asimplechord

What was that last night, Wild? Jonas Brodin is doing an amazing job as a small-ish, young defenseman, and Charlie Coyle had a decent night for his home debut, but. What. Seriously. OTOH... DEVILS. :)

Morning random:

a) Writing "I suck at summaries" anywhere in your summary pretty much guarantees that I am never going to click the link to your fic. Even more so if it's a work in progress.

b) BBC News reported this morning on a prisoner who concealed his mobile phone in his rectum. Guards became suspicious when a ring tone was heard during a search of his cell. Ow.

c) It is Friday. Paper is submitted. Book club (ie, wine drinking with book discussion as an excuse) tonight. HAPPY WEEKEND!

+ ( live music, A+, with a side of family dysfunction )

+ So, after THAT, we drove back to Houston in time to see The Mountaintop. Appropriate on the day before MLK Jr Day. I enjoyed the set a lot, and I really liked the first half of the play, but when it turned a little surreal, I started to check out. Until the final scene, which was gorgeously done.

+ On the subject of hockey: #mnwild's Granlund scored his first NHL goal, Parise scored (I was the saddest panda, staring at the pic of his stall in the Wild dressing room [I just typed staal, guys, idek] and Wild jersey, you don't even know), the NJ Devils won. And SUCK IT, FLYERS. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that if the Devils are my "husband" team, the "boyfriend" team is going to be the Wild this year. Sad side note: please do not let the Aeros fail to renew the lease for Toyota Center, because I don't want them to move to Des Moines. D:

~ What is going on with Michael Phelps' face? Seriously. (Related, in that the pic I saw of him was in a Deadspin article about the Ravens winning the AFC championship: already so tired of the Harbaugh bros storyline. Thank fuck there's hockey and tennis to distract me.)

OK. Now I'm going to go switch back and forth between the Li Na/Radwanska QF match at AO (and then Daveeeeed's QF match) and the Red Wings/Blue Jackets game. And think about the next square to be filled in my trope_bingo card.

a) I... am not a nice person. I have just spent 30 minutes amusing myself with the artist summaries for Bandom Big Bang, LOLing at how there's going to be some amazingly good fic and some amazingly bad bad!fic. When did I become such a snob?

b) I am not a fan of the weird epaulette things with a tie, but I will probably obtain a copy of the GQ in which photos from this shoot are published. Unf.

c) LUDO! I am ridic excited that Stamps & Tommy and the High Pilots (and Without a Face, for the TX shows) are on that tour!

d) D: Empires did not make the final round of the Rolling Stone cover contest. Neither did Fictionist, the other band I liked. Oh well, it still got them tons of exposure, right?

e) Killjoys on Friday. :D :D :D




In the meantime... prompt me? I need to kickstart creativity, else I'll wallow in work misery even when I'm not at work. So, yeah. Fandom, pairing, phrase or photo, and I'll write a sentence, a drabble, or something. American Idiot, GK, bandom, SPN, HP, CM or House. (Or Andrew/Jesse.)

1. I thought more than once about extending my visit to NYC when I got the NDP notice and then the pre-sale code for the Discos' show at the Bowery, but I seriously cannot spend that time off without consequences - the day and a half I'm taking are being made up by working MLK Jr Day and the thirteen hours I spent in lab on Tuesday. (As an aside, J is going to be in town that weekend too. Cling-time! :D :D :D)

2. New post-doc arrived. SO TIRED OF ANSWERING QUESTIONS. It would be okay if it were just her, but I have literally spent hours the last three days showing other people how to do things. It's not like I have, you know, shit of my own to do.

3. I keep thinking about writing something, anything, but by the time I get home from work, I can't be bothered to think straight.

4. Almost through S2 of The West Wing. It's funny in a sad way how a decade after these episodes aired, NONE of the issues they confront have altered significantly. (And I still love CJ like burning.) [ETA: The more I watch, the less I care for Bartlet. To me he comes off as a predictable, pompous ass who relies on a bottomless well of useless trivia, his own opinion, and the bible more than anything else.]

5. Rise Against's new album comes out the same week as GD's Awesome As Fuck? Good music week. Actually, I think that's the week of SXSW, so it'll be a FABULOUS music week. :D :D :D (Also, did I ever flail here about Another Station; Another Mile? My heart eyes over them, I can't even explain.)

