I stepped out to a downpour to pick up some lunch. I walked a couple of damp blocks accompanied by the smell of wood burning in stoves. Water had built up in the uneven bricked sidewalks and potholed streets like normal except this time it was breathtaking as the puddles were full of pollen and flower petals.

God damn Boston is beautiful - It made me feel as though I was listening to that hauntingly beautiful song take me somewhere nice by mogwai which always floods me with emotions and sometimes tears. Perhaps it is the current state of events as well - things have aquired new excitment, meaning and beauty.

God damn I need to stop this working until 4 am thing I have going down.

I was walking through the snow covered yard on my way to get a bahrito yesterday evening and I shut my eyes as I was walking to tremendous warmth - I could have laid down in the snow like kelsey and villard and gone to bed for the night.

My computer task is almost golden - I am working out several additional bugs and my first subject is coming in Wesdnesday! I am so excited. I am also excited as hell about possibly starting a study with Tom from SCU next year looking at moral development in children :)

I have been trapped in cambridge - I don't think I have ventured outside a 7 block radius for weeks now - I think I may take a zipcar for a couple fo hours to drive out of town so I can see the stars and listen to music... That sounds so god damn good right now.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1987 that creationalism is religion and can not be taught in science class. But those fucking creationists won't listen - instead they create new monkors - "Intelligent Design" which they claim "on its face is not linked with religion" yet the texts link to websites claiming god created the world and that jesus christ died for our sins.


Topics such as plate tectonics and the age of the earth should be left out of general education. Genetic mutation should be seen as the hand of god striking down upon sinners. Our children need one book - the bible - it will show them that god moves the earth and that the earth was created several thousand years ago. Our children should be made aware of the devil's work - planting dinosaur bones in the earth to confuse those of weak faith.


Good News:

Mid Feb. Georgia changed their position from an inital proposal that left out the word evolution and major physical and biological sciences to a curriculum consistent with support of evolution.

Bad News:
This Feb. the Board of Education in Ohio voted 13-4 to approve a chapter that relies on Intelligent Design ideas to challenge evolution.

In Michigan, school officials are looking at proposals that woudl add creationalism and the bible to PUBLIC school curriculum. A board member's daughter has proposed to the scoolboard that equal time shoudl be spent on evolution and creationalism.

Missouri Rep. Wayne Cooper has introduced a bill that would require equal treatment for ID and evolution.

A proposed bill in Alabama would protect teachers from getting into trouble for teaching creationism.



The merits and faults of evolution should be taught. There is no place for creationism in public school. But then again there is no place for faith-based aid in the federal budget.

Ach mein got. My apartment is a complete mess. I swear I must have spent 20 minutes looking through papers. Paper reycling is piled up a good foot on my table... all kinds of shit just thrown together.. old school papers, frozen pizza boxes. My couch is covered with articles and my coffee table is full of coffee cups with chai or hot chocolate residue. Half of my bed is taken up with MiScha 2000 and more articles. Oh yeah and the sink is full of plates.

God damn I can not wait for this weekend. And cleanliness. And Bright Eyes times 2.

The lab website is now up and is relatively stable!

i have finally been saying no. and it makes life much better.

I am so exhausted. Again from every angle. So much so that I haven't even signed onto AIM in weeks.

Charlie is in a comma and was taken off of his medication yesterday so that pnmonia can overtake him. My grandmother seems to be handling it pretty well. I must admit and it has really surprised me. Although she is being an absolute bitch to my parents. I hate how she does that to my father - I think she can be so god damn manipulative with him and it aggravates me like nothing else. Next time she makes some snide comment about him or my mother... i am not just going to tell her that it is untrue.



Meanwhile school is killing me. I am taking 2 real courses - a multivariate statistics course and contemporary topics in psychopathology... which is basiclaly the outline of our general exam... which means we really need to know this shit. I am going to attempt to take the general this summer so that what I learn in this class will never need to be revisited again!!! hahaha
But I am also quite excited about my practicum at the cambridge hospital - last week imet briefly witht he coordinator over there and it felt so relieving to be in an applied setting.

I was thinking about river today - I do not know why but she popped into my mind.. I am curious as to what she is up to. I emailed her last month but I am guessing all I have are her old email addresses. god damn she cracked me up.

I also think I may be making a trip out to california for the first 2 days of may or coachella (www.coachella.com) - I need to make this work financially... I just can not pass up on an opportunity to see the pixies, kraftWERK, the cure, bright eyes, mogwai, cursive, the trail of dead, wilco, le tigre and oh so many more. The rest of you should join :)

He has not opened his eyes in 3 days. He wants to leave this place.

