Passing notes

Before I get rolling, Karen has written about the Gretna, Louisiana atrocity-in-progress over at her blog. Now, on with our regularly scheduled blathering.

We had a saying in residency: “You’re either in this hospital working, or you’re in here as a patient. Either way, you’re here.” Point being, no time off for illness.

In five years of training, I only missed one day, and that only because I had food poisoning and couldn’t bring a barf bag with me on rounds. Well, I suppose I could have, but the other residents frowned upon that degree of obsessive dedication. In any case, at L.A. County Hospital we functioned in a perennial state of “swamped”. If you stayed home, someone else had to do your work, someone who already had too much work of his own.

Now that I’m out of that zoo, I have no excuse for not taking better care of myself. Office patients can be rescheduled, ya know? But, no. I had to go into work, because . . . ah, who knows.

I still eat fast, too, which made sense during residency (you never knew when the ER might call) but makes absolutely no adaptive sense nowadays.

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts & best wishes. I’m a little better today, but not much.

I tend to get political on the weekend, which means I get depressed, too. For you non-Americans in my crowd: we’re indoctrinated from kindergarten with a slew of nationalistic ideas. America is the greatest nation, and we’re great because of the freedoms we enjoy, the freedoms our country symbolizes, the freedoms our military defends. You have to find out about the atrocities on your own: the genocide of Native Americans; My Lai; Andersonville (a Confederate POW camp); the LONG history of black oppression, from Day 1 to the present; the firebombing of Dresden. Robber barons of every generation raping the underclass. Iraq. New Orleans.

There’s so much evil out there now, I don’t know where to start. If I were Christian, I could only conclude that Dubya is the Antichrist. Tell me I’m wrong.*

But, hey. This is a humor blog (sometimes). So, for your pleasure, consider the following:

I have it on good authority that this image is a fake, a clever bit of photoshopping. However, there’s a good deal of confusion as to what Dubya really wrote in that note. Thanks to close questioning of eyewitnesses, I have narrowed down the list of possibilities to the following.

1. I’m bored. Can I go home now? Wah!

2. Condi: there’s the Colombian ambassador. Think you can score me some blow?

3. I never been in a room with so many nigras. Nothing personal, Condi.

4. How many of these here ambassadors are Republicans, anyway?

5. The Iranian ambassador keeps staring at me. He is so dead.

So . . . have you folks heard of any other possibilities?

We’re watching one of my all time favorite movies right now: Men in Black. Awesome script, great special effects, and every actor was on his/her game. Nothing sucks in this movie, not a single damned thing.

Watching Vincent D’Onofrio’s alien bug reminds me of something Karen showed me on Arachnopets yesterday: a series of photos and messages from a guy who lets centipedes crawl on his hands. Now, I know a lot of you are terrified of spiders, but I’m here to tell you that spiders ain’t got nothing on centipedes. Centipedes are far more aggressive than most spiders, and their venom is WAY more painful.

If you don’t like creepy-crawlies, do not, repeat DO NOT view this link. I’m telling you, we’re talking Major League Formication, got it? But those of you with creepy-crawly loving kids, you’ll score points for coolness if you let them look at these photos.

Have a great weekend, y’all, and thanks again for your kind thoughts.

D.

*Yeah, when I get published, I am definitely going to have to get me an apolitical blog.

Addendum: I’m not the only one who thinks Bush is Eeeevil. This guy has written the book on the subject. For example: by several separate numerological systems, Bush’s name adds up to 666. So there!