Essays

Triple Chromosome Cookies

“We snuck out of lab gleefully at 4pm each Friday to the neurosciences building, not just to be updated on the latest news in fly genetics, not just to tell our Principal investigator that we were out inundating ourselves in innovation, but mostly for the fragrant and fragile cookies served just inside the lecture hall doors. Surviving in science requires the curious ability to ferret out the free lecture cookies, in whatever form they come in, last minute grants, gifted centrifuges from the seventies, or an actual hand sized, fresh baked, triple chocolate chip cookie that melts in the mouth on Fridays at  4pm.”

On Physicists, Developers, and the Dangers of Big Data

“So to address the dangers of simplification and ease of human removal, I propose that we all start acting like biologists. Biologists are the most human of all the damn scientists, the most delightfully weird, and party the hardest at conferences.”

Yelling at Birds

“I buried it for weeks in the other noises, but like a murdered corpse, it drifted stinking and bloated to the surface, bobbing and weaving its thick fingers through the sonic flotsam. Peckpeckflutterscrabblepeck.“

Dog Walk Thoughts

“Thank God I have a fluffy thing that loves me.

Thank God I don’t have to make small talk about the pandemic with the fluffy thing.

All he thinks about are squirrels, crows, and tennis balls.

Is there a God?”

Library Ladders

“I am trying to determine who to blame for my love of library ladders. It must be Disney. For a potshot at unreachable dreams, Disney is an easy tin can to tip.”

Pratt’s Pukes

Back grating against the abrasive granite chimney, reaching for the chockstone to clip my protection, knees grinding in to hold my bodyweight secure, blueing with bruises already through my kneepads, the exertion at 180 feet above tunneling my vision, stomach contents already left a few feet below the constriction, Shayna, unseen and unheard at the other end of the forty meters, since my upward progress had slowed to mere inches in the past ten minutes, I thought, as the blood drained from my chest leaving a buzzing numbness, and each pant, left me further and further outside the safety of the granite offwidth I had been securely wedged in moments before, I thought, my god, what a wonderful afternoon.

Rat Screams

“I tried blearily to drown out the screams of the rats in my bag, scrabbling along the confines of the rubberized backpack, each new trap, another toothed gullet and piercing keen, trying to make out the dripping orange flag of the transect through the mystery of the 4am rainish cloudforest, feet losing purchase in the perennial mud, hands being stabbed by the grumpy trunk of the pandanus which looks inviting and steady, but under the soft fuzz are inch long thorns that dig into the tender flesh of the palm, much like the question which was burrowing itself, faceful of orb spider by orb spider into my mind, did I actually like science?”

Soiree Surveillance

“AFTD. Always find the dog. A pooch is a great barkometer of party vibe level. If it’s a happy go lucky mutt fellow puttering around, all is well. Find a chintzy looking couch, kick back with some lemonade and chat with the hopefully normal humans around you. If the dog is a wolfhound, mastiff, or other large and very well-groomed exotic hunting dog. Find and exit immediately. You are the prey. I repeat you are the prey.”

On Swiping

“Perhaps the fascination is fueled by my own imagination. The raw and yawning gulf in my life. The stories they tinderites put forth demand a role to be played. A future that could be occupied, if I choose to bend and bow into that projection.”

Ladystache

“Yet this determined suppression is only temporary.  I lean forward in the mirror, after a couple golden and contented weeks, Tom always finds a way back. Determined, sprouting, a faithful dog I kick and kick and viciously kick. Yet he always slinks back to that upper lip.”

Unfun Tunnels

“It would be interesting to quantify the amount of things I’ve destroyed because of my period. Skirts, pants, couches, all fair game for an eccentric cycler like myself. Just spurts out of the old canal like summertime hydrants in Queens.”

Monkey bits

“The elation I felt at sighting a twin set of monkey genitalia made me thoroughly, deeply, and completely realize that I was never going to be a primatologist.” 

Shorting the Slut Game

“Obviously, the solution to maximized proximity to beauty and the proliferation of sex is to find your life partner(s) as early as possible, but for us wayward dilettantes with whom fate, geography, and frame of mind have not aligned, I propose the four week turnaround. Enjoy, and remember, use only for good.” 

Ice Cream Rich

“But the ideas and fame and fortune came much the same as my writing, when I was digging through the freezer for the last scoop of ice cream and despairing about the general lack of it. My idea of success is never having to worry about the quantity or quality of ice cream in my freezer. Nor the ability to go out and obtain said ice cream at all times of day, night, and location.”

Wavestorm 7-8

“My feeble and bloodless paddles had barely gotten me the speed I needed to get into the slabbed tube, my foamie too long for the steep drop of the right, the nose of the costco darling pearling me towards certain salty pummeling, yet I clung and fought backwards to the back towards the fin which would lift both of us from imminent dunking like a deranged retriever, bounced by the chop of the huge wave and the speed, down down, unable to stand with the speed and rock, boogie-ing like the ghost of Tom Morey, praying that surface tension and momentum would come to my aid, cursing the choice of board Shayna had said, would be perfectly fine for a quick pre-work surf.”