I hope to god she listens to my father and I. I know he would not want this and I think she does to. but i know nonnie and it is up to her.

I just know for sure that when the times comes.. which I hope never does in this fashion.. I pray to god someone is not sticking a fucking tube into my stomach to feed me and making machines breathe for me.

I am worried about Nonnie. I think this will be better for her.... but i am not sure she sees it that way. and i wish i was there.

It was always painful to me to sit there at the center while she asks him questions and he mumbles and shakes. It was always neat when he would recognize us but it only lasted for seconds. When Heather and I visited him once he danced for us. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

It is good that I can still see him dancing, and singing Frank, and I can still remember sitting in the den with him when I was just over 10 going through his closet full of knives and asking him how many people he killed during world war 2. God damn I can still hear him talking about being a frogman during WW2 and growing up in the ghetto's of broklyn, catching batting practice for the NY Giants for nickles a day and then playing for them. Such an amazing man. He was defined by his stories and was so animated in telling them. I suppose that is really why I think he has been dead for a good decade now. He lost those.

memory is for eternity and emotions are god and it is all recurrent.

Tonight I saw Underworld which reminded me of some good times at the arcade during high school.

There was a guy in his early 20's who came over to the U.S. from Russia. His parents sent him over money. He hung out with all of us high schoolers at the arcade because he enjoyed masterbating to the female game characters... especially xmen.. he liked storm an aweful lot.. he was disgusting. I am not kidding. He would always talk about his nights at the strip club. One day he came into the arcade. Hey man I came prepared today. I put a condom on so i make no mess before i come here.

BUt anyways back to the story. SO one evening my friend John and I were at the arcade. He asks us. I hear in America there are vampires and werewolves is that true?

It went perfectly I said well there are no werewolves here - they are a myth. Then JOhn piped up but there are vapmpires. We told him he had to be extra careful when he was out at night. ANd to try to never go out after the sun went down. The first thing that came to his mind was the strip club.

It was fantastic he kept asking us about vampires for a good month until one day he asked someone else about it. Then he came in you guys lie to me!!

Today there was yet another job talk and luncheon. I really enjoyed this one - the guy was very easy-going, precise and clear and rather down to earth when he was just with us graduate students. I felt interested in something other than my small area of research once again... which is relieving

I found myself really interested in the work he does as it is right up my alley - rumination, dysfunctional attitude interactions and treatment response. But I think what has me most happy is that I felt thoroughly engaged and had something to say about his talk and research. It is nice to see that the disinterest that the recent cognitive language talks gave me was not so general.

Etienne just put on some amazing music. This is blowing my mind. The vocals and music to some extent remind me of die goldenen zitronen. especially this song. i reccommend dowloading it if you can.

Home has been beautiful and makes me sadly nostalgic in a happy way - however that works.

Christmas Eve we took my grandfather on some boat light show thing he used to do with my grandmother all the time - it was hooky as hell and santa could not sing - he was as bad as me - but it was great fun chilling with Bill laughing at the girls who could not walk in their C.F.M. heels. We were just waiting for one of them to fall overboard.

Christmas - My grandfather's place was packed with 10 dogs, a gamecube, an x box, 4 cousins, 6 aunts and uncles, a baby and a few family friends. How I love playing video games with little kids - it is the best - ross fell in love with super monkey ball so I am gonna try to pick him up the gameboy version tomorrow. My uncle is helping me build some furniture for the lab this evening. As much as I never thought I would say this when I lived here I really miss Spokane. And I miss doing construction with my uncle.


thought this sadness, anger, and disappointment had left.

a world like tomorrow wears things out
To get out you take the tide. any tide.

in good time.

Erika came in today and must have printed off an additional 500 pages of reading for me. Dear lord the stack gets higher and higher. At home there is already a stack of scientific papers going the entirety of one bookshelf space. I would say less than half of them have been read. But today I was in a reading mood and read over 150 pages of scientific articles... Right about now it is driving me nuts... and i am putting it down. But the thing is I love it. I find it all so fascintating and I have so much fun reading through them. Plus it makes me feel good.. I think if this jackass could publish in a journal like this with a crappy ass experimental paradigm I could have crapped out of my ass in my sleep maybe I can be a scientist.

I went over to the neuroendocrinology department and picked by some collection tubes and put sodium azide in them to kill bacteria. It crystalizes on the bottom looking like salt.. but you do not want to eat it. The IRB board likes to give a fuss about it because if you ate like 20 globes of it you would die. But anyways I was extra careful to wipe off the top because of this. I told the lab manager over there that you would have to be a lizard or snake to die in my experiment and she looked at me like I was insane and then laughed.