How to waste time at work? Step 1: Read your friend's blog

What does Jake do when he has nothing to do? (Actually Jake has quite a bit to do, but he is desperately avoiding writing a manual for the use of MATLAB for his labmates, and for this purpose nearly anything short of dental surgery will do.)

Choice #1: Read his friend's blogs. Why not? It is not like any of us have more productive things to do than inspect the inane details of our friend's work lives.

Usually pretty dry, but every so often you are rewarded with comic gold. For example, this choice comment from Jess Wade, my friend who works at Penguin publishing in the fantasy and scifi division, is intriguing:

Had a fifteen minute discussion with Anne Sowards about which adjective to use in copy describing a vampire. The options were gorgeous, notorious, infamous, or no adjective at all. By the end of these discussions it's hard not to get a little loopy. The insouciant vampire! The punctilious vampire! The short but commanding vampire! The chaste but hopeful vampire! But clearer heads prevailed and I believe Anne went with gorgeous.

How about bloodsucking? Although I imagine that would get old after a while... We are dealing with sexy, scantily clad vampires, and the demographic of individuals who find the descriptor "bloodsucking" attractive is thankfully limited.

I really, really need to get back to work before I spend the next hour contemplating this.

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Tch tch tch. "Bloodsucking vampire" is redundant. Perhaps you can claim that as evidence that your writing glands need to be invigorated, possibly with adult beverages, before you can efficiently generate that manual.