Great - now there goes my hat.

Well the camera crews should be arriving any day now, because it's time to make a fucking movie out of my life. The blog just doesn't do it justice any more. I don't even have time to write this, but I'm doing it anyway, because I need an outlet today, and that's what this is. So let's rewind to about 3 days ago, could have been more, who the fuck cares? No, actually let's rewind even further than that, back to about 1 month ago. When I slice brains at the lab I have to put them in cryoprotectant. They go into a fridge that's supposed to be -20 C, so that they don't rot (they are meat after all). They can be kept for months in there. When I started my last run of slicing I used the cryo that was in the freezer already, since it is a bit of a bitch to make, and the stuff that was in there was liquid I thought "why not, obviously it works". I was pretty sure I'd mixed it up months before for another project. I ran out of cryo, and since the slices need to go right in, and we didn't have time to order one of the substances we need for it I decided to borrow a recipe and some supplies from our neighbouring lab. I mixed it up with their recipe, hoping it wouldn't freeze. I've had trouble with this shit before, so I threw it in the freezer in a little vial to test it. It worked, so I used it. Basically, if the cryo doesn't freeze it works. If it freezes you're fucked, since the ice crystals poke holes in the cells and turn your tissue to mush. Try freezing an apple, thawing it, and eating it like it's not applesauce. Not happening. Aaaaaanyway. After that day I went to class and joked with two girls in my lab about how it was totally going to freeze anyway. We had a good laugh. See what happened was someone discovered that the freezer had risen in temperature, and so a massive cleaning was undertaken to melt all the frost out and get the efficiency back up, so the freezer would drop to 20. My joke was "what freezes between minus 10 and 20 degrees celcius? Bad cryo. I'd been f'ed too many times, and we laaaaughed and laaaaughed. The fridge was fixed, I threw my stuff back in, the temp dropped, everything was fine. I had 2 more batches to slice. I did it, and then to make up for some bad slicing, ordered some more rats in. I got around to slicing these about 3 days ago. I looked in the fridge and saw some of my vials frozen solid. You have got to be kidding me. I thought "crap, the new recipe is bad." I looked at my older vials: solid. You really are kidding me right? How did even that cryo freeze? I felt like collapsing. 2 weeks of staying up past midninght in the lab slicing for 6 frickin hours a day, down the drain. I went back to slicing, halfheartedly. I mixed up new cryo with the old recipe, now that we had all the ingredients. At the end of the day I had dealt with it emotionally, and was ready to start from scratch. I came in the next day to test my new cryo, and when I had another look at the thermometer in the fridge I noticed something. Yes, it was -20, but -20 F, which is -30 C. riiiight. No way of blaming anyone for this. Besides, there was some other tissue in there which was still in liquid cryo! WTF. I sent an email to Francesco, no answer. Francesco gave a talk in our grad TOX course, and just left after. Very out of character, he's the type to deal with this kind of thing right on the spot. What happened next? Well I went into the lab to fill out an order for more animals, and I asked him if he had a moment to talk about it. He didn't but later found me in the wet lab, transferring my latest slices into my new, working cryoprotectant. This is when the shit hit the fan. Francesco confessed that we had a problem here. He could not support me as a graduate student, we were incompatible at this point. It wasn't a personal thing, much the opposite. He still wanted to hang out, go skiing, do things together (this smacks of a break up doesn't it? "It's not you, it's me." It certainly felt like it.) Francesco is too young, too "poor" to support repeated attempts at things like this, there just isn't enough money to go around. There are others that do have the money for it. He was also very candid about the fact that he noticed that I didn't like the lab work, that my heart wasn't in it. I couldn't deny that. I cant' say I "like" slicing brains or killing rats. The research topic is growing on me, but I don't like the lab work, which means I am not thorough with it, it's not what I want to do with my life. I have to give him credit for calling me out on that. I never would have brought it up, I thought grinding through this shit came with the territorry of being a grad student. He told me that the more he looked at me the more he saw an animal in a cage, that I was just not meant for this kind of work. He's right, I'd rather be outside or in a class. . . He was almost in tears when he said that if he had the money he would give me everything I needed, a technician to do the dirty work, order new things in go over things meticulously in the lab - I guess all that softened the blow. Anyway, he informed me that he was going to contact the head of BioMed and see what other options were available something to me, possibly something more 'course based'. Frankly, that has a lot more appeal to me .. . Maybe even a change of topic? I was really depressed about it, I felt like I just wasn't good enough, like I'd been kicked out. Francesco did make sure, however, that I knew this is not what it was, that he was not allocating blame, and that he felt incredibly responsible for it. Kinda broke my heart to see him like that. I still am down about it, but I am looking at it more as an opportunity, an open door, rather than a closed one. Honestly I felt like I was so stuck for the next year and a half, now I feel like I'll be a little freer, which is unexpected, and very good. Honestly, it was the classes I like in my undergrad. What I like about grad school is interacting with people and teaching, so hopefully this will open some doors that way. I am meeting with the dept. head on Friday I think, so that will be that. The thing is that now I am really halfhearted when it comes to working on my talks and posters, because in all of them I have to speak as though this is what I intend to do, when by Friday the story may be completely different. . . My head is still spinning from all this though. Somehow everything got turned upside down when a freezer dropped 10 degrees C. So some water molecules slow down enough to hold hands and not let go, and my life turns upside down. So much depends on so little.

