Joel Sequitur

European Vacation Recap

2008-08-07T14:21:00.005-04:00

Quick summaries of what I did and where I went to across the Pond:

London (7/14): Went to Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Globe. Saw the changing of the guard. Went to the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum. got picked off the street to dance in a British Christian punk rock music video. You heard me. British Christian punk.

Cambridge (7/15) Went to 10 out of 31 colleges at Cambridge and went punting (propelling a boat with a pole) down the river Cam. Almost drowned and hit every boat and wall along the river Cam.

Vienna (7/16) Took a RyanAir (Irish version of Southwest, except you have to buy the drinks and complementary peanuts, and they sell lotto tickets) to Austria. Saw a bunch of former imperial palances belonging to the emperor Franz Josef, and sat through an actual concert of Mozart's "Requiem" at Karlskirche, a 18th century Baroque church, instead of bad university student dressed in funny wigs playing bad Mozart music.

Salzburg (7/18) Was not impressed with everything built on a cliff or nuns spinning around singing.

Munich (7/19) Apparently, when we got there, it was the festival of Munich's patron saint, which meant random people dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes and beer being sold by the liter on the street for about $4 (€2.75). So I threw back a couple of liters of beer, because you know those Germans; if you don't join the party, they come get you.

Rome (7/21) After sleeping in a six-bed room for twelve hours on a train, finally got to Rome, only to discover the city is like living in a distillery: hot, smoky, and smelling of cheap alcohol. Sights here included the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and waking up at 6am to stand in line another two hours to get into the Vatican, where I met two Filipino nuns who went to school with my mom. And an interesting conversation at a laundry mat where my friend Tristen spoke Korean to this one Korean guy who spoke Italian to the laundress to get out clothes cleaned on time.

Florence (7/23) Took a nap at the Florence hostel and had a dream that a hot, lost Italian girl woke me up and asked me for coffee. Instead, I was woken up by Peter, my friend from Boston who is not a hot, lost Italian girl. Thoroughly disappointed. And the Renaissance art wasn't that impressive. Botticelli's Birth of Venus or Michaelangelo's David were ok, somewhat disappointing in how imperfect they look in real life.

Nice (7/25) Spent the day on the beaches. Most of the women were topless, unfortunately most of them were also thrice my age. Did see a quartet of Chinese girls sunbathing, but, alas, I didn't know how to speak Mandarin or French.

Barcelona (7/27) Drinking beer I bought of the street at 2am. Going back to the hostel at 2pm for R&R. I think I went to the Olympic Park and the unfinished cathedral, La Sagrada Família, but the rest is a blurry, drunken haze.

Madrid (7/29) More a haze too. I was impressed by the Prado and immense detail of Picasso's Guernica. Spent the last night drinking out of bottle of wine on a tour bus given to us by Filipinos.

If It´s Tuesday, This Must Be Barcelona

2008-07-31T05:11:00.002-04:00

Actually it´s Thursday, and I´m in the airport in Madrid. Horribly bad about keeping up with the blog this summer, but will have a lot to say about the entire Euro trip. Just wanted to make one entry en España.

There Goes the Neighborhood

2008-06-13T12:52:00.006-04:00

I promised I wouldn't get very political in my blog entries, but this time, the Republicans made it personal....

Apparently, pundits who are being paid to charge Barack Obama with being too liberal and too elite are skipping the fact he went to Harvard Law School and lived in Cambridge and instead are attacking where he lived and taught constitutional law: the University of Chicago and Hyde Park. One of the first articles was a Washington Post last Friday which said "Republicans plan to describe Obama as an elitist from the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where liberal professors mingle in an academic world that is alien to most working-class voters." The Weekly Standard featured an article, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," which described Hyde Park as "Berkeley with snow" and rampant with "the same alarmingly high number of men wandering about looking like NPR announcers — the wispy beards and wire rims, the pressed jeans and unscuffed sneakers, the backpacks and the bikes" as Berkeley. It ends, "[t]his is the perfect place for a man without an identity to make one of his own choosing."

Former and current Hyde Parkers were quick to defend their alma mater and its world. Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal pointed out the fallacy in the Republicans associating the UofC academia with liberalism, especially in a school home to Milton Friedman, Anthony Scalia, Allan Bloom, and a bunch of economists that helped a Chilean dictator. The Asian Times and Inside Higher Education are lamenting how one of the last bastions of academia is being defamed.

I guess my biggest problem with these articles is that they (purposefully) screwed up describing Hyde Park as another Berkeley or Cambridge. Well, its not; it has people who aren't just white and rich (just joking). There is nothing elite or extremely gentrified about it. There's a Starbucks next to Jimmy's. That's about it. There's no Apple stores or Abercrombie-malls anywhere and you're more likely to find Chardonnay drinking yuppies in Lincold Park than at the Med. Yeah, the UofC still is an ivory tower. But most of all, those articles miss how diverse the neighborhood is. Hyde Park does not have a classifiable identity because it doesn't adhere mindlessly to one doctrine or one party platform. Of all the neighborhoods of Chicago, it's the most diverse and most defiant. It also shows the limits of academic paternalism. co-existing with the UofC has its advantages (urban renewal, the UofC police, high incomes and property values) and its drawbacks (the UofC's intentions, the exclusion of lower-income minorities, the overpriced Co-op that's been replaced by a Treasure Island. But where else can a guy interview top Venezuelan businessmen at the GSB and then grab 40s of Steel Reserve with his SOUL friends? (that happened in one day).

So John McCain and his campaign is free to attack Obama; I mean it is an election. But mess with the UofC, caricature Hyde Park as some liberal elitist haven, there are a lot of UofC alum in high places who'd make you their bitch.

Still Getting Calls from the DNCC

2008-06-04T22:01:00.008-04:00

I've stayed away from a political entry mainly because the primary season has been so long and volatile that there have been children conceived and born before it ended, including my newborn niece Kaitlyn, and really, I've been too damn busy with work and med school. Still, I've never shied away from debating my political views, whether or not it's my family, my peers, the New York City Police Department, or the Department of Defense. And everyone in my lab still wonders why I have a degree in Political Science and didn't think about the high-paying world of political operative (truth being, I'm too blunt and honest to spin. Bite me, Bill O'Reilly.)

So today I was listening to the radio to hear a woman talk about how she knew Senator Barack Obama follows closely Senator Clinton on most of the issues pertaining to women's rights, but she didn't care. She would vote for Senator John McCain in the fall and hope he screws up the next four years so badly that Hilary can run again in 2012. This wasn't NPR. This was Kiss 108. And her sentiments have been bounced all over message boards this past week.

Without interjecting my own political views, let's take this from a logical step. Now let's say that you are trying to nail something together to build an object. And your choices were a hammer... or a jigsaw. Let's say the choices for the hammer are a claw hammer or a framing hammer. And when you go get the hammer, you find your choice (claw, whatever) is gone. Would you really use a jigsaw to drive one nail because you don't prefer the framing hammer?

Now this was a really dumb-down, and blatant metaphor, but I think it works (maybe?) Hilary's was a flawed campaign. Obama's was not perfect. But if Clinton supporters believe that the change promised by her campaign are needed to fix this country, then they really should reconsider their threat to abstain from voting or voting for Senator McCain. Because when all the filters are applied, and all the sand is sifted, the two candidates for the Democratic nomination are incredibly close on the major, vital issues that make up governance of a nation. McCain is not close to Hillary's positions by a long shot.

Now whether or not you should support either platforms is a different issue.

Going to California

2008-05-29T09:00:00.003-04:00

I am. From July 2 to July 10. Mostly in the Bay Area. But I haven't been to California (LA) for years, at least not since the Reagan years, so suggestions about what to do there other than engage the Filipino community would be appreciated.

The West Coast has that image of being super-health conscious, so I doubt there would be as many barbecues there as there were here during Memorial Day. Except in New England, they don't call them barbecue, they're called "cook-outs." Unless it's a "Southern-style BBQ," which is entirely the same as a cookout except they think "Southerners" (which is everybody else in the country) layer their meat with four pounds of sauce. And then they barbecue everything in New England, from burgers, ribs, bacon? and kielbasa to swordfish, lobster and clams. And every dish has this complementary side of beans that's supposed to be the vegetarian option, if it didn't have a piece of pork floating in it. Yeah, so much beef.

PIE FIGHT

2008-05-20T10:03:00.001-04:00

Scav Hunt 2008.

Evidence the Blogger is Alive

2008-05-15T11:49:00.002-04:00

I have been MIA from Joel Sequitur for a while, but the reality is that out of this blog's six readers, I've personally seen four of you guys in the past month. And the two who I haven't seen, get your butts out to the East Coast once in a while.

The month has been exciting as A) I have achieved the Masters in Science by finishing the Master's thesis of minor doom, B) said thesis then became the thesis of major inconvenience as I had to revise it because my graphs printed outside the margins which wasn't evident on Word, C) I'm working on a poster and several papers with my Parkinson's disease research for the Society for Neuroscience, D) I went to Portsmouth, Virginia to tour naval hospitals, E) had several "hilarious" encounters with miscellaneous women and F) did Scav Hunt. Barnraisings and pie-fights galore.

With the Parkinson's stuff, I'll actually be busy finishing that up to get authorship on the papers and planning trips to California and Europe, so the next entry might take a while. With that in mind, I like to take this time to congratulate Nick P., who is walking this Sunday at Boston University's campus wide commencement. I could have walked too, but I'm too lazy.

Time Out

2008-04-20T20:27:00.009-04:00

The objectives coming to BU and Boston proper were clear: get a Master's with honors, get into (an accredited, American) medical school, and go awesome neo-Scav road-tripping with fellow ex-Shorelanders, all the while retaining whatever sanity I had left after Chicago. Now that all of those goals have been accomplished, though the sanity one is debatable, I've just been playing Halo 3 and bumming around a city whose surface I haven't even scratched.

Joel Sequitur will be leaving its Boston existence very soon, the fourth move in five years. Most of my friends, save for a few matriculating into BU med's Class of 2012, are leaving or have left. And barring meeting the girl of my dreams (or a reasonable facsimile) in the next two months, I will have little incentive to come back to Boston in those four years. So today I thought of all the things and events I have yet to do that can only be accomplish near a stream of dirty water called the river Charles.

