I'm sick of it.

Yes, I am.

I'm tired of being Someone (or Something) Up There's laboratory rat.

I'm tired of having Pavlovian psychological games played on me, of being subjected to situations where the stress relentlessly piles up and -- presumably -- my reactions are read on a dial or long, long strip of paper somewhere.

You'd think the experimenter would be getting tired of putting me through the endless tests involving ever-increasing periods of deprivation punctuated by the pushing of the smallest morsels into my cage, particularly when my responses have become dulled to the point where they sometimes barely register.

The bell rings, I salivate. But I'm drying up.

At least the majority of laboratory rats -- those belonging to the Experimental Animals' Union, Local 307, perhaps -- don't have to clean their own freekin' cages.

I bet they get cute girl lab rats to keep 'em company, too.

This pressure has been going on for too many years now. I'm sick of it.