Maybe one day I will find the person responsible and thank them - or kill them on the spot. With my hands. Probably both.

Back to you Dale.

Shit, that explains a lot

So among many other things I'm working on a seminar presentation on opiate toxicity. In your travels when you do these things you often have to start by wading balls deep through the the sticky, stinky swamp that is the sespool of pop culture. If you have your hip waders on (and a pair of goggles and a snorkel in case you go in too deep) you can look around and enjoy yourself as you squelch your way through. If you keep your eyes open you might see something like this, which makes the whole thing worth it.

It was on a website called NAIDA for teens. NAIDA is an authority on drug addiction and relapse, my area of research. I had to laugh at this though. It was in the middle of a page on opiate mechanisms of action. There was no preface, warning, waiver, disclaimer, explanation or justification. Just this priceless poster. Imagine you got paid to think that up and make it? How much do you want to bet the artist drafted it all with Sharpies? I'd like to think he did, cause it would certainly prove his point.



This is the first posted picture not taken by me or someone I know in a long time. I guess it really affected me.

In other news, I think I really flustered some dude last night, which is making me giggle right now just thinking about it. Project serve is going on over this reading week, and there are some Calgarians in Guelph, two of which (Zahid and Mohammad) are staying over at our place. There's about 30 Project Servers in town, and the other night they were all over at our place making pizzas and so forth (we had a little buffet assembly line type thing going for dinner). They're a cool crowd, and the Guelphite portion of them will likely keep partying with us after this point. So last night they all went to the Cornerstone, and Franks and I decided to crash the party after having some drinks at her place. . . well I had some drinks, Franks decided G&T's were cramping her style at the moment, which is cool. So I got there and no one was drinking, and seeing as how I was four in I thought I'd buy Pieper a drink. Cashless I booted it up the street to BMO, and as I was jogging back I saw this guy having a smoke outside one of the bars look over at this other dude and say "Hey, you're looking handsome tonight!" The guy was like "Thanks!" And I could see in the other guys eyes that he wasn't really talking to that guy. At this point I was lateral with him and the guy looks at me and goes "Oh sorry, I thought you were my friend Steve." Without skipping a beat I was like "No man, but I could be your friend Marcus if that's cool." He laughed nervously and said alright, though he was probably glad I didn't stop jogging. Maybe it was the green mardis gras beads, who knows, but a compliment is a compliment! I hope that guy was comfortable with his sexuality, cause if not that could eat away at him for weeks. . .

Anyway back at the cornerstone my friend Richard Laviolette was playing. He wrote some amazing solo stuff. I appreciate how hard it is to write stuff that is slower and make it interesting, which he does. Part of it is his really unique voice. The I bought his CD last night, the second I've bought since I discovered Napster back in OAC. He thought that was kind of a big deal, and I think he is right. This is Richard and Jenn (a project server and friend of Frankie, Derek and Lindsay). Jenn and I got our CD's signed. Richard made the covers himself, which are pretty bad ass, he sewed them. He signed it "Love me tenderly"

You got it Richard.

So the Cornerstone was

kind of an interesting joint. I may hang out there again. The crowd was earthy crunchy, but not with too much granola. You know, tree huggers that don't just hug trees, they live in the woods. My kinds crowd. On Friday we plan to play Drink Like a Marine. I will maybe post the rules for this game some time if I'm bored. It's easy. You watch the movie "The Marine" (worst piece of shit ever made) you laugh, and you drink when stuff happens. Like suplexes, choke slams, explosions, smashing glass, gunshots, plot twists that don't make sense, and general violations of physics. Frankie you better develop a taste for those G&T's real quick.

Until next time, keep your stick on the ice and don't sniff markers. Not even the smelly ones, those deceptive works of the devil, they'll kill you.

