Monthly Archives: January 2010

You know what they oughta do?

Home } asides } You know what they oughta do?

It seems like our government is reactive and not proactive with respect to terrorism. Some guy hides explosives in his shoes and now we all have to take off our damned shoes at the airport. This most recent guy hides explosives in his underwear and now they’re strip-searching folks in Nigeria. And boy are the Nigerians pissed about it.

Remember Robert Redford’s job in Three Days of the Condor? He was a reader. His task was to skim through all manner of thrillers and determine if there were any ideas or themes that might be of interest to his CIA handlers. This seems rather inefficient, though, because you’re wading through a sea of published novels to find the occasional interesting tidbit . . . and the fact that they are PUBLISHED novels strikes me as an unwanted filter, such that you will only find plots that have some commercial appeal (at least in the mind of one publisher).

A book proposal featuring an earnest young man strapping explosives to his nut sack would not, IMHO, go far. And yet it happened.

So here’s my idea: our government should hire writers of marginal talent to serve as professional brainstormers. What they would do all day long is generate ideas for terrorist schemes against the United States. They would have to be marginally talented writers because those professional authors are too used to thinking, “Gee, will this sell?” to come up with any really rotten ideas. But take some guy who has published a couple of short stories in some lesser known zines but can’t manage to land an agent, let alone get his book published, and he’d be a wellspring for the half-baked ideas of which these terrorists seem so fond.

I’m not talking about me, mind you. I’m happy with my job. But I suspect there are a lot of writers like me who actually need the work.

There would doubtless be some unintended consequences. I hate to think what DHS would do with a plot about female suicide bombers hiding plastique in their breast implants.

Walnut, January 6, 2010. Category: asides.

Truth, stranger than

Home } Critter foo } Truth, stranger than

Here’s a photo from a viral email my sis sent me:

Endangered pork

The email comes with the following explanation, as long as a number of other similar photos:

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs.
Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely
and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.

The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health,
although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused
the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate
another mother’s cubs, perhaps she would improve.

And so forth. As I usually do with viral emails, I checked Snopes.com for the real deal. The true story is quite a bit more disturbing. At the Sriracha Zoo in Thailand, zookeepers have set up a number of such odd displays, all for the entertainment of jaded animal . . . um . . . lovers? Tigers giving suck to piglets, pigs giving suck to tiger cubs, dogs and pigs and tigers living in harmony, you name it. All in good fun, perhaps, except this particular zoo has some a few loathsome skeletons in its closet. Read more at Snopes.

Walnut, January 5, 2010. Category: Critter foo.

Yes, Jake, I am always stealing posts from you.

Home } Things Stolen From Jake } Yes, Jake, I am always stealing posts from you.

Jake says: You should make a category, “Things stolen from Jake.”

Make it so, Number One!

Walnut, January 4, 2010. Category: Things Stolen From Jake.

New Years Resolution:

Home } asides } New Years Resolution:

Get back to 163 and stay there.

I’m counting calories. That and exercise, and I’ll get back to 163 in no time. I’ve already lost three pounds; eight more to go. How hard can it be to lose eight pounds?

I love the way weight peels off at the beginning of a diet. If it kept falling off at this rate, I’d reach my goal in less than a week.

Any resolutions you’d like to share?

Oh, and I’m wondering: how many authors are selling their work as pdfs? Do ebook readers support pdfs? And will we eventually get to the point where authors sell directly, without a publishing middleman?

Walnut, January 3, 2010. Category: asides, Writer's Life.

MD aware

Home } The Barbarous Craft } MD aware

That’s what we used to call it in residency . . . so named because it would punctuate the ubiquitous comment in the nursing notes. As in,

Mr. Ramirez’s IV infiltrated and had to be removed. Unable to give 2 AM dose of labetalol. Current blood pressure 224/110. MD aware.

It’s the ultimate ass-cover. The doctor knows about all this and no orders were forthcoming. And if the 1:50 AM phone call was only, “Doctor, Mr. Ramirez’s IV doesn’t seem to be working,” the note in the chart makes it a he-said she-said situation. Worse: the nurse’s note is in black and white, and if the doc tries to correct things the next morning, it looks like fighting in the chart — a classic “gimme” for the malpractice lawyers.

We had another saying in residency: “They can always hurt you more.” Applies to patients, ERs, nurses, call centers. Sometimes it makes me long for the bad old days when we were truly resident in the hospital. If you were there, you could assess the situation firsthand. You didn’t have to depend on someone else’s report. Reminds me of how in med school, on an internal medicine rotation, we’d sometimes make ICU pee rounds, checking folks for their urine output.

There were good reasons for this, but they escape me at the moment.

But you know, you have to have a life, too, which means you have to trust other people to do the right thing. And by and large they do.

(No, nothing bad happened . . . but calls in the middle of the night always make me think about this issue.)

Walnut, January 2, 2010. Category: The Barbarous Craft.