Just Another Whiteboy Listening to Rap

This horrifying image is from my youngest brother’s profile on his university website. Beneath the photo he announces, “I am researching the growth of semiconductor nanoparticles and their intercalation into block copolymers to form complex nanostructured materials.” I know for a fact that what he’s really doing is building obscene handpuppets in the cellar of a forgotten warehouse at the edge of campus. I’ve watched him play with them, pulling the little anatomically-exaggerated monstrosities over his grubby fist and squealing in a falsetto Scottish accent. It’s disgusting. Carrying on about nano-this and semi-that just keeps the government taps flowing so he and his “team members” Lewd Lizzie and Under-me MacKintosh can keep fleecing the American taxpayer.

No, that’s all a lie, or wishful thinking on my part. You see, with each nanoparticle intercalated, Andrew is more and more lost to us. For one year, he lived in Hiroshima. He was only about 23, and he liked to drink too much, terrorize the locals with his spellbinding dance moves, then call me on his mobile and narrate his trip home, which basically consisted of wild laughter and the word “Ouch” repeated each time he fell off his bicycle or rode into an oncoming taxi. His life wasn’t really going anywhere, so after some painful soul-searching, the family decided to donate him to science.

That’s why I was so happy to get this e-mail from him this morning, in which he reveals that he is still flailing about erratically, upsetting the furniture, and scaring the crap out of Asian women with his dancing. Here it is:

There are a few people in the lab with whom I get along quite well. And considering that I'm a particularly gregarious breed of primate, I often find myself getting embroiled in time-sucking, PhD-lengthening conversations that have a 13.33% chance of being directly applicable to anything I might be studying / working on / needing to do. This is something that I need to work on and one tactic that I find particularly helpful is the use of headphones. I find that setting the lab day to a soundtrack has the useful effect of distancing me from my companions and helping me focus on getting some work done in the lab. It also quiets down some of the easily distracted parts of the brain and so I end up spending much more time on point. Unfortunately, being mom's son, I have the tendency to "shake my booty" and even occasionally "drop it like it's Hot", though only if I'm feeling cavalier about the integrity of my knees. Often I stay just aware enough of my situation that I simply look like someone who is shaking his head to a beat. However today I crossed a line. I was absorbed in doing some soldering when the Fugee's "Fugee-la" came on to my headphones. I love this song. It's well written and sounds great. It's no "Ready or Not" and it certainly is no Sir Mixalot's "I Like Big Butts" but it's pretty good. I was starting to rock out and once I put the soldering iron down I sort of lost control and kicked the chair back and really threw down. This startled and then quickly baffled one of our new students, Xioayu, who had evaded my peripheral vision and started working at the bench behind me (and thereby in the path of the enthusiastically flung chair). Luckily this room is more or less chemical free so she wasn't startled in the middle of handling anything more dangerous than silicone (that's boobie-mix to all you classy gentlemen out there). When I spun about in the middle of one of my trademark moves I came chest to face with the picture of surprised, amused and slightly uncomfortable Chinese womanhood. The first and third of the aforementioned mix of emotions quickly yielded to the second as she pointed to my freshly shaved head and said, "When you blush your entire head becomes pink!" Sigh.

Beautiful. Just amazing. I mean, “Drop it like it’s Hot?” Wow. God is good. Doctor Disco, we salute you. Our extraordinarily small, needlessly complicated future rests in your capable hands.