Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: oh my god it is an update! even yesser!
It has been quite a long time since I have last updated this thing. To my faithful (imaginary) readers, I apologize.
I have no excuse.
I began this thing with a very funny post but the pressure to stay funny was too great and I cracked like…something that cracks easily.
Ok. That is a lie. In reality I’ve been working my ass off at 2 hospitals and writing quite a bit but nothing funny. It is damn hard to be funny all the time.
I’ve also been applying to medical school which is professionally scary. Uber scary. Why? Because I want to be a doctor more than anything.
That I want to be a doctor after 6 months of helping to care for all kinds of people I STILL want to be a doctor.
I still cry when a patient dies and I still get mad as hell when people are mistreated.
Some people say doctors must be detached to remain sane; I call bullshit. You have to feel to stay HUMAN.
Anyway, I’m updating this so that I’ll feel guilty about not updating in so long AND I’ll face my fear of the medical school application. See that, I’m sneaky and I’m using guilt against myself.
Clever? Hell yeah.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cute, funny, happy, nun, nuns, soccer, u-turn
Little known fact about me: I keep a mental list of funny/happy/adorable things I’ve seen.
The top of the list an elderly couple riding a tandem bike and wearing matching tie-dye shirts. You really can’t top that. I saw that spectacle of adorability on the day after I graduated from college. That couple was the last thing I saw before leaving Grinnell and it was so Grinnellian. Warms the heart.
Today I saw something that made me laugh. The scene- I’m driving home and as I turn onto a street I see a little old lady driving a car, her hands on top of the wheel and eyes barely peeking over. Suddenly, she makes a remarkable U-Turn and I see that she is a Nun. You go sister! Break that law! A few blocks down the street I passes a police car. It would have been awesome to see what the police would do if they encountered a U-turning nun. I imagine they wouldn’t do much considering that this city is riddled with crime and U-turning nuns pose very little threat to the world.
The nun incident is hereby added to my list, it is somewhere near the bottom but it has made the list.
Congratulations U-Turning Nun. You made me smile.
I tried to avoid it for as long as possible but the time has come. I’m going to blog about my cat.
Wait! Before you write me off as some “cat person” you should know that I like dogs too*.
Anyway, Elliott, my cat is weird.
We got him seven years ago. He was the runt of his litter, a tiny black fuzzball with big blue eyes. As soon as I saw him, I was in love and I sensed that he was…odd. As he settled into our house it became more apparent that Elliott is “unique”. He was fond of sleeping in tissue boxes, tennis shoes and any other enclosed space his tiny body would fit. I couldn’t leave him alone while I took a shower. He cried until I picked him up with wet soapy hands and put him on the window ledge in the shower. I was afraid he would fall, after all he was no bigger than a can of soda/coke. But no, that wasn’t good enough for Elliott. He was not happy until he was perched on my shoulder in the shower. He didn’t seem to mind the water at all (in fact, he still enjoys the occasional bath today).
He still assumes the shoulder perch in times of stress, such as when I take him to the V-E-T. A vet-tech who was over eager to cuddle with him attempted to extricate him from my shoulder but in the process blood was shed and my glasses were broken.
All of the previous material could very well just be filed under “all cats are weird” and forgotten but Elliott has one habit, nay, fetish that is truly shocking…he is a serial killer…of socks. No sock is safe in this house. I’ll often find a stash of socks under the couch or in some other obscure place around the house, some of the only evidence of his peculiar hobby. Like Jack the Ripper, Elliott the Killer stalks his victims in the dead of night. Few witnesses have actually seen him in the act of murder. I will occasionally glance up from a book and see him disemboweling a wollen sock, shaking the life out of the very yarn but as soon as he realizes that he is being watched he drops his prey with a look of innocence and embarassment as if to say, “I know what this looks like but it isn’t that bad…”. The kind of look a 12 year old boy has when he is caught intently “studying” the more “exposed” photographs (of tribal women (or men…)) of National Geographic.
The fact that Elliott is embarassed by his hobby is what makes it so weird. Aside from the occasional glimpses of feline versus woven violence the only evidence of his actions are the piles of corpses scattered around the house and even more distressing, the occasional corpse (usually of one of my nice hiking socks) draped over his food bowl. I often ponder the metaphysical meaning, if any, of the draped corpse/sock in the food bowl. Is this Elliott’s sacrifice to the god(s) of the knitted foot coverings? Is this his ultimate act of dominance over the sock?
Of course the best explination is the simplest. We adopted Elliott at barely 5 weeks old, he hadn’t yet begun eating solid food, he was tiny, undernourished and adorable. Elliott is an indoor cat, a lesson we learned after he lost his fur (almost all of it) from allergies to the real world so maybe the closest thing he can get to chasing down and killing a small furry creature is chasing down and “killing” a small furry sock.
