a houston cop recently assaulted a band while they were performing on stage and then tazed several members of the audience, including a 14 year old boy. you can read about it and watch some videos. the incident has convinced me that: (1) corporate tv and newspapers are overwhelmingly biased in favor of law enforcement, and (2) when i finally break down and get a cell phone i should get one with a built-in camera.

what should you do when faced with belligerent cops? what are cops legally allowed to do and what are they not allowed to do? i know they're allowed to lie, for one thing. it's a pretty standard questioning technique to lie about what evidence they have in the hopes of getting a confession. but other than that?

i want to know not because i want people to get away with breaking the law, but because i believe in the united states constitution's protections against unreasonable search and seizure. the whole "what have you got to hide?" attitude forgets that under the constitution all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. we should live by the rule of law, not the rule of fear and intimidation.

i looked around a bit and found several informative articles. it's all good reading. i can't vouch for its accuracy, though, so read with some skepticism. also please don't let the "fringe" nature of the hosting sites obscure the issues at hand here.

all this has got me wondering about my own run-ins with the police. were they legal? what could i have done better? maybe when i have more time i'll tell some of those stories here.

listening: ktru

Behold! Friday, the 13th day of October 2006, is Four Potato Day.

Today, the Institute cafeteria served for lunch no less than four (four!) potato dishes. I foresaw this day, as if in a vision. I prophesied far and wide to anyone who would listen. There shall come a day, prophesied I, when we shall be visited by four (four!) potato options. Not two potato option, nor one, nor three. But four (four!) shall be the number. And lo, it has come to pass.

celebrating with: vodka

1. use computers deliberately, not habitually.
2. cultivate friendships.
3. don't put things off. if you're motivated now, do it now.
4. follow through. finished projects are sources of pride, not stress.

reading/seeing: edward burtynsky china

11. I am (We are) bringing
(c) disease agents, cell cultures, snails

listening: mulatu astatke ethiopiques 4

i almost forgot to mention one of my favorite scenes from the utah conference. a member of the audience was disagreeing with a speaker about a certain known genetic fact, whether it was one way or the other.

speaker: "well, we can look up some of the papers afterwards if you want."
audience member: "well, i wrote some them."

oh, snap!

listening: marc ribot y los cubanos postizos

a couple pictures from another conference. this time in park city, utah, where the sundance film festival is held. both photos courtesy kevin.

joel and i drinking jack and cokes on the hotel balcony. we're watching a flock of turkey vultures ride a thermal updraft, gliding around in circles.

joel, dave, and joan on one of several day hikes between sessions. that's how these conferences often work: attend lectures in the morning, talk science in the afternoon while hiking or swimming, and in the evening go to more lectures and talk science over drinks. this is also how most biologists dress.

i'm often the most excited and motivated about science while at conferences. part of it's just getting to see a lot of new science in a relatively small amount of time -- something that hasn't happened much since the early days of grad school, when everything was still new. part of it's also that i get a lot of opportunities to interact with peers -- something lacking from a lot of my grad school and postdoc experiences. it reminds me that i'm part of a community of people with similar interests, even if there isn't much of that community at home.

conferences are like mini-vacations for me, they never seem like "work". this summer, while trying to figure out what i should do for a proper vacation, it occurred to me that doing biology field work sounded really fun. i asked around to see if any colleagues needed help with their work in the italian alps. unfortunately i missed the boat on that one -- this year's field season was already over. but next year maybe!

i think i just really like activity-oriented fun. a lot of people like to go to bars and socialize, but i'd much rather play in the band onstage.

listening: atelia

at the airport, there were pictures of three men wanted in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"special features: beginning to go bald."
"special features: allergic exanthema on hands."
"special features: none."

i can't decide which is worst.

the picnic table was strewn with the mangled corpses of dead male ants. only males. most were cut to pieces -- an abdomen here, a thorax there. a few were still moving, twitching. a severed head was frantically waving antennae, skittering across the table. the living could be seen flying in packs above, or climbing on blades of grass below. it was sunny and warm.

it seems to be a german custom to say "tschues" when leaving an elevator. no "hi" or anything when you get in, just a small "see you" as you leave. it's kind of cute.

just got back from the evolution meeting, this year in stony brook, long island. lots of fun, as usual. my talk went well, had lots of good discussion with colleagues. i discovered that it feels really different to give a talk when you personally know, and have had drinks with, a large fraction of the audience. it seems more... direct. i also managed to catch both the flu and a cough. after my talk, luckily, so this year i didn't lose my voice until the end of the conference.

afterwards i spent some time in new york city visiting friends. jessie came up from virginia for a couple days, which rocked. i also saw hope and alex (alex having just moved up from atlanta two weeks before), kim and josh from B8, and old high school friend amber freda (formerly amber scott).

we did the normal things friends do -- restaurants, shows, bars, things like this. one notable incident involved a rooftop party, barbecue tongs, a vanilla frosted cupcake with sprinkles, jessie's left hand, and several layers of packing tape. i got a couple cupcakes thrown at me for that one.

music-wise, i caught a tim berne/tom rainey show at the stone, but missed shows by erik friedlander, tv on the radio, boredoms, and antibalas. i managed to fit in a little bit of tourism with trips to china town, MoMA, and ellis island.

all in all, the trip seemed very new york to me -- lots and lots of stuff going on but not enough time to fit it all in. i'm not complaining, though. i like all the activity.

for those that haven't heard: toby morris was shot and injured while working in iraq. he is now being treated in a german hospital.

so the twigs' ridges of snow have grown to a comical five inches. it looks like someone's covered the whole town in spray-foam insulation. we're deep into winter wonderland territory here, folks. it's probably for the best i don't have a camera.

snow has an impressive ability to find every little exposed, upward-facing surface and then pile on top of it in large amounts. like right now all the little twigs in all the trees are supporting inch-high ridges of snow. even the chain link fences have piles of snow at the bottom corner of every diamond. and to think this stuff just falls out of the sky.

listening: les savvy fav

i'm starting to think that i'm basically always going to have a bunch of writing to do. always, as in for the rest of my professional life. i have three papers from my Ph.D. work that need to be revised and submitted for publication. and there's the two fellowship/grant proposals i need to write, due in april and then again in august. and by that time i should have new experimental results that will need writing up. and... you see where this is going? always. i need to figure out how to balance this shit.

at least i'm getting back into the lab now. i find lab work very calming. that is, when it's not what's keeping me stuck in a festering shit-hole of a graduate program. but that's over now, yeah? breathe, jeff. breathe.

reading: everything is illuminated

so i have an apartment now. it's pretty nice. it's in an apartment tower and one wall is all glass, so it gets lots of natural light and has a nice view of some foothills to the east. it's a 15 minute walk from the institute down a pedestrian path that goes past a bakery and some nice open fields. the building itself is pretty grim and humorless, though. very much a 1960's concrete tower. and it doesn't really help that someone made the questionable decision to paint it in random primary colors. but overall i'm pretty happy with it.

i tried to get a place in the old town where all the buildings are crooked and the doors and ceilings are way too low, but those are apparently scarce and expensive. not to mention that i really need someplace furnished. i'm not too keen on buying a fridge and a couch and a bed and whatnot if i just have to get rid of them 10 months from now.

