Everyone takes themselves so seriously. First they are shy and afraid, then they are insecure, then they are "cool", then they are distant, then they are busy, and then suddenly they are old. If there was a life in there, please point it out, because I think I missed it. You might notice that each of these things builds on the others. Nothing is created in a vaccume, everything builds on something else. I think that most people never get beyond the "hide behind mommy" stage, they just cover it.
There is a kid in my school who is really ticking me off. He is the kind of person that actually says things like "I'm cooler than you". I don't know where he gets these ideas from. He isn't "mad gangsta", he isn't "wicked awsome", and (thankfully) he isn't "totally rad". After watching him walk around with his shoulders swinging, his hand down by his crotch, and his his supercilious smirk sitting on his face like a dead toad, I sometimes wonder. First I wonder what having one's hand on one's crotch has to do with being cool, then I wonder what being cool has to do with having a life.

I am currently listening to Yngwie Malmsteen's "Fugue". It would seem to me that this would be a rather common name. Someone, somewhere, has called something a "fugue" before. Oh well, it's called fugue. Perhaps that is because it is so very fugue-ish, it has a fuguey repetitive kind of layering to it and such.
It's not that there is a problem with something being called fugue; it's just that it should have a name instead of a category. For instance, he called the piece before it..... never mind, I don't know what that means and it's in Latin. Bad sign. Ok, the piece before that is called "Icarus Dream Fanfare". I don't know what the music has to do with Icarus, but that will shortly be remedied.
(5 minutes, 26 seconds and one sentence later) Ok, it is now clear to me that the Icarus Dream Fanfare follows the basic line of the myth of Icarus. I shall not admit that I had forgotten said plot, nor that I had never listened to the piece while thinking about the title, I'll just give super strong hints.
There are a few things that everyone must know to sound smart. Notice I did not say to be smart, I said to sound smart. First of all, you must know words like utopian and postprandial. Second, you have to know what words like that mean (except for postprandial, no one in their right mind would bother learning that one). Third, you must know more Greek myths than Aristotle, and have practical applications in the modern world. Once you have mastered these two useless things, you will be well on your way to being an overweight, distant, disrespected, balding, smelly and ignorant company executive officer.

Anyone that wants to listen to "Icarus's Dream Suite" and has more time than a lame duck president can ask me (gadadhoon) on AIM. I'm sure as heck not waiting for it to upload onto this site, and besides I don't know how.
Have fun with your postprandial thoughts, assuming this is a postprandial time for you.

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS TRANSLATIONS OF STRONG LANGUAGE!

Damn it! Life is a fucking bunch of shit. Everything is run by brainless assholes who don't give a shit about anything but their little lives.
Wow, wasn't that fun? All that pressure, now it's gone. Ok, now let's see what I said. To find out, I turn to my friend; Merriam Webster. Here is the translation into proper English:
May all life be sent to hell. (did I want to say that?) It is feces in the act of copulation (ew!) Everything is managed by anuses without minds... (um, most anuses don't have minds)... who don't give a defecation about anything but their little lives (they must be constipated, don't be too hard on them.)
See, wasn't that fun? Next time you get mad at someone you can tell them what you mean in proper English. Just stay away from the translation of "damn", people will think you're a cult member, or worse, a Muslim. I don't understand why they would think you were a Muslim, considering the fact that Muslims do not want all life to be sent to hell, but to each anus it's own mind.

We here at thoughtsfromchemistry have noticed a string of low quality posts of late. We apologize for this inconvenience and have taken steps to correct the problem. We thank the…. ahem, loyal and attentive readers for their input on this issue.
As usual, the problem lies with the editors. They have been falling asleep during meetings, taking too much sick time, and in general being about as useful as a load of bricks. This is not to say that a load of bricks cannot be useful; some of our greatest and most historically important buildings were made from bricks, it’s just that most bricks don’t edit very well.
Our apologies to any bricks that might be offended by this statement.
It may, however, be appropriate to point out that that most editors don’t brick very well, though we’ve never had them try it.
We have done drug tests on the editors, and the results were rather disappointing. Not only did they test negative for interesting things like cocaine, ice and marijuana, they tested positive for very high levels of various prescription drugs. Upon questioning the editors we found out that this was due to their habit of raiding the medicine cabinet, mixing drugs at random, and doing semi-scientific experiments on themselves. In addition to that they had been playing computer games at their desks, raiding the break room fridge, and leaving plastic cups in the paper disposal bin. While this is rather unusual behavior for most people it appears to be perfectly appropriate for editors.
It would be greatly appreciated if the readers did not inform the editors of the findings of this report. We currently have a Pekinese and a canary in the job, and we’re not sure how they would handle it. Actually, we never told the editors anything. It might not even be their fault, we don’t know. It’s always nice to have some professional yet distant person to blame for any situation, and editors fit the bill nicely. Usually one would say it was the accountants, or better yet the CEO, but since thoughtsfromchemistry has neither accountants nor CEO’s we can’t do that. In all likelihood the blame should go to the writers, but they’re attending an international convention right now and can’t be reached.