The unseen force that makes one Blog

Man - I love YouTube. I really do. You know what else I love? Making clips. I tried to go to bed last night, and a wave of inspiration hit. This is what came of it.

Drink up - what's the worst that could happen?

I will start with an excerpt from an msn conversation I had with Deb, well, just now. It's absolutely priceless. I also think it fits perfectly the subject matter found at the end of this blog. Enjoy.


deb says:
i have a story you'll appreciate

Happy Singles Awareness Day! says:
oh yeah?

deb says:
so last wed my friend fergus ended up downtown "far drunker than he intended"

Happy Singles Awareness Day! says:
ahhaha

Happy Singles Awareness Day! says:
great quote

deb says:
and he had a 20, which is enough to get him home

deb says:
but he sees a street bum and decides to give him 5

deb says:
so now he has 15

deb says:
and he sees a 7-11

deb says:
and sun chips

deb says:
and now he has 11

Happy Singles Awareness Day! says:
this is getting so good

deb says:
and he thinks "dammit now i don't have enough to get me home"

deb says:
so what does he do?

deb says:
he buys 11 lottery tickets because he thinks "I'm going to win my way home"

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
holy fuck this is awesome

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
as if he felt that lucky

deb says:
i don't think it was luck, it was logic he was riding on that night

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
sounds like it

deb says:
he obviously wins nothing, stumbles to my friend miller's house

deb says:
which is like a 15 min walk from downtown

deb says:
he gets there at 3:30 (bars close at 2, you do the math)

deb says:
and buzzes until miller lets him in

deb says:
then he passes out on the couch and miller goes to bed, for about a minute before he hears fergus

deb says:
rather making a mess of himself

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
I'm dying over here

deb says:
and has to put him in the shower with his clothing on

deb says:
the pictures are terrible

deb says:
like, i can't look at this bad

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
oh my god pictures?

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
amazing

deb says:
well if someone woke you up at 3:30 to puck on your couch wouldn't you take pictures?

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - Happy SAD! says:
you better believe it


Weeeeelll sheeeit. You asked for it and I couldn't help myself any longer, so here is the video of Gabbo in all its low quality glory. I'm sorry I am such a hog for the airtime. I've changed since then, I swear. I was drunk and really excited. So the premise was that Yank was away this weekend I think, or just gone (maybe at someone's house?) and we had a message for him. Yank, fill us in, what was the set up?

Winterlude

Amongst the marking, the lack of desire to do lab work, and the tribulations of life - of which there can be many, as we all know - I have managed to keep up with doing stuff that doesn't suck. Something I've been falling behind on for a little while. Where to begin? Timmy and I headed up to Blue of a wicked day on the slopes. Though I was by myself for the most part I got some good reflecting done while testing out my new boards on the north end. All the while Timmy was on the south literally beating up the hill. He was learning to snowboard. He's quite good considering it was his second time out. But when timmy falls he ragdolls. He hits face first and pulls what you call mystery moves in the dust as it kicks up all around him, lit in the afternoon sun. If you watch carefully as timmy gracefully rolls out of his fall you can see him pound the ground with his fist, or even throw in the occasional headbutt. Atta boy timmy, don't let the bastards grind you down. Seriously though, it was a kick ass day. Perfect weather, great snow, good company - we had a blast. Also in the past 4 days or so I've gotten back outside to take pix, something I've desperately missed, doing. I managed to capture this black and white stitch of three shots. Timmy doesn't like the jet and the powerlines, but I think they belong there. At least the jet. . . Anyway, it's nice to get a little piece of your life back that you've missed. My folder for February was starting to look pretty weak, and that shit is not cool. Now it's been filling up. Yesterday Tim and I went out to catch some more shots. Got some okay ones, but largely fruitless. Basically it was nice to get out in the sun again. So here is Gaby. I told Gaby a long time ago I would get her in this thing and never did. Now I have a reason though. You know those little things that just make you laugh your ass off weeks after they happen? Gaby is that little thing. Look at her - you can just see Gaby's entire personality in that shot. She's emoting there. That's Gaby extremely disappointed at the Mackie Hilborn for not being at our party a few months ago. Don't you just feel like you've done something wrong? I do. So you never know what Gaby's going to say next, but you can bet your ass it will make you laugh. Anyway so how do I know Gaby Leith? Well we go way back if you really think about it. If you ask either of us we'll probably both bring up the same event. We were at camp, I think I was a senior boy and Gaby was probably an Inter girl or something like that. We were both into Drama though so we were in the same play: East of the sun West of the moon. I'm sure Gaby remembers what it was all about. I was supposed to be some kind of prince, I remember that. We did it theatre in the round style, so we were all in Centre Camp. I was supposed to be a bear that would turn to a prince I think. All I remember is parading around centre camp with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent (it wasn't overdone in those days), which I slowly turned into an angry scottish accent as the play progressed to mark my slow metamorphosis from Bear to Prince. Yeah, I had talent huh? Real creative, especially since I was only 16. . . So for some reason Gaby was supposed to ride around on my back during these interludes. Gaby help me out here, what the fuck was the point of all this? I don't know, but it was fun, and everyone thought it was real cute that a senior boy was carrying an inter girl around in a play I guess. . . But I digress. Oh how far we've come. Gaby msged me from the library yesterday where she was trying to do work, and for five minutes I think I didn't stop laughing. Stop me if you don't find any of this funny, but those of you who know Gaby (Yank) you will laugh at everything she said. I msged Gabbo to figure out who the fuck that bitch girl was that wouldn't drive me home. She informed me she was Naiman's friend and that she walked home as well. . . so there was that.

