Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis

2007-07-23T14:16:00.001-06:00

June 10: I get in a minor fender-bender on Calgary Trail. Yes, I am an idiot, and feel free to tell me I should quit driving. My girlfriend is uninjured; my Mini, however, has a dented front bumper and two detonated front airbags.

June 17: I trade in my rental Kia Rio because a) the steering wheel vibrates like a Mexican space shuttle, and b) it smells vaguely like feet. The Toyota Corolla is marginally better.

July 10: I call the repair shop and ask what's up. Apparently they are waiting for a part from BMW, specifically an airbag.

July 13: "BMW tells me it'll be a week."

July 22: My airbag is not yet in place. Actually, my airbag is not yet in Canada. It's not even MADE yet, as it's on factory back order. In Germany. And it has to be shipped by boat, because it's an explosive device and can't be shipped by air.

Goddammit.

Things I hate

2007-03-22T17:51:00.000-06:00

1. 1-in-4 call. 89 hours of work this week, whoo!

2. People who stand on the escalator. It. Is. Not. A. RIDE. PEOPLE.

3. Estonians. I'm an obscure bigot!

don't want no sugar in my coffee

2006-10-15T12:21:00.000-06:00

In any modern city, you're liable to get patients who speak a multitude of languages. Fortunately, probably the most multicultural group of people in said city will be its doctors, so you're probably going to have a colleague who speaks whatever language your patient does.

Take last week; I admitted a guy whose primary language was Cantonese. He spoke a very tiny amount of English, but somewhat more than I speak Cantonese. My senior resident that night, by luck, grew up speaking Cantonese and English, so I watched as she got a much more complete history than I could have.

Now, being the culturally sensitive guy I am, I tried to pick up a couple of words. The most important word in any language for me is "pain," (and how fucked up of a statement is that, eh?) and "pain" in Cantonese sounds something like "tong" or "tung"; it's hard to tell exactly because it's an inflective language which all sounds the same to my white-guy ears.

So three days later the guy, who's had a catheter stuck in his penis for a few days (long story), pulls it out. This is more difficult to imagine than you might think, as there's an inflated balloon inside keeping it in place, so it's impossible to pull out a Foley catheter without some bleeding and, er, tearing.

I go up to his room and try to ascertain how much damage there is. I ask him, "where does it hurt?" and he looks confused. I point at his penis (which is only bleeding slightly) and ask him if it hurts, and he looks confused. I dimly remember from when I admitted him that Cantonese for pain is "tong," so I point at his penis and say "tong?" At this point he looks unbelievably befuddled and a little insulted.

After about five minutes of sign language and screaming "tong" he seems to realize what I'm getting at and says, "no, no pain." Whew! I go out and relate this story to my (also Cantonese-speaking) med student, and she starts laughing uncontrollably.

"No, no," she says. "'Tung' is pain. 'Tong' is sugar."

That's right, I spent five minutes pointing at an old guy's wang and yelling "sugar! sugar!" I can't imagine what he thinks of the health care system now.

Happy hospital thanksgiving

2006-10-09T23:36:00.000-06:00

Today, if you live north of the border, was Canadian Thanksgiving. Most people have their turkey on Sunday night, though, and leave Monday free for digestion and hockey games.

I missed my family Thanksgiving for the third time in as many years; it seems I’m always on hospital call on that holiday. This year I’d arranged my schedule so I could travel to my cousin’s wedding the previous weekend, meaning I had to make up the call on Thanksgiving weekend.

I’m not going to lie, it had been a rough few days. Friday I admitted something like ten patients to the hospital, which doesn’t sound so bad until you realize that each internal medicine consult takes like two hours if you do it right, or if you have to do any on-the-spot reading. So either you half-ass your job, or you don’t sleep. I’m not jaded enough to half-ass it yet.

Saturday, I slept.

Sunday, I was on ward call. Now, for ward call at this particular hospital there’s one resident on for all the internal medicine patients. That’s about 300 patients, several of whom are actively dying at any one time. Ward call, as one of my colleagues put it, “is like going to hell.”

Around dinnertime I was up on the fifth floor, trying to figure out what antibiotics to give to an alcoholic who’d inhaled his own secretions. This 70-something woman came up to the desk, asking if anyone would like a plate of dinner. I took a glance at the plate, and realized it looked a damn sight better than any hospital food I’ve ever seen before. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots, and cranberry sauce. And gravy.