1. ~~Grab a sandwich at Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe or All Star Sandwich Bar.~~
2. Kayak down the Mystic River.
3. ~~Visit the ICA on free Thursdays from 5-9PM.~~
4. Try all 36 brews on tap at Publick House.
5. ~~Go to a game at Fenway sober.~~
6. Star-gazing at BU Coit Observatory.
7. See ImprovBoston.
8. Listen to a book reading at Harvard Book Store.
9. Do the Duck Tour.
10. ~~Watch the Boston Marathon (which is tomorrow).~~
11. Visit the Distillery Gallery.
12. ~~Go to Wally's Cafe during a live Saturday set.~~
13. ~~Stop subjugating inner tech geek: visit the MIT museum.~~
14. Relax by Jamaica Pond.
15. See the Mapparium.
16. ~~Attend the 2nd Annual Cambridge Science Festival (damn me for missing the 1st).~~
17. Actually walk the Paul Revere Trail.
18. Tour the Sam Adams factory, again.
19. See the Blue Hills Reservation.
20. Attend a Boston Pops Orchestra concert.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2008-04-17T23:23:00.003-04:00

I needed to get to the airport for a business trip, so the quickest way to get to Logan from my place was to take the Green Line and switch to the Blue Line at Government Center. So I was on the Green Line inbound last Tuesday, only to find out that the Blue Line was closed from State to the Airport. Now, this would seem like something that the MBTA should have posted on their website as news, but they didn't. Instead, they were shuttling people between Blue Line stations, and I was told by the MBTA police the shuttle I was getting on was going to the airport. Now, if this shuttle had gone straight to Logan, this would be the end of the story. But, as soon as the shuttle got on 1A to Logan, it was told to be rerouted to Maverick Station, where the driver was told she was taking people back to Government Center and we all had to transfer off that shuttle and get onto another one for the airport.

Unfortunately, the driver of that shuttle (this being the 2nd shuttle I've been on today) had never driven to Logan; this wasn't his normal route and no one at the T apparently had ever directed him. So, after he had gotten the bus lost in the Budget rent-a-car parking lot, the shuttle somehow got on the Mass Pike going away from the airport. At this time, I only had an hour left until my flight, and I was pretty pissed off I was being driven by an un-navigated driver and the teens playing craps in the back of the bus. So, finally, before the shuttle got back to I-90 and totally missed all exits getting to Logan, I shouted, "Where the fuck are you taking us?" This prompted three other guys and I to stand up and start asking the driver himself. One guy who was a worker at Logan said he knew the direction to the Airport station, but the driver wouldn't listen. So, half of the bus just got off at Harborside Drive and followed the guy, walking through the East Boston Stadium and Rec Center, to the Airport station, which took only five minutes to get to walking. I asked if they had seen the shuttle, but none of the MBTA officers said they had. As far as I had known, it was still on the Mass Pike.
I got to Logan with 45 minutes to check-in, so I made my flight, despite all the hurdles the MBTA threw at me. Only to find out at Washington/Dulles my connecting flight was delayed for engine trouble...for three hours.
The angel of transportation made it up to me though today. On my flight back to Boston, they overbooked the flight, so I volunteered to give up my seat. Not only did I get the free ticket voucher, but they put me on a direct flight to Boston that actually got me there earlier than if I had gone on my the overbooked flight as schedule. Moral of the story: since there are no black-out dates on that free ticket, I get to go to California during the 4th of July without having to pay $600.

Weird Scientists

2008-03-31T23:06:00.001-04:00

If I haven't explained/ranted to you yet about my lab work, I'm currently looking at several gene mutations linked to inheritable forms of Parkinson's disease and my research is looking at the effect of oncological drugs on the genes expressing these mutations, which my lab planted into worms. Well, the basis for my experiment, and for 3 months of work, was looking at a crossed Parkinson's mutant with a transgenic protein that makes its dopamine fluorescent under UV. Well today, I learned there may be a "distinct probability" the transgene has been lost in the worm. And by "distinct probability," I mean it's been PCR confirmed, causing me to kick the PCR machine. Which means there is no genetic difference between my control and experimental groups....which means loud expletives were said.

How this happened could have been homozygous control worms could have infected the strain, or there was breeding back, or I'm being punished for transgressions in a previous life.

That's the way the cookie crumbles, before spontaneously combusting, I guess. Still have 2 more months to get the re-crossed worms.

In real world news, my sister has signed up for gun training class.

Yeah, I'm beginning to see no difference between reality and absurdism.

In Which I think Some Higher Sentient Beings Watch My Life Like a Sitcom

2008-03-26T23:32:00.002-04:00

I think I was dumped. The real problem is I didn't think I was in a relationship. But a girl I've been seeing on and off for the past three months (more like actually we interacted once in each of those three months) gave the 'just a friend' speech . I'm sitting there wondering if she's been dating my doppelganger. And truth be told, my reason for hanging out with her in the first place was ennui, but I ended up even more bored and sedated after every date. So really, I managed to not have the stresses or fun one usually gets out of a relationship. I break even.

Now I need to keep on working on my thesis, because my PI has availability to enough drugs and chemicals to kill 50,000 worms and it would be trouble if he offers me some "tea."

Cause I've Gone to Canada in My Mind

2008-03-20T18:44:00.002-04:00

So my friend Anne and I were discussing how first-year medical students either are in a relationship coming into med school, or end up hooking up with someone during their first semester, it dawned on me that should a medical class be mainly composed of men, those men normally would have to compete for the affections of the female students if this were true. Then I saw this article, and realized what my Plan B should be.

Actually I Prefer Mario Cart Wii

2008-03-01T18:13:00.002-05:00

"Yes, I'm not very well-versed in the electrophysiological subtleties of the C. elegans worms. I'm more interested in grinding up their bodies and draining their neurotransmitters." -JML
"I take it you played a lot of World of Warcraft." -Dr. James Eberwine, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania

Overheard at BU...

2008-02-27T22:31:00.002-05:00

is usually rather boring, monotonous shit. But at lunchtime, when I got on the elevator, I couldn't help but overhear this one guy's conversation with two embarrassed and uninterested women. And by couldn't help, I mean he was the only one talking on the elevator. So to paraphrase what he said:
"So, I've gotta say - that I didn't know what inner peace was until these past two weeks. I mean, that's what enlightenment is - is giving of yourself and, like, finding yourself in love. There's where you find your purpose. Yea, I believe that everyone has a soulmate and they bring you meaning. I feel so enlightened now..."

Other than the fact I wanted to stuff his mouth with a gym sock and berate him for his liberal use of the word "enlighten", his conversation got me thinking, is it that people need to find love to achieve peace? Or do people have to be in peace with themselves to be able to love others? Because I've known people who had to be in a relatively stress-free time of their lives (including me) to get into serious relationships. But then again there are manic problem-thinkers who need a significant other to put a leash on them. Or is it just a case by case basis? And really, what type of love was he discussing? What happens when the initial euphoria is over?

I ponder this, while I bang my head against my laptop, wishing this will make my thesis write itself. Sadly, this didn't work for my BA thesis either.

2008-02-18T00:25:00.001-05:00

I've noticed many of the old Chicago crowd are re-reading Nietzsche again, and I had an interesting conversation with a PhD candidate from BC on nihilism at a party last night (after accidentally hitting on his girlfriend). So I tried going through Birth of Tragedy today. From what I read, Nietzsche really didn't have that much to say about love. Not love "agape" or love "philia"; he's all about that love as a moral emotion to affirm life and transcend the old past philosophies. But the eros type of love. That struck me most reading the entire Apollonian and Dionysian diatribe. Yes, the entire disparity of balance between presenting good and evil is written, but I've yet to be rid of my disinterest in his philosophy or to find any connection between reading his books and Valentine's day. Is the will to power romantic?

I Hear Linkin Park when I Hear Valentine's Day...

2008-02-17T23:08:00.003-05:00

"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Every other person I talked to last week wasn't, per se, outright embittered it was Valentine's day. They just had a more apparent feeling of malaise than usual. Hearing stories about relationships that strained to make it past last Thursday, failed engagements, the stress of long-distance relationships, I began to wonder why I myself wasn't sulking or indignant about being single on Valentine's day. Maybe because I just associate with bitter intellectual people. But the holiday never meant anything really significant to me except another example of crass commercialization destroying the true meaning of a Catholic holiday (I damn you all if you do that to Palm Sunday!!), so I never saw giving tokens of affection as being limited to, or the duty of, Valentine's Day. Also I'm fine not being attached to anyone right now and just playing the field. I know (or suspect I know) of what I'm missing out in not being in a relationship - the confusion, the dizzying initial happiness, and possible isolation, regret, hope and future. Yet I'd rather work on being sane and grounded myself and not having to force that responsibility on any new love interest.

Talking with old Sports editor Joe from the Maroon, we recalled what probably is the most saccharine thing i ever did for a girl, which was have Joe deliver her a birthday cake (actually a cupcake with a candle on it) on my behalf as a surprise. His version of the story was that he was madly in love with the girl, even though he had just met her two minutes before he delivered the cupcake. I resolved my next romantic gesture will involve a boombox and Peter Gabriel.

February Observations

2008-02-10T14:35:00.000-05:00

- February is an insane word to spell correctly. Stupid eclipsed first 'r'.
- I find it strange that the only times I experience anything close to inebriation in Boston is with the old UChicago crowd. And it's not with the UChicago crowd who have or had transplanted here, but instead visiting compadres who say, "Hey, it's been a long time since I've gotten hammered. Roger that, we have a goal." And before you know it, I'm drinking a pitcher of Sam Adams, Blue Moon, Johnny Walker, weird tasting grappa, or some other wowie sauce. Is it that the company I keep at BU just can't hold their liquor as well, or the life of the mind happens to ruin the life of the kidneys and the liver? Could be both.
- Today it started to rain. Then it got sunny. Then I heard thunder. And then it started to snow flakes as large as cottonballs. Cold, icy cottonballs being hurled at 20 mph. Now it's sunny again.

