Crazy psycho Catholic girls!

On another note, I've recently been communicating with a uber-conservative Catholic girl I knew back in highschool. She and I were friends in my brief highschool stint in Kansas (coincidentally when I was an uber-conservative Lutheran). We mainly ate lunch together and would catch the occassional movie. Anyways, about a month ago she wrote me an out-of-the-blue e-mail. Apparently she's been in love with me ever since I left Kansas, and has been telling her friends and family about this wonderful guy she wants to spend her life with. Not only that, she's been holding out for me this entire time. This is over a 7 year span! She was upset that I don't keep in particularly good touch with her, and wants to know what the deal is. Anyways, I had to tell her the truth: sweetheart, I'm gay. This did not go over particularly well, and has started a somewhat humerous but sad e-mail exchange.

Some actual excerpts from her e-mails:

" I want to know why, after your last email in July, you didn't try to call or email me once. I didn't respond because I needed this year to learn about myself and to work some things out." (in other words, it's totally alright for her to flake out, but inexusable for me)

"I did have feelings for you but I'm not sure if I still do."
(then why didn't she say anything for 7 years???)

"It seems like we both have changed so much and we're further apart than ever."
(yes, people do change over time, especially 7 years... what does she expect???)

"I'm in total shock. I can't even express right now what I'm feeling, yet I have so many
thoughts and questions. (It's a good thing you told me this by email instead of on the phone or in person. It wouldn't have been a pretty sight.)"
(ok, so I'm REALLY glad I didn't tell her over the phone or by person)

"You've hurt me though."
(by being gay, or by not falling in love with her?)

Now comes the real gold:

"How could you keep it from me all this time? I feel lied to and betrayed."
(lied to and betrayed? this coming from the girl that didn't tell me her feelings this entire time)

"We've gone through so much together."
(what??? we were friends for one year of high school; the extent of our friendship was eating lunch together and going to a couple movies)

"I thought I could trust you. How can I even trust you now?"
(for fuck's sake, when was trust ever an issue here?)

"You know I'm strongly against such a lifestyle, and I am not going to accept it."
(ok, so she's a biggot)

"Ideally, I would like to still be friends. I care about you and think about you everyday."
(wow, she's totally obsessed with me!)

"It will be difficult, if not impossible for me to not think about your lifestyle. I wish I could get past it but it's just always going to be there."
(tough luck!)

"I don't like how our friendship has always been off and on. In my mind, friends talk maybe once a week-over the phone or by email."
(huh??? if I talked to all my friends that often, I'd never get anything else done!)

"Maybe we should just let the friendship go and move on. It hurts me to be going through this."
(then maybe she should stop being a crazy bitch, and pull her head out of her fucking ass!)

I had no idea I had this effect on anyone! Wow! It makes me sad because 7 years is a long time for someone to not get laid!

Yes! I'm saved!

Well ladies and gentlemen, it appears that smoking the reefer isn't as bad for us as we were made to believe! A NIH-funded study at the University of California Los Angeles demonstrated that there is no link between weed consumption and lung cancer. In fact, THC may be good for you, as it helps kill old cells that may become cancerous. This means that I no longer have to worry about dying from lung cancer, and can instead worry about more likely possibilities, such as what to do when my liver finally fails due to excessive alcohol consumption. Now, as a disclaimer, the NIH are a bunch of godless baby eaters, so we should probably ignore everything they say, and pray that their funding is cut even further. How did Satan infiltrate the NIH??? Probably the same way he got into my laptop! Out Satan! Out!

Of course, if my liver does fail, I can always grow a new one. Ah, the miracles of modern medicine :)

Another private school rant...

One of the interesting things about living in the northeastern U.S. is the obsession with private schools. There are many kids, especially at a place like Dartmouth, that have never set foot in a public school. Parents shell out $40,000 per year so that their babies can go to top notch schools, such as Exeter, Andover, and St. Peter's. Of course, many parents cannot afford the price, and instead send their children to 2nd-tier private schools. Even the best public schools are considered to be unacceptable by many parents... this despite the fact that the New England states have the best public education systems in the country. This is a striking difference from the attitude in Edmonton, where people are usually happy, or at least satisfied, with the public school system.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars on high school (or college for that matter)? C'mon! I survived two stints in the Kansas public school system (high school and university), and it wasn't so bad. KANSAS!!! The place run by a bunch of old white overweight high school drop-outs who are desperately trying to bring Kansas back to the dark ages. I kind of feel as though I got a pretty good deal, because at least my education was cheap.

