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Wednesday

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Another 5 hours of sleep and a calm drive to Mt. University, filled with 40's style jazz, fast food sandwiches and an asshole or three in their gold-plated lexus. Mom was pleasant as usual and traffic was moderate, a neon yellow sun brimming around a white swamp of clouds, stuck together like egg noodles. It really felt like a good day. Man my attitude was gonna change.

It all started with L, Dr. Zivago's grad student. L was supposed to have been there in the morning at 9. I got into the lab on the early 9ish side. L wasn't there. Dr. Zivago came in at 9:30, with some undergrads trickling through before and after up until 10:20. L still wasn't there. After awhile we gave up on her and decided to go on with subject (rat) testing anyway. The big problem with this idea was that noone but L knew which rats were supposed to be tested. I half-guessed that we should do the 6 rats she and I had injected back on Monday. That was good enough for Dr. Ziv and all of us suited up with lab coats and gloves.

So, how do we test to see if rats are depressed with the shit we put in their system 48 hours ago? Well, first you put them in a plexiglass cylinder/bucket of water. You then let them stay in the bucket for 15 minutes and see if they swim or float (since we 'tie' life-jackets onto them). Normal rats swim most of the time, since they're thinking "FUCK! I'm going to fucking drown! Swim!" Depressed rats, on the other hand, mostly just float along (and would normally drown), since they're thinking "I'm past giving a shit. I'll just die and have it over with."

Testing the first 3 rats was bad. I was too gentle in cinching the life-jacket to the rat I did. It slipped off and Dr. Zivago got the guy, toweled him off, then put him back in the tank. The 2nd rat wouldn't swim so Dr. Zivago rushed in to save him. He had to put the rat down since it was really suffering.

After those three were done, Dr. Ziv wanted everyone to go to the war protest in the square. He, myself and an undergrad went in. I'd never been to a protest before. I wanted fire and brimstone to rain down with incoherent Bible quotes and riot-scale violence. Instead, the leaders kept repeating things about solidarity and throwing out slogans, while we made peace signs or clapped. No irony for me.

The last three rats we tested was a fucking nightmare. All the undergrads were gone and it was just Dr. Zivago and I. If I wasn't cinching the life-vest too high or low on the rat, I wasn't holding the rat down just right. Dr. Ziv pushed me aside and did everything himself, which made me feel like crap. Then again, he was mightily pissed off since L didn't have anything written up about what we were doing.

As if I didn't feel numb enough after all this, Dr. Zivago finally ordered all the rats that'd been tested to be sacrificed. He said the experiment was "fucking poor" and he didn't want the rats to suffer more. I was shocked that he'd actually do that (since the rats would get better in a few days without the drug). All those lives and our time wasted.

It immensely upset me. Nothing should die because of that kind of neglience, especially when you have a responsibility to protect those lives.

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