A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

As those of you who have ever googled my name will know, I once did a pretty terrible web project on synesthesia back in my undergrad days. Being me, I had forgotten to sign up in advance for college webspace, and so I abused my power as neuroscience webmaster and set up my page there instead. An unforseen side-effect of this is that the page didn't get taken down when I graduated. Five years later, it still sits there, mocking me with its typos and garish hypertext. Every year or two I contact the newest webmaster to ask to have it taken down, but apparently it has infected several servers with its presence, and so has managed to bounce back from multiple deletions in a manner not unlike that of the Earth of the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. And despite its terribleness, synesthesia websites seem to really enjoy linking to it, which is fine, I guess, but things just got a whole lot weirder; I just found out that it got me a footnote in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

It's not really worth bothering to check out, but here is a link for the insatiably curious (full text pdf here; I'm on page 38).

This is at once hilarious, embarrassing, and my greatest achievement to date.

You're toxic; I'm slipping under

Wow...it's been almost two weeks since my last update. Things have been busy, also weird. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

Once again I've been experiencing that impulse to give this blog some sort of purpose, or at least a coherent theme. So I looked over my last several entries for inspiration.

My first idea was a cocktail blog. I tried to think of what I might say in such a thing, and the only thing that came to mind is that Ketel One was $15 last time I was at Ralphs. This is not exactly edge-of-your seat material here, is it. Sure, it's good to know and all (though my search for a recipe for a Ketel One Martini persists unfulfilled).
My next thought was to do something boardgame or comic related. Now that just sounds terrible. It did, however, remind me of the following: here are some Sam and Max comics for you, and also there are some cool games coming out in May, including a new Illuminati expansion, and a Bruno Faidutti steampunk Mars colonization game.

Anyways, in addition to my inability to find any single topic worth talking about indefinitely, I realized that if I narrowed the focus of this thing at all, y'all'd probably have a lot more two week delays to look forward to. So no major redesigns for now.

'cause I just can't seem to drink you off my mind

So, thanks to Adam and Amanda for participating in the thing from my last post, and scowly faces to the rest of you for not.

Here is something from the aptly-named Damn Interesting on phytoremediation, in which one uses plants to fix environmental problems, for instance, genetically modified sunflowers that clean up strontium- and cesium- contaminated pools in Chernobyl (Another, somewhat creepier, article is about the subterranean coal fires in Centralia, PA).

And speaking of toxins, here is a site with really good cocktail information. I was especially drawn to the list of ingredients, which includes many that are decidedly obscure or unavailable, and to the "mixilator", which I promise is the last thing I'll say on the subject of randomness and cocktails for a really long time.

We had seasons in the sun

Remind me to talk about classes and TAing and such someday. Not today; I ain't in the mood.

Ooh...I can, however, tell you How I Spent My Spring Break.
Like many of you, I was grading until Monday afternoon (though I spent Sunday celebrating Early Easter with the family. Yum, ham). Then, as I mentioned, Adam and I tested my recipes. Tuesday I slept and several of us went to see V for Vendetta, which we all appeared to enjoy. Wednesday I probably did some things; I dunno. Thursday Mike had a very nice little get-together. Then on Friday Tia and John came down for a visit, and we roamed around La Jolla and UCSD and ate lots of ice cream and generally had a good time. Saturday evening I went up to LA and subsequently got to visit everyone else.

Man. I am the worst describer ever. Now you know why I try to steer clear of the whole personal narrative approach to blogging. Oh well; since this entry is already all autobiographical and such, I might as well mention this personality awareness thing that Zoha found. Come judge me!

Kitten's small, kitten's growing

I have the hiccups.

Some of you may not realize what a big thing this is. When I get the hiccups, I often have them for like a week. So I've got a pretty good response strategy set up:
1) Drinking water in comical positions
2) Holding my breath
3) Swallowing unseemly amounts of refined sugar
4) Drinking pickle brine
5) Holding my tongue and coughing

If I still have them by the end of that, I'm pretty much doomed.

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Wait. This was totally not supposed to be a post about the hiccups. Instead go look at Encouragement Kitten, which is one of the best things one can do with the already formidable medium of kitten pictures. And while you're at it, you might also enjoy Spamusement, which, much like Encouragement Kitten, is so much more entertaining than the concept would suggest. Granted, maybe 90% of them aren't very good, but others made me laugh so hard my torso nearly imploded. Speaking of which, I'm off to drink some pickle brine.