The Easiest Post for Me to Write Tonight, or, Six Random Things About a Fledgling Blogger

I can produce thoughtful posts, as I can produce thoughtful writing. But I write very slowly. I never just, you know, dash a logically coherent outline with a flourish, boldly ejaculate a rough draft onto the page and then winnow away in x amount of full-length reviews the way one is “supposed” to. I edit painstakingly as I write. For hours at a time.

In addition to frequently compromising my efficiency and demonstrating again that I’m an anal-retentive, prissy masochist, this habit forces me to post my reaction to PhizzleDizzle’s meme-tag now. (Yeah. Forces. Alas, yet again, I am a victim of the cruel world.) In my present, sore, glum state, it is less rewarding yet far easier for me to finish a post in which I state six random things about myself than a post in which I take the long-term use of tazarotene to task. Such is the brain of a merely aspiring scientist.
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My blog is nowhere near substantial enough to take the hit of a bloody meme-tag without making me want to cry over it. Nonetheless, here goes:

The Meme:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

The Things:

1. I learned to read when I was two. (Nearly three, however.) Several preschools denied me admission for “being too advanced” for the curriculum they were willing to offer. (They were preschools in Georgia, though, so maybe that isn’t as impressive to you as I hope.) I can even remember the day when the word that looked something like “DRXX(())IIR” on my yellow toy cash register resolved itself into “DRAWER”, and I yelled, “Mommy! It doesn’t say ‘DANGER’!”

2. Despite this, I believed in magic until I was, oh, twenty-six years of age.

3. Five days before I entered my master’s degree program in archaeological science, with the stated intent to pursue the archaeological questions introduced by the Genographic Project, I pulled forth a journal and wrote, without stopping to edit, and seemingly from nowhere, a short story about an alter-protagonist who confronted an immortal character about Acheulean hand axes and wound up stealing a blood sample from her to answer genetics questions instead. (Not that I would ever steal blood from someone! Yikes!)

4. I have had two (modest) roles written for me in student plays from college, one in which I worked alongside a student who now has a degree of professional success as an actor. I am actually a poor actress. In retrospect, I don’t know how this happened. It’s embarrassing.

5. I’m still a virgin.

6. I REFUSE to tag anyone. What, do I look like some ALL POWERFULZ blogger with a bullet-proof site and a tag-ready posse over here? Please. Don’t confuse me with Dr. Isis and Comrade PhysioProf anymore!

Goodnight, all! Thanks for the fun.

You Can Thank the Traitorous Red Team for My Having to Remove a Post I Was Proud Of

As I said. Stickin' to science.

More soon.

P.S. Apologies to Dr. Isis, for whom I used the deleted post as a golden opportunity to pay well-deserved homage, and who, goddess-like, surprised and delighted me by linking to it. As for our beloved Comrade PhysioProf, well, let's just say that my thankfulness for an indignant teammate who knows how to wield a pen (a keyboard?) has increased an everlovin' tenfold.

Me and My Retinoid Tazarotene

Commenter biopunk inspired me, after the Indianmeal moth escapade, to tackle a problem involving retinoid tazarotene. You see, though my Very Famous Dermatologist once assured me that I could use this medication indefinitely, my New Dermatologist heartily disagrees. New Dermatologist wants me to give it up entirely. I have been on it for five years and he says that's enough.

I protested. "But Very Famous Dermatologist said that, without it, this fundamentally genetic problem of mine, which is completely under control right now, would return."

"Well," said New Dermatologist, in his alluring accent, "it's not like a genetic predisposition toward acne can't be controlled without prescription drugs. Tazorac works on the biochemical level, right? It's changing the shape of the skin cell, so that it's less sticky and you shed it faster. A clay mask with a highly acidic mixture can do that-- um, can have a similar effect. Plus, we know that acne is worsened by dairy foods . . . Okay, so it's genetics. But you can change your behavior and control it that way."
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I repressed a cross sigh. It was dawning on me that, once again, I would have to evaluate my understanding of acne. Starting with my use of the Wonder Drug that had single-handedly transformed me from an ugly duckling into a swan.

Amidst my bustle-about, I have gotten thus far:

The exact mechanism of how Tazarotene works is still unknown.

The End . . . Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. But not much. I have no formal biochemistry training and this latest exploration will be satisfying but slow going. And I can't wait to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of scientists.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any less sexy than Indianmeal moths, I decide to blog about acne . . . Well. Eliza Doolittle did not start her ascension from a picturesque place and neither am I.

Wind!

Wind! It's blessedly windy in Vegas. I'd almost forgotten what great gusts of cool, soul-opening wind felt like.

P.S., Apology

Oh, and sorry to everyone I unceremoniously blogrolled without asking first. I didn't mean to be rude. I'm in the process of emailing you now, for courtesy's sake.

All This Hot Talk About What I'm Gonna Do . . .

Today the Obama Campaign offered me a (modestly) paid, full-time internship in a battleground state. So I will be out of town from October 12th through November 5th.

Largely because I want to keep My Fair Scientist focused on science and closely related issues, I haven't decided how frequently I will blog during my trip to the front. Writing this blog is tricky. How to create a blog that will compel people like me to go, "Whoa, Juniper began as an unemployed loser who had to crash with her parents, but she worked her bony butt off, and now she's a rockin' geneticist! Maybe I can do it too!" without beginning it as a Pity Party? (Woe to those who mistake my masochistic willingness to reveal how pathetic my life is right now for a Pity Party. It is merely my colossally arrogant conviction that my future is Epic, as well as a typical exhibition of manic-depressive writerly-ness.) For that is the ultimate goal. . .

