To put things in perspective, Sam had never really invented anything chemistry related by this time.  In fact, this was a skill that he would not develop until sometime later after being fired by the GM.  During the beginning stages of his indoctrination into the herd Sam met routinely with the GM.  Sam told me that during meetings with the GM the student was required to submit ideas which were then discussed and finally each meeting concluded with the GM retaining the original copies of the ideas that the student had brought.  These ideas were placed in the bookshelf drawer previously described earlier and possibly transposed and cataloged at a later date by the GM himself for future use.  Regardless, the entire experience of being able to present ideas was fascinating to Sam.  The whole idea that such a famous professor would sit and listen to a student was an ego boosting experience for Sam.  Still, the GM was not completely satisfied with the ideas Sam was coming up with so he requested that Sam see a visiting scientist from Belgium and also professor Hardwood of the same chemistry department (not that he was really constructed of oak).  Sam recalls professor Hardwood being somewhat agitated by his visitation and him stating “why should I give the GM all my ideas?”  Sam then presented these third party ideas to the GM but he still wasn’t satisfied.  Finally, the GM reached into his treasure chest and pulled out what he thought was a sure fire idea for a great project.  Unbeknownst to Sam at the time this idea was doomed to failure from the beginning and that his soft underbelly was about to get ripped apart at a later date by no other than the GM himself.

So our foolish Sam began work on the GM’s project.  Despite keeping grad student hours he managed to make progress that pleased the GM.  Again a digression is required here.  As it turns out the GM managed to keep very lucrative hours for himself.  Typically the GM would wander in to the University of Asscrack at around 2 pm, sit in his office for 4-6 hours and then scurry back home.  At most he taught one class per semester (if that) and still managed to rake in a 5+ figure salary.  Of course this is just a minor price to pay for the tax paying peons who reside in the great state with nothing on each end and yet it is so high in the middle.  We will get back to the millions of dollars wasted on the GM’s (supposed) inventions, not a single one amounting to any industrial significance.  According to Sam the GM would give praise by saying “keep up the good work” and “don’t worry about the literature I’ll take care of that you just focus on the laboratory work.”  Finally Sam gave his first talk on this research.  In the audience were people from the exploder tire company.  Several days later they informed the GM that on a recent literature search a Japanese company that makes copying devices amongst other things had recently patented the chemistry Sam had been working on.  The GM immediately did a 180 on Sam.  “It is your fault, it was your responsibility” said the GM to Sam.  Sam was then reassigned to train one of the exploder tire company’s employees how to do some of the techniques developed in the GM lab while the GM tried to decide what to do with Sam’s project.  I should digress here yet again.  This is when Sam started to wake up.  The tire exploder scientist that Sam trained basically told Sam that the GM was going to be made a coinventor on a patent covering an idea he came up with.  It would appear that the GM was nothing but a parasite; however, Sam still wasn’t sure.  One thing Sam did know is that the GM had lied about protecting his soft underbelly and that his project sure wasn’t original as promised.  In another “hindsight is 20/20 moment” Sam told me that later it came out in a local newspaper that the Japanese company mentioned above had previous dealings with the GM.  In fact, from the chemical literature a number of Japanese researchers had spent time in the GM’s lab working on almost identical chemistry.  It was of little doubt to Sam that the GM’s sure fire idea had ultimately come from one of these visiting Japanese scientists.