Election Smelection

2008-02-06T17:02:00.000-05:00

The most Super Tuesday activity I did yesterday was sitting at an Obama phone bank reminding the good citizens of Massachusetts to vote and using up 80 minutes. The most interesting conversation I had was with an elderly man chiding me for supporting a "Muslim Communist who would turn over the country to those terrorists."

There's many things inherently wrong with that statement.

It was an honest mistake ...

2008-01-26T17:06:00.000-05:00

As part of a long ruminations I've been having lately about the direction of my life (which sometimes ends with me saying I'm an old man and start shaking my fist at BU college students calling them whippersnappers), I've compiled a list of what I consider the worst mistakes I've committed in my life. Possibly, this list's existence is to be a reminder so I never repeat them again, or as a future reference for my future children, or just for everybody's amusement. The fact most of my egregious mistakes involve high school or infectious disease means it's mainly for amusement. And since society likes lists, I've placed the top 10 so far. Note, they are not ranked.

a Becoming the manager for the girls' basketball team, thinking it's a great way to get dates.
b. Learning how to skip.
c. Wanting attention, even if it was negative.
d. Accidentally plagiarizing from the Disney Channel and Arthur Schlesinger.
e. Picking fights with people I was unmatched with, including a QB from a rival high school.
f. Gave up playing a musical instrument.
g. Forgetting certain precautions and asking really, really important questions to romantically-interested girls.
h. Letting myself be worked to death and verbally insulted in a laboratory, even if I was the youngest student there; should have stood up for myself and had more confidence against the post-docs.
i. Not saying I love you enough to family, girlfriends, drunken reprobate roommates.
j. Donating blood on a day when I had little sleep, no real food, a horribly-planned party to set up in Cobb, and an incompetent Scav captain to wake up 10 times. (Yes, this last one is very specific.)

Winter Update

2008-01-14T22:28:00.000-05:00

1. I had a dream this morning where snowfall predictions turned out to be false, and everyone was pointing at a light dusting of flurries at Cherokee Park and laughing at the meteorologists. Then I realized Cherokee Park was back in Kentucky. I woke up screaming and remembered I was back in Boston, but there was a foot of snow outside.

2. The undergraduate technician in the neighboring lab is actually not as innocent or work-oriented as she appeared to be when she made snarky comments about her mom pushing her towards dental school. I may ask her out for coffee soon.
3. My Masters diploma application and first thesis draft are due soon. Thus, the C. elegans worms I experiment on rule my life. Stupid important worms.
4. I will be getting a crash course in high-performance liquid column chromatography next week. Somewhere, Paul Strieleman is laughing.
5. The last albums I downloaded were by Radiohead, Miles Davis, the Shins, and Maroon 5 (one of these things is not like the other...)
6. I've been surfing online for tickets to Europe, because let's face it, I won't have this opportunity during med school. My friend Ramon is pro-France while my sister Roze wants Ireland, and my lab mate Andrew went to Poland on the cheap (although he lost his luggage in Italy). Hmmm... going to have to make some choices. Also, if you have about $1500 in disposable tender and some free time this summer, I invite you to come along.
7. And finally, I'm still wondering if karma is setting up the Patriots for a horrible fall (losing the Super Bowl to the Giants, Bridget Moynahan with a rolling pin on the 1-yard line, a giant video camera falling on Randy Moss). But considering the luck they've had so far, it seems that God is wearing a hat with a B on it.

The Summation of Current American Politics

2008-01-09T09:59:00.000-05:00

Saw this guy standing on a street corner in Manchester, NH during the state primary yesterday. The photo was also included on Digg and Yahoo News.

Auld Lang Syne

2008-01-01T23:41:00.000-05:00

Currently, I'm stuck in bed with a runny nose, ear canal drainage, a continuing medication regimen of penicillin, and possible halitosis. But last night, I finally celebrated a New Year's without an impending sense of stress for the new year with 50 of my closest relatives and seven bottles of Seagram's (and two liters of 7 Up). For the first time in about five years, I wasn't concerned about having to climb the AMCAS mountain or pandering to resumes, MCAT scores, GPAs or picking certain extracurriculars over others. This new year, I'm drinking till 2AM, eating sliders till 3AM and planning tuberculosis screenings for 8AM, there's a half-inch of snow and the wind chill's at -32C, there's bird flu and Pakastani insurgencies for the upcoming year, and I feel fine.

I do have the usual resolutions - of losing weight, getting more fit, keeping up correspondences with friends and family, actually looking for a relationship, hoping the girl doesn't care about my dancing skills. But I also realize that everything I put off from my senior year of college onto moving to Boston. I started to pick this year when I went on a relief trip to New Orleans during Spring Break, then actually had a Spring Break vacation going to a bachelor party in Miami, and then went to the Philippines in September. I have not travelled as much as I used to in my youth, and now, before the long nights of USMLE Board studying begin for me, I have technically three months to go travel, to experience new people, places ideas, and the serendipitious forces that have kept me alive these past 25 years. I'll also pick up recreational reading again, as with the status of airports, I'll probably have more free time to read in between traveling.

So first planned trip is an excursion to California to erase all my bad associations with that state (which actually only involve LA) and then to southern Europe (the Mediterranean coast, Northern Italy, possibly eastern Europe). If any one has more places or books to suggest, feel free.

To 2008.

History of Drugs: Part I

2007-12-27T22:26:00.000-05:00

Something that was passed around in the lab on a holiday card, proving my ultimate association to geekiness.

Patient: Doctor, I'm in pain.
1000 B.C. Doctor: Eat this root.
250 A.D. Doctor: That root is heathen. Say this prayer.
1700 A.D. Doctor: That prayer is superstition. Take this vial.
1900 A.D. Doctor: That potion is snake-oil. Smoke this powder.
1950 A.D. Doctor: That powder is addictive. Take this pill.
1990 A.D. Doctor: That pill is not efficacious. Take this bioengineered drug.
2000s A.D. Doctor: That drug is artificial. Eat this root.

Luckily, alcohol is the drug of choice this season. Happy holidays!

In Mourning for Mr. Plow

2007-12-19T22:56:00.000-05:00

Apparently the best way to prepare for a Nor'easter in Boston is to let out every student and government worker at 2pm on the main roads and highways...right before the snow plows and salt trucks are on the road. Let's just say it was quite exciting watching cars not move on Boylston Street for three hours. The old-timer New Englanders, who've been here for years, just simply didn't go to work or send their kids to school and stayed at home. They've gotten used to the idea that it is not going to stop snowing right away.

I'm finished with exams, but since every form of frozen precipitation has fallen in the past 96 hours, it's obvious Mother Nature wants me to celebrate indoors. And like any normal American, I say to her "Screw you" and venture outdoors to take pictures while doing errands like grocery shopping (was sober) or exploring the Transcendentalist quality of snow falling (was drunk.)

On my street in South End:

At Harvard's main quad:

The Massachusetts State House:

Boston Common:

Union Park:

Analogize

2007-12-15T10:57:00.000-05:00

I said, "Great, I'm going back to the kingdom of the blind as the one-eyed man."
Nick said, "Well, if you want I could poke out your other eye."
I said, "Uh, I need that eye to be king. The point is I don't want to go back to the kingdom of the blind."
Nick said, "Why not? You could tell them you have two eyes. Better yet, three eyes. They're blind, they can't tell!"
I said, "Wouldn't they brand me as a witch or something with the three eyes."
Nick said, "They're blind, what can they do?"
I said, "Yeah, the forming of the lynch mob with pitch forks and torches would be hard to organize."
Nick said, "They'd probably grab a lot of brooms...

Seven Ivy Leagues in Search of a Sense of Humor

2007-12-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

At the Harvard Coop
JL: "Excuse me, do you know if any of the houses sell their own Harvard t-shirts?"
Sales Representative #1: "No, no, all of the official Harvard merchandise comes through us. None of the houses have their own shirts unless it's a special discount from the COOP. It simplifies the process."
JL: ( in sotto voce )"Yeah, getting rid of imaginative houses does simplify things."

At the Harvard Shop
JL: "Do you have any Harvard shirts with the logo that are funny?"
(Blank expression from girl at counter. Looks to guy stocking hoodies)
Guy:"Sorry, I don't think so. We're very sober here."
JL: "Nothing? Nothing like 'If it were easy, it'd be Yale'?"
Girl: "That statement's true, how is it funny?"

At Hidden Sweets, also in Cambridge, MA
JL: "Are there any funny Harvard shirts here?" JML
Sales Representative #2: "Harvard? Nah? But we got alot of funny Boston shirts, like one that's says 'Wicked Pissah'"
JL: "But none from Harvard?"
Sales Representative #2: "Don't think so."
JL: "How about a Harvard shirt that's spelled Hahvahd?
Sales Representative #2: "How's that different from its regular spelling?
JL: "No, with like h's for the r's."
Sales Representative #2: "Oh yeah, we did have shirts like those, but we ran out of them."
JL: "Any time you might get them back in stock?"
Sales Representative #2: "Probably not. We got them that way cause the printer made a mistake."
JL: (Runs out and gives Harvard campus middle finger)

I think years of blue-blooded elitism and also blue-blooded inbreeding has rendered the parts of the neural limbic system associated with laughter obsolete with some of our Cambridge brothers. I miss UChicago's witty self-deprecation. With that, you knew you were nerdy, your school is soul-crushing, and you're damn proud of that.

*Am fully aware there are eight schools in the conference, but Yale seems fully equipped to make fun of its other Ivy League fellows.

Glass Half Full, but Leaking

2007-11-26T23:22:00.000-05:00

I got accepted to the University of Louisville for medical school, which mean Plan B and C don't need to be started. But then when I told my lab about this, the South Asian post-doc said, "Too bad you didn't go to Sweden. They train some of the best doctors."

Yeah, that Swedish application was a bitch to complete to begin with.

A Convenient Truth

2007-11-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

I was contemplating getting up to grab a beer from the kitchen when I realized that I had a bottle of wine, a bottle of whiskey and somehow, a bottle of tequila on my desk.

They're all unopened and I was mainly going to use them as gifts/bribes, but still, it's a weird coincidence.

Five Years in ESL for this?

2007-11-12T18:03:00.000-05:00

I've been in Boston too long.

