baited breath

I can see yours in the cold...

Ok, so it all seems to have boiled over, onto the stove, and settled, finally, on the floor in a cool mushy puddle. Things got worse, then kind of stayed in limbo for several excrutiating days, and now you'd barely know that WWIII had happened in my house. We are a bunch of drama queens, aren't we? (I'm definitely much less dramatic than I used to be, though.) I don't think all the roommies are particularly happy, but things seem to be pretty damn civil these past few days, thank goodness.

I've been spending a lot of time with my homeboys and homegirls (ewww, that just sounds gross) at SCUL. These people really are great, and kept me sane while my world seemed to be rapidly falling apart these past couple of weeks. My favorite neighbor also just lost his dad, and the gang has been really supportive of him, too. People who bike, I think, are just a little more cool than the rest.

Speaking of biking, I got a call at the MassBike office today from a writer at Bicycling magazine. He was looking for some quotes and info about commuting, of all things. Usually Bicycling is incredibly boring (and that's coming from someone who LIVES biking), but they are going to do a big section on commuting for Bike Month this year. I gave him some really dull, but honest, quotes and thanked him for writing the article. I neglected to mention that I just cancelled my subscription, beceause I thought the mag sucked...

Finally, I want to leave you with a little story about what I did while half the country was watching big men in little pants running around with a funny shaped ball. It turns out that one of the SCUL ladies is a scientist at a sprem lab. No kidding. She invited a bunch of us over to her place for dinner and realized that she needed to go to work to do a couple of things. Instead of just leaving, we all decided to tag along. One of our gallant young men offered to donate a bit of his manhood's progeny for our experimentation. So we got to watch his sperm flit about under the microscope looking forlorn without their egg. I sort of knew that there were different types of sperm cells, but you could really tell that they had different shapes and mannerisms. It's funny to think that all of these individual creatures live inside of a guy, and are, for all intents and purposes, part of the man. (cue Eric Idle...) While we were at the lab, we actually were even more excited to get a chance to play with the liquid nitrogen that they freeze the tiny 1/2 humans. We froze one of my bananas and shattered it on the sidewalk, and then ate some of it (it tasted shockingly similar to a non-tortured banana). We splattered the liquid nitrogen on the floor and watched it slither all over the place (it behaves a lot like mercury and doesn't seem to have any friction at all). And then one of the guys decided to try to burn his wart off with the stuff (which he knew was fairly safe because his doctor had done it to him before). All in all, we agreed that it was one of the best field trips we'd ever been on. Nothing like getting a bunch of geeks in a science lab...

who would you eat?

We're not so different. This little excercise is interesting in a number of different ways. I like to confront anti-abortion folks with these pictures of embryos from different species and ask them which ones are sacred, and which would you happily kill and eat? But the similarity could also be useful in illustrating the idea that humans, pigs, and chickens are pretty damn similar when you really get down to it. We're all just blobs of cells that have decided to organize themselves into shapes that have a head, some legs, eyes, heart, brain, and some other random stuff that has managed to keep us reproducing for millions of years.

Happy half moon day, everyone.

hope

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered...

America, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war."

Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

but keep trying!

I did my best to make my life a bit more tolerable last night (and thanks to some really great people, and too much beer) I was actually happy for 8 hours or so. Alas, several of my roommates had different plans, and managed to make my life pretty damn miserable. The thing is they made themselves miserable in the process. They actually asked me to move out because they think I'm causing all their problems. And I'm certainly no roommate saint, but I'm convinced that there's a lot more to it than just me (they complain that I'm too messy, but they also complain when I clean!). So I'm hoping to stay put (and I'm certainly willing to compromise even more). A similar situation happened to me about 12 years ago, and I did reluctantly move out, only to discover that within a couple of months so did everyone else, because after their scapegoat left they realized that they all hated eachother. Why does life have to be so difficult? As the writers for Buffy drilled into us all last season, "The hardest thing about the world is living in it."

Society seems to successfully break down one hurdle to survival, only to replace it with another hurdle. What happened to the life of leisure that the industrial revolution promised us :-)

not dead yet!

I'd pretty much given up on this journal thing, as I've just been too busy, and I'm kind of tired of staring at a computer screen these days (maybe it's a symptom of cabin fever). But I've been feeling shittier and shittier lately, and it occured to me that venting might be a good idea. So here's my vent list!

1. People suck. Last night, one of my roommates asked me one of those ridiculous hypothetical questions that I hate where a human and a cow are about to die, and who would I choose to save? Obviously, there's no one answer to this sort of unrealistic query, it really depends on all sorts of variables (had either one pissed me off lately, does one have a better chance of saving him- or herself, do I have a personal interest in saving either, would either of them be likely to die soon anyway, or would I really even be capable of saving anyone at all as I'm such a klutz?). But, if you boil the question down to what I think he was really curious about - Do I think that a human is more worthy of life than a cow? - then I have a bit of an easier time giving an answer. Short answer? No. For any number of reasons, the world is not better because the average person exists, and neither is the world significantly improved by the life of a cow. And if you want the long answer, then I would probably go futher and say that a human is more likely to do harm than the cow is, so it probably would be better for me to save the cow.

2. I live my life with a few simple beliefs. Things like caring about others, trying to give back more than I receive from the earth, and looking to make things better than they already are. It's sort of like a religion, without the silly omnipotent or semi-omnipotent creatures lurking about in some other dimension. My philosophy isn't set in stone, and I know that my modern, technophile lifestyle doesn't quite mesh with my ideals, but it does help me when I get confused or have trouble making a decision. Unfortunately, it also makes me extremely depressed when I do my best to live a good life and some of the people around me totally screw me over because of it.

3. I know I'm not perfect, but I get the distinct impression that most people are just incredibly superficial, selfish, uncaring, and utterly clueless. Example: I reluctantly invite a woman who also has cats to move in to our home, and her cats not only take over the house, leaving my poor kitty cowering under the bed 90% of the time, but she also leaves me a four page note telling me to keep my cat out of the living room! The note also declared that she thought that I was rude to ask her a (very benign) question while her boyfriend was in the room. In other circumstances I might have chalked up her cluelessness to being in a bad mood, but she'd literally just found out that she'd gotten a job she'd been wanting for months, and she was really happy. Added to all this stress with that roommate, I've also got to live with the moodiest man I've ever met, who has randomly decided (after fawning over me when he first moved in) that I am completely intolerable, and am apparently incapable of doing anything right.

4. Forget Iraq, there's a warzone right here, all around us in America. It's called the roads. Every time I step, or roll, off the curb and into the street - to go to work, perhaps - I fear for my life. I've been hit by idiots in cars at least four times in the past year. And no one seems to care. "People just don't look where they're going." was how the last police officer consoled me when I reported the SUV that ran through a stop sign and right into me in the middle of a crosswalk. It's become acceptable, even encouraged, to operate a motor vehicle dangerously. (The aforementioned roommates spend months on end playing Grand Theft Auto, a video game where the goal is to kill as many people as possible while driving around in stolen automobiles). The last time I had enough courage to get on my bike, I had to scream bloody murder at some asshole who just couldn't wait 5 seconds and decided to squeeze his 7 foot wide, 2000 pound, armored vehicle into the 4 foot wide space between myself and oncoming traffic.

I'm once again getting to a point where it's all becoming a bit too much for me to take. Time to cuddle up with my favorite feel-good movie, Contact, and see if I can't drag my terrified kitty out and give her a hug.