sorry for my absence...

... but I am home now. Home in the horrifically plain suburbs of Chicago, surrounded by white! White landscapes, people, elephant gifts, and minds. And you know how that gives me material. As a sappy, lame excuse for my inattention to this blog, I offer you a scrap of a google chat with a morsel of information about my personal life. It doubles as a sneak-preview of the evil holiday spirits and corporate bah-humbuggery soon to spew from this journal.

elyse: i hate hallmark because it is the mass-production and mass-marketing of everything in this world that is trite, boring, unartisan, and banal

elyse: because 1/4 of the items in the store that aren't about baby jesus, stuffed animals, and gem-studded troll dolls are about making the alcohol swigging habits of suburban biddies cutesy and pink

R: I like you :)

elyse: i like you :)

Isn't that disgusting? Aaaaaand I'm never mentioning my personal life again.

Quickies

1. Buses

Lately I've been in a dangerously bad mood in the mornings and it's been all I can do not to explode with rage every time I'm on the bus. Some guy will inevitably weasel his way into a seat that opens up right next to me every morning, forcing me to stand while 10 people squeeze past where I'm standing in the middle of the aisle. I have a new theory that the murderous ideations of serial killers are born on public transportation, and I dare you to defy me. Also, please don't give me dirty looks while we're across from each other on the bus. It's not my fault that you chose to put on that much eyeliner, lady.

2. Baby's First Car

Last weekend, I purchased my first car. Car shopping is a lot like clothes shopping except... the salespeople are usually fast-talking men, I fit into everything I looked at, and when I went home at the end of the day, I didn't hate my body. Now I'm broke so I won't go clothes shopping for awhile, which makes me sad... but I like my car. I'm trying to think of it as an accessory... like a really expensive, rapidly depreciating scarf.

3. Emotionally Unstable

In my life, a few men have referred to me as "emotionally unstable." This would bother me if I hadn't pieced together a few coincidental facts about these men:

1. They considered themselves to be very good looking and intelligent.
2. They were interested in me romantically.
3. I was not interested in them romantically.

Just throwing this out there, but maybe what's "emotionally unstable" about me is my unshakable opinion that they are undesirable mates. Also, who seems more emotionally unstable: me, or a guy who cries every day? That's what I thought.

4. Science

Science is like the big brother who sometimes lets you have the larger slice of pie for dessert, but then the next day he calls you fat and rubs your face in his dirty underwear. What a fickle, fickle world I work in.

I am the ONLY person who could slice her finger open and bleed profusely trying to BAKE COOKIES. I'm probably also the only clumsy, irresponsible cook who manages to have slip up with knives on a daily basis and can never remember to keep band-aids around. Every single finger on my left hand has bled this week. Last week, a paring-knife mishap caused me to slice between my thumbnail and finger (it hurt like a bitch) as well as behind my cuticle on my right ring finger. As a last point, if you have open cuts on every finger, don't squeeze limes with that hand. Maybe you'd have figured that out sooner than I did... I'm slow.

I should stick to yogurt. Nobody ever cut themselves trying to eat yogurt (except maybe on the foil lid... uh oh).

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Ladies, nobody in science is ever going to give you any respect. You're going to have to knee them in the groin, sucker punch, headlock, and choke hold them, kick them to the ground, beat them into unconsciousness with a heavy object, and take the respect you deserve from their limp, clammy hands. In an intellectual sense, of course... yes, of course...

Halloween 2009

I don't think I'll ever really understand Halloween. Is it religious or pagan? Is it for kids or adults? As a kid, wearing a costume made me cry, and other kids' costumes scared me. Even now the idea of dressing up like a stranger perplexes me... who am I supposed to be when I'm in costume? A character? Myself? Which myself?

I walked around campus on Friday as confused as ever. On a non-holiday, the undergrads look strange to me. Half of them are wearing baby blue t-shirts and athletic shorts, and the other half look like a bad cut/paste job from an Urban Outfitters catalog. On Halloween, I figure it's safe to assume they're in costume. Maybe the Urban Outfitters kids dressed up as the school spirit kids to be ironic, and the school spirit kids wore the ugliest outfits imaginable to make fun of the Urban Outfitters kids. Or maybe no one was in costume and they all looked like they do every day. Honestly, it's hard to tell the difference.

I spent my Halloween drinking wine and eating stir fry with a French Kiss, a wild type Drosophila, Pumpkin π, and a guy named Luv. My costume was Bad Elyse-- which is a joke, see, because there is no Good Elyse. Hahahaha. Ah, I don't get Halloween at all.

Hiccups

I am a weird girl and I have weird hiccups.

When my mother was pregnant with me, people could tell that I was hiccuping because her stomach would bounce visibly. My hiccups were so strong they actually caused my mother pain.

My hiccups have always been out of control. My diaphragm contracts so violently that my entire body shakes. They yank on internal organs, tug my abdominal muscles painfully, and keep me from breathing properly, making me lightheaded.

I don't know what triggers them, but this morning I woke up with the hiccups (actually, the hiccups woke ME up) and I've had them 3 times since. The present bout has been so strong that I had to vomit (twice).

Go away hiccups!

Then came the Beatles, and it was Good.

My mom and I listened to the Beatles' remastered Revolver (stereo) this morning. We're huge Beatles geeks. We debated which album best represented when the Beatles' sound began to change. I think Revolver shows the complete revolution they made... but she thinks earlier. Rubber Soul, perhaps? And which song is more perfect-- "And Your Bird Can Sing" or "Here, There, and Everywhere"? Every time a song came on we had a conversation that went like this:

Me: I really like this song.
Mom: Me too! It's a really good song.

or

Me: This is a perfect song.
Mom: Yes, this is really one of [Paul/John/George]'s best songs.

It's like saying "amen" after a prayer. Everything in my family is about the Beatles to the point of ridiculousness. When I was little and we skipped going to mass, my mom would play "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be" and say that it was good enough. My mom got a new puzzle last week. She said, "It'll give us something to do at Christmas besides look at the snow." It's a white album puzzle-- 500 white pieces. Only in my family.

Knives are sharp

Last night I was admiring my new birthday knives. They are exquisitely beautiful and shiny, especially the santoku knife, which has oval indents in it for "thinner slicing." I was standing in my kitchen admiring its icy, almost malicious gleam in the tinny fluorescent light, and found myself instinctively moving my finger toward the blade to touch its shiny edge. (I like to touch shiny things. I am a girl.)

Slow motion-- my finger's hypnotic trajectory is punctuated by my mother's voice-- "KNIVES... WILL... CUT... YOU..." I managed to stop my finger micrometers away from the knife, suddenly realizing that yes, running my finger along the edge would probably result in a terrible, annoying band-aid on my digit for the next two weeks. This probably saved me hours of irritation as well as 8-10 bloody paper towels.

Thanks, Mom.

Addendum

I was thinking about my previous post's pleas to Shonda Rimes & Friends. Yes, I would still like some sort of massacre to occur at Seattle Grace. Yes, I would like it to happen as soon as possible. Yes, I would like every major and supporting character to perish without any dramatic dialogue or mourning involved. But in addition to this, NO ONE CAN COME BACK AS GHOSTS. Especially ghosts that have sex and warn people about cancer. Especially ghosts with spin-offs, or ghosts that appear on Private Practice. Also, I would like the president of ABC to formally apologize to America and all countries where Grey's Anatomy is syndicated for this poor excuse for entertainment.

Thanks!
Love, Elyse

TV Guide

As you may recall, I canceled all television service to my apartment a month ago. It's been a quiet month in my apartment. I kind of like it, but sometimes I need to do something... mindless... so today I watched some of this season's premieres (on my laptop).

1. Grey's Anatomy: First of all, why do I waste my life watching this drivel? The dialogue is painful and all the characters are ridiculous. But I think I've beaten the bad dialogue horse too much in my life; today, I'm going to beat the bad plot horse. Thanks for killing off boring George, Shonda Rimes & Friends, but there's still lame Izzy, boring Meredith, boring Christina, boring Derek, lame Alex, lame Meredith's sister, and the rest of the lame, boring cast to kill off. I suggest that a bomb explodes in Seattle Grace, flattening the entire hospital, because this show is like a roach infestation. If you don't obliterate them all, they'll come back even stronger than before in some incorrigible spin-off. We can't have that again, people-- I will not abide by another show as terrible as Private Practice. Also, I'm growing impatient about the speed at which character deaths occur. You can't afford waste an entire episode deifying a character who had no redeeming qualities. Be honest, you're glad he's dead. It's okay to move on with sociopath-like speed. You have other bad characters to kill, SR&F, and I want them all dead before sweeps (except Patrick Dempsey). Please start with Izzy. Now let's get crackin'!

2. Eastwick: I'm still not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, they took an awesomely dark, overtly sexual and sadistic book about three gorgeously powerful women and turned it into a frilly, flouncy, cutesy-magicked version of Desperate Housewives. I hate Desperate Housewives as much as Grey's Anatomy. On the other hand, the guy who plays Darryl the Demon is way hotter than I imagined him in the book. But on the first hand, Rebecca Romijn can't act well enough to sell her character. But on the second hand, who cares, because she looks sooooo good kissing Darryl. But on the first hand, no no no, don't ruin literature with cliche dialogue, plots, characters, soundtrack... even the font in the credits is predictable. No, ABC, no. Just.... don't. I beg you.

