Some Words

This post is inspired by the middle school days.

Today I woke up probably around 10am (after setting an alarm for 7am with the hopes of maybe going to the gym) and have spent the day eating, cleaning, and perusing the internet, much like yesterday. Though yesterday I watched three episode of glee and the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

It is now about 3pm and I have a load of laundry in both the washer and dryer and all my dishes are done except one knife that I just used to put some peanut butter on a banana.

As much as I can bring myself to say about the passing of Dave Marriner:
Somehow I imagine a TMB wake is in order. If it would happen for anyone, it would happen for him. Two things I couldn't get myself to tweet: "The Trojan Family has lost a hero." and the eerie fact that I heard this news and watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on the same day. Two stories of the tragic death of a compelling man. Which drove me to contemplate whether the comparison of the two men was in fact flattering or offensive. Gut reaction is flattering, but again, I didn't know Dave well. I basically knew him well enough to wish I knew him better.

Although it is a Monday it is a bank holiday here in England, which means no one has any expectations for me to be productive, though I have some expectations of my own.

Had a completely awesome time with Heather, Erin, and Craig visiting Monday-4am Sunday. We were in London til Thursday, and then chilled here in Oxford on Friday and Saturday. London involved lots of being angry at craig and eating mediocre food, but we did see some ridiculous historical things (rosetta stone, magna carta, st. paul's, buckingham palace, the Elgin Marbles, etc.) and learned about the shows 'distraction' and 'sugar rush' while meeting ridiculous people from all over the world at the hosel. Oxford was more relaxed, but we still had to suffer the walk from my place to town whenever we went in. We cooked full English breakfasts both mornings we were here, and then cooked a chicken on Saturday night. We also took some tours of cool Oxford stuff, focusing on Christ Church College, cause I could get us in for free, and because it's the coolest one (harry potter, alice in wonderland, henry VII, etc). We also ate and drank at the Turf Tavern, the pub where Bill Clinton 'did not inhale' and The Eagle & Child, the pub where The Inklings (a writers group that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein) used to meet on Thursday nights in the 30's according to Wikipedia. New Years Eve didn't turn out quite how I expected, but it was probably better in many ways. We ended up having a dance party in the Christ Church Graduate Common Room, which was Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)'s former room, that was also the guest room for Einstein when he visited.

Also we ate Kidney. Yum.

Now I'm going to check my Laundry, try to write a script for a short film, and make an outline for that article I said I'd write. Maybe I'll also do some work or go grocery shopping. In reality I'll probably just watch the last three episodes of glee.

Thinking about England again

When I first got back from England October last year. I was homesick for the place as if I had lived there for years. I listened to the song's on this band stornoway's myspace page and lilly allen's myspace page and vampire weekend's myspace page over and over again, just because they made me feel like the place. Dunno why, but they did. I have since gotten over this. It almost seems like a hassle to go back right now.
Until recently.

Now it all seems just right.

I've started listening to Stornoway again.

FUEL UP - Stornoway

Curled up in the back of the car
Nine years old you don't know where you are
And your head's on the window, your eyes are just closed
There's a voice in the front and a hush on the road
You're a passenger but your mind is travelling on.

Open your eyes and you're nine years older
Hands on the wheel and you're racing on over
To lie with your first love, you can't wait to see her
You borrowed the car and you think you're the driver
But now you're the passenger to your own heart
and it takes you travelling, travelling on.

When the morning broke and the sky fell down
It went black as night and the wind blew round
And stole your directions, you lost your way home
And you felt like a passenger left by the road
But I'll tell you the reason you couldn't get home
Cause there's nowhere you've been and it's nowhere you're going
Home is only a feeling you get in your mind
From the people you love and you travel beside
You may feel like a passenger but now you're the driver
You've got to go travelling, travelling on
Because if you break down, it's a cold, hard shoulder

So fuel up your mind and fire up your heart and drive on
Drive on, drive on
And when your days are darker, put your foot down harder
Drive on, drive on.