The catalysis for this conclusion comes from some conversations I've had around town, the first when I went to a Walgreen's that was all decked out in Red Sox championship gear.

JML:'Cuse me, mam. Ya know when they gonna get any Celtics geah in heah?
Excuse me, madam. Do you know when there will be any Celtics gear in this here establishment?
Store Clerk: No, but you'd think it would be soon.
JML: Yeaah, I juhst thot it would be heah now, with Sahx season ovah.
Yes, I just thought it would be here now with Sox season over.
JML's brain: Ok, who just spoke?

I've been noticing that lately I can relatively imitate the Boston accent with ease - replacing R's with Ah's, making D's sound like T's, elongating I's to sound like EE's, sounding like Ted Kennedy. At first I did this to get around Boston easier and secretly taunt Bostonians with their loss of the letter R as every New Yorker and Jon Stewart does.

Me at Dunkin Donuts:
One Year Ago -
JML: Could I get medium coffee, with cream and sugar?
Dunkin Donuts Person: Wat?
Now -
JML: Can I get a regulaah coffee, lahge?
Can I get a coffee with cream and two sugars, large?
Dunkin Donuts Person: Suah thing, suh.
Sure thing, sir.

Now, I don't now if I'm talking like this to local Bostonians just to communicate better with them or out of habit, which is the worse case scenario.

JML: (Getting into a taxi) Thanks, suh. Can I get ta da cohnah of Union Pahk and Tremont?
Can I get to the corner of Union Park and Tremont?
Taxi Driver: Vehy good, suh. Not that fah.
JML: Yeah, I coulda walked, but it's wicked cald.
Yes, I could have walked, but it's wicked cold.
JML's brain: Why the hell are you speaking like Elmer Fudd?

I've noticed I don't talk like this among people outside of Boston, so I think if I extricate myself from the New England area, my ability to speak will return to normal. Hopefully. But if you here me say the word "idear," kick me.

Non Symposia

2007-11-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

There are times I forget that I'm not at UChicago anymore and that people don't want to get, or normally just can't get analytical. Case in point, a conversation I had with my neighbors, Prithi and Sarah. Prithi is planning on moving out of Boston soon and Sarah needs a roommate.

"Yeah, I just need to find one of those cats who inherited lots of money from an old lady to be my new roommate and pay half the rent," Sarah.
"But if the cat got everything in the old woman's will, wouldn't they have gotten the house too?" Me.
"Joel, don't destroy Sarah's dream. She wasn't thinking that far into it," Prithi.

Yeah, so I was accused of raining on her parade. Well, UofC people do that, often it seems.

Ennui and Ninjas

2007-11-01T19:45:00.000-04:00

Nothing today particularly happened. I went to work, I burned worms, I went to Pharmacology lecture and I picked up dry cleaning. No eccentric dreams or romantic overtures dashed by reality. Really boring... even with trying to watch ninjas.

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Thus proof I am alive. And hunting those ninjas. Damn those stealth bastards!

Things Change

2007-10-22T14:55:00.000-04:00

Back in the day, there was still a Curse of the Bambino, and the Red Sox were in my mentality the Lovable Losers.

Now, with all the drunken fans keeping me up last night (and I'm about three miles from Fenway) with their drunken boastful talk of a dynasty, I wonder:

When did the Red Sox become the Yankees?
When did the Indians become as cursed as the old Red Sox?
And when did the Yankees become the new Mets?

Unfortunately for the Mets, they're still the Mets too.
At least I have some constancy still in the baseball world knowing there is a Greek man's ghost and his pet goat's ghost hovering over Wrigley Field, laughing.

Best Birthday Present...

2007-10-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

is the fact my living room finally has four walls again.

Otherwise, still standing ladies and gentlemen. Which is great for a mid-20 year old who knew he shouldn't have had that last shot of whiskey.

Also got this -

Happy Birthday Joel!

From all of us on The Facebook Team, have a great day!

Hole in the Wall Gang

2007-10-13T16:27:00.002-04:00

Yes, I am back in Boston, had a wickedly unstressful med school interview, and came back from the Philippines without getting dengue fever, malaria, or an arranged marriage. I would like to talk about the still-class centered and familial structured society of the Philippines or the immense social upheaval that will happen if the newfound wealth there doesn't start get trickling to the poor majority. Or my current thesis project, which centers on characterizing a dual-knockout worm line.

But instead, let's discuss what I came home to in Boston. There had been construction on the back facade of my apartment building before I left. This is the email my roommate sent me two days before my flight back:

On 10/4/07, Matthew Lee wrote:
>
> Joel,
>
> You're not going to f$%#@ing believe this, but the wall of our
> living room just fell out. They've been removing brick all week
> and I guess they took out more than they should, so the wood
> and plaster just peeled off the building. I'm looking at
> night sky and scaffolding from desk as I'm writing to you.
> In fact, I can see the night lights on one of those skyscrapers
> downtown right now. I'll try to have some answers for you
> for what that means about living here in the mean time.
>
> Matt

This is my reply:

On 10/6/07, wrote:
>
>
> Matt, I come back to America to find out theres a fucking
> hole in the living room. What else is new?

This is what the back of my living room looks like:

The construction workers estimate it will take them 3-4 weeks to repair the whole thing. Even though I can still use the bathroom and kitchen, and my bedroom isn't actually connected to the living room, it is a pain not being able to use it to relax, sit on the couch, watch basic cable, or play my roommate's PS3...Wow, was that really all I did with the living room? Anyway, it has forced me to have to watch the MLB playoffs at bars. And the main drawback to that is I can't save money buying my own beer.

For pics from the Philippines, look at http://uchicago.facebook.com/p.php?i=2902956&k=4V1445UZ4XTA6DDDRE2Y

Honesty

2007-10-13T16:07:00.000-04:00

Med School Interviewer: "So, what would you say are your weaknesses?"
Me:(Pauses. Thinks.) "Girls."
Med School Interviewer: (Laughs)"A lot of candidates wouldn't admit to having weaknesses."
Me:"Well, I know I'm human."

Magical Mystery Tour

2007-09-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

I will be out of commission for a while, as I will be making several transcontinental flights this week. As much as I'd like to be able to tell my Bangladeshi post-docs idea of having Bush and Ahmadinejad just duke it out in an arena Battle Royal style to avoid a war, or how my next-door neighbor's stomach is revolting against her Indian heritage by making her sensitive to curry and tea, I'm afraid it will have to wait another day.

If you're wondering, I'm going to have a medical school interview at Louisville on Wednesday, followed by a straight trip to the Philippines, where graft and nepotism exist,but it plays in favor for my family.

This is what my schedule will be like for the next week:

Tuesday 9/25/07 4:45PM Leave Boston Logan Airport
6:30PM CST Arrive Chicago O'Hare
7:30PM Leave Chicago
10:00PM EST Arrive Louisville Airport
Wednesday 9/26/07 10:00AM Drive aunt to work
12:00 Noon Sign in at the University of Louisville School of
Medicine Office of Admissions
4:00PM Day of bliss ends
7:45PM Leave Louisville Airport
8:29PM Arrive Chicago O'Hare, again
9:20PM Leave Chicago
Thursday 9/27/07 12:30AM Arrive Boston Logan
12 Noon Leave Boston Logan, getting repetitive
2:02PM Arrive Detroit Airport
3:00PM Leave Detroit
Friday 9/28/07 10:45PM Arrive in Manila, Philippines
Saturday 9/29/07 5:00AM Leave Manila for heart of darkness in the Philippines
7:00AM Arrive in rural, feudal provinces
Thus, if you been adding this up, I'm in the air for over 30 hours this week (42 if you include the 12 hours I lose crossing the International Date Line). Which is probably the reason why I'm kissing sea level right now. At any rate, if you haven't heard any news of me leading a rebellion of syndicalists and getting myself named Grand Moff of the Philippines, I'll tell you guys how my travels went.

The Crazed Filipino Show

2007-09-14T01:28:00.000-04:00

Last week, I started working in a laboratory in the Pharmacology department looking at transgenic worms carrying the encoded LRRK2 gene which is tied to ubiquitin degradation in Parkinson's disease. If anyone can point out how this is related to Pharmacology, please tell me.

So I went on a double date tonight: a high school classmate and her date, me and her sister. Hearing she had just gotten into college around Boston, I thought the sister was a freshman, though she turned out to be a junior transfer. Except does it still count as a double date if it was just me, my high school classmate and her sister when the date canceled? Especially since I paid for only the sister? And should I feel relieved and yet unadventurous the sister wasn't five years younger than me?

On for more sitcom situations: stay tuned as Joel has to go to two parties at the same. And the guest he encounters is hilarity!

Damn, I need a theme song.

Born in the Wrong Decade

2007-09-06T22:36:00.000-04:00

Line from Pharmacology lecture today:

"Researchers found the receptors for THC, the active substance in marijuana, through active testing."

Another throwback from the 60's is this article from the Onion I keep on reading and wishing I was there when Slaughterhouse Five was first published.

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

You Can Take the Boy Out of the Ivory Tower...

2007-08-31T00:30:00.001-04:00

I finished three secondary apps to medical school today (UIC, Tufts, and Drexel), when I looked over the essays I wrote and saw I referenced Socrates, Ray Bradbury, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Do the med admission committees appreciate essays with footnotes?

Ironically, my secondary application to UChicago had only one quotation. Not from Durkheim or Nietzche, but Star Trek:TOS. If there is no one who gets that reference on the committee, I'm in the wrong field.

Better Homes and Gardens than Mine

2007-08-29T12:50:00.000-04:00

So since I bought/was given for free half of old Shoreland East's furniture, I thought of showing what my room looked like now instead of clogging mailboxes with 360 KB worth of jpegs.

Here's my bed, with its low Japanese frame I bought for $20, oriented horizontally to the room as Vanessa suggested, which actually gives me the greatest amount of walking space and room for Poulos' old desk and my shelves and closet.

Now, time to stop procrastinating and do my secondaries since school doesn't begin till next week...or find some other activity to waste my time.

Guess I Should Stop Pissing Off Those Norse Gods

2007-08-16T00:48:00.000-04:00

My reward for finishing the MCATs and not feel utterly broken:

9 medical secondary applications to fill out
$485 to pay out with said apps
3 neuro articles to read before I work in a Parkinson's disease lab
and 40 days to pack until a trip to the Philippines.