I asked if she’d brought this from home, and she confirmed that impression. Her husband wasn’t going to eat his home-cooked dinner today, and she wondered if the nice young doctor would like to have it instead? Considering I hadn’t eaten anything but coffee and vending machine Mars bars all day, I gladly accepted. I did have to ask, however, why her husband wasn’t going to finish it, and if he was OK if I had it.

“Oh,” she said, “I’d brought this turkey to give to him, but they put a tube down his throat to help him breathe today, so he can’t eat. We didn’t want it to go to waste.” I’m still amazed she said this without tears in her eyes. She assured me it was all right, and walked back to her husband’s room, leaving me standing there flabbergasted with a plate of delicious turkey in my hands.

It amazes me sometimes how well people are able to maintain their humanity in the face of the indignities perpetuated by old age, infirmity, and the health care system. And if I’m thankful for anything today, it’s that. Happy Thanksgiving.

Medicine ate my life

2006-10-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

So. Sorry about the downtime, folks, but it's been kind of... hellish lately.

I've been doing internal medicine the past month and a half. It wasn't so bad at the University; I usually would get home by 7 o'clock or so and have a little time to pretend to set up my new condo. By the way, I moved into a new condo about four weeks ago. Haven't done shit to get it set up, mind you.

But now I'm at the Alex (another big hospital). I am the sole resident in charge of my team, which currently has about 10 patients but will likely have about 40 after a couple of nights of admissions. My staff doctor is essentially absent. I am NOT FUCKING READY FOR THIS.

Also the power company shut off my juice and it took a week to come back on. I forgot to set it up in the first place, you see; I think a sign of how much this job drains you is when you forget to do very obvious and simple tasks in the rest of your life.

I'll see you all in a few weeks. Life will get better some day soon, this I promise myself.

He can die after I've had my coffee

2006-07-20T15:48:00.000-06:00

Those of you in the health care field may be familiar with the concept of "report", which is where nurses sign over care of their patients. This is, of course, supposed to be put off for a bit in the event of an emergency, but some nurses seem to look at it as a sacred time that brooks no interruption. Seriously, I'm sure more people die in those fifteen minutes when the nurses are shut in that little room...

Also, I don't know why "report" never takes an article. It's always just "report," or "in report." Like it's a city. Report, Alberta, population 8 angry nurses.

Which led to this conversation yesterday:

ME: Hey, could you -
NURSE 1: WE'RE IN REPORT.
ME: I know, but -
NURSE 2: Look, my shift is over and I just want to sign out and go home.
ME: Yes, I'm sorry, but -
NURSE 1: Come back in five minutes.
ME: THIS MAN IS HAVING A HEART ATTACK. HE IS IN THE PROCESS OF DYING.
NURSE 1: (sighs, rolls eyes) All right, all right...

I mean, fuck. Sometimes things can't wait for you to finish report, or finish your break. This isn't paperwork. This isn't a phone call you can put off until you've had your smoke. This is someone's life; and if he's having a heart attack "time is heart" as the saying goes.

This isn't to say that the vast majority of nurses aren't dedicated, caring and hardworking. But some seem to see their career as a shit job rather than a vocation, and that's when you run into trouble and dead patients.

Oh, the guy totally wasn't having a heart attack. But when you're having "9/10 crushing chest pain," best not to take chances, eh? So anyways, that's why I'm now pretty sure I'm known as "that asshole resident." Whoops.

great balls of fire

2006-07-13T17:09:00.000-06:00

Patient: Hi, doc. I've been ejaculating blood for the past week.

Me: Sweet zombie Jesus. I mean, any other symptoms?

Patient: Well, my left testicle has seemed really enlarged and sore lately.

It is; twice the size of his left, in fact.

Me: Yeah, that's probably what's causing the blood-jizz. This can be caused by chlamydia or gonorrhea; so, uh, any affairs lately?

Patient: Absolutely not! But I have been having some pretty active sex lately. I thought I'd injured myself.

Me: *chuckling* No, that's just an infection. We'll clear that right up. But seriously, if you've been going hard enough that you thought you fucked your balls off, good work.

Patient: Thanks, doc.

Hey, everybody! Watch the resident fuck up!

