gone 'til November

"Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life."
-- Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, in "the Art of Peace"

To this end and others, I will be travelling to Japan next week for 14 days. I will see Nagoya, Tokyo, Kyoto, and hopefully a few other places. And I will be climbing the Japanese Alps for a few days. I will, of course, take many pictures and have much to say, but I'm not sure what my internet access will be like once I'm there. So I may post again soon, or it may be the end of October when next I get the chance. I hope you'll keep checking back. And now, as is my style, I will offer an incentive in the form of a picture of the hamburglar. It's an odd one this time.

Goin' to the Chapel...

Tomorrow morning I (accompanied by my dear friend Monica) will take the first of many flights to come in the following weeks. This one, though, has a certain sentimental weight to it. We will be headed to Montreal for my dear sister Patience's wedding, an event so sure to be outstanding that it had to be held off of U.S. soil. Far, far from civilization in the land of moose-riding beavers and french fries with gravy, inside a very fancy chateau in a tiny little town called Montreal, the Atkin family will welcome (indoctrinate) a new member to its motley ranks. Welcome, Brian Jamiriquai Lufthansa Jones...now how about helping to clean the garage?

You gots to be kidding me

Yeah I said "gots." And I went to college, too. And I've begun not one but two sentences with conjunctions. Why such a nightmarish approach to grammar? Because if we've learned anything today, kids, it's that if you know the right people, you don't have to know anything else, or even be qualified for the job. OH, you headed a corrupt lottery commission, AND you're Bush's pet lawyer? Hey, that's perfect.

Seriously, Harriet Miers? What, did Laura pass on the job? Andy Card too busy? Does no one rememberthe Ohio gang? Or that we used to have three branches of government?

If the Senate confirms Miers, I might have to start cheering for the other team...

Um...are you sure you're a doctor?

This sign (you can click on the pic to make it larger) was posted on the door of a nearby conference room at work. It hung there for about a week - notice there is no date on the sign - and was the absolute first thing I took a picture of with my new camera.

Ah,science. Wooing the ladies with questionable, handmade signs since last thursday.

Oh, SNAP!

I was tentatively thinking of titling this post "Bobby Digital," and then reflected on the fact that nobody does or should get RZA jokes. That being said I bought a digital camera for my trip. I went to B and H, which is the largest camera store in the world and was certainly a sight to behold. Oddly, it is staffed almost entirely by orthodox jews and also the whole store is connected by conveyor belts. The staff guy I talked to was SUPER helpful, so I guess he earned this cheap plug I'm presently putting in. Go to B and H!

Con(cert)ey Island

Last night yours truly could be found in Keyspan Park, home of minor-league baseball team the Coney Island Cyclones. Oh, and the Shins and the White Stripes were there, too.

I was treated to a fabulous concert as I stood in center field; a stage was constructed in the outfield, and was open in the back to let in the night sky and the breeze coming off the Ocean.

The first band, M. W. something, was terrible. The Shins, however, were solid and terrific. They performed a lot of their hits, but, truth be told, were so very much themselves as they are on their albums that it doesn't really make sense to see them live. It's exactly like listening to their music on mp3.

The same could not at all be said for the White Stripes, however. The difference between the music of their albums and the music of their live show last night in Coney Island is like the difference between seeing a tiger in a zoo and seeing a tiger devouring a gazelle in the wild. Jack White is a maniac, a Robert-Johnson-esque guitar devil who must be seen to be believed. He flew from instrument to instrument and from song to song, stopping only to take polaroids of himself and Meg (which he then threw out to the audience) and to make a few suitably bizarre comments like "This morning Meg had breakfast with Dennis Hopper. (pause) No, that's not true."

Speaking of Meg, she is far more impressive a musician than anybody gives her credit for. With a very proper air about her, she's able to keep up with and adjust to Jack's almost feral perfomance. When Jack broke a string for the second time, he merely tossed aside the guitar he was playing and picked up another and started playing a totally different song, then, when his roadie has fixed the string, Jack took up his now fixed guitar and continued the first song where he'd left off. This was done without pause, and Meg never missed a beat, despite there passing no apparent cues between each other.

Even the songs from their newest album that I don't like sounded incredible last night, to the point where I was made to think "oh, that's what that's supposed to sound like." Score another one for the Detroit music scene...

Oh, hey, that's just great.

For months - months! - I have been laboring over this problem at work. I have two mice, each with a different genotype. PCR done by my coworkers shows one mouse has a transgene, the other does not. However, I keep getting results over and over again that say that both these mice have the transgene. So either the tests I'm doing are wrong, or something's going on with these mice. I assumed it was my tests that were failing somehow, and I felt stupid and like a really bad scientist.