No wonder I want to be distracted by power tools, fire and alcohol.

Complete with a Ceiling Crawling Crack Baby

2007-08-10T17:32:00.000-04:00

I've been up since 4 AM studying MCAT Chemistry and finished two Med School Secondary Applications. That was such a rush...(puts out cigarette on arm)...I'M ALIVE!!!!
And now I need a fifth of bourbon, a monkey wrench and a blowtorch.

Wonder Boy

2007-08-07T15:19:00.000-04:00

Note: This is an old essay I wrote in high school that I recently found.

March 4, 2001

One October morning, I frequented the annual St. James Art Fair, which showcased local crafts and products. While I tried to conduct warmth to my benumbed fingers from a Styrofoam cup of coffee, I gazed at some Quechuan tapestries from Ecuador. The proprietor of the Ecuador stand must have mistaken me for a Hispanic, since he greeted me in Spanish and inquired if I came from South America. I replied no. After he named several other Latin American countries he thought I came from, I curtly retorted, " I'm Asian!" He uttered meekly "¡Ay! You're Asian; then you must be smart."
I contemplated first whether or not I actually did appear Latino. However, the fact that the vendor associated the word "smart" with my race flooded into my mind many thoughts and meditations. The stereotypical Asian has a high IQ, a superior mentality in mathematics and science, and an industrious, competitive and perfectionist work ethic. In short, everyone expects the Asians to be geniuses.
Of course, this view has misconceptions, and it seems racist to correlate Asians with intelligence. But, I too have enhanced this cliché by appearing as the cliché; in public I assume the prototype of the Asian whiz kid. I wear a conservative and unpretentious suit of turtlenecks and polo shirts. I talk in a smug and pretentious voice, as if I do know it all. I even opted to wear glasses instead of contacts because I thought glasses would amplify my highbrow persona. Thus, I have become what everyone thinks I am, a prodigy.
For all the regular people with average intelligence, I would like to apologize for making you look inferior. But, since my mother gave birth to me, my father has always craved a reason to boast about his son. My cousin had an astounding singing voice that my uncle would gloat about for hours. My envious father found no vocal or athletic talent in me; he almost accepted me as average when my kindergarten counselor had me take an Advance Program test and I scored in the top four percentiles. Now, my father brags about his genius son, with his high SAT score at age fifteen, his all A report card, and his thirty academic awards. I feel sometimes that I have not lived up to my father's image of me, but I must continue this illusion that I am some sort of genius. So, I enrolled in a nationally distinguished high school and have tried for the last three years to impress my doting father with academic accolades.
My parents did not put all of this anxiety on me alone. Society placed a great deal of pressure on this generation of teens. I know many of my peers feel overwhelmed by their expectations. Today's world requires everyone to be educated. Politicians habitually clash over the best way to improve education. College admissions have become highly competitive; the statistics from the College Board shows Ivy League schools like Harvard University only accepts 12% of the students who applied there, and approximately 30,000 high school seniors applied.
The title of genius has become more hallowed than before. In the 1980's, genius meant geek, nerd, Steve Urkel. Now, genius means Bill Gates and money. Naturally, I enjoyed when people called me an Einstein. So I carried on this façade by studying for tests four days ahead of time, by typing compositions over until they reached perfection, and by researching until I found the answer to a question. This reputation as a genius, I realized later, gained me nothing internally. I alienated people and made myself antisocial. I had no stable friendship and even those who tolerated me thought of me as a nuisance. When PSAT scores arrived, I became so irate that someone else's score was higher than mine that I forgot my score probably qualified me for the National Merit Scholarships. I berated myself for receiving a B+ in Advanced Placement Computer Science until it dawned that some people, like my friend Cynthia, cannot even turn on a computer without slapping it.
So, recognizing how much of pompous jerk I became, I lightened up. Out of character, I became the manager of the girls' basketball team my freshman year, but that is a different story. Today, I try to balance my intellectual side with my personal side. Sometimes, not wanting to sound condescending, I would say something irrelevant and quirky. I would rather people think of me as an amiable eccentric than an arrogant show-off.
In the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow desperately wanted a brain, even though, he had no guarantee the Wizard would give him an exceptional brain. The Wizard might give him a retarded brain and the poor Scarecrow would have gone on thinking he was smarter than a flying monkey. Still, the Scarecrow did realize he lacked something most people, like me, take for granted. I empathize with the Scarecrow, afraid that I will not fit other peoples’ judgement of aptitude. But, I have learned the only person my intelligence can truly satisfy is myself, so I have begun to live without pressures or contention, and I think I have finally begun to enjoy life for the first time. Humanity can recognize me as a genius or a predestined Nobel Laureate if it wishes to, but I would like it to know me first personally rather than intellectually.

Don't Remember Having Personality DNA in the Lab...

2007-07-23T00:13:00.000-04:00

Muggle's Lament

2007-07-22T16:29:00.000-04:00

Actually I haven't had much time to do my secondaries since I've spent the past 11 hours sleeping and then prior to that 14 hours reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." The sad thing is I was alerted that the book was on-sale at Walgreens by Victor after I had spent two hours waiting in line at Borders at midnight.

If you want a review of the book, look on Amazon. All I have to say is it is a fitting ending to a seven-volume series that for a lot of fans they've been following for twelve years. But WHY J.K. ROWLING, WHY, DO YOU HAVE TO RELEASE THE BOOK EVERY DAMN TIME I'M STUDYING FOR THE MCAT?

Secondary Colors

2007-07-22T14:19:00.000-04:00

I received my first secondaries last week for med school, which puts into perspective that in the next six months, I will retake the MCATs, work in a Parkinson's disease lab, gather data to write a paper for a thesis committee to tear apart, write more secondaries and hopefully get interviews, TA for Histology and go to the Philippines for a week.

But like my grandpa said, "If this family could survive WWII, this family can do anything."
God bless his Japanese-hating bones.

The Lone Gunman

2007-07-15T00:59:00.001-04:00

I am the last of Shoreland East.

Well, actually Tera Ellefson is here in Boston too, but of the original Kids, I am the last one since Poulus and Vanessa have returned to Chicago.

I tried to fill the void with work. That did not help.
I tried to fill the void with study. That did not help.
I tried to fill the void with drinking, clubbing, and making out with hot girls. That partially helped, but the fact the conversations I had always turned to MCATs, med school application, and Red Sox reminded me of what I was missing. Also, it didn't help that I am durnk.

Anyway, I remain in Boston for at least another academic year, so if anyone is visiting, call my cell (773-xxx-xxxx) or email me. Seriously, I'll be missing the conversation.

How I Feel About Summer Action Movies (or why is it that Keanu Reeves survived in "Chain Reaction" but the Asian Scientist got Shot)

2007-07-02T19:38:00.000-04:00

Pretty much sums it up for me...

Crap... better start breeding.

2007-06-21T15:51:00.000-04:00

Things I've been doing to procrastinate studying:

1. Change layout of blog.
2. Damning Science.
3. Look up old Onion articles.
4. Damning Science and Weathor, Evil God of Weather Chaos against Scav, again.

Study: Uneducated Outbreeding Intelligentsia 2-To-1

CHICAGO-In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as fast and twice as often as its educated.

Adventures in Medical Bureaucracy

2007-06-15T12:46:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid of becoming just another tool in a vast, convoluted and highly inefficient machine called health care. A great big tool.

I had to go to BU's Student Health Services to get an ear infection treated last week. First thing they had me do was get an MMR - because apparently different offices of BU don't share important student documentation, like their immunization records. So I wasted 20 minutes standing in line with international students for a vaccine which I later found out I was already up-to-date on.

Then they had me wait in the clinic for another 5 minutes for the doctor to prescribe that my ear be washed with a saline-water solution (apparently, it wasn't an infection, my ear canal was just clogged with wax). So I waited another 20 minutes in a clinic, which afterwards the nurse practitioner doused my ear canals with cold saline solution that while cleaned my ears put a lot of cold pressure on my ear drums and lead to me being dizzy, disoriented, and somehow on a bus going to Chestnut Hill.

The moral of this story: don't use Q-tips in the ear canals.

Inanimate Objects that Probably Hate Me If They Gained Life...

2007-06-12T14:16:00.000-04:00

includes Vanessa's car, which in the past week, has undergone inadvertently thanks to me...
1) had a mattresses strapped to its top
2)accidentally had its doors tied up because of the strapped mattress, causing the driver and passenger to attempt to get in through the window (the driver succeeded).
3) was driving down Storrow Drive at about 10 mph below the speed limit, which then was 35 mph below the speed of everyone else driving on Storrow Drive
4) got stuck during through Back Bay looking for metered parking during the Boston Pride 2007 festivals
5) got stuck and almost blindsided in Chinatown
6) I kept on closing the door on a seat belt.

Revenge of the Nerd’s Romantic Life

2007-06-04T01:31:00.000-04:00

As advised by my legal counsel (the former Shoreland Scav captain) I will try to make some of the names involved as ambiguous as possible since this blog is open to the public (and I don’t really feel like using LiveJournal).

At any rate I was back in Chicago for Alumni Weekend. I left an UnCommon Core Lecture given by my old Biological Diversity professor, Dr. LaB to have lunch with Victor at Salonica, a lecture which culminated in Dr. LaB taking off his pants and standing in a water tank demonstrating the amazing world of biological fluid mechanics. This has nothing to do with the rest of the story but it needed mentioning.

At Salonica, Girl #1 called me just as I’m sitting down into the booth. She wanted to meet up, as friends, and actually this is the least messy romantic flameout involved in this story. We made plans to have dinner that night. I gave Victor a vague response as to who Girl #1 is. He justifiably gave me a skeptical look.

