Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Daily Douchebag: BALB/c mice
DOB: the strain originated when Halsey Bagg purchased a pair of albino mice from a mouse dealer in Ohio in 1913
Occupation: I'd say "guinea pigs," but since they're mice, I'll say "experimental subjects"
Hometown: Memorial Hospital, New York via Ohio
Current residence: my lab's infrequently used chemical fume hood so J-Sexy and SisterChristian won't bitch about my rodents stinking up the lab
Douchebaggery: No matter what a grad student works on, whether it be yeast, worms, flies, cells, viruses, bacteria, mice, rats, monkeys, or whatever else, there's one thing that everyone has to do which is the scourge of our existence: a timecourse experiment. This involves setting up whatever you're doing and taking samples at different times afterward, usually as inconveniently as possible. In my case, this means infecting mice with virus and dissecting out their respiratory tracts, then making smoothies out of them with my trusty power tissue homogenizer. It's the time of my life. There's nothing more entertaining and delightful than spending a very long day whipping up infected tracheal homogenates. It's better than sex. It's...also apparently opposite day.
I had to get up this morning at 4:30 a.m. to start an epic experiment involving
I shouldn't complain too much because this was the lot I cast when I signed up to do mousework in a virology lab. Lengthy timecourses are part of the package. When I get this experiment to work and can demonstrate that rhinovirus is growing in my mice, I will get to write a banging first-author paper and graduate. However, I'm seriously annoyed because I could have been working on this experiment months ago if it weren't for the stupid mice. My mice are housed in what's called a barrier facility. This means that there are certain procedures and controls in place to prevent outbreaks of mouse diseases. Obviously, when you have thousands of mice all living in close proximity, epidemics can be devastating. Unfortunately, my stupid mice decided to go and get mouse hepatitis virus anyway because some dipshit wasn't following barrier protocol, and I had to stop breeding them for three months to clear out the epidemic. While this wasn't ALL bad (I got some face time with this hot veterinarian, and spent it dropping sexy virus talk all over his fine ass), it really set my work back. Then, when I begged the hot DVM to let me resume breeding and he grudgingly gave me permission, my mice were all old and not at the height of fecundity. Mice only reproduce until they're about a year old, and many of my breeding pairs were eight or nine months old, so the females were disinterested in the old, fat males they were caged with. The few pairs who still apparently had an active sex life produced small litters. I had to use what remained of my young, virile, experiment-worthy mice to set up new breeding cages, thus making me wait another few weeks for sires to rape the dams in estrus and produce some pups for me to experiment on.
Finally, after a month of trying to get my mice to get down and get pregs and not eat their young, I managed to scrounge enough mice together to do half of this lousy experiment. Hopefully enough of the recently born mice will avoid consumption by their mothers long enough to be weaned and participate in the other half of this experiment next week. With my luck, there will probably be an outbreak of mousepox in the barrier and all my mousework will be delayed another six months. I swear these bastards are conspiring to keep me in grad school via epidemics of every disease EXCEPT human rhinovirus and a refusal to reproduce like the rodents with nothing better to do that they are. It's pretty sad that I'm being outwitted by a strain of witless vermin inbred via twenty-six generations of brother-sister mating. Pretty sad, indeed.
Labels: Daily Douchebag, epidemic geekery, grad school bullshit, mice, Rxxx Sxxxxxx, science, viruses rule
Monday, April 02, 2007
I'm only happy when it rains dead animals
So my favorite organization in the world, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (except human beings), has enlisted the help of some HUGE names to front their typical attemptedly shocking campaign. I know that PETA pulls all kinds of shady shit, like breaking into private property and destroying shit, using guerilla ambush tactics to disrupt everything from charity auctions to dairy farmer conventions, and distracting people from their preachy, superior message with naked sluts like Pam Anderson. However, nobody told me that PETA can actually manipulate the fabric of space-time. They must be able to, however, because if this latest piece of angry animal propaganda is any indication, we've gone back in time to 1994, when this prostitute was still marginally relevant:
If you can tear your eyes away from the skinned fox or whatever, you might recognize the floor-to-ceiling curtain-wearing bitch as Shirley Manson, lead singer of Garbage. Apparently she hasn't been working much in the last decade or so, and thus she had some time on her hands to be PETA's latest celebrity asshole.