*and* i have an office. i spent my first two weeks here in a fluorescent closet with no windows and hard wooden chairs that hurt my butt, but eventually we were able to finagle an office left empty by a lab group that just left. so now i share a small room with the other postdoc in the lab, who conveniently preferred to not have the desk by the window. rock!

the lab itself is pretty nice. lots of big windows along two walls of the main space. a lot of the time, the lights aren't even turned on. i'll enjoy it while i can. supposedly when we move to indiana our space will initially be in the basement, with no windows at all. eventually we're supposed to move someplace better, with "substantially more natural light". the lab head had that written into his contract, even. but we don't know when that's gonna happen, and i may be gone again by the time it does.

listening: howlin' wolf

space has been a big issue this past week or so. space to live, space to work. when i first got here, i had a small room in the basement of the insitute's guest house. it was fine for a temporary place. not a lot of light, the room itself was only twice as wide as the bed. but it was cheap and close.

the head of my lab had reserved a month in the guest house to give me time to find an apartment. but because of reservation issues, the office said, i had to move to one of the other more expensive rooms after two weeks. okay. they didn't tell me what day i was to move out, so i assumed the two weeks expired on february 1st. not so. the staff walked into my room on january 31st at 10:00 in the morning, without knocking, while i was still undressed and in bed. they had somebody in tow with their luggage, ready to move in. oh, okay, thanks for the warning, yo. shouldn't you have realized i hadn't checked out yet?

so i quickly dressed, packed up all my shit, and then went upstairs to sort things out. they had a new room for me, but my reservation was monday through friday morning, and then monday through friday again. three days in the middle with nowhere to stay. what the fuck? i'm starting to get the idea that german beaurocracy is not only "sophisticated", but also stupid. they had one room left that was available for the whole two weeks -- at $35 a night. jesus.

so now i have one of the "apartment" rooms. it's fine. one main room, lots of light, with its own small kitchen and bathroom. i wouldn't mind having an apartment like this for the year i'm here, if it was less expensive. the kitchen had two colanders but no pots or pans. huh? i managed to scounge up some extras from the other public kitchens in the building.

more about the apartment search and office space soon.

listening: coldplay

so i've been here two weeks now, and i'm starting to get used to it. i've been spending most of my time up on the hill at the institute, but i've been around town a bit to clubs and bars with science people. people at work are pretty friendly. i'm also trying to not be anti-social, remember people's names, all that.

and i'm starting to realize that i'm a postdoc now, not a student. at emory it seemed pretty natural that i knew more about evolution than other people, since people there are more interested in infectious disease than in basic evolutionary science. but the lab here is very much an evolution lab. i guess all those years as a grad student actually count for something.

i have to say, though, that it feels really good to be in a lab that's actually doing the same kind of science i am. not just working with similar organisms, but also interested in similar questions. like we're part of the same community. like we're actually colleagues. crazy.

aaaaaaauuuuuuuugggggggggh. i am never doing that again. freaking. english. girl. buying. shots. for. everybody. two russians and two brits and a lot of alcohol make for one bad idea. i can't even keep water down. *hurk* ... bleeeegggghhh.

john paul (of john paul and claire) came by to visit yesterday. he's in germany a couple weeks for work, part of some collaboration between NASA and the european space agency to put a new module up on the international space station. we hung out and talked and caught up. there wasn't a whole lot to do, since almost everything's closed on sundays here. we walked around the old town a bit and ate at a cafe. which is apparently what many germans do on sundays. it's not so bad. though i might end up working on sundays and taking a day off during the week to run errands while everything's still open.

my sleep schedule is slowly getting back to something resembling normal. i didn't get much sleep my last three days in the states, nor on the plane over. so when i arrived, i was falling asleep at 1:00 pm local time, waking up at 9:00 pm, sleeping again at 1:00 am, and then waking up again at 4:00 am. now, at least, i've got it all corralled into one block. i just need to push it back a little so i can stay up late enough to go out for drinks every now and then.

so i live in frickin' germany now. and it, like, snows here. and everybody speaks german. it's gonna take a while before it all sinks in.

most of my time has been spent just getting set up. finding an electrical adapter for my computer was a huge ordeal, but it gave me an opportunity to walk around and see the town. i even found a little asian market that carries basil seed drink. so now i have internet access again. and i have a new email address for work, but i kind of dread using it because the insitute's webmail interface is so bad.

the paperwork here is pretty intense. the personnel manager gave me a list of 16 people i need to find, fill out whatever paperwork they might have, and get their signatures. "german beaurocracy is very... sophisticated." no joke. and then there's the german bank account i have to get. and the medical examination. and the residence permit. and i don't even know what these other things on the list are, since it's all in german.

and here's a little factoid i learned recently: the cast of sesame street live is a bunch of cokeheads. who knew?

you will now please refer to me as doctor jeff.

i'm not much of one for holidays, but i find the whole new years thing really appealing. looking back on the last year, reassessing your life, thinking about the way you want things to be in the future. maybe especially now, since so many things are about to change in a big way, whether i like it or not.

my first resolution: get things documented as they happen. i'm basically spending this whole week recording music -- and i haven't really been very active in music for like a year. i should've got all this down on tape back when these bands were actually in shape and playing out. it felt a lot different back then. less forced. and my dissertation -- three of those four chapters should be published already. that certainly would have made formatting the thing a lot easier. now i've got to finish slogging through a bunch of text on topics i'm totally done with, personally speaking.

my second resolution: appreciate people. this one's going to be harder. part of it's just making some kind of effort to remember people's names. but more than that, appreciating people for who they are instead of judging them for who they aren't. i've been thinking about this a lot recently, as i prepare to leave atlanta and all my friends here. there's a lot of creativity in this town, and i didn't really take full advantage of it. people i didn't play music with enough. people i didn't talk to enough. there's not enough time to set things right here, but in a couple weeks i expect to meet a whole lot of new people.

listening: antibalas afrobeat orchestra

i'm writing my dissertation now, with the goal of sending it out to my committee on the 29th. if find science writing to be pretty grueling. one trick i've discovered is to leave my ethernet cord unplugged, and only plug it in when i need to look something up. that way, i can use the internet without getting distracted by it. so every time i go to obsessively check my email yet again, the "server not found" message reminds me that i really have better things to be doing. i've also found that drone-y noise music helps me work.

there is a retarded amount of formatting i have to do to get everything consistent and compliant with the graduate school's specifications. two of my chapters involve lots of mathematics, something MS Word handles very poorly. so i have to do everything in TeX, which is great at math but absurdly complicated when you want to change the appearance of headings, margins, and so on. it's even worse when you realize that i'm doing all this for a document only five people are ever going to read.

but i do get a big kick out of seeing it all together, all the stuff i've been doing these past several years. it reminds me that i'm not just spinning my wheels, that slowly but surely something actually has come of my time here. i also like how i can see so many of the things i find so compelling about biology and evolution woven together throughout the four chapters of my thesis. how it all relates. cooperation, conflict, microorganisms, selfish genes... if i was still an undergrad and read this stuff, i'd think it was really fucking cool.

listening: alvin lucier's "music on a long thin wire"

some signs of the times: i'm basically done with lab work, i'm scheduling a defense date, and lie and swell is finally going to record. i may get out of here yet.

listening: crappy satellite radio in coffee shops

with all this news coverage of bird flu recently, has anyone noticed how the media seems to studiously avoid the word "evolution"? even liberal-leaning media like NPR. they usually say "mutate" instead, but i recently saw the undergrad newspaper here say "metamorphosis". like a fucking butterfly or something.

it's not wrong to say mutate, it's just not quite the whole story. viruses mutate all the time, but only some of those mutations help them infect people better. when they don't help them do better, the viruses with those mutations never become common. most of the time we never notice them. when the mutations do help them infect people better, it's called natural selection. as in darwinian natural selection.