Again, thank you for your patience.

We were singing some songs after worship and my brother asked for what sounded like "Too Much Koalas". It turned out that he had been asking for "David and Goliath", but I think he had a good idea. In honor of my brother's request, here is Too Much Koalas, to the tune of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". In the unlikely event that you have come to this page but don't know me, the Cram is what we call the principal at my school.

The Cram came down to worship, she made the students reel
She was really fat, but we all know that, She wanted to make a deal

Well she waited till the songs were sung and then came to the front
She folded her hands across her chest And said "let me tell you what"

"We have a little problem, and I think you need to know"
If you don't help, I'll make you yelp, You gits are gonna grow
Now you think you played it pretty good, you know what you can do
But I'll tell you what, if you're a slut Then I sure won't listen to you

Well the students they just sat there, cause they didn't know what to say
Cause they were dressed, and if you've guessed,
They sure weren't dressed to play
But as the students sat there, they heard a funny noise
They turned around, and then they found
The world is full of joys

Koalas commin run boys run! Cram's up front but she is done!
Big furry ball with flailing arms!
Koalas have so many charms
The students saw the Cram was gone, and cheered a mighty cheer
Then they moved aside the tables, and they passed around the beer
And since that day, the students say, Koalas run the place
And of the Cram? Oh for a rhyme, she never left a trace.

A)
I, Milton Christiansen, being of sound mind and rock hard sexy body, do hereby declare all legal jargon to be a load of crap. I also voice my sincere belief that anyone who actually NEEDS fine print is one of the following:

1. A CON ARTIST

2. A SLIMEBALL

3. A LAWYER

4. WICKED BORING

5. All of the above; A POLITICIAN

I would like to propose that all legal documents be done electronically, thereby saving an area of forest the size of Washington hourly. I freely admit that this would cause said state to suffer a severe economic downturn, but declare that I am not responsible for any damages would result from this plan.

B)
1.
Persons who do not fall under categories 1-5 in section A include BETH'S DAD, who, according to my first impressions, is NORMAL, if technically a lawyer.
2.
I hereby declare the above document to be NULL and VOID, and point out to anyone that would use it against me that he is a MORON. In the event of my passing I will to him what my dog last ate.

We can be an awfully insensitive nation. No, I am not referring to the Republic of Mongolia, though they can be awfully insensitive at times. Instead I refer to the land of the free and the home of the brave; ancient Greece. Just kidding, but seriously, think about this; a woman has been in a vegetative state for 15 years, and now they want to pull the plug. I shall not get into the ethics of that, frankly it's too much for me. What boggles my mind is how far it has gone. Instead of coming to a civilized conclusion, the family has focused the full power of the federal government on the issue. While the politicians in said government are busy using this woman to their full advantage, she starves to death slowly. It's strange to me that we give criminals a quick shot, but let innocent people shrivel up like prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
I can prevent this from happening to me at least. If I am involved in a near fatal accident and collapse into a persistent vegetative state, I DON'T WANT TO BE POLITICAL CANDY!

I just don't have it any more
The joy that filled my mind
A dark force pushing me to the floor
Just uncaring, not unkind
A stand here alone,
A fool in the court
Chilled by the stone
On which they make sport
And laughing for kings
And dancing for princes
I ride on the wings
An act that convinces
And if I find I'm filled with anger
I'll have to beat it to the ground
And If I find that I may murder
I heed the oath to which I'm bound
So if you find me on the floor,
Shattered in the dust
Place me back upon the table
In the darkness there to rust

As I type the entry for today I am being very slow and cautious, since I have my pet wasp on my index finger. Every time I reach for the r, t, f, g, v or b the wasp bounces up and down. I am very impressed by how docile it is being. I certainly couldn't trust most humans with the same thing.
Today's thought from chemistry is, in fact, from chemistry. We finally did some actual lab work, something that wasn't just theoretical. Granted, all we did was boil water, but hey, it's a start.
It was easy to see that the class was a bit rusty in the area of lab equipment. Some over zealous individual had the Bunsen burner on full when they lit it. Now, I don't know about most Bunsen burners, but our's can be pretty impressive. This one made flames leap up about a foot and a half, directly into an overhead cupboard. Needless to say the teacher wasn't pleased. As my partner and I placed our beaker of water over the Bunsen burner we heard screams coming from the other side of the room (I've put the wasp away, if that thought is still bugging you). Someone hadn't attached the burner properly, and flames were leaping directly from the wall. The teacher rushed over, turned it off, and said; "Now you see why this should only be done with a trained professional". I wondered if he was referring to boiling water, or making flames leap from the wall. Perhaps he just wanted to say it. There aren't many times a high school teacher can call himself a "trained professional". I considered, with some guilt, the many times I had done things like dousing my hand in alcohol and lighting it, or spraying air freshener over a candle, or making my own firecrackers from dissected rocket engines. Perhaps I should have done those things with the supervision of a trained professional. Then again, any reasonably conscious semi-professional person probably would have prevented me from lighting my hand on fire.