Of course, it's not as though graduating at a place like Exeter doesn't have it's advantages. According to a Exeter-Yale-Princeton-Dartmouth educated friend of mine, the kids that graduated from Exeter with 'C' averages typically got free rides at places like Michigan, UCLA, and Berkeley, top ranked public universities. They of course didn't get these scholarships based on merit, but because it looks good for a university to have Exeter graduates attending your school.

A common trait of all the private schools is they have secret societies. Dartmouth has an ugly mausoleum-like building in the middle of the college that houses a hand-selected group of students belonging to one such society.

The most famous secret society of all is the Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. Some illustrious members of the Skull and Bones:

George Bush Sr., George W. Bush, John Kerry, Dick Cheney.

Just goes to show you don't need brains to get into the Skull and Bones, just money and family connections. Also shows you really don't need brains to get into Yale.

Go Oilers!

I was going to make a post about my Edmonton Oilers (which, by the way, just made it into the Western Conference finals, despite being the 8th seed in the Western Conference), but Cibbuano beat me to it.

I hate my computer!!!

Fucking piece of shit! Every time I try to open MATLAB or Power Point, it shits the bed! There have been numerous times recently I've salivated over the thought of throwing my computer off the Chrysler tower in NYC, and watching it obliterate itself on the street below. Luckily, it'll still let me open Firefox so I can post on my blog.

So, in other news, I joined a Greek house. Yes, you read this correctly. Now you may be asking yourself "what is Stephen, a model PhD student, and outspoken critic of fraternity life doing joining an undergrad Greek house?" Well first let me fill you in on what kind of house I joined. The house (refered to as the Tabard) is an all-inclusive co-ed house with probably the most diverse membership you can imagine. The members represent every ethnic group and sexual identity out there. They needed a grad advisor, so I boldly took the challenge.

Secondly, the Tabard helps me deal with the pathetic grad student social scene at Dartmouth. You see, most of the grad school parties here are exclusive to certain schools (e.g., the medical school or business school), or else they're just really lame. For instance, this is how many of the parties in my own program go:


Other grad student: "Ooo ooo! We're going to make paper!!! Want to come?"

Me: *Shrug* "I guess I've got nothing better to do."

Other grad student: "Ok, meet at my house at 7! This'll be fun!"

Other grad student (after a few hours of boring paper making): "Ooo ooo! Let's play some really bad folk or Celtic music for the next 2 hours!"

Me: *groan*

Other grad student (at 8:30): *yawn!* "Time for me to hit the sac! It's almost my bedtime."


Now, compare this with a Tabard party:


Undergrad: Let's commit all sorts of debauchery and stay up until 3am while listening to really good tunes!


So yeah, I'm a 24 year old fratboy. Crazy.

Watch out for black holes!

After reading a bizzare post by Derelict, I started to think about the world, and when and how the world will end. Not that I'm losing sleep about it, but it is an interesting thing to think about. I grew up in a Lutheran family, and was taught that the world will end with Jesus' second coming. Now, of course, I know better.

There will be a time when Earth is unable to support life of any kind. This will likely be long after the human race has gone extinct (assuming, of course, humans don't colonize distant planets). We've heard about many of the popular world-ending scenarios (nuclear war, meteor impact, uncontrolled global climate change, "grey goo" from replicating nano-robots, etc.), but I did a little search on the internet to figure out what some scientists believe will be the coup de grace that finishes life on Earth.

Here it is: 20 ways the world could come to an end. A ridiculous article in a lot of ways, but still interesting.

What's the deal with dolphins?

Man, dolphins are wild! First they learn how to retrieve torpedoes, then we discover they understand (or can be trained to understand) math, and now we learn that they have their own names! What's next? Dolphins that can fly jumbo jets?

This reminds me of a science fiction book I read back in Junior High: Startide Rising, by David Brin. I remember thinking how cool it would be to have a conversation with a dolphin. Of course, what would you say to a dolphin? Something about fish?

Post 11

I guess my last post was #10. I don't know if that's a great achievement, but anyways, it's there. So far the posts that elicited the strongest reactions (based on number of comments) were a short blurb about my trying Viagra (a whopping 16 comments) and another short post about forgetting the meaning of Easter (9 comments). Hmm... not too sure what to make of that.