3. House: I used to love this show until one day I realized they ran out of ideas in the second season and still needed to give Hugh Laurie something to do to justify his huge salary. I would prefer that they have him tap dance and solve riddles for an hour instead of murdering all the respect I had for the show's writers. Who writes for TV these days? I'm starting to think it might be a group therapy project in an adult care facility: cut and paste things from newspapers and novels until you run out of space on the page, then doodle set designs on them. The sixth season premiere is a modernized and watered-down plagiarism of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I'm not even going to explain to you how the writers have stolen the plot of the movie point-by-point, because I have more respect for you than that. It's even worse than plagiarism because it takes a work of Ken Kesey genius and infuses it with the same tired cadence we've all come to know and detest in House dialogue. I like a good homage as much as the next cranky bitch, so when they come up with a good homage I'll certainly give them credit for it. Where's the creativity? At the end of the episode, 13 sleeps with a stripper and kills herself, Wilson throws a sink out the window, House gets a lobotomy and the giant Indian-- I mean, FOX -- puts the sad, empty remains of this program out of its misery... oh, sorry, no... that's what would happen if I wrote this episode.

It's almost my birthday and that means I've been thinking a lot about... alcohol!

I thought of a good name for a sure-to-be disgusting shot: PBR&J. It would consist of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jello, or maybe PBR and grenadine and a cherry. At any rate, that's gross, but it would be fun to order. I would probably try it once or ten times.

You know what would make a really good shot? Tequila. I'm going to have some now.

P.S. My parents got me knives for my birthday. Super sharp professional chef-quality knives. I'm excited because my current cutlery requires Neanderthal-esque techniques in order to slice foods tougher than a mushroom. Sometimes I think it would help if I grunted and scratched my fleas while I use them, no joke. Now that the new knives have arrived, my mom keeps calling me and reminding me to be careful, because "knives can cut" me. Thanks for the heads up, Mom.

Phobias

I've been experiencing a lot of anxiety lately, and I think I want to commemorate that by describing a couple more of my phobias. I don't think these phobias have cool names like masklophobia (which, by the way, is still generating hits for this blog. I'm not alone). If you can think of a good one, please share it with me.

1. Peanut butter. First of all, people, peanut butter is evil. It's fatty and sticky and once you stop eating it, it's in your mouth for a long time afterwards, tempting you to eat more and more and more. Fuck Skippy: this addictive paste is obviously ground out by Satan as he plucks the peanuts that dangle from his ceilings in hell. But enough about reasons to love peanut butter. I'm terrified of peanut butter because it's a goitrogen as well as an allergen that can kill small children in minutes. I'm terrified because I don't understand the immune system well enough to put the word goitrogen into perspective. I hear "thyroid-slowing food" and immediately think "neck tumor." I like my thyroid and neck the way they are, so no peanut butter for me, thanks. (P.S. Kissing after eating peanut butter is also not okay.)

2. Bathtubs and showers. In a perfect world, you get clean in a bathtub. Thinking about how imperfect this world's bathtubs are makes my toes curl. I cringe when I see cheesecake photos of women lounging in their bubble baths. Just imagining the invisible cast-off grime entrapped in soapy scum along the walls and edges of a bathtub, not to mention the hair, oh the hair, is enough for me to get in and out of my shower as quickly as possible. I bleach it down every morning and I still refuse to touch the walls and sides. My hot water bill is really low. I wear sandals in every bathroom except my own, and sometimes my anxiety takes hold and I can't help wearing them at home, too. Somehow dirt is just dirtier when it's in a place you get clean.

3. Eyes. I don't really have the stomach to justify this fear with vivid imagery. Well, I'll try. Eyes teeter at the verge of your sockets, held in by spidery ropes of nerves. They are outpoochings of your brain. They are covered in bulging red capillaries and pumped so full of vitreous humor (as opposed to vitriolic humor, like this blog) that the tightest little bump might burst them like a balloon. Oozing itching blinking twitching eyes.

Is it weird that thinking about eating peanut butter, strangers' showers, and eyes keeps me awake at night, but I can appreciate the beautiful nuances of a brain while I remove it from a rat's still-twitching, disembodied skull?

iMemoriam

Last week, I lost a good friend of mine: Veatrix, my iPod. She presented Wednesday morning with a sad iPod face and never woke up.

Veatrix was a first generation 20 GB color iPod that I adopted from my dad, who won her in some promotional event at work and doesn't have my emotional musical needs. I was a freshman in college then and only used an iPod to amuse me during the 20 minute walk to and from my dorm. I filled her with the entire Beatles catalog and a few Rolling Stones songs. At first I scoffed at the students who were attached to their portable music player as if it was a pacifier, but I soon accepted the easy, codependent lifestyle Veatrix offered me.

While I dragged myself around campus, depressed and cold and considering transferring to another school, Veatrix soothed my weathered nerves and warmed me inside while my ears blackened with frostbite. Veatrix outsang the my peers' obnoxious pseudointellectual debates while I studied in campus coffee shops, and she and I developed a clever eavesdropping scheme to catch up on the most interesting gossip. By the end of college, I relied heavily on Veatrix to completely drown out reality.

Veatrix was my best friend. She chattered to me during long car rides and nerve-wracking graduate school interview trips. She was a salve to the irritation I developed on my bus commutes to and from the UNC campus. When I put her on shuffle, she always played the songs I wanted to hear, even defying randomness to inject extra Wilco into the mix when I needed it most. Veatrix knew me better than Pandora ever could. In the spirit of hyperbole, I'll admit to you that the man who invented iPods is the only man I'll ever love. (That might not be true, but hell, this is a eulogy, not the encyclopedia!)

This past week without Veatrix has been one of the most boring and irritating weeks of my life. For each shoe-squeak step that I take to the bus stop, I miss the upbeat melodies Veatrix might have played me. For every paper I pull off PubMed, it hurts to wonder what musical accompaniment Veatrix might choose. Each un-soundtracked workout brings a stinging tear to my eye. Each obnoxious bus conversation I overhear makes me miss her, miss her.

Oh Veatrix. I'll never replace you in my heart, but of course you must understand that I immediately replaced you in my life. Mama's gotta keep her sanity, baby. I got my new iPod nano, jet black, today... and it is obscenely cool. I named it Veatriix. See how the "i" doubles as a roman numeral? Can you even stand how clever I am? I know, sometimes it's just unbelievable.

I miss you Veatrix, but now that your music lives in on a newer model, I guess my heart will go on.

Are you on the Bus?

I am fortunate enough to enjoy a completely free transit system in my town. There is no parking on campus so we all save hundreds of dollars a year being able to ride the bus to and fro. I am absolutely not complaining about the gratuitous transportation provided by the good people of Chapel Hill today. Absolutely not. Indeed, today I'm complaining about the good people of Chapel Hill.

As someone who took buses around Chicago for four years, I am freaked out when I ride the buses here. In Chicago, if I saw the same man every day on the way to and back from work, I would probably consider him to be stalking me. But my little bus route has few enough riders that I actually notice when new people are on the bus. Not only that, but I can remember things about the people I see every day.

There's the girl with the bag I really like. Sometimes I hate my bag so much that I want to ask her to trade with me. There's the guy that dresses well and smells awful. There are the girls with perfectly straight, blond hair-- I have no idea how anyone keeps their hair so smooth in this humidity. There's the girl who is always sucking face with some guy and looking at me as if I should be jealous. I'm not jealous, lady... no disgusting tongue maneuver you perform can make me wish I were you. I can out-maneuver you any day of the week, honey.

Then there is this guy on the bus that I tried to ask out last year. He had long black hair, piercings, fingerless leather gloves, and always wore classic rock t-shirts. One day he and I both wore a Beatles shirt, so I got on and sat next to him, then tried to talk about how funny it was that we were both wearing a Beatles shirt. It got awkward real quick (as you may have suspected). Later in the year, he cut his hair and looked respectable and I lost all interest (as you may have suspected).

I have not yet lost interest in cornering strange men on the bus and attempting to make them love me. It's a fun game. Today I happened to be sitting next to a marginally attractive man and quickly noticed an unpleasant odor emanating from an unidentifiable direction. It definitely wasn't Attractive Man. I became increasingly paranoid that he might think I smelled like baby poop-- I wanted to turn to him and say, "Sir, you should know that I just stepped out of the shower 20 minutes ago and thus have not had the opportunity to generate the nostril profanity we now experience." But that would have been even more awkward than the sometimes-goth boy incident.

Suddenly I located the origin of the scent: BAD SMELLING GUY was sitting right in front of us. He became impossible to ignore. Why was BSG on the bus at this unusual time? What have I done to evoke this inopportune fortune? Well, I've done a lot of bad things in my life, so I can't really claim I don't deserve to sit next to an odoriferous person or two... but I digress. The smell continued until BSG got off the bus at the stop before mine.

People, I beg you. Please don't go on the bus if you haven't showered in weeks. Just walk home from work-- it's not like a little sweat will make you stink worse than you already do. It makes it really hard for me to terrorize good-looking men with my flirtations when an ambiguous odor shakes my deluded self-confidence.

Can vodka cure headaches?