6. I was earwormed today by Wisdom, Justice, and Love. First when Tavis Smiley & Amy Goodman got into it on Democracy Now this morning (and wasn't that a total lovefest?) and then when my iPod kept cycling through A Thousand Suns. [There was a thought somewhere about violent political rhetoric and the long war and the political assassinations of the 60s, but I'm too tired to connect the dots now.]

7. A reminder from J had me all excited: the new Mercy Gunderson novel is out! And Amazon said that my copy had been delivered. But there is no package on my doorstep, in my mailbox, or in my neighbor's house. The USPS is not being particularly helpful at the moment, but I suppose that's because it's after hours. *sigh* I guess I'll keep slogging through Aftermath and Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife in the meantime.

8. Fuck yes! (PLEASE, BILL WHITE, RUN FOR HER SEAT.)

9. 30Jan shows of American Idiot are/will be sold out b/c it's BJA as St. Jimmy and it's most likely Michael Esper's last show, y/n?

10. Fanta orange soda + Dripping Springs vodka = A+ supper choice

I make plenty of writing mistakes. But here are three things that made me close Firefox last night and return to a book instead of reading fanfic.



1. Appall is a verb. Not a noun.

2. Your =/= you're. I can understand making that mistake in a text or a quick email. But in a title and multi-chapter fic, with that same mistake in EVERY post? Really?

3. I admit that I love commas. (I care about the Oxford comma, and Vampire Weekend can take a leap off a hipster, indie cliff - overrated.) But really. Direct address commas are your friend. Consider:

"I am not Bob."

"I am not, Bob."

That comma changes the meaning. Learn them. Use them. Love them.

1. Is there a reason that everyone involved in the ordering process at Fisher sends me a copy of my order? Seriously, I received three copies of the same invoice today. I have limited space in my work mailbox. Do they not check who's CC'd when they forward these?

2. I'm debating applying for the Certificate in Public Health at the School of Public Health. It's not a degree, and if I take one class per term, it'll take me a couple of years to complete. But if I'm interested in pursuing anything with respect to science & public policy, I'll need a degree in public health, not just a PhD in science, so I'm thinking I should maybe at least try. If it turns out to be something I enjoy, I can always double up on course work, and the certificate classes are all credits that would apply to the MPH program.

3. *sigh* New Student didn't come in Friday or yesterday. I am not clear how to impress upon him that graduate school doesn't really work like undergrad, where you can show up for tests and pass. You need to put in hours of lab work, and he... is not doing so. I am not his advisor. The Chief needs to have this talk with him, not me. I'm annoyed right now because he's doing things he needs my help with, and I rearranged my schedule to deal with him, and then he didn't come in and didn't let me know until mid-way through the day. If he's just going to fuck off when I've had to make alternate plans for his benefit, we're going to have to come to an understanding: if he does this again, he's on his own, and HE can explain it to The Chief.

New Professor hired a post-doc a couple of months ago.

The post-doc needs help learning his project. Okay, fine. There's always a learning curve.

He borrowed some antibody from us. Actually, I gave it to him. When he had problems, he came and asked me for help. He needed some plasmids, and I gave them to him.

Then he came and asked me - no lie - "How do you figure out which E3 ligase is the one that modifies your protein?"

Uh. Go read the literature; there are a few strategies. I'd start with whatever signaling pathway your protein is in/effected by, and try known ones, and then if they don't work, go from there.

So he borrowed more plasmids. And asked more really basic questions, questions that he should be able to answer without my help if he just READ THE LITERATURE.

Again. And again. He came to my bench with his notebook and asked me to help even when I was obviously in the middle of something. And some of it was stupid shit: what molecular weight is X-protein?

IDK, why don't you fucking Google it? Or ask if I can stop what I'm doing to help you do something a first year student should be able to figure out.

Fine. But today he asked me to explain the relationship between TGFb and X-protein, and I was like, "Uh. That is your project. Perhaps you should read the literature, rather than asking me to describe it to you." And he looked at me and asked, "What papers should I read?"

... O.o

I told him to go search TGFb at PubMed. That was, perhaps, a bit mean. He's going to be buried under papers from now until Christmas if he doesn't narrow his search.

But seriously? He's a POST-DOC. He should be able to figure that shit out for himself, not ask someone who isn't working on his project, who isn't even IN HIS LAB to explain it to him.