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

Purple Haze Within My Brain

All I want to have is a clear mind. 

On the last year, I have been looking for a new challenge.
I have written several intention letters.
I have read a lot of research projects. 
I have prepared a bunch of CVs. 

Nothing worked out.

I was so close to get a tenure track position in a private university. 
All I would have had to do was to move to Monterrey and to focus on teaching at undergraduate level. Salary seemed to be enormous. 

At the last moment, the authorities decided to hire a cognitive behavioral therapist.
She apparently had no experience in teaching and had recently obtained her Bachelor's degree –I guess she doesn't belong to National Researcher's System–, but she had studied on that private university. 

A big bias. 

A colleague told me about a chance to work in Aguascalientes.
They looked for a researcher with expertise on drug addiction, or so he told me. 
I wrote a project of basic research with animal models to perform experiments in order to evaluate several potential drugs of abuse. 

At the last moment, they decided to hire a guy with an expertise on drug policies. 
They hired a guy who speaks about drugs, but from a social –rather than a neurobiological– perspective. 

I just made a resume of my last year, but I really looked for an opportunity so bad. 

I was so hopeless that I started to consider the possibility to get a job as a ghost writer.

On the last month, things changed.
My boss told me of an opportunity. 
I went to this University to give a talk about my career. 
The researchers who evaluated me, seemed to be looking for another profile. 
They say they have an excess of researchers like me. 
(Eventually I would find out that they thought I would ran away from the job due to the state of their working conditions.)

Nonetheless, one of them seemed to be interested on hiring me for a different purpose. 

I have been in contact with him.

He's interested on the relationship between gut microbiota and cognition in animal models of Alzheimer and schizophrenia.

Tomorrow I will go to this University, once again. 

I don't want to get ahead of the facts, but it seems to be a real opportunity for me.  

I will have an interview at 9: 00 am. 

The only thing I don't like a lot it's the distance. 
On times like these, I think seriously about learning to drive and about getting a car. 

The Deafening Sound Of A Heartbeat

I had a bad night. 
I felt pretty cozy and suffocated when I woke up from a fuzzy dream. 

A few years ago, one of my colleagues introduced me to this researcher I dreamed of.

It was my second year as postdoc, when he did it.
Maybe we went to her lab to ask her for some kind of technical help. 

Even though senior researchers mainly look at postdocs as a workforce, or consider us some sort of shy and low self esteem human beings, she was very polite with me.

Of way contrary to most older researchers who ignore us when we're not with another senior researcher, she was educated with me even if I was alone, anywhere, at anytime. 
  

Since then, she has always been polite with me. 

The first time I saw her, I found her pretty feminine. 
She wore a multicolor blouse and jeans. 
She spoke to us with a pretty soft voice. Her black curly hair spread on the air. 
It made me think that she cared about her appearance, but in a pretty delicate way.   

In my dream, we were in a middle of a class.

Suddenly, she said she needed to talk to me in private. 
It surprised me. She looked sort of angst. 

Then, we walked out of the classroom and sit at some sort of wooden chairs painted in pink.
We were pretty closer. So close that I was able to look at the freckles on her face. 
Her eyes were so brown and her eyelashes were so long. 
I felt intimidated by her beauty.  

Suddenly, to broke with the enchantment, I looked at her legs.
They were so white.
One leg was without hair removal and the other was depilated. 
The depilated leg was naked. 

I couldn't avoid it. I had a sexual thought, but I chased it away.
Dunno why, but I felt so guilty. 

She spoke to me.
She said something I cannot remember. 
Maybe it was something about a comment I posted on her Facebook that she didn't like. 

Then she stood up and walked away. 

As she walked, I could see that the white skirt she wore was opened at the back, so I could see her underwear. 

Again, I felt guilty and looked away. 
Then I woke up, feeling febrile.

The Deafening Sound Of A Heartbeat

Now My Mind Must Go On Holiday

Six years ago, I was about to have my first published paper as a first author. 

Even though I was so enthusiastic for what it meant for me, if I think about it, I really did not enjoy my life at all. 

I was so stressed and focused on my research project, working for a minimum of ten hours, almost on a daily basis, that I got drunk on weekends to deal with stress. 

I smoked tobacco and ate unhealthy food. 
The only physical activity I practiced was to play soccer on Saturdays.  

I demanded too much from my heart.

At the lab, I attended to seminars each Monday. 
They were divided in two categories. 
On the morning, we had a Journal Club. 
The second was meant to be a progress seminar and it started at lunch time and ended almost at 9:00 p.m.

At that time, they were several lazy and irresponsible students in the lab.
Frequently, they did not appear on Mondays and they did not perform experiments. They pissed off my advisor and the seminars became a nightmare.

No matter what, these seminars were never suspended -except for a couple weeks on summer and Christmas holidays. 

Outside the lab, I attended to seminars each Wednesday. 

They were organized on a Clinical of Addictive Disorders and they were basically for physicians, psychologists and therapists.
These seminars were taught in the same way students teach a class, when they have to expose: thousands of slides with statements that everybody could read.   

They were mainly a waste of time. 

I was also an asignature professor at the School of Psychology, four to six hours per week. 

As a PhD student, I attended to a class which I really thought it was a waste of time.
Also, I performed experiments, sleep recordings, stereotaxic surgeries, statistical analyses and things like that.

Six years ago, Mark Lanegan came to Mexico City.
He and his band were touring Blues Funeral and they gave a show on April 9th, 2012. 

Though I knew a little bit Mark Lanegan's solo career, I would have loved to go to his show.

I had heard several albums of Screaming Trees.
I believe that I just had bought Blues Funeral. 
I missed his show. 

I was so focused on my research project, that I heard about Mark Lanegan's show almost a year later, when Soundgarden came to Mexico City for the first time. 

I felt so stupid. 

Now, I have several papers as first author and things have changed a lot.

A few days earlier, it was accepted my first paper as corresponding author.

Through the revision process, referees made appropriate comments that improved the quality of the manuscript.

Referees did not criticize the English, not even suggested to change a single word.

Simultaneously, it is so satisfying and frustrating.

To be a corresponding author means a lot on my field.
To be Spanish-native and to be able to write by yourself your first corresponding author paper in English should mean a lot, too.

Even though it is supposed that it is a basic skill among Spanish-native researchers (science is English-written), it is not as common as it should be.

Sadly, no one of my current colleagues knows that I have written all the papers that I have published so far as a first author.

(Blame it on my advisor.)

I don't even know if my current colleagues know that I had four papers as first author when I started to work with them.

It's pretty normal, but it's so frustrating.

I must start from scratch, as if in my previous papers, I could barely write in English.
This is so damn irritating.

(Well, in a way, this blog supports my point).

Now, I enjoy my life more than I did six years ago.

Anna Hanks from Austin, Texas, USA (16 March 2011, 14:35)

I have a lot of free time.

I employ it for writing personal stuff.
I even finished a novel with which I participated on Premio Mauricio Achar 2018.

I employ it for reading several pieces of information, literature and music.
I write about these things on my blogs.

I employ my free time for playing electric guitar.
I have three guitars -a Squier Stratocaster, a Gibson SG and another cheaper one-, and I also bought a couple of amplifiers, microphones and several guitar pedals.

I play songs I like -I never learn a song just because- and I even have composed some silly songs. I don't know if someday I will have the opportunity to record them.

I employ my free time for listening music.
That's how I discovered several artists I hadn't heard, like Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett, Cloud Nothings...

(I have a small fortune on books, CDs, cassettes and vinyls.
I could have bought a car, instead of having these small treasures).

Nowadays, I barely drink alcohol or eat unhealthy food.

I quit smoking three years ago, I had surgery two years ago...

And Mark Lanegan came back to give a show.

Unlike six years ago, I know a lot more his solo career.

Among several of his songs and collaborations, I have heard The Winding Sheet, Bubblegum, Blues Funeral and Gargoyle...

After the show, I even shook hands with him and I got he signed me a copy of Uncle Anesthesia.

This time he was accompanied by Shelley Brien on keyboards and Jeff Fielder on guitar. They were touring Gargoyle, his tenth LP and fourth in five years.

(It was an awesome show.
Eventually, when I feel less darker and negative, I will post about it.)

No matter what, sometimes I still feel invisible, like I did six years ago.

Now My Mind Must Go on Holiday

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