Janel's Place

This is a brain.














This is my gel of nine brains.














This is a person thinking about brains.














This is serial maggot killer.

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I was driving the big blue truck we used to own, and the brakes weren't working. I therefore hit a person in a little car but then had to go around the block before I could get the truck to stop. Then I got out and went over to a large gathering of people in a parking lot only to discover that they hadn't noticed that I hit somebody because there was a funeral procession for a policeman going on. Sure enough, the road was filled with mexican police officers wearing very sparkly black and gold clothes, jogging alongside a limo chanting "el panino, el panino." Rachel Ferguson then came and told me that I didn't have to worry about the person I hit because he was going the wrong way on a one-way street. O'Neil then gave me a wilted pink flower and asked me if I could see anything.
At that moment I teleported to the NIH where they informed me that instead of a poster session I needed to sing for everyone.

I thought I should record that for posterity. The only thing that slightly made sense was O'Neil's role as last evening I was staining my sad little blot with Ponceau stain trying to see ANYTHING resembling pink proteins and O'Neil was kindly interested in the sad scenario. The conclusion of the matter was that I ran my proteins the wrong way on my western blot and they are now floating around in the Fort Collins sewer system. I can repeat the experiment today and try and stay focused until it's over. My sense of humor is down in the barn I think, it definitely did not come to the lab. Time for some maggots to die.
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Long day, wow. But today I learned that Paul was one of those ***lucky*** people who saw Jesus after He was killed. Didn't know that. I have always thought that the sheer number of people who claimed to see Jesus after He died was one of the strongest reasons to take the hypothesis seriously, but I had forgotten where the "big numbers" were actually recorded. Well, just found them. Check this out (this is Paul's letter to the people in Corinth, dated about 56 A.D.):

1 Corinthians 15

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that...

He was seen by Cephas.

Then by the twelve.

After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.

After that He was seen by James.

Then by all the apostles.

Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

Seeing Jesus would be pretty motivating. All of these people (except John) went to their death because of this crazy claim they would not give up. Dude I believe them.

Well that's all. I need to get off this computer. I need to go and see if there's a baby in the barn. It's getting about that time where I am ignoring what she looks like and thinking she's just going to pop that thing out no matter if it appears she lacks the capacity to feed it. It could be in the barn RIGHT NOW... whooooo-ha-ha.
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25 years my parents have been married. They're good parents, I should go and visit them. But I'm here in the lab. I'm not excited about science today. I'm craving an adventure. A short one. I looked through my Japan blog today and remembered how lonely that was. It's lonely here too, but I have Max and a cell phone.

I hate the devil this weekend. There are so many people I care about who don't give 2 min thought to their eternal souls. Most of them don't believe there are such things as souls, and "life-after-death" is something to wait and see if it exists. What if it's too late then? Do you think God, if there is one, can be messed with like that? He is merciful, obviously He is merciful, but He is still righteous. This Book I have is so vast, so sensible, so full of truth, so full of raw history and awesome and humbling looks into the very mind of God, and people don't see that, ^#$* the devil! Sometimes I want the world to end so no more people will come into it and reject Him, but that is the glass half-empty view. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then the end will come. Maybe for every person I know who continues to ignore Him on a daily basis there are ten others that receive their lives. And "my people" still have a chance to find Him while they still have breath. If I give up on them then the *&#% devil wins a round.

Caffeine levels are too low to do science. I watched 4 minutes of "Anaconda" last night and had a horrible snake dream, followed by one where my sister introduced me to her new two-headed boyfriend who liked to take one of his heads off and put it on his arm and talk to it. Brains are so weird, I can't imagine studying anything else. I need to email George Bush and see if he'll let me come and cook him some portabello fajitas in a couple of weeks. He never responds to my emails. Hard to believe, I know.