When I was a senior in high school, my gigantic wisdom teeth pressed on a nerve in my jaw and gave me a headache for almost the entire year, nonstop. Or maybe the kids I went to school with were just so annoying, blonde, and orange that I was in psychic pain all the time... I don't know. If you went to my high school you'd understand that both options are equally likely. I had my wisdom teeth removed and graduated high school in the same week, and the headaches went away. Hooray!

But I get headaches now that are almost as bad as that one. Let me tell you this week's tale of woe: On Tuesday before I went to a concert, I started getting a headache. I kept it at bay by taking 3 Advil with a Guinness. That is probably not so great for my liver, but what's done is done. The next day it was back! So I left work early and took a nap. Then it was back again! And I haven't been able to shake it since.

Here is something you shouldn't do when you have a headache: Go on internet medical advice websites. All I can think about now is how I may have a subarachnoid bleed. Every ten minutes I'm running to the mirror to see if there's blood leaking from my ear. But if my meninges were hemmoraging for 5 days, wouldn't I be craving meat? Probably, since I'm already (according to the blood drives that reject me) "dangerously anemic." It's okay: If I sit really still and try not to breathe much and don't think about anything or open my eyes, I barely feel any pain. It's like being dead.

Random aside: I was at the gym this morning laughing to myself about a cat food commercial. I think it's weird that they advertise salmon, lobster, and sea bass as a "natural" diet for cats. When was the last time you saw a cat deep-sea fishing or cracking open a lobster tail? Hell, cats don't even have the opposable digits to properly handle a seafood fork. You might as well give them pureed polar bear liver, because they're just as likely to eat that in the wild.

I have never been so happy to have a photographic memory than I was this morning when I had a dream about my wallet without my debit card in it and got up to see it was true. I was able to visualize where I had left it and that is today's reason I didn't jump off a bridge.

I'd be pretty disabled without my photographic memory. How does everyone else do it? Please explain "paying attention" to me.

I have a dream...

What if all the Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvds in the United States were connected to form a single coherent boulevard? Then we could take a luxuriously slow road trip around the United States, passing from city to city in a nonsensical labyrinthine path. This would benefit people who sometimes wake up in strange cities and find themselves confused by their orientation to home relative to the identically-titled but fundamentally unequal MLKJBs. I'm just sayin'-- it would save some people a lot of time that would otherwise be spent meandering around, burning fossil fuels, and trying not to cry in front of the gas station attendant.

Some people would also really benefit from intuitively renaming all roads according to her place of residence: "Direction of Ice Cream Store Street." "Intersects with Gym Road." "Pathway between Work and Home Skyway." "Full of Speed Traps Go Slowly Way."

Also, what if we outlawed parallel parking? I think it's discriminatory to people who never took the driving exam because they passed driver's ed with an extremely high grade. Some people can't help it if they are too smart for the system.

A roundabout excuse for not posting more often.

I love multidisciplinary studies. Specialization limits the accessibility of whatever topic you study-- sure, you might be an expert in the environmental theory of praying mantis egg-hatching dynamics, but if you can't communicate what you know to someone who studies the neurobiochemical interactions of crawfish mating rituals, what good does it do? We do need experts, though... it's just that, we need a few experts, and we need them to mentor people in a broader context than their own expertise. Multiple mentors-- that's the idea behind a thesis committee, I think.

I am writing about this today, not to change the face of science (I'll save that for another day, a greater blog), but to express my frustration with grad school lately. I work in a fantastic interdisciplinary lab that combines chemistry and neurobiology, and yet I find myself constantly tripping on the crack between the two. Imagine you have a study where you use a chemical technique to study a neurobiological phenomenon. Now you have a problem: write for a chemistry journal, and the chemists think you're doing chemistry wrong. Write for a biology journal, and the neurobiologists think you're doing neurobiology wrong. You're wrong from every angle, even if you're right. (My lab is really well established, luckily for us, but the problem still arises, especially when you're trying to do something new. Cough, cough.)

Now back to that age-old (beginning of this blog-old) notion that as a woman, I feel that I experience extra frustration. Most of the men I know are happy to step back and say "Yes, I'm a chemist-- who cares about the neurobiology?" or "The neurobiology is solid, so I am going to let it speak for itself." I feel this is easier for someone with a Y chromosome because society expects them to be great at one thing-- and everything else be damned. Women are supposed to be multi-talented: can you cook? do you keep a clean house? does your hair have bounce and shine? can you wiggle your hips attractively when Lady Gaga comes on at a club? please theorize about the themes in the Bronte sisters' literature as compared to Jane Austen's. how does NMDA antagonism in the hippocampus impact task-acquisition in various behavioral paradigms? etc. Maybe that's not true-- maybe that's just some neurotic pressure I feel because I can barely cook, clean, control my hair, and wiggle seductively, and I haven't read early 19th century women's lit since high school.

But my obvious neuroticism aside... my point is, taking a multidisciplinary approach to science is, in my opinion, the best approach-- and the most open for criticism. And unlike a lot of people, I don't let criticism roll off my back. I take it as a challenge to get better. Guess what? Being a first year grad student presents a lot of challenges (mostly because I don't know anything), and I'm EXHAUSTED. And that, my dear reader(s?), is why my posting has been lackluster lately. I'm just too tired to store up my vitriol. It leaks out of me all day like a car with a bad transmission. And your diaphragm (again, not the contraceptive) is the one that suffers. I apologize to diaphragms everywhere.

Queueing up

In an effort to not spend my money, I'm kicking television. Cable costs an extra $40-something a month and I would like to have that money in my bank account. Or to spend on concert tickets. The best part about not having television is that I won't have to see a single Grey's Anatomy commercial and wonder how Americans became so tasteless that they made it one of the highest rated programs on TV.

The cynic in me is crying out for some depressing and inherently-biased indie documentaries. Any recommendations? I'm partial to movies about America's obesity problem, but I also like macabre political agendas, doom-and-gloom nature prophecies, and anything with bizarre wooden puppets acting out modern day biographies in the style of Greek theatre. (Protagonist!)

UNCLE

North Carolina, I give up. Enough with the insects, okay? I give up. I concede that nature hates me.

I have good reason to think that my car has a nest of bees inside. Does that sort of thing happen to normal people? What would someone do if their car was full of bees? Will I at least get some delicious honeycomb out of the whole ordeal?

I still love Obama

I don't know a lot about politics, but I do know a lot about bitching. It seems that lately, a big mouth is all you need to put your two cents into debates about the economy and healthcare. People I went to high school with are posting daily rants on Facebook about how Obama's a communist-- the last time I saw these guys participate in anything was gym class, and I think that was only to prove who was the superior douchebag. Seems like the same thing now. My friends (who definitely know more about these subjects than I do) want to debate politics with me just to prove me wrong, as if making their point clear to me is useful. I guess political stress makes people a little bit aggressive. But hey, what's the point?

So I don't know a lot about politics, but I'm pretty sure that the government isn't taking tips from Facebook and Google Chat transcripts. I know that back before we had these online social outlets, people actually got off their fat asses and organized protests. Regardless of the effect, at least they sent a message of discontent to someone other than irritated social networkers (well, me). Some people that were frustrated with the system actually wrote great music instead of contributing to their gigantic beer guts all day. Our generation is fucked and that's not Obama's fault. We are lazy and fat (well, not me) and whiny. We aren't apathetic enough to quit complaining, but we're content pass the hard work on to that nebulous "someone else." I think we deserve whatever shitty future America that evolves for not taking action about whatever we believe in now.

It took me a lot of angsting teen years to unearth this nugget of zen, but I'll share it with you for free: If I can't control it, I'm not going to stress about it. I'm a biologist and I've got no business telling Obama what to do, unless he decides that all research should be creationism-based. I pay my taxes, obey traffic laws, spend too much on clothes, and think that the government's doing its job if a tribe of neighboring Neanderthals don't pull me out of my bed at night to rape and pillage me. Here's what I worry about:

• Poorly conducted fMRI studies influencing our view of neural processing.
• Lack of respect for women in science.
• Ignorant medical professionals-- every time I go to the doctor, I end up diagnosing myself and giving suggestions for my own treatment. Why don't we teach our doctors to THINK? About something other than money, I mean.
  
• Politicians who don't know anything about research and take pride in their blazing ignorance (I'm looking at you, Sarah Palin).
• People without a sense of humor and their sad, sad, sad, sad lives.
• The fact that I'm writing this blog on a Sunday morning when I should be cleaning my apartment.
  

Moby Centipede

A week ago there was a gigantic centipede taunting me from the ceiling, but I was having a Rolling Stones underwear dance party so I couldn't be bothered to kill it. By the time I was done, the centipede had stopped peeping at me and gone back into hiding. I have been trying desperately for these past few days not to think of it predating the corners of my quaint apartment while I sleep.

Tonight, it returned: (Actual size of insect = approximately 2 inches)



You'll be pleased to know that I didn't even scream when I saw it. I let out a cry of outrage that it would dare flaunt its vulnerable position (an obvious insult to my integrity as an insect assassin) and aspirated it to the oblivions in my vacuum cleaner. Centipedes are predators, but I think this victory over arthropoda reiterates that I am a more accomplished predator than most natural things. TRY ME.

