by Laurelin

I enter this week with a heavy heart. Usually I have something to look forward to, some great event that with the passing of each shift at work I can say that I’m one day closer to. I enter this week with a heavy heart because I have no one, no increased heartbeat when my cell phone lights up on the end of the bar because it might be him. There is no him. I enter this week with a heavy heart because when I look ahead I see only the same thing day after day; I see only what I feel the majority of the world sees: plain and boring monotony. My heart is heavy, and it’s crushing me.

This week is my chance to shine at work. With my boss on vacation for one week I am the next in line, so this building and everyone in it is mine to run. My walls, my liquor, my beer taps and kegs, my neon lights and my whole staff. Seven straight days of bartending to make sure nothing goes wrong, to make sure this place looks better than when it was left this past Monday. But with no days off to look forward to I can’t help but feel like I’m in a war zone. No Boston waterfront for the fourth of July, no sunshine in my face at the beach, my tan lines fade and my eyes lose their spark as I adjust to sixty-three hours indoors. Even breathing becomes boring.

I fight the sinking realization that this means for one week I am left alone with my own head, my own abilities or inabilities. I have no time to drink with friends until it’s all numb, until I can only laugh about everything that right now seems so overwhelming. I have only time to wonder if I am really upset about working so much, or if I am upset about being able to drink too little. I know it’s only one week; after this weekend my schedule is back to normal, but for some reason the days seep by slowly like spilled molasses.

To make a change one must desire change and create change. I desire change. I also desire sunshine. I desire men, and I desire sangria. Instead, this week, I get sixty-three hours. This week I get discipline, ruling others, and myself. This week I bitch slap my liver and other neglected body parts so they don’t fall into misuse. This week, it will take everything in me not to fade to dust…

Related Posts:
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Contentment and Other Boring Possibilities
Life Beyond The Bar Scene: Last Friday
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: No One Nails the Cry Face and Other Tales of Woe
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Of Lies and Half Truths
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: I Would Never Look Through Your Phone and Other Trust Issues
Life Beyond The Bar Scene: My Manager’s Pants Look Better On The Floor And Other Tales Of Responsibility
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Blonde Ambition
Life Beyond The Bar Scene: Love is Better Soaked in Tequila
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: It’s Not You, It’s Me and Other Tales of Woe
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Winter is Coming
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Digital vs. Analogue
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: A Long December
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Strobe Lights and Glitter
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Fake It ‘Til You Make It
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Apologies and Other Useless Utterances
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Liquid Running
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Anger and Other Mostly Useless Emotions
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: One of the Guys
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: A Case of the Crazies
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Unsettled
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Boys of Summer
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Play On Playa’
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: How to Lose a Girl in Ten Minutes
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Naked Laurelin Reading
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Healthy Relationships are for Boring People and Other Mishaps
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Letting Go
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Does it Exist?
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: The Dating Game
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: After a Few Beers Everyone Looks Good and Other Love Stories
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Getting Naked With Laurelin
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Seven Days and Seven Nights of Sobriety
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: When it’s Time to Move On
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Starting Over and Other Stupid Resolutions
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: He Broke Up with Me on a Post-it and Other Travesties
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: The End of Four Loko As We Know It
Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Boston’s Top 5 Dives

by Damon Martin

On Wednesday, scientists in Geneva, Switzerland revealed they’d found the elusive Higgs boson particle.Two different groups of physicists at CERN, who independently carry out research at the world’s largest hadron collider announced their findings during a press conference on Wednesday, which appears to confirm the existence of the particle which was first theorized nearly 50 years ago.