2006-07-02T19:38:00.000-06:00

Today was my first day as a resident. If I've talked to you recently, you probably know that I matched to Family Medicine (not quite Emergency, I know, I know...) here in Edmonton. If I haven't talked to you recently, we should chat, guy.

I started my rotations with Emerg at the University hospital - at 6 am, on the day after Canada Day. I was, of course, nervous beyond belief the night before. If I could put a finger on it, I'd say it was akin to that combination of excitement, joy, and gut-wrenching nauseating fear that you just won't be good enough that you feel right before you lose your cherry.

Or was that just me?

I couldn't sleep last night. I went to bed early - couldn't sleep through the fireworks. Shit, I missed the fireworks. I set my alarm to wake me early - 4:15, so I'd have plenty of time to wake up and prepare myself. The fact that it's cockmeltingly hot (that phrase is copyrighted, by the way) in my apartment didn't help. Finally I managed to pass out around 1:15.

When I woke up, it wasn't to the sound of my alarm for once. I think the sun reflecting off the opposite building was what got me up. And a good thing, too, because I woke up at 6:20 - 20 minutes AFTER my shift began. My initial response, of course, was SHIT SHIT SHIT MOTHERFUCKER. My next thought was that I'd set the alarm to 4:16 PM like the retard that I am. My next thought was that, someday, I'll look back on this and laugh.

Today is not yet that day.

Fortunately, I had a fairly easygoing staff doc the first day. He was, surprisingly, OK with my display of raw unprofessionalism. And, fortunately, I didn't cock up too bad on any of my patients. Yay.

In other news I passed all my exams, went to Spain for a month, became a doctor and also bought a condo. Life, she keeps you busy. And I wonder why I don't have time to clean my room...

Damn you, Seth!

2006-02-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

I'm off work for the next week and a half - conveniently, just in time for the Olympics.

It's ironic that I'm such an Olympics junkie, given that I have the rough physical coordination of a spastic CP quad patient (I can make jokes like this because I help treat them. That makes it OK, right?)

Anyhow, this has been making the rounds of the ex-GW blogs, and since I'm currently sitting at home in my bathrobe and boxers at 10:20 am, I figure now's as good a time as ever to fill 'er out. I was tagged by Seth, incidentally; burn in hell, Seth.

Four jobs I’ve had
* Bagel Sandwich Maker
* Data Entry Clerk at an immunization office; I know what shots you've had.
* Laboratory Assistant
* Doctor (pending)

Four movies I can watch over and over
* The Party (1968, Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards)
* Super Troopers
* 28 Days Later
* Ronin

Four places I have lived
* Edmonton, Alberta
* Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
* Kungshamn, Sweden (briefly)
* Kingston, Ontario

Four TV shows I love to watch
* Arrested Development
* Scrubs
* 24
* The Sopranos

Four places I have been on vacation
* Quintana Roo, Mexico
* Fairbank Lake, Ontario
* Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Tortola (same cruise)
* Dinney World!

Four websites I visit daily
* Something Awful
* Wikipedia
* Globeandmail.com
* gmail.com

Four of my favourite foods
* Pepperoni and sausage pizza
* Pasta with bolognese sauce
* All-Bran Buds (no, really)
* This crazy fucking Indian thing with yogurt that my sister makes

Four places I would rather be right now
* On a beach somewhere in the Carribean, away from the hotels and the tourists
* Spain. Always wanted to go to Spain.
* In the emergency room (no, really)
* Montreal

Been a while, I know

2006-01-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

I'm briefly back home between interviews right now. Quick recap of the past few months:

1. Pediatric subspecialty kind of boring. ICU stressful but interesting; I got to throw in a few central lines, which is always awesome. Family med OK. Emerg elective in Kingston went well.

2. CaRMS did NOT go so well; landed five interviews off of fifteen applications. Only one of eleven for emerg went through; looks like I'll be doing family med emergency!

3. Just interviewed at my only five-year emerg program in Manitoba. Great program, and I think I stand a good chance at matching there. Unfortunately, I don't know if I can convince myself to live in Winnipeg for five years. I'll be having this debate with myself often over the next two weeks.

4. Next week will be interviewing family med in Kingston and Montreal. Drinks will be had.

Later, peeps.

The best turn-down EVER

2005-10-17T10:12:00.000-06:00

Most of your fourth year of medicine is taken up by the application for residencies. Those of you who remember speaking with me after I got into medical school may recall me saying something along the lines of, "all the pressure's off now, I'm a doctor no matter what!"

