Who are these elusive “real people” whose existences arise every so often in our conversations and in my thoughts? And how real am I, and should a person aspire to be more real? It seems as if everyone alludes to the characteristics of these people without explicitly defining those traits. Real people, we say to each other, are like such — implying that some individual or group of people are not “real.” And who can answer this question? I can only conclude that Real People are people who live in the Real World.

(I intended this post to be much longer, but after following my convoluted thoughts for two hours through academics, science, humanities, intellectual property, law as a social construct, publication, entertainment, popular culture, escapism, personal influences, personal motivations, and who knows what else I’ve left out, I’ve realized that it’s quite infeasible for me to write everything down.)

I wonder if anyone ever daydreams about thinking as I sometimes do. Just moments ago, with Acceptance playing on iTunes though I could barely hear it, I gazed up and saw not the acoustical ceiling but numerous star-like lights, connected by a web of threads against a midnight blue field that extended infinitely in every direction for as far as I could see. This, I seemed to instinctively know, was the structure of reality, and to understand any one of the pinpricks was incredibly important. I reached to grasp a few, but could reach them no more than I can capture any of the stars in the Milky Way — but my handful of shimmering ether, though dull in comparison, was still unfathomable rapture.

Why don’t people just think more? Why don’t they prefer to do so? I can’t imagine anything on Earth comparable to the ecstasy of a revelation, that instant of recognition.

There’s an interesting new sound in the house today. It goes something like,

*chirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirp* SLAM

*chirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirp* SLAM

*chirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirp* SLAM

Please don’t call ASPCA on us, however. There are no small animals being brutally slaughtered here. It’s simply that my aunt’s hooked up a noisemaker to her door that sounds like birds and is supposed to drive insects away. It chirps every time she opens her door, and then she slams it and it stops.

At least that’s what I think it is. I haven’t really checked, and I don’t really want to. Supposedly if we hear strange noises coming from the animal housing quarters at work, we can ask and have the sounds explained. The veterinary expert here at LABiomed even had a Powerpoint for us on animal experimentation last Friday, through which his goal was to… uh… eradicate some common misconceptions.

His first histogram showed that 90% of all research is done on rodents, and progressively fewer experiments are being done on other animals. “We want to use as few animals as possible,” he told us. “We do our best not to waste them.”

Then, another histogram showed that only 60% of the tests are “painful,” while 38% were done under pain relief. After telling us all about the government regulations surrounding animal research and showing us lots of cute pictures of mice and such, he shut down his laptop to ask for questions.

Michelle asked, “What happens to the animals after you’ve experimented on them?” Silence.

And the guy says, “Oh, we k-…euthanize them. Because the research needs to be taken to the cellular level to be completed.” And he went on for a while longer about why the animals need to be keuthanized. Despite his efforts, however, the atmosphere of complacency brought about by the pictures of cute animals had vanished.

(Disclaimer: I don’t really have any qualms about animal testing, so long as I’m not performing the keuthanasia or drawing blood from the eyes of mice — which is apparently what is done. It’s a necessary evil at this point — computer models aren’t that sophisticated yet, Dr. Singer.)