memorial day

some belatedly-uploaded photos from the memorial day cookout at jared's. by the bye, i've been very remiss with the 2-year-old promise of more photos on this stupid blog, which i will work very hard on changing. i permit you to scold me severely if i continue to default.

alyson, steven, nuwan and eranda

(weird)nick, eranda, alyson

grace and waldo

morning glory

while sabrina's cafe still is the undisputed champion of brunch in philly, and rx holds a special place in my heart, i would highly recommend morning glory, which has the fattest, fluffiest, most gorgeous biscuits i've eaten in my life. get there early, though -- kinjal and i waited almost an hour to get a table, a good part of it (unfortunately) in the rain. (for a full review and pictures, go here)

there was a mini-conference at penn yesterday at which i presented some of my results -- the last major thing before i leave this place on monday for my summer of fretting and anxiety. the talk went well, and i was settling down to enjoy the rest of the proceedings when some effing jerk of a doctor came over to me and started asking a whole bunch of questions obviously designed to expose the ignorance he must have thought i had. while it is true that many people nowadays are doing fmri work with no clue of the limitations of the methodology, i'm well beyond being one of those people, and seriously resented the implication. i've mentioned recently that respect is the currency of academia, and i feel that for all the suffering i've been through to get here i should be given a little bit more of it, absence of letters after my name notwithstanding.

the after-conference was great -- drinks at la terrasse, apparently known to all but me as LT, thus reestablishing one of the more peculiar motifs in my life. dr. sb got a bit tipsy and started bitching about lab members present and gone. our lab has a very unusual history -- our PI used to be the famous martin orne, who did a lot of the pioneering (and highly controversial) research on hypnosis and false memory. events in the 70s and 80s leading eventually to the advisor's takeover apparently involve deceit and betrayal worthy of the great soap operas, but all that history is highly secret, and guarded closely by mysterious elderly people in our lab who are still on the payroll even though they don't do any work. it's all highly thrilling, and every once in a while i get a small tidbit, which i squirrel away in memory for the day i publish my shocking expose. incid: someone should print out this entry so that if i'm found dead in a gutter somewhere one of these days justice can be sought.

we had more beer. R(s)ODPFBSE appeared, then happy hour ended and we decided we would much rather drink jared's tequila than buy $6 beers. plus: he now has molds for making ice shot glasses, which are so awesome i almost feel i shouldn't be writing about them. the housemate ended up tagging along, and (weird)nick and laura and christian. and we stayed out till pretty late, and ended up outside the cvs singing irish songs at 2 in the morning and somehow not being killed.

the unfortunate truth

i saw some rather amusing data today that suggests that scientists only actually read 20% of the articles that they cite in their papers, this discovered by tracing citation errors as they're transmitted through the literature. i freely admit here that i'm probably one of the culprits, although i'll also say in all honesty that i try to at least have a copy every paper i cite (and read the abstract). also, i'm certainly batting more than a .2 average. give me a few more years though...

the recent study that came out my lab(s) has been all over the news the past couple of days...here's the cnn video if you're interested.

(the media, as I'm sure you've guessed, has completely trivialized the findings, not to mention put up horrible and inaccurate brain pictures, but c'est la vie).

John Horgan:

There are moments when I teeter on the edge of belief that nature cares. The occasion may be mundane. I may be raking leaves of a gray fall day, drinking a glass of wine with my wife, Suzie, on our deck at sunset, waiting with my son and daughter at the end of the driveway for the morning school bus to arrive. Gratitude wells up in me as a kind of yearning, as strong as hunger or sexual desire. I want to thank someone, something, for all that I have ...(Yet) a God who deserves thanks for my good fortune, I had to remind myself, also deserves blame for the misery of countless others. Thanking this God for all I have would be obscene. I would be saying, in effect, "Thank you, God, for not screwing me like you've screwed all those other poor bastards.

after watching iron man and the new indiana jones with jared and co., i think i can safely conclude that summer movies just aren't the same without the passing of snarky comments, and having someone's fingernails in my flesh at each cheesy line uttered.

today

i sat at the the bar all alone for fifteen minutes waiting for my friends and sipping scotch, and for a fleeting second felt like humphrey bogart in casablanca, just before ilsa lund walks in.

i'm done with clinic hours for the year, and would just like to wrap up by saying that it was, in many ways, what i expected. scary, primarily; i don't think any of us really felt like we knew what we were doing until fairly late in the year, and the supervisor was not one for positive feedback and support. but many other things too: moving, and sad, and life-affirming, evidence otherwise unobtainable that for all the blackness in this cold world, people still struggle on and claw their way inch by inch towards whatever redemption may be given them.

i think this is because there's something very powerful about sharing stories, and really, in the short time i've had with each client this year, that was one of the key things i had to get people to do. so i've listened to many raw, true stories, told by people who knew we were ethically bound to never pass them on, and being in that assessment room, listening to those narratives, not holding them in judgment, has been one of the most real things i've ever had to do, and i almost felt sometimes that i didn't want to taint them by writing them down, generating a report, diagnosing, arranging the clutter and mess into something organized and meaningful. that was my least favorite part of the job: interpreting. no, nothing compared to the moment, the struggling with words, the tears and the closeness. in my life so far, i don't think anything else has ever been quite so true.

if you have several hours to kill (this is good for wasting time surreptitiously in the office, but you didn't hear it from me), may i recommend alter ego (based on real psychological principles!)

the last time i saw han, we were cooking dinner, and discussing the human genome project, and generally feeling that those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, and so forth. a very long 4 years have passed since then, during which time he moved to missouri for grad school, and i suffered through my trials and tribulations, and we sent messages to each other on AIM once a year saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY and MERRY CHRISTMAS and HOPE YOU'RE WELL and other such platitudes.

so han's in town now to see his brother graduate, and duke WH and i met him for dinner and drinks at nodding head and schubert's symphony in c major* at the kimmel center. he's hale and hearty and completely the same as he ever was; plus ca change, etc. i miss duke. penn's having its reunions now, and everything's red white and blue balloons and fight songs and hugs and misty eyes, and that's helping none at all.


* schubert was very turquoise, very controlled. it was christoph eschenbach's last concert here, and in true american hypocritical form, everyone stood and clapped for him for a million years even though they all hated him when he first arrived. another reason to be filled with self-doubt here; you never know when people truly think you're good, or if they're just filled with the occasion.

the housemate successfully defended his master's thesis on wednesday, which was a cause for much rejoicing and a trip to marigold, where they have tiny portions of very delicious food at exorbitant prices. i was assured, however, that all produce is purchased locally, from to farm to your plate, etc. highlights included some most excellent ham ("wigwam") in an eggs benedict-like creation, chicken liver pate on brioche, and sublime poached salmon.

classes: done
grading: done
clinic: one more bloody report to write
research: more or less never-ending. having to worry about the the summer project i'm running in the ex-lab is wearing, and it doesn't help that there's no one else to worry with me about it. i need to stop, and do some reframing. i need to feel...like this is exciting, and not just intensely scary. i need to feel that, if nothing else, in a few weeks i'll be able to get prata, and hang out with people, and possibly get a little sleep.

a plug for a new documentary by the other housemate's friend, which looks utterly gorgeous and is most worthy of your attention.

so i have, finally, watched citizen kane, and now know the significance of why rosebud was his sled. one small candle. if you haven't watched it yet, i'm going to spoil the story for you here (sorry) because it's the whole point of this post. in brief: charles foster kane is abandoned by his parents, is reckless and controversial and bipolar, grows an yooge newspaper empire, is rich beyond his dreams, marries several times, builds xanadu, retreats into his pleasure dome, and dies uttering the single word 'rosebud'. which, as we have said, was the name of his sled when he was just a little boy, asking his mother 'what will i be?' what does a man profit if he gain the whole world but loses his life, etc.

because this really is an archetype for this kind of story, it started me thinking, and contrasting it with all the research that says that really, the moral of such tales is not true. rich people don't have any more existential crises than poor people; there's no necessary correlation between wealth and the sort of shylock misery that's portrayed in these stories. and the same thing goes for people who go chasing rainbows and waterfalls and breaking themselves apart for the things they call dreams -- they don't necessarily end up happy; sometimes you get right back, coehlo-style (ugh) to where you began, and find that what you were chasing wasn't what you really wanted.

yet the rainbow-pursuing life is painted as the ideal, and i think that's because it's such a dominant narrative, so readily accessible in people's minds. it's not that the other stories are not there -- think sally in forrest gump, or emile hirsch in the recent (and wonderful) into the wild*, in which, yes, it is your prerogative to give away all your money and go live as an eremite in alaska, but most of the time when you do that you waste away and poison yourself on inedible berries.

but that's not the story that sticks with people; the two dominant narratives are citizen kane, and jeff bridges in lebowski: be rich and lose your soul, or be picaresque, and paint with all the colors of the wind, and really be true to yourself, and live a glorious, irresponsible life. which brings me to the point, and the issue that minz and i were discussing a couple of days ago, which is that just because we're doing what we want to do doesn't mean that our lives aren't fricking hard. happiness, self-actualization, both of those are unrelated to the daily grind, and (i painfully admit), doing "meaningful" work does not give you a leg up to achieve either of them. and i apologize if i have to say this a hundred different times in a hundred different ways on this blog, but this really is one of the very central things to me, and it helps me if you ponder it, and understand, and remember.


* please do yourself a favor and go see this movie if you haven't. if for no other reason than to see that emile hirsch can actually act, and that the person who persuaded him to do speed racer is truly trying to screw up his career. also, if you went to see speed racer, i don't want to know about it

from last night's house (4x14):

EVAN
They told me I have an autoimmune disease, like lupus or sarcoidosis.

HOUSE
That's what we're here to find out

EVAN
You really as good as everyone seems to think you are?

HOUSE
You really as miserable as everyone seems to think you are?

EVAN
I just want to do something that matters.

HOUSE
Nothing matters. We're all just cockroaches. Wildebeests dying in the riverbank. Nothing we do has any lasting meaning.

EVAN
And you think I'm miserable?

HOUSE
If you're unhappy on the plane, jump out of it.

EVAN
I want to, but I can't.

HOUSE
That's the problem with metaphors; they need interpretation. Jumping out of the plane is stupid.

EVAN
But what if I'm not in a plane? What if I'm just in a place I don't want to be?

HOUSE
That's the other problem with metaphors...yes, what if you're actually in an ice-cream truck, and outside are candy and flowers and virgins? You're on a plane! We're all on planes. Life is dangerous and complicated and it's a long way down.

EVAN
So you're afraid of change?

HOUSE
No, you're afraid to change. You'd rather imagine that you can escape instead of actually try, because if you fail then you've got nothing. So you'll give up the chance of something real so you can hold on to hope. Thing is, hope is for sissies.

i know it's terribly wrong that i take so many of my life lessons from tv and the movies, but can you really disagree when hugh laurie says something like that to you?

made paella in commemoration of the mother being in spain -- it's true; the burned bits at the bottom of the pan are indeed the best part.

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.

murderous rage

i swear to god, if i get one more piece of spam entitled "order a phd"...

(as roy clark sang)

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned,
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand,
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day,
And only now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday, when I was young,
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me,
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think what life was all about,
And every conversation, I can now recall,
Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all

Yesterday, the moon was blue,
And every crazy day brought something new to do,
I used my magic age as if it were a wand,
And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond

The game of love I played with arrogance and pride,
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died,
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away,
And only I am left, on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young