actually, flu is a really good example of evolution in action. evolution is the reason why there has to be a new flu vaccine every year. the virus evolves to avoid the immune responses of people who've been exposed before. you can see evidence of natural selection in the influenza's virus' DNA. robin bush has done a lot of good work on this.

i don't know if it's scientific ignorance, a desire to avoid controversy, or just plain cowardice. in the interest of "balance", the media always tries to show both sides of an issue. but the truth is that evolution is a scientific fact with the overwhelming support of the scientific community. to give pro- and anti-evolution scientists equal time on talk shows misrepresents the scientific consensus.

maybe the media is getting better about this. a reporter from the washington post came by the lab not too long ago, working on an article about flu evolution. maybe they'll start reporting about how much of our modern technology -- from the human genome to forensic DNA evidence -- was made possible by evolutionary science.

i bought my first car for $600, a 1989 ford escort station wagon. it had like 175,000 miles on it and wasn't in great shape. my friend tracy jo felt a bit guilty selling it to me, even at that price.

it served me pretty well, but i'm not sure it could say the same thing about me. after rear-ending a couple people (i was a new driver, after all), it started looking pretty sad. like it had cancer of the face. i didn't really mind, as long as it still ran and the duct tape still held everything together.

the beginning of the end was when the the water pump went out. again. i thought i was doing good not letting it get too hot -- keeping the antifreeze filled, driving only short distances -- but apparently it wasn't good enough. the head gasket blew, the oil sending unit blew, and it all went to shit. what with all the other problems, it quickly became not worth fixing. even tracy jo said i shouldn't put any more money into the car. the shop said they could dispose of it for what i owed them, and gave me $100 for the tires.

i sure wish it could've waited two more months to die. with any luck, in two months i'll be somewhere overseas looking at 2-3 years of blissful automotive-free living. until then i've gotta figure out some way to get around car-lanta even though i no longer live near a train station or on the bus route to school.

listening: the ringing in my ears from gogol bordello's halloween show

October 4, 2005

UNIT #: B-8

Dear Tenant:

As a result of a meeting with the City of Atlanta, we are under a consent decree which must be complied with immediately. THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER, ACTION MUST BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY.

Please be advised that all residential use of your unit must be terminated immediately. City inspectors will be returning within 10 days to verify that you unit is no longer occupied for residential use.

You will not be required to make any further rent payments. Once you have vacated, your deposit and any prorated rent will be refunded. Please note that we will need you to confirm with the office when you have vacated by turning in the key for your unit and sign out with us.

All units will need to be available to city inspectors at all times. If you know that we do not have a key, please drop a key off at the management office.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you,

Management

"i know truth and you don't" --terry from west virginia

you can't really have a conversation with people who say things like this. not a conversation in the sense of a two-way exchange of ideas and perspectives. people who say things like "i know truth and you don't" aren't interested in hearing what other people say, only in forcing their beliefs onto others. so why waste your time and breath helping them? unless, of course, you want to do the same thing. but then there's probably some kind of group you can join to find others like you. "ranters anonymous" maybe.

here's the context: sasha and i were in west virginia picking up some of her art from a gallery run by terry and her husband tracy. yes, the husband is named tracy. anyway, we were talking to tracy when terry walked in looking pretty pissed off. she took issue with some of the provocative liberal propaganda on sasha's truck. terry warned us that, until we remove it, we're inviting satan to do evil in our lives. this warning eventually devolved into a full-fledged sermon denouncing, among other things, islam, homosexuality, and science. science is a graven image, apparently.

terry used words like "warning" and "concern", but she seemed genuinely angry. did she find sasha's public expressions of disagreement threatening? was terry not entirely comfortable in her belief? i don't know. she certainly had the zeal of a convert. terry and tracy at one point mentioned that they were in a pretty bad place before they found jesus. it's unfortunate that the positive change religion worked in their lives has become a source of discord and ill will toward others.

the full extent of the ill will was a bit unclear. i found it interesting that terry and tracy denounced all muslims as bloodthirsty jihadists while at the same time saying stuff like "i am an extremist" and "my god is a god of war and a god of judgment". war? judgement? it brings a bit closer to home some of the things we see on the news these days.

if i had felt talkative, i would have said something like "the difference between you and me is that you believe you know the truth and i believe no one knows the truth". i'm looking for answers just like everybody else, but i don't presume that what i've figured out so far is The Truth. i mean, i feel like i've got a bunch of stuff worked out, but i also recognize that it's not necessarily all going to hold up as i keep looking. and i certainly don't presume to tell other people what their answers should be. if you want to talk about it, sure, great, i'll share with you what i believe. but it's not my job to go around dispensing Truth.

i didn't say anything to terry. i didn't want prolong the conversation (such as it was). what would be the point? in the end, we all decided to just stop talking.

listening: sun ra's version of "ain't necessarily so"

july 4th from the top of stone mountain:

photos by sasha

i have accepted a postdoc position to work with greg velicer at the max plank institute for developmental biology in tubingen, germany. the plan is for me to move sometime this winter. i'll be about a year in germany, after which the lab will move to indiana university in bloomington.

i've gotten used to other people having my name -- the frugal gourmet, the comic book artist, that guy in my organic chemistry class -- but this one was a first for me. my name in lights, in a used car lot, in the middle of nowhere, georgia. of course we had to stop and take pictures.

the image that sticks with me, though, is the one that got away: a three-quarters view of the strip mall, no trees, no sign, absolutely no distinguishing feature of any sort other than my name, emblazoned across the front. what does it mean when the apparition comes a-haunting wearing a tag that says "HELLO MY NAME IS __you__"?

i had trouble framing the picture to look like what i saw in front of me; i needed something more wide-format. it was late, the well-dressed guy who asked for change at the gas station was walking down the street toward us, and we were worried about getting in trouble with the local authorities. so we left before i could get the shot.

i might have to go back down there.

listening: kletka red

listening: steve reich

well thank god that's over. my application for a postdoc from the NIH was late again, but at least this time it got done. unlike last time. and it even turned out pretty well (warning: 3MB pdf). maybe i really will have a job one of these days.

my behaviour may have been even more erratic this time around. at one point i realized that i probably didn't leave enough time for the people at virginia to organize the necessary signatures, so i drove the nine hours up to charlottesville to expedite the process. it seemed a bit excessive, but it really helped. this time it's late only because of my own neuroticism.

the trip to virginia was a lot of fun, too. i got to hang out a bunch with my friend jessie and other people there, having fun and talking shop. at one point somebody referred to the evolution of disease virulence as a "can of worms". i said, "i live in that can of worms".

listening: les savy fav

here's something i wrote as part of a postdoc proposal to the NIH. i've been trying to make my scientific writing less stuffy and more engaging. and use shorter sentences. this is a small step in that direction. a small step.

SELECTION OF SPONSOR AND INSTITUTION

My graduate career has allowed me substantial experience with experimental evolution and laboratory microbiology. These fields are central to my interests, and I plan to pursue them as part of my future research program. But the lab only tells you how microbial evolution can happen. It doesn't tell you how evolution has happened, or how it's happening right now in the natural microbial environment. Because the lab allows you to manipulate and control so much so easily, I feel that my training so far hasn't equipped me with the skills necessary to address questions about evolution in the real world. I feel the sponsoring investigator and institution are specially placed to offer training in the experimental design and statistical techniques necessary to deal with environmental variation and the special challenges of working with multicellular organisms in natural environments.

The anther smut system is also amazingly ideal for my interests. Because you can, under field conditions, experimentally measure infectious transmission -- the ultimate currency of pathogen fitness -- you can really get at these big open questions about the evolution of virulence. I just can't think of any other system where these questions can be so easily addressed. And the sponsor is the leading investigator working with this system.

