And the nominations are in for round three of Humiliation.

I have never read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
Nick has never read Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Tim has never read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
Leigh has never read Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Wendy has never read The Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
John has never read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Matt has never read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

Let me know which ones you’ve read in the comments thread below.

I’ll calculate the final scores once we’ve all voted.

I discovered today that I have come down with the plague.

Of course, people around me are asserting that it’s simply a cold, but I don’t believe them. (And they’re being remarkably unsympathetic: my best friend asked if she’d inherit my childhood toy when the plague killed me, while Nick’s response was, “I have a concert to go to next week! I hope I don’t catch it.”)

I suppose it really is only a cold, but I’m sick so rarely that I’m not enjoying the experience, at all. And, of course, as with all colds, it’s arrived when I have an enormous pile of marking—which needs to be turned around in three days—sitting on my desk.

I consider that a curse.

But, then, I dragged myself home from work—where I’d been intending to stay and mark through the afternoon, after my morning class, but I abandoned that idea in favour of home, comfy sofas, warm cardigans, and tea—and I found this in my letterbox:

This is a Cyberman coloured in by my elder nephew and sent to his Auntie Treena. (Or, since he’s only three and a half, sent by his mother in his name—but it’s the same thing, in the end.) That’s the sort of thing, like ducklings, that would brighten up anyone’s day.

I’m so thrilled to think I have a nephew who colours in Cybermen—I love the new series, but without children of my own, I don’t always recognise the impact the new revisioning is having on the next generation.

And I’ve always thought Cybermen would be more sinister if they had an element of the harlequinade.

I would imagine that almost anyone who has tried to evade their taxes or fake their own death has realised this fact. But I’m fairly sure that few of them were creating an identity from a completely different species with proficiencies that an ordinary person can only imagine.

That’s the fun part.

In fact, I suspect that’s the real reason for the addictive nature of MMORPGs.

It’s been a long time since I rolled up an entirely new character for a role-playing session, and the last time I did so it was for a different game, with entirely different rules.

But tonight, Nick and I have been creating, respectively, a human Cleric with a fierce hatred of the undead and an Elven Ranger who wields two swords.

Oh, we can’t wait to come across those kobolds who slaughtered all our characters in the last game.

(My poor dwarf. She tried her best, and yet she ended up crushed by a giant boulder, twice, while glued to the floor in a room swarming with her enemies. It’s an ignominious death, really. Plus, I was the first to die, which is just embarrassing.)

So far, I’ve learnt the following things:

1. I’m allowed two one-handed weapons, instead of being limited to an ordinary weapon and an off-hand weapon (something like a dagger, light and easily carried). These two blades—entirely imaginary and represented solely by the rattle of dice across the table—are now my most cherished possessions.

2. I only have limited money to buy my provisions. That’s fine—except I didn’t realise that that included my primary weapons, which led to the following conversation:

NICK: Of course, you’ve already spent some of that money on your long sword and your short sword.
ME: What? They should have been given to me by my parents at birth. Or at least when I entered Two-Blade Ranger Academy, or wherever I trained.

3. Elves are just cool. And so are Rangers. When we were fighting the kobolds, their native sneakiness allowed them to sneak up and then dash away without allowing us the standard retaliation.

Frankly, I find that both annoying and unsportsmanlike.

But not when my Elven Ranger can do much the same thing.

Then it’s just the natural outcome of long training, and something to be respected.

4. Unfortunately, Elves largely have rubbish names. And I’m completely stymied on creating an entirely new name, so I’ve just had to pick the least offensive of the standard options. It could be worse: one of the recommended names for a female human character is Shawna. Apparently, this fantasy universe intersects with the 1980s at some point.

5. Ultimately, it might be easier and less time intensive to simply find a way to enter a chaotic fantasy universe and slay real enemies than it is to interpret the spreadsheet we’re using to calculate our abilities.

Then again, it’s easier to use the spreadsheet than it is to do this manually, so it’s all relative.

6. I worship a god of storms, strength, and battle. Apparently. I’m sure that will come in handy.

7. My special attacks have exciting names, including “Dire Wolverine Strike” (oooh) and “Jaws of the Wolf.”

There’s no way this character’s going to end up glued to the floor while a boulder bears down on her.