Vodka

I'm 25% Polish, 50% German, and 25% mystery. When all these genes combine, you get a human being that runs more efficiently on hard liquor than any other substance in the world. Vodka got me through college. It helped me dance, it helped me date, and it helped me break up. It helped me forget the C- I got in calculus, Egyptian history, organic chemistry, and genetics, and the C+ I got in almost everything else except Russian Lit and Neurobiology courses. Vodka is my hero.

Last week I found out that vodka can work without damaging your liver. Some kids were climbing on me earlier in the week and pinched a nerve in my neck. (It was sort of cool. If I put pressure on the right point, it felt like my skin was on fire. That is how I self-diagnosed my neck pain as a nerve problem.) I was pretty miserable at work because I've found that I don't get very much done with my head on my desk. I took this gigantic, squishy green pill called "Aleve", but it didn't alleviate my pain. Someone should rename that pill. Maybe "A-LIE" would be more appropriate.

The Russian I work with said that vodka can cure pain. We didn't have any vodka in lab, but we had 100% ethanol for cleaning lab surfaces, and that's probably even better. It's everclear, baby. So the lovely people I work with prepared a poultice of vodka and taped it to my neck. Guess what! It worked!

Now I profess to you, my handful of readers, that vodka is a true panacea that can solve nearly any problem. And whatever it can't solve... try tequila?

The daily disrespect for Sarah Palin

elyse (12:42:57 AM): yeah why do families gotta kiss?

chris (12:43:05 AM): I don't know

chris (12:43:07 AM): It weirds me out kind of

elyse (12:43:09 AM): that's weird

chris (12:43:12 AM): Especially my grandma

elyse (12:43:43 AM): the weirdest is when you have to hug or kiss family members who aren't actually related to you

elyse (12:43:50 AM): like an uncle or aunt who is married in

chris (12:44:24 AM): Yeah

elyse (12:44:41 AM): in the palin family they call that matchmaking

(Hopefully) The only post I will ever write about Facebook

I almost never add people as my friend on Facebook. I wait for them to add me. Playing hard-to-get over the internet is a challenging and rewarding game. I get this cheap, dirty thrill from the rejections and selections that happen over Facebook.

When I add people, I almost always regret it. Sometimes I add guys I've dated and never see them again (only their updates, like irritating ghosts of the relationship I aborted). Sometimes I add the new girlfriends of exboyfriends (to freak them out). Sometimes I add the boyfriends of girls who don't like me (to piss them off). None of these things are very productive! I should have a hypnotist give me an aversion to the words "Add friend."

I love the creepout feeling I get when someone adds me. What makes someone who never talked to you in high school decide one random afternoon that they would like to cybernetwork with you? When I was at home last month, I went to a bar and saw a lot of these cyberalumni-- all of whom had mysteriously requested my friendship years ago and said nothing to me since. And then what do you say? "Long time, no see... your facebook status tells me you split up with your boyfriend, how sad!" "Remember that time in high school when... umm... we didn't hang out, did we? Remember that picture you uploaded last month? HILARIOUS." "No no, you didn't get fat!" Awkwardtown.

The best of all Facebook feelings is when you get to reject someone. I rejected someone once because I didn't recognise him. I thought he was going to creep my photos and write scary "compliments" on my wall. I realized later that I'd had a science class with him in high school, and he'd just altered his name as a joke. He friended me again a month later with his name changed back to the real one. But he didn't send me a note or anything to clear up confusion, and I'd never even had a conversation with him... so I rejected him again. All in all, he requested my friendship over 10 times, never once trying to decreepify the situation. Toward the end there, I got so much joy rejecting him that I think I descended to yet a lower level of hell. Sorry, dude. Don't be so creepy.

The worst is when you are unfriended, or when you have to unfriend someone. The actual unfriending process is quite satisfying, but the decision to completely cut someone out is sort of difficult. Actually, last year I was living with this disgusting guy and wanted to unfriend him for months before my social situation permitted me to click that glorious button. My most recent ex boyfriend unfriended me because he "didn't want to see my updates, they make me feel horrible." Well, the dumb bastard should feel horrible, but I totally understand. I've unfriended my exes before because I don't want to see when they are in a new relationship. I also unfriended everybody I was obligated to be friends with during college, but whose life I didn't really care about. It's annoying to see pictures of parties you know were boring and trite on your newsfeed, am I right?

In summary, I'm a bitch on Facebook. It's good practice for real life.

Today's edition of Things That Can Only Happen To Me

Today I was teaching a lab class about insect foraging, so the students and I walked to UNC's arboretum for some observation of the fast-paced world of honey bee life. I got lost. In the arboretum. By myself. The students had to come find me. It's a good thing I have a good sense of humor about myself because that is harikari-quality embarrassing.

If you've ever driven with me, you know I pretty much can't pass cars. I just can't do it! It seems rude, and you can't deny that changing lanes adds some extra hazard to being on a four lane road. You know it does, you devilish maverick driver, you. Well, this IMMENSE MOVING VAN cut me off in the parking lot of my gym (what was it doing at the gym? "Hi I think I'll relocate oh wait how about some cardio now") then ended up driving 25 mph directly in front of me from the gym to my apartment. It finally pulled into my own apartment complex and TOOK MY SPACE. That's what I get for being a neurotic, ultraconsiderate driver, I guess.

Why does this happen? Probably because my common sense IQ is approximately that of an anaesthetized rhesus monkey's.

Post of Boredom-- yours and mine

Oh my Darwin, a week with no posts? This can only mean that I have better things to do than sit around and fester in my own cynicism. I'm truly sorry.

Last night, some dude was flirting with me at a bar. He was a nice, respectful, normal guy who was paying complete attention to me, so of course I wasn't interested at all. I don't know why, exactly ... but I really feel guilty for not being attracted to him. Poor guy-- how could he know I only date jerks? Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an Elvis Costello song.

I recently looked through some family photos that my grandmother had been keeping. It is never nice to be reminded of what you looked like in middle school, but it did provide closure to my speculations about why people made fun of me. Hair, braces, glasses... you might as well cover me in Post-Its that say "Kick Me!" And my nose has completely changed shape since then-- My nose is pretty cute now, let's be honest. How is that possible!? Maybe all those celebrities aren't lying about nosejobs after all.

Countdown until the end of June: 3 days. YAY.

Happiness is a warm turntable

The religious period of my life ended when I stopped believing in Santa Claus... since then, the closest I come to recapturing that feeling of trust and wonderment in a higher being is when I listen to good music. The Beatles spent six years building the foundation for everything I worship (and on the seventh year they rested, or maybe they were getting high). Maybe I don't get any moral direction from rock'n'roll music, but I'm clever enough to decide if I want to be good or bad all by myself. (I usually decide to be bad, because I don't really mind coming back as a lower life form... an insect, lab rat, or socialite). Sometimes a song will come on at a moment so apt that I know there is some all-knowing musician watching over me. Hence:

This morning, while I was recovering from a horrendous migraine and some breakup and family death-induced depression, I reached into the back of my car to find a new CD. When I moved here, I had only packed a few mix CDs and a few albums stolen from my mother (she only really listens to Paul McCartney so she won't miss them). I pulled out the Beatles' LOVE album and a copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot slid out from behind it.

My face looked like like this: WTF!?!?!?!??!?! if you can imagine that as a facial expression. My eyes were Ws and my nose was the T and my mouth was saying FUCK FUCK FUCK! It would look like a face, believe me:

W W
T

FUCK
FUCK
FUCK

YHF is one of my all time favorite albums, and I thought I had lost it years ago when I moved to college. How the fuck it ever got into the sleeve with LOVE is beyond me. I need this fucking album so much right now.

Thanks for looking out for me, incorporeal musical spirit of Jeff Tweedy! I love you. Sorry for saying 'fuck' so much.

Psychology is the new home ec

When you grow up, they tell you girls can do anything. They tell you that more women should go into science and math. And then they have things like Girl Scouts to make young women feel empowered.

What a load of crap.

Men don't actually want women to be their contemporaries in any field, particularly science and math. Males are raised with the expectation that they will naturally excel in "logical" subjects and like the perceived security that comes when they pursue a career in those fields. I have personally experienced many situations where a man will shamelessly tell me something that we both know is incorrect just to show me "how little" I understand compared to him. And you know what? 95% of Girl Scout badges are about "fashion" and "cooking" and other housewifery skills. I know because I was a Girl Scout. We had three committees in our camp for each meal we prepared: Cooks, dishwashers, and people who had to prepare the centerpiece. Do you think the Boy Scouts make centerpieces? No fucking way. Little girls, but not little boys, have the importance of a useless decoration committee impressed upon them by an organization that advertises delivery from this very trap. And this centerpiece committee hearkens to exactly where men want to keep women in the workplace-- in an ornamental and non-essential role.

It's lucky that I turned out to be such a man-eating bitch. Whenever some "man" spouts off some crap to me that I know he's made up, I don't fret. I don't feel stupid or frustrated, I don't cry, compulsively shop, or run and get another man's help. I don't feel insecure, regret my choice of career, or want to punch anything. I just remind myself that assholes like him will never get to date me or collaborate with me professionally, and that's a huge loss because I'm a great kisser and a kick-ass scientist.

Planning ahead

In about 23 years, when I have a midlife crisis, I'm going to have a really funky experimental punk garage band. My kids are going to be incredibly embarrassed. My third or fourth husband will leave me. I'll lose my job and have to move into a grungy basement apartment, but I'll be happy mixing the sounds I collect from the pigeons cooing for scraps in the park with the roar of airplanes taking off and the cool rhythm of coins falling into a vending machine.

