Despite All My Rage I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

I'm ill. I've got the flu.
I've been sort of sick since Monday.
I hadn't slept well.
Yesterday, I came home earlier than usual.
I slept too many hours.

I'm about to get ready to travel to the city.
None of these issues is relevant. 

Last Thursday, a couple of colleagues invited me to give a talk in a Sleep Research Course.

Today, I'm going to talk about how the microbiome impacts on sleep and the development of some neurodegenerative diseasses and neuropsiquiatric disorders.

I had less than one week to prepare this talk.

Originally, I wasn't invited to this course.

The sad events of the last week, changed many things.

I'm sort of nervous.
The talk I prepared it's sort of incomplete... or I think so. 

I'm still ill.

I dreamed about my PhD advisor and his Associate Researcher.

I was in his lab, performing a stereotaxic surgery with one friend of High school.

The surgery was a disaster. I didn't have all the instrumental I needed.
The rat was suffering and my friend constantly told me that he had saved the rat from death, several times. I felt so guilty.

I hold the animal in my hands and I tried to give it comfort. It was really suffering. 

There were another guys in the lab, attending to a seminar.

As I was looking desperately for a heavy drug to give peace to the rat, the Associate Researcher walked close to us. She gave us a speech that, somehow, I had heard before, a few times. She was selling the idea that going to a Neuroscience Meeting was the best idea everyone could ever have. Deep inside, it seemed that this meeting was going to be the most boring thing in the world. She told us her speech so enthusiastically and smiling.

Also she said, in a pretty low voice, as if she didn't want us to hear it, that my advisor was going to be the star on this Neuroscience Meeting. So, in the end, it seemed that the point was that the lucky volunteers would be his slaves. 

She wore a dress with stamped flowers on a black background.
She seemed more honest than she seems in reality.
She didn't use heeled shoes –as she always does in reality– and she seemed shorter than she seems in reality. 

I was so desperately looking for ketamine.
I wanted to give a peaceful death to the rat, but I was so silly and proud of myself that I didn't want to ask her for ketamine.

Then my advisor walked beside me.
He seemed really angst. He had his stereotypical face of "Get out of my way, you useless dumb!" His gesture evoked on me some unpleasant feelings... but, somehow, they were not as intense as they used to be almost ten years ago. At the end of my postgraduate studies I really hated my life and I even developed some level of alcoholism, addiction to smoking and a couple of psychosomatic illnesses. 

These feelings left a pretty clear example on my dream. 
A rat was in agony and my advisor just didn't even know... or didn't care. 

Also, I had the impression that he was so tiny and that I could just beat him up and throw him a few miles away from me, with a pretty small effort.

My dream was an astonishing metaphor. 

Despite All My Rage, I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

I Want To Do Something That Matters

Yesterday, I woke up at 5: 30 am.

I took a shower, I got dressed, I had breakfast, I came to the University to teach a class at 8: 00 am. It was cold and I just had a thin sweater. 

I spoke about resilience, about a couple of soccer players who grew up in pretty different environments and became so important to their countries –one of them won an U-17 World Cup and played with Ronaldinho and Messi in Barcelona; the other one was a victim of the War of the Balkans, won the most important award a soccer player can receive in Europe and the last year led his national team to the final match of the World Cup– and that, currently, are on very distinct situations.

One of my pupils asked if adversity is a necessary condition for resilience. 
A couple of students spoke and clarified the point. 
I didn't know they were so informed about this topic.
It was a nice surprise. 

I spoke about a couple of books of war and about aggression and violence in modern society.
I wanted to be clear: Thomas Hobbes wasn't wrong at all. 

We (human beings) are violent. Despite we don't own letal weapons, we're able to create letal weapons. In comparison to another animals, we don't have a biological restriction to kill another human and so we kill another humans just for pleasure or just to steal something that the other human owns and that we desire so badly.

I spoke about plagiarism and social networks and the dilemma nature versus nurture. 

It was a class of History of Psychology. 
We're reviewing British empiricists and nativists such as Descartes and Leibniz.

Before the class, I read a few pages of a few books and papers I have on stand by, I qualified some examinations of Statistics and I wrote some notes for another class.

At 11: 00 am I left the office and moved to an appointment. 
My boss and I had an academic meeting at Mexico City. 

We took the University transportation –it was a black Jeep with polarized glasses, very new and comfortable– at 11: 40 am and we moved to the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía. 

