Psychoblog

the whole issue of animal cruelty raises its ugly head in the media every now and again. what constitutes cruelty exactly? where should we draw the line? in my line of work it’s something that is always there in the background. the research on acute stroke and drug treatments depend on the use of animals and i know various people who conduct experiments on rats and mice. much of the knowledge of exactly what happens in the brain after a stroke occurs has come from animal experiments; knowledge that myself and others base their work on. by the way, that’s the first time i have ever used a semicolon in a sentence and i’m not sure if it works or not.

i attended a talk by someone a while ago who described their work with mice. they reared the mice and spent a lot of time teaching them some simple skills. then they operated on the mice to give them a stroke and tested them to see how this affected their functioning. finally they killed the mice and cut out their brains for examination. nice.

so, anyway, i know the importance of experimenting on animals and to an extent i use the results myself every day (well, to an extent we all do), but it’s not something i can ever agree with. however you phrase the moral dilemma i am never going to believe it is right to subject others to suffering and death for our own gains. i think the whole superiority of humans thing is a weak argument. we don’t deserve our lives any more than other animals. this is an issue that you can’t compromise on though. you are either one side of the fence or the other and the two sides can’t really be reconciled. so i guess this is something that will go on and on forever and ever.

i used to have a habit of having weird random men experiences. mostly they were amusing, some though i was very lucky to come away from in one piece. they stopped a couple of years ago, about the time i stopped being so naive and also when i stopped being able to fit into my array of little tops.

today i was walking home from northfield (birmingham home) and when i was passing the swimming baths i met a random weird man. the conversation went thus:

“hello”
“hi”
“hey, stop. didn’t you hear me say hello?”
“oh yes, i said hi back”
“so…how old are you?”
“24″
“where are you going?”
“home for dinner”
“what are you doing later”
“don’t know, hadn’t thought about it yet”
“do you have a boyfriend?”
“yes. i get married in 2 months”
“oh. do you want a bit of extra stuff on the side?”
“erm…no.”
“aww why not?”
“i’m not that kind of girl.”
“there’s no harm in it.”
“i really must be getting on now”
“i like your arse”
“oh…thank you.”

yey, i still have it. i can still attract freaky men.

hmmm.

stress is a funny thing. it’s an overused term really, like depression is. usually when i feel stressed it is because of some impending scary work-related thing, like exams or doing a talk in front of important people. it’s very short lived and afterwards i get the buzz of relief and accomplishment.

i have recently discovered a very different beast. it’s very odd. constant nervous tummy for no reason, headaches, overactive tear ducts, broken sleep, can’t concentrate but can’t be distracted by anything either, always feeling full even when i haven’t eaten all day and my favourite foods are laid out in front of me. went out the other day with carl to meet some stranger and i didn’t put any make-up on.

went shopping for a pair of jeans, came back with the new jeans, 3 tops, 1 pair of netball bottoms and a new jacket.

cool. this isn’t so bad after all.