I'm going to call my band Elyse and the Landlords. I'll send you my demo.

Nature fools me once again

This morning I was a-walking, a-walking to the lab, and I saw a bird lying on its back on the ground. There have been a lot of dead birds around campus lately. However, as I approached this sparrow, it suddenly flipped over and sat crouched on the ground, not moving but obviously alive. I happened to be just outside the birdsong lab I used to work in, and I had a grand notion that I would scoop up this poor injured bird and bring it to the experts for some TLC.

I was about five inches away when suddenly, the sparrow flew in my face and perched on a wall, laughing at me. What a little shit!

Cultural values

When I visited home last week, I went to the grocery store with my mom. She held up a box of organic cereal and said, "This is so expensive. It's like two bottles of wine." She then revealed to me that she converts the price of luxuries in wine bottles to determine if they are worth the expense.

I was surprised because I do the same thing with yogurt. In line to purchase my lunch, I think to myself, "I could buy six yogurts for the price of this hummus wrap." When I order a coffee, I think, "This is π/3 yogurts." In fact, I have become so adept that I can convert money to various yogurt brands as if they were foreign currencies. The exchange rate varies week-to-week because of grocery store sales.

In the future, when our government unravels into matriarchal tribes, mine will be a gluten-free yogurt economy with a rock'n'roll religion backbone.

... sigh

I obsessively re-read my blog posts and check them for typos. If you find a typo, PLEASE TELL ME. I would die a thousand deaths if someone read this blog and considered me to be illiterate. This morning I was reading the last ten posts for linguistic integrity and (in)appropriate content and my mother asked what I was doing. I said I was reading my own blog, which sounds pretty damn egotistical now that I think about it. She asked me what my blog was about, so I read her the entry about feeding my children chicanery.

Her response: "Oh my GOD, you are not going to want your children to stick out of the crowd like that and not fit in. Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have to have DCFS remove your children and raise them ourselves."

My reply: "I suppose you're not the intended audience for this blog."

For the love of Wilco...!

Uh oh, EtOH!

Last night I crawled home at 4:30 am after a looooooong night of drinking. I woke up at 9 am and stumbled downstairs, a little drunk. I grabbed the sunday crossword puzzle and finished it in record time. Usually I get pissed off at one of the corners and lose interest. (You probably think I'm an idiot now, but whatever, we all have different skills. Mine are irrelevant blogging and Olympic-caliber dating. Yours are... crosswords? How fun for you.)

Next, I finished the quote acrostic. It's this bitch of a puzzle that I've been trying to beat for years... YEARS!!! Then I did the super jumble in less than 2 minutes. Last night in the bar, I couldn't calculate 20% tip on a $12 tab... and listen, I'm not THAT bad at math. It's $2.40, okay?

I wonder if alcohol changes the way the brain is balanced such that the power dynamic between hemispheres (or otherwise "opposing" brain regions) is upset? Finally, an fMRI study that doesn't bore me to death: how average regional BOLD activity changes before, during, and after copious alcohol consumption. Use each subject as his own control, provide an open bar and mingling with attractive strangers (to encourage excess imbibing), and make them get in the MRI machine to do word and math problems every four hours. I'd go to that party. I think the study would explain why so many great writers were also great drinkers, an issue of obvious interdisciplinary importance. What's that, NIH? What are "ethics"?

I am stereotypical

I have been having some boy problems lately and feeling pretty crappy. As in, on the verge of tears all the time crappy. But today I bought three pairs of REALLY CUTE SHOES and it makes me feel elated. As in, dancing around the house in my new shoes elated.

I think I'll go out on a bar crawl with my old drinkin' buddies wearing my new drinkin' shoes!

Ladies, you know when your hormones get out of control and you want to either love or scream at anything in your line of sight? Maybe that's just me. Anyway... I'll have a new post as soon as I stop taking out my inexplicable rage on my sock monkey. Poor sock monkey.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your livers.

One of the things I really like about myself is my ability to simultaneously be a lightweight and hold my liquor. I feel drunk after half a beer, but I don't feel sick after 12 shots of tequila. I'm Polish, German, Irish, and Native American, baby!

The only excuse I have for bragging about this is that I'm headed to Chicago for a week, and this means that my liver needs to get in gear. We don't pussyfoot around drinking in the windy city. I can't wait to get my hands on some pauper quality vodka.

I'm signed up to give blood when I come back. How drunk can you be when you do that? Just askin'.

GRE cuisine

I think when I have kids, I'm going to rename the foods I make for them for my own amusement. For example, I think it would be interesting to call lasagna "chicanery" and satiate my children with the dish before sending them to play at a friend's. Their friend's mother might ask them if they are hungry, and do they want a snack? To which my wonderful children might reply, "No thanks, we're full of chicanery."

Then all the other mommies in the kindergarten class will hang out at the PTA meetings (I won't be there because I don't support meaningless pseudo-government) and say, "Mrs. Twisby is one eccentric lady! But her unwashed, barefoot, hippie-named kids are way cuter than mine!"

MORE OF ME

If I ever go 2 weeks without posting again, don't worry your pretty little heads. You don't have to go through withdrawal from my obnoxious sentiments. I have added Twitter to my blog (upper right) and you can follow me, if you think you really need to, at the user name "twisby."

I almost never post what I'm actually doing because I could only post four times and that'd basically be it. Sleeping, at lab, at Weaver Street, bored. No, no, no; instead, my twitter account is a fountain of inappropriate goodness. Thanks, Internet, for giving me another venue upon which to wreak havoc.

Awkspring

My boyfriend and I like to talk about baby names a lot. I think it's important to agree on baby names with your partner in case you ever accidentally have a child with him. I'm pretty sure that he simply agrees with whatever I suggest because today I suggested the names Thorfinn and Fokkobosker, and he said they were "great." But really, a man's role in picking babynames is just to agree with the woman, isn't it? It is.

Thorfinn "Lightning Fish" Twisby: I think that's a pretty sweeeeeeeeet name. He'd probably be the most popular kid on the math team. I was the least popular kid on math team, so that would be quite a generational improvement.

Attack of the killer ovaries

It's hard to summon up the energy for a sarcastic and acerbic post when there is an imaginary raccoon inhabiting my uterus, trying to chew and claw its way out. WHY, UTERUS, WHY? Someday I am going to stuff a gigantic, months-overdue baby in there to teach it a lesson, and then let's see it try to backtalk me.

There are things this week that I MUST do but have negative desire to start doing. I'm going to blame my dangerous apathy on the raccoon -- settle down in there, Rocky! -- and my upcoming inebriated visit to Chicago. Life gets hard when you get to adulthood and don't find the adult things rewarding... things like "pride in a clean home." I find buying and eating giant chocolate chip cookies rewarding. However, bikini season is coming up and I don't find the day after said cookie-eating to be very rewarding at all. How does one make the shift between concrete childhood rewards and aesthetic adult reward? I fail.

Last week I watched the Grey's Anatomy season finale. Besides feeling bitter disappointment in myself for debasing my good taste, I felt no sadness in the potential deaths of the annoying blond doctor and the annoying short doctor. Television can only improve with less dynamic duos of bubbly blond ladies and bumbling babyfaced men. However, I did cry when I watched a dog food commercial, a Dove soap commercial, a talking dog on Disney Channel, and when Rocky Raccoon gnawed through the last throbbing shreds of my fallopian tubes.

Thank you for putting up with these disorganized, uterus-strangling-me Monday morning blues. Tune in next time when SO HELP ME THEY HAD BETTER BE GONE. Peace, love.

Joe the Plumber Uses the Dictionary

Joe the Plumber Slurs Gay People: I Would Never Let "Queers" Near My Children

All that press from the last election must have inspired Samuel Wurzelbacher to brush up on his learnin'. In the above article, "Joe the Plumber" takes it upon himself to define the word "queer" to the Huffington Post, adding, "People don't understand the dictionary."

I can understand your confusion, America. After all, Joe is concomitantly defending bigotry using the dictionary and defining marriage using the Bible. Seems backwards! Can you help me understand, Joe, the difference between church and state? Can you look it up in the dictionary for me?

And let me just say, I don't want Joe the Plumber near my children, just in case willfully ignorant bigotry is contagious.

Sorry I've been lazy about updating... My life is crazy. I'll be back with more inane rants as soon as I can. In the meantime, go read Fmylife.com for some equivalent embitterment.

Question:

When people like Tori Spelling write books, why do people buy them? Maybe it's misguided for me to think of Tori Spelling as a boring, unattractive 90's version of Paris Hilton because there are obviously people buying her books. So what's so interesting about her? I would actually be more interested in Paris's autobiography than Tori's, and I'm saying this with the expectation that Paris would just make a list of what's hot and defend her misuse of underwear for 90 pages before devolving into doodles of shoes and pink hearts.

Tori has written two books. I'm willing to put money on the fact that neither one of them explains why all that plastic surgery can't make her face less manly.

My Monthly Cycles

MyMonthlyCycles.com is a free website that enables women to track their periods. After you track a few cycles, it calculates your average cycle length and predicts your period start dates for you. You can also track ovulation and symptoms, if you want. Admittedly, this website has changed my life. I would never be able to keep track of hormonal crap like that without an email reminder-- I'm a little like Einstein that way. You know, if Einstein was absentminded about buying tampons instead of brushing his hair.