Some time as we were finishing up lunch, Paul, an old friend, CS major, Mac Labbie, and Max P Scavvie comes into the diner and saw both of us. He’s waiting for Harold, another ’06 alum who’s now working in SF for Facebook. Unfortunately, Harold was walking to Salonica with Girl #2, who I haven’t had a decent conversation with since May 2005. I made a horrified look, Victor realized who she is too, Paul informed me Salonica has a men’s bathroom in the back. Inside said men’s bathroom, I texted Victor, “Is it safe?” His reply: “Yes.” Coming back to the booth, I asked if it was bitter and rancorous of me to host the Shoreland Scav HQ in my dorm triple that year across from her room. Victor said it is if my only reason was because she hated Scav Hunt. I said the main reason was b/c Shoreland needed an HQ and it was an added benefit. He said then its okay if it wasn’t the major incentive.

Harold then joins us and then all four of us started talking about the good old days, and what's been going on in Chicago. After a spirited conversation on the etymology of the word “bugger”, I found out that Harold lived in a certain dorm, incidentally, one floor right above the girl who gave me the only reason to visit that dorm. I shared my experience about that disastrous night with Girl #3, including the involvement of a certain “Creepy Guy” who we all know… and know. Needless to say, some very personal information was shared. I apologized retroactively to Harold for any noise I may have made being there. All four of us discussed the uselessness of Creepy Guy.

So yes, I was forced to remember the wackiness of my romantic life at the University of Chicago, which possibly could make for a very bad after-school movie or a very good teen sex comedy. It really seemed all too coincidental. Any idea what God or the makers of The 40-Year Old Virgin are trying to tell me?

2007-05-23T22:39:00.000-04:00

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's...

JoelNotes

2007-05-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

As suggested by this NYT article
if I had to list all of the novels that I thought were too long -

The Scarlet Letter - whole thing in one headline: PURITAN SLEEPS WITH REVEREND, BORES 11TH GRADERS FOR YEARS TO COME
A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens was paid by the installment (chapter)...and it shows.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Enjoyed most of the book, but could have done without the last two decades.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - did Hermione really have to campaign for house elves' rights? How would that help fight Voldemort?
The DaVinci Code - Monty Python's search for the Holy Grail is better.
Ayn Rand - anything she's written. Why did I have so many copies of the Fountainhead as a 1st year?
The March - As long as the Civil War.
Finnegan's Wake - I still haven't finished reading it...

Can't sleep, clown'll eat me.

2007-05-20T19:26:00.000-04:00

Just for exposition's sake, I was staying over at my cousin's house over the weekend and slept in their basement, which was also their kids' playroom. Both their kids being boys and under the age of five, the playroom was naturally littered with toys.

Ok, so the real story begins when I was getting ready to sleep when I heard this horrible, mechanical noise out in the darkness. Being groggy and having drank a fifth of bourbon earlier, I thought it was my imagination, so I went back to closing my eyes.

Like twenty minutes later, I heard the same mechanical, scratchy noise again, and could distinguish that it sounded like laughter. Another 10-15 minutes later, the same horrendous laughter again. I finally got up, trying to look for what this shit was, turned out the basement lights, and looked around. What grabbed my attention the most was this clown doll of my nephew's was lying on its side on the floor, but when
you pressed the button on its back, it made the same piercing laughter I had heard. Having seen horror movies about toys killing people, I threw the toy into a toy chest and slept in the family room under the pretense it was cold in the basement.

Now, I hadn't heard the clown toy before that night, so it couldn't have been a sound I would remember which leads me to wonder -
was it a) just my imagination and my psychosis playing tricks on me?
b) a mechanical failure of the toy?
c) the beginning of that creepy Stephen King novel?

So, yeah, to sum up this entry, Spring finals are done and possessed toys are haunting me.

Political Side: Don't agree with giving total amnesty in new immigration bill, but at least it takes care of better enforcement policies.
Personal Side: Congratulate my friend V for giving me further incentive to visit Chicago again.

Party Like Its 2008

2007-05-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

Anyone else tired of the 2008 Election already? I dug up this old article of mine from three years back about the problems of the primary system today. What did most states do? Try to move up their primaries to earlier dates. My only mistake - what crack was I smoking when I picked Dick Gephardt?
"Primary system fails America"
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/viewpoints/articles/2004/01/20/primary_system_fails.php

If only U.S. presidential elections were chosen by the candidate who got the most items on a Scav Hunt list...one can dream.

Duck Soup Part II

2007-04-29T20:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've been away from reporting my self-deprecating experiences in life. Not that it hasn't been as random or "Joelesque" as usual, but hey, I've been busy. I have finals. I have people to see and remark about the absurdity of life. For someone else's misadventures visit this site. He also has webcomics.

First, I still would like to send out my sympathies to the Virginia Tech campus for their courage and sacrifice these past two weeks. At first, I was concerned about reprisals against the Asian-American community, and in particular the Korean-American community, because of who the gunman was - which was a concern of many of my friends at BU. But, which reassured me about humanity, most people didn't want to pay attention to the images of the gunman and instead focused on grieving the victims, helping the survivors, and how to improve the outlets of mental health resources for the college students to be able to use.

On a different tangent, I have been mistaken for a different ethnicity in three different places this weekend (Fenway, Starbucks, Bed, Bath & Beyond). And it was by people of that ethnicity - like there was a Chinese-American woman asking me about bridal registry for her daughter? at Bed, Bath & Beyond. How many languages can you say - "I am Filipino, I'm sorry I can't speak your language." ?

It doesn't work to Babelfish the sentence. I have to be able to speak it phonetically. And how surprising is it for me to be mistaken for Indian?

All Look Same?

2007-04-10T20:52:00.000-04:00

One more thing - Stupid Dice-K Mania in Boston
Do I look like the guy in this picture, or should the drunken Irish Bostonians take a lesson in racial sensitivity?
My favorite response so far
-"What do they think of Dice-K back in your home country?"
"Well, since the Japanese drove my family into hiding during WWII, we don't think highly of them."

Glad its not all in my family

2007-04-10T20:31:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I'm back, but busy. I will have a blog page to regale you with stories about my many travels these last few weeks, but here's an entry with a family secret I would have rather never wanted to have known...
My dad dated a senator's daughter from Kentucky.
That senator lost to this current douchebag, who latest episode, while I disagrees with in idea, brings up the question - really do you want shitty acts like Black Eyed Peas and David Gray on your lawn?

Joel is Currently Unavailable...

2007-03-24T11:24:00.000-04:00

as he will be traveling 6000 miles in the next two weeks, building houses in New Orleans for Katrina relief, improving his tolerance for Evangelicals, and bonding with his male cousins in Miami. He will be a living Johnny Cash song ("I've Been Everywhere", not "Ring of Fire.")

I'll keep you guys posted.

Luck of the Joelish

2007-03-20T23:00:00.000-04:00

So St. Patrick's Day 2007 for me involved my nostrils being so filled with mucus that I couldn't breath, the city covered in snow, ice, and what the Weather Channel described as "undetermined precipitation," and studying for a midterm.

The week before was when I did most of my St. Paddy's day celebration at the Harpoon Brewery St. Pat's Festival. Not going to delve into the sordid details; but it ended up I being the relatively sober one in the party (screw you, Asian flush and my ALDH mutation!!), yet still being coerced into doing an Irish jig for a radio station t-shirt. And then being asked to have an Irish dance-off with someone else. And trying to remember if people were videotaping this and searching YouTube for any videos of a Filipino doing Riverdance for the past week.

I should have taken the dance-off challenge; they're so rare.
Somehow I do feel cheapened by this experience, but it is a nice t-shirt (WBOS 92.3). I didn't get a damn thing for this video 5 years ago.

So why am I afraid of a video now? Can't blame being a high-schooler like in this one.

Catholics have more fun...

2007-03-07T15:11:00.001-05:00

I've decided to give up Youtube for Lent, if only because it's a distraction (an amusing one.)
Also, the Archbishop of Philadelphia posted videos about how we could doing more with our lives than watching Youtube, which while ironic - because then I wouldn't be watching his videos- convinced me I need to ween myself off Youtube.

Hey, if there is an afterlife, it's gotta be a lot of fun for Catholics...

New Topics for discussion: why the concept of arrythmias hates me
Ann Coulter vs. John Edwards - will this finally shut them up?

All that glitters isn't necessarily gold...

2007-03-06T22:11:00.000-05:00

Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll

Face it - a world where airplay has been conquered by Justin Timberlake deserves a rockapocalypse.

Stating the obvious

2007-02-28T23:57:00.000-05:00

I've found out in the past week two of my ex-girlfriends are now engaged.

Yep, I'm so far unmarriageable.

Duck Soup

2007-02-18T20:32:00.000-05:00

Non Sequitur of the week (and it's just Sunday):
So I was discussing with V about a mutual friend, who for the sake of his girlfriend, was trying not to associate him with the word sketchiness, even though he's had contests to see who is the sketchiest.
Me: If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, sounds like a duck, it's a sketchy friend.
And then suddenly, an MBTA Cop came out from behind us and interjected,"So is it a duck?"
My stunned reply, "Yes... it's a duck."
Lesson - I need a softer outside voice.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! (Year of the Pig for non-Asians).

I blame E! Stop the Histrionic Personalities.

2007-02-17T01:03:00.001-05:00

1) Continuing secretarian violence and civil war in Iraq.
2) Democratic Congress challenging the Executive Branch on Constitutional war powers.
3) Palestinian coalition government still not officially recognizing Israel.
4) Escalation of offensive warfare from the Taleban in Afghanistan.
5) Nations meeting together to discuss how to stop global warming from worsening.
6) Iran being defiant on nuclear aims and its growing hegemony in the Persian Gulf.
7) Growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States.
8) Darfur peace talks stalled.
9) Aging baby boomers placing strain on the current health care system.
10) The 2008 Presidential primaries.

There. 10 relevant issues that deserve more press coverage than Anna Nicole Smith. The woman is dead, she didn't change America, and the course of this country will not divert knowing the father of her damn baby. GET OVER IT! I usually don't agree with Bill O'Reilly, but he's correct in pointing out the only value of her story is a warning about the irresponsibility of seeking attention. Don't start me on Britney Spears. Just go to obscurity in peace, woman.

Alexander Hamilton's Ghost is Shaking His Head at Me

2007-02-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

Is there anyone out there, either of noble stock or born in the 18th Century, who wants to officiate a duel?

I forgot how this rake has impugned my dignity, but I know it shall not go unpunished.
His mistake that Boston Common is near the Charles shall also not go unpunished.