Ha.

Turns out it is, in fact, occasionally extremely difficult to get into certain programs - including emergency medicine, which is what I happen to have decided upon. The residency programs, overall, have something like a 33% acceptance rate - roughly 80 applicants for the 28 spots nationwide last year. Ouch.

The analogy I've developed to explain this is that I've fallen for the most beautiful, most popular girl in school, and everyone wants to take her to the dance. It's still worth the effort, in my mind, to ask her out, but I have to operate under the assumption that she'll say no. However, Emergency Medicine has a friend. This friend is named Family Medicine, and Family is easy. I mean, she will put out for ANYONE. She's not quite as attractive as Emergency, but she'll get you where you want to go - specifically, via the CCFP-EM program, which is a third year of family residency which lets you work in ERs.

I get the occasional disgusted look while explaining my analogy, but it's a decent framework.

Anyhow, a large part of your application for the residencies is your reference letters; you're essentially expected to get a reference letter for every rotation or elective you do in your field of choice. This is tough in ER, since you tend to spend very little time with any given doctor because your schedules rarely coincide. I've been trying to get references out of rotation coordinators, since they see all my evaluations from other doctors, but failed in the case of one from the University Hospital.

His excuse? "I can't give you a letter because I'm in rural Zambia."

Seriously. If I had a nickel for every time a girl turned me down because "I'm washing my hair... in rural Zambia, " or "I'm dating someone else.... from rural Zambia!" I'd be a richer man today.

I have to stop going after girls from rural Zambia.

Like a theme park, except with more agonizing pain

2005-09-14T17:32:00.000-06:00

For whatever reason, emergency shifts tend to have an overriding theme. Perhaps I'm just overlaying that onto my day, perhaps I'm subtly biasing myself when I pick through the charts, but I swear I can pick out a common thread to most days spent in the ER.

Yesterday, for instance, was an orthopedics day, specifically the Day That Everyone Broke Their Damn Foot. Ortho days are fun because the people are otherwise healthy and you get to knock them out and move bones back into place.

Today, by contrast, was Chronic Pain Disorder day. People with weird-ass conditions that specialists don't understand come in expecting me to help them. Fun! Some of them are well-versed in their condition, explaining what's been ruled out and what helps in the voice of someone tired of explaining to idiot medical students that no, they don't know why their bowel hurts so much, and that this dose of morphine is what they usually have. Some of them are just big old balls of crazy.

Sunday's theme was People With Disturbingly High Blood Alcohol Levels, but every day is like that at the Royal Alex, heh. We had one guy come in with a level of 99 mg/dl - by comparison, the legal limit on that scale is, uh, 17. Fortunately, he'd been drinking mouthwash, so at least he smelled minty-fresh. It almost, but not quite, masked the rancid urine odour which tends to permeate the Alex on Sunday mornings.

In non-medical news: Electric Six put on the best damn show I've seen in a while. They got indie-rock nerds dancing in the aisles, man. It was wicked. I also flirted with a cute industrial designer, who by utter coincidence was designing surgical tools for one doctor I worked with. Wish I'd got her number, but the show started unexpectedly early.

And the opening act covered Iron Maiden - and covered them well - which is always fun. I have an unironic, unashamed love for speed metal, and you do too. You're just too scared to admit it.

Three words

2005-09-11T17:09:00.000-06:00

Foreign. Body. Rectal.

Hey, did you know that if you lose a vibrator inside yourself, and it's still on, it'll run until the batteries die?

Did you know that that takes, like, a DAY?

How do I afford my rock and roll lifestyle?

2005-09-08T23:59:00.000-06:00

Obstetrics and Gyn(a)ecology is over, thank Christ. The only thing miraculous about birth is that something that large comes out of something that small. Also, to all the ladies in the crowd: GET THE EPIDURAL. PLEASE.

Emergency medicine is what I'm on now, two weeks of elective followed by four weeks of rotation. I love emergency, really; I've decided beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's what I must do. I spent most of third year wondering what I'd wind up doing; hell, I thought I'd be a psychiatrist becauase it was the only thing I hadn't hated. Well, that and you work like six hours a day for a quarter-million dollars a year.