About a minute went by and the messages started. "There's someone eating chips in the cubicle next to me and it's sooooo annoying." "Seriously, I can hear their jaw crunching and I want to kill them."

I laughed.

"OHH MY GOOOD IT WON'T STOP"

I laughed some more.

"Seriously, I am so conscious of that. When I go to the library I only bring soft foods, things that won't crunch. I take off my headphones and check the volume, some people just don't care!"

Now I'm in stitches over the soft foods comment

"Marcus, I don't know what to do. I hear a bag of something else opening now, I'm scared."

"I don't know if I should yell at them, or buy chips, but if I buy chips they will think that that is acceptable and it's SO NOT."

ahhahahahah

I told her I thought it would be a good idea to buy some tostitos or crispers and chew them elaborately, you know, enunciate and chew with diction so that they knew you were doing it on purpose. . . I barely got that sentence out

And Gaby was more preturbed than ever. She was telling me how sensitive she was when she was in the library, that she stared people down regularly.

"OH MY GOD - this guy just answered his cellphone, and it had the most gayass ring."

"Seriously, sorry to use gay but that's what it was! His whole fucking conversation was 'yeah, I'm in the library. K - peace.' FFFFUUUCK YOU!"

Again I am dying now. I could barely get a word in edgewise before

"Oh my god he's on it again - seriously what the fuck?"

"Why is it that when people answer cellphones all social etiquette goes out the window? I don't come up in the middle of your conversation and interrupt you! And turn off your gayass ring!"

At this point I have tears in my eyes, picturing Gaby just boiling in her little cubicle, want to kill chips cruncher next to her (as she called him/her) and break the dude's cellphone in half and throw the pieces in his face. ..

"I also hate people who whisper. What the hell is your problem? It's just as distracting as talking, it's still a sound."

hahahha

"Marcus I think I need to get out of the library."

I agreed, and I asked her why she didn't, and this is when I really laghed.

"Marcus, it sucks here, but forgot my keys. I already went home once to see if anyone was home and no one was."

"Also, I do have a huge mid term coming up, and I'm sitting here all by myself rotting away and I have NO FOOD."

I'm giggling again

"And when I went home, I tried to break into my own house by climbing the roof to the top window."

"I slipped and fell. Like - I actually fell off my roof."

I cannot stop laughing at this point - I am so entertained. Thank you Gaby. I'm sorry you fell off your roof, and I'm sorry you were starving in the library, and good luck on your midterm. You are priceless.

So today I was about to eat my lunch when Jocelyn, my neighbour, walks in. She was sick and tired of looking at these giant icicles, precariously perched, ready to fall, dangling from our eve. They weren't in a particularly dangerous spot, but she couldn't handle the sight of them and wanted to get them down. Seeing as how we bought about 500 apples last weekend that we had NO use for other than spud gun ammo and to watch rot away, Graeme and I gleefully ran outside. We killed 15 minutes whipping rotting apples at this icicle. Half the time we'd hit the dude's window behind it. We broke of some substantial pieces of this thing, but the dude was glaring at us unimpressed from behind the pane (which we totally applesauced), and lest he call the cops on us we ended it at 15 minutes. Also because I shattered a nalgene full of water that on the concrete after it dropped from icicle height, and also because we ran out of apples, and also because the spud gun probably created somewhat of a disturbance when it went off. By the way it also turned it's ammo into applesauce before impact, so that was no use. My friend Erin suggested the use of a hot super soaker full of saline, but if I know icicles, these fuckers will spitefully fall all on their own when I'm not looking. Probably by tomorrow morning. We did get a good piece of them though, and that was a good way to break up an afternoon. Fuck you icicles. You can see Graeme giving it his all in that pic, that big patch is the motherlode we were aiming for. . .