For anyone not interested in dueling, here's a comic strip demonstrating the cheap way of presenting in the science world.

Portrait of the Artist on Speed

2007-02-02T02:57:00.000-05:00

riverrun. rivering run. river running running. trains running. rosebud was his sled. truck tires screech when stop. stop lights blinking. sirens wailing. must leave south boston. boston crazy. parents crazy. think i would randomly pick up lighted packages left on sidewalks. i know what aqua teen is. indonesian hobbits. p ≠ np? only the central time zone cares about this years super bowl. need whiskey - sour, mahattan, straight, neat, no rocks, no chaser. story of my life. boy meets girl. boy tutors girl. boy loses girl. cold. no snow. nhs4ever. minimum wage. bite and bark, but biting wrong peopl e. caddy smells like trees. caddy's drawers are muddy. benjy i is gonna climb the fence. aughhhh! you see, william faulkner, its writing like that which is why youre burning in hell. like d lost generation books better. boats floating gatsby. running bulls in pamplona. chicago thinks i have money. alumni association hires friends from old house to track me down like a dog. cant even get own online account. weird. science. feel itchy - scratch-scratch-scratch - legs numb. nerst equation always there. med school cares about the nerst equation. got to her heart through the nerst equation. need sleep. badly. first sleep, then md diploma, then girlfriend, then kids, then revolution, then safecracking. explosions first sleep. wimper first, then bang. really wet and hot wimper.

Sign of the Apocalypse #3: Peyton Manning puts curse on Pats clutch, region of New England has winter of discontent

2007-01-22T20:19:00.000-05:00

Why are my guy friends coming to me about their broken, dysfunctional relationship problems? I'm currently finding my love life is only existant when I'm in Chicago, and I can't afford flying back all the time, what with the Redline prices going up thanks to rising gas prices.

Point is I guess I'm just been more lucky with my personal life so far than some of my friends. All I can suggest to you all my buddies is to pray to St. All-the-people-I-know-as-single-and desperate-as-me-are -my-other-friends for intervention.

On a seperate note, congrats to Da Bears, and those 2 weeks between the NFC championship and the Super Bowl means Bears fans have a lot more time to do crazy, half-ass stuff, like giving birth.

Being Prepared

2007-01-21T13:29:00.000-05:00

HERE LIES JOEL
LOVING SON, HUSBAND, FATHER

HE WAS JAKE BARNEY AND KEVIN TIRELLA'S
ONLY ROOMMATE TO BE FOUND
SLEEPING ON THE COUCH WEARING
BOXERS AND A FOOTBALL HELMET

This would be carved on my tombstone if my old roommates had their way. I suppose there are worse epitaphs, but sure as hell better ones.

Irony of Ironies

2007-01-18T02:18:00.000-05:00

And now for something completely different from waxing about philosophies on a train ride.

The Augusta Chronicle and every other media source is discussing how James Brown's last testament and will was drawn up before his last marriage in 2001 and thus excludes his wife and 5-year son. Yeah, I'm concerned about the legacy and familial problems this will create... but get this - James Brown (Godfather of Soul, singer of "Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud," had Al Sharpton as a tour manager) had Strom Thurmond Jr. as his probate lawyer. Yes, the son of that Strom Thurmond. The one NNDB officially lists as a "Racist senator/closet miscegenator." The one who ran for president in 1948 on a platform of segregation and in 1957 filibustered the Civil Rights Act. The one who Trent Lott lost his job to complimenting him.

The really creepy thing is that Jr. was about 30 years old - when his 100-year old father died.

As I see it, either jail time really mellowed out Soul Brother Number #1, or Strom Jr. is really good at probate law.

Musings on a transcontinental trip on an Amtrak train

2007-01-18T01:01:00.000-05:00

I will never again take a transcontinental trip on an Amtrak train. Damn you Lake Shore Limited! Luxurious Viewliner accomodations my ass!!!
There is something eternal about traveling through the Midwest on a winter night. Yeah, the images of a Norman Rockwell painting appear hokey and charmingly ancient and the image of early 20th century small town America is a whitewashed ideal that no one alive remembers firsthand. But the rural midwest I saw from my frosty train window are aware and savvy of how urban America has changed, and yet they adapt slow enough to retain their immediate charm. The single iron lamppost lightling the show gently falling on the tracks at the edge of the station. The small town main streets, selling cell phones and soy-based products from new stores, but still retaining their Victorian-style buildings as they intersect with the tracks. The lone silos and decaying barns out in a icy, fallow field. The Georgian-style farmhouses perserving their families' character and independence. The orchard trees decorated with laces of ice, like a forest of glass trees. Out here, you lose a sense of urgency, and with it, disposability. These structures carry with the the tradition of both grandeur and purpose; they were meant to withstand time and fashion. And long after I passed these small towns and independent farms, I wished that they would continue to persevere long after a string of presidents, appliances, and non-essential celebrities. Although I don't agree with all the thoughts and actions of rural America, I find one of their virtues - endurance - something we are always in short supply.

Perhaps Indiana and Ohio are only meant to be seen in the dark.

After witnessing what northern upstate New York - i.e Buffalo - looks like - broken machinery, disrepaired and abandoned factories and mills, burning tires, polluted rivers, I now realize why two of my closest friends are obsessed with post-apocalyptic dystopian futures. Thunderdome anyone?

I had breakfast in the dining car sharing a table with an electromagnetic physicist from Syracuse and his precocious 5-year old daughter (is there any other?) He seemed interested in how my progression into med school was going, and as someone who was an outside observer, appeared extremely critical of the entire process. His experience was with former students at Syracuse University, including one girl who took the most advanced physics and chemistry classes, but was passed over last year. His conclusion was that medical schools were not looking for the most challenged or the most intelligent candidates, but the most accomplished and best work-ethic (the ones with the best GPAs). If not for the MCATs, I would totally have agreed with him, and even then he made some convincing arguments. I went back over a speech my adviser gave from the outgoing AAMC President in 2005 about how the sorry state of medical admissions treated its American candidates, and realized, I wish that physicist guy would be on my admission board... and maybe my friends.

That's my trip on Amtrak. Never listening to you on transportation advice again, Kevin!

2007-01-08T01:09:00.000-05:00

Previously on Joel's blog...

Joel had just finished his finals at Boston University and was looking forward to a relaxing end to 2006, when...

the Amish ecoterrorists escape with the mutant virus on their helicopter, but an intrepid Asian jumps from the rooftop to make their getaway more complicated...

Andy and Kevin's car chase across San Francisco ends in a fiery blaze, not knowing who survived...

the Scav Hunt team finally reaches Mordor with their ring of duct tape, closely followed by an army of orcs

Joel races to stop the colorblind technician from making the fatal mistake with cutting the blue wire...while in his room, temptation awaits....

and in a final disaster waiting to happen, someone brings a bottle of Johnny Walker to Joel's family.

To be continued 2007

2006-12-14T15:43:00.000-05:00

"what would you attempt to do
if you knew you could not fail?"

- written on a coffee mug sitting atop the towel dispenser in a men's bathroom at Boston Medical Center

2006-12-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

Protein synthesis: an epic on the cellular level

Hippies meet Protein Synthesis

This was played in my Biochemistry class today as a surprise. I'm pretty sure my physics teacher from high school played the role of "the T-factor."

One thing you have to wonder - was the puff of smoke symbolic of any energy given off or ATP used, or was it just a byproduct of whatever they were on making the video?

2006-11-22T00:36:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving Tradition:

Yeah, I'll be participating in this one in the next 6 hours.
But while we gather round the table to celebrate the one time American settlers weren't decimating Native American populations with smallpox and guns, I think back... actually not to anything Thanksgiving related, but to this conversation I had with my friends (for anonymity's sake, named N and V in this post) a few weeks ago driving to Rhode Island. This was after N had "caught the flirtatious eye" of a waitress at Friendly's, and us carrying the joke to a whole new level.

V: We have to tell (N's significant other) that he's a hearthrob.
Me: Of course. Don't you remember that N was a teen hearthrob on that show on TV. What was it?
N: You know, that popular teen drama show.
V: Laguna Beach.
N: That's the one.
Me: And before that,you were on Beverley Hills: 90210 playing the cute kid brother.
N: Yeah, I was a child star too.
Me: What did you do with all the money you made as a child star?
N: Spent it on crack.
V: No hookers?
N: No, they just came to me.
Me: Yeah, why spend anything if you could get it for free?
N: Exactly.

And finally, they lied to you about those Pilgrims and their adventures. Stupid Hooflin-Mifflin history books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

Can you ever understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control, and with nowhere left to go, and then see people who have all those things in their lives? You're amazed that they exist and they burn so bright while you can only wonder, "why?" And then someone tells you you're one of them?

When the Hell did going to grad school become part of a "driven, organized life?"

2006-11-15T20:29:00.000-05:00

Return to Form: aka more random thoughts.

A homeless/drunk/schizophrenic (pick one, I don't care) was sitting at the back of the bus during my morning commute saying a very loud, and very chauvinistic prayer. According to him, I'm a part of the "sodomites, nuclear terrorists, homosexuals, and pedophiles" ruining the country and driving it down to Satan because I'm an immigrant. Well, glad to know I'm a vessel of the devil.

My friend Robert does work with the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think tank dedicated to combatting the spread of strategic weapons and limiting current stockpiles. That's the good news - such a group exists. The bad news: they're realizing the IAEA has a lack of candor about what their job is supposed to be. For more information on why the fallout shelter might go back in style, visit these critiques 1) and 2) at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

2006-11-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

My president is a Fish.

Also, I'm beginning to believe Deus ex Machinas fall from the sky for the angels' entertainment.

2006-11-08T23:42:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted in a while.
a) I'm a bad blogger
b) I have a life outside of the Internet
c) I'm lazy
d) Two of these choices are correct
e) All of these choices are correct.

AP has just announced

America

coma. Tell me America, how do you feel?
"Groggy, and like my legs have atrophied. What's been going on since I lost consciousness?"
We've been in Iraq for 3 years, Iran and North Korea are emboldened to gain nuclear weapons, global warming's gonna kick our ass, and we pissed our surplus to give money back to the rich.
"Okay.... what else is new?"
The Red Sox and White Sox have won a pennant.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! PUT ME BACK TO SLEEP!"

