I think we're all a little guilty of thinking 'eh?!' to practically everyone's PhD execpt your own! Mine is in nutrition and I'm enjoying it but at the end of the day science can get very tedious, stuffy and pretentious sometimes! A.K.A Boring!!
To me the elephant PhD sounds mad but fab! I'd love to listen in to a talk on your project chrisrolinski!
In fact, at our place we're thinking of forming a group where PhD students share their work but they are from all different subject backgrounds, so we don't get bogged down on the finer points of something I don't understand let alone know how to spell!