Just a reminder to myself...

and anyone else who may have a heart in need of some 'yoga', sing along if you know the words

Outside the Wall - Pink Floyd

All alone and in twos
the ones who really love you
walk up and down
outside the Wall

Some hand in hand
some gather together in bands
the bleeding hearts and the artists
make their stand

And when they've given you their all
some stagger and fall
after all it's not easy
bangin' your heart against some mad bugger's wall.




Keep each other safe, roll with the punches and keep watching for an opening. That is all.

A pretty important subject to me.

Is defending originality, and it's under attack. The Copyrights Royalty Board is about to blow the fledgling Internet Radio out of the water. They have sent out a revised fee schedule that would leave the six biggest webcasters with a bill that amounts to HALF of their annual revenues. The smaller webcaster (i.e. EVERYONE) would be on a 'sliding scale' where they would be assessed for a modest 37% of their profits.

Land
Land
Land
Land
Land
... see Snatch. ;)

As it turns out the biggest and baddest on the block are not charged a red cent. I totally understand this. The amount of buzz and sales that they generate makes it a symbiotic relationship with the 'artists' that make up the biggest part of the CRB's bread and butter. These 'independent' outlets are sucking up bandwidth on their 'lesser' artists. While I cannot claim to know who's got a contract with whom, the station that I listen to:

Radio Paradise

has a great variety of 'eclectic' rock. This means everything from Radiohead and The Flaming Lips, to Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, to The Shins and Calexico, to Imogen Heap and Frou Frou, to Charles Mingus and Theloneus Monk, to Ludwig and Amadeus. Every album I've bough online, I have gotten at the inspiration of this station.

Anywho, I know it in my heart that it would be a dark day for the light that has come shining out of this brave new internet world, in the shape of independent music and many envisionings of our musical cultures. A light that is about to be squashed under the thumb who are using their power to control what we listen to. Pure business move, but as the people, we can have Congress cap this nonsense at 7%. Let the minstrels and troubadours get back to their artistry and not to worrying about sounding like the latest noise.

"D'Jour" means seatbelts. (that was for like TWO people... maybe...) If anything I've said has made a lick of sense, please call your reps and senators and let them know that you support originality and the value of the internet to equalize the artistry in our world. Thank you and g'nite.

I just like this song...

and I can't find it for my music player on myspace, and I'm not quite committed to shelling out the $25+ for the import. Nice and bittersweet. I came across it as it's the closing title of an anime I was a little unimpressed with called Gilgamesh. I wish I could find the translation, I read it in the subtitles, my favorite line translates to: "The absence of you surrounds me, but the scenery is terribly benevolent"... do YOU know a Japanese word that rhymes with 'benevolent'??? Alright then.

Week One

Well... it seems some bets may have paid off this week. No, I've not blown anything up, but if you laid your money on the "Breaking something costing over $25", well played. The work I've been doing is part of a larger program that is studying chemical reactions on the surfaces of dust in the atmosphere, and how that dust reacts with water in humidity and sunlight. We're using a lamp that is generating intense light that is filtered through a lens on top of the cell we have our sample in. So the days last week were: measure sample, put in cell, place filter on cell, place cell under lamp, irradiate, take cell out from lamp, take filter lens off cell, remove sample, rinse cell, bump filter off table and watch in horror-slow-motion the effects of gravity, shatter filter on... holy shit!! holy shit!! holy shit!! holy shit!! I left a message for my grad student supervisor and left the lab looking like this

::insert soundtrack here::













I was pretty miserable the rest of that Thursday. The grad didn't get the message and when I related the tragedy the next morning, her reply was, "We have another 300 nanometer filter, it's okay they have them in the stock room. They cost about $40, it's nothing major... the 310 nanometer we have on special order from China, that's a $500 filter. Don't break that one."

That's why I HAD to break this one... yeah, I had to. So that I wouldn't break the expensive one. Fact is, I dodged a bullet and I'm a humble and slower, steadier puppy in the lab now. Oh, just to let you know who I dealing with in this lab, this was taped up on the door of the lab. Yeah, I'm gonna be alright around these kids.

48 hours

Two days in. It's a little slow in the lab right now as we're waiting on some custom orders for the experiments that we're running, and I can't say as I'm super disappointed. I am fighting a lethargy right now, and I'm not sure if it's my removal from the sensory-saturated experience of living in a metropolis to a summertime college town, or the cranial exercises I've been doing in refreshing myself on two semesters of chemistry as it applies to graduate level research. Prolly a healthy combination of the two. One of the researchers was cool enough to contact the fitness center and get me a deal on a student rate, $45 for use of all of the fitness centers for all ten weeks! Yeah, suck it Bally's you ass-bit... oh wait, they've already got my money. I'm going to get back on the wagon of my Factor-Five-Fuck-Yeah-Fitness regimen, and hope my brain is just needing a little extra blood right now. Nerdly details of the work to follow! Tell a friend!!!