8. But most exciting of all is a potential paragon path (the move towards a specialisation, which requires me to survive to level 10. Still, I’m hopeful).

Stormwarden.

We haven’t even played a single encounter with these characters, yet—and we didn’t cover ourselves with glory during the last encounter. But I’m still eying a paragon path in which I “learn the ancient ways of the stormwardens of the Feywild. These techniques turn your whirling blades into a storm of destruction that rains down punishing blows on your enemies. With each slash of your weapon, the wind howls in anticipation of the coming storm.”

See, that just sounds fun.

If I die before that comes about, I’ll be terribly disappointed in myself.

I’ve been listening to Tripod—while labeling an enormous pile of assessment-criteria sheets—and it’s occurred to me that, really, when you live with a geek, and when you are a geek, there’s no other appropriate soundtrack to your life (except, perhaps, for the requisite enormous quantities of The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, VNV Nation, Rammstein, albums containing nothing but twenty different versions of the Doctor Who theme—but I’m really just diluting my point here, aren’t I?).

Specifically, I was listening to “Hot Girl in the Comic Shop” and “Gonna Make You Happy Tonight” when it occurred to me that these songs don’t make provision for the girl geek.

Now, I’m not claiming to be hot, but I’m as likely as Nick to be the one heading into the comic shop. (Though I’m not a true collector, since I largely buy trades, except for Fables. And speaking of Fables, when’s the next issue out? They’re at war, here! I need to know what’s happening. And please, please don’t kill Bigby Wolf. I’ll be terribly upset.)

And once in the comic shop, I’m as likely as Nick (who’s the true, uber-geek of the household) to drift over to the role-playing games. In fact, I have a better pedigree in table-top RPGs than Nick.

On that note, see how pretty my new Dungeons and Dragons dice are?

Nick and I have had a slight struggle over who gets to use these dice, but I maintain that the only reason we bought them was because our other two sets have exhausted their natural twenties (for me, at least) but have not yet exhausted their critical fails. Alas.

Plus, they’re pretty: even prettier than the ones I used to use for White Wolf games, which I always loved:

But, that aside, I’m also just as likely to be the one who tells Nick I just need to sit up until I’ve finished the level. It’s true: the save points are too far apart on most games. (And on Lego Indiana Jones, you can’t save until you’ve finished the level, which is likely to damage any relationship except on between two geeks.)

I don’t deny that Nick is and always will be a far greater geek than me: I may have seen every episode of Doctor Who more than once, but Nick can tell you who directed and produced each episode.

I’m just saying that, these days, girls aren’t such a rarity in comic shops.

All conversations are strange when you’re rolling up D&D characters.

ME: I think we’re down on healers. And then we’re all dead. Again.
NICK: I’m thinking I have to play a cleric, regardless.
ME: But you like to play a fighter. I don’t mean the specific class, but a fighting character.
NICK: But the main thing is that I want to turn undead, and clerics can do that as well as paladins.
ME: You want to become the undead?
NICK: Turn undead.
ME: That’s what I said.
NICK: No, you invoke “turn undead” and their heads explode.
ME: Okay, that is pretty cool.
NICK: “Don’t worry, my son: I kick arse for the Lord.”
ME: But he died.
NICK: He died righteously.
ME: True—laying down the kung-fu law on the undead.
NICK: That’s it—I’m playing a cleric. And I’m going to show all you wussbags.

By semi-popular demand!

(We were at a BBQ on the weekend, and Moby Dick came up in conversation, as we were all watching the sausages cook. A friend said, “Ooh, Moby Dick“ but I felt compelled to point out that, really, no one had read Moby Dick. Plus, didn’t Heathers name Moby Dick as a plausible catalyst for teen suicide?)

Nomination are open for Humiliation: Round Three, the round otherwise known as I’m Determined To Win One Of These, Even If It Means Humiliating Myself—After All, It’s My Blog.

A recap of the rules:

In the comment thread, nominate a book that you haven’t read but that you can reasonably assume everyone else has read.

Remember, you can only win by humiliating yourself by exposing a gap in your cultural knowledge. An obscure book won’t get anywhere.

As with last time, I’ll open a new thread after nominations close for us to vote on what we have and haven’t read.

Nominations will close—so we can keep the playlist comprehensible—on Thursday the 7th of August at 5.30 p.m.