My only wish is that Elliott wouldn’t have such a knack for kidnapping only one of the pair of some of my favorite socks. I could deal with suddenly losing both my green argyle/frog socks but having the remaining twin looking me in the face every morning is almost too much to bear. There is nothing more pitiful than a drawer full of unpaired socks moping around a sock drawer.
Something else that is strange is that Elliott rotates his socks. One week he will be killing a blue woolen sock, a black toe sock with stars on the toes and a completely innocent Christmas themed sock then, somehow after the requisite killing has been completed these socks are allowed to rest in peace…for a while. Sometimes the dead socks rise from the grave and Elliott defends humanity from the zombie sock invasion.
So, my cat is weird but think of all the evil socks he keeps off the streets. We don’t have to face the horrors of zombie sock invasions.
(* But only some dogs. Dogs I hate include but are not limited to- Chihuahuas, Jack Russel terriers, yappy dogs, small dogs, poodles, dumb dogs, smelly dogs, poodles, evil small dogs and that one Rottweiler that chased me when I was a kid resulting in a 4 inch scar on my hand. Basically, I like your good ole brilliant working dog. Sheep dogs, Labradors, collies. The kind of dog that needs intellectual stimulation. The kind of dog that knows that Nietzsche is often full of shit.)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cameras, experiments, flickr, photography, photos, procrastination
Must study more…must study.
See my flickr page for new experiments in procrastination I mean photography.
I’ve been taking photos for years and in college had the wonderful opportunity to use big expensive cameras like the amazing Cannon EOS-20D and Cannon EOS-1D while working for my college’s newspaper.
Like all photographers, I took at least 50 photos for every 1 that was published. So, I have plenty of photos that can be the subjects of my experimentation.
When I worked for the newspaper I basically just took the photos and my good friend and boss (aka Photo Editor) Nick did any editing. As a result all the photos I post to my Flickr page are pretty much unaltered. So this is a new area for me.
Leave comments on the Flickr page!
Love and Peace,
Me
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cheap whiskey, drug addict, evil boss, OD, unemployed
It has been some time since I updated this blogthingey.
Things have changed quite a bit. I am currently unemployed and in the process of becoming re-employed. Hopefully at the same institution but with a different boss. [It is a long and sordid story but the summary is that I did nothing wrong.]
Aside from applying for every job possible, I’ve been studying for the MCAT. So life has been…boring.
But I do have time to think about things.
Something happened today and I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit. Here is the story:
I’m at the store paying for my groceries when a woman appears in the line next to me. The woman has a transparent purse that allows everyone to see the contents of her purse. I glance over at her purse, now perched on the checkout counter and count 5 pill bottles and one Rx cough syrup bottle in addition to the packs of cigarets. I can clearly read the prescriptions on about 3 of the bottles. All were for very powerful opiates. Then the woman placed her purchase item, a handle of really cheap whiskey, on the counter and mentions something about “really needing this (the whiskey)” tonight. Then she mentioned something about tomorrow being her pay day and that she would be back for more alcohol after she gets paid.
The future doctor/current scientist in me sees red flags everywhere. Alcohol and opiates don’t mix. The reason why your doctor tells you not to drink while taking certain medications and the reason your pharmacist puts a little sticker that says “DO NOT TAKE THIS DRUG WITH ALCOHOL” is that taking really strong opiates with alcohol can kill you. As in dead.
The woman had at least 3 bottles of different opiates (those are just the ones I could see while glancing inconspicuously). I had a momentary moral dilemma. Should I tell the lady about the dangers of mixing the drugs in her purse with alcohol or should I just assume that she has been properly informed of the complex biochemical actions that mixing the drugs could cause?
I left the store still pondering what to do. Luckily she exited just after me. I approached her and gently asked, “Ma’am?” Once I got her attention I said, “I noticed the prescriptions in your bag. You do know that it is very dangerous to mix those with alcohol, right?”
Her reply was- “My doctor gave me these drugs.” OK…maybe her doctor is an idiot…so I tried again with a more blunt tactic. I told her that the drugs in her bag could be very dangerous if mixed with alcohol. For a moment she pondered my statement then informed me that she only mixes them “at night”. I replied with, “doing that could kill you. Trust me.”
I reiterated the danger and possibility of death thing, hoping that something would stick in her head. I don’t know if it will. I’m glad I said something but I doubt my words will change her actions. For her, the drugs (which were really powerful painkillers but she didn’t seem like she was in pain (I know that pain isn’t visible but people who need fentanyl are generally REALLY sick. Sick and in so much pain that is not responsive to weaker opiates like…morphine. (Morphine is actually very strong but fentanyl is 80 times stronger than morphine)) probably were needed at some point. Opiates are notoriously addictive because of the way they affect the brain. They make the brain feel good. Warm and fuzzy. Alcohol is also a drug with the same effects.
