Women are from Venice, Men are from Mars.

On the subject of the differences between the sexes, which seems pervasive in many of the blogs I read, this supposedly from an English Professor at the University of Phoenix;

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:

Rebecca (last name deleted), and Gary (last name deleted).

THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he
could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously
excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the
hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine
headquarters on the ocean floor of the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)
Asshole.

(Gary)
Bitch

(Rebecca)
FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!

(Gary)
Go drink some tea - whore.

(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one

........ I particularly liked the way that Rebecca killed off Gary at the very first possible opportunity. From that point on Gary knew he'd missed a golden opportunity and was defeated, futile retribution being his only recourse. Score one to the Venetians.

It ain't over 'til the fat guy sings.

The Gods Must Be Crazy! Well, at least the american TV viewing public. Scott is still on 'Idol' - he wasn't even in the bottom three! Could it be that TV viewers now dislike Simon so much that they'll go out of their way to pick up the phone and vote for whoever he tells to "pack their suitcase"?
I can't believe the american public would vote to retain someone who repeatedly fails to meet even the most modest standards of ability.
Ohhh, wait a minute........

Bush cancels Earth Day.

This is the headline that greeted me as I opened up Yahoo this morning. Widening the box, I read the full headline, "Bush cancels Earth Day visit to the Smokies."
The sad thing? I wasn't surprised by the first headline.

Blogger is a jerk

Blogger is a jerk. Last night it started redirecting me to its home page when i clicked on certain links - after a while it wouldn't let me get to my own blog. I did get to one of my most frequently visited blogs (no doubt blogger was taking a much needed break from sustained jerkissitude) and then, being in a bad mood and apprehensive of a job interview (kinda) today, proceeded to leave a thoughtless, inappropriate and unnecessarily antagonistic comment on one of my favorite blogger's posts (sorry P). I went to bed in totally the wrong frame of mind in preparation for a job kinda interview.
I got up next morning, realizing I'd run out of my SSRI prescription and didn't have time to get it filled - nice start Steve. The interview was not so much an interview - a mutual friend had passed on my resume to someone at a local Biotech company - and we were to meet for lunch to "sound each other out". I got to the Biotech, waited in reception and shortly heard "Hi, you must be Steve." i turned and instantly both of us recognized each other. "We've met before." In unison. Within milliseconds I realized that the only time we could have met was at our mutual friend's party, one at which I'd gotten AMAZINGLY drunk, even by my extreme standards. Great, fucking great!
Lunch actually went okay, and for sure I didn't order a beer with it! I'm not holding my breath over the position - I've been rejected or, more often, never heard from them again, so often I don't really care anymore.
Apparently I'm also incapable of relearning organic chemistry for the MCAT teaching - its clear the human brain is not designed to assimilate the details of the Friedel-Crafts reaction after a certain age.
This post is so fucking whiney that I think I'll delete it soon.
Blogger is a jerk.
(edited)

Q time (via P)

Apparently I don't have a visual memory. Can't come up with "mostest" answers for the pic Q's, representatives are;

What picture has brought to you the most joy?

S on the beach in Costa Rica collecting fallen almonds

What picture has brought to you the most introspection?

Sunset over the Pacific (also Costa Rica, but really a generic - could just as well be California or anywhere else looking west)

What picture has brought to you the most sadness?
An old photo of a close family friend taken at our (once) annual family/friends Xmas party, which i came across soon after he died of cancer. Usually the life and soul of the party it was a rare pic of a sad, reflective K, almost as if in anticipation

What picture has brought to you the most laughter?
Any one of many photos of K and our dear friend M (who also died of cancer not so long ago) at same Xmas parties, making everyone else laugh

What picture has brought to you the most frustration?



What song will always make you cry?
Anything by Good Charlotte. (I could have picked any one of a number pathetically lame artists/bands but I picked them because, well, I can)

What song will always make you dance?
Return of Forever - High Contrast

What song will always make you drive really, really fast?
Suburban Train - Tiesto; very loud, very fast

What song brings your best (in order to narrow the selection) outdoor memory?
Purple Haze - Jimi

What are you listening to right now?
In the Waiting Line - Zero 7

What book was last given to you by someone else?
"Looking for Spinoza. (Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain)." - Antonio Damasio

What book did you last refer to someone else?
"White Teeth" - Zadie Smith

What book will you keep with you always?
My PowerBook

Where do you like to be quiet?
In the kitchen when pouring another drink

Where do you like to be loud?
In the car

What is your favorite fruit juice?
Fresh grapefruit

I tag; Nelson Mandela, Trent Rasner, Stephen Hawkins and Lisa Simpson

Vacillation and acylation

I'm starting to wonder whether having four blogs - well, three really, since one is totally devoid of content - is such a good idea. I know what you're thinking - "he hardly ever posts on any of them, what's he complaining about?" - but it seems i'm becoming less and less able to multitask. Give me one thing to do and there's a slim chance it will get done. Give me a bunch a things and its a dead cert that not even the easiest will get done. Besides, i'm trying to memorize a whole organic chemistry course to take this MCAT teaching application test and its using up pretty much every available neuron. And, believe me, there ain't too many to spare. I hated organic chem way back in college so i skipped just about all the classes. I suspected that one day it would come back to haunt me and how right i was.