The following is about as dry, boring, and about as meaningless as it is possible for words to be. It is, how ever, accurate and informative.

I have come to the conclusion that the axe effect actually does exist. Not only that, but it is one of the main deciding factors of attraction. Unfortunately, it's a negative effect. I've noticed that all the guys that wear axe are insecure, disliked and controlling. At least I assume they're controlling, I don't actually know from experience. I am told they are that way by some of my female friends.
When something is marketed, say a brand of gum, or (heaven help us) enzyte, there is a target group. No matter what the people at the top are a bunch of fat middle aged white guys with receding hairlines, but by the time it gets to marketing it might be portrayed as something for gay black republicans. The problem arises when the marketing strategy is so direct that it excludes anyone outside that group. In the case of the gay black republicans, this is not a problem.
For most other groups the product begins to become part of their identity. If this is a negative identity, such as that associated with creepy guys who have sweaty palms, then the product gets a negative identity. That said, if the product is marketed to people like, say, the ideal American family, the effect can be quite striking. Since everyone wants to be part of an ideal American family, but no one actually is, everyone buys it.

Actually, never mind, that wasn't really very accurate. In fact, since you slept through most of it, it wasn't very informative either. Perhaps your time would have been better spent watching "Barney" re-runs. Please repeat our anthem after me;

I love you........

In a small forgotten corner of the galaxy a particle moved. This is not very unusual. If there is any definition of infinity it is the number of small particles in the galaxy. But this was no ordinary small particle. It was a particle that was having an identity crisis. It had examined its existence as a particle and had become very depressed. Being tossed about the universe by great forces, ever being pulled into the opposing camps of matter and energy; it had lost its sense of purpose. Suddenly it stopped its headlong flight to nowhere, ignoring all the laws of physics.

Changing direction, it headed for a small forgotten planet. It flew at an almost incomprehensible speed, powered by sheer will. It sped right through the atoms it encountered in the atmosphere, paying no heed to their empty space. It sped onward until it encountered an atom of nitrogen, or rather a neutron in said atom. Smacking into the neutron with force far exceeding its infinitesimal mass, it forced the nitrogen atom out of its bonds.

And it was over, the particle was forced to change into energy, giving up the ghost of conscious knowledge it had held for so little a time. The nitrogen bonded with a carbon, which nabbed a stray potassium, and it was over.

Or maybe it wasn’t over, the nitrogen had been part of cytosine, which had been part of a DNA strand, which had been in a brain cell. This small alteration caused a protein to form incorrectly.

It was one of quite a few proteins that formed with little errors on that day, and it appeared to be quite unremarkable. But this protein had a life of it’s own, it started to change all the proteins around it into it’s own twisted shape, till finally the cell fell in a twisted ruin. It spilled the malicious proteins out into the body, where they began to wreak havoc on all the surrounding brain cells. Fortunately, this was the brain of a cow.

Kevin Donovan bit into his juicy burger as he plotted the murder of his ex-girlfriend. It would take a while, but he could wait. His mind plotted her death with a cold calculating reason.

A few months later his pieces were all in place, but Kevin was dead from BSE.

Ok, that’s the end.

