itch.

I am sitting in a seminar about "Ankyrin-based membrane domains within the lipid bilayer" right now, at the Center of Molecular Genetics on the med school campus. I am here by choice. Unfortunately, this lecture is not going as interestingly as had hoped it would. The subject matter is falling flat. The speaker sounds as if he is muttering through a tin can. Half of the lights in the room are out. I am tired, and feel like I am wasting my time.

The guy sitting next to me is picking his ear with his pinky. Crumbly, microscopic balls of earwax are probably tumbling down the side of his face, onto his shoulders, and into the weave of his tweed-covered seat right now. His fingernails will now have crusty yellow wax crammed under them. Those wax particles have several hundreds of bacteria chomping away at the lipid molecules of the oily substance. Earwax made of accumulated oil secretions from sebaceous glands within his ear canal. Pieces of lint and dust had settled into the warm, sticky, oily mess; so much debris had gathered around the root of one of his ear hairs that it triggered an "itch" sensation.

People are so gross. He is using that hand to grip his pen. His pinky finger drags across the page as he writes. Thousands of molecules of earwax are being spread all over the friggin' place. Smeary, odorous earwax. Bright green and mustard yellow varieties!

.... damn, it is hard to stay awake in here.