And it's nine more years you've been driving now
But tonight you're stumbling through your old town
You met up with a schoolfriend who's still just the same
And you talked all the same shit you talked in those days
And now you're drunk and you're sad for the old times passing you by
For there's no rewind so you might as well play while your time is rolling away
And get back on the road, it's a beautiful day
Pick up all the friends you can find on your way
And if you lose direction they'll be there guiding you on
Guiding you, guiding you on.
Because we're all going the same way down this long road
Yes, we're all bound the same way down this long, long road.

So fuel up your mind and fire up your heart and drive on
Drive on, drive on
And when your days are darker, put your foot down harder
Drive on
Fuel up, and drive on
Fuel up, and drive on
Drive on.

I like blogger

So I'm in the process of trying to make like... a "public persona" on the internet. It's so bizarre to like... decide which parts of me should be shown to the public and which shouldn't. The weirdest part about it, is that the people whose tweets I follow and whose blog posts I read occasionally really seem like they leave nothing except their exact name and location at the door. But it's obviously not the case.

It's confusing.

Anyway, dunno if this blog will continue, or if I will decide to use IT as a part of my public persona. But then I'll have like four million avatars. Maybe I'll migrate this blogspot thing to "frostedbeagels.blogspot" so that my frosedbeagels twitter coordinates to my personal blog and my thegreatantidote blog coordinates to my dagreatantidote twitter. One public and the other private. Note: there is apparently a character limit on twitter account names, such that I had to use "da" instead of "the". When I realized this I got a little happy inside, cause it meant that I could use the nickname "Lady daGA". Lol. Dork.

Also. I like blogger. I've been checking out posterous and wordpress for this more professional internet Sonya, and so far I am not impressed. We'll see. I feel like blogger is increasingly becoming extinct, but I'm not quite sure why.

At least it's not Xanga.

Not about women and kids

I almost posted this as a comment on someone's blog who was legimately having a conversation about it and talking about women and kids and work and whatever. Really I respect that, but this is more about the conversation in general than the place of women and kids, which I think is a much more complex issue.

I just want to say this, almost to see if I'm the only one who feels this way. I just started grad school a year ago, and at that time the place I'm at had all these things about the "work-life balance" and I thought it was great. I was like "yay, they DO care about me." Now one year in, I'm pretty tired of hearing about it, and am not looking forward to having the discussion every year of grad/postdoc/assprof/prof as if it is some sort of new phenom that is exclusive to academia. It's just life. Work is a part of life, if your having a problem and wish you watched more TV with your hubby, then do it. If your job doesn't let you do that and you want to, find another job. I don't mean to sound bitter, but I guess I am reminded of that time when I was a senior in high school and there was a "what to expect in college" forum for a bunch of us nerds, and this girl asks if there's time to have a social life in college, and the guy just looked at her as if she was crazy.

I think I just got something...

So Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights likes to talk about, you know "Going back to why we PLAY football in the first place." It's just a game, it's just for fun. We PLAY it because we like it, because it's a game kids start to play after school in the yard. Forget all this politics and crap, and play the game you love.

I think it's the same with scientists (and probably any other field, too). It's all just a game, just puzzles, just problems you have fun solving. Like a crossword or chess or sudoku, or trying to guess the end of a movie. I think all too often people get bogged down in the seriousness of it. In the money, in the personal reputations, in the livelihood they hope to gain from it. Joy is much simpler than that.

Anyway. I think I've still got that UAH shooting on my mind. Crazy shit, that.

First official work day of the week...

... AND IT'S FRIDAY!



I've been going a little nuts. Just you know... where you start getting pissed at people for no real reason, and get a little passive aggressive. It's happening right now between me and my housemates because we're not used to spending this much time together.

Pictures are from a walk with housemates on Saturday.