Finally: the intellectual environment of the sponsoring institution is extremely rich. The sponsoring department is home to a number of bright, enthusiastic students of nature who are interested in a range of fascinating questions. Their enthusiasm for science is infectious and inspiring. I look forward to learning from them.

listening: liars

these last couple years of grad school i've found myself thinking quite a bit about role models. or, rather, the lack of role models. sure, there are older scientists i know and admire, but i wouldn't say that i really identify with them. not as a whole person. not as the kind of human being i want to be. yeah, they're liberal and outdoorsy and all, but somehow there's still something missing. i guess there are a few scientists i identify with as friends, but they're more my age, more like colleagues than role models.

maybe the problem is that most scientists seem bizarrely uninterested in creative activity. as in doing it themselves. i guess i'm used to being around people who do and make creative things just as part of their normal lives, whether or not they call themselves Artists. and these people tend to not be scientists.

of course, i don't feel entirely comfortable on the other side, either. at least not in atlanta. people i know through music here, when i tell them i'm a scientist, they get this look. you know, where their eyes open real wide. like i just admitted to being a martian. and after that, they think of me as "a science person", the whole musician/photo/drawing thing being pretty standard and unremarkable in our community. on the plus side, some people think scientists are totally hot.

at least i'm not the only one who feels conflicted. my friend jessie, also a scientist, says:

being in this field isn't a day-job you can just go home and forget about, and i have trouble deciding between hanging out with my simpler-life friends or spending the evening in the lab. i usually choose the friends. i sometimes get bummed out when i can't relate to people in the department because i'm too into impromptu dance parties, shall we say 'lesser-known' music, and cheap thrills. i'm too close to my inner-child.

maybe we need to start the Union of Punk Rock Scientists (UPRS) or something.

i guess it's wierd that i identify so much with the counterculture but still want to do something as seemingly "legitimate" and authority-sanctioned as science. my family's always saying "we're so proud of you". hm.

listening: mazzy star

i'm starting to reconsider how i spend my time. i used to like not having a schedule. it was right thing to do then. i was so utterly absorbed in what i was doing, and there was very little else in my life at the time. i could go into school at 4 in the afternoon, work on lab stuff, go see a show, go back to finish up at the lab, and then head home around 4 or 5 in the morning. crazy, but it worked. at least for a while.

now, i'm not so sure. i'd like to develop work habits that are more... sustainable. balance, you might say. i'd like to actually work when the sun is up, so that my evenings are more free. but how? sometimes it seems like my brain doesn't even wake up till 6 pm or so, and the rest of me is just left to make due. oy.

i've tried coffee, of course, but with mixed results. it helps with the mornings a bit (or noons, depending on your point of view), but the afternoons have always seemed like dead time. maybe that's when i need to do lab work and not even try to write? that, or see talks. and then more writing after dinner, perhaps. hm.

listening: shellac

probably the best birthday i've ever had. thanks everybody.

listening: spoon

from the 2005-03-10 edition of creative loafing:

By any accepted standards, Lie and Swell slips through the cracks of free jazz, punk, and avant-garde music, plucking bits and pieces from all three but never showing allegiance to one over the other.

Made up of baritone saxophone player Bill Nittler, bass clarinet player Jeff Smith and drummer Alex Lambert (Blame Game/LebLaze), the trio has an approach that falls well within the boundaries of jazz. Unleashing a sonic maelstrom of jittery honks, skronks and drum blasts driven by punk antagonism and solid song structures, Lie and Swell's sound takes shape without the chaos of free and improvised music, but with all the cerebral tension. What's more, the lack of a coherent rhythm section keeps the group well outside the means of traditional songwriting.

There are a few live recordings from shows at Eyedrum floating around, but the group's dynamic is best illustrated when playing live and lost in the moment. Lie and Swell plows through a set of its own numbers, interspersed with covers like Ornette Coleman's "Bourgoise Boogie" and the Butthole Surfers' "Cherub"; all three members twitching and lurching with frantic, convulsive energy. "A lot of what we do is part of the musical communities which we come from," reveals Smith.

Nittler chimes in, explaining, "We thought we were playing free jazz at first, but we've come to realize that we're just playing what we know. Playing with structure gives direction and we're all old punk rockers in some capacity, so that all comes across in how we fit together."

in other news, today is my last day as a twentysomething. wierd.

listening: tom petty and the heartbreakers

lynn margulis came to talk last week. she's famous among biologists for her discovery that mitochondria, the parts of our cells that supply energy, are actually descended from bacteria. in other words, all plants and animals are the product of a symbiosis between a bacteria and a protist.

but that was a long time ago -- both the symbiotic event and its discovery. margulis eventually joined that group of scientists that are well known for popularizing science but not doing much of it. richard dawkins and steven j. gould also belong to this group. i went to see her thinking that i should make an effort to see prominent elder evolutionary biologists while i still can. a bunch of them have died since i started graduate school -- john maynard smith, bill hamilton, steven j. gould, ernst mayr. i especially regret never meeting JMS. i was even in the UK a couple of summers ago and could have made a "pilgrimage" to meet him, but it didn't even occur to me. he's dead now.

so i went to see margulis, just to hear her for myself. she's considered somewhat controversial. personally, i don't see what the big fuss is. it all seems perfectly reasonable and consistent once you realize that, even though her work gets cited a lot by new age hippie types, she herself keeps the science at a pretty sober, reasonable level.

i think the controversy is less about her actual scientific claims, though, than her general tone and attitude. she's very outspoken and confrontational. she sees her work as opposing mainstream neo-darwinist thought. she has a tendency to pepper her talks with literary references and leftist politics. she can be pretty dogmatic -- at one point she actually called something "wrong thinking", which sounded to me a lot like "false consciousness". this talk was especially bad with the literary stuff, since it was somehow supposed to be about the intersection of science and literature. mainly she just recited a lot of emily dickinson. a bit pompously, i might add.

not that i think scientists should stay away from politics or art -- but they should be clear about what science is and what it isn't. scientists, like all people, have political and religious views. but the fact that they're scientists doesn't make those views any more or less authoritative. science doesn't tell us how we should run our lives, or structure our governments, or in what to have faith. for these things, science is neither here nor there. scientists would do well to remember this, especially since a lot of the opposition to the teaching of evolution in schools comes from people who think science is part of some vast liberal conspiracy. i have no problems with liberal political agendas; they just shouldn't be part of science class. or any class, really.

i think a good example of the "engaged scientist" would be noam chomsky. one the one hand, he's a professor of cognitive linguistics at MIT. on the other hand, he's a prominent leftist political thinker. but his politics and his linguistics are two different things. he's not a political authority because he's a scientist, but because he's a concerned citizen who does his homework and argues his point persuasively. linguistics is just his day job. and we all have day jobs.

listening: neko case

it's official: i am albert einstein. well, you know. the einstein type.

the myers-briggs personality test says i am an "INTP" (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). here's some of what I've been able to find out about these people:

Possessing a desire to understand the universe, a JEFF is constantly looking for natural law. Curiosity concerning these keys to the universe is a driving force in this type. They are the "absent-minded professors".

JEFFs are not good at clerical tasks and are impatient with routine details. They may exhibit weakness in performing maintenance-type tasks, such as bill-paying and dressing appropriately. Introductory greetings such as "How are you?" may just be given and received with nonchalant disinterest. Conversations are more likely to open with something like: "Hi, I think I've worked out how changes in the Borg's command protocols can be routed through sub-space without compromising their universal teleconnectivity!"

