We have bombasts and blowhards, but nature still trumps us for pomp and circumstance.

Several days ago I'd grown bored of sitting in my apartment. It was stiffling and claustrophic, notions that seemed too foreign for belief. Even so, I thought about distant fields and wooden bridges. There was a sweet instance about them, and something told me it was the right time.

The night was so mild I didn't need a coat. My original plan took me along the same street I'd walked for a year now. Pagodas of orange flourescents nudged along shadowed canopies, like slitted gowns giving a glimpse into the bare flesh of the evening.

And down the hill, along the plain of concrete sidewalks, nodding briefly to the greco-roman student union. I parted ranks with humanity as I started walking up the hill to the main, old campus. Time had slowed and ceased, making my stride slow and short. I crested up along grey veins, trundling down into an asphalt artery. A black gentleman stopped his car and asked after the union I'd passed. And so we traded paths: my old way for his.

But then I got a notion while starring at the forest to my right. It'd been years since I'd gone down the the arboretum and forest at Obie town. I'd travelled through this one some--but not at night. And so I skirted around a building, descended past some dozen tiers of overgrown bushes, and side-stepped onto a path.

No sooner had I done this then I heard humans being drunk and very stupid up ahead.

"Where's my fucking flashlight!? Fuck your guitar pick, we could find it if I had my flashlight!"

That was the Alpha male, a rip-roaringly drunk, scary, violent son of a bitch that wanted a fight that night. Two others were with him. They were caricatures of people more than anything: Alpha in all his strutting, yelling and barkingly drunk glory, the beta dude who just wanted to find his guitar pics, and the female who stopped Alpha from killing that night. I stuck around partly since I had a cell-phone and I don't take kindly to meaningless violence.

So I switchbacked through several trails in the near dark, moving away from the noise steadily. Webs criss-crossed and brushed across my face, light afterthoughts more than anything. Finally I took to the jogging trail by the lake the forest bordered, found a random bench, and sat. I could still hear them carrying on in the background. Even so, I began to commune and find out what the Buddhists mean by inner calm. It all washed away for a little while: myself, the thoughts and images that constantly cut through my mind, even what the reality of all of it was. I looked out at the lakeshores out beyond and admired the blazing lights set against the darkness. They always remind me of campfires, or torches--something that seems so familiar and good that I get lost in the feeling.

The threats of death and beating by Alpha did interrupt me at a few points, but that lot eventually settled down some. And after an hour and a voice mail message to C, a good friend of mine, I buggered off back to my square cave and got lost in more hollow ways.

So what else has been happening to this old buzzard. Hm.

Well my experiment is almost done with--and thank Christ, Buddha, and whomever else you like. Granted I've gotten accustomed to (but not over)the overwhelming pulpy reak of monkey shit. But only being able to do a pair of monkeys a week is too slow. This is the way it had to be done for the pilot experiment, though. I'm just about done scoring all of the data for the control (i.e. non-manipulated) group. I didn't finish today because some thoughtless twit decided to individually house 5 pre-juvenile monkeys in the room right next to mine without telling me. The only TV I have access to is up on the same floor, same hallway. I need the TV to score behavior from my camcorder tapes.

And so I got to listen to 5 young monkeys bitch and screech and moan and whine and carry on like spoiled children in the background. Who the hell housed them separately NEXT TO EACH OTHER? You don't do that for young monkeys. I'm gonna ask so I can bitch the person out for being a fool and potentially fucking up my last two monkeys and their behavior during my experiment.

Oh but there was other stuff.

On top of screeching monkeys, the care staff--who should only be around in the mornings--was there doing shit. In the afternoon on a SUNDAY. And naturally they had to use the hallway where I'd set up the TV and all my other stuff. There's literally nowhere else I could have gone unless I wanted to listen to a jet-engine recirculate air or monkeys screeching at me.

And on top of these two, a phone somewhere kept ringing. I thought it was the one kindof in front of me, but apparently not. And whomever it was that was calling didn't get the clue that if a person doesn't answer the first time, they ain't likely answering soon. I sure as fuck wasn't going to. They could tongue my balls for calling the 3rd floor of the lab on a SUNDAY.

Combine all these factors with having to pay the utmost careful and precise attention to every movement and sound a recorded monkey is making for 5 minutes...and I couldn't handle it for long. I still had 40 minutes of behavior left to score, but I knew what my raging point was and I was close to it.

So I went back downstairs with my stuff, tried to calm down, got even more pissed off at the sheer jackoff hee-haw factor of it all, then finally calmed down.

The rest of the night has been good.

Brief notes about other shit:

*On Saturday I went to the lab to score some behavior too. Yeah, ain't I dedicated son of a bitch? My advisor was there anyway, since there was a primate protest out front. I did my thing, he did his, I talked with a colleague from the other primate facility across the way, and finally went outside to listen to an animal rights guy pontificate.

Now I respect certain parts of the animal rights movement. They have done some good things. For one, scientist type peoples working with animals now have to have all their experiment steps approved by a committee now. There are also federal and state regulations for caring for monkeys and other animals, including provisions about making sure they get intellectual and emotional stimulation. Even the perception among scientists of how monkeys relate to us has changed. All of this happened because of lobbying by the animal rights people--and for that I thank them.

On the other hand, this speaker used terrorist rhetoric, factual distortion, and an uncompromisingly 'us versus them' approach that I found startlingly naive. Many in the movement now feel that we, as scientists, should go back to experimenting on prisoners, the mentally handicapped, and mostly people who are willing to volunteer. Many people in past years have talked to my advisor and said they'd be completely willing to help science if that meant no animal testing.

Funny thing is that my advisor was protesting human testing on prisoners and the mentally infirm back in the 60's...and he favored animal testing as an alternative.

So the subject of ethics goes around in a circle.

Still, interesting to hear arguments against animal research.

Last but not least: there was a pub crawl on friday. I got done with testing at 6pm, ate me a damn quick meal somewhere I can't remember, then shambled over to the German Drinking Haus of Booze.

What followed was a debauched sabbatical, with drinking and all manner of crazy shit. I stayed pretty moderate, considering I had to go in on saturday for all the stuff I mentioned.

What can you say about a siege on the bars of a small city? Well, not much, except that I met a developmental doctoral student named Sarah. Pleasant person, good to talk to; mostly did the talking thing toward the beginning and end. Not exactly my type, but pleasant to look at and the small-talk was decent.

By the end, we had only a small remnant of our 25-30+ horde of liquor-swilling lushes. We were in the shittiest bar in town. Bar none. They may as well have mopped the tile floors with piss. They may well have. But people played foozball, had more booze, and were having a great time about everything. I convinced a very, very drunk Xtian that he'd led us well to the promised land (our 10th bar) and that we could bask in its dive-like nirvana. His eyelids fluttered a bare hair open while his girlfriend looked on with calm, but steady, concern. He flashed me a genuine wide smile after my little diatribe about us not thinking any less of him if he left to get food, drink water, and lay down.

When you're fucking drunk after a certain time, you stay the fuck drunk and need all the help you can get.

And so with foozball a-goin' and me completely, almost startlingly, sober...I shook hands, hugged, and left.

That's all. I swear. Really.

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