I keep coming back to this game again and again and again, and every time I mention it, I complain about it.

That doesn’t seem entirely fair, given how much I actually enjoy the game. It’s variable but generally beautiful, and great fun to play, when it’s playable.

But it seems to me at the moment that it’s actually not playable, or not unless you’re prepared to devote an enormous amount of time to it.

Once upon a time, you could flip through your friends’ and the rats’ packs, hoping for a decent card, rummage through the markets to see if a coveted item had appeared, make a couple of low-level items, and still not waste more time than would have been required for a quick round of Freecell.

But that’s not the case now, and it’s all to do with the increasing dependence on pop-up cards.

Take the two new sets, for example: Lucha Libre and Toys, Toys, Toys.

To make the top-level item in Lucha Libre—the Title Belt—you require a Wrestling Ring, Blue Amigo, and Purple Diablo.

The Wrestling Ring is easy enough: it’s expensive, but you can buy it. But those two wrestlers! Both require a mask (in addition to boots, cloaks, or shorts). And masks are pop-up cards.

They’re rare pop-ups, as well: I’ve never seen the Purple Mask in the wild. So I can’t make Purple Diablo.

And I need more than one mask: to complete the set, I need to vault the Purple Mask, the Purple Diablo, the Blue Mask, the Blue Amigo, and the Title Belt. That’s three masks of each colour.

So far, I’ve found two Blue Masks. So my collection has large, frustrating holes in it.

Toys, Toys, Toys is even worse, if possible.

The top-level item there is an Electric Train, made from a Metal Robot, a Model Rocket, and a Hot Rod. The Model Rocket itself is made from three other items, but at least those are all available in the markets, as is the Hot Rod.

But that Metal Robot! He requires (of all things) a Bubble Wand and two Wooden Soldiers. The Wooden Soldiers, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn, are pop-ups. Once again, I have never seen one in the wild, although I did once gaze longingly at one in a friend’s pack.

And, remember, I need to vault the Metal Robot on his own as well as the Wooden Soldiers card itself.

Five examples of a pop-up that I’ve never even seen? Is it any wonder I’m becoming frustrated?

I’ve heard a friend say that his frustration with the game comes from the fact that the rats have nothing of value in their packs. When you play co-operatively, as we do, you don’t raid your friends’ packs, though they will grab cards that they know you need. So you rely on the rats to offer chances to steal interesting cards—and stealing cards is, after all, the stated aim of the game.

But, honestly, I’d rather buy everything—regardless of how slow and frustrating it is to build up credits—than have this reliance on pop-ups.

Because it’s ruining the flow of the game.

You can no longer just pop in and out of a game, planning on a quick flip through the packs. Chances are, not a single pop-up will appear in that time and, when you’re waiting for pop-ups and desperately reliant on them, the game then becomes an exercise in frustration.

I don’t know if the intention is to induce us to spend more time playing the game, but that’s the outcome of these changes to the game mechanics.

And I may be lazy and prone to procrastination—in fact, I dare say I am.

But I’m not sacrificing my work, my students, and my writing by spending more and more time looking for cards that never appear.

I’m afraid that as more collections come to rely on pop-ups and, consequently, the game shifts to a more time-intensive mode of play, my inclination to finish those Feats of Wonder is going to fall away.

Recycling my own material:

ME: Really, no day can be bad when it includes ducklings.
NICK: That’s true!
ME: The only things cooler than ducklings are otters. And maybe puffins.
NICK: Puffins are cool.
ME: I love puffins. When I take over the world, it will be at the head of an army of puffins.
NICK: A mighty army of puffins!
ME: Hell yeah, a mighty army. What other kind of army would you have?
NICK: A wussbag army of puffins.
ME: I’m going to blog that.
NICK: Well, just make sure “wussbag” isn’t a offensive term.

From mid-conversation:

ME: You don’t have a brain.
NICK: You don’t know that!
ME: You’ve already made that joke. I blogged it.
NICK: I know that. I was making an amusing reference to it using the power of amusement.
ME: You see, if you have to use the word “amusement” twice to explain your joke, then it isn’t funny.
NICK: You’re an exacting comedy client.

Every time Nick’s left the house in the past three days, he’s seen a family of ducks wandering around near the house.

