you know

sometimes - and i have been noticing it more and more often these days, you know - sometimes there is this fluttery pulse in my heart, and then soon after there is a throb my eyes, and my eardrums, and my throat, and my sweat glands, and it hurts every inch of me inside and out, a straining sort of pain like when you vomit and you rupture a couple blood vessels around your eyes; and i need to sit down and breathe then, for a hot second, really, little more than that, though it certainly feels like a long while, as long as it takes for the teetering moonshine spiders to scurry out of my eyelids, erratic and back-lit by the most economical incandescent bulbs their pennies could buy, or perhaps a moment longer to be safe. it came to me first in primary school, i imagine, while looking over the marks awarded my efforts, if you could call them that, but over the years they became more frequent, it would happen when i had to make a decision in a split second, and then it would happen when i had to make a decision in several weeks, and then it would happen when i would see a familiar face, and then it would happen when i would see a stranger’s face, and then it would happen any time i awoke from any sort of slumber, and i really had to wonder some days how i had managed to escape my bedroom that morning in the first place.

there came a day that i wondered if these episodes were the sort of thing you drawl about flatly and with disinterest while discussing a particularly unusual psychological patient which, by virtue alone of his laughable, frightening absurdity, is surely not yourself, a continuous series of panic attacks, exacerbated by a psychosis which could only be fuelled by a surfeit of cheap wine and narcotics, or something, but then it occurred to me, no, i have been here before, this is just what it means to be alive, though i found it very hard to reconcile, for i could clearly remember not being nearly as poised a few months ago as now to destroy entire worlds with the tips of my fingers and bid the festering maw of death a shouting berserker’s welcome at the drop of a dime.

it occurred to me today that perhaps this is simply what becomes of the status quo if you give the status quo enough time to gain control of itself, if you do not take care to carve out your evils and humanity early enough on, the inevitable and rather predictable course of a tumor; how it starts with a microscopic flurry of growth, how you ignore it but it continues to grow, so you do not notice until it is distended and you can feel it hanging at your side, drooping and resting moistly against whatever normal flesh there still is, how you examine it and find it has spun out wide, leaky capillaries, a haggard, sticky tangle of ruddy yarn drunk with soured blackcurrant syrup which has done its best to siphon off your blood, so many tiny, starving lampreys lining the underbellies of your veins, how it learns to live alongside you until it is strong enough to envelop you, to strangle you, to invade you, to convert your every last finger, nail, and toe to more of the same, to make of you a malformed, cystic quorum of itself and yourself, to drown you, seeething and dumb, in a vast sea of metazoans to which you once considered yourself superior.

do you like banjo, listen to this song

now i am rolling around in a grassy field by a drafty old barn on a sunny day, and nobody knows or cares where i am, and i do not have a worry in the world

http://shakeygraves.bandcamp.com/track/unlucky-skin

uh oh

a worrisome reading about un-reproducable publications has been floating around here in the last 24 hours (if you don’t have journal access i can send it to you), along with an old commencement speech from none other than richard feynman which begins to probe how these data get published in the first place. i don’t pretend to be an expert on industrial biotech or world-famous physicists, but anybody who actually does science, no matter the discipline - even non-scientists who like to keep abreast of research - should read these.

in brief, as researchers, it is, first and foremost, up to us - NOT just the people who review our publications - to be rigorous about our own work and test the ever-loving shit out of our claims; i.e., if you think you’ve discovered a mechanism for something, it is your scientific and moral obligation to play devil’s advocate and try your damndest to tease out every last fallibility, however small, in all your methods, hypotheses, thinking, &c. your reputation within research depends on it, and the general public’s impression of science as a whole depends on it too.

brothers, sisters, and colleagues, go forth and check yo-selves ‘fo you wreck yo-selves.

productive sundays

dear coffee,

that fluttery, palpitation-ey feeling i get when i hang out with you more than usual is starting to grow on me. probably because by the time it hits, i can see the light at the end of the tunnel on whatever presentation we’re working on. thanks for keeping me company! and here’s to a long future of arrhythmia.

your pal, alex

the air is humid again and it carries wafts of ethylene up from the grass; there is always something about it which downright suffocates me.

let’s form our possessions into a pyre and laugh while it burns. let’s punish our enemies mercilessly without batting an eyelash. let’s walk away from here and never look back.

untitled no. 15 (for hurry or for headlock)

the sun done set before the gallows pole
when that ugly burnished bugle called back the
hired hands,
a violent, bashful whelp,
what sterling silver rabbit tears
falling in earnest alongside hearty handshakes -

a cry for help
the thirst before you wake -

a brew to sicken you,
milk, chicory and honey to
quicken your wishes,
to grow out your eyelashes and
their sweet surreptitious
rashes, hungry silos,
to starve the tanglespiders
creeping up and down their
backs

i have the most disturbing news

once all the other authors fill out their copyright transfer agreements, i will be author #13 on a paper in blood. link to follow when it hits first edition.

(the postdoc in our lab says i will now not have to drive myself insane over the gre’s when i apply to grad school in the upcoming cycle - i suppose that will be nice)

i’ve been checking out this stoner-doom/sludge blog every day or so, and generally scouring the internet for music i haven’t heard before. some of the spoils of the hunt:

• admiral sir cloudesley shovell (loud & groovy, reminds me of sabbath)
• wiht (reminds me a bit of pelican, but doomier; recently broke up)
• apocalipsis (from sunny mexico city, these guys are loud)
• dead moon (punky and spaghetti-westerny, broke up a few years ago)

this year i have decided that my summer holiday will be bonnaroo with two of my bandmates. i am turning into a bottomless pit for music, if i wasn’t one already.