Land of Yajeev Announcement, 4/1/08

My subscribers and friends of the blog have just received the following disturbing email. The postscript was not included in the original text, but has been appended below for clarification.

Dear Friends of the Land of Yajeev,

It is with bittersweet sentiment that I announce to you that I have posted the final entry to the Land of Yajeev. I'm throwing in the towel. As I've long feared, I have finally exhausted my life's supply of bloggable material. I want to thank you for visiting the site, for leaving your comments, for providing blogworthy inspiration, and for sharing this experience with me. I am hanging up my blogging boots and will be focusing on other writing ventures: my dissertation and the great American novel.

Please visit the Land of Yajeev to read my final post--I think you'll find it quite meaningful. Even though I'll be retiring yajeev's pen, my posts will remain online for you to enjoy in reruns. Consider the Land of Yajeev to be Nick-at-Nite of the blogosphere. Good times, great oldies.

Sincerely,
your humble blogger,
yajeev

P.S. APRIL FOOLS! You didn't actually think my dissertation would take priority over the blog, now did you? It'll take a lot more than a doctoral dissertation committee to keep this voice down.





Speaking of foolery, this morning, my advisor made me the victim of a horrific April Fools Day prank. We recently published an article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper was the fruit of two years of hard labor/ indentured servitude and is, thus far, the crowning achievement of my scientific career. This morning I received this email from my advisor:

Yajeev,

I just got this intense letter from NIH [our funding source] saying that our last paper had been cited in a fraud investigation and we will have to produce all primary data. Lets talk when I get in.

- Advisor

When I read that, my heart just about stopped beating. My mind, already spread thin across about twelve different things, began to melt. That's it, I thought, my career is over. Even if we were cleared (which we eventually would have been, mind you), I didn't know how long this would take or how far a " fraud investigation" would follow me. I began compiling a mental checklist of where all of our "primary data" could be found. The sweat balls I encountered during last summer's job interview returned, beading at my forehead before gliding down my cheeks.

A few minutes after I read his note, my advisor entered the lab, holding a folded sheet of paper, bearing a grim expression on his face. He handed the paper to me, saying, "Here's the original message."

I unfolded the page. It took several seconds of staring at the words "APRIL FOOLS!!" typed in large print across the middle of the paper before I comprehended the hoax my advisor had perpetrated. Before I could experience a full measure of relief, a wave of anger overcame me, and I heard myself uttering some very unkind, unfiltered words to my advisor-- words of which, once the relief finally set in, I was very much ashamed. Fortunately, my advisor was quite amused with his prank. My response only confirmed to him the greatness of his deception.