Today, I came home from work and found them pottering around the back garden:

I’m only sorry the images aren’t a little clearer, but the drake became so noticeably distressed when I approached too closely—and, at his distress, the ducklings immediately disappeared under their mother’s belly—that I had to push the camera to its limits to get any photos at all.

But, really—is there ever a day so bad that it can’t be improved by ducklings?

This week’s live-blogging brought to you by half a bottle of wine and some Nurofen—not, I might add, ingested simultaneously.

I’ve also decided that it would be more practical to start each live-blogging episode—rather than my default pattern of live-blogging ABC New’s weather forecast—with a picture from Nick’s extensive collection of Doctor Who memorabilia.

(I suppose it’s not that extensive, by comparison with some collections that I’ve seen. But there are some odd items in there, as you’ll see in future weeks.)

Tonight, his pride and joy, and the lord and master of our living room:

It always worries me slightly when I have to pick him up by the head in order to dust. Still, at least he doesn’t shriek “Exterminate!”, unlike the bottle opener.

I can’t help but feel that the family photograph in the background—my great-grandmother, although it doesn’t really matter—is rather incongruous.

We’re still a couple of minutes out from the episode, by the way.

Nick fancies watching Freezing—since we’re now up to the before Doctor Who ads—but I think that’s only because it’s got Alex Kingston in it.

Aha! And here we go, with a recap of last week’s episode.

Martha! Hey, Martha! Why don’t you stay a while? And lovely Ross! Hurray!

And we even get a recap of the Sontaran haka that caused so much controversy (well, sort of) in last week’s comment thread.

Poor Donna’s grandfather.

NICK: Okay, at the very least, the sonic screwdriver should be able to shatter glass.

That’s a good point: don’t soundwaves shatter glass? And then at least Donna’s grandfather wouldn’t be choking.

Well of course Donna’s going with the Doctor. Oh, Donna’s grandfather should be a companion; he’s such a lovely, lovely man.

Nick’s impressed that Martha’s password is more than four letters. I bet it’s a non-sequential alpha-numeric password, too. Am I supposed to be thinking about that?

Ah, Sontaran sexism. Honestly, I’ve said this before, but if they’re a clone race, why would they be so misogynistic? Sure, they don’t need women for replication, but do they even have women?

Oh, the Doctor gives Donna a TARDIS key, but Nick thinks the moment is awkwardly delivered.

Whoops, the Sontarans have the TARDIS. And now this strange little megalomaniac Rattigan has gone to inform his students of “planetfall.”

Does he mean the death of the Earth, or is he using the term “planetfall” to mean something else?

Ha, the Doctor knows Martha isn’t what she seems. He’s not daft, that one. (Ooh, understatement.)

Jodrel Banks? They’re rubbish, aren’t they? Didn’t they completely fail to spot the Vogon Constructor Fleet?

Another Rose flash!

The Sontarans are like trolls. And like roast potatoes. But I maintain that Ross is nothing like a pink weasel.

“Belittle” jokes to a Sontaran. Isn’t that a little racist? But Nick thinks that the Doctor has always been a little contemptuous of Sontarans, above and beyond their tendency to kill people. More Sontaran haka, but it seems that the Doctor has no more patience with it than some viewers.

Now, why is the Doctor speaking to Donna in code? Surely no one can actually get into the TARDIS? We’ve seen Daleks trying to break into it, and failing. No one can blow it up. It’s essentially indestructible. So does it matter if the Sontarans know that Donna’s in there? Ah, hang on: that’s just started to make sense to me.

Every time I see Luke Rattigan, I realise that the Sontarans aren’t the only ones in this episode with a Napoleon complex.

NICK: I think Rattigan thinks he’s acting in a completely different episode from everyone else.

Why didn’t it occur to Rattigan that maybe these people didn’t want to leave Earth and move to an entirely different planet? I like the fact that he constructed a breeding programme. Poor boy. But isn’t he a millionaire? He probably doesn’t need a breeding programme to pull girls.

I do feel for Donna in this scene: having the Doctor suggest a way in which she could help and communicate with him and then not being able to put that into practice must be devastatingly frustrating. The more I see of Donna the more I like her as a companion.