I would walk up to this ho wearing a chin-to-chocha mink and tell her to quit giving me that disapproving look, and then I'd make some fox tartare and eat it in front of her. Last time I checked, I didn't give a fuck about garnering Shirley Manson's approval, even when it was 1994 and I was wearing a flannel shirt and rocking a 107.7 The End (Seattle alternative station) bumper sticker on my Jansport backpack. It doesn't bother me in the least that the weasel-like, hole-dwelling mammals they use for fur have muscles under their shiny, pretty coats, and it doesn't bother me that Shirley Manson is trying to discourage me from wearing those coats. Shirley Manson should be working harder at reminding everyone who the fuck she even is.
I'd like to know where did the idiot vegans who made this ad got that skinned animal from. Either they broke into a fur farm and stole it, or they killed and skinned an innocent animal to make their point. Whichever method they used, isn't either one just a LITTLE hypocritical? It seems that cruelty to animals went into making their stupid ad, which isn't particularly fitting with their mantra of "ethics". Then again, PETA's "ethics" involve committing a variety of crimes against people, like destruction of property, assault, burglary, etc., so the consistency of their views on ethics are highly questionable.
MAYBE the only person who might get the point of this ad without being totally pissed off at PETA is Kathleen, the chick with the big hair from this cycle of "America's Next Top Model", who was supposed to pretend to be an anti-fur activist in a photo shoot and had no idea what to do. It literally never occurred to her that people oppose fur, so she just stood there blinking at Mr. J and the photographer, totally confused about why she was supposed to pose with a bunch of red paint cans. At judging, Kathleen explained that she's not for killing animals, but had no problem with fur that was taken from animals "dying of natural causes in the forest." Apparently, she thought the fur industry obtains its raw materials by scouring the wilderness for random animals that died of old age, or by scraping roadkill off our nation's highways. I thought that was hilarious, although Twiggy, an anti-fur activist, tore her a new one, saying, "Well, that's NOT how it happens, DEARIE," and successfully appealed to Tyra to send her ass home for being stupid. Kathleen is the only person on the planet who might look at this ad and say, "Holy shit, that's what an animal looks like after it's been liberated of its fur?! I'm never wearing a dog fur-trimmed Rocawear hoodie jacket again!" Everyone else is either already on PETA's side or like me, hating on PETA for being self-righteous, hypocritical assholes who clearly have a very loose understanding of "ethics."
Just to show PETA and Shirley Manson how much I don't give a fuck that there's a living animal under a GORGEOUS fur coat, let me remind them what I do all day:
Here's the rest of my poliovirus plaque assay spinal cord homogenate prep:
Shirley Manson and PETA can eat me like I'm going to go eat some veal or foie gras.
I would walk up to this ho wearing a chin-to-chocha mink and tell her to quit giving me that disapproving look, and then I'd make some fox tartare and eat it in front of her. Last time I checked, I didn't give a fuck about garnering Shirley Manson's approval, even when it was 1994 and I was wearing a flannel shirt and rocking a 107.7 The End (Seattle alternative station) bumper sticker on my Jansport backpack. It doesn't bother me in the least that the weasel-like, hole-dwelling mammals they use for fur have muscles under their shiny, pretty coats, and it doesn't bother me that Shirley Manson is trying to discourage me from wearing those coats. Shirley Manson should be working harder at reminding everyone who the fuck she even is.
I'd like to know where did the idiot vegans who made this ad got that skinned animal from. Either they broke into a fur farm and stole it, or they killed and skinned an innocent animal to make their point. Whichever method they used, isn't either one just a LITTLE hypocritical? It seems that cruelty to animals went into making their stupid ad, which isn't particularly fitting with their mantra of "ethics". Then again, PETA's "ethics" involve committing a variety of crimes against people, like destruction of property, assault, burglary, etc., so the consistency of their views on ethics are highly questionable.
