"Ah, surrounded again by the glory of effete wankerism! Yes, I'm sitting with relatively good posture on the second story of the Starbucks in downtown Insanityville (since I have no other choice). Our last half hour had a hearty rendition of Bob Marley like reggae, followed by what sounds like a sonata by Brahms or Dead White Baroque Dude. Flute and harpsichord duet; maybe Bach? Eh, I have Robert Miles on headphones...but the classical does sound good.

This place is more unpacked than a 24-carton cask of Bud Light on football night, no doubt owing to literally thousands of greek kiddies trying to get their pseudo-groove on (all slutted up with noone to do), while everyone else is too wrapped up in post-modern or college culture. We have an interesting crowd tonight: there's Frat Asshole out on the entirely glass door partitioned 2nd story deck, screaming at people with "Yeah!" and "Woo!" and "Hey, wanna come up for some coffee?!" He has two lackies who are vaguely amused by this behavior. There's Chinese Couple professing love with gifts of coffee mugs. And last but definetely not least, there are these two German dudes in the very back corner near the balcony, talking in heated whispers at some points while pointing at what looks like (at a brief glance) an engineer's schematic of a vibrator.

I guess electric cocks have to be dreamed up somewhere.

So we are the few, the 2nd story Starbucks crowd who just want a place to read and work (or verbally jack off in Frat Asshole's case) without listening to open-mic night and people politely chatting too goddamn loudly. I had that lovely experience in the semi-quiet study area of The Tomb today, with this pair of Chinese wankfucks twittering behind me and opening/closing what sounded like dozens of binders. Set-up does not take that long unless you're trying to get gold from lead, c'mon.

But I'm being overly snarky. I'll get back on track.

This past week was what you might call the initial trial by fire. I had:

*140 pages of dense quasi-philosophical articles on emotion theories, all related to questions like "Are there basic emotions?" and "What distinguishes emotions from moods, temprament, and other affective states?" Some of it quite interesting, most of it too philosophical and not enough psychological for me.

*A 2 page paper on 'What are the core aspects of emotion that are different from other psychological processes'? I went the safe route and argued from a purely evolutionary perspective. I'll post the thing sometime. You might like it. You'll likely hate it, but I'm Lord High Asswombat here and I control the jukebox.

*Several chapters of statistics to read. Somehow after having had three semesters of stats in college, I'm just now getting the hang of thinking statistically again. The book and the professor use notation I'm not familiar with, though, and we're covering shit that I only did in computer programs while analyzing data sets.

*Homework for the stats class. This might sound like your Ye Olde (or not so Ye Olde) 40 problem homework assignment in math, but it involved alot of work and even more editing. The questions weren't exactly clear, y'see, and getting clear clarification isn't something this Teacher's Assistant is good with.

So I dealt with all that and felt suitably annoyed/aggravated/drained. Now it's Friday, at around 10pm, in a downtown cafe and I have no work assignments to do. I'm half-way through my emotions class reading, though, which is great. I could probably take off saturday and still stay ahead. I'm gonna get ahead as far as I can, though, because I don't want a repeat of this past week.

Now while all of that work last week was a pain in the ass, I've gotta say that I'm in the best lab group in the world. No fucking kidding, I shit thee not. While all of the professors in the psych. department are decent to fantastic people and I like all the graduate students, I continually feel blessed to have Dr. Crisco as my graduate advisor. In all my time as a researcher, I've worked with five different lab heads--and while I really liked Dr. Pony, Professor Crisco outshines them all. To get a good idea of what Crisco is like, take Dr. Zivago and completely reverse it so you get:

*A fundamentally decent, caring, even empathetic person who listens to your suggestions and thoughts.

*Organized, efficient, knows exactly where he is and where he wants to go.

*Genuinely wants to help those around him succeed, since their success is his success.

*Anything else that is not bullshit, backbiting and asinine jealousy.

Fundamentally, someone I can really work with for 4-5 years. Blessed, I declare, blessed.