Donna’s mother, on the other hand, I could live without. She gets more and more unpleasant as the programme goes on.

Ooh, DefCon One! Nick always accuses me of going to that in arguments. Unfairly, I might add.

And why would nuclear weaponry be a good idea? Well, why is it ever a good idea?

Nick also worries that not all the nuclear-capable countries are on the same side of the planet, so would they all be able to use their weapons? He’s also not certain that they can launch nuclear missiles into orbit, but that’s another story.

Uh oh, Sontarans on the march. Oh, no, lovely Ross! Don’t say he’s in the line of fire! Dammit, not lovely Ross!

No, not Ross! Oh, damn, he’s dead. Poor, poor, lovely Ross. And stop calling him Greyhound 40, you horrible man! Ah, I see that the Doctor agrees with me.

The Sontarans aren’t very sporting fighters—should they really be shooting people in the back? I thought they were meant to be the ultimate soldiers. Oh, well: apparently this isn’t war—this is sport.

NICK: No, this is Sparta!

Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge Stewart! That’s exactly who we need. And maybe Benton: he can’t really still be a Sergeant by now. But we certainly don’t need Yates: he always was annoying.

Oh dear, Rattigan. It’s annoying when you realise that your war-mongering allies don’t actually want to help you achieve a Utopian society on another planet. But at least you’re not dead.

Donna as the Doctor’s secret weapon: I can believe that. She’s tough, Donna. She’s up for anything. But I don’t mind her being legitimately scared. I’d be bloody terrified.

The aspect of the show where the Doctor is constantly irritated by Donna’s belittling of herself is another aspect that I like—it’s understated at this point in the season, but persistent, and builds up to something intriguing.

Gas masks for the UNIT soldiers? I wonder what they could possibly be planning? And the Doctor definitely knows that Martha is not what she seems.

DOCTOR: Are you my Mummy?

That’s hands down my favourite joke of the season. Maybe of all four seasons. No: it doesn’t beat “Rose, I’m trying to resonate concrete.”

Ooh, the UNIT chappy is giving a St Crispin’s Day speech. Still better than the one in Independence Day.

(Do I mean St Crispin’s Day? I haven’t got time to look it up. But I always confuse it with St Swithin’s Day, for some reason.)

Now, using the Valiant to clear away the smog is a clever idea. I do hope that smug Sontaran is killed fairly soon, though. He’s starting to annoy me with his constant harping on the glory of battle.

The Martha clone’s not very clever, is she? Why does she go to the basement with the Doctor?

Why can’t you wear a T-shirt reading “clone” in front of Captain Jack? He doesn’t exactly need encouragement. And what kind of missing adventure could they possibly have had to make the Doctor think of that?

Ah, that Sontaran’s dead. I don’t really support shooting people in the chest, but he really was an annoying walking-potato, troll person.

Clone feed? Oh, ew. I don’t really like the idea of the entire planet being turned into a clone-breeding planet. Plus, as Nick says, surely Earth is a fairly long way away from the Sontaran empire? If it weren’t, surely it would have been over-run years ago.

The coat Martha’s wearing, is that the one the Doctor got from Janis Joplin? Actually, looking at the length of that coat on Martha, it would have been far too long for Janis Joplin, wouldn’t it?

I feel rather sorry for Rattigan in these scenes. He’s so thoroughly ineffective: even when he’s holding a gun, people just walk straight past him, as though he isn’t even there.

Set fire to the atmosphere? Oh, here we go. I’m sorry—I’m devoted to this programme, but this is really rather silly. Wouldn’t this kill absolutely everyone on the planet?

NICK: Right. Watch the Doctor destroy the avian population of the Earth.

And the way he’s saying “please, please, please”—it’s as though he saying, “Don’t kill everybody, mad experiment.”

I’m not sure why that UNIT woman kisses her superior officer. Relief, I suppose.

And now the Doctor’s making a grand sacrifice. But he can’t just send the machine up in the transport on its own, because that’s not the Doctor’s way. Even though this wouldn’t be genocide, which we’ve seen him baulk at time and time again—and we’ve never seen him commit yet, although we’ve heard about it. So he has to give them a chance.

I know Sontarans don’t fear death, but surely they should have some sense of self-preservation. Random death—and more haka!—doesn’t necessarily make you an effective soldier, surely? And is a waste of training, perhaps?