MAYBE the only person who might get the point of this ad without being totally pissed off at PETA is Kathleen, the chick with the big hair from this cycle of "America's Next Top Model", who was supposed to pretend to be an anti-fur activist in a photo shoot and had no idea what to do. It literally never occurred to her that people oppose fur, so she just stood there blinking at Mr. J and the photographer, totally confused about why she was supposed to pose with a bunch of red paint cans. At judging, Kathleen explained that she's not for killing animals, but had no problem with fur that was taken from animals "dying of natural causes in the forest." Apparently, she thought the fur industry obtains its raw materials by scouring the wilderness for random animals that died of old age, or by scraping roadkill off our nation's highways. I thought that was hilarious, although Twiggy, an anti-fur activist, tore her a new one, saying, "Well, that's NOT how it happens, DEARIE," and successfully appealed to Tyra to send her ass home for being stupid. Kathleen is the only person on the planet who might look at this ad and say, "Holy shit, that's what an animal looks like after it's been liberated of its fur?! I'm never wearing a dog fur-trimmed Rocawear hoodie jacket again!" Everyone else is either already on PETA's side or like me, hating on PETA for being self-righteous, hypocritical assholes who clearly have a very loose understanding of "ethics."
Just to show PETA and Shirley Manson how much I don't give a fuck that there's a living animal under a GORGEOUS fur coat, let me remind them what I do all day:
Here's the rest of my poliovirus plaque assay spinal cord homogenate prep:
Shirley Manson and PETA can eat me like I'm going to go eat some veal or foie gras.
Labels: assholes, media whores, mice, overcompensation, retard rage, scathing indictments, science
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Razzy's husbandry skills on the decline
For the first time EVER, I just lost a mouse in my lab. Usually "losing" mice means that they are cannibalized by their mother, or they just die for no apparent reason at all. Today, however, a mouse actually escaped on my watch. I was about to humanely sacrifice him as follows:
I was about to close the lid on my dry ice and ethanol death chamber and end his existence in this mortal coil when the little fucker jumped out onto my shoulder (mice have serious hops). Then he jumped down to the floor, and before I could either grab his tail or stomp on him, the motherfucker ran off. I guess he wasn't too keen on winding up like this:
I can't say I blame him. I applaud his drive to survive, but because he's inbred and probably retarded even by mouse standards, he'll probably die of starvation in the lab ventilation duct system. Now I've had to inform everyone in my lab that while they are trying to work, they might be surprised by a little guy suddenly running onto their bench and freaking them out. Since everyone but me is the type of girl who will jump on a chair and shout "Eeek!" (well, except J-Sexy, who will probably just say, "Razzy, get over here and kill this dis-gos-ting mouse." Anyway, I'm contemplating putting up posters to apprehend the fugitive before he can spread his transgenes around the Washington Heights wild mice community:
I was about to close the lid on my dry ice and ethanol death chamber and end his existence in this mortal coil when the little fucker jumped out onto my shoulder (mice have serious hops). Then he jumped down to the floor, and before I could either grab his tail or stomp on him, the motherfucker ran off. I guess he wasn't too keen on winding up like this:
I can't say I blame him. I applaud his drive to survive, but because he's inbred and probably retarded even by mouse standards, he'll probably die of starvation in the lab ventilation duct system. Now I've had to inform everyone in my lab that while they are trying to work, they might be surprised by a little guy suddenly running onto their bench and freaking them out. Since everyone but me is the type of girl who will jump on a chair and shout "Eeek!" (well, except J-Sexy, who will probably just say, "Razzy, get over here and kill this dis-gos-ting mouse." Anyway, I'm contemplating putting up posters to apprehend the fugitive before he can spread his transgenes around the Washington Heights wild mice community:
Labels: epidemic geekery, grad school bullshit, lab mishaps, mice, science
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