CERN physicist John Ellis put forth a simple analogy to explain why the Higgs boson is so important. He explained it’s like looking at the universe as if it were a giant snow field. In the universe, particles zip around at the speed of light with nothing to slow them down, kind of like a skier would do on a field of snow. But as physicists have theorized for the last 48 years, moments after the Big Bang occurred a ‘Higgs field’ was created as well that served as a way to slow down these separate particles giving them mass that allowed them to combine into atoms and eventually the building blocks of our world. Going back to the snowfield analogy, if skiers can skip along the top of the snow without slowing down there are also people that would have snowshoes on that would move through the snow but at a much slower speed. Then there are people that just have boots on that move even slower in the snow. The snow in this case is the Higgs field slowing down different particles so they can gain mass and combine into matter. Now if you drill down a snowfield into each individual snowflake, that’s what the Higgs-boson particles would be. An individual particle that forms as a whole to give mass to objects.

Evidence of the Higgs boson particle was found by physicists working on two separate teams, ATLAS and CMS, who worked completely independently of each other to study the results found from experiments conducted in the hadron collider. Thought their studies were done autonomously, their results were shockingly similar. Both teams announced discoveries that were drilled down to comparable levels of accuracy.

In the scientific world the rate at which they are certain of their discovery is on something called a sigma scale. On the low end of the sigma scale, a one or a two is seen as inconclusive data, a three counts as an official ‘observation’, and a five sigma is the signal of an official discovery. A five sigma amounts to less than one in million chance that scientists are wrong. The ATLAS team at CERN announced their findings at a 5 sigma, while the CMS team came back with a 4.9 sigma, slightly less but still overwhelming evidence in support of the Higgs-boson discovery.

In the room on Wednesday was 83-year old physicist Peter Higgs, who first theorized the Higgs-boson particle back in 1964. He celebrated the new along with his fellow scientists. “I am astounded at the amazing speed with which these results have emerged. They are a testament to the expertise of the researchers and the elaborate technologies in place,” said Higgs. “I never expected this to happen in my lifetime and shall be asking my family to put some champagne in the fridge.”

The discovery of the Higgs-boson particle by the teams working at CERN will likely seal the deal that Higgs himself will receive a long-awaited Nobel prize.

Now that scientists have confirmed the existence of the long theorized particle, the work can really begin on determining how our universe was formed. “Now the emphasis will shift to verifying the properties of the particle that has been discovered: does it have spin zero? Does it couple to other particles proportional to their masses?,” said John Ellis, who works at CERN. “The discovery will open up a new era in particle physics, as we look for deviations from the properties expected in the Standard Model, and for other physics beyond the Standard Model that might be connected, such as the nature of dark matter.”

The Standard Model is what physicists have used for decades to theorize and explain how our universe was created. What was once theory now moves into the realm of fact. Work will continue at CERN’s collider until it is shut down later this year, so that improvements on the facility can be completed, allowing atoms to be smashed with more energy at greater rate.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“Every film for me is very personal.”
– Stephen Chow

Stephen Chow is one of the most hysterical filmmakers working today. The film that first broke him out, Shaolin Soccer, is a huge cult hit in America and his latest film, Kung Fu Hustle, is getting the right kind of release from Sony Pictures Classics.

Kung Fu Hustle has some brilliant imagination behind it. As the co-writer/director/star Chow has a lot on his plate with this, his most personal film. It’s about a hapless wanna be gangster; Sing [Chow], who must overcome his inability in order to become a member of the notorious Axe Gang. The Axe Gang, meanwhile, want to reign supreme by occupying the most coveted territory, which is a sacred street protected by an unlikely cast of characters, many of whom are highly skilled kung fu masters disguised as ordinary people.

A personal kung fu film may seem like an oxymoron, but Americans have to realize that China’’s entire film culture is 95 percent kung fu flicks. They represent the zeitgeist of China’’s entire history and are as iconic to them as the Western is to us.

Read our exclusive interview with Stephen Chow on SuicideGirls.com.

Lass Suicide in Cat Burglar

• INTO: Tattoos, reading, drawing, running, drinking, ballet, and online shopping.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Finding an amazing new author, food, alcohol, coffee, friendly drunk people, cute underwear, my cat, when I can get more than five hours sleep a night, new tattoos, good days at college.
• MAKES ME SAD: Unnecessary, nasty comments and dramatic people.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Reading, drinking, and dancing.

Get to know Lass better over at SuicideGirls.com!