Bastard Assistant from Hell
The Bastard Assistant from Hell or BAfH for short is the character of the Bavarian university assistant Leisch from the stories by Florian Schiel .
The BAfH is based on the earlier BOfH, the Bastard Operator from Hell , which enjoys cult status on the Internet and Usenet . In the satirical stories, Schiel describes the everyday life of a constantly grumpy assistant who doesn't like students or any form of work. In the short stories Schiel therefore repeatedly describes the pranks and meannesses that the BAfH does to its environment. The BAfH has now also enjoyed a certain cult status.
In addition to the "Original BAfH" author, there are others, such as the BSfK (Bastard Student from Kiel, alias Hauke Goos-Habermann), who publish stories that take place in the BAfH universe.
people
main characters
Leisch
Employee at the LEERstuhl and central figure in the stories reported from the first-person perspective. Cynical adversary of all DAU (= stupidest possible user). Leisch is an anagram of the author's name "Schiel". Leisch owns an office that is quite generously equipped with modern technology and is secured with a fire door. He keeps annoying visitors away by hanging a sign on the door saying "Try running - do not disturb!" (what he calls "raising shields"). Occasionally, however, someone dares to disturb him anyway, which has unpleasant consequences for those who range from the accidental deletion of his university account or the saved thesis to attacks with electric shocks. Only his boss is allowed to disturb him, which Leisch accepts rather reluctantly. Officially responsible for computer support, he does this work in the best bastard fashion. Help calls are usually forwarded to completely different numbers such as the Maggi hotline or to the offices of other university employees. However, if he does take a call, he usually gives the person seeking help tips that only increase the problem or create new problems. To this end, he often uses the BOfH excuse calendar , the explanations of which satisfy the technically inexperienced person seeking help, even if they do not understand them. When he's not causing chaos at the university again, he spends his working hours playing computer games or watching films, for which he usually uses the latest technical equipment, which he usually uses the research budget of the LEERstuhl to purchase, on the grounds that the work is more efficient that way. However, Leisch occasionally has to offer courses, which, however, are passed by almost no one due to the mostly more or less insoluble difficult material or where the students usually no longer appear after 1–2 sessions, which is why the course has to be canceled due to insufficient number of participants . Leisch also keeps participants away with other harassment, so he has his lectures relocated to the tower lecture hall, which is on the seventh floor and can only be reached by stairs, when senior citizens visit the university. The university management and even the Ministry of Education would like to get rid of Leisch, but under unexplained circumstances the documents about his hiring have disappeared, so that it cannot be ruled out that he has been working at the LEERstuhl for more than six years and therefore cannot be dismissed as a civil servant. He also manages time and again to use tricks to get rid of restrictions on his rights for computer support, which are carried out in various ways, but never have any success.
Mrs. Bezelmann
Wickedly hissing secretary . Leisch was responsible for her employment because, like Leisch, when in doubt she knows how to get out of any responsibility. Occasionally she is also called the "Bastard Secretary from Hell". She often cooperates with Leisch on his meanness, for example when new students are to be kept away from enrolling or when stamping official documents. Occasionally she and Leisch try to hit each other off. However, there is usually an agreement in the processes at the LEERstuhl, as both benefit from Leisch's activities. It is known that she easily takes militant combat courses and owns firearms that are not approved in Germany . Distinctive: flashing glasses and gleefully drawn down corners of the mouth. She also collects the in-house mail on her post cactus so that the recipient can only remove it with an immense risk of injury. In fairness she provides iodine tincture and plasters.
The raven Nero
Mrs. Bezelmann's raven with yellow eyes, which has almost completely lost its feathers. When she was hired, Mrs. Bezelmann insisted on the presence of her raven in her office. The raven is used as an alarm device in that Ms. Bezelmann puts a yellow or red card in his mouth and then sends it through the corridors to the BAfH, which can take a long time because the raven keeps getting lost. Nero has a strong dislike for cats.