For the science blog i'm planning to write a follow up on embryonic stem cell research, based on recent progress in research and lack of progress in swaying the ideology of the current administration. However, I've been stalled by both inertia and inability to access key papers - the science publishing community is every bit as elitist as the science research community. In fact i was also considering a post on the failure of science publishing to communicate that which its meant to communicate. I've also been meaning for a while to write a piece on the biology of aging, but for some reason whenever i start to think about it I become disinterested. I wonder why this is.

As for the stupid lists blog, i've forgotten why i thought it was such a good idea in the first place. Maybe i should follow up my stupid list of Canadians with a list of stupid Americans. Plenty to choose from.

And this blog.... I did consider starting "Zerotonin: Memoirs of a Melancholy Mouse", which was to be included in Pura Vida, here instead; The story of Morris E. Mouse, a mouse with no serotonin receptors, in his search, along with his sister Marrie, for happiness. But it seems like so much work. And then there's the TV chat show interview with Genghis Khan. I don't know, I think the effects of SN1 nucleophilic substitution on chirality are making me kinda brain dead.

Woohoo! My first pointless post about nothing in particular. I'm just like you guys now!

On the beach

“So this guy wakes up on the beach only to find he’s the last person alive on Earth. Of course he has to leave the beach to find this out, but, anyway, seems the rest of humanity has been wiped out in some kind of nuclear Armageddon.”
“So how did this dude on the beach survive it?” one of the surfers asks perceptively.
“Uhh, I don’t know. Sunblock maybe?
“Anyway of course he finds he’s not really the last one alive and that there are other survivors and they band together to start civilization over. There’s a love interest there too I think. So it begins at the end and ends at the beginning, y’know?”
“So that’s why you come to the beach? You sleep on the beach and maybe the rest of the world goes away?” The perceptive surfer again.
“Hey, maybe it is, maybe it’s a metaphor.” But, how to explain just how the beach mirrors my destiny, how it comforts and then torments, how it nurtures and tortures. How the surf, sand and rocks are freedom themselves, and yet the beach entraps, between the raging surf and the hard, dry world. And how it gathers the lonely and the together, the happy and the dreamers, the adventurers and the voyeurs.
“I thought this was the metaphor.” Indee interrupts my reflection, arms in the air, hands open, meaning everything around us. The gesture and her comment seem to have attracted everyone’s attention.
“What??” I have no idea what she’s referring to.
Indee looks right to left, back again, eyes shifting, faux conspiratorial, leans forward and says, hushed but loud enough for all to hear, slowly,
“The blog.”
“What blog?” I reply, genuinely perplexed.
“This blog.” Again hushed yet loud enough.
I stare at her incredulously, no idea what to say. But she and everyone else are waiting for an answer.

Pura Vida

I should be writing my novel, to be posted on Cali's sister blog (Pura Vida), but I'm not.

Settings: It is set largely in the US Southwest; San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and in Costa Rica. I imagine other locations will emerge.
The Premise: It features a small group of people from diverse backgrounds, though with strangely similar traits, dedicated to exposing untruths and deception within Science and the Pharmaceutical Industry. In particular, the rumored existence of the ultimate life-style drug being developed by a mega-international Pharma consortium. The drug in question, in ways laid out in the novel, is able to reset the brain's homeostasis mechanisms in the event of disturbance thereof. The question is, therefore, what is the brain's default status? Happy or sad? Passive or aggressive? Enlightened or in the dark? I don't know - that's why I'm writing the novel.

I should be writing my novel, but I'm not.......

No lo vamos a olvidar!

I got one of those Blockbuster pass things; ten bucks for all you can watch for a month. So far we've seen the following;
"Purple Butterfly" with my favorite actress, Zhang Ziyi, or is it Ziyi Zhang. The movie was okay, she was as wonderful as ever.
"The Return", a thoughtful russian psychodrama, which pretty much sums it up.
"The Incredibles"; lots of fun. Plus, Mrs. Incredible (Elastica) is pretty hot.
"Harold and Kumar go to ...." Surprisingly fun and funny.
"Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring again" or something like that. I didn't watch it - S did while recovering from a cold, she says its sad - good thing I didn watch it.
"The Motorcycle Diaries" was quite simply one of the most amazing movies I've seen for, well, ever! What surprised me is that the movie, and the original diaries, had passed me by and I didn't know, until the very end of the movie that the main character and narrator was indeed a young "Che" Guevara.



I wish this movie had gotten more attention when it was in theatres. We desperately need another "Che" now.

Deposted.

I deleted a post I had put up a couple of days ago ("Pope dead, Illinois and North Carolina survive") since i thought some might find it disrespectful, which wasn't my intention. In spite of disagreeing with him on some obvious issues, the late Pope was, after all, opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty and was clearly at heart a good and honest man. Which, lets face it, is more than be said of the world's most powerful religious leader, George W. Bush.