Things you really don't want to hear

[liv]

The guy I share a cell culture room with opened a conversation with Do you know much about mycoplasma? and it got worse from there. Turns out he thinks he may have an infection but he doesn't plan to do anything about it because it's a hassle and he's read that the parasite is present in a large proportion of cultured cells anyway. Actually, he's pretty sure he does have it, because he's seen things moving in his cells when he looked at them under the microscope.

Aaaargh. Mycoplasma is highly, highly infectious stuff, and nearly impossible to eradicate, and it's mostly asymptomatic except that it makes cells prone to die catastrophically if you stress them. I am so not impressed that my cells are neighbours to cells belonging to someone with this kind of attitude.

While I am distracting myself from the fact that it's another four hours before I can have a cup of tea, I also discovered a noise more unbearable than nails on a blackboard: putting dry ice into a metal scoop, which then contracts very rapidly due to the cold and makes a truly infernal squealing noise.

Comments

[tzotze.livejournal.com]

Ewwww that does not sounds pleasant. Hope your cells stay nice and healthy!

[liv]

Thanks for the good wishes! And you probably have a clue what it's like working with living things; I'm guessing you have to keep the environment around your fish pretty clean too, right?

[wiredwytch.livejournal.com]

That sounds bad... it even sounds a bit irresponsible to me, I mean, shouldn't he DO something about this instead of also endangering other people's work?

[liv]

Yup, that was pretty much my point. He should do something about it, and it's horribly irresponsible not to. He should also not come into a clean culture room carrying half a cup of coffee and wearing open-toed sandals. But there you go.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've read that several times and it sounds as much like his body is infected as his culture is...

[liv]

Yes well. I wrote the post somewhere over 20 hours into a full day fast, I'm not at my most coherent right now. But even on normal blood sugar it's really hard to find a concise way to distinguish between: the cells that the scientist is currently performing experiments on and: the cells that constitute the scientist's body. Pronouns are annoying like that.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, no criticism, I rewrote my comment five times before it approached coherent and I'm awake. I just wanted to actually check which you meant.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Idea: you should give his cells cancer, and see how he likes it.

(I know it doesn't really work like that)

It's forty degrees out. Not good fasting weather.

[liv]

I like the concept, but... At the moment I'm working on being just enough of a bitch to get him to meet minimum standards, preferably without stepping over the line so he ends up hating me. He's not connected to me administratively at all, which makes that harder than it might be.

And take care of yourself with the fast. I'm nearly done, hooray, will just send this comment and then go and put the kettle on. But 40 degrees is unreasonable even on a normal day, ugh.