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Stinkerbell had two kittens. I shouldn't have just logged on because I have no thoughts. Today I learned that the world is not round. It's rectilinear. Alligators don't carry the Everglades virus as far as we know. My maggots are sick, what do I do. I know, go to bed. That'll fix 'em.
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I do not care of septic calves,
This lab means less and less,
Fruit flies, gels and chicken pot pies
Do not bring happiness.

Logistic graphs are horrible,
The estimates aren't right,
My cows are reabsorbing milk,
It's going to be a long night.

Man. This stuff is insane. I can't believe people do this for a living. Maybe it will make more sense if I go stick my head in the fridge for a while. My larvae are crawling up the walls and need to be electrocuted. If I ever figure out how age affects the association between swollen umbilicus and septicemia in calves I can proceed to electrocute my larvae. Perhaps I am the only person in the world to have ever written a sentence like that. How very special.
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I can't get over cute wrinkle puppies.

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"If we can all celebrate the different varieties of Christianity, then I think we will all be the better for it."
-- an expert on NPR

Judas is hot news on NPR and T.V. these days. As well it should be. There's something very appealing about it to the humanoid mind. Maybe barely recognizable, but do you know what is so fascinating about this harmless little gospel? It tarnishes the credibility of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul. Those annoying guys who agree about the fall of man, their responsibility to God, and the gratitude and life debt we owe Jesus Christ. They agree about who Jesus was, and they also agree He didn't marry Mary, hop off the cross, or move to India to live out the rest of His days. One can only hope they are a little bit chauvinistic, a little bit untruthful, a little bit egotistical... shoot, they're most likely liars, and who could ever know where the truth leaves off and the lies begin? There's really no point in bothering to figure it out, because after all we know the whole story is a fairytale because people don't rise from the dead and there is no such thing as a virgin birth. Life after death is the opium of the weak mind.

Nice sounding quote: "If we can all celebrate the different varieties of Christianity, then I think we will all be the better for it."

MEANING: "Literal" Christians can hopefully now become more open-minded and realize that the only real truth is that there is no "Truth," what remains as the only hope of world peace is tolerance and acceptance that those believing differently about things are not wrong, simply different. Do what makes you happy, leave everybody else alone."

I am SO glad that Christianity still has the power to be annoying to the general population. It's encouraging. There are times when I feel the church has lost it's salt. We're the weirdos that are nice but misguided, not really worth listening to or taking seriously because when it comes right down to it we're just the same as they are, plus more rules and lacking the toughness to face reality. But if we can still raise hairs on NPR, then there's a little bit of saltiness left, let's keep studying and learning from our Boss so we don't ever lose it!
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I received a compliment yesterday, I think. Someone I know used to believe that all republicans are evil smarmie bastards. Now that she has known me, she believes that some of us at least have good hearts and are just misguided. I like that better. Something else funny happened yesterday also. Thanks to Vince and Kessid's marvelous sense of humor, I realized that being absolutely frustrated with graduate school nearly to the point of tears is actually extremely funny. My frustration is that I cannot seem to draw nice boxes around pieces of maggot brains. Yes indeed, the fact that I study maggots has come to the mental rescue once again.

Today is an absolutely beautiful day. FYI: King Solomon had apes and monkeys or peacocks which is another reason he was cool, the fact that he had 1000 wives and worshiped strange gods in his old age is awesome evidence that God deals with you based on today's behavior and not future behavior, and His mercy really is infinite. Infinite. Big word. God is really awesome.

This poem came by email today from "Today's Bible reading." It's a good poem for people like me who like to share problems with God for a while and then take them back.

Broken Dreams

As children bring
their broken toys
with tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams
to God
because He was my friend!

But then instead
of leaving Him
in peace to work alone,
I hung around
and tried to help
with ways
that were my own.

At last I snatched them back
and cried,
"How can you be so slow?"
"My child," He said
"What could I do?
You never did let go."
Author Unknown
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The coyotes are howling it up tonight. My brains are running out of watts. Maggots do need a lot of spit to make a pupa. Hadn't thought of that.
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More cute things gleaned from emails...




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