Friday Funny: F**k you and your f**cking cheeseburger

I don't know if I've mentioned this before or not, but I am from Texas. Although I don't share many of the opinions and views expressed by the inhabitants of my home state, I do love the Texas fast food burger joint know as Whataburger (when I was little I thought it was water burger). Like any establishment open 24h, drunk idiots tend to congregate at Whataburger just about the time the bars close down, my drunk ass included. I like it in particular because they start serving their breakfast menu at 11:00 p.m. and nothing prevents a hangover like a bacon and egg taquito or two.

Anyway. While illustrating one of the things I loathe most (stupid, redneck, white dudes) it also features something I love and rarely get to witness; a total douche nozzle getting exactly what they deserve followed by public mocking on YouTube.

I know it's kind of long, but I suggest hanging in until the end. It's worth it. Enjoy

Friday Funny: Heaven and Squagels

I freaking love David Cross. His comedy is exactly my sense of humor.

(I recommend starting at the 35s mark.)

Have a happy weekend!

Friday Funny: The best light switch evah!

A family member of mine has a very dark bathroom and as a result, you don't see the above light switch plate until you've turned the light on. My husband was the first to use the restroom and discover Jesus and is junk. After leaving the restroom he informed my Aunt of his finding and she asked him if he had switched the light off after his "discovery." He replied that he had. My Aunt then informed him that most men refused to touch the switch once they realized what it represented. To this he simply replied, "Oh, well I guess I shouldn't tell you that I used my mouth."

On a completely different note: Is anyone attending the International Conference on Gram-positive Pathogens in Omaha, NB?

My big news in the form of a riddle...sort of.

If a game of ping pong represented funding, and I was the dude in blue, what would you guess happened to me?

If you guessed obtain my own funding, then you are correct. I actually received the good news back in June, but I didn't want to write about it until I actually received the fellowship money.

And yes, I did dance around just like that guy.

Auto-tune is annoying unless...

it's used in the following context.

Now I need a navigation system

There is no way my brain can come up with a coherent blog post, so I present you with the following video. As many of you know, I loves me some Star Wars and that love is persuading me to make a purchase that I do not need. Plus, this video is fracking funny.

Like I need another distraction

We pre-ordered it a few months ago.

It came in the mail today.

Yes, I'm talking about the Beatles Rock Band.

I haven't played it yet, but I can already tell you it will be THE MOST AWESOME GAME EVAH!

If I ever build a bomb shelter...

I'll need about 100 cans of this:

h/t GIZMODO

o.O.

My husband and I love, love, love Star Wars. We don't get dressed up in costume or attend conventions, but... we do engage in lengthy discussions about Star Wars, we did see the movies on opening day and watched the movies a trillion times, we have. We even used the music from the celebration scene (the last scene) from Star Wars Episode IV as the recessional music for our wedding (The music played when you walk back down the isle after the ceremony).

So, you can imagine my excitement when I learned about Star Wars: In Concert. It is a concert of sorts featuring music from all six Star Wars episodes. To spare you, dear readers, from a long blog post where I geek out over every detail of this concert, I will list the pertinent details in bullet form.

This is going to be really freaking cool because:

• a live symphony orchestra and choir performs the music.
• synchronized film footage is displayed on a high-definition LCD screen that stands three-stories high.
• the actor who portrayed C3PO, Anthony Daniels, will narrate live.
• Lucasfilm created film montages specifically for this production.
• a Star Wars exhibit containing costumes, props, artifacts, etc. will accompany the show.

For a more detailed article, click here.

Bacon, The devils meat?

Almost anyone who knows me, even a little, knows that I love bacon. When said people see anything related to bacon, they either alert me to it or buy it for me. In the recent past, I've received bacon band-aids, bacon luggage tags and bacon-flavored chocolate. Today, I was alerted to the following picture on the blog, Picture is Unrelated - WTF Pictures and Videos.

So, my question is, where the hell is my complimentary piece of bacon?

What does a scientist look like anyway?

Obviously, we all know the stereotype of a scientist's physical appearance and it's on the corner of giant nerd and crazy. While a few of my co-workers over the years certainly fall within that description, it hardly describes scientists at large. Most of my fellow lab mates, including myself, look like everyone else. However, from time to time I hear my co-workers complaining that no one suspects they are scientists and most of them feel this is because they are women. Personally, I think it's difficult to assume anyones job unless that job requires a uniform or uniform-like attire (i.e. scrubs). I don't know why anyone would look at me in the grocery store and assume I am a microbiologist or any other type of professional. 

So, just for fun, I thought I would let everyone guess what the dudes in the embedded video do for a living. I'll give the careers, and if you want, see if you can guess which person does what for a living. 