Authority derived from office, position, or wide acceptance does not impress JEFFs. Innovative free-thinkers who follow their own new paths are usually greatly respected. Famous historical figures who attract the JEFF's greatest respect are scientists, composers, inventors and, in society, revolutionary leaders and noble visionaries who bring about major change.

The JEFF may have a problem with social rebellion and self-aggrandizement.

JEFFs dislike having their lives planned. They feel a distinct unease before most fixed appointments and cannot fully relax until the scheduled event is over, or at least in progress.

JEFFs are usually fascinated by music and may have deep and wide-ranging tastes. JEFFs are often keen on melancolic minor-key music in which an introspective and/or esoteric mood is conveyed. JEFFs are often drawn to dissonance. Indeed, they may even thoroughly strive for dissonant sound worlds. An appreciation of modern classical music, as well as perhaps contemporary jazz, is therefore common with them.

Quality photographic skill, as well as an intrinsic feel for imagery, is usually second nature to the JEFF. When viewing photographic images, the overriding concern is for how the photo is conveyed: its mood, its colour, contrast and shading usages, its perspectives and image quality. The actual subject of the image, which other types are likely to concentrate on first, takes a back seat unless it is unavoidably dramatic.

Since people encountered on a holiday usually count as details, unless more personal contact develops, the JEFF tends to be drawn more to lonely, isolated places where atmosphere is less disturbed. JEFFs belong centrally to those types referred to as melancholic. The JEFF melancholic is typically drawn to wild polar expanses, to mountain ranges and all places on the edges of civilisation.

Famous JEFFs: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Rick Moranis, Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen.

listening: fugazi, les savy fav

before they got big, the rapture stayed at our unit a couple times while on tour. this was before i moved in, i think. supposedly, the first time they came through they put a frozen pizza in the oven but forgot to take it out. the next time they came through, several months later, they opened the oven and saw that same pizza still sitting there, burnt to a crisp.

listening: robert johnson

i am totally sick. like, it hurts to swallow, it hurts to cough, having a fever sick. i don't get sick like this often, and i'm totally getting flashbacks. my head feels like it needs to stay home from grade school. maybe i have the flu? that'd be exciting. the symptoms fit. and it's peak season:

but maybe it's not the flu. other respiratory illnesses apparently have similar symptoms. it might be a respiratory illness caused by the fact that, while insulating my room the other day against the sound of my upstairs housemate's alarm clock going off for an entire hour every morning, i was treated to a rain of dirt, rust, cigarette butts, and year-old cat litter. i'm sure that was real healthy.

or maybe i picked it up from the pope?

listening: the paper chase

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

you know, i agree with everything those stickers say, except for the words "not a fact". evolution is just as much a fact as electrons are. no one's ever seen an electron. electrons are theoretical constructions that allow us to organize our experience of the natural world and make predictions about how it will respond when we manipulate it. and it works. the fact that you're reading this shows that it works. does that make it god's almighty truth? no. does it make it a scientific fact? yes. evolution is no different.

but i don't think there should be stickers or disclaimers on textbooks, even without the words "not a fact" -- unless the stickers apply to the entire content of the textbook, without singling out evolution, and are on all science textbooks, not just those about biology. can you imagine that?

"This textbook contains material on chemistry. Chemistry is a theory regarding the nature of materials and substances. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

sounds good to me.

listening: hank williams, sr.

a spider built its web right over the entrance to the fire ant nest, and then the ants stopped using it. for something so dumb, ants sure are smart. in other news: i've neither seen nor heard from the mouse. that's good.

and: when did there start being web addresses on the sides of garbage trucks?

reading: burn collector

i've been interested in the CIA recently. i guess after all that press about intelligence failures before 9/11 and non-existent iraqi weapons of mass destruction, i got to thinking how the CIA's job is a lot like science. (the intelligence branch, at least). like, how do we get dependable information about what's going on in the world right now? not very well, apparently.

part of it may be the nature of the beast. the CIA is all about secrets and subterfuge, but science thrives on openness and consensus. science works best when there's a healthy diversity of opinions that can be tested against empirical evidence. supposedly one of the reasons the manhattan project worked and germany's atomic bomb program failed was that our scientists worked together while the german scientists were all competing for hitler's favor. even the hitler youth had a bomb program! the whole idea of tenure is to insulate scientists from politics, so that researchers don't have to fear for their job if they criticize the work of people in positions of power and influence. that's also why peer review is anonymous. no wonder the CIA has so many problems.

i think many of my friends have skills that'd be useful to the CIA. joel and trent come to mind, especially. they're both good at languages -- joel's fluent in russian; trent's fluent in japanese and has studied spanish, korean, and vietnamese -- and both are electrical engineers with substantial skills in mathematics and digital communications. did you know that the single biggest employer of people with mathematics Ph.D.'s is the national security agency?

not that the CIA would be a great a place to work. it sounds like it's full of politics and egos. i'm reading this book called the secret history of the CIA by joseph trento. not exactly the kind of thing that inspires trust in one's government. i wouldn't recommend the book, by the way -- it's poorly written and reads like an attempt at character assassination. i was hoping for something more ... academic.

but maybe things have changed since the bad old days of the cold war. last spring a CIA recruiter came to emory. i asked him if there was any sort of screening with respect to political beliefs. he said, "no, just as long as you don't belong to an organization whose stated goal is the overthrow of the united states government". fair enough. he also said there used to be a big deal about homosexuality, but now the CIA has its own gay and lesbian organization.

of course, there's also the moral issue: do you really want to work for an organization that has a habit of helping multinational corporations by overthrowing democratically elected governments?

"and if you go somewhere / know why you go / don't let them sell you / those wings on"
--dog faced hermans

my new year's resolution for 2004 was to, and i quote, "fucking graduate already". i guess i screwed that one up, huh? i'm not sure if i should go for the repeat, but i haven't been able to think of anything better yet.

in the mean time, i've been doing some reassessment and renovation, mainly with respect to my living accomodations. the warehouses are cool, but they don't have to be as squalid as our unit sometimes gets. i took down an ugly wooden door frame that a previous occupant had built in my room to prettify the door-sized hole smashed out of one cinderblock wall. it looks much better now, all ragged and cave-like. i'm in the process of rearranging my possessions so it doesn't look so much like i live in a storage closet. and i put door sweeps on a couple doors in my airlock entryway to insulate against the cold and vermin.

yes, vermin. a couple nights ago, i woke up in the middle of the night feeling wierd sensations up and down my left shin. at first i thought it was muscle tremors due to poor diet or something. but when i turned on the lamp and pulled back the sheets, there was a fucking mouse in my bed, under the blankets. it was small, grey, and cute, but it was a mouse nonetheless. you'd think they'd avoid crawling into bed with giant mammal predator types, right? maybe this one has mental problems.

the incident wasn't entirely out of the blue: the last couple weeks we've been finding little mouse carcasses around the warehouse. they'd be laying there, headless, right next a little pile of fur, gore, and cat vomit. i'm hoping that once i clean up all the dirty dishes in my room, the mouse will get hungry and wander off to meet its fate somewhere else.

there's also a nest of fire ants under the outside wall of my room, but i don't mind them so much. they pretty much keep to themselves and do their foraging outside. the little pile of red dirt under my desk seems to just be a trash heap.

listening: dog faced hermans

the lie and swell show last night went pretty well. the improv sections of our songs have been working really well in performance recently. we're finding more and more ways to make things interesting in the spaces between written parts. different, unexpected places to go. which is what improvised music is supposed to do, right?