And then the issue of wanting to shut out the political rants my closest friends and family hear all the time from me in "real life". Just doesn't feel right in this space o' mine, the darn politics. Lots of other clever bloggers to zestfully castigate, ahem, Psycho-Ass Team of Death and Destruction anyway. (Right on! Bless them all.)

Anyway, I am really excited about the opportunity to get up and work for the election of my candidate instead of aimlessly grumbling over his eeeevilbwahahahahahahaha opponents. Yes! How ironically refreshing, to stop worrying over what you want accomplished and just do it already!!!!1111!!!!!1111

Ironically.

No Wonder I Dread My Statement of Purpose

I took some time to write my (excessively accomplished) best friend from college a long email today. She still lives up North.

Usually, I try not to be a downer. I write sassy, brilliantly entertaining letters in which I heroically manage to keep my chin up without dissolving into saccharine dishonesty. And today's letter started off okay. But it wound up ending like this:
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Yesterday my workaholic father got sick and stayed home from teaching ROTC while my worried mother went on her shift and my unemployed butt battled Kitchen Infestation II: Indianmeal Moth Caterpillars. (The first was of Argentine ants.) Semi-translucent white "worms", about three mm in length, and equipped with swiffering amber dots of heads, had been dropping from the ceiling and cupboards on silken threads like miniature paratroopers for a week and a half. With initially negligible but then escalating frequency. They liked to land on my head as well as on the dining table, whenever people had gathered to eat dinner and were just about to take a bite. They grossed my parents out, especially my fastidious dad.

"They're not maggots, are they?!" my dad had asked, in stark horror.

Well. This kind of sciency goodness is always my job. After my parents failed to locate The Nest, I examined a few specimens, conducted some online research, successfully identified them, and prepared for war. The critters had established a major canopy in a forgotten glass jar of peanut brittle, stoppered only with a cork that they could disgustingly wiggle around. They had gone on to colonize a few poorly secured bags and boxes of grain products. Getting rid of them took six hours, great quantities of dish soap and hot water, my powers of obsessive-compulsive attention to detail, too many garbage and recycling bags for a time of Bailouts and high food prices, and cheap vodka no one in this teetotaling household drinks. It also required me to take photos of larvae and pupae with my cell and send them without warning to Tiny One, who has hated and feared insects since that time in grade school when I gave her my chicken pox and she hallucinated a bedroom chock-full of creepy-crawlies, and who is thinking of flying home for a visit soon.

My dad eventually emerged to get an (untainted) lunch in a peaceful corner and watch the proceedings afterwards. I excitedly told him all about the caterpillars, how they had true legs and bristles if you looked at them closely, how they were common pantry pests all over the world and how they had probably been feeding in the deeps of the cupboards for weeks. He asked questions about my extermination process (which mostly came from a quintessentially Pacific Northwest website on holistic destruction of meal moths) and about how the things had gotten into the kitchen in the first place. He made the kind of half-exasperated, half-ridiculously-proud spousal quips that my parents have started to make to me, now that I'm old enough to hear spousal criticism in any form-- "Your mother; ever since I've been married to her, she just doesn't seal things. Maybe we can convince her now to seal things in the kitchen"-- and marveled along with me at the blessings of technology, which have relatively recently enabled us to refrigerate as many things as possible, thus protecting Bisquick and cornmeal from moths even when one has no storage canisters or heavy-duty Ziploc bags on hand.

"I always tell Mom," I chattered jovially, as I wiped a bottle of nutmeg, inspected and cleared for consumption, with a vodka-soaked cloth, "that, had I been born any earlier than, like, the 20th century, I simply would have starved to death. I'm already picky, and I get perfectly good food. I'd never stomach the vittles of a world ruled by boiled vegetables grown in human sewage or puddings kept on shelves overrun with mice."

"Nah," replied my father, eyeing my long assembly line of foodstuffs. "You would have been one of the ones who invented a way to make it safe to eat."

This flummoxed me. I had no idea that my dad thought I was that smart. Hell, I had no idea that anyone in this family thought I was smart anymore. I always get the feeling that almost no one has thought of me as smart since I underwowed everyone at Cal.

Later, in an effort to keep my interest piqued with science topics, my dad gave me an article he had received on a "non-lethal counter-personnel" device the Air Force has recently invented, which they call the "Active Denial System"--LOL--and which is delightfully like a Star Trek phaser set to stun. Okay, not totally, but it does focus "[an invisible] beam of millimeter waves occurring at the 94 GHz frequency" to effect "a rapid heating of the human target's (adversary's) skin that is extremely uncomfortable and ultimately prompts the individual to flee" without "[promoting] cancer or [causing] reproductive problems". Inside, I had the mixed reaction of fascination, pride and apprehension that comes of confronting military technology as both an Air Force Brat and a Berkeley skeptic who doesn't like to hurt people. Outside, I beamed like a little girl whose father tries to please her even though she doesn't understand football, talks too much, swears like a sailor, votes Democrat and isn't rich, famous, or popular, and though she isn't as overwhelmingly pretty as her younger sister, especially since she has chopped off her long hair.

Wow. This has turned into a long domestic story that frighteningly reveals my increasingly fragile self-esteem. YAY UNEMPLOYMENT! YAY LIVING WITH ONE'S PARENTS! YAY DILETTANTE SCIENTIST-HOOD! I'm totally stoked!

Dude. Could I get any more depressing? And who can sell herself in any Personal Statement with a shitty attitude like that? Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself, trying to produce a zowzer of a Statement right this minute. Maybe I first need a major Adjustment, stat.

But I feel better, now that I've posted this. With a masochist's zeal. Forget about saving face in the blogosphere . . . what a mighty relief-- this one small step!