Stop the presses, Jimmy!!!

The fix is in!!! Just an update on the Great Garlic Mustard Pull. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning. A sunny day in the mid-seventies at a 600-acre woodland preserve, having worn shorts and a riding jersey to the event and being told that along with an infestation of the invasive species, we would also find that there was no shortage of the native Poison Ivy... hmmm. I'm from Poison Oak country out in California, and I'm as allergic as the best of them, so "Leaves of Three, Let it Be" was little comfort, but I seem to have made it out unafflicted. While we were looking for the mature, seed-bearing stalk of the Garlic Mustard, I was approached by a young lady named Rachel who was gettin' the scoop.

I've got about three wonderfully stinking pounds of garlic sprouts and leaves just waiting to be processed next weekend, and some 'care packages' sent OUT!!! THINK ABOUT IT!!!

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Dr. Vicky Grassian and getting my marching orders for the next ten weeks... in a word... festiggio. No wait, that's not a real word... let's go with anxious. Yeeeeeah, anxious. Film at eleven.

Quick, Granola Boy!!!

To the Hippie-mobile!!! So, I've been in Iowa City for 36 hours now and have found my first (of many) tree hugging activities. The produce place that I go to turned me onto a great coop out here New Pioneer Coop and while I was strolling through what looked like a miniaturized Whole Foods, I found a stand where they had samples of Garlic Mustard. The lady also had flyers that I'd seen out of the corner of my eye during my ramblings yesterday. It was for the Great Garlic Mustard Pull, which is a citywide effort to remove the Garlic Mustard plant from the parks. This plant is apparently an invasive species brought over from Europe in Seventeen Si::cough cough cough:: and at that time it was used for its aromatic properties to align your humors ::shrug:: Aaaanyway, I hope to grab up some of this plant and try to process some of this pesto-like shmear. It's vurry, vurry good and belongs in my belly, not in the prairie.

I'm a bad hitchhiker

I have not packed my towel, I've not had five pints and two packs of peanuts... and I seem have to remind myself more than twice: "DON'T PANIC!" If you haven't followed the Douglas Adams references, there are words so much better than mine to be read. Seriously, go read it now.

Needless to say this is my first time in research, and it has been a good while since the last time that I have housed at school. Well, getting into research is only slightly less difficult than jumping into the middle of a Cirque d'Soleil act. It's just tough to not panic before you realize that the standard is a constant state of damage control. To wit:

I have had a three-month 'conversation' (it's really maybe been about a dozen posts and responses) and I have had no mention of exactly what financial assistance I can expect, that I would be signing a lease upon receiving the room that would be 'set up for you', or that the kid (literally... rock n' roll haircut, complicated shoes AND a fizzy drink) I have been working with on getting set up upon arrival is in NO way attached to the research project I will be working on and that all questions I have had with regards to the next ten weeks of my life that were trying to be proactively dealt with were being answered in a manner that placated me while apparently never raising confusion in this 20 year old GRAD student. ::shaking head:: DON'T PANIC!
::shrug::
Truth of it is that I've got a roof over my head, some peanut butter in the fridge and I bought a nice towel set today. I've gotta get through some pints now, y'know... safety first.

Time for a Quickie???

I have arrived safely in Iowa City and will be meeting with the project liaison in a couple of hours. The AXE fraternity house is a nice setup and its simple rooms are just what a focused mind is always in needsaha ohafeweh jhak jhklaeurtia...

sorry, I'm typing this in a coffee house. I didn't sleep a lot last night, what with last minute... well... everything. So I'm trying to recharge before I meet my academic supervisor and not to look like a crack fiend... mmmmmm coffee and espresso , coffee and espresso, coffee and espresso, coffee and espresso. This may wind up biting me in the ass. ::shrug::

Not a lot to report, other than Iowa City is beautiful for what I've seen. There are a lot of bike paths and its a little sleepy in this neighborhood as classes have just let out. It's a nice, little calm before the storm that I'm sure is waiting for me.

Sleep deprivation's got the electric yellow by the brain banana. You know who you are. Back inna bit.

Sincerely,
Buck Rogers