Today I learned that the both mice have the transgene, and that our PCR method of genotyping gives false positive results. So, there's no way I could have gotten the results I was hoping for. It is these sorts of time-wasting experiences I sincerely hope will not find their way to the forefront of my mind as I lay on my deathbed...

Regarding my boy Kanye, Paul Krugman, and President George W(hitey) Bush

Now that I have found a way around paying for the NYTimes' stupid "Times select" program for Op-Ed content, I tremendously enjoyed reading Paul Krugman's new column about the effects of race on the response to Katrina.

Personally, though, as happy as I was that Kanye said what he did when he did, I think he may have been dangerously oversimplifying the matter. George Bush doesn't care about black people, but his record would seem to show that he doesn't really care about anyone other than his big rich corporate friends. Why else would he offer FEMA and HUD positions as favors to friends, rather than qualified professionals? Those are vitally important gov't agencies, who primarily serve the people who need federal assistance (i.e. those other than rich white men). This gets me back to the problem, though, which is that if the public gets fixated on this notion of its being largely an issue of race that slowed the Katrina reponse, we won't fixate on all the factors that led to a slow Katrina response. Thoughts?

Der Kommissar IS in town. I know, I partied with him last night.

My first clue was running into my debutante socialite friend there. You know, the one who knows all the fancy New York people and introduced me to the correspondent from Al Jazeera. By the end of the night, I figured I might just be in the running for 2nd Fanciest American; you know, silver to ole' Jimbo's gold standard. Why so fancy? Well.....

Last night I attended a special invitation-only soiree at the Guggenheim, held to celebrate the opening of an exhibit of never-before-seen-outside-of-Russia collections. There were performances by musicians and dancers, as well as free drinks (including some kind of vodka that's apprently not even on the market yet. How very.). As for the art, some of it was incredible. The icons - which I came to learn made up the most expensive part of the collections and were from as far back as the late 12th century - were breathtaking. Some pieces of the later work - in particular this mixed-media sculpture piece of a man on a train - were fantastic. Some others, not so much.

I like dressing up, I like art, and I like weird parties. Check, check, and check.

This is amazing

This clip right here shows MSNBC newsman Olbermann saying what needs to be said. You should really check it out!

Now and for the rest of my life...

...I'm on hold. A stupid jerk at the medical center broke an instrument I need to use, then went on vacation, and now the stupid jerks at tech support have me on hold. The real problem, though, is the hold music. A terrible sax solo "da dum dee doo dweeee!" plays, and then a message interrupts to tell me my call will be answered in the order it was received. Through some cruel glitch, this message re-starts the hold song. "Da dum dee doo dwee!" over and over again for the past 20 minutes.

SOMEONE MUST PAY.

Brooklyn, number one!

The largest parade in North America is held a few blocks from where I live. I went last year, and darned if I was going to miss it this year. The West Indian Cultural Festival Carnival Parade is a gigantic costumed extravaganza that stretches on for as far as the eye can see. Giant flatbed trucks covered with speakers blast dancehall reggae music while ornately-decorated performers dance their way along. It is nothing short of incredible. Of course the streets are packed with spectators, but everyone seemed really well-behaved, the food smelled terrific and the pageantry was unmatched. I have it from a reliable source that this event is a major one in the world of competetive carnival dancers, and contests are held in Trinidad, Jamaica, and elsewhere just for the right to come to Brooklyn to show their stuff. DO NOT miss this event next year if at all possible!

the name is a swear word.

MotherF*cker is one of NYC's biggest dance parties. Held every sunday evening of a three-day weekend, it has been brought to my attention on a number of occasions by a great many different people as something I had to try. I was jonesing for something like the Bang at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, so I had high hopes going in.

Stepping into Mf'r was like stepping into the NYC you only see in movies. The NYC where all the pretty scene people get together to have decadent parties and get on one another. I didn't think this actually existed, but I have been there, and I have seen it. The event was held on several floors of this club that was entirely too small for the hundreds of people there, and the music was ridiculously good.

The problem, however, was that the event was made to get people orgiastic and sloppy drunk in a very tightly packed venue. Right about the time I could feel my Caged Animal Syndrome getting worse, some guy passed out onto me. I caught him, picked him up and leaned him against a pillar on the dance floor while his friend giggled. "Are you okay?" I asked, only to be greeted with that glazed-over forty-yard stare I know from my Emergency Room days. "Your friend is messed up, you'd better get him some help." I tell the giggling scenester next to me. "Oh, he's fine" the guy says, as his friend slumps down against the wall. This goes on for several minutes, my checking on the passed-out-with-his-eyes-open guy and pleading with his stupidly grinning friend, who has taken to dancing with the guy's arm a la "Weekend at Bernie's."