His staff are also incredibly competent and rather pleasant people. Gabe is one of the older people there, hovering in her 50's with a sortof soft-spoken librarian touch to her and a gentle kindness I can't explain. She's been helping me get an idea about how to deal with looking at immune antibodies, white blood cells, general immune stuff.

There's also Mike and Heather, who seem to look after the care of the monkeys (since I work in a monkey lab) and do routine stuff like health maintenance, checking for pathogens, etc. Even the monkeys themselves are relatively decent creatures. I'm still not used to how different they are from rats, though, and I feel uncomfortable sometimes about their situation. At the same time I'm amazed by them. I think my decision to work with monkeys was a good idea. Not only are any research results more closely linked to what we'd see in humans, but the way they socialize is alot more like us. It's uncanny sometimes.

Funny enough I don't see the other grad student, Sara, around the lab much, but then again I haven't been to the lab all that often these last two weeks. That'll change after I get a project firmly started, but right now I'm still trying to gain my feet.

Work stuff aside, you're probably wondering how Insanityville is growing on me. Well, I kinda love and hate this town, but the nice parts generally win out. There's really no parking anywhere except enclosed 8 bucks-an-hour parking structures, so you have to walk everywhere downtown--and the whole campus and general area is downtown. The metro isn't bad here, but there aren't nearly enough buses, so you sometimes have to wait 30 minutes to go 7 blocks someplace. Still, it beats having to walk all the time and I always ride free as a student.

As far as socializing goes, I haven't really met anyone besides other graduate students and professors (there's the bum who wants to buy a Lexus and beer with his pan-handling, but he doesn't really count). While they're all great people and I've had some fun at this or that grad. student outting (official or spontaneous), I wouldn't call any one of them friends. Nice acquaintances that'll help you in a bind, but that's about it. There are also some familiar faces I see down in the Crypt/The Cat, but we haven't approached one another. I figure give that several more weeks so people know I really am a regular there. And I really am a regular there.

So yeah, bottom line: no friends here. That doesn't bother me like I thought it would, though, since there are still all of the people I know from here and the past times in my life (including you, Mr. Improv Genius Swell Guy Person, whose e-mail I'll reply to when my wireless connection stays up for longer than 5 minutes or the DSL line finally works again).

I was supposed to have talked with Dorknoodle last night about some shit going down in his life, but my phone didn't list his number in my 'missed calls' index thingy. T is still having problems finding a place to live, but I'm hoping to hear from her some night over the phone.

As far as recreation goes, I haven't gotten a chance to do much of that. There've been some truly special moments, though, like going out onto one of the far wooden piers in the harbor, laying down in the middle of a thunderstorm, and watching the entire sky glow like exploding white fire all around you. Often times I somehow end up back at my apartment by the lake around sunset, so I'll stand outside near my favorite tree and watch until it's died beneath the land.

And one highlight I can't ignore is finally, finally being able to see "Hero" last night, after two weeks of trying to schedule time for it. I'd told myself that I hadn't quite earned it, but then I told myself to straight-wise fuck off and get over myself. The movie turned out to be quite different from what I thought it'd be (what with the whole 'one man versus an empire' quote), but I must say: it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. It was like a synthesis of "The English Patient" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", with what I can only describe as achingly gorgeous action scenes and absolutely brilliant cinematography. Saying it was a visual treat for the eyes is an insult to it. I was very glad I decided to see it then; picked my spirits right up.

There are some other flicks I want to see this weekend--what with not being achingly busy and having no real 'net connection. Ghost in the Shell 2 and Sky Captain look dead sexy, and I'm a sucker for sci-fi.

I'll still get plenty of studying in, but I figure a few two hour breaks ain't all THAT sacrilegious.

I've bored the crap outta you enough, I know, I know. No new photographs. Haven't had much interest lately. Then again I've barely been able to get 8 hours of sleep lately, so we'll see what routine does for me. I still need to more carefully edit some of those good trip photos and the Las Vegas ones, though, so there may be some new stuff soon.

Right, back to studying and heated Aryan whispers about the next generation of fake dicks..."

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