Sick as a Medieval Rat

So I've been basically bed-ridden most of the day... that was kind of the plan, what with Jana and I renting 5 movies from Blockbuster... but I've been laying prostrate like a dead body filled with stagnant, murky, putrid swamp muck, almost literally. In that time I had a dream that someone was giving me a tour of Streetsboro, Ohio, and the guide said he had no idea where the town came from-- just then, a family on bikes cycled past and I called out, "Hey! Local family! Where did Streetsboro come from?" and one guy got off his bike and said, "It was created because it's at a major junction of State Routes 43 and 14." Then he got back onto his bike and cycled off, after which I awoke in a state of nirvana.

I also thought about how much I beat myself up, also literally. I have an amalgamation of useless and laughable scars-- the one on my knee represents my blood sacrifice to the Walk Disney Company. Another more recent scar was obtained after burning myself while making a grilled cheese sandwich. I can't even remember how I got one scar on my eyebrow-- no, really-- I knocked myself out and can't recall a damn thing. But, I'm alive (for now) and that's what matters.

I think the subliminal messages in Back to the Future strongly affected me in my weakened state this afternoon, when it wasn't even five minutes into the movie and I wished I had big hair, aviator sunglasses, vintage Nikes, washed-out jeans, and a Walkman. Really, I did. I contemplated completely re-furbishing my wardrobe for a few minutes before Marty McFly went back in time and the god-awful style of the 50s snapped me out of it.

But really, I'm thinking sensibly now and I still want an 80s wardrobe. Think about that for my 24th birthday present this summer. Find me a pair of vintage Nikes and I'll be your pal forever.

I've been thinking a lot about my thesis project and the literature review I have to do over spring term. I've been refining the literature review idea and I'm still going to tackle the relationship between imagery and perception, but now I think I'll concentrate on the clinical evidence, mostly. I want to talk about neglect, cortical blindness, schizophrenia, and maybe some other populations that have famous double and or single dissociations (or associations) concerning imagery and perceptive abilities.

As for my thesis, something has been bothering me about it lately-- I feel like it might not be unique enough, might not be helpful to humanity in any way, really. So this is what I'd like to do-- I will keep part of the original idea: remember how I said the right and left hemispheres in the brain are asymmetric, and the right hemisphere is better at spatial processing than the left (to make a very general statement)? I would like to find right hemisphere dominance in an attention task when attention is overloaded in normal university students.

But instead of comparing university students to patients with visual neglect in this project (who cannot attend to one half of space), I would like to scrap that idea and compare normal participants instead to people with high-functioning autism. As you may or may not know, one characteristics of autism is abnormal attentional function-- whether it be inability to attend to things, hyperfocusing on certain things, etc. Not only does autism research get lots of funding, but perhaps I will now have something scholarly to talk about with my mom, since she is a teacher of autistic children. She assured me, after I told her my idea, that she is no scientific expert-- yes, I know that! But it would still be great to be able to talk to her about something I'm doing, for once. I say would because I don't know what my adviser will have to say about this idea. He claims he's open to studying attention in various clinical populations, but it seems he has been trying to shape my project to fit into his comfort zone... but I don't want a comfort zone project!

So now, I swear to you, that I will do my best to argue my case if he tries to evade my idea. That's one of my New Year's resolutions, in fact-- professors have always taken control of my projects after I have an idea, but I can't forget that this time, this time, the project is my thesis, it's mine, mine I tell you! And I think I deserve to be a little more possessive this time, since my name will be on the damn thing after all, and I'll have to basically write a novella over summer on whatever project I do do, so I'd better have a good say in it!

Okay, end of rant. It's New Year's time!

Approximately 20 minutes to go until the fireworks go off at the London Eye, and Jana and I are sitting in her room in our PJs giggling over a Youtube video of polar bears who are fond of destroying hidden cameras. Jana made Chex mix out of Shreddies (the English equivalent to wheat Chex-- they don't have any of the other kinds), and it turned out OK, except her oven doesn't work very well so half of the batch got burned and the other half got soggy... but all in all, it tasted... pretty... normal... I mean, once it was all mashed around in my mouth with pretzels, mixed nuts and bagel chips, it tasted the same as always. So... good job, Jana.

I bought us some real champagne to pop at midnight, so that should be enjoyable... after my dead swamp body day, that is.

Now, I leave you with this recent quote from Jana:

"There's this new show called Hole in the Wall, which is a gameshow where a big wall comes at you, and there are holes in it in the shape of weirdly contorted body positions that you have to match and jump through, or else you're pushed into a pile of goo... oh, and it Japanese-- of course it's Japanese."