I tell one of the event staff about it on my way out the door a few minutes later, and he sends a bouncer over as my company and I head for a diner. Granted, the music had been fantastic and a completely attractive stranger told me that we might be soul mates because she had a boy scout shirt like the one I was wearing back at her home, but I'm played out on that stupid-kids-who-can't-take-care-of-themselves scene. It wasn't fun in college with the frat kids, and it isn't fun now.

I'm going to be on national TV!

By now there are people in this city who know I'm always game for strange adventures, and one of these fine cats forwarded an e-mail to me asking for volunteers for an "experiment" to be televised on ABC. And so it was that this past wednesday I went to ABC studios on the west side for a taping for ABC Primetime.

The "experiment" was supposed to consist of looking at pairs of images depicting three-dimensional geometric shapes, and trying to discern whether the two shapes were the same. We were to write our responses to ten of these questions, and then to speak our answers aloud to an additional twenty such problems while sitting with five other people. It took a bafflingly long time for me to get called in to be tested and taped, and I soon found out why. They weren't really testing all six people in each group, they were only testing one - the other five were there to provide peer pressure. The other five would all give the same answer as each other, and were right 50% of the time. The idea was that the group could pressure a person into picking the wrong answer.

The theory behind this experiment is actually pretty interesting: apparently the areas of the brain involved in visual perception are colocalized with those involved in conformity, and the doctor who was running this experiment postulates that enough pressure to conform can affect visual perception. The area of the brain involved with nonconformity, the amigdala, is also the fear center of the brain.

I was one of two who tied for highest scores on the test, and my scores actually improved when the group was trying to lead me astray. Unfortunately, others who were tested did really badly, so on the day the accuracy dropped to something like an unspeakable 5%. I just hope this is not the only thing talked about on the TV show. I don't know when it's going to air, but they said it should be on in the next few weeks. I'll let you know.

P.S. There's another story involved with this one, about one of the participants hiring mercenaries to extract his daughter, who was stranded in New Orleans, but I'll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, the day was very strange on the whole.

(unintelligible yelling, then) "The giant is awake!"

Never count the beast out until you're safely back at home, I guess. The bureaucratic leviathan has reared its head, spurred on by my shouts of triumph.

My master's degree is not done with me yet.

Apparently my first graduation application somehow disappeared, and my second - put through after an hour on the phone with the registrar this morning - came with an unsettling footnote: I am 3 credits short of the number I need. Why? Well, to my limitless dismay, it has come to light that the approval of my advisor for a course means nothing if the school doesn't agree. And they don't. My advisor says he should have checked.

It was a fine course, though. A fine-goodbye-three-thousand-dollars-and-now-I-have-to-come-up-with
-some-way-to-get-three-credits-and-can't-graduate-until-January course.

Have I mentioned lately how I hate everything?

Update: I will be getting my necessary credits through a practicum, for which I will be doing some writing and reading I kinda wanted/needed to do anyways. As for you, Ms. McDingo Pancakes, this issue arose largely because of my taking classes outside of our program/school, so do be EXTRA careful if attempting to do the same. Granted, had a full array of classes been offered in the summer term, I might not have had to go outside the program...Ah, well. No time to worry about this all now...

A tale of two bear tales

Bear-related news item the first: Our little friend Butterstick
God Bless the internet - apparently a fellow named Tom over at Unrequited Narcissism had devised a way to hack the National Zoo's online voting system, currently being used to select the name of a new baby panda, such that you can now add the option "Butterstick" to the list of choices. See the news note and a ridiculously cute picture of the panda in question here or learn how you can vote for Butterstick here.

Bear-related news item the second: DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.
I have greatly enjoyed, over the years, those documentaries where people who take themselves or their passions too seriously are held up for all to see and find hilarious. Something like Spellbound might be a good example, or large parts of Michael Moore's films. In the case of Grizzly Man, however, the joke is on you - this movie dares you to laugh at it while making you the most uncomfortable you'll ever be while watching a movie. Grizzly Man tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor who abjures the company of man to live amongst those he claims as his true friends - grizzly bears.
Now I have worked with schizophrenics, and this guy tops them all. His life with the bears, as he recorded it in a sort of video diary, is punctuated by wild mood swings and thoroughly bizarre ramblings. The high point of the film for me was when one of the bears - who, in a manner apparent to all but Timothy, struggle to tolerate his presence - does what a bear does in the woods and defecates. Timothy rushes to the fecal mass and begins petting it, saying, as though to the bear, "I'm touching your poop! I'm touching your poop!" and then begins weeping.
I won't carry on much more with this. Timothy's friends are as strange as he is, and the whole documentary is like watching a surrealist car accident in slow motion. One might rightly ask why such a movie was made, and that question is answered at the movie's onset: Timothy's story was brought to the attention of a filmaker when, recently, Timothy was eaten by a bear.

Weirdness abounds...

The Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Show!