Snowed-in Thought of the Day

If Dan is right, and he may just be, especially considering the recent supreme court decision, consumers should seriously be thinking about where they spend their money. I'm not sure exactly how I started thinking about this just now, but part of the development of my train of thought took me back to some stuff in the movie Food Inc. that rung particularly true. Consumers need to treat every dollar they spend as a vote. If you buy a Big Mac, you are saying it's okay for the owner of McDonald's to determine national policy. If the placement of power is determined almost solely by the placement of money, we really need to seriously consider how and where we spend our earnings.

It is possible that a consumer shift toward more responsible companies (I don't know what this would actually entail) could help prevent future fiscal crises. I guess the main problem with this is that if a company (like McDonald's) offers things cheaper than anyone else, than people are more likely to spend their money there, whether or not the company has integrity, especially if they are poor. An interesting problem, though it could probably be better articulated. Anyone have arguments or comments? Economists?

FYI: You can check out the pdf version of the article below here. It just came out last week.

Something wicked this way comes.

I said I'd do it so here it is: the article I just finalized for the Oxford University Biochemical Society's termly magazine Phenotype. The editors were oddly professional, I was rather impressed. You should eventually be able to see this article along with its friends here in the Hilary 2010 issue. There was a lot of other stuff I wanted to talk about like open access journals and the use of blogs etc at conferences, but I was given a word limit, so what can you do?

Welcome to the future.

I was just invited by Heather to write a "Young Lady's Guide to Science in 2010" for the newish blog she is doing with Erin and Courtney. This prompted me to catch myself up on what they've been writing lately. In the process I came across a video mash-up of the major pop songs of the year in Erin's post 'Wrap It Up, 2009', and realized how much more I can link experiences to pop music this year than usual. And it is TOTALLY a good thing. I highly suggest you watch the video (DJ Earworm - United State of Pop ...) , cause it made me super happy about 2009, however morally depraved it might have been. Between ill-advised encounters with boys, a rave, beer pong, spontaneous dance parties, the Gold Room, Hawaii, Oxford, NaNoWriMo, the Pac-10 tournament, making out with a basketball player at the tournament in Minneapolis (oops), Graduation, Obama becoming president, driving to 'work' in Beverly Hills over the summer, the fact that the band is actually going to be on Glee, and realizing that I can use twitter for science, everything seems very incredibly surreal and amazingly possible.

I know all of these things are super shallow, and not really important. But they still make me happy. Another thing that makes me happy: dolphins are people, too?

A Taste of England

Haven't posted in a while.  I thought I was going to be all good about it, and post things from England, like how lena, courtney, and kate did on their travel blogs during semesters abroad.  Not so much.  Here's one of my favorite pictures from England, just so I can pretend I did this while I was there:

Instead, as of October 1st, I started keeping a diary of sorts.  Mainly, I bought a book at Blackwell's that has a page reserved for each and every day. I think its designed to keep track of homework or something.  Lame. Whatever it's supposed to do, it's been very good at getting me to write or draw something every day.  Twice I have made other people write in it, so I don't have to.  It's nice.  Maybe I'll have my grandma write in it over Thanksgiving.

So, I have agreed to write an article about Web 2.0 and its influence on biomedical science for the Oxford Biochemical Society's termly journal.  It is incredibly interesting to learn enough about this topic to write a semi-coherent article.  The ideas of open source computing, twitter, blogging, podcasts, etc. are having real effects on scientific communication.  I just have to figure a thesis around which I can organize these thoughts and facts.  I will probably post it, or a semblence thereof, on here when I'm done.  It's due November 27th, so that's not too long from now.   Another picture just for the hell of it:

Regarding the whole computers are becoming more and more important thing, I am hoping to become much better at the internet in the near future.  For one, I'm planning on getting a brand new shiny macboook pro over Thanksgiving.  I currently am unable to do many things like watch videos and run iTunes smoothly.   Really, I think these are both fixable problems, but it's about time for me to get a new computer anyway.  Secondly, I now own sonyahanson.com and I need to figure out something to do with it.  Lastly, my mom gave me this sweet digital SLR as a graduation present, and I might start a flickr page on which to post my good pictures, since I kind of dump everything on facebook regardless of how I feel about its quality.  We'll see if I follow through on any of these things, but I certainly enjoy day dreaming about them.   Especially the new computer thing, and I don't think I can really survive if I procrastinate on that for much longer. 