The careers are: (a) software developer, (b) patent lawyer, (c) owner of successful business that produces educational software and videos for children and (d) self-employed executive recruiter.

Sorry people, the video doesn't start immediately. Just give it about 20 sec. ;)

 

 

A little Friday funny

I just couldn't resist sharing this with more people. Just scroll down and read the reviews.

I hope y'all have a great weekend.

Can I raise a practical question at this point?

Are we gonna do Stonehenge tomorrow?

Mexico.

Just over a week ago I was lounging around the beach, eating and drinking in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. We did get off our butt's long enough to take an excursion to the Coba Ruins where I climbed on everything that wasn't roped off. We had a great time.
The best part was that trip was almost free. His band was flown down to Playa, given free rooms in a resort and paid to play two shows at two separate resorts. We are hoping they book them again next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I promised pictures, so here they are. They aren't the best, but they are the only ones I have that don't totally reveal my identity.
Fig. 1: Microbiologist XX on top of a Ball Court in the Coba Ruins. This court was teeny tiny compared to the one at located at Chichen Itza.

Fig. 2: Me and Lancelot in front of the Nohoc Mul pyramid at Coba.

Fig. 3: View from the top of the Nohoc Mul pyramid. Climbing down was worse the climbing up. It was steep, the steps were tiny and uneven and the wind was gusting.

Fig. 4: In the ocean.

Burritos, Bloggers and AA's BH

I have to say my first week as a married person ended on a high note, but it had nothing to do with being married...of course.

The first thing that was great about today was that I went to lunch with Ambivalent Academic's Better Half (AA's BH) and Ambivalent Academic herself (listed in order of appearance at lunch). It was really cool to meet both of them, see what they look like and find out their real names. I had been communicating with AA's BH over email a little bit (nothing torrid, just business) and decided that it was time to meet in person, and thankfully they agreed. So meet we did, over burritos. Both of them were great and I can't wait to meet up with them again. Lunch flew by so quickly that I feel like we barely got acquainted. I definitely see a happy hour in our near future. Yay!
You might be wondering, how could your day get any better than meeting two cool people and eating burritos? Well, a very productive meeting with your new boss where he loves your ideas and tells you that you can move forward is how it happened for me. (From this point on I bestow the pseudonym Magnum PI, on my post-doc advisor) For the last two months I have been researching (not at the bench) and reading, trying to find out everything possible about the organism I want to study and today I got the green light to request the strains and get started. I am also taking on two other projects that are already in progress in his lab. The two ongoing projects are basically going to provide me with all the experience I need to develop my own project with the other bacterium, which is what I am hoping to start my own lab with. In fact, one of the major reasons I took a position in this lab is because it would provide me with a great arsenal of tools and knowledge to study my new favorite bacterium.

Thanks to the meeting, I feel like I have good plan of attack that we both agree on. Now I can really start working like my normal self. These last two months of little bench work and lots of reading were starting to get to me. It just doesn't feel right if I am not running around the lab like a freak with multiple experiments going on at the same time. It was nice for the first couple of weeks, but I am so freaking ready to dive back in.

Post-Thanksgiving Ab Workout

A few months ago Lancelot and I were introduced to this by bort at Nondiscovery Blog. Since then we have burned hundreds, maybe even thousands of calories, laughing or asses off at it. It's one of those that just gets funnier every time you watch. (I recommend back-to-back viewing for intense ab workout).




This clip is so damn funny that the Family Guy did a spoof on it. It's good stuff.





I hope eveyone had a happy Thanksgiving.

The Notorious G.F.P. and Me

As many scientist and science-lovers know, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Osamu Shimomura (Marine Biological Laboratory), Martin Chalfie (Columbia University) and Roger Tsien (University of California, San Diego) for the discovery and utilization of green fluorescent protein, or GFP.

As a microbiologist, I am well-aware of the many scientific discoveries that have been aided by GFP and other fluorescent proteins. In my department, fluorescent proteins are commonly used for analyzing protein-protein interactions, protein localization and cell sorting.

In honor of GFP, I decided that I would share my use of this protein in my doctoral research. Unfortunately, it wasn't for anything super sexy, just determining a translational start site. In this case I fused a gfp gene, lacking a Shine-Dalgarno, downstream from two potential translational start sites. I introduced the fusions, in trans, into my organism of interest and assessed the fluorescence of the recombinant strains. Some of the pictures are located below.

I was alerted to the next picture on Wikipedia and I included it because it is way cool.

A San Diego beach scene drawn with an eight color palette of bacterial colonies expressing fluorescent proteins derived from GFP and the red-fluorescent coral protein dsRed. The colors include BFP, mTFP1, Emerald, Citrine, mOrange, mApple, mCherry and mGrape. Artwork by Nathan Shaner, photography by Paul Steinbach, created in the lab of Roger Tsien in 2006.