two new things

1) i didn't fail out of grad school!!!!

2) there's nothing on the internet!

argh blechen grad school cough spit

well

you know how i approach everything in life with insane optimism and naivete at first, then get subjected to some bone-crushing fall from grace, develop an unhealthy skepticism of the world and a correspondingly unhealthy weed-smoking habit, and finally settle somewhere in the middle, a cynical stressball who giggles at everything for lack of any better ideas?

yeah.

that just happened in grad school.

i joined a lab and then every single one of my experiments for 3 months did nothing.

then i had to take on oral exam, which i failed the first time around and had to take again this morning.

with that minor disaster in the past, now i have to pick up the pieces of my former self and decide wtf i'm going to do as a project for the next 6 years.

i have to choose something that doesn't not work.

luckily the girl feeds me lots of meat and doesn't give me any backrubs until it's absolutely positively i'm going to die without one and then she gives it to me and everything is all better :-)

GRAD SCHOOL IS HARD! AAAAH!

quiz of the month

Harry Kim You are a bit naive, but full of energy and potential. Your optimism and good will are what make you likable to your peers. You have a tendency to become obsessed with unattainable members of the opposite sex.

Take the Star Trek Quiz

call a duck a donkey

smear it like butter

this link was on blogdex yesterday. but i just gotta say, isn't it amazing how they just take the ten things that wilson said that contradicted the administration, and then say that those are the ten things he lied about? hahaha. it's so easy to smear someone. just take what he said that you don't agree with and then label that "liar!"

taco bell

that new "good to go" thing. go eat it.

credit loomba

inspired by my dischordia queen

my fellow lesbian trapped in a male body, 976-dischord has undergone this incredible transformation from wannabe-artist into bona fide artist. i mean this is some real shit going on here. so i want to holla back with this stream of consciousness in that davila style i've come to know and love:

symbology
why do we
rearrange our minds
our experiences
our realities
for conveniency
it's catching up with me

the labels we choose
keep meaning on the move
the world in a box so we don't lose
control

but definitions bleed
associations breed
memes have greed
competing for the attention of our minds
we run the risk of closing the blinds
to what we might find
behind

what should be rays of light
slowly bringing me back from dreams
replaced by obnoxious streams
of sound
it isn't fair
fresh prince of belair
the cell phone ringer
that has become my morning shofar
the loud clarion call of the shofar
so far

i hardly have a thought or speak a word
i'm already choking back the GERD
taking ibuprofin prophylactically
just a quick stand in for actually
taking care of myself
my brain
my body
my spirit
i hardly hear it
anymore

but what can i do
but keep on the move
another day another idea
if i can remember it
or find the symbol to capture it
without distorting it
or rendering it
completely insufficient

sometimes wonder how much bliss
is ignorance
would be nice
to not think twice
to be so sure
to be so pure
confident that
what i do will help

is it self-sacrifice
or is it vanity
for me to try
to convince the world
that what i've learned
about the mind
means we should rewind

deconstruct
try our luck
at building up
from the ground
this time around
we're bound to be
closer to liberty

free from the constructs
that came so easily
instinctively
but got so rapidly
swept up by associativity

appeared so real
we forgot the deal
the contract between objects
and percepts
is tired
expired

oh! that's why pandagon sucks now!

i've been soooo confused! like for the three months before the election last year i was reading pandagon every day and loving it. but nowadays i read the headlines over rss and it just doesn't seem the same. and whenever i go and read it, the posts are usually these verbose commentaries line-by-line on random things written by conservatives that just don't seem to have the tanginess they used to. i finally figured it out. it's because the best member of the pandagon team, ezra klein, has his own blog now. this new girl, amanda marcotte is who sucks. change your bookmarks to ezra's blog. it's the new old pandagon.

help a brother out

so if you read this blog with any frequency, chances are you've already seen this and filled it out, but the dude who invented blogdex is trying to graduate from mit and so he needs people who blog to fill out a survey about it. huup.

monkey, not pussy

via boing boing, a wonderful commentary on that which overwhelms blogdex this week.

cats fucking rule

i want this one:
half african leopard half domestic cat

technology alert: testing dashblog

i installed osx tiger today. the "dashboard" is satisfyingly extensible. now i can blog from my desktop while looking at a dancing hula girl, the local weather, what's going to be on tv tonight, and a dynamically updated todo list from ical. sweet.

priorities

for the past year i've been telling myself i need 4 things to keep me happy:

good food
good science
good sex
good skiing

san francisco has been very good to me.
i eat mind bogglingly good sushi at least twice, usually three times a week.
the lab that i just started working in has me dreaming about hippocampal slices. it could very well be the one that i will choose to do my thesis work for the next six years or so.
this new girl in my life continues to amaze me. good sex of course is a metaphor for a great number of things, not the least of which is, literally, good sex.
i had such a great time skiing in tahoe this season that i bought some new skis and a seasons pass to northstar for next year.

and i got back into running 2-3 times a week, after a two month long hiatus, because i actually am running bay to breakers in two weeks.

i guess good conversation is important to me too, but i lump that in with sex and food. so you could say it's the 5 "s"es: sushi science sex skiing socializing.

now all i need is the sixth s: sleep.

a pleasure to pass on this blog

i fucked ann coulter in the ass, hard

google maps craigslist hybrid

unfathomably useful.