The boss
The boss is the professor of the empty chair . However, he has no idea about most things and is happy if he can leave the work to Leisch, who of course mercilessly exploits this responsibility. His way of speaking is characterized by the increased use of hesitations such as “um” or “hrm”, Leisch often throws in a helping “thing” that completely throws him off his concept. He is the only person who can enter Leisch's office with impunity, even if the latter has "raised the protective shields".
The colleague O.
The colleague O. is, just like Leisch, an assistant at the LEERstuhl. It is noticeable that he has a strong affinity for purple underwear . In contrast to his colleagues, he is also physically active by going on extremely strenuous hiking excursions at the weekend, which he then raves about during the breaks, which, however, is usually acknowledged with incomprehension - especially on the part of Leisch.
The colleague Rinzling
The colleague Rinzling is another assistant who is also a chronic hypochondriac and sees everything and everyone in his environment as a danger to his life. He therefore holed up in his sterile office and almost always leaves it with a protective suit, but at least with a breathing mask.
Marianne
Marianne works in the same department as Leisch. She plays the trombone and therefore usually carries her titanium trombone case with her, which she also uses as a weapon (including to demolish cars that she believes are unjustifiably parked in the women's parking lots in the university's multi-storey car park) and with which she threatens Leisch, for example to force him to undo harassment against her in the computer system. She is known in the university as the “power lesbian ” and tries to enforce emancipation in all areas, for example she insists that a robot rather than a robot be built.
Yogi Flop (actually Gustav Vorderbauer)
A physics student who is more concerned with metaphysics , however, puts forward confusing theories about the connection between telepathic waves and the fact that all students hang up on the cell phone before he has said a word. Nobody has told him until now that cell phones have number displays.
The BfAfH
The Bastard female Assistant from Heck was also ordered to the LEER chair in order to better exploit the potential for chaos. She and Leisch divided the university area between them so that they don't get in each other's way. She also had an affair with Leisch.
The BBfH
Sethimus Typhon, also known as Bastard Bureaucrat from Hell, causes his mischief in the RKfH (Reisekostenstelle from Heaven), where he forges accounts. He and Leisch fight duels from time to time.
The janitor
The caretaker , also a bastard, spreads chaos in the building services. He often works with Leisch, for example to make exams illegible or to keep students away from the EMPTY chair, which is rewarded with a case of beer. Various subordinate caretakers report to him and assist him.
The chief of the Klingons
The chief of the Klingons is the chief of building services . He has a kind of peace agreement with Leisch, which has threatened to end several times. Various forms of pressure that Leisch uses against him are, for example, the threat of filling out a pile of forms for a large number of repair jobs or interventions in the building services using the computer. The fact that an employee was accidentally killed in an accident at work is another reason for him to prefer to let Leisch do it, for example when he repairs computer equipment in the workshop or uses various aids.
Running gags and terminology
The thing from another world
Ms. Bezelmann's copier , also known as “The Thing from Another World”, often appears in the stories. It responds to all sorts of actions by mass ejecting paper and sometimes toner . Apparently, the probability of failure is directly proportional to the urgency of the copy job.
The SCHWAFEL project
The abbreviation SCHWAFEL stands for Self Constructing Hyper Wavelet Algorithms For Extrapolating Linguistics . This is a project of the European Union and the Federal Government with exclusively German project partners, u. a. from Hamburg and Munich. As part of the project, there are occasional working meetings, so Dr. phil. Vogel founded the Munich Institute as part of one such. It has no special purpose or results, but it does consume large amounts of money. Leisch often misuses the budget for this project for his own purposes, so he used the item "quality control" on the assumption that no results would be produced anyway, the quality of which could be checked, for the purchase of an access control for the hallway where you are Office lies.
Web pages
The old BAfH website has existed since 1996. It changed address several times, but nothing changed about the characteristic design of the 90s.
What is striking is the enormous number of fan pages that has persisted to this day (2011). They offer different typed versions of the same BAfH stories.
Since 2005, the game Bastard Open Web Project developed by netAction has been the central website of the BAfH. Most of the old BAfH stories are hidden within the game world, as are references to books and fan articles such as the calendar of excuses.
