Simpson's Movie

I watched this movie a week or two ago, after I had lost yet another game of Catan to Ferret and was feeling cranky. This movie did a lot to cheer me up however and I managed to leave his house with cordial feelings instead of bitter ones. I wish the townspeople (or at least some of the townspeople) had played a greater role in the movie instead of filling in the backdrop but it was still funny and fun. The story revolved around Homer for the most part, and the plot was pretty straightforward: Homer messes up, Springfield vs Simpsons, Simpsons vs Homer, Homer saves the day despite himself, Simpsons reunited with Homer and Springfield. Rate: ***

Busy-ness

Work has been really hectic recently owing to some nice data, so I will just break down some of my doings in a nice list:

• I successfully gathered the final bits of data for a paper and then intensely worked on paper. We are now awaiting comments from co-authors before revising and submitting to journal.
• Data that had been in the hands of a core facility for processing (more than half a year now) finally was completed and I have been busy analyzing and trying to draw some conclusions. I hope to finish the rest of the data collection in the next few months and finally write up the results. I am happy to say that the data looks correct and that the last several months of waiting have not been for naught.
• Our tissue culture facilities have been shanghaied by flood conditions. A leak in the ceiling turned out to be more severe than initially thought and I have spent the last two weeks anxiously ferrying my cells and studies to another lab in another building. It has been very stressful and I have been bitter.
• I have been preparing two talks for an upcoming conference. This has also produced anxiety attacks even though I've given talks before and they have been fine. I hope to get over this kind of thing eventually or else I might have to retire from science completely.
• Last weekend was the hottest weekend of all time, and I managed to choose that weekend to host a bbq. It was much too hot to sit out on my roof as I had envisioned so hot dogs were speedily cooked on the grill outside and we all gathered inside to douse them in chilli and eat the potato salad and regular salad I had prepared. I can't say it was much cooler inside, but we all had a fun time anyway watching the horse race (Big Brown did not win the Triple Crown) and playing Settlers of Cataan.
• Tortoise went away for an international conference/honeymoon and gave a talk on his prize-winning paper and enjoyed many delicious foods. During this time, many funny/absurd things happened in lab.
• I have been completely obsessed with reading Female Science Professor's blog. She is my unknown role model. My officemates are probably getting sick of receiving links to her posts and my continual references to her. I can't help that her life is so interesting! I'm sad because I've only got about 100 posts left in the archives. I'm trying to ration them out a bit better instead of gobbling many at once.
• I am slowly recovering from my ankle sprain. I wish I could say I was completely well now, but it still hurts sometimes. I think next week I will start working out again. I feel bleh.
• Bunny is getting married!!! The date is December 14th. She's managed to somehow plan her wedding and honeymoon in the space of about two weeks. Every time I speak to my mother, she (my mother) reminds me that I have to come up with some nice thing to say on her behalf. I'm not sure why she can't prepare and deliver her own speech for her daughter's wedding, but I can do without being constantly reminded.

Dune

I really watched the movie ages ago but have not had a chance to update due to busy-ness. Busy-ness will get its own post in due time. The first time I encountered this movie was during a dinner at my archery coach's house. For the record, I was a terrible archer and it was only due to luck that my brief participation on the archery team did not cost any lives. At the time of that dinner, Dune was on, and I remember glancing occasionally at it, noting it was an awful movie and thinking, hey is that Sting?

So I am straining to remember details of this movie; fortunately it is not difficult because this movie was so awesomely ridiculous. A young Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks, sporting very poofy hair, played the main hero in this movie (have forgotten his name already, oh well). My favorite parts occurred whenever people had a thought. Thoughts were depicted by stagy whispers and they always took much longer than an actual thought would have. Whenever an event took place that had been previously foreshadowed via dream, Agent Cooper would stop and clearly state, for example, the moon! And then there would be a repeat of the dream sequence. I assume it is because the movie was targeted to toddlers who might not be able to put two and two together unless it was hammered home repeatedly. The first part of the movie was intriguing, but at some point David Lynch must have realized he was running out of time so the second half of the movie felt extremely rushed. It was probably good that Ferret and I had been used to having unanswered questions (having just watched Ergo Proxy) and so were not too distraught when we were confused. Overall, the movie was mostly funny and I don't regret having seen it. Rate: *** (awesome meter)

On Clones...

I've been too busy to post anything recently but I had an amusing interaction today so I figured I'd share:

This morning I went to drop off my rent checks to my real estate manager and got sucked into a bizarre conversation that spiraled wildly out of control and out of reality. It started very tamely, he asked how things were going. Next time, I will answer that things were busy with school and leave it at that. Today though, I made the mistake of answering, "oh I've been very busy in the lab." And this naturally prompted the question of what I work on. So I told him I was working with stem cells and trying to grow tissue. Most people would leave it at that or wish me luck or something, but instead he started talking about horses that were being cloned in britain and then how he felt it was wrong that people clones might be farmed and killed for their organs. I was appalled and said of course that would be completely wrong! But he was not listening to me and started talking about how he didn't know if his clone would share his memories; he wasn't sure, but he thought his memories left imprints in his brain and if he was cloned his clone might know those things. I stopped speaking at this point because I had no idea what to say. I really wanted to leave because I had to get to school for lab meeting but he kept on talking and each sentence became weirder. I hope this is not how the general public understands genetics.