How to annoy your labmates pt 1

A couple weeks ago, there was a biodept product show. This basically means that several vendors set up booths in the Jordan Hall atrium and try to get you to buy everything from eppendorf tubes to thermocyclers to antibodies. They lure all the grad students there with free bagels or pizza, hoping that we'll talk our PIs (who are in control of the moolah) to buy their products. Basically we wander through the booths, acting interested, and then head for what we really came for--our lunch.

The vendors always have promotional free stuff: post-its and pens usually. My favorite are the pens shaped like pipetmen. This time one of the vendors had clappers. You know, those things that you get at sporting events that you shake back and forth to make really loud clapping noises? Really, there's only one purpose for these in the laboratory: to annoy your labmates. There are at least two of these clappers in our lab and over the past couple weeks, every once in awhile you'll hear a loud clapping noise followed by a yelp from a surprised (and probably annoyed) labmate. Yesterday, Rohini surprised/scared/annoyed Michelle. Michelle retaliated by hitting Rohini on the arm hard enough that it was still red 15 minutes later.

My first thought when this happened: Hardy lab fight club... :)

Resurrection, continued: It deserves two posts

I just ran across this poem from Mary Karr via 22 words. Striking and beautiful.

Descending Theology: The Resurrection
by Mary Karr

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now

it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.