Every month or so they have a new poll topic about -- you guessed it-- menstrual cycles. Usually the poll is something like "You're headed to the beach and you realize you got your period! Do you: (A) Wear a tampon. (B) Stay home. (C) Go, but keep all your clothes on. (D) Cry uncontrollably until someone gives you a valium."

This month the poll asks us whether women should be compensated (with extra pay or extra vacation time) for their periods. UM HELLO!? No? Ladies, all you're doing when you menstruate is sitting around and bleeding*. I see no reason why you should be compensated for this unless your job involves swimming with sharks, feeding steak to bears, or playing in the nude with wild oranguatans.... Or maybe if you work for Bill Clinton.

*I can say this because I'm a woman.

I hate riding the bus

Yesterday I was riding the bus home from the grocery store. It had just begun to rain lightly and the bus was not crowded at all. In fact, there were many, many seats available. Two men boarded at the Credit Union. Instead of taking a seat, they decided to stand in front of me. Not only did I have to stare at their (unappealing) behinds for 15 minutes, I had to endure their wet, dripping backpacks hitting me in the face over and over again while I tried not to drop my armful of groceries.

Naturally, I began to contemplate whether I should speak up and cleverly chastise these bastards. Before I could make up my mind, the girl sitting across the aisle from me whipped out her cell phone and called a friend, saying loudly,

"These two white dudes just got on the bus and decided to stand rather than sit by me because I think they hate black people! That's so racist right! Can you believe how racist these jerks are for not taking a seat because it's next to a black girl? I gotta go, I don't want them to form anymore racist opinions about me while I'm on the phone."

Those two men completely ignored her, but I'd like to think that they will feel The White Guilt for the rest of their bus-riding days. I'd rather have them feel The Shame Of Douchebaggery for shaking their moisture onto me like smelly, wet dogs. I only wish I were bitchtastic enough to call them out on it.

AmazonFail, ConsumerFail

I recently learned that I have not been using the Internet correctly for years! Beyond the fact that I don't really like watching YouTube videos or creating sexy webcams or sexnetworking on MySpace, I'm apparently not shopping correctly either. I'm just a failure as a woman.

The controversy with Amazon.com and its "delisting" of media dealing with homosexuality and feminism brought this to my attention. To check the extent of this "AmazonFail," I went to Amazon.com and searched for gay and lesbian literature, only to learn that I was still able to find and purchase it. I went to Twitter and asked the world what the big f'in deal was.

The world told me (or rather, some random guy who happened to read my Twitter post told me) that "It's not that "objecitionable" [sic] content isn't for sale. Amazon delisting makes these books harder to find." So wait, I had assumed that "delisting" meant removing something from sale... but apparently, the big controversy is based on those annoying lists that pop up when you look at a book. You know, the ones where people who can't bother to spell right list their favorite literary works? I find those lists to be the least helpful and most self-indulgent things on Amazon.com. But apparently it matters a lot that we can no longer read JimBobTX1978's list of favorite lesbian parenting books. (Obviously that's discrimination, but maybe we should be happy that it's a small step toward getting rid of these lists completely.)

I've been shopping wrong for years, apparently. I should be buying all my books based on "Britneyz Favrite Russian Lit" because those lists are the most powerful component of Amazon.com's industry. That would have saved me a lot of time sifting through my own Amazon searches-- think of all the WORDS I had to read to decide what book to buy!? What was I thinking?

So hey Amazon.com... what you did was wrong and discriminatory and just plain ignorant. But hey consumers, how pathetic are you? Stop relying on the Internet to pick out your goddamn books for you!

Taxation without Misunderestimation

Why is it that that IRS can't steal, I mean deduct, the correct amount of money from my paychecks during the course of the year? I always get money back. I guess that's nice, but it makes me concerned about the math qualifications required to get a job in government these days. Maybe that's why this country's in debt, eh? Eh????

Confession

... I don't know how this is going to sit with you guys, but I watched Power Rangers: RPM this morning and I think I sort of liked it. It's so dramatic, with its cheesy catch phrases and moody lighting and acute camera angles. It's like baby!LOST. Just wanted to get that out there in the open. The first step to healing is admitting you have a problem.

Death by pollen

Last night, we were chatting with the bartender at a pretty funky establishment in Durham. Recently, he told us, he traversed the globe eating steaks and then reported back to the bar via his blog about how they were prepared. (Some blogs are useful). They had a special "Nate's Steak" item that changed according to his blog-- how cool! Someday I want to travel and find a feature of every culture to become neurotic about. Then you can have a themed laugh at me.

In other news, I am sorry to everyone for not respecting your seasonal allergies in the past. Though I may not have said it to your face, I thought you were being huge whiny babies. I now understand your pain. I have had a sore throat, itchy eyes, stuffy nose, and a cough for the past week and a half and it's all because of the damn pine tree sperm. Keep it in your cones, boys.

Synopsis of every spring since college:
Rainy day = I wish it was nice so I could go outside and enjoy myself
Sunny day = migraine and panic attacks about insects

Now that it's getting warm and flowers are blooming, my porch is swarming with hornets. I'm not used to gigantic hornets because I'm from Chicago, where bugs die in the winter and don't get a chance to grow larger than my thumb. I can hear them buzzing though my window pane and when they bump into my window, they make a tapping sound. It's giving me goosebumps, the scary movie kind.

I'm not saying we need to go back and revive the Silent Spring project, but maybe the size of insects here has gotten out of control. Are there any non-chemical ways to keep insects off my porch?? Keep in mind that I don't have half the hand-eye coordination to swat at them.

I'm pregnant

APRIL FOOLS! Oookay, that was lame, I apologize for the low quality of this post.

Yesterday, P and I were trying to dissolve a powered drug in hydrochloric acid, and somehow we ended up with about 5 mL of solution with a pH of -0.5. To give you an idea, lemon juice is about 2.5 and battery acid is 0.3 on the pH scale. Our lab safety manager had to call someone to remove "hazardous materials" and got pretty pissed at us for doing something so dumb.

Today, we poured some water on the floor and ran to get him. "We spilled 12 M hydrochloric acid on the floor!!" He looked at it, swore, and ran down the hall to call HazMat or whatever.... April Fools, safety manager, April Fools. He was pretty mad at us. I'm pretty sure that someday when I spill lye all over myself and my skin is burning off, this girls-who-cried-wolf prank is going to bite me in the ass, but until that day, me and my intact skin think it was pretty funny.

Did anyone out there do something incredibly clever today??

I'm homesick for my home away from home

Carrboro, I love you, but you bore the hell out of me. I can only appreciate beauty for so long before I need to bask in the gritty 24-hour gleam of the city. I'm counting down the hours until I can count down the days until I'm back in Chicago. All my memories seem more intimate when I experience them as just another anonymous, coffee-swilling speedwalker, gripping my cell phone and handing out fruit to homeless women (I like to hand out oranges... they need the vitamin C). Right now, I really miss the Lake, which looks like a sleek science fiction ocean in the middle of the jagged urban badlands. My boyfriend kissed me for the first time while we were watching the sailboats come in one night, and people walking by stopped and watched because we were so fricken adorable. True story, it was cute squared.

Tell me your favorite tourist spot in Chicago, and I'll ruin it for you by telling you that I made out there. Navy Pier? CHECK. Millennium Park? CHECK. The Point? CHECK (aaaaand regret). Revolving doors anywhere in the city? CHECK. Jaywalking across Michigan Avenue and almost getting hit by a bus? CHECK.

I am stupid

So far this week, I...

1. picked UCLA to beat Duke,
2. claimed that I wanted to be "the Amelia Earhart of neurobiology,"
3. exploded small tubes of glass all over a table and wiped them up with my bare hands,
4. cried over a boy (Although estrogen can probably take the fall for this craptasm),
   
5. LOL'ed a Friends episode,
6. watched a For The Love Of Ray J marathon,
7. managed to ruin hummus,
8. and forgot my umbrella after obsessing over the hour-by-hour forecast for ten minutes one morning.

The list goes on, but it's just depressing to think of how incompetent I am at living my own life.

I don't think #2 is that bad... imagine if one day you simply vanished into a hippocampal wonderland of place cells, AMPA receptor trafficking, and neurotransmitter playgrounds. That's where good neurobiologists go when they die. (Bad neuroscientists have to hang out with Carl Jung.)

Things I would miss if I lived in the 1940s

• My iPod
• the Beatles
• ethnic food, especially middle eastern and thai
• Johnny Depp movies, and vibrators
  
• wimmen's lib
  
• the end of the Cold War
• microwaves
  
• Google, and vibrators
• polymerase chain reaction
• not being called a spinster
  
• PubMed and Web of Science
• laparoscopic surgery
• the HPV vaccine (I got dose #2 yesterday. I'm so responsible.)
• Long lasting batteries, and vibrators
  
• cell phones and digital cameras
• word processing
  
• President Barack Obama (and vibrators)
  

Giggle-O-The-Day

I have been watching this video over and over all evening and it hasn't gotten less funny:

Unseen footage of the Australian lyrebird

If this doesn't make you laugh, you must have a diaphragm* of STONE!

