I had originally hoped to post at least once every couple of days, but the bitch goddess of work has once again made it clear to me who wears the pants in our relationship. All week long I have been feeling not so great, and each morning I tell myself "Okay, today I am going home early to get some rest". And each day I am at work later than the day before.

I have this really bizarre love/hate relationship with my work at the moment. From the start, let me say this: I think the work being done in my lab is some of the most interesting and novel radiological research being done in the world. I'm just never quite sure exactly how I fit into it. Some days I am thrilled with what I am doing and feel like I have definitely found my niche, and that there is a promising future for me here. Other days I get this harrowing sensation that I am carving out a technician's role for myself, and that my research is going nowhere. It's like I'm manic depressive, but only when it comes to work.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I know I have a problem changing gears. So perhaps what I am experiencing is just relating to my transition from working on a project defined by someone else to developing my own research themes.

The bottom line though is that it's tough, and I am really stressed out at the moment.

What exactly is indie credibility? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? The idea that there are some criteria that you have to live up to in order to be independent seems really backward to me. I was watching Forrest Gump last night as I was laying in bed before giving in completely to sleep. Like clockwork, Forrest finds out he has a son and the waterworks begin. Yes, I am a softie. And it dawned on me that my appreciation of sappy movies that make me cry would get me snickers and eye-rolls from my indie peers.

Let the litany of my supposed uncoolness begin. I like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I am a sports nut. I like doing touristy things in places I haven't been (and also in places I've lived for years). I have a Ph.D. in engineering and enjoy all the nerdy interests that would suggest. And if this gets me ostracized or otherwise made to feel inferior by people who share my so-called "cool" interests, then they can go stick their heads in a toilet.

This sense of not caring was what drew me to those sort of people in the first place. They do what they think is cool. But lately I've been wondering if that's not so much being indie as it is being narcissistic. Just do what you like. If you like wearing swanky clothes, going to the happening shows, and hanging out in bars, more power to you. But don't expect me to put up with you when you make jokes about the khakis I'm wearing, how I missed the last Death Cab show, and how I find other things to do instead of having drinks in a dank smoky room.

So I'm on the train this morning on my way to work, and I pick up a copy of the Metro (a free "lite newspaper" in Boston) someone has left on a seat. I suppose because I have some deep-seated desire to get angered, I generally turn to the editorials first. And this is what I am greeted with.

"And our guest columnist today, BRAINIAC, operating on forty minutes sleep". Wasn't this guy one of the aliens with telekinetic powers on Star Trek? Geez! I thought he was going to light me on fire! As if his picture wasn't bad enough, the column was some speculation on what "the face of evil" really looks like. I dunno, but after seeing that picture, I've got some ideas.

Luckily the readers' page was able to distract me, as the letters were even more ridiculous than usual.

I think it's a shame that if you go outside the mainstream media, U2 are thought of more as a joke than anything else these days. Granted, they are suffering from the world's worst case of overexposure (Time asks "Can Bono save the world?" Please!). But that should hardly take away from their near-unparalleled body of brilliant work. Even something as recent as "Beautiful Day" is a great piece of pop music. I pulled out their seminal album War to listen to in the shower this morning, and it struck me as sad that a band this talented has been relegated to being the butt of jokes for today's indie snobs. I suspect that a lot of people slagging them off grew up listening to The Unforgettable Fire, like I did.

And they're doing the atomic bomb They don't know where the dance comes from And they're doing the atomic bomb They want you to sing along

In high school I used to wonder why life seemed to be set up as a series of partings. It occurred to me that you go through high school, becoming attached to your circle of friends, only to find yourself at graduation realizing that the circle is about to be broken. Obviously there is no way you can control it ... friends will go their own ways to lead their own lives. I chose to go to Berkeley partly because it meant not going far from home, not being faced with being completely separated from the world I knew.

College presents a similar cycle of acquaintance followed by ultimate separation. For me, the hesitation of releasing my old friends and moving on with new ones made my freshman year fairly awkward. After finding my niche, my life progressed and all was well. I spent three years with the same two roommates and look back on it fondly. Again the cycle came to its close, and still being fearful of significant change, I chose to remain in the Bay Area for grad school.

The story becomes eerily familiar at this point: new friends competing with my reluctance to release my old ones, slowing my personal growth to a near standstill. I worked in the same lab for five years, and now I think of them as my second family. But my feelings of being an outsider (however self-imposed) didn't subside until my third year there.

Now I'm in Boston, at last accepting that perhaps the world beyond the Bay may have something to teach me. But again, I'm clinging to the friends I've left elsewhere, and not immersing myself in what is in front of me. At this rate, by my next job I'll have lost touch with all the old friends and will be locked away in my memories.

No matter where I go, I can't leave home.

Do you ever find yourself caught up in a particular lyric of a song? I mean, so lost in the melodies, harmonies, and underlying music associated with the line that you think it is the most meaningful thing you've ever heard? And then, when you actually stop to consider the meanings of the actual words, you find the sentence (or sentence fragment) is actually pointless?

This happens to me all the time. My explanation tends to center on the idea that while there are lots of people who can write great music, there are a disproportionately small number of equally great lyricists. Morrissey is one. Stephin Merritt is another. Jarvis Cocker was one. But then there are countless numbers of bands who are undoubtedly musically gifted, but sing the same old hackneyed love song (or worse, sex song). I've loved New Order since junior high, but most of Barney's are just plain nonsensical.

I could be wrong. I've also said frequently that I don't listen to song lyrics, that I prefer to focus on the music. So it could be that when I find a passage in a song that I find especially moving, chances are the words associated with it don't make much sense outside of the context of the song. In other words, I can't be bothered to listen to ALL the words of the song, so the one lyric just seems lame to me.

Speaking of trite sex songs, I caught five minutes of an A&E program last night where Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe was discussing why heavy metal took over the L.A. scene from punk rock in the early 80's. It's always good for a laugh to hear heavy metal-heads (I mean good old, glam rock, hair band heavy metal-heads) try to claim that the genre will make a comeback. I think the scene started in dives, moved to arenas, then stadiums, then down to clubs, and is now terminally stuck in dives. Don't get me wrong, "Kickstart My Heart" still gets me riled up.

What started off as an exercise in DHTML has blossomed into what I hope will be a gathering place for my ideas and experiences. Whoever is interested in delving into my brain is welcome to peruse. Thanks for reading.

Some launch tidbits:

• The background images are photos I've taken at assorted locations. If you'd like to know more about any of them, drop me an email.
• All coding for this site (HTML, JavaScript, CGI) is original and was done by me.
• "ted v1.0" is in no way, shape, or form a reference to Garbage.