Not for the Faint of Heart

I’ve not been updating this much recently, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and I really would be seven kinds of shocked if one couldn’t glean that from both the timestamps and the fact that I open every one of these now with the apology that I’ve not been updating recently.

So we’ll continue.

In Murphy News:

• I was not meant to be a butcher (hint: if you really don’t like animals dying for scientific studies, skip this). It’s funny that I’m sitting in a Subway eating a meatball sandwich while I type this, but I really don’t know how cool I am with killing an animal myself. Case in point: I’d like to do some metal studies involving the hippocampus. Not the human hippocampus, of course, but a rat hippocampus. Which means getting a rat brain. I didn’t actually have to extract the brain, of course, as I’d never done it before and would probably have ended up injuring the rat and causing, in a roundabout way, the beginning of a new species of superrat which would subjugate us all. So I watched the physiologist do it. Step One: Knocking the rat out in the desiccator filled with inhaled anesthetic. I’m fine with that. Step Two: Dissecting the rat. Ok. It wasn’t in pain (so she said) and it’s over now. Rat done. Step Three: What’s she doing with that knife? Step Four: She’s not… Step Five: She is. Step Six: Rat head in a jar.
  
  I’m not cool with doing that. I accept that these kinds of things have to be done so that we can more fully understand the chemistry of life, but I think I’ll sit back and let someone else decapitate the rats.



• Busy week this week. Group meeting on Tuesday afternoon, which I’m quite nervous about, and softball game on Monday. In case I’ve not said this, I’m involved in a softball team now, which is fine, but the manager signed us up for the wrong league such that instead of playing the Computer Science graduate school, we’re playing SAE tomorrow. Color me all kinds of mercy rule.

Pirates:

• I’m encouraged by what I saw from Duke’s outing on Saturday, and a bit discouraged by Snell’s today. Conflicted about Casey’s injury as he was hitting moderately well and we are paying him more than anyone else on the roster, but at least it gets Craig “Thor” Wilson some playing time (it should be coming over Burnitz, but it’s playing time nonetheless), which is providing us with everything that looks like offense recently. Mostly, I’m just waiting patiently for the first day off, Thursday, so that the relievers can get a modicum of rest. On that note, someone came up to me yesterday to ask why the Pirates have played more games than anyone else. I laughed a little. And then looked sadly at the schedule.



• I realized that I’m not sure what style of announcing I like. Cubs announcers tend to be a little too high on themselves, the Reds announcers were kind of static, saying something only when something happened such that a sizeable chunk was dead silence, but I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than Pirates announcers chatting about their pets and silverware.



• 4-10 isn’t where I wanted to be right now, but it’s hardly the end of the world. Pirates fans in the Pirate Q & A and on message boards have been calling the season lost since the first game. While I’d be surprised to see enough change to get us to .500, it’s just damn depressing listening to the talk of fan revolt.