As I said in my last post, I’m suffering from a bit of Montezuma’s revenge right now. Thankfully, I’m past the puking stage, and am able to eat normal (but small) meals. However, my gastrointestinal system is still a bit fucked up, and I’m still slightly nauseated. It doesn’t help that I have to give a talk in front of the whole department tomorrow, and am still suffering from bouts of mud butt (yes, I know you wanted to know that). Conveniently, this gives me an excuse if my talk ends up sucking… I can blame it on the illness, instead of my spending too much time on this blog.

This whole episode has prompted me to find out: who is Montezuma, and why is he so pissed off? Montezuma was the last Aztec emperor, before the Spanish conquered Mexico. Apparently, the Spanish invaders used him as a puppet, before his own people killed him in an uprising. Since then, every time a foreigner gets sick in Mexico it is a form of Montezuma’s revenge. However, this doesn’t explain why my colleagues and I got sick. Sure, my ancestors did some pretty horrific things, but none of them had to do with the Aztecs. It also seems strange that three people conducting research to help, indirectly, preserve Mexican forests would get sick. Why did none of the happy, healthy (looking) tourists we saw at the airport get sick? Surely the fact they walked all over the Aztec ruins in shorts and gaudy American t-shirts would have annoyed Montezuma far more than anything we did.

Maybe he thought I was stealing treasures when I took mite colonies back with me. Or maybe it was the bottles of Mezcal I took back with me to the United States. Whatever the case, I’m starting to think this Montezuma guy is a bit of a dick.

Seriously, though, when you’re in Mexico, don’t drink the water. Stay away from fruit and drinks with ice in them as well.

The real cause of Montezuma’s revenge. (if you're interested)

Me-hico!

On the topic of new experiences (of which I have had many in the past few weeks), I just returned from my trip to beautiful Oaxaca, Mexico. I had a tremendous time! The day we arrived there, we drank a lot of Mexican beer, and investigated this city of 100,000 people. After calling it an early night, we woke up the next morning, and got ready to head to the field. The purpose of this trip, by the way, was to collect mites for my PhD research. I'm doing a biogeography study with these mites, and making comparisons between mites associated with two beetle populations: one in the S.E. USA, and one in Mexico.

Anyways, on the second day, we headed into the field with a group of Mexican forest service technicians. The goal: find a bunch of trees infested with the southern pine beetle, take bark samples back to a lab in the Universidad de Oaxaca, and search for mites in the inner bark. We drove 3 hours on dirt roads through some of the most beautiful areas I have ever seen. In a bit of a twist, the Mexicans sat in the cab, while the gringos sat in the back of the truck (see picture above). There's something exhilarating, and at the same time terrifying, about sitting in the back of a truck, screaming down some Mexican roadways. I did think a little bit about how quickly my life would come to an end if the truck drove off the road, or had an accident and rolled over, or threw me off the truck, causing me to break every bone in my body. Whatever the case, I survived.

We drove to a little village, where we negotiated with the mayor for permission to cut down a few trees on their land. We sat in a straw building, and drank several rounds of Coronas and Mezcals (Mezcal, btw, is a close relative of Tequila). After an hour, we convinced him to show us to a nearby stand, and allow us to cut down and remove a few trees. We took care of the trees, and headed back to the mayor's place to say fairwell. He gave us another three rounds of beer, and then tried to convince me to marry his 14 year old niece. He offered me 2 cows, a house, and land (twice what he offers Americans, he told me). I'm 99% sure he was shitting me, but it makes for a great story. He then made us pay for all the beers he offered us, and sent us on our way.

The next day, we went to breakfast at a local eatery, and ate enchaladas with corn smut, Oaxaca string cheese, and pumpkin blossoms. Delicious! We then went to the University of Oaxaca to start the mite colonies. It was Cinqo de Mayo, so getting into the University was a bit of a challenge (not many people were working that day). That evening, we headed to the main square, and joined the locals in some revelry! It was nice not to see very many pasty-white gringos there (and most of the gringos showed a good deal of respect, e.g. by not wearing short shorts and bikini tops).

Of course, no trip to Mexico would be complete without Montezuma's revenge. All of that delicious Mexican food was forcibly evicted from my body. My daily caloric intake was at a negative yesterday, as was my fluid intake. The plane ride back was painful, especially since the flight from Houston to Boston was delayed 45 minutes. However, I'm happily back to eating solid foods (it's amazing what pot'll do for your appetite... also good for nausea).

Despite getting ill, I have to say:

¿México es agradable? ¡no, México es fantástico!

One thing's for sure: Mexicans have fine asses!