Grant Proposal Carnage

Degrees on the wall, diplomas in frames,
Sacred geometry twisted for the games.
Peer review is a slaughterhouse, a currency of shame,
Publish or perish, sign your name in acid flame.
Hypothesis twisted like a barbed-wire noose,
Data sets cherry-picked for the highest use.
The truth is a cadaver on the stainless steel,
While the board of directors sign another meal deal.

They pay for the product, not the paradigm!
The ghost in the machine is a nickel-and-dime!
The grant is the gospel, the funding is the god!
Smash the fucking beaker, we're all just cattle on the sod!

GRIND! The ivory towers to dust!
GRIND! The logic crumbles to rust!
Meat grinder of the bought-out brains!
Neurons dripping down the drain!
GRIND! (Solo riff kicks in here)

The Nobel is a needle for the junkie of the mind,
Post-docs in the dungeon, leaving sanity behind.
Statistical significance is just a pretty lie,
To justify the budget while the real questions die.
Carbon dating the conscience, silicon for the soul,
Technocratic vultures picking at the whole.
Ethics is a footnote in a forty-page report,
While the algorithm fiddles and the data starts to contort!

"Objectivity... is a fossil fuel..."
BURN IT!

GRIND! The ivory towers to dust!
GRIND! The logic crumbles to rust!
Meat grinder of the bought-out brains!
Neurons dripping down the drain!
GRIND!

Cog... in the wheel...
Steel... grinds the real..