A few twitters

You ever feel parts of your life are like a soggy puzzle? Every piece you try kinda fits... but not really.

I may, perhaps, be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. But then... if I am, maybe we all are in our own way.

Thinking about this on my ride home: Was Nietzsche the first blogger? So I decided to find an article to post that could articulate my thoughts better than I have the energy to. I was just thinking about how some of Nietzsche's books, really read like a twitter page. APHORISMS = I Heart Nietzsche.  Twitter is such a fascinating thing, I wonder if they had any idea when they started it.

Also, do you think men would feel threatened by a woman who drives this car?

(brrp)

I don't

ever want to feel stressed out.

I don't ever want to feel like I have to do something that I don't want to do.

I feel like this means something.

My two favorite Beatles songs:



And this has nothing to do with my current situation right now, or anything.
They've been my favorites since I was like 14.



Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't like Hey Jude or When I'm Sixty-Four or any of their 400 million other amazing songs, it's just that these have always stood out to me.

However, I've never been a fan of I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Way better than the moon landing.

hahahaha. The Daily Show half hour summary of yesterday is hilarious. This British dude is having people compare Obama's inauguration to the moon landing.

My mom called today and said, "Hi Sonya, this is mom, I was just wondering if you celebrated for that... you know... how do you say? Obama becoming president thing. I still can't believe it really happened. Anyway, call me later."

On that same topic:


Obama's limo would be a Cadillac.

So, the theme of this post is that today was a super good day, despite the fact that I turned in a physics homework that I know I didn't do correctly, mainly because I didn't start it til this morning. Just getting the shitty out of the way, on the first graded item of the semester. That's how that works right?

Part of the reason I didn't really care about my physics hw was that I was finalizing my travel plans for das two grad school interviews Feb 10-12 and Feb 12-14. I'm so stoked that that's done, now I just have to go interview clothes shopping, and do a shit ton of research on the interests of the people who are going to be interviewing me and... on what I should pretend my own interests are.

Today being good was not based solely on money, BUT I did make $110, BITCHES! In addition, I found the $100 bill in my drawer that I had forgotten I was saving for Vegas this weekend, BITCHES!

SPS and friends went out to dinner for Bickers' Birthday at El Cholo with bunches of his current and former students. It was great. I think he had like three margaritas, and was working the table like mad. There were some old, old students there (like from 98, FUCK that's old). They told us stories about how they used to do the wave during class, and how apparently people used to go drinking at La Barca with Bickers. We're so bringing that back! w00t!

Bringing Back "Kill Whitey"

Hey Guys!

It's been a little over 12 hours now that Obama's been president.

And so far...

AWESOME!!!

Currently watching MSNBC wondering where Rachel Maddow went. Is this the B Team?

Also looking at pictures of young Biden:
Look at those cheek bones!

Anyway. Obama is giving his last pre-ball speech. That's right. Go HOME!! Be the first black man to fuck your wife in the Lincoln Bedroom Just do it!

This isn't the time for U-G-L-Y, You Ain't Got No Alibi.

So this kinda goes along with my idea of having my facebook status be:

"Sonya is a hot blonde, LA, 21, just wants to have fun. I stay up late. XOXO"

But this one is more like a line from a movie from the perspective of say, you know, that girl from Clueless, maybe:

"Just cause you're ugly doesn't mean you wanna be pretty.
Just cause you're fat doesn't mean you wanna be skinny.
Just cause you're dumb doesn't mean you wanna be smart.
But I know for a fact that everyone at this school wants to be me."