there wasn't a lot of audience, but that's pretty standard for this type of music. a few people came up afterwards telling us how much they liked it, which is nice. one girl even drew a picture of our band!

roger ruzow's nu south subterraneans opened up the show and were lots of fun. they've got a different sound these days, more of a hard-driving fusion thing. i especially liked roger's new tunes. i distinctly remember one of them being called "cockblockers", dedicated to the republican party. i also enjoyed ben davis' wailing alto sax.

i'm famous! i got featured on justincrane.com, and now the book deals and teevee appearances are just rolling in, let me tell ya. eat your heart out, leno. i also fixed a problem some were having when viewing the site with web browsers made by evil corporations. and started moving over old content.

watching: city of god

so i ended up putting the fellowship application off till april, when i can (hopefully) do it right. i may end up without a job for a few months, but i've got enough saved up to last. and i wouldn't mind an extended vacation.

working on this site is wierdly meditative. i wish i felt the same way about science writing.

reading: infinite jest

i think i slept like 15 hours or something last night. this when i was planning to burn the midnight oil, finish my fellowship application, and mail it off this morning. instead, i slept and slept and slept and made it that much less likely my application will make the deadline. and now my career is that much more uncertain.

and i feel so much better. why? not because of probably missing the fellowship deadline, that's for sure. i think i just really need to sleep a bunch. some sort of biochemical thing involving serotonin, perhaps. not needing so much sleep is definitely one reason to look forward to getting older.

listening: college radio, npr

i'm so fucking stupid. that's what's going through my head right now, over and over again. even when i know on an intellectual level what i need to do, for some reason i'm still unable to get it done. procrastination is a lot easier when you don't need the signatures of multiple academic officials across state lines. and your future employment (and happiness?) isn't what's at stake.

listening: this american life

why can't i think straight? i could earlier today -- what's gone wrong? i've become paranoid and superstitious about thinking clearly. do i need to eat again? have i eaten too much already? do i need to take more vitamins? do i need to take less vitamins? do i need more coffee? didn't i already have four cups today? myabe i need to cut down. maybe i need some passive entertainment to clear my head. maybe i've had too much and given myself mall brain.

[later...] okay. it's passed a bit. i think it was that post-eating low blood sugar feeling thing again. and now i'm hungry again...

i'm not exactly sure why i feel compelled to keep a blog. a kind of journal, maybe, but about things i'm willing to share with strangers. stories I don't get a chance to tell people. a way to organize what it is i'm doing with my life. or maybe it just seems more honest than pretending audio pedestrian accident is a record label, when really it's some sort of modern-age vanity press.

i've been thinking a lot about wishes recently. like, what do i think is "the good life", and how do i get there? it's not something i do easily. i've kind of been philosophically opposed to making wishes for at least the past decade. the whole idea of wishes and dreams just makes me feel vaguely bitter.

some things i've been asking myself: if i had my choice, where would i live? like, what city and country? in what kind of dwelling? alone or with others? with pets? what kind of job would i have? what would i be doing outside of the job? how would i like to be viewed by others? what's my idea of success?

i guess the underlying gist of all this is: how can i be happy? like i said: vaguely bitter.

i've come up with an answer to the "what city?" question. or at least what kind of city. i want to live somewhere where i don't need a car to do my daily business. someplace culturally and racially diverse, with a thriving local arts and music community. someplace affordable, so it's not like i'm constantly surrounded by rich people. someplace with good, cheap, spicy food. someplace where it doesn't get too cold. someplace american. i definitely wouldn't mind living abroad for a while, but for the the long term my heart belongs to america.

i'm not sure such a city exists. it sounds kind of like a cross between new york city and houston. or like a more diverse austin. i'm guess i'm screwed for now on the location front. this doesn't bode well for the rest of my happiness prospects, does it?

listening: birthday party, gogol bordello

there's a bell tower here on campus that plays songs. every day at 6:00 pm, after the chimes. today it was "the wind beneath my wings". usually i can't recognize the song.

the tower sounds really cool and fucked-up. the bells are fake, some kind of keyboard setting. there might be a couple real bells, too, i don't know. the songs are always in a major key, but bell sounds have a really strong overtone at the minor third, so there's tons of dissonance between the song that the bells are trying to play and the actual sounds they're making. it doesn't help that the arrangements are real busy, like someone just sat down at the keyboard and played the song the way they would play it on a piano in front of their church.

and the way the bells work, different notes in the melody jump out at wierd times. like there's someone else trying to play along who doesn't really know the song, so they just bang this one bell every once in a while. the whole thing feels like some mentally disabled teenager doing a totally earnest rendition of some horribly cheesy song -- just really pouring their heart into it -- and totally failing to get it right. and not knowing how bad they're fucking up. it's so great!

sometimes i wonder how the air can be so still at shows. i'll see like a wisp of smoke from somebody's cigarette just kind of floating there lazily, and all the while there's this terribly loud energetic noise going on. doesn't the smoke want to jump up and down, too? i guess you have to be human to appreciate it all.

today feels like europe. at least, like europe did the last time i was there, which would've been exactly one year ago. maybe it's the unseasonably cool, overcast weather, or the fact that i rode the train this morning, or the woman asking me in a british accent for directions to the westbound platform. it's also rather quiet in my head today, for which i'm thankful.

i think it's been fall in my head this whole time, this whole year. which is odd, since not too long ago it was always summer. there's only been one day this year where it actually felt like summer. it was sunday, and lazy, and i was driving without the luxury of air conditioning, so maybe that was it. most of the time, though, i just wasn't there. sure i was hot, sure i heard the cicadas, sure i saw the dragonflies -- but i just wasn't feeling it, you know?

both hands, various places :: freckles too numerous to count

both hands, various places :: variety of cuts and scratches in various states of repair, source usually unknown

both hands, on palm at base of last three fingers :: callouses from riding bicycle, now fading

right hand, ring finger :: callous from writing (primary)

right hand, middle finger :: callous from writing (secondary)

right hand, thumb :: callous from playing bass clarinet

left hand, tips of first two fingers :: callouses from playing guitar

left hand, middle finger, inside of largest segment :: callous from nervous habit of placing hand over mouth and chewing on finger

left hand, middle finger, second knuckle :: childhood scar from cutting finger open while preparing microwave chicken for family consumption

left hand, back, near wrist :: childhood scar from scraping hand against concrete wall while trying to pick up dropped school books

left hand, heel of palm :: childhood, uh, dark spot from accidentally stabbing self with pencil on an airplane

i like not having a schedule. i like it when people ask me what i'm doing tomorrow and i can say i don't know, i'm just going to do whatever feels right.

i think i like it because it makes me feel like i'm living the way i'm living and doing the things i'm doing because i want to, and not because i have some responsibility or obligation to do this. i do what i do because it's fun. and if i'm not having fun, then i should do something else that is fun. sometimes i forget about these things.

i don't have any problems with habits. i get into habits very easily. the thing about habits is that they're just habits, as easily broken as they are made. i'll get into these periods where i'll go to some restaurant or coffee shop all the time -- almost every day -- but one day all of a sudden i'll just stop going, do something else. no big deal, that's just the way it is.

the changes makes my life feel episodic. more like an adventure, because i'm doing something now that i didn't used to do, and no longer do something i once did. there's more progression. my memory is very place oriented, so i tend to lose track of time when everything happens in the same places.

i think i miss the sky. i find myself stopping and looking up a lot, whenever i come to a place that's not all covered up with trees. you know how in old cowboy songs they always sing about how they miss their texas home and its wide open spaces? i think i know what they mean.

day one. here's to my new life, my new brain. fluoxetine hydrochloride, 20mg.

i'm to take one every other day until monday, then one every day thereafter. two weeks from now, i meet with the doctor guy to see how it's working. i should expect the side effects more or less immediately. the intended effects may take anywhere from a day to several weeks, no telling. if it seems to be working, then i'll get a prescription. right now i'm on samples. the first one is always free.