As I came into the parking lot of the health food store where I work, I saw there was a small bus parked there. I sighed and shook my head. It looked like piranha Sunday, the day when large groups of elderly people with heavy accents mob the store. I snuck around the back and into the warehouse, not wanting to draw the attention of the mob. I don't mean to be hard on them, they're very nice people, it's just that I don't get paid for helping them.
I went into the back room where I work with bulk goods. It's a nice place, a quiet haven in a busy store. I bagged a box of whole wheat rotini, then labeled the bags and put them back in the box. Unfortunately, I was left with three bags. This is usually not a problem; I just take the extra bags out into the store and put them on the shelf. I glanced out a small window into the store, and saw no one. Picking up the extra bags, I headed into the main store. As soon as I opened the door I knew I was doomed, the mob was there in full force. I tried to walk the 20 feet to the pasta shelves without drawing attention, and failed. Actually, I didn't just fail, I failed miserably. An old man stopped me and asked me about a small box. "Fat dis men?" he asked. I stared at the box, hoping it would give me some clue. "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you" I said. He stared at me with a resolute determination. There is a common human idea that crosses cultural and ethnic boundaries; if they don't understand, say it louder. "FWAT DES MEEN?" he asked, emphasizing each word by tapping his finger on the box. I thought, and then finally it dawned on me. "Oh!" I said, and looked at the box. It seemed rather self explanatory. It was a box of herbal cough drops. I tried to figure out what I could explain that hadn't already been said. I took that chance that he might not be able to read English and told him they were herbal cough drops. He threw his hands up in the air. Finally a man who could speak his language came over and solved the problem, which apparently was a misunderstanding of the word "herbal".
I continued on my great journey, bravely attempting to walk the remaining 16 feet to the shelves. "Excuse me." said an elderly woman. "Do you have parsley flakes?" I had heard these words of doom before, it seemed that every time a bus load of people came we ran out of parsley flakes. "It looks like we have run out" I said, glancing at the shelves. "I can go bag some for you if you like" I said. Usually the script goes this way:
Employee; I'm sorry, we're out, but I can bag some for you if you like.
Customer: No, that's ok, I'll come back later (or) No, that's ok, I'll just buy it from _______.
But these are not normal customers. These are angry customers. These are people who have just spent 5 hours on a bus (no joke). They want good deals, they want happy service, and they want it NOW. I sometimes wonder why someone who takes a 5 hour bus ride to get to a health food store should want quick service, but to each his own. Following the alternate script, she said "You bet you will bag me some! You will bag some right now!" I smiled. Whenever someone who thinks they are paying for my time gets mad I think it's funny, especially if they aren't paying for my time. I returned to my bagging room, rotini in hand, and bagged the parsley. I took an armload of the small herb bags out into the store, and was instantly mobbed. Old ladies appeared from everywhere, and began pawing through my armload of bags. On of them picked up a bag, looked at the price, and put it back down. She selected two smaller bags instead, and appeared quite pleased. "They're by the pound" I said. "It’s cheaper if you get a big one instead of getting two smaller ones, because then you aren't paying for the weight of the bags." She looked at me as if I was stupid. "I rode 5 hours to come here!" she said. "You expect me to pay that high price?" I shook my head. She had missed the point entirely, and paid exactly 17 cents for bags, but the customer is always right.
My armload of bags gone, I set out for the pasta shelves once more. I walked a record ten feet before I was stopped again. "I'm looking for vege-meat." said a middle aged man. I thought of the warehouse behind the door. It was stacked floor to ceiling with vege-meat of all possible descriptions; dozens of brands, hundreds of products. "Can you describe it?" I asked. "Well, it came in a box, not a can." Again I thought of the warehouse behind me. I was forced to agree with him. Indeed, it did come in a box. There might be cans inside the box, but it came in a box. I was able to exercise my psychic powers because all the vege-meat came in boxes. "Can you describe the box a little?" I asked, trying to sound like the kind of person that can identify every product just by glancing at the barcode. "Well," he began again. "It's a box kind of box, very much like a box and not like a can." There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Oh, never mind, I'll come back later" he said.
I turned. As if in a dream, I saw the pasta shelf appear before my eyes. Stretching my arm out to it, I placed the bags of rotini in their correct slot. I tear rolled down my cheek, and triumphant music played.
Then I turned, smashed the speaker from which the triumphant music was blaring, and began the return journey.

I was sitting in Church today in between Sabbath School and Church, and there was music playing. It was that rather annoying piano-and-bird-recordings type of music; the kind that usually comes in cd sets that also include titles like "whale songs" or "crashing waves". I listened briefly to the piano, but found it rather unremarkable. I then started listening to the bird calls. Most of them were mating calls or territorial songs with a few group calls thrown in for good measure. In other words, it went something like this: Sex! sex sex sex Sex! sex sex sex. Hey you! get off of that branch! You bastard! that's my seed! Frank? Katherine? where has David gone? etc. ect.
The speaker came to the front and made a comment on the nice music. I stared at my thumbs and stifled a laugh. People always think of birds as innocent little darlings, but that's kind of like assuming that all short people are kind hearted and ignorant. Bad idea. Never, ever, ever, look down at a short person and speak to them as if they are kind hearted and ignorant. The same applies to birds. When feeding pigeons or chickadees, never let your guard down. Chickadee language at the feeder can usually be translated as follows: "Hey! look! seeds! Come on everyone! Ok, now stay over there. I said stay there! These are my seeds! You jerk! (this is where they start fighting, the nasty little birds)

Basic Chickadee translation:
Chickadee-dee-dee; a call that family groups use to keep together when traveling. Also a warning call, the more "dee"s, the more danger.
Two quick chirps; startled, angry, sometimes used when the bird feels its personal space has been violated
Three quick chirps; an alarm call that causes the family to scatter
One gentle chirp; feeding call, used to call the group to a feeder or food source
Musical song (there is only one "musical song"); mating call