Recent Work Emails (or MEN and Primordial Meetings)

Some recent highlights from my inbox:

-A 7-page venomous email about Valerie Pecresse (ministre de l'ensignement superieur) visiting UC Berkeley in what is probably a nefarious plan either to dominate the world or to destroy the French University (perhaps both simultaneously) from a French professor who teaches there and somehow has my email address.

-A similarly venomous email about some aspect of the strike or proposed education reforms (all my work related email these days is petitions and 7-page tretises about how the Public French University is Dead) titled "take a look at the website MEN." This was NOT anything related to porn or dating (then I probably would have looked at it). MEN apparently stands for Ministre de l'Education where something scandalous to my colleagues was posted about the role of an enseignant-chercheur as now imagined by the French Government.

-An email about a Big Important Faculty Meeting where we were supposed to decide whether or not to cancel the current (although nearly finished) semester saying that attendance was "primordial." I guess this is more intense than souhaité or obligatoire?

-An email flurry about what time the Primordial Meeting starts-- noon or 12:30? We perhaps had to verify with the mastadons and other primordial invités.

-An email from the director of the language department of our university apologizing for not attending last week's Primordial Meeting, and thus preventing any decision-making whatsoever from occuring (not that any often actually takes place in French meetings, though). She would like us to attend another meeting primordially next Thursday at either noon or 12:30.