The woman probably needed the drugs at some point for surgery or something but the fact that she is adding alcohol is an indication that the high isn’t working anymore so she has to pour more and more chemicals on her brain to get the desired effect.
The big problem isn’t so much that the woman is taking insanely strong drugs, or that she is buying terrible whiskey. The real problem is that she doesn’t seem to understand that the pills and the alcohol are both respiratory depressants. Mixing them can transform a passed out drunk person into a passed out drunk who is so sedated that they can’t wake up if something happens. At this point the person can die from simply not breathing enough, or they could vomit and aspirate the vomit or their respiratory center in the brain can get so doped up that it forgets to make the body breathe.
I really wanted to sit down with the woman and explain the action and effects of each of the drugs (including alcohol) in excruciating detail then talk to her doctor to bring the dangerous actions to their attention.
But I’m not a doctor yet. I did what I could. I told her that her behavior was dangerous. I just hope she doesn’t OD or something like that.
So there is your depressing glimpse of life for some people.
Don’t be stupid.
Please.
Also, (to the universe) give me my damn job back.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Right now, I’m annoyed with god or whoever runs things in the universe.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why are some people evil?
Why do some people suffer while others lounge in luxury?
Why do I think about these things so much?
What I do know is that it is not fair that two of my very good friends have very bad cancer. It isn’t fair that babies and kids at the hospital where I work have cancer.
It isn’t fair that some babies never make it to their first birthday. Do you know how many babies die before 12 months of age in Memphis? Too many. The infant mortality rate in parts of Memphis is 19 deaths per 1,000 live births. A baby has a better chance of survival being born on the Gaza Strip or Sri Lanka than Memphis. Back in college, I helped run a group called SCIPE (Grinnell College Student Campaign for Increased Political Engagement). We once invited experts on healthcare to come to campus and debate whether the US would benefit from universal healthcare. While doing background research I learned the dirty secret of Memphis, an infant mortality rate that is higher than many “developing countries”. I was furious and felt guilty that something so easily preventable was happening in “my” city. I don’t know why I felt guilty as an 18 year old college student nearly 1,000 miles from Memphis but I did.
It isn’t fair that the USA has spent god knows how many billion dollars bombing civilians. It isn’t fair that the civilians are called “collateral damage”.
Every time someone tells me that some tragedy is “part of the divine plan” I want to meet the maker of this “plan” and ask him/her/it/they if the suffering of one baby or one family or one nation is really worth it. Does everything have to balance? Why can’t good things happen to good people? Why can’t “bad people” (I’m not sure anyone is ever fully “bad” or “evil”) change for the better?
Most importantly to me, what can I do to make things better?
I know I won’t ever give up. That is just the way I am. I’ll keep repeating Gandhi, “Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it” even when it seems meaningless.
The good news is that these questions have been plaguing me for years, preventing me from ever being too comfortable. Always forcing me to try to change things in any way I can.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: college, every tree on campus, festival, film, Grinnell, jedi, racquetball, star wars, Titular Head, tulat, weapon of choice
One of the many reasons I love Grinnell is the annual student film festival, Titular Head. Many amazing works of cinematography have appeared at TitHead over the years including, “Racquetball Tunak Tunak Tun” , an epic tale of two college students playing a game of racquetball so intense that it knows no bounds. Another noteworthy film is “Weapon of Choice” by my friend, Patrick Murray. A spoof of a spoof is always pretty good but, “Tulat“ Dhiern Patik’s spof of Borat is especially well done (I’m biased though because I know just about everybody in the film). Another wonderful film, “The Flesh and the Foam” was brilliant but unfortunately was unable to be screened or released because of nudity.
However, in the year since I graduated, the Titualr Head Film to end all Films, has been created. ”Star Wars Grinnell” created by Henry Reich (one of the colleges’ top long distance runners and easily on of the most talented students on campus) starring his little brother Alex as a Jedi Knight. In a physics classroom where I spent many, many hours, Alex uses his Jedi mind control to make the professor (played by the charming Randy Brush) change his exam grade from an “F” to an “A”. The action continues and the special effects are spectacular. Though the story-line is a bit… disjointed, the film is well deserving of it’s first place prize.
The next time somebody asks me why I went to Grinnell, I will tell them to simply search “Titular Head Grinnell” on youtube.
Grinnell is amazing. I wish I were there.
Other noteworthy films include:
Bend it Like Bala- starring my friend Rup as Bala the soccer guru
‘The Passion of the Omana’- which isn’t online anymore
‘A Young Bolshevik in Grinnell‘
Today Iowa made gay marriage legal.
Even though I am not gay, I’m so proud of Iowa. I spent four wonderful years in a small college in Iowa and I can truly say that Iowans are some of the nicest people on Earth.
You can read the summary of the proceedings here.
- Shoeless Joe Jackson: Hey, is this heaven?
- Ray Kinsella: No, it’s Iowa.