In the meantime, more self-professed evangelical Christian American voters voted for the Democratic Party in this election than ever before this decade. Which makes sense now realizing that Karl Rove probably could make Satan his bitch.

What does it say when the highlight of my day is riding on an illegally-overcrowded bus (Damn you MBTA! You win again T!) and falling off into a puddle, and the only reason why that was the highlight of my day was in attracted the sympathy of a cute girl in my lab? Yeah I thought so.

I'll write more later. Promise.
In the meantime just read an article I've written prior to the election and look at a picture of my friend dressed as Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment for Halloween. (Yes, he still is my friend.)

2006-10-20T19:31:00.000-04:00

It's official. I categorized myself.

Pure Nerd

86 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Professional Wrestling

Love & Sexuality

America/Politics

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 99% on geekosity
You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

2006-10-13T00:36:00.000-04:00

I try so hard for beaver too.

2006-10-11T20:36:00.000-04:00

Reading Headlines as if I was guest-hosting the Daily Show.

Been a while since my last post. And thanks to Exam Week, will probably be another while.
Even though I feel like I'm in Hell and am just recovering from stress-induced frequent urination, I still like this better than midterms at the U of C.

So a runthrough of the headlines today.

1) It doesn't pay to be a Yankees fan this postseason. My condolences to Cory Liddle's family and friends, and to Larry David.

Why Larry David?
Let's take this quote from one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld, and think of Larry David speaking George's lines:

Cushman: I gotta tell you, you are the complete opposite of every applicant we've seen. Mr. Steinbrenner, sir. There's someone here I'd like you to meet. This is Mr. Costanza. He is one of the applicants.
Steinbrenner: Nice to meet you.
George Costanza: Well, I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past twenty years, you have caused myself, and the city of New York, a good deal of distress as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughing stock, all for the glorification of your massive ego.
Steinbrenner: Hire this man!

Unfortunately, I don't think this is how Torre got to keep his job.

2) First "South Park" was on the dot about Mel Gibson. Now it seems Team America: World Report was right about Kim Jong Il and the UN's call for swift action and its lack of impact on Pyongyang or it's march for nuclear status or call for unwanted attention (except the puppet thing, as far as I can tell). What's next, underpants gnomes are for real? Saddam has a gay thing for Satan...wait a minute....?

3) So there's a major Washington ethics scandal involving the influence peddling of former superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, 650.000 Iraqis have died since 2003, the National Intelligence Estimate concluded the Iraq war was exacerbating the Islamic terrorist threat by fueling resentment toward the United States and providing a training ground for terrorist recruits, the large deficits thanks to the Iraq War and the tax cuts, Katrina, and the basic lack of environmental or ethical oversight. And the only reason why there is a chance of upseating one of the most uncontrolled, fundamentalist group of politicians ever to have the majority in Congress is because of one horny Republican closeted gay congressman who didn't realize emails can still be hard evidence in Ethics Committee hearings.

Not to belittle Democrats, because I align most of time with them when the choices are weak-willed intellectuals or madmen, but if and when the Democrats have a majority in a house of Congress, they're going to have to address the important issues which weren't fully annunciated in this midterm election, because the media cares about this damn pointless sex scandal. I know a win is a win and Democrats should take what they can get, but this is ridiculous.

Should I be happy that this is how Republicans fall from grace? Not really. Especially because this just confirms the whole "family values is the only issue" theory.

That Hobbesian state is looking better all the time.

4) Well, at least Fox News is doing they're best to belittle the Foley scandal for what it is.

5) And finally, if you feel the Earth wobble, that means we're all doomed. If you're a mammal.
But you knew that anyway.

Alright back to the books. See you when I feel like procrastinating again.

2006-10-04T18:09:00.000-04:00

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Note to Reader: The author's brain is mush from rote memorization before a Biochemistry exam. His Humbuckers are offline.

2006-10-02T00:11:00.000-04:00

Ever have one of those days where you're sitting in a room reading a passage on hemoglobin, or just walking down the street on a rainy day, and you stop... and start to wonder -
"How did I get down to this street? How did I get to this chapter in the textbook? Basically, you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?"

And you cue the 80s music. And you remember the phrase Talking Heads is more than Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly using their massive foreheads to intimidate guests.

So you have to remind myself:

I was born on October 21, 1983, at least that's what my parents tell me.

I would have been happy to go to an ordinary school, receive an ordinary education, make ordinary friends, and live an ordinary life...

But my parents had me take an advanced placement test in kindergarten, and not knowing the trouble it would cause, I naturally tried my very best, was labelled ADVANCED for the next years of my life in the primary school system, and was immediately shipped to the best schools in Kentucky...

Then when that got expensive, my parents transferred me to the best magnet school in the state, which furthered my resume-padding that America now applauds...

And sent me to one of the best academic institutions, where I realized that being blindfolded and in a dark cave wouldn't have been so bad if Socrates wasn't a little pederastic whiny bitch...

I would've been happy with an ordinary girlfriend, having an ordinary job, living an ordinary life. Teenage romance is the same thing. But somehow I always want the girls out of my reach - too pretty, too sexy, too psychotic, too much of an econ major...

Somehow I want the jobs and accomplishments that aren't befitting ordinary people, but an ordinary life looks so peaceful from up here in the tower...

Which leads you here, walking down the street, reading about the Bohr effect and which histidine residues are the main effectors on hemoglobin, on a rainy day, letting the days go by, and the water flowing underground.

And you cue the 80s music. And you remember the phrase Talking Heads is more than Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly using their massive foreheads to intimidate guests.

Seems like a logical day, right?

On a lighter note, we're closer to achieving a Leviathan state, one basically where we've just sold out our ideals for freedom and equality to all men for "security" of just "American citizens". Hobbes bless us, everyone.

2006-09-29T00:30:00.000-04:00

What's A Former Soviet Republic To Do?

Relatively short random thought today, but I saw a commercial from the Kazakh government. It's message? "Kazakhstan. Ever wonder?"

Sasha Baron Cohen, you're a genius in so many ways.

2006-09-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

The Science of Meep

Science has eaten my life. Working out at the gym, I think about what type of muscles I’m using and can actually picture the sarcomeres aligning together for the contraction, the triads releasing calcium so that the actin and myosin filaments can come together. I bit into a piece of chicken and thought what would this have looked like fixated underneath a microscope instead of frozen and deep fried. I look at a party and realize all my friends have inherited the mutant gene which improperly encodes aldehyde dehydrogenase, causing a malfunction in their metabolism of alcohol. I realize that this is the path to becoming a Mad Scientist, but I'd be in good company...

Besides, I have promised a couple of friends to turn them into cyborgs in 50 years when their original body parts fail some of them.

Conservatives dislike the poor. Liberals dislike the ignorant. Me, I'm not prejudice. I usually dislike everyone.

I've been meaning to avoid turning this into a political blog, but today, as more people in the Med Campus lounge paid attention to T.O. overdosing than say... the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan having a momentous meeting at the White House and driving the course of the War on Terrorism, or say a mad gunman taking a Colorado high school hostage, I'm finding it hard not to political, or to stop reading the editorials before the sports or funny pages. The more I'm concerned about the state of our country, the more I guess I want to be informed. Aristotle was right... not about the sun revolving around the earth thing, but that man is a political animal.

Yet our media is supesaturated with sensationalist "personal" stories concerning those poor celebrities who just can't be understood. (Drudge Report, I lost faith in you during the Terri Schiavo shit-tacular news coverage. FoxNews, we were never that close.) While a piece of my heart does go to every child who falls into a well or every multi-million dollar wide-receiver who gets depressed, can I go one day with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan acting... demur? Can't they do that one day so the rest of us can focus on the fact the world's going to shit?

And I end on a sad note: there are some days it just doesn't pay to be male.

2006-09-22T23:31:00.000-04:00

I actually asked an intelligent question about the Michaelis-Menten equation in class today. If you’ve never heard of it consider yourself blessed from the madness.

While on the Central time zone,

It’s O-Week at the University of Chicago. Right now thousands of matriculating first-year college students there are being lulled into a false sense of fun and merriment. How do I know?

The website on my friend's AIM away message:

NO-week

Actually, my years in Chicago were the best time of my life. No, not emotionally, psychologically or sexually, but where else can I have conversations about Star Wars and existentialism without going to a Comic-con?

Godspeed, Unit Kiersz. Godspeed!

2006-09-21T01:16:00.000-04:00

Why I write (aka what didn't fit in my damn 500 character limit profile)...

Because a honeybee flaps its wings in five milliseconds and the average American’s attention span is becoming shorter than that. Because we want to read insightful passages of literature only if they’re based on the movie. Because great speeches like the Gettysburg Address would today be reduced to five second soundbite on TV, followed by a techno remix on YouTube. Because as Bart Simpson eloquently phrased it – “T.V. ruined my imagination and my ability to ummmm, well uh....you know,” and I’ve watched a lot of TV in my life. So before I become banal like the rest of society and get run over because I saw a shiny object on the freeway, I’m dedicated to writing down my thoughts and events of the day (be them random or slightly random) simply because to better ourselves is to think… before I forget.

Today is my sister’s birthday. I sent her a text message. She hasn’t responded yet, so I don’t know if she got it, she appreciated it, or if she’s still alive.

I don't think she'd appreciate her future birthdays being the anniversary of the Thai Coup d'etat of 2006 (I hand it to Wikiphiles for naming this event faster than the media). The government of Thailand was overthrown in a bloodless military coup today, and actually most of the Thais and the King of Thailand supported it. Crazy that people prefer a military dictatorship over an unpopular, albeit-democratically elected government?

I remember my class on “State, Society and Democratization in Southeast Asia,” which summated that there are a variety of socio-and structural reasons dependent on each country-case that came down to one basic axiom - democracy doesn’t work in Southeast Asia. I don’t know what to think about Thailand, but hey, its instability has so far contributed to the Philippine economy growing. My 6-digit inheritance in Philippine pesos is now worth 4-digits in U.S. dollars.

I have a weird way of flirting. It's more noticeable if I demonstrate it in person. At least its not a handicap for me.