We have an academic collaboration with a couple of researchers in there. 
They own a San Diego Instruments' apparatus that we need so bad. 

We had this meeting at 13: 15 pm. 
It lasted an hour, or so. 
They even spoke about politics and the bad things scientists of the institute are dealing with due to this new government. 

I particularly didn't like the meeting at all.
I felt these researchers were sort of arrogant and that they saw me as a PhD student with just one paper and no experience at all. 
It's really though.
You just can't speak about all the things you have done... when you first meet someone. 
You need to be patient. 
Sooner or later, things will fall apart. 

If they knew half of the things I've done –exclusively regarding my academic career–, maybe, they would change their attitude. Maybe they would be the same.  
Though I'm not pretty sure if I want to be recognized by them, it's annoying. 
It sucks. It's a pretty common issue on academy. 
You have to deal with someone else's ego all the time.
It's obvious why people see us as a team of cocky and hurtful guys.  

Then we moved to the other point of the city, to UAM-Xochimilco. 

At 15: 30 pm, my boss had another appointment there. 

After his meeting, he introduced me to the responsible of the bioterium.
She reminded me so bad to someone I have recently met. 
They basically spoke of another issue I have to deal with. 
We have another collaboration with researchers of UAM-Xochimilco.
We have a prenatal immune activation model with rodents. 

They also spoke about the bad things scientists of UAM –including myself– are dealing with due to this new government. 
It seems that each time I'm finally about to get an academic tenure track position, things fall apart. (Should I devote myself to another activity?) 

As my boss went to his appointment, I walked around the University.
It's awesome. It's really an enormous University. 
I understood why it is so desired by academic mobs. 
On the last strike, UAM–Xochimilco was a big issue.
Everyone seemed to be interested on employing it as a weapon of power. 
I even found a building that has appeared in many of my dreams. 
It was the first time I ever saw it. 

This meeting lasted half an hour and my boss had told me that it would last an hour and a half. 
As soon as this meeting ended, he called me on the phone, but my phone had no battery, so I arrived at 16: 45 pm. 

We moved to Lerma again.

Our driver took the Second Floor of Periférico. 
It was my first time, too. 
The city looked fantastic. 
It even looked like another city of another country.

We arrived to Lerma at 18: 00 pm.
I arrived home at 19: 00 pm.
I'm still so tired. 
I still don't get used to this rhythm. 
I want to do something that matters.
I need to write a lot more.  

I Want To Do Something That Matters

If You're Lonely, You Can Talk To Me

I would like to write, but I feel so tired.
I'm on my new house.
It's weird 'cause we had always lived in apartments. 

My wife and cats are sleeping. 
They're so happy. 

A week ago we moved from Mexico City.
Lerma is a nice place, but cold. 

I'm still sick, though not as I sick as I was a week ago. 
The moving was so exhausting. 
Excluding the furnishing, we moved 120 boxes!

I had a lot of stuff. 
Tons of books, tons of CDs, tons of DVDs, tons of BRs and tons of clothes, five guitars, five guitar pedals, microphones, personal computers, a couple of amplifiers for the guitars... 

My new studio isn't bad at all, but currently it looks like a warehouse.  

We lived in a small apartment the last five years. 
It was a nice apartment, but our neighbors were so disrespectful. 
Usually they put loud music -always the same song- and they kept the building so dirty. 
They made loud parties almost once per month.
They usually threw trash to the streets and behaved as if having kids and cars were the most ambitious goals humankind could ever have. 
Some of them even murdered dogs and cats. 

Nevertheless, I feel nostalgic. 

Last Sunday of the previous year, we went to the old apartment. 
It was so weird to look at it so empty and cold. 
We lived many things there. 

Before we lived in this small apartment, we lived in another one. 
It was located in a better neighborhood than the later one. 
It was so well located and people was so polite. 
We had a nice park, coffee shops and restaurants so close. 

Sadly, then I was so focused on my PhD that I didn't enjoy it at all.

Before I got this job in Lerma, I was a postdoc at UAM Iztapalapa for four years.

It was a nice period of my life. 
I was free to do whatever I wanted to.
My boss was an awesome man.  

He helped me out to find a new job. 
The last six months I wanted to speak with him. 
For a year I had been some sort of consultant and I wanted to have a better academic position. I wasn't enjoying at all to be some sort of consultant. 

Money was running out. 
For a year, almost everything I had was from SNI. 

I met my most recent boss when I was about to have my admission interview to the PhD. 
It must be the autumn of 2008. I needed that he signed me a document.
He was in the middle of a Science Fair. 
Though he didn't know me, he was so polite. 

A year ago or so, he came to the Dissemination of Science's Office in which I had been working for the last year -the team in which I was working, had been working in an enormous building who had to be abandoned after the September 19th Mexico City' earthquake- and he stayed with me for a couple of hours.

For a reason I ignore, he knew that I play guitar. 
(Maybe someone told him so, or he looked at one of my youtube videos.)

He told me that, at some point -maybe when he was a postdoc-, he wanted to play guitar, too. He told me that he was a terrible guitarist. He spoke me about a Beatles' song.

Dunno remember exactly what he said, but the point was that according to him, this song has been considered to have one of the best bass lines in the history of rock n' roll. 

For the ten years I have been meeting him, this has been the most personal moment we ever had.

I was speechless. It was so weird. What a jerk I was. 

The first night I slept in my new house, I had a dream about my recent boss and one of his friends who also was my boss when I was a postgraduate student. 

Once I recover I will write about it. 

Hey Bulldog

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

Almost fifteen years ago, I started to teach at undergraduate level. 

One of the reviewers of my thesis was a young researcher.  

He studied timing on rodents. 
I had just written a thesis about numerical competence on pigeons. 

At the end of the revision process, I told him that I was interested on teaching and he got me an interview on a private University. 

It was one of the most expensive in the country, or they said so. 

When I went to the interview, the appearance of the school surprised me. 
It seemed really modern. It seemed a first world school.

Everything looked so new and clean.  

http://www.marca.com/

I began three months later.
I had an awful schedule and a boring topic. 
Nevertheless, the experience was the best I could ever have. 

A few of my pupils were really concerned in learning.  

Since it was the first time I was completely responsible for a full course, I must have been a lousy teacher. 

Two years later, I started to teach at UNAM. 
I worked there for four years. 

On the last years of my postgraduate studies, I was so stressed that I did not enjoy teaching and then I quit. 

The relationship with my PhD advisor was so unpleasant at that time.

I had even found a way to teach my classes when it was lunchtime at the lab, to avoid any kind of conflict between us.

Sadly, it didn't work. 

He was not personally mad with me, but in general. 

The lab was full of undergraduate students. Most of them were apathetic and lazy. 

He treated me like if I were one of them. 

One day I got sick and I told him that I would not go to work. 

Unfortunately, that day none of the lazy undergrads was in the lab at that time. 

He got furious and wrote an impulsive e-mail. 

He wrote the worst things he thought about each one in the lab. 

In my case, he wrote that I had no ideas and that I just followed his instructions. 

He sent that e-mail to all of us. 

I still conserve it. 

Obviously, it hit me. 
Specially 'cause he made it public. 

I trusted him and he trusted me –I was the one who took charge of his classes when he couldn't do it–, but it was completely disappointing. 

Maybe I was apathetic and lazy, too. 

However, everybody is able to check my track record at his lab and draw their own conclusions.  

The last paper I published with him was my idea, but he refused to accept it. 

It looks like he just wanted to show how powerful he was.
Also, the most important issue above all: he never get wrong. 
Specially when it's about judging people. 

He recently published a review including part of the data of my published papers.

Not only he did not include me as a co-author –he could ask me to write the corresponding section of the paper or to redo the plots, or whatever–, but he did not even put me on the acknowledgements of the review. 

On each one of my papers he put people who actually did not collaborate at all.  

2011 SfN Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA

I was so stupid. 

I should have leave his lab sooner than I did. 

I quit as a professor. 
I should never have given up.

I would have almost fifteen years teaching at UNAM. 

I became SNI soon after I received my PhD and I had a post-doc position for three years at UAM-Iztapalapa on which I acquired several abilities related to training of human resources and to Grant's writing.

I've been teaching on a regular basis, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

I also have been invited to speak about some research topics on diverse academic forums. 

I was advisor of a graduate student and also co-advisor of a postgraduate student. 

I am about to send the response to the reviewers' comments to my last research paper. 

Nevertheless, what I do is barely attractive to society. 

September 19th earthquake' damaged an important research building in the institution I have been working in the last four years.  

Obviously, it worsened my chances to find a researcher position there.  

A month ago or so, I sent my CV and my independent research plans to compete for a researcher position in a provincial University. 

A colleague told me about this opportunity.
A week later, he also told me that I had just passed the first candidate filter.

This researcher position was offered by an institution interested in conducting studies on addiction to drugs of abuse. 

They wanted to have evidence to apply it on public health policies. 

They expected from the young researcher all the abilities I had acquired as a post-doc. 
This opportunity sounded like real fun. 

Besides, my postgraduate studies were conducted in a lab focused on cannabinoids and I have an expertise on behavioral tests employed to evaluate diverse stages of addiction on murine models.

My profile could be of interest for the institution.  

Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, while I was watching a FIFA World Cup game between Brazil and Belgium, I received an e-mail from this institution. 

I was so nervous.

Then I started to read: 

"We're sorry to inform you..."

It seems the epithet of my academic life. 

I asked them what had been exactly wrong with me. 

They told me that they didn't have the necessary resources to support my research purpose and that they were looking for a social researcher.

My profile was too oriented to basic research. 

In other words, they wanted a profound thinker rather than an expert on behavior and basic research. 

It was kind of weird, 'cause on the announcement of the vacant they asked for an expert on evaluating the effects of drugs on health. 

What the hell does that mean? 
Were they just too polite to me?
Was my PhD advisor right about me?
Am I an average untalented researcher?

I hate my situation. 

They say it cannot rain all the time.

However, this has been the second bad news I have received in the last month. 

At this rate, the best news I will have is that I can have a child. 

Perhaps I am overreacting.

I guess I should have learned how to fix cellphones and cars. 

I am a disaster. 

I fail over and over again. 

https://libero.pe/rusia-2018/

http://grantland.com/features/beck-phases-out/

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

You Want It All But You Can't Have It

A colleague invited me to teach a class to graduate students, a couple of months ago.

Students were so tired.  
They told me that they had had classes all day long.

He wanted me to speak to them about the most studied receptors and hormones involved in food intake regulation. 

The course was about hormonal pharmacology. 

Another colleague invited me to teach a class to the same graduate students, a week ago. 

She wanted me to speak to them about the basic aspects of food intake regulation with emphasis on the hypothalamus. 

She's so smart and I got nervous. 

Nonetheless, after a few minutes I managed myself. 

We were about to leave the classroom, when a student appeared out of nowhere.

She asked me if I wouldn't give them a musical recommendation.

The first time I spoke to them had coincided with Kurt Cobain's mournful anniversary and at the end of the class it occurred to me to recommend that they listen to his music.

The student looked kind of impatient. 
It's possible that the second class would have bored her. 
Maybe it just sucked. 

She told me about Mike Patton and a band called Mr. Bungle.

I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. 

She said that he was the singer of Faith No More and that he had a band which sounded like Primus.

She said that this band would change my life. 

A just woke up from a confusing dream.

We were sitting in a coffee shop. 

She wore Jim Morrison-style leather pants along with an intense red blouse.
The blouse had a gigantic neckline.

She crossed one leg over the other and lit a cigarette. 

For some reason, I noticed her Doctor Martens boots.
They made think of a woman with which whom I had a murky romance.

(This woman wore the most exclusive and expensive models of the British company.)  

    
As she smoked, I couldn't stop seeing her cleavage. 
It was hypnotic and made me feel dizzy. 
Her breast looked so mysterious and unreachable.  
I felt guilty, morbid, weak and idiot at the same time. 

Suddenly, she said

"Don't you really know Mike Patton?"

pulling me out of my own thoughts. 
  
I felt so stupid that I just smiled at her.

Then, as I asked her for a cigarette, I looked at her face.
As she touched my hand to give me a cigarette, I felt dizzy again. 

I brought the cigarette to my lips and she lit it to me. 

Her eyes looked kind of evil and her skin was so pale. 
Her hair was dyed purple and blue. 
She seemed a vampire. 

As she lit me the cigarette, I could see a tattoo on her forearm.
It was a tattoo resembling Lilith's Star. 

What does this mean?
Should I listen Mr. Bungle?

You Want It All But You Can't Have It

El Pelo De Esa Chica No Deja Pasar La Luz

"Narcolepsy includes excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep attacks, cataplexy, hallucinations and poor sleep quality. 

It affects .03 % of worldwide population. 

Cataplexy is an episode of sudden loss of muscle tone, provoked by a strong emotion. 
Narcolepsy with cataplexy has been associated with a selective loss of orexin/hypocretin neurons.

These neurons are located in the lateral hypothalamus and were discovered in the late 90's, by two research groups, both of which were interested in peptides involved in food intake regulation. 

Due to studies carried out between the 40's and 60's, which showed aphagia in animals associated to lesions of the lateral hypothalamus, authors had been suggested that orexins/hypocretins would have an important role in appetite.

Later, following the discovery of these peptides, it became almost a standard approach to employ transgenic mice lacking orexin/hypocretin neurons.

Surprinsingly, instead of being hypophagic, these transgenic mice exhibited a sudden loss of muscle tone.

Orexin/hypocretin knock out mice are the most employed rodent model of narcolepsy with cataplexy. A couple of papers have recently demonstrated that the medial prefrontal cortex is responsible for the profound muscle weakness provoked by stimuli associated to strong emotions, such as palatable foods and wheel activity.

In summary, the proposal is that neurons from this area project to emotional brain regions and that the lack of these peptides from the lateral hypothalamus facilitates the inhibition of motoneurons in the spinal chord."  

In a few hours I'm going to speak about this topic. 

Despite it is of my favorite ones, I couldn't sleep well.

The entire night, I was sort of anxious and tired. 

I guess it was related to my academic career. 
I am on a precarious situation. 
I am able to do so many things for free.
But if I continue to do it, there will come a day in which people think that I am doing well. 

My life has been so depressing, lately.
There are no real job opportunities for me. 

I feel dizzy. 
I woke up from a confussing dream. 

Mona was walking down the street. 

I knew her a couple of years ago.

One of my colleagues asked me if I wanted to learn how to extract DNA from brain tissue and how to measure DNA methylation. 

I agreed. Then, one of his pupils took me to Mona's lab. 

No one introduced me to her.

Obviously, when she suddenly saw me there in her lab, she was so surprised.

But she did not say a word. 

Later, when I saw her on the alleys of the University, she just ignored me. 

Obviously, except if one of my colleagues was present. 

Maybe I wasn't too polite when I appeared out of nowhere in her lab.
I should have introduced myself to her, but I didn't. 
It was also wrong that neither my colleague nor his student, had introduced me to Mona. 

For days I thought I had to apologyze, but time went by and I just forgot about it.

After the September 19th earthquake' left uninhabitable the building on which both Mona's and my colleague's labs' were located, we found again on a temporal office.

The first day it happened, as I walked thru the office, I said "Hi", just for courtesy. 
She was signing up some papers that were stacked on the desk.
She raised her head and saw me, but she just ignored me. 
Her attitude pissed me off.
I was angst a few hours.

What kind of roughness had that been?
What kind of rough woman was she? 

We have been sharing this office for almost three months.

We even sit one behind the other. 

I have even taught one of her postgraduate students how to evaluate the Novel Recognition Object test in rodents. 

She's so selfish, so hypocritical.

She's just kind to people when she needs something from people. 

Wouldn't you believe me if I tell you she's Jewish? 

I had never had the opportunity to personally treat any Jew and I had never considered them as victims or as the greedy people they show us in the movies. 

She has even been rough with my wife, too.

I particularly hate when this happens. 

She's so obvious.

Most of her students are also so selfish and so hypocritical like she. 

Losers.  

Suckers. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/

However, in my dream Mona was walking down the street.

Apparently, she was looking for someone else. 
I didn't want to see her and I avoided her, but suddenly we stood. 

She opened her mouth and then smiled to me.
She said "Hello", exhibiting her teeth. 
They're as yellowish as those of rodents. 
Maybe she's fifteen years older than me, or so.
Even when she looks younger, I have always thought that her teeth reveal her real age. 

She was looking for me. 
She was about to hold my hand.
Her chestnut-dyed hair warmed like a strange fire in the gloom and simultaneously left some of her real gray hair exposed. 

It was cold and rainy. 

I felt inside of a World War II movie scene.
It was so intense. 
I sensed we were about to kiss... and I woke up. 

I don't really understand why I dreamed about her.

She's attractive, and I guess other colleagues have a crush on her. 
I don't like her. 
I'm sure she will ignore me again, when we stop sharing the office. 

She's a prominent researcher. 

We have a cold relationship. 

On the last week I've been dreaming about her.
I have heard that she likes opera.

When I imagine what kind of teenager she was, I do not know why but I think she liked pop music. 

I think she liked Mecano and that she used to dance in nightclubs.

Las Curvas De Esa Chica