Zombies, Diego Rivera and Me

Diego Rivera ate people. Not a lot of people talk about that. Of course, not a lot of people talk about Frida Kahlo's intra-vaginal shrapnel or the theory that they both probably had sex with Trotsky, but, he certainly did eat people. He bought, stole, or generally misaproppriated the bodies and cooked them into stews, which he then ate with his oh-so-bohemian friends. It is not known (by me) whether the solo browed one partook.

Zombies might eat people. It depends on who you ask. Some sources say that zombies merely tear the flesh and gnaw the bones. Others say that they actually eat the brains, but do not digest them. Whatever they do, they seem to have a drive to interfere with the contents of the skull.

In two weeks, I'm going to disect a brain and spinal cord. It might be true that the original owner of that brain is walking around today, probably not thinking about some agreement they made to donate their remains to science. (read Stiff, by the way- wicked good book on cadavers) If they are thinking about it, I'm sure they didn't intend to have their grey (and white) matter poked at by a bunch of slack-jawed UNDERGRADUATES.

Yeah. Undergraduate. And I'm not pre-med. In fact, I doubt anyone in my class is. We're psych majors, for the most part, and people who are trying very, very hard to fulfill their science requirement without taking a lab science. BIO 102.2, and then this: Behavioral Neuroscience. At a state university. A mid-level state university, with a decent reputation for research, but with the locals, it's like home. Home, of course, being the place where they have to let you in. I respect my teacher (professor, I guess). He seems to be trying to teach a rigorous course. He seems to be trying to treat his students like people who can be expected to master difficult material. He looks like a gym teacher more than a PhD, though, and when he mentioned that he hoped to get us 'good brains', but they were more likely to be those of alzheimers or parkinson's patients, I realized that this class might be more than we all signed up for.

I will do the brain lab. I will do it because this is the one opportunity I have to see a human brain (with any luck, I hope) and I'm not the type of person to pass up anything once in a lifetime. I just really can't see the whole exercise as much more than a waste. When people donate their bodies to science (seriously, read Stiff by Mary Roach) I think they consider that they might be disected by medical students, maybe scientists, maybe academics. They don't consider a room full of undergraduates, most of whom chose their major because it's one of two that require less than twelve classes, doing it as part of a requirement for a two-hundred level course.

This isn't a hand. It's not a liver. It's not a heart. There's nothing more individual in life and anonymous in death than a brain. It's singular. I don't want to cut into something that held a lifetime's memories, feelings, thoughts, education, sins, remorse, guided every heartbeat and breath- like it's some goddamned frog. It's not like this will somehow pass on the accumulated knowledge of the individual who gave their brain; it will just pass on the very common and universal knowledge of how A brain looks and feels. It's not worth it.

Honestly, I'd rather do a fetus. Because dead fetuses (fetii?) are funny. And they haven't done anything. I have very little respect for the singularity of something that has experience only of aqueous stasis inside someone else. A fetus, in my opinion, doesn't even carry the weight of potentiality. Sponteneous abortions are part of life's design. This life begins at conception shit doesn't seem to take that into account. It's like saying that college graduation begins at tenth grade. Sure, everyone who graduates college began tenth grade (with some rare exceptions), but the majority (I think- I'd check it if this was a paper) of people who begin tenth grade don't finish college.

Besides, everybody likes making more fetuses.




[Neuroscience]