It'd been in the making for a few weeks now. Hara-Kiri's vision of doing ECT on rats was coming to fruition. Dr. Zivago had rode on the rough-shod road of discovery, bringing his nappy horses to bear on some imperceivable goal, along some imperceivable road, quite possibly smacking into some imperceivable boulder.

The boulder wasn't so bad. There we were, two men who had never seen let alone done something like this before, just me and my partner Hideyoshi. We'd studied what sorts of setting we had to use for the device, making sure that the shock would cause a seizure. Now while that sounds horrible, there's a bright side to it: If your brain seizures due to shock, you instantly fall unconscious and can't remember the event--or a few days prior to it. We were shooting for a seizure. I could tell by his eyes he really didn't like that prospect; I'm sure he could tell that I didn't either. Still, we had to try for the good of the research (and our asses).

Hideyoshi and I readied the rat. He sported my 3 inch chemical rubber gloves and whispered calm things to the rat. She sniffed the air and just crouched on his arm. I stood at the ready, knees bent, sports stop-watch in one hand while my other one fingered a big, candy red 'shock' button (aka Big Candy). We weren't looking forward to this. I quickly put on the felt-covered alligator clips dipped in salt water, nodded to him and pressed Big Candy.

Nothing happened.

I looked at Hideyoshi and poked Big Candy, then prodded it repeatedly. We chuckled nervously, put the rat back in its cage and then tried playing electrical engineer with the piece of equipment before us.

We tried some stuff. We prepared for all Hell to break loose again. I shot against Big Candy. Hell didn't break loose.

I pulled out one of those electrical engineer gizmos that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about an electrical current. I plugged the electrode leads into the thing and tried more stuff. After a little while it was clear: we had no idea what the hell was going on, but these rats weren't getting themselves all unconscious on us today. You could tell we were relieved.

Still, I knew that come Monday Dr. Ziv would probably say something along the lines of, "What the fuck? I told you to make sure the fucking thing worked! God damnit.." I have my defense prepared, though. It's got 3 levels:

*Level 1: I asked him if he wanted to try the experiment on Friday and help us work out the bugs. He said nah.

*Level 2: Originally we'd meant to try out the thing on monday anyway. We'll still have time to fiddle with the machine, get it to work and then get to the actual experiment.

*Level 3: I didn't call him on Saturday because he'd mentioned that he doesn't know how the machine works. Why ruin his weekend with a problem we can't fix until we talk to other labs on monday?

It's all entirely reasonable. He may or may not think so. Unfortunately he hasn't written my letters of recommendation yet, so I'm hoping his reaction doesn't cloud his reasoning.

----

It was around 1:40 when Hideyoshi and I called it quits. I was walking back the 15 some odd blocks to my car (since the bus doesn't run on saturdays), when I suddenly realized something. I'd gotten the "which school term are you applying for?" dates all wrong on these two cover sheets I'd given Dr. Ziv. Sure, I'd originally put 2004-2005, but for some reason I scrapped those and put 2003-2004 instead. I walked back to Dr. Ziv's office, carefully remembered how his stack of teach recommendation papers were placed, then went through to find mine. Nope, he hadn't done any part of them yet. They were next. The person before me got some mighty nice marks. I wondered if I'd be doing this clandestine shuffling several days from now.

I threw away those bad copies, printed some new ones, filled 'em out, checked over them, left the room, came back and checked over them again, left the room, then came back and checked over them again and finally satisfied myself. It looked like nothing had been disturbed in the menagerie of festooned crap in his office, his jungle of academia. I sent off an email to The Captain about me being late, walked to my car and headed out to The Valley.

Now, as a small aside, let me relate The Ziv Controversy. It basically works like this:

I'm not sure I can trust Dr. Ziv with writing recommendations for me. He's cut alot of legal corners with doing his research, as well as some other activities that I know aren't right. I also know that Grettle, his ex-grad student, originally wanted to go to medical school--but he convinced her she couldn't get in anywhere and that she should stay on in his lab. She's since left for medical school, but I stay there at the lab: the senior-most researcher but also the one in the most tenuous position. I mean:

*Would he write a bad letter of recommendation for all the other places I'm applying besides Mt. University, just so he can keep me around?

*Is he genuinely dissatisfied with me or is only going to write a luke-warm letter?

*Or will he do what he said and write a good letter?

I can't say. I have enough evidence in my mind, and others agree with my decision to look on his hard-drive and see what my letters read like. If they're fine, they're fine. If he tries any of the former two, though, I've got an amazingly nasty obstacle. I could cancel him as a teacher recommendation, send notes around to all the profs I want to work with, and try to explain the situation. It'd be brazenly unethical of Dr. Ziv to restrict me to just his lab or just plain inaccurate if hes said I'd done only an ok job...

I'm somewhat sure it won't come to that, though.

----

My brief thoughts on The Last Samurai will have to wait for tomorrow or a few days after. Mom recently got Groundhog Day on DVD and wants to watch it. I'm too tired to re-re-edit my first essay, so I think I'll take her up on it.

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