*the organ that enables laughter, not the convenient contraceptive device. Don't put rocks in your pants, gals.

Albums good enough to pay for

Last night I watched an hour of VH1's weekly top video countdown and remembered why I gave up on pop music in 7th grade. By the way, as you may have predicted, the new single by the Fray sounds exactly like the previous singles by the Fray. Thus, I would like to provide you with a list of albums worth buying.

• TV on the Radio, Dear Science
• The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed
• Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
• Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
• David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
• Fastball, Keep Your Wig On (and I'm looking forward to Little White Lies in April; go pre-order it)
• Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
• The Beatles, Revolver (and Abbey Road, White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Let It Be... Naked)
• Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne (or at least all the Tweedy tracks)
• Voxtrot, Mothers Daughters Sister and Wives
• John Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
• Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (I know I put Wilco on here twice, but I don't know how people can exist without both albums)
  

Animal Fact Time

I mentioned in the previous post that I watched a documentary on Africanized bees last week. I learned a lot of things about bees in spite of the overarching humanist framework that clouded the perspective of the entire documentary-- "We have to learn to live in haaaaaaaaaaaaaarmony with the apian world!" Yuck, isn't it enough that I make weak attempts to live in harmony with the human world? I also could have done without the dramatic bass-thumping, five-minute death scene in which a nest of Africanized bees attack a man in his yard... especially the part where he's writhing around on the ground with insects blanketing his body. Not very educational.

Okay, Animal Planet documentaries have their faults. Let's just say I learned one really cool fact about bees and that made it worth while.

In AFRICA, where Africanized bees obviously originate, beekeepers have tried to relocate their colonies to South Africa-- however, another species of bee (the Cape bee) already lives there. The Cape bee has an adaptation to the high winds in this area-- their queens are often blown away from the nest, so the workers have the ability to lose the reproductive suppression that the queen imparts. Basically, the workers can become queens. These Cape bees are sometimes able to infiltrate the African bee hives, where they begin to lay unfertilized eggs that are basically just clones of themselves. The African bees care for the Cape bee larvae and original imposter queen as if she were part of their hive... and kill their own queen. Meanwhile, the Cape bees do not forage for food and simply live as freeloaders until the nest is run into the ground.

Those Cape bees are mooching superheroes-- a role model for all those moochers I knew in college.

I don't believe anything I hear on TV: Sources
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622343.600-cape-invaders.html
http://www.beekeeping.org/articles/us/battle_of_the_bees.htm
http://westmtnapiary.com/africanized_bees.html

Did you miss me?

I missed you, blog readers. All four of you.

When my computer crashed, it gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate my life. Last Monday, my laptop rested in the corner, a wisp of smoke trailing from its lower lip-- a sexy throwback to the good old days of Marlboro advertising. It was a cool cowboy and I was a scared heifer. I realized then, that I had come to rely on my computer not only for random Google searches and self-obsessed Facebooking, but as a scheduled distraction from everything else in my life.

So I cleaned my apartment. Then I made a mess and cleaned it again. I watched a really cool program about Africanized bees on Animal Planet. I fell asleep at 10 every night because there was nothing better to do.

The really sad part about not having my computer was that, every so often, I would think "Well, since I can't do any work right now, I'm going to shop online!" and I'd be very excited for a few minutes before remembering that online shopping also requires a computer. I am a pathetic, pathetic girl.

Anyway, I have a working computer now. All the rage I felt about terrible customer service and unreliable products has dissipated into a methadone-like*, soothing calm. I spent four hours last night shopping for clothes online and not buying anything. Oh, it feels good to give into addictions.

*I've never taken methadone, but I've listened to a lot of music that references it, which obviously makes me qualified to talk about it as if I have first hand experience. Obviously.

SAD NEWS

My hard drive is fried like okra. It's pretty hard for me to blog from work because I like to blog in my pajamas while I eat brownies -- and my lab lacks both key components. My new hard drive will be here Monday! You can read the archives if you miss me.

I have a lot to say about the quality of Hewlett Packard computers, but this is a family blog* so I will keep my negative, expletive-laced opinions to myself for now**.

*No, it's not.

**Until the next post.

Take your breast guess

Yesterday at work, a couple of girls and I pondered what it was, exactly, that made men like boobs so much. (We were looking at pictures of Scarlett Johansson.) The classical answer to this question is that men don't have boobs, so they're fascinated by them... or sometimes, you'll get the evo-devo style assertion that large breasts indicate a woman who is "nurturing." Bullllllllllshit.

I'll believe that the presence of breasts, as well as other feminine body shapes, is a logical feature of the male attraction protocol. This fact does not quite explain to me why the brain would rank larger breasts above regular sized breasts, however-- to me, the whole purpose of breast-attraction would be to discern breasts-versus-no-breasts. As far as I know, other primates don't obsess over huge bazookas the way we do, so can I blame society? Please please please?

HERE IS MY PROBLEM:
Girls like to say that men like breasts because they don't have them. That makes every girl feel better about their boobs, right? It divides us into the Haves and Have Nots. It implies, "Any boob is a good boob." Boob communism isn't real, girls. I barely have any boobs (34 A, on a good day), and I'm not obsessed with breasts. I think they are gross. They are veiny and wiggly and weird. They stretch out sweaters. What's the mystery? Cow udders are more interesting, if you ask me.

I also don't buy that men think women with big breasts are nurturing. Who has ever looked at a picture of Salma Hayek and moaned, "Oh, I can just picture her nursing my offspring!" And the women pictured in JUGS probably don't inspire family yearnings in anyone. I wouldn't want MY baby dangling off some basketball-proportioned mammary gland while mommy posed, glistening, on the hood of a car. But maybe that's just me, I'm weird.

I'll never have pornstar boobs. My breasts have been the same size since 7th grade. To lament my physical inadequacies, I wrote you this song. Okay, I actually just rewrote the lyrics to "The Way We Were." I don't have quite enough freetime to compose an original soundtrack reflecting on puberty.

Mammaries light the corners of my mind
Bouncy flesh-colored mammaries, that's the way they were
Scattered laundry, unmentionables left behind
Training bras remind me of the way they were

I'll remember
Whenever I put on a sweater
The way they were...
The way they still are...

HEY MADONNA

HOW ABOUT

YOU PUT ON

SOME

GODDAMN PANTS?

Mystery Post of Mystery

Sorry for the recent lack of updates-- I have been preoccupied by things that I don't write about on this blog. Does anyone have any hilariously bitter sentiments to share about Valentine's Day (or President's Day, for that matter) ?

I had a wonderful weekend in which I thought about science less than one times. Do thoughts about science occur in quantal units, or did I think about science in a fraction quantity? MYSTERY

My weekend preoccupation bought me The Sound and The Fury because I've been wanting to re-read it for the longest time. How will I read Faulkner when I'm drowning in a sea of papers about synaptic mechanisms and estrogen-mediated plasticity? MYSTERY

I discovered I have an allergy this weekend. I'm not going to tell you what it is. MYSTERY

Dudes, I'm working on some more interesting thoughts. Ponder up those mysteries.

Friends in otherwise annoying places

I've got a lot of Facebook friends that I've never met or even talked to. The number probably stretches into the 200s. This is because I went on a themed Facebook-friending spree as a freshman in college in lieu of studying for a calculus final. I don't have anything in common with them, but I actually love reading about their lives. Some of them are doing really amazing things, some of them have become beautiful, and some of them are coping with major crap amazingly well. One of my Facebook-only friends is on a VH1 reality show called "For the Love of Ray J," which is basically a knock-off of "Flava of Love" -- but slightly less trashy, if you can believe that.

Tonight I was cooking (SOMETIMES I COOK, OKAY?) and I noticed that "For the Love of Ray J" was playing. Naturally, I decided to eschew every one of my cultural principles and watch it. (Almost any excuse to abandon principles is a good one.) Here are some things I observed while slicing leeks:

1. Ray J is kinda sexy (but who is he? A musician of some sort?)
   
2. They are scraping the bottom of barrel looking for hot girls to be on reality dating shows (exception: my Facebook-only friend, who is gorgeous)
   
3. All these women are certainly only trying to wedge their foot in the doorway of the entertainment industry
4. Reality television is totally fake!

None of these statements are revolutionary, obviously, but I feel like it's my duty to tell the world (or, the six people who read this blog) that my Facebook-only friend participated in this purported "dating competition" in spite of the fact that she's been serious with the same guy for years. What! A scandal, you say!? Not on a high quality VH1 reality program!? This week she was almost eliminated because Ray J sensed she might be less available than advertised... but she was able to bamboozle him with her feminine wiles to survive another week. Next week's preview foretells even more drama. She'll get a lot of exposure for her modelling career from this little stint, no matter how it turns out. Good for her!

Bamboozling men? Bamboozling the Man? I guess we do have something in common-- other than our love of Ray J, of course. But LADIES, who doesn't love Ray J?

Correction

I recently stated in this post that one cannot subsist on lentils alone. Some very un-thorough investigation (i.e. googling "on lentils alone" and reading a page summary without visiting the website) compels me to inform you all that you can indeed survive on a diet of only lentils. Ghandi did it.

I'm sure you'll all be very surprised, as I was, to learn that I do not possess a caliber of willpower comparible to Ghandi's. My bad, guys. I'm going to eat some chinese take-out and marinate in bitter tears while I contemplate my failures.