But that’s all right—Rattigan has made his sacrifice, instead. All those bodies on the Doctor’s conscience: this new version of Doctor Who has been a violent one, hasn’t it? Not as violent as some individual episodes of the original series, like “The Horror of Fang Rock,” but with more overall deaths, I think.

Hey, Donna’s grandfather! You should ask the Doctor if you can go, too. It breaks my heart, it really does: his desperation for something he’s never going to experience except by proxy.

No, stay in the TARDIS, Martha!

Oh, it seems she doesn’t have a choice. That’s interesting. And at least one more episode with Martha in it! Hurray!

Next week: “The Doctor’s Daughter.” With, quite literally, the Doctor’s daughter: Peter Davison’s pretty daughter.

From this Wikipedia page:

“Marilyn Manson covered “Tainted Love” and released it as a single from the Not Another Teen Movie soundtrack.”

Ha! Edgy.

Then I kept reading, found that it has been released along with covers of “Suicide is Painless” and “Bizarre Love Triangle,” and my heart broke a little.

Nick’s feet are particularly susceptible to tickling:

NICK: Stop!
ME: No.
NICK: I’m getting a headache.
ME: No, you’re not. (Note: sadism is an essential part of the tickling process.)
NICK: Oh, my brain!
ME: You don’t have a brain.
NICK: You don’t know that!

I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear that I managed to get myself out of the situation with the revolving columns and the lava. Turned out I didn’t need to grab the rope at all: I could jump straight to the platform. Which is odd, since I couldn’t reach the revolving columns from the platform, going in the other direction, without the agency of the rope.

But that’s beside the point.

Tonight Nick and I planned to roll up characters for our Dungeons and Dragons campaign. (Why, yes: we are epic geeks. But then a fair number of people reading this blog are in our group—or we’re in their group—so it all balances out.)

But then it seemed that the Wizards of the Coast website was down.

Now that’s just unnatural.

So, rather than rolling up my lovely Elven Ranger—who should be a good melee fighter but also have decent ranged skills, unlike Gudris, my late lamented dwarf. First to die! Honestly, that’s just embarrassing—I’m lying on my living-room floor with my chin on a ceramic elephant, singing along to Dobie Grey’s “Drift Away.”

It’s as good a way as any to spend a Saturday evening.

Basically, I’d written an extremely ranty—but eloquent and amusing—post about the fact that Microsoft Word all but destroyed my sanity this afternoon, causing me to waste five hours on what turned out to be thoroughly wasted time.

And then things just became worse, since the computer insisted, when I tried to save the draft, that I wasn’t connected to the Internet, and the entire thing disappeared into the ether.

(Still, I suppose it gave me a chance to make a bad pun. It’s also an ignorant pun, since I’ve never actually listened to OK Computer. I mentioned this recently to a friend to whom the album is essentially a religious experience and, even though we were talking via instant messaging he still managed to infuse a distinct sigh into his “Oh, how I envy you!”)

So now I’m even more disappointed by electronic communication.

(It doesn’t help that I’m stuck on Lego Indiana Jones: I managed to leap from a rope to a moving column and across a lake of lava to collect an artifact, but I’ve died over twenty times trying to leap back onto the rope. I may never be able to leap on to the rope, but then I’ll be stuck on this level for ever. A dilemma, but I can’t see my way out of it.)

I don’t have the heart to repeat my rant about the ways in which Microsoft Word attempted to drive me either into Bedlam or into an early grave, but it comes down to this: once I had finally compiled my three appendices (which alone took well over a year to put together) into a single Word document—with a view to converting them to the university-specific PDF format, sending them to the Graduate School, and having the degree conferred—Word suddenly had a conniption.

Apparently, the file was too large for Word to handle.

It seemed to feel that this could best be dealt with by taking the third appendix—my pride and joy, in its way—deleting fully half of the words on each page, and filling the resultant gaps by randomly spacing out the remaining words.

This was after a serious of events including randomly removing my columns and refusing to allow me to insert a page break at the end of a section.

I would wash my hands of the thing altogether, but I really do need to get this PDF sorted out. It’s the only way the Graduate School will accept the thesis.

And so there’s nothing for it but Microsoft Word.