|
sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
|
bitter research
I am here at the SACNAS conference Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) which is being held in Phoenix, Arizona this year. Yes, it's hot. No, I haven't attended a single talk in three days. Yes, they paid my way--a full ride, and no, I'm not especially happy to be here. I am here because I am part of a program at the university where I go to school which also pays my way (tuition, stipend) and which is requiring me to be here at the worst time in the semester (first round of tests, missing two days of class, etc.) I hate to be one of those ungrateful minorities, you know. I hate being any type of stereotype. But I hate being a grateful minority even more. So sorry for who I am, kids. And speaking of who I am: As part of the conference, several universites sent out recruiting representatives with free pens and other shit to impress the yokels as they do, and the reps are some of the most ungraciously prejudiced individuals that I have come accross in a while. Yes, they are here to recruit minorities because several large government institutions give the universities that they work for money for fostering brown children, but you have to be the "right kind" of minority. You have to show up with your white face on and your shoes shined and your face deshined with Lancome powder or else they look right past you at a person who has the "Yes, massa" suit and tie on. I'm not going to wear a suit because a fucking recruiter from Yale thinks that intelligence and talent look like a fucking investment banker. I mean, thank you for the cheap pen, but you can cram that pen and your other cheap toys up your ass past the stick that currently resides there. If you're not tasting the tinny taste of cheap ballpoint ink, it's not far enough, my dear. I have also spent the last several days trying to avoid the woman who runs the program which pays my tuition. She is an evil boil, white as pus, who had a little party at her summer home for the poor little brown children where we each had to show up with a dish and sit on the porch while she and her fellow professors sat inside. Subtle. I mean, serve us on fucking "special" plates and cups, why don't you?. My tiny but bitter heart was glad to see her ignored outright by the many minority scientists who are here. She suddenly has not a single colleague among them who is willing to cavort with a white woman just for the sake of gaining an ally. Her power means nothing here and for that the Lord has made me truly thankful. Anyway, I have spent a lot of time with Sophistica here (though she had to present her research this afternoon and then had to go and nap awhile--that's where she is now) as well as some of the other little brown babies in the program: Shiva, Welcher, and Soldier Boy. There is another woman here who is part of another program because she couldn't get into my program, but she has (thankfully unsuccessfully) tried to weasle her way into our group. She, too, is evil and so reptilianly so that we have nicknamed her Liz--short for Lizard. She has done a lot of shitty things to various members of our group, including lying outright to them in order to gain their help in her unsuccessful bid to become a member of the group. How crapulux is that? The Dimer is also here ( a couple who are always together, so that they are the literally referred to to their face as "The Dimer"). They stick together, you know. I like them both, but I don't really know either one. It's also so very strange to interact with them as monomers. Their conformations are completely changed and it confuses little old me. Speaking of conformations, I saw only a couple of posters which dealt with protein analysis, and only one was really interesting and was about research being done by a grad student at UC. The other guy had done a summer project which he presented as a research extravaganza. The rube. Almost dinnertime, kids. Yep, they're feeding us as well, catered food served by sullen staff members who are very sad to be leading the kind of lives which make them subject to having to wait on college students. Sorry, folks. Should have studied science, then you could be like me: able to pretend that your hard work can gain you access to the largely white world of research science.
More lies:
|
|||||