But in the middle of my first ER rotation, I had one shift where we had two people who'd been shot by the cops while fleeing in a stolen car, one woman who'd had her face smashed in with a stereo speaker, three heart attacks, and one guy who tried to kill himself with pills and, when that failed, a very woozily-applied razor. So as I was stitching this guy's arm up - the wounds were a little weavy - I felt that hammer come down and smash me on the forehead. The sky opened up, beams of light shot down, and a voice said "THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO WITH YOUR LIFE."

And then the security guard gave me advice on stitching, because he used to be a surgeon in Russia. It was a weird day.

Now, one of the great things about emergency is that you only work 4 shifts a week; four eight-hour shifts. Compared to the 70-90 hours I was working on O&G, this is luxurious. Granted, the shifts are at odd hours, and your sleep schedule can get fucked up; f'r instance, I have to wake up in four hours, and I'm still wide awake because I woke up at noon today because I've been working weekends. Tomorrow's gonna suck... But the upside of all this is that I have time for the rest of my life. Time to study, time to update my blog, time to go to concerts.

In the next week, I'm planning on seeing three, possibly four concerts: local indie rockers The Mark Birtles Project on Saturday (they have a cowbell!), Metric on Sunday, Electric Six - my favourite dance-punk band - on Tuesday, and possibly Audioslave from the nosebleeds on the next Saturday. I haven't been to this many concerts since fourth year undergrad when I lived with the guy who booked all the bands. Now, I can do this through the magic of emergency.

Given the cost of tickets these days, I can also do this through the magic of debt. But that's why I get the high-income job in the future, right? So I can enjoy myself now? Racking up 20 large in debt a year isn't bad, right? Right?

Maybe I should start

Study study study

2005-07-12T17:38:00.000-06:00

(click to embiggen)

Took this picture last summer, at Batchawanna Bay, east of Lake Superior Provincial Park. Looks like an old Ministry of Natural Resources drop box; I just loved the look of the rusted outpost of our civilization completely overgrown by weeds.

Come to think of it, it's been almost exactly one year since I took this shot. The year in the interim has been long and difficult in some ways, rewarding and invigorating in others, and in still others perfectly scrumtulescent. Thank god it's almost over.

Pictures!

2005-07-11T17:42:00.000-06:00

Sweet, I finally got un-stupid about Blogger's picture function.

This is me today. Note beard; too lazy to shave.

More pictures to follow when I'm not cramming for my pediatrics exam in two days.

Maybe smoking isn't such a bad idea after all

2005-07-02T17:00:00.000-06:00

As of yesterday, July 1, 2005, every bar in Edmonton is smoke-free. On the one hand, this is great because a) now I don't reek like smoke when I come home, and b) now I'm not quite so prone to collapsing on a filthy, beer-stained dance floor in an asthmatic fit.

You can make the argument about 'personal liberty,' as regards one's right to smoke in a private establishment, but really, your liberty runs out when you harm me. And second hand smoke is pretty noxious to those of us with sensitive lungs, regardless of the semi-proven cancer risk. There are, of course, other risks, as evidenced by bitch if you burn me with that butt ONE more time it's going UP YOUR FUCKING NOSTRIL.

So, in general, I highly support the bar smoking ban, and I know it'll lead to me patronizing more bars that I would've avoided before.

Except.

See, one of the side effects of smoke is that it deadens scent. Your nose becomes less responsive to smells when it's in a smoky room, overpowered by the miasma of tobacco. And yeah, it can smell pretty bad, but it's an odour that you can deal with. Last night, because we left heading out to the bar until late, the only place we could reliably get into was the Commercial Hotel, one of Edmonton's finer dives. At first, it was fantastic, because hey! No smoke! Nothing to blur your vision of the 40-year-old cougar beckoning with her wizened hand!

However, we quickly became aware of an... odour... permeating the area in front of the bar. A straw poll indicated three in favour of 'vomit,' one in favour of 'spilled beer,' but he's an idiot so we went with 'vomit.' And chances are that smell's always been there, but it's been masked by decades of smoke that never got fully cleared out. So maybe, just maybe, as a nausea prevention tool, smoke ain't so damn bad.

Of course, the truly wise man will simply not go to bars that smell like the inside of a stomach. So we left.

***

Pediatrics is fun, but it's hard work. I mean, these are seriously the longest hours I've ever had. My last week on the unit I spent 90 hours in the hospital, not counting at home study time. Or, at least, I would've if I hadn't had my immune system collapse one day under the weight of all the viruses these snot-nosed little bastards drag in. Pediatricians must be invulnerable to disease after their residencies.