Whoa.

If you were to take Cibo Matto and legendary Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf, get them both really hopped up on sugary cereals, and mate them together with Hello Kitty as the midwife only to then raise the resultant child exclusively on cartoons, you would get Puffy AmiYumi.

I attended their show last night at Irving Plaza. It was, in a word, INSANE. Despite a terrible opening band with three white guys whining about something, the crowd - which was surprisingly diverse both racially and in terms of age - was fantastically invested in the show. When Ami and Yumi took the stage, the audience went ballistic; I thought everyone there was going to explode when the band rocked out on a song called "Energy" and then slipped into the opening organ riffs of the Teen Titans theme song.

I couldn't stop smiling for the duration of the concert. They played the theme song to some new Pokemon movie, a cadre of really fun and energetic songs, and finished with the theme song for their own show on the cartoon network, "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi." Of course the audience wanted an encore, and Ami took the mic and said, "Thank you for the encore. We'd like to play our favorite song." Which, oddly enough, turned out to be "Basketcase" by Green Day. I'm not complaining.

This was ridiculously fun, and I cannot encourage you more strongly to see this group live if you get the chance.

T-e-e-n t-i-t a-n-s, Teen Titans, Let's GO!

Almost Mugged! (albeit by squirrels)

I was enjoying thoroughly Monday's respite from our oppressively hot weather; having left work around 5:30, I stopped off at the farmers' market to buy some pumpkin bread and raspberry apple juice, and then seated myself - juice, bread, and book in hand - near my dearly beloved statue of Garibaldi in Washington Square Park. A few pages in, I was struck with that undeniable sense of being stared at. I turned my head to the right, and there, not six inches from my side, was a squirrel. He was poised as if to pounce, and had on his squirrel countenance a look that could only say "give me the bread and I might let you walk away unharmed."

"No deal, " said I, trying to stand up to walk away. I found, however, that two more squirrels had moved right up next to my feet. One was on his hind legs, and the other crouched; the latter squirrel's sentiment was clear: "Stop screwing around, whitey, and give us the bread."

How could a person even punch a squirrel, if they had to? They're all teeth and little claws, and they practically breathe rabies and, I don't know, chlamydia, probably.

"I don't negotiate with terrorists," I told the one crouched on the bench near me. "And tell your racist friend that his act is played out. Even if it is squirrel racism. " Reminding myself that I was miles above these filthy creatures on the food chain, I rose and started to walk away. But they followed fast - almost too fast. I choked, and acted out of fear for the worst. "Heathens!" I yelled, throwing a small chunk of bread over their heads. I quickly walked the other way to the Kimmel Student Center. The guard inside had apparently seen me yelling. "Trouble with the squirrels?" he asked. Then, not waiting for an answer, he added, solemnly, "they tried to take my friend's taco, right out of his hand" and stared off, thoughtfully, into the park.

Big in Japan

Any post whose title is an Alphaville reference has got to be full of goodness, right? Right. So it is with great pleasure and a modicum of "am I really about to do this?" that I announce to you, dear readers, that I shall be taking a trip to Japan for two weeks in October.

This, my first ever trip outside the 51 states (U.S.+Canada), is made possible by a grant from the Hilary and Luke Foundation for a More Japanese Graham, to whom I am tremendously grateful.

I'll be by myself over there, although there are a few folks I'll be looking up. Mainly old doctors like Sho Kanzaki with whom I worked at Kresge. I imagine the trip will be transformative and a thoroughly broadening experience. If you have any suggestions for things I should do while over there, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Act II - The Apartment in Crisis?
Is the famed fourth floor apartment in crisis? If by "crisis" you mean "andrew finally came back from the navy and then left again to go to Nantucket after he, Jaina and I had a very pleasant dinner at that one place I like" then yes, yes it is.

Dr. Science - an underwater denizen?

I went back to Michigan this weekend, both to see my immediate family all together for the first time in a long while and to volunteer at the 156th annual Highland Games. The games are a major event for the St. Andrew's society, which is the Scottish benevolent society of which I became a third-generation member earlier this year. Just what did I do to volunteer to help out? Well, let's put it this way: I'm one of the three in the following picture to be holding a golf club:

Yep, in my spare time I'm the Loch Ness Monster. This little girl kept hugging me. Constantly. All day. I had my photo taken with about a thousand small children while in that beautifully-made-but-still-really-hot-inside costume. But don't worry, I also found time to taken advantage of the finer things in life...
...like visiting with highland cattle...
...having a staring contest with a baby...
...and answering the age-old question: how well can the Loch Ness Monster dance like a robot?

I ended up having a pretty fun - albeit strange - time as Nessie, and I even got to lead the march of the scottish clans during the day's main events. I think the kids there had fun with me, and it was for a good cause, so who's complaining?