Broken French Press

I was in the process of cleaning my Bodum ™ French press when I somehow smacked it on the kitchen sink, causing it to break. I’ll be forced to resort to tea for the rest of the day: a bad yet probably really healthy thing for me in particular. I’ll let you know how the crash goes. Meanwhile, I’ll be studying various forms of differential staining in microbiology (something that caffeine is absolutely imperative for).

Tokyo to Osaka Teaser

Watch this NOW. Sure to be a stellar film.

Tokyo to Osaka Teaser from John Murillo on Vimeo.

My entire self changes with the seasons…

It’s true. Just recently I’ve been taking on the habit of engaging in vast amounts of sleep (20 minute power naps, 6 hour midday sleep sessions), and it all started with the downpour of water that San Luis Obispo has seen in the last week or two. Last Friday for example, the combination of rain and an organic chemistry exam disaster persuaded to make a choice: either I would go home and begin drinking in an attempt to be conscious, yet not totally aware of my failure, or I could go home and sleep (the only alternative in my opinion). Since I’m not an alcoholic and tend to drink only on special occasions (or by myself from time to time), I chose to come home and sleep. I did so for a period of six hours.

This summer, with the weather being as perfect in San Luis as it always is, led me to a state of insomnia. There were periods of time when slept with only half of my body on a couch for a duration of three hours and yet I never felt the need to get a full six to eight hours of sleep. I wouldn’t call what I have “Seasonal Affective Disorder” or something like that… But I definitely become a different person depending on the time of year, flowing in and out of mania and mild cases of dysthymia.

Not much else is new on my front. Comrade Alex Davis has informed me that The Road will finally be playing at our own Palm theater this Friday finally. I guess I’ve got a man date in store for the weekend.

I leave you with this… An artifact of the past. The Swan Thief has been on a hiatus of sorts but is returning.

holy lameness

is this happening right now? i come home expecting a mellow fucking night and all is well until my roommate gets home and starts blasting some stupid ass world-music-jam-band cacophony. lame. thankfully i’m out of here next month.

parasite

Brain Parasite Drives Human Culture. 

goodbye paso robes (kind of)

I’m moving. Just found out I got the place. Stoked.

-chase

thoughts on the last few days.

I dunno whether a lot has happened the last few days, or maybe I’ve just been thinking about it more than usual. It’s probably the latter; now that I think about what I’m going to post here, not a lot has really happened… But it’s given me some ideas for some reason. 

I spent most of the weekend attempting to study, you know, plastoquinone and ATP Synthase (just to name a few). It was basically impossible to do it at my house, my room being filled with countless distractions: books (I can’t think about Nietzche or Vonnegut this far into the quarter), guitars (too many, and ones that sound good too), cats (preferably Tiggs but Miguel can get the job done once in a while), and lastly the “Art of Doing Nothing” as my comical, lanky fiend of an Uncle Steven loves to phrase it. So the short of it: I had to get the hell out of that trap if I wanted to get anything done at all that weekend. 

I made my way to my former place of work, Joebella Coffee, and got it on with an 8 ounce triple soy latte. Yeah, I’m a douche… I drink soy milk in lattes… But let me explain: I’ve been so goddamn lactose intolerant since I was a wee bastard that you really don’t want to know me if I get a good dose of this 12 carbon sugar. For some reason (for all you scientists out there) I don’t really make β-D-galactosidase (enzyme that cleaves lactose into more digestible components) very efficiently, so I have trouble with that. I’ll just go ahead and blame it on my parents for no apparent reason. I guess something like 90% of Thailand has lactose intolerance because of the extremely low-milk diet most of the infants receive. Anyway, that’s my reason for being a douche bag and getting soy milk. 

I had my way with cellular respiration for about four hours and by that point it was time for the place to close. Having nowhere else to go, and hating Paso Robles enough already, I made the trek down to San Luis that I’m far too used to these days. What I didn’t think about was that it was a Saturday night… San Luis is kind of distracting and ridiculous on a Saturday. For the sake of keeping some of my detailed thoughts away from the public eye, I’m going to be extremely vague in this next part. So, I went by one coffee shop (shall not be named for the sake of events in the other one) and it was ridiculously crowded so I made my way to the other. This one didn’t seem as crowded, however it was extremely distracting the entire time due to one attractive female working at the place and another drinking coffee at the place. Yeah, it’s not that big of a deal but I don’t want to be an asshole.

The rest of the night was filled with a reunion of old Joebella coworkers and partaking in a viewing of Kill Bill. And tasty muffins. I hit the sack pretty early that night because I had a dick-load of homework to do the next day because of all those distractions.