The author
Florian Schiel studied electrical engineering and information technology in the field of cybernetics at the Technical University of Munich and completed his studies in 1990 with a Dipl.-Ing. In 1993 he obtained the degree of Dr.-Ing. with a thesis on automatic speaker adaptation in ASR. From 1993 he was employed as a research assistant at the Institute for Phonetics and Linguistic Communication, University of Munich . A large part of his short stories were written there, heartily caricaturing everyday office life in general and at the university in particular and mixing up current topics with swipes.
From May to Nov 1994, and from March to September 1997, Schiel was a visiting researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California. It was there that the short stories were written that would later become the book Bastard Goes Overseas. ( ISBN 3-929303-11-6 ) were summarized.
Calendar of excuses
The BAfH comes up with an excuse for every request, because of which it unfortunately can not do anything.
This was picked up by fans and made collections of excuses for admins. From 2001 to 2004, roughly estimated, a service was running on a server at the University of Bremen that delivered a different excuse every day. Anyone who installed a Perl script provided on their web server would get the current excuse from the uni-bremen server and display it on their website.
This was followed from 2005 to 2008 by a mailing list with 430 subscribers at last on netaction, which sent out an official excuse from Florian Schiel every day. In addition, there was the excuse as HTML, text, JavaScript and image, so that they could include the fans in their website or their forum signature. At the same time, the author distributed a printed calendar. Like most BAfH books and websites, it shows Nero the raven.
In 2009 and 2010 there was no calendar of excuses. Since 2011, the excuses on Identi.ca have been offered in a separate user account. In addition to the subscription called follow , the service offers an export to RSS for feed readers, blogrolls and mail programs. There was a JsonP interface to integrate the excuses into your own website, but this is no longer available due to technical changes on the part of identi.ca.
history
Author Florian Schiel first started translating the stories of the Bastard Operator from Hell in the 1990s before developing his own short stories and distributing them via a mailing list. After he had already published a short story in an anthology, he sent his stories to various publishers. In the professional world, the BAfH became a prime example of the change in the book market through the Internet. In July 1999, the unknown author ousted Günter Grass and others from the top positions on amazon.de .
First special edition
A first numbered gift edition with a personal dedication for Christmas could be ordered via a website. From February 1997 an illustrated paperback edition ( ISBN 3-929303-09-4 ) appeared in several editions. Goldmann Verlag later acquired the paperback license .
Second volume with America satire
The USA satire book Bastard Goes Overseas. ( ISBN 3-929303-12-4 ) was published in 1998 for the book fair.
Third band with a new name
In 1999 the third volume, Carpe Diem Academicum, was published. ( ISBN 3-929303-18-3 ). This name (a title of one of the stories) was chosen by the publisher because the more conservative booksellers had reacted critically to the words "Bastard" and "Hell". The stories take place after the assistant returns from America. In 2003 Goldmann Verlag published the third volume as a paperback under the title The Latest from the Bastard Assistant ( ISBN 3-442-45625-8 ).
Fourth volume
Another publication took place under the title The Bastard Ass (i) plots on . This volume contains 48 stories that were published between 2001 and 2003 and could only be obtained directly from Florian Schiel.
fifth volume
The last volume so far is called The Ultimate Bastard Ass (i) from Hell and contains 43 stories from 2003 to 2005, this volume can also be obtained directly from Florian Schiel.
Volume 1–4 as an anthology
A thick rind with volumes 1–4 was published by Lehmanns Media ( ISBN 978-3-86541-466-3 ).
More books by Schiel
Florian Schiel has also written a detective novel under the pseudonym Leisch ( Wenn voices kill. Schwarten Verlag, ISBN 3-929303-14-0 ), which also takes place in the author's scientific environment. An annotated collection of BAfH stories was published as a paperback in 2003 under the title Survival Guide for the German University (Florian Schiel Verlag Munich).
Web links
- since July 2005 Florian Schiel's new official BAfH website
- The homepage of the BSfK
- Article at Telepolis
- Calendar of excuses at identi.ca
Individual evidence
- ↑ T he BASTARDS eiten ( Memento from June 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Bastard Open Web Project ( Memento from July 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ User account
- ↑ existed ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