DISTA 3105. that's what the green half of the capsule says. what do you suppose it means? manufacturing information, perhaps. batch numbers, lot numbers. some code not meant for you. perhaps the plastic dissolves but the print remains, undigested. a collection of disembodied letters and numbers, floating around in your stool, waiting to be passed and collected at the other end, flitered out at the sewage treatment plant -- magnetic ink, you know -- and reassembled, tabulated for the day's figures. a pharmaceutical mark/recapture experiment, keeping tabs on who's eating what.

DEC 1 2003 4MZ85M. they come from the same lot. when that time comes, will i still be taking these things? two years from now, so it's possible. hopefully i'll have left this town by then.

No 3105. FP 1522 DPB. FL-8530-2. 10108808, that's a wierd one. these things have so many identifying marks. the two packets appear to be identical, though. they're even signed. Lilly, big and cursive, but still a font. ownership without individuality.

and what about the logo? that sun-like O, cut through with straight slices at the bright yellow top, fading to wavy slices at the dark orange bottom. i imagine it's somehow supposed to symbolize the consumer's transformation from a dark, uneven (and therefore undesired) present, rising to a shiny, straight-laced future. i can't help but think how the straight lines remind me of a flat-lined cardiogram. that's the life i'm trying to escape, the flat one. i want my waviness back.

i almost thought about asking for a different, less recognizeable drug, just to avoid the social stigma of overprescription, of medicating away all the bumps and worries of this brave new world order. but this one's the upper. zoloft is a downer. makes you sleep more, at least. god knows 10-12 hours is enough already.

i went by the lab yesterday. a former postdoc was there, visiting for a couple days. at one point she said, "so i hear you," stopping, eyes closed, putting her hair back in a ponytail, searching for the right words, "have been away from the lab recently." it didn't even occur to me that there'd be rumours. i guess humans are social creatures, after all. most of them, at least.

i don't really care if people know i'm on the drugs or not. i resent the prying interest, though. i just want to be left alone. by these people who are not my friends, at least.

i'm leaving tomorrow. for about a month. i'm going overseas to wander around in the Old World. just to see what there is to see.

actually, the first week i'll be at an evolution meeting in aarhus, denmark. that's how i can afford this elaborate getaway. school is paying for the plane ticket. after the meeting, though, just wandering. it'll be the first time i'll be in a foreign country for no real reason, with nothing to do, and nowhere to go. no excuse, no meeting to attend, no friend to visit. just wandering around.

earlier this year i realized that to travel alone in a foreign country where i've never been before and whose language i don't speak would be one of the few things left in the world that seems scary and exciting. sure, there's lot of things that seem interesting and fun. but scary and exciting? not really. the only other thing i could think of would be to tour with a rock band.

it used to be that everything was scary and exciting -- learning how to use the houston bus system, falling in love, leaving home to start college, getting my own apartment, running a radio station, working in a lab, moving to a new city to start graduate school, learning how to be a scientist, learning how to play improvised music.

now, though, it's gotten to the point where basically all the things i want to do in life i can do right now. i don't need to wait anymore until i graduate, or move to a new city, or buy a new instrument. i just need to go ahead and do what i want to do. there aren't any new opportunities waiting just around the corner. everything is open. this is it. this is where the railroad tracks end. from here on out, there's no predetermined direction, no map.

also, i've been pretty burnt out recently, and i'm hoping the trip will let be step back a bit and take stock of things. get a larger perspective on life, that sort of thing.

if you like, you can email me while i'm abroad, using my travel address: lieandswell at yahoo dot com. i can't promise i'll write back, but i will read your message. in a foreign country, no less.

mr. mr. trent messec of tokyo, japan, has solved two of the three great mysteries of life!

great mystery number two: what chemical combination of filament and gas is it in the street lamps that makes everything all orange at night? answer: those are high-pressure sodium lamps. they have no filament, just an arc. the gas inside contains sodium, xenon, and an almalgam of mercury. you can read more about them and even see their spectral power distribution, showing the big peak in the yellow/orange area.

great mystery number three: you know that big monster machine in the train yards with the giant claw that picks up the freight boxes and puts them on the spine cars? what's that machine's name? answer: reach stacker. the giant guillotine-looking ones are called gantry cranes.

how did trento- do it? just check out this nice piece of work (some names have been changed to protect the innocent):

> Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 20:53:52 +0900
> From: Trent Messec
> X-Accept-Language: en
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> To: jssmith@b...
> Subject: [Fwd: Train Yard Heavy Machinery]
>
> Who pissed in his boot? Was I rude? His web page
> listed his address and said to send questions, even.
> Well, at least he gave me an answer. I'll think twice
> now before writing experts with an attitude.
>
> I can find answers quicker than superman can dodge
> a dodge.
>
> Your pal, T.
>
> "J.Schleisegger" wrote:
>
> > Who are you - it is not polite to write to people in the way you are
> > doing. Why should I give you information?
> >
> > It is a "reach stacker".
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > JOHANN SCHLEISEGGER.
> >
> > Date sent: Tue, 22 May 2001 22:23:39 +0900
> > From: Trent Messec
> > To: Johann Schleisegger
> > Subject: Train Yard Heavy Machinery
> >
> > > A friend of mine asked,
> > >
> > > "you know that big monster machine in the train yards
> > > with the giant claw that picks up the freight boxes and
> > > puts them on the spine cars? what's that machine's name?"
> > >
> > > Do you know the answer?
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Trent
> > >
> >
> > Johann Schleisegger
> > Senior Lecturer in Rail Systems Engineering
> > Department of Mechanical Engineering
> > University of Sheffield
> > Sir Frederick Mappin Building
> > Mappin Street
> > Sheffield S1 3JD
> >

mr. mr. trent claims to not to eat cookies.

there are really only three great mysteries left in life. that's what i realized the other day, while i was riding down dekalb avenue past the cabbagetown train yard on the way to a show. all those old mysteries -- what's the meaning of life? how do you make love stay? which came first, the chicken or the egg? -- you know, i answered those questions a long time ago. i've moved on.

the way i see it, the three really big important questions now are these:

1. who invented tape?

2. what chemical combination of filament and gas is it in the street lamps that makes everything all orange at night?

