Anything Is A Job If You Get Paid For It

You may be familiar with the dry ice by-product of my bitch-ass job but today on Electionday Eve I am going to wax poetic about how truly ridiculously lucky I was fucking awesome it is.
This comes as a spin off from my original idea for todays entry; I was going to make a Top Five of dream jobs and try and come up with an actual available Major that would be the first step.
Initial results were depressing: There is no major currently taught in any of my prospective schools that would imbue me with super powers, I'm too damn dumb/unmotivated to be an astronaut, and too interesting to be a patent lawyer.
Then I realized the last dream job I listed was in fact (surprise surprise) my current occupation.
I work as the more active of two lab techs at Maui Community College.
To start off, how bad ass does that shit sound? It immediately conjures up images of lab coats and goggles and the kick is you're goddamn right I wear goggles and a lab coat sometimes.
It's my job to do whatever my boss, his boss, or their boss tells me/him/them to do. I show up at like 10:30, take my headphones off, toss my Jamba Juice in the biohazard trash, and immediately start fiddling with shit.
It is my job to fiddle with shit. We need to set up the labs for Bio, Microbio, and two Chem classes. Every time you've come into a science class and the lab stations were set up? The Benedicts solution has been put into eight individual dropper bottles? There was a restriction enzyme sitting on ice waiting to be pipetted? Some lab tech had to set that shit up.
I don't think I can stress this enough. My pain-in-the-ass job is to build, tune, and perform experiments without having to know why or how it works.
I can wax poetical about this all god damned day. In fact, today, I was instructed to test Wednesday's lab: Some sort of basic intro to calorimetry involving burning peanuts and heating water.
So, I had to dig out a ring stand. And when I say dig, I mean actual scrabbling around in our madhouse of a stockroom. That place is amazing. I should take pictures.
Then, since regular, you know, scientific crucibles don't transfer heat fast enough, I had to dig around in our recycling box for a Full Throttle energy drink can, and construct a little dish and bucket out of it. It was a brilliant piece of expedient labware-slash-avant garde art, built out of flanged aluminum can bits, test tube clamps, and wire-gauze.
Then I had to find, test, and clean all the bunsen burners because, oh yeah, my next job was to test which nut burned the best. (Out of our current selection, hazelnut!)

After we finished, the waves were apparently good, so my boss went surfing, and I went to class.

Sometimes there's about half an hour of work to be done, and I play with dry ice for two hours.
(I now have something really really cool to show you with dry ice. Bring it up in conversation some time)
Then again, there are days when microbio asks for 250 assorted glucose/sucrose/MRI/peptone-iron semi solid deeps, and we have to innoculate a few fungi plates. It's still fucking awesome.
And, apparently, I get paid for it.


(P.S. I got a haircut. Here is a recent photo of me, bein' a baller)

If you can't tell by the genre of youtube links I sling you, the reader,on a daily basis, I've been revisiting the roots of hip hop lately. Expect this to spiral wildly out of control until I rock a flat-top and blast Planet Rock 24/7 out of a gigantic analogue ghetto blaster.













(P.P.S. In case you didn't catch all the goods yesterday here they are in order
1. Raw instrumental beat by MF Doom
2. Kanye innovating? Or simply flipping a track YOU DECIDE (P.P.P.S. He is innovating)
3. Madvillain is a collaboration between MF Doom and Madlib. Shit be ob-scurrr.
4. Pharrell Williams, 1/2 of the Neptunes, produces the beat AND writes the lyrics for this ungrateful bitch, who later goes on to desecrate this Hit on a fucking Platter handed to her.
5. N.E.R.D is the personal project of the Neptunes + Shay Haley. I like this song.
6. Yeah Okay I Couldn't Help It.
7. Or This Time, Either.
8. Common is from Chicago. He's vegan, has a kid daughter, wears tight collared shirts, and has won two Grammys. What the fuck have you done lately? (He was the Gunsmith in Wanted too)
9. Oh yeah, I also linked to a little gif of Miguel from El Dorado. What the fuck, man.
10. JUST AS FUNNY THE THIRD TIME GOD I LAUGH EVEN NOW.
11. LILLY ALLEN!
12. The man holding the camera is Questlove, producer and drummer extraordinaire. The man playing bass is *fucking sweet*. The song is for Pharrell's unreleased project, The Yessirs.
13. CURVEBALL, SUCKAS. Tired of hip hop? Guess which one of these girls is a lesbian.