See now that's funny

An open letter to that mean girl:

Dear mean girl. Why are you mean? I'll start by saying thanks. Thanks for picking up me and 8 of my camp friends from downtown the other night. I don't know your name, but I'm sure Gaby does. I think she's the one who called you. Thank you also for driving us to the base of the Gordon st. bridge. Remember that night? I do. I remember it like it was last Saturday. We were driving along. I was huddled on the back floor of your van with Kilmer and a few other seatbeltless passengers. We saw what looked like the RIDE program up ahead, so out of courtesy I asked if I could get out along with some others who didn't have belts so you wouldn't get busted. See I thought this was a nice gesture. You seemed to think so too. We made it pretty clear that we would walk till we were past the cops and that then you would pick us up. Turns out that it was a car accident, and so you had to turn right (water st. ?) for a detour. Well we had planned for that too. We planned to be picked up 20 paces around the corner. We jogged after you as you turned but you only sped up. Thank you mean girl. We waved and you kept driving. Thank you for that too. So Kilmer and I walked. It was only -20, we needed the fresh air. It felt like summer anyway, it was a really warm -20, so I was glad I didn't have gloves or a hat. I was also glad to see you pull back onto gordon ahead of us to drop of mike and naiman. I thought maybe you were going to pick us up too? We waved you down but you turned right and sped off again. Once we got to the top of the hill, where mike and naiman live, we saw you pulling out of their driveway. That's when Kilmer and I walked up to the car and asked if we could still have that ride home. Kilmer tried to open the door and it was locked. And all I remember through the haze is that you and that girl in the front seat exchanged akward glances. I got the message. I tried to be sad (which I was) when I said "it's okay, we'll just walk" in hopes that you might have some pity on us two cold guys who live literally 2 minutes out of your way. After all, you had to turn down college to drop of gaby, and you could just scoot around the corner to edinburgh. Or not. You didn't get the message, you let us walk. You sped off after we walked around your van - again. In the direction we wanted to go - again. I may never know why you did this. It's it was a random act of meanness. Are you spreading these acts? Do you go around doing this to people? Did Kilmer and I say something offensive? I'm pretty sure we were quiet back there on the ride from downtown. I heard somewhere your room mate is crazy and that's who was in the front seat with you - if so I am sorry. But either way, this is a thank you letter to you. I quite enjoyed coming home close to frostbite. I thought "this sure beats cabs!"

So last night I'm marking this paper on Ethyl Carbamate Toxicity. Yeah - don't worry about it. So I flip to the back page and check the references, and I see this order form. Yeah - an order form. What theF-. . . That should be pronounced phonetically, real fast, one word "whattheF-"

As the image resolves itself I realise what I'm looking at. One of the most embarassing things a guy could have accidentally stapled to his term paper: the confirmation for the online order he placed for flowers for his girlfriend. Priceless. I know her name, her address, his address. It's funny to me. Also what is funny (well I'll let you read it, hopefully the pic is big enough to see the text when you click it). The line he sent "I know we said we'd keep the cheese to a minimum, but considering how great you are this is the least I could do." hahahah fantastic. The part that's really embarassing is that he didn't keep the cheese to a minimum. . . he spent 80 dollars on 12 roses (multicoloured) to be delivered on Valentine's day. Oh how priceless. I'm sorry maybe this is only funny to me, but I think the cheesiest thing on V-day is roses, 12 of them. Also the most unoriginal. Not to put you down Toxicology Guy, I'm sure Christina will love the flowers. Even though they'll be dead in a week. . .

But imagine. He has no idea he stapled it to his paper. I bet he doesn't even notice the missing print out from his desk. What do I do? I'm thinking of keeping it subtle and just writing something in the marking scheme "nice man, Christina's gonna love it." What do you think? I was also contemplating sending her 24 roses with the same phrase as Toxicology guy wrote. You know, just to 1 up him. Maybe make sure they get delivered the day before. . . 160 dollars for a great practical joke? I'd pay 160 more to see the look on his face when she reads him the name of the guy who sent them over the phone and he realises it's his TA. His universe would collapse. For about 5 seconds in his mind chaos would reign and NOTHING would make any sense. And you can't put a price on that.

C'est Encroyable

PS - this just in. It's Derek's old roommate. Do you know how much funnier that makes this?