A Gout Out for the Mix Tape Universe

Two 15 Minute Breaks

The mad man rush of a human who schedules his life in 15 minute intervals can be nauseating. (Did you know that nauseous is something that makes you feel nauseated?) The lead in my eyes is casting an even droopier look today as the four hours of last night rest has only propelled me to 10:23 am. I’m sinking fast on my first 15 minute break here in my cube. I really need to move to a country with a siesta. I was scheduled to grind my nose against the text book as a pre-emptive strike at getting ahead of next semester’s course load…but since the only thing that is organized in my life is black ink comprising nicely organized blocks of time on a paper schedule holder, I don’t have my book in my bag. So here I sit wondering, what the hell do I want from this life? It would be so much easier to just say, “Hey I’ve got a job. I don’t have too much debt, (as of yet) I’m still young, verile and fairly healthy…why don’t I just coast?” It would be so much easier to forget school, forget writing, forget being in a band. I could get a membership at some weightlifting meat market and start injecting creatine directly into my penis. It would be easy to be a typical jock and save up money to live in typical suburban home and be the typical alpha male who chases women, gets restraining orders, drives a Volvo or worse a Jetta and hits on all of my girlfriend’s friends. In less then a minute I realize that that is not the life for me. I’m better off a cube dweller clinging onto his dreams in some barren Wal-Mart land wishing for something more than mediocre. Every time I tell people in my office that I’m majoring in journalism they stare back at me from their soulless eyes like I’m the sick one. They ask, “What are you going to do with that?” I guess it’s difficult to explain to the clones that life is more than the dull passing of time. Even if I don’t become a journalist I hope to live like one. The silliest mundane journalism class assignments forced me the streets of Denver to experience things like The Blossom of Lights at the Botanic Gardens and open discussions about science at the Wynkoop Brewery. Below are the features I wrote:

Denver Botanic Gardens

Cotton-puff clouds conceal the sparkle of stars from Denver this evening.
One doesn’t need a thermometer to tell you the temperature on this Dec. 4 night for the human body has its own scientific explanation for the conditions; it’s cold.
Tonight marks the second evening of the16th annual Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanic Gardens, which is open every evening 6-9 p.m. from Dec. 3, 2005- Jan. 22, 2006.
The Blossoms of Light impacts Denver by bringing in people from the surrounding cities, according to the woman working at the ticket booth.
“They make a night out of it,” she said. “They come for the Wild Lights (the Denver Zoo exhibit) and the Blossoms.”
While the stars remain tucked behind the clouds of an overcast Denver sky, tonight’s event evokes the thought that somehow those stars are being held captive here as more than one million colorful lights dress the expanse of the 17 acre garden.
All the senses are coerced into interactive play during this outdoor event as one journies through the visual stimulation of nature and light.
“People drive around to see the Christmas lights on houses,” Haaland Wodell a garden patron said. “Here, it’s a winter wonderland stung up for us.”
Strolling through the garden, the eyes of patrons intakes just about every color imaginable, from a golden rain tree decked in light blue pastel and sorbet orange lights to an Iowa crab apple tree dressed with soft yellow and cheery apple red lights.
For $1 a person can buy the garden’s 3-D HoloSpex glasses which turn the prisms of the light into shimmering snowflakes.
“It’s like Alice in Wonderland,” a little boy wearing the 3-D glasses said to his father as they strolled through Shady Lane, a crab apple tree-lined corridor of red lights. “It looks like a snowflake forest.”
The garden’s events usually include music. Tonight the Cantabile Singers caroled throughout the outdoor expanse while Oakhurst, a blue grass band, rocked indoors in The Mitchell Hall.
This evening also included impromptu renditions of White Christmas as enthusiastic patrons spontaneously sang together while walking past the ornamental grasses.
Relief from the winter cold was found at the lobby café which exuding with the seasonal smell of hot apple cider.
“With a hot cider in hand,” Wodell said. “There’s no place I’d rather be freezing my butt off.”
For information and tickets you can call The Denver Botanic Gardens at (720) 865-3500 or visit the website at www.botanicgardens.org.
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GE Foods

From tobacco plants becoming medicinal to goats milking silk Café Scientifique met Nov.15 in Denver to discuss the possibilities that genetic engineering offers.
The discussion, held at the Wynkoop Brewing Company, also included how this technology is exploding to life faster than guidelines and regulations can be created to govern its use.
Genetic engineering makes it possible for scientists to introduce genes from one organism to another. Recently tobacco plants have been combined with a gene enabling it to produce the breast cancer treatment drug Herceptin.
John Cohen Café Scientifique’s organizer explained that the cost for Herceptin is $10,000-$20,000 to administer to one patient for a year.
Taking the production of Herceptin from the confines of the laboratory into the tobacco plant fields can save breast cancer patients thousands of dollars.
“So, if you don’t genetically engineer Herceptin there’s thousands of women who will die of breast cancer because they can’t afford the treatment,” Cohen said. “That’s trying to provide a valuable drug that can only be made this way.”
Goats have also been genetically engineered so their milk will produce the protein found in spider’s silk.
Suzanne Wuerthele, a toxicologist and head of the Sierra Club’s Rocky Mountain chapter in genetic engineering explained that there is a demand for large quantities of the spider’s silk to make bullet proof vests.
“Imagine milking the spiders,” Wuerthele said. “You just can’t do it.”Farmer’s are embracing this science because it’s making their labor less intensive as new crops are being developed to be more self sustaining.
“In New Zealand there is some research in getting genes from the African clawed toad which has a toxin in its skin, into potatoes,” Wuerthele said. “So it can be expressed in the potato and it can make its own pesticide.”
“So you can see this is this is only limited by your imagination. This is a very powerful technology.”
The Food and Drug Administration labels genetically engineered foods as substantially equivalent foods, therefore considering them safe for the public. This means that genetically engineered foods don’t have to be labeled and they don’t have to go through special long term toxicity testing.
This lack of regulation is what sparks the concerns in anti-biotechnology activists because little is known about these foods before they are released into the market and contaminations from genetically engineered farms to other farms is spreading.
Wuerthele explained that even though the U.S.D.A. passed something called the Organic Food Production Act in 1990 which asserts that if a food is going to be labeled organic it’s can’t be genetically engineered there is still no regulations formed to protect farms from cross contamination.
“About 7 percent of the organic farms in this country have contamination from other farms of genetically engineered variety,” Wuerthele said.
There is a concern for the unknown with this science still in its infant stage of development the process to create genetically engineered organisms is expensive, inefficient and done by trial-and-error procedures.
Cohen reiterated “the law of unintended consequences” which was a topic of discussion during the previous Café Scientifique.
Green Peace was sailing in the Philippines to protest the possible damage to corral reefs done by global climate change, Cohen said. As they approached the harbor their boat destroyed a patch of corral reef that they were trying to protect.
“They took out 100 square meter area of irreplaceable corral reef. So, that’s the law of unintentional consequences,” said Cohen.
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I wouldn’t trade those experiences for an accounting degree. I could either cube my life away or I could live my life away from bland burnt coffee and the stalemating grasp of the florescent lights. I can live frozen in cubicle dreams…but I’d rather melt the cube and swim away. God I feel as gay as I sound tonight.