Other things to think about:
Just cause you're nice doesn't mean you want to be mean.
Just cause you're poor doesn't mean you want to be rich.
Just cause you're locked up doesn't mean you want to be free.

You can do the race and gender thing with it, too. It's sort of fun to think about things when you phrase 'em this way.

No, I'm not high.

Try not to engage in wishful thinking.

-Prof. Hogen Esch, Chem 322b (2nd semester Organic Chemistry)

So it seems I would actually love to go to the drag art show I mentioned earlier. It opens on January 15. I'm not really available this weekend or next, but maybe the weekend after that or sometime on a weekday we could arrange a field trip. Courtney and Heather have expressed interest. I would also like to bring as many sophomores and freshmen as possible. Corrupting the youth is in. The juniors are a lost cause.

It's against my programming to impersonate a deity.

- C3PO in Return of the Jedi.

I'm still really impressed with this movie. I think a lot of it has to do with John Williams' music. It may be totally corny, but it works so well.

So... my facebook status right now is about how I am watching Return of the Jedi, and like within seconds after I posted it, an acquaintance of mine (below)from high school (I seriously don't think I ever had a conversation with him) responded with a very positive "Fuck yes!".

When I was home over break and drinking beers with my band director and the rest of my marching band class, we started talking about this guy, and apparently he is in a band now with a few current high school students. Dubie (high school band director) told us the whole high school like worships him now cause he's some badass drummer. We had no idea! He just played keyboard in the pit in marching band!

It's also highly possible that he's not really that good, and high schoolers are just dumb, but it makes me think about my hopes and dreams for the following year and upcoming future. I hope to continue playing French horn, probably mellophone, perhaps dabbling in trumpet (I know they suck, but I have my reasons), to the point where I'd love to be in some makeshift funk band or something. I don't care how good it really is, it just seems like it'd be fuckin' awesome. Like a random stress reliever and something to care about other than work.

For a reference point, this is pretty much how I envision my future:

The Internet is a Wonderful Place Full of Rainbows and Puppies

So, although officially it may seem like my brother is unemployed, he introduces himself as an 'internet entrepreneur'. He even has business cards! Yesterday at the bank when asked his title he said 'President' and after I, he, and the banker had a good laugh, he showed me his card for this company called Reducible Systems Inc. Apparently it's 'one of the first quantum computing companies'. I like to think he's full of shit, but I have no idea.

On a similar entrepreneurial note, today he's borrowing my car to go to lunch with someone interested in this domain name that he owns: http://www.mathissexy.com If you click on it, it will take you straight to my brother's homepage, which honestly is not that interesting, other than the fact that has a picture of him on it that prompted Courtney to comment on how we look a lot alike.


I did a search for 'math is sexy' on google, and came up with some interesting things, such as the blog at http://calculust.com/ which provided me with such interesting things as the holiday classic above entitled Present Parallel Universe, and the inspirational video below, which is corny, but whatever.



Also this quote:
"When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability."

And finally, a great picture from the google image search for 'math is sexy':

So, my brother just got off the phone with said partner in his mathissexy.com venture, and apparently the lunch date is off: they talked about everything they needed to talk about over the phone. All I have to say about that is that I kept on hearing my brother say 'Algebra is for Lovers'.

Scientology: Funny and then not so funny.

So after the World of Wonder my brother and I walked to the Psychiatry Museum on Sunset:

As suggested by Pepper Ann, sometime during bowl week.

It was sweet. I mean, granted, hilarious, and ridiculous, and you wonder how much money they put into it. Just check out how well done it is.

I'm sure there is some truth to it. The abuse of mental patients back in the day a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And the abuse of the words ADD and depression nowadays to sedate the human population into robot functionality.

But... Scientology, I'm sorry, you've gone too far with things like this:

And this: