These Theses

I'm trying to concentrate and create my thesis paper, so suddenly every other thing in the world is interesting and intersecting. Which would almost sound raunchy if it wasn't so dull.

My thesis is on cravings. Does treatment with such-and-such device reduce cravings? Unfortunately, the people being rated are already lacking cravings in life which is why they are seeking this treatment in the first place. This muddles the data.

Muddles... data... It's all gone uncertainly Heisenberg on me. It doesn't matter, I guess. I just have to do a remotely comprehensive presentation and then turn in one stack of paper so they'll hand me a stamped one.

Hey, I almost sound like pre-June 2010 Jen, again. I think I'll have to add a picture of a topless mermaid, now. Then we'll all feel better.

I'll work on flowing sentence structure after my thesis.

Muscley Mama

I'm slowly getting better. My doctor is giving me steroid infusions for 3 hours a day, I'm starting to remember words and I'm going back to work on Thursday.

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Do you think I'm sexier on steroids?

Ironically Craving

craving: an intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing

What I crave and what I do are not presently joined. I crave a long sleep on the warm grass but I sit at a desk and read articles about craving. I craft a grant about craving scales as they relate to addiction while I crave sunshine and birdsong and leisure but my arms are strapped with plastic tubes to the keyboard and so I crave as I create an explanation of craving.

I have officially drowned myself in the existentialist sewer.

The Planet Is Fine

I love those random conversations with strangers in which you feel tightly, yet temporarily connected to this other person somehow. Or, barring the sensation of a personal connection, I love having a random conversation with a stranger in which it seems that one or the other of you (or both) is passing on some kind of clue.

And as I get older, I find myself having random clue-like conversations with strangers in which our bizarre exchange indicates to me that this very intimate spiritual and philosophical spiral path I've been traveling IS relevant and meaningful, at least for me and the occasional random stranger.

I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening at the theater the other night. (Parenthetical snatch* -- I forget how much better movies are in the theater on the big screen. DVDs are convenient, cheap and fabulous for lazy entertainment and escapism, but you really end up missing something in the transition to the small screen.) Anyway, I recommend The Happening, but I'm not really going to tell you about it because you know how you just have to see his movies and let them unfold to really enjoy them. Also, the theater where I saw it was crowded and about one third of the audience seemed to really enjoy it and two-thirds were pissed, saying things like, remind me never to see another M. Night Shyamalan movie. In other words, he didn't necessarily tailor this to soothe the fears and meet the expectations of the status quo.

So when the movie ended, my friend and I did the post-movie meaningful look that says, Whoa, good, I think. Need a minute. And the lady in her early sixties with fabulous earrings and a very sharp gauze pantsuit (confession: sometimes I'm into certain kinds of clothes and accessories) on the other side of my friend also gets in the post-movie glance interchange with us. And she and I start chatting while waiting for the grumbling crowd to pass.

Random Stranger Lady (RSL): Well, I really enjoyed that!

La Sirena (LS) and Friend: Me, too! (he owes me a coke)

RSL: You know, lots of people have been saying things like that, that plants are interactive and you should talk to them, like... (lots of people are walking by and complaining here so I don't catch the first five names she rattles off)...and George Washington Carver. You know, and I think I would hate people if I were a plant. We deserve everything we get and then some!

LS: You know what George Carlin said about the earth, that she's just going to--

LS and RSL: (in perfectly metered unison)-- shake us off like a bunch of fleas!!! (The women laugh while the passing 20-something hipster doofi fire them looks of annoyed confusion.)

And so this is my roundabout way of saying goodbye to George Carlin and here is the full text of the Carlin bit from which the aforementioned quote came.

Goodbye, George -- or is it, really? Perhaps you've just attached yourself to another valence?

* Wouldn't "Parenthetical Snatch" be a great name for a band?

Tin Foil Hats

Contrary to popular folklore, tin foil hats will not protect your brain from radio waves, televison rays or cell phone interference. According to a team of researchers at MIT, this widely circulated rumor ... is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC.

In a pilot study performed on themselves, these dedicated researchers found that tinfoil hats actually magnify the intensity of power transmitted to the head, thereby making the wearer of this protective device even more vulnerable to radio wave mind control than those not wearing aluminum foil hats. The research did not investigate the ability of aluminum foil to protect the human brain from extraterresterial technology. We also can't be sure if tin foil may have once protected people, as all modern foil is now aluminum.

My (Neuro) Chemical Romance

C6H3(OH)2-CH2-CH2-NH2

Ah, dopamine! Oh, how you move me. You make my heart race. You multiply in the face of my attraction. Thanks to you I can concentrate and think conceptually. Ah, dopamine -- source of psychosis, you are the needle and the damage done. You are the end justifying the means of many -- and then you abandon them like any pursued lover. Oh, cruel transmitter! Oh, sweet reward!

Ah, dopamine...