Snark

Article: "Palin rails against pathetic anonymous bloggers"

Summary: To retain her status as a mostly irrelevant symbol of macho-feminine folksy anti-intelligence, Sarah Palin continues to give interviews in which she embarrasses people with vaginas everywhere. "I wanted to be a journalist, but I'd have to go to Bristol, CT to do that-- that's so far away! So I had a baby and named her Bristol instead!"

Related article: "Twisby reads Palin articles, asks bartender to leave the bottle"

Summary: Much like Sarah Palin, Elyse Twisby hunts her produce in the wild supermarket aisles of the southern grocery chain Harris Teeter, taking deep pleasure in decerebrating mushrooms and tearing into the still-warm flesh of a freshly baked eggplant. "I wanted to be a professor of Russian literature," she says, applying an umpteeth layer of lipstick. "But that would have been pretty hard, so I drink vodka instead."

Ad obnoxium

Lately I have been a lot more irritated than usual. A variety of factors have probably combined to create this effect... Last week's unprecedented eight days of migraine, probably the effect of some combination of small lifestyle alterations, attests to my recent neurological sensitivity. The fact that I'm surrounded by females all the time in my new lab also makes me a little edgy.

What's sort of hilarious is that I'm finding myself being annoyed to the point of almost rage by things that happened too long ago to be of any importance, or things that I consider myself a douchebag for being angry about. This is why, today, I bring you a list called "Ridiculous Things that Annoy Me: 2/3/09 Edition"

• People who walk slowly. EVERYONE in the South walks like they are in an art museum, gazing contemplatively at a Monet. Girls walk in groups so it's hard to pass them on the sidewalk, so I become trapped behind them and forced to listen to their inane logic about why some boy can't commit, or how cold the 60 degree weather is.
• People who sit next to me on the bus and impede my ability to get off at my stop. There is an empty row over there! Get away from me!! You smell bad!!!
  
• Women. You need to toughen up, ladies, and stop acting like delicate southern belles.
• Men. Desperation is irritating. Pretending to be considerate so I will feel obligated to hang out with you is more irritating.
  
• The price of produce-- $2 for an avocado? What the fuck!?
• Weather that is too cold for just a sweatshirt but too warm for a peacoat. I am from Chicago. The central limit theorem does not apply to temperatures there.
  
• FROGS THAT WILL NOT MATE. Their whole brain is just designed to help them have sex more efficently. It's like when you grab a Kleenex and blow right through it-- what's the goddamn point?
• Polymerase chain reaction.
• My parents. I'm not sure if it's because they are exhibiting every sign I can recognise for early dementia, or because they've been like that since I was five so I know it's just their personality.
  
• House (the TV show). The character "13" needs to die. I am going to quit watching.
  
• Waiting for food to cook. I AM HUNGRY NOW, DAMNIT.

Today's irate rant brought to you by the temp workers in the Mood Dept. of my brain.

Migraines

Migraines! If this were caveman times, I would be left for dead by my family group, if I hadn't already spared myself the pain by throwing myself off a cliff. Eight days of pain makes me a totally useless human being. I can't write until this thing goes away... I can barely drag myself out of bed. What a pathetic way to live.

Just hypothetically speaking...

Today I was searching for some ideas about what to do on Valentine's Day around these parts if all of your interests and emotions aren't encapsulated by CW teen dramas like Dawson's Creek and Gossip Girl. (Let's say, hypothetically, that I'll have a date. I don't write about those kinds of things on this blog so you'll have to speculate.) So I googled "alternative valentines day" and it returned a lot of unprofessionally published and edited articles by bitter, bitter single women and cheap-ass men about how much "V-day BLOWS" and how your girlfriend should be happy with chocolate-flavored condoms because she better consider YOUR needs, too, brah.

I am of the opinion that every holiday "BLOWS" so I don't harbor any special hostility toward one aimed at people in relationships. It's still better than a holiday aimed at taking candy from strangers and dressing in terrifying rubber masks, or one that wastes the last few precious seconds of a fleeting year by counting backwards from 10. My intention was to find some sort of ingenious idea to take your date, who might-- just hypothetically-- be a handsome musician, to hear live music and maybe drink a hilariously tacky pink alcoholic beverage. Or maybe, like at UChicago, there is a free reading of the Vagina Monologues put on by the students. Probably not in the South.

So I smartened my google search to include the words "chapel hill," because I know that there are at least 5,000 sorority girls and their fraternity boyfriends who are federally mandated to love Valentine's Day. My search returned an account of an incident that occurred on February 14, 2007 on the student union quad at UNC. The story is here. Basically, a student discovered his girlfriend was cheating and he invited the entire campus to see him dump her on the quads, luring her there on the premise of having her serenaded in public. It turned out to be a hoax, but watch the video of the event, and pay attention to the crowd. Near the end of the video the boys begin chanting "Slut! Slut! Slut!" and that's when I realized that this whole incident is symptomatic of something very unattractive in Southern romantic notionry. I'm still pondering the extent to which I'm disgusted or amused by the way Southern people think about other people, and how much of my perception is a unique experience because I am a creep magnet.

Anyway. If any of you have any amazingly creative ideas for what two people-- hypothetically, me and a hypothetical cute date-- might do on Valentine's Day that won't make me gag, I would LOVE to read them.

At long last:

Today I did a couple of things that I have been wanting to do since I was five: I played with mud, mated frogs, and didn't wear a hat in January. All of these amazing events were brought to me by the University of North Carolina!

When we mate the frogs, we have to create some sexy mud-lined motel rooms for them so they feel comfortable. Then we lovingly inject them with hormone to get their mojo working. We put some frog choruses on to set the mood. Tomorrow, I'll run into the animal room like a kid on Christmas morning to see if my little Emma and Mr. Knightly, Janet and Brad, Beatrice and Benedick, Miss Piggy and Kermit, Bert and Ernie [don't be so homonormative], Dominique and Roark, Mountain Girl and Kesey, Lara and Zhivago, Margarita and Master, and Maude and Harold have successfully completed the only relevant task of their short lives.

When I was little, my little girlfriends would come over and play house in my tree fort while I dug through the garden looking for slugs and undeveloped cicada larvae. They braided one other's hair while I sprayed beehives to see if bumblebees can fly wet. They tattled to my mom while I dissected dead birds with sticks. Those little bitches.

By the way, bumblebees can fly when they are wet. They can pretty much fly fast enough to catch up with a ten year old who is running away as fast as she can. When they sting you in your mouth, it looks like collagen injections. Now you know!

Winter makes me stir-fry crazy

During the winter, I get a lot of crazy ideas that my mother and my precious sane friends usually have to remind me aren't practical. Usually those ideas are things like, shave my head and pierce an eyebrow, or throw away all my clothes and start a new wardrobe from scratch. A few weeks ago, I had this wild idea that I could subsist on yogurt and mujadara (a lentil-rice-onion dish) and coffee until the end of my graduate career to save money. It costs about 5 dollars to make a week's worth of mujadara, and I can usually get 2 yogurts for a dollar... but after a couple weeks of doing that, I find that you can't survive on lentils alone. They need to have veggies in them, and sometimes condiments. Condiments are surprisingly expensive, especially the ones I like on my mujadara.

Hierarchy of condiments:

10. Peanut sauce
9. Horseradish
8. Wasabi (like horseradish, only better)
7. Soy sauce
6. Plum sauce
5. Tahini
4. Raita
3. Louisiana hot sauce
2. Teryaki sauce
1. Sriracha

Sriracha is the KING of condiments! Depending on the mood I'm in, raita can go right to the top, or plum sauce, or tahini... But you can put sriracha on anything. Once on Top Chef, Casey the hot chef made sriracha ice cream that failed spectactularly, but I think that if she'd been given enough time, she could have made it work.

Harry Potter and the TransExtravaganza

I read all the Harry Potter books. I read some twice. I read some three times. They have a special little place in my heart and I don't care if you think that makes me lame. You know what're really lame? The Harry Potter movies.

Last night I headed over to a friend's place to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Those kids really can't act. It's not so apparent in the first couple of movies because the audience is distracted by how little Dan Radcliffe is and by Alan Rickman's amazing portrayal of Professor Snape. But by this fourth movie, it's pretty obvious that the kids playing Harry and Ron (Emma Watson, i.e. Hermione, can act) are either receiving spectactularly inept direction, or that they have no skills for the director to work with. I vote for the latter, based on their performance in the fifth movie.

While we were watching the movie, I kept thinking about how much better these film adaptations would be if they hadn't taken them so seriously-- I would love to see a campy Harry Potter movie that takes all the semi-adult jokes in the book and expounds upon them, instead of being so plot and action-scene focused. Aside from the obvious jokes about Harry's wand, the movies could be improved simply by adding sparkly makeup to some of the male characters. Maybe the normal version needs to exist as a basis for a future campy movie. Maybe someday the world will be illuminated by the existence of another transvestite-filled musical. I can only pray that, if and when we are so lucky, Alan Rickman will reprise his role as Snape, and that he's willing to wear purple eyeshadow.

I would also like David Bowie to play Voldemort and Jake Gyllenhaal to play Harry, essentially reprising his role from Donnie Darko with the addition of teenage wizardry and a promiscuous romp around Hogwarts with Ron.