3. you know that big monster machine in the train yards with the giant claw that picks up the freight boxes and puts them on the spine cars? what's that machine's name?

if anybody can definitively answer at least one of these questions, email me and i'll make you cookies (or dinner, if you prefer, and are female).

i really like the phrase "rock out." i like the way it's agnostic about one's relationship to the music. like, you can rock out if you're in a band performing on stage at some club, or you can rock out if you're just listening to CDs really loud in your bedroom. to rock out simply means that you're totally involved -- emotionally involved -- in the music that's going on around you. it doesn't really matter who's making it. it's about the music itself.

and because rocking out is about the music itself, it's not all that big a step to go from being a music fan to being a musician. at some point you just love music so much that you want to be as involved in it as you possibly can be. you want to be part of it. so you learn to play an instrument. so you start a band.

in some ways, it reminds me of the way i went from studying science in school to being someone who actually does science. as an undergraduate, i had a wonderful opportunity to see what kinds of things people have learned about the world. i'd hear things in class or read them in a textbook and i'd think, that sounds really cool, i want to know more about that. so i'd talk to the professor, who'd recommend a book that covered the topic in more detail. so i'd read the book, and it'd mention some other cool fact about nature. and i'd think, that's cool, i want to know more about that. so i'd go to the library and read the original paper, and i'd have a question like, but what about this? so i'd find and read all the other papers that dealt with that subject.

and eventually, i'd get to the point where nobody had answers to the questions i was asking, so i figured i might as well answer them myself. so here i am.

i had a dream about vampires. they were like the ones you see in the movies these days -- young, attractive, stylishly dressed. they were bad. they went around killing people and sucking their blood. that's bad.

i was running from them. but, somehow, i was also masquerading as a vampire. and i was kind of a vampire, too, but not like them. they had super powers that i didn't have. they were super strong, and super smart. i wasn't. i knew kung fu, but i wasn't as strong or as smart as them.

at some point, they asked me to prove that i was a vampire by sucking the blood out of this one woman among the people they were killing and sucking the blood out of. and i was going to do it (as i was a kind of vampire, although not like them). but i wanted to make sure that the woman was unconscious first so she wouldn't die a painful death.

but she wouldn't go unconscious. i kept saying, "go to sleep, go to sleep", and she kept crying and saying "i can't, i can't". and i kept doing kung fu on her to make her go to sleep, but she wouldn't. i was very upset -- i didn't want to have to suck her blood while she was awake. this was a horrible terrible thing to do to someone. i was crying, with tears down my face, saying "go to sleep, go to sleep" and she kept saying "i can't, i can't".

and then wierd stuff happened. i didn't suck the blood out of the woman. i had my mouth at her throat at one point, but then she turned into a plastic monster toy version of herself, with lots of big fangs and a funny hat. this was why she couldn't go to sleep. and then she started chomping on one of the arms of the one of the vampire guys. and then i ran away.

i had this funny little black teardrop-shaped device that blinked when you pressed it. if you were going the wrong way, it blinked red. if you were going the right way, it blinked green. i ran out of the house we were in, but the device was blinking red. following the green blinks, the device led me back into the house and out the back where the vampires had a helicopter waiting to whisk them away.

when i showed up at the helicopter, i looked at the green blinking device. the vampires had devices, too. one of the vampires shrugged at the others. another vampire said something about never before seeing a macaque. they apparently thought i was a rhesus macaque (a type of monkey used in HIV research) that had been turned into a vampire, and only looked human. i got into the helicopter with them. they were packing themselves very tightly into a small plastic tub in the back so they could all fit.

during our ride, they were asking me about the extent of my vampire super powers. i was very nervous that i'd be found out. i was not really a rhesus macaque. one of the female vampires was asking me if i could draw the rockefeller center building, from memory, with all the windows, street by street (i'm not exactly sure what she meant by this). this was too hard for me to do without vampire super powers. i said, "i can't do that". she hit me on the back a few times, somehow demonstrating that i was not as strong as them. a male vampire, the driver of the helicopter i think, was telling me about this super hard mathematics problem they had to solve in vampire training school. it was tough.

that's all i remember. i think i woke up after that.

in the rain we roasted
yellow marshmallow bunnies
over glowing iron ingots
cooling in the grass

i had a dream not too long ago. i was riding in the passenger seat of car at night in the warehouse district of a city that was not houston. at a stop light, i looked up at the sign showing the name of the cross street. i don't remember what it said, but above the sign there were two more signs with alternate names for the street, like they have in houston's little vietnam. the alternate names were Susie Ibarra Avenue and Jim O'Rourke Way.

i've been reading way too many music magazines.

science and music may both be creative intellectual activities, but i tell you what -- nobody i've met through science seems to have any sort of aesthetic sense.

in college, i used to dj at the school radio station. lots of people who worked there had very defined, very identifiable aesthetics. not everybody, but there were plenty of people around who cared about how things look and who would make things just as a matter of course in their everyday lives. nobody i've met in science really seems to care much about how things look, nor does anybody i've met really make things. you know, people have hobbies like sports, or sailing, or yuppie buddhism, or collecting fancy expensive writing pens, or participating in community service activities. i don't get it.

i was talking to a professor here once about a paper i was working on, and one of his comments was about how nice it looked. he was commenting on the fact that i defined my own paragraph styles in the word processing program to make everything consistent and easy to read. you have a sense of style, he said. he meant it as a complement, but i was a bit insulted by the fact that he found it so remarkable. of course i have sense of style.

i try to do science the same way i make other things, like music or pictures. the only thing different about science is what's considered good. when i make, look at, or listen to music or pictures, i have an idea of what i like, what i consider good. usually it's just a visceral response i have to the thing, and it takes me a while to explain why i like it. sometimes i can't. other people may have different responses to the same thing and different ideas about what's good and what's not. it's all a matter of taste.

what makes science good science is much more explicit and much less idiosyncratic. the simple elegant experiment that clearly supports or rejects a fundamental scientific principle. the right controls to rule out other possible explanations for your data. the unifying theory that explains and ties together lots of previous observations. i think about these kinds of things as scientific aesthetics. science is considered good when it conforms to values we think lead to a more complete, more secure understanding of the way the world works. other than that, it's just another thing that people do, another thing that they make.

somewhere around 1997 i discovered gall wasps. gall wasps are tiny harmless wasps about the size of a fire ant. they lay their eggs on some part of a plant, like a leaf or a twig, where chemicals produced by the wasp (maybe the egg?) cause the plant to grow around the egg. this is the gall. the larvae then hatches out of the egg and eats the nourishing gall from the inside. eventually it metamorphosizes into an adult, eats its way out of the gall, mates, and starts the process again.

i discovered that there were lots of different types of gall wasps living on live oak trees, making all different kinds of galls, and that there was one specific species of ant that colonizes the one larger kind of gall after the wasp hatches out. Leptothorax pseudomyrmex mexicanus. or so i'm told.

i had seen the galls before -- the tree in front of my childhood home was a live oak. to this day, my mental image of "tree" is a live oak. my brother and i would often throw the galls at each other. we called them tree berries. we could tell they weren't acorns, but we really didn't know what they were. i remember opening them up, but i guess i never found anything inside.

when i finally realized what they were (or, actually, had it pointed out to me what they were), i got onto this whole gall trip. i went around to all the plants i could find, looking for galls, opening them up, seeing what's inside. there were big ones, small ones, brown ones, orange ones, green ones, some grew on the undersides of leaves, some grew on twigs, some grew inside the branshes themselves, some even looked like dried up flowers. i started my own pet nest of pseudomyrmex ants. i eventually got into trouble for destroying the homes of so many innocent insects.

why was i so infatuated with these things? i mean, i may have a mild affinity for insects, but nothing like this. it took me a long time to figure out why, but i think i eventually did. it's because i had been living around them for my entire life and never knew. never even suspected. and, all of a sudden, here they were, everywhere.

i think that's why i find a lot of things interesting. it's easy for me to believe in fig wasps, because they only live in costa rica and africa and venezuela and other far away exotic places like that. but gall wasps, here, on my very image of tree, in plain old houston. that's wierd.

i think most of the things i find interesting are things that are either going on around me or that involve me in some way but have been going on without me noticing or being aware of them. like, for example, evolution is a process that goes on around us all the time, but it's really hard to see it because it involves whole populations of organisms and lots of time. and genes.

for the same reason, i still wonder why it is that across the country there seem to be a significant number of young white kids my age who really like this one type of noisy unlistenable jazz. i got into it in high school when i heard it on the local college radio station, being played by people who would later become my good friends. why should perfect strangers in other far away cities care, too? and why are they my age? i still don't know.