Sunday was a pretty decent day. It wasn’t a normal Sunday; for I was given the gift of taking the next day off due to a combination of Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthday. Thanks men; I hope you were both as cool as everyone tells me. Of course I didn’t want to do my homework at my house so you know, I did pretty much the same thing… Except I hit up the library thinking they would be open until 2 a.m. like they usually are on Sunday’s. 

Whilst in the depth of the electron transport chain, a small gnome-like man (he probably wasn’t that gnome-y, I’m just exaggerating) appeared and informed me they would be closing in five minutes. It was 4:55 and I had only been there for less than two hours. Fuck. Hit up the same place as the night before; hit up Brett, Matt, and Brandon; took part in the usual debauchery and inappropriate conversations to have in public; ran three blocks on Higuera chasing after Brandon; acted like I was throwing up profusely after Brandon and I stopped and severely scared some girl; hit up Tio’s; went home; slept. 

Monday… I don’t remember Monday… Except that I pretty much didn’t do any of the studying I should have… 

Tuesday. Well, for some reason I only slept four hours the night before so I felt like garbage all day. Drank too much coffee. More electron transport chain and preparation for lab at eight in the morning at the Robert Kennedy Library. Oh yeah, I was severely pissed off at Boo Boo Records for not having the new Appleseed Cast album and I’m still pissed because I went back today and still no dice. There were these girls wearing the same color and style of leather jacket as me and I felt like an idiot. They seemed annoying and lame. What else? Oh yeah, lately I’ve been parking in the same parking garage on Palm like every day when I go downtown (the newer garage) and I always end up leaving before the hour has passed so I never have to pay a CENT. I’m stoked with this but at the same time, for some reason I feel like I”m being a dick to the guy who’s working there. I know it’s ridiculous of me to think like this but…

-chase

this is cool

here’s a nice quote which was quoted in one of my favorite blogs: The Religion Virus

In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. … It happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
–Carl Sagan

enough said i think. check out the blog here.

ahhh thank you

new episode of flight of the conchords just put me in a really good mood. here’s one of my fav. songs ever from the first season.

hello, everyone who doesn’t read this…

recent happenings:
- snowboarding solo + collar bone injuries
- being once again addicted to lost
- becoming a master of stoichiometry
- persistently bothered by annoying jehovah’s witnesses
* they’ve come to my house several times as i’m about to hit up my chemistry lecture and i’ve got a few things to say about it. first of all, they always come in pairs of two’s; and always, ALWAYS, the older middle-aged man stays back and doesn’t say anything. I end up having to talk to either a female or some douche-y young kid who was sucked into the sickness and ridiculousness of christianity, and religion in general, too early to even make his own decisions. the first meeting was just awkward and i kept my comments to myself the entire time: this lady held up a few brochures of christian propaganda, and asked which one i found interesting.
but of course i was interested in the one that asked “WHO REALLY RULES THE WORLD?” with some cheezy artwork displaying a hand holding the earth. let me give you an example of the logic in this crock of shit: “would satan have offered jesus all the nations of the earth if he (i’m guessing the “he” is satan; your grammar sucks, assholes) didn’t own them?” so you’re saying that secular governments and rule are the work of satan? i’m confused i guess. maybe you’re saying that it would have been impossible for satan to offer anything that wasn’t his, and since he offered the nations to j. christ they MUST have belonged to satan!! i suppose i shouldn’t be surprised: we all know that religion sees logic only as something that prohibits your faith from manifesting (faith: “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension.” thus logic, or proof, has no place in religion), but fuck you. by the time the second encounter rolled around i was beginning to forget about the vapid christian brochure. this time, it was the douche-y young kid and the old man; of course the old man remained about 6 meters back while the the kid did the talking. he was uncomfortable the whole time and, i believe, tell that i was an atheist just by looking at my beard. he seemed to pretend like he had NO fucking idea some of his cronies had come by at the SAME TIME the week before. they’re like fucking telemarketers: he even tried to give me another brochure. to make a long story short, he asked which one i took, if i found it interesting, and if i had a chance to look up any of the scriptures. i said yes: that i found it’s supremely devoid sense of logic extremely interesting, that i would never waste my time doing anything christian propaganda told me to do, and that obviously i’m not a religious person so he was wasting his time. also, he had a dead fish for a handshake. that always repulses me. basically, he told me the other people would come around again and ask me about what i had read and what i thought about it. great, i guess i’m going to to checked up on by the propaganda police: religious totalitarian regime. worse than communism and fascism put together. i’d rather be stuck in george orwell’s dystopian society than endure religious totalitarianism. and this is what it would be like, assholes would be coming around every week to make sure you read your propaganda. well i hope they come by next week so i can basically just tell them to screw off again.