Peds is also kind of depressing. Most kids are healthy, healthy enough to come in, get checked out, and go home. But the ones in hospital are the ones that are truly fucked - cerebral palsy, quadriplegia, seizure disorders, mental retardation, the works. We call those the 'Dr. X specials' because one particular local doctor takes care of so many of them. And it's absolutely terrifying when you think that THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOUR FUTURE KIDS. Seriously, it's enough to make you live in fear for an entire nine-month pregnancy.

What's even more soul-deadening, however, are the kids who have degenerative disorders, like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. I had a thirteen-year old who was wheelchair bound; he'll be dead by eighteen. How do you keep on a bright face for that? It's so horribly cosmically unfair, but you've got a responsibility to make the kid feel as though nothing is wrong. And that's goddamn tough to do.

Wow, that was depressing. I promise the next post will actually have some more upbeat content. If nothing else, the sun is shining and I'm about to go for a run. Use your legs, kids; you never know when you might lose them.

Cured by the power of ROCK

2005-04-11T23:41:00.000-06:00

There's a new radio station in Edmonton, land of the historically mundane and soulless corporate tunesmiths. Radio Sonic, broadcasting from a trailer by the side of the highway, promises to bring modern rock to the airwaves of the 'Chuk, and I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl having her first Sapphic experience.

For years your alternatives in this city consisted of a) The Bear, which was better before its playlist started consisting entirely of turgid nu-metal, and b) Easy Rock 104.9, which apparently every nurse must play by law at work. If it's supposed to be so inoffensive and calming, why does it make me want to hurt people, huh?

In any case, Sonic pledges to be cast in the mold of Toronto's The Edge, or at least what the Edge claims to be. So far I'm not disappointed; they're conducting their 'broadcast tests' and have been playing music that I actually LIKE. Yesterday morning I was driving home from a night on call at the hospital and heard 'Battle Flag' by the Lo-Fidelity All-Stars and shouted 'HELL FUCKING YES' to the apparent consternation of the elderly couple stopped beside me.

Jesus. Iggy Pop just came on. I need new pants. This station is like your cool friend who not only likes the same music you do, but has like a thousand CDs of obscure bands that you'd probably like if only you got to hear them once in a while. Well, I'm hearing them now. Thanks, you indie-rock music geeks!

***

Had an epiphany on surgery on Thursday. During clinic I had four separate patients compliment my performance to the preceptor; afterwards he told me he might get one of those per rotation for a student on a regular basis. So apparently I'm fantastic dealing with patients.

Now, don't think this is me getting all cocky. I'm distinctly AVERAGE when it comes to my level of knowledge, at least as applies to surgery. And I can't tie knots for shit. But at least now I have a better idea of where my strengths are, and that gives me some empirical evidence to base my choice of career on. D-Day is coming up in a few short months...

***

Holy fuck! The Clash! I'm in love!

A real horrorshow

2005-03-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

You do not know the stuff of nightmares until you've done surgery.

The setting here is an operating room: a poor, unfortunate gentleman with rectal cancer. It's too close to the end to make anything workable for an asshole, so the whole thing has to come out. The procedure, if you're interested, is an abomino-perineal resection, which basically means "we cut you in two places, one of which you're really not going to be happy about."

The upper incision is straightforward stuff; cut open the abdomen, divide the bowel, close off a few blood vessels and away you go. The lower incision involves spreading this poor bastard's legs apart, and cutting a hole about the diameter of a compact disc centred on his anus. Core that whole thing out until you reach the abdomen, at which point you meet up with the upper surgeon's hands. Oh, be sure to have the student standing behind the ass guy for maximum impact.

At this point, you've essentially got a sixteen-inch drilling sample, which you then have to remove from the patient. The easiest way to do this, of course, is to PULL IT ALL OUT THROUGH THE ASS. The whole mass is delivered like some horror-film version of childbirth, leaving a gaping cavity (which is, in fact, dilated at least 10 centimetres; time to push!). You can see daylight streaming in from the abdominal cut.

Closing up is pretty straightforward; the upper guy connects what's left of the colon to a permanent colostomy bag - no asshole anymore for you, sir! - and the lower guy just puts in a fuckload of stitches, leaving the patient a smooth plane like some rectal castrato