for anyone who may not be familiar with it, is that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
I think I started this with the intention of listing each individual work related atrocity by line item to emphasize the sheer range of horrific events. I find now that I'm just far too tired to go into all the gory details. Instead, I'll simply say today was awful. Were I to write a poem now, it would probably be called "Untitled (A List of Events That Cause Me to Hate Everything)." I could even write a(n) haiku, although I'm damn sure that would centre around the repeated use of the word 'hate' as well. Meaningful yet compact.
So rather than continue my rant I shall depart so as to put on a new album, Eric Clapton's "No Reason to Cry" coming up (although I begin to question the validity of his assertion) and in exchange I leave you with this to chew on.
Sod's Laws and its Corallaries
(or The Twelve Laws of Inaccurate Perception)
- SOD'S LAW, ALSO KNOWN AS MURPHY'S LAW. If anything can go wrong, it will.
- O'TOOLE'S COMMENTARY ON MURPHY'S LAW. Murphy was an optimist.
- THE FIRST COROLLARY TO SOD'S LAW. Anything that is to go wrong will do so at the worst possible moment.
- THE UNSPEAKABLE LAW. As soon as you mention something, if it's good, it goes away; if it's bad, it happens.
- NON-RECIPROCAL LAWS OF EXPECTATIONS. Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results.
- HOWE'S LAW. Every man has a scheme which will not work.
- ZYMURGY'S FIRST LAW OF EVOLVING SYSTEM DYNAMICS. Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.
- SKINNER'S CONSTANT. The quantity which must be multiplied by, divided by, added to or subtracted from the answer you get to give the answer you should have got.
- LAW OF SELECTIVE GRAVITY. An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
- JENNING'S COROLLARY. The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
- BARTH'S DISTINCTION. There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types and those who do not.
- NINETY-NINETY RULE OF PROJECT SCHEDULES. The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90%.
- FARBER'S RULE. Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.
