department of complaints and (slight) melancholy

1. an article came out today in nature neuroscience by someone i know (a singaporean) reporting very exciting findings on pre-conscious neural activity (an extension of the ben libet/dan wegner experiments, but with a sophisticated and very cool new method). this meant a whole day spent in moping and jealousy and talking to minz and daniel for comfort, as well as agonizing about the fact that no one else would really understand why this was causing me so much grief.

2. today was the last day of classes. the semester on the whole has been unkind to me -- too much time spent doing utterly useless classwork, and grading exams, and being accosted by stupid-ass undergraduates. i've also come to accept that i'll probably never be steady and competent, and need to have a brilliant idea fairly soon if i want to have a career, or not starve.

3. also today: ben and jerry's free cone day. every other fellow in the line was a homeless person, which made me feel extremely depressed. not because homeless people disgust me or anything -- i'm rather fond of buying them sandwiches -- but because there something just totally antithetical to the spirit of free cone day about that happening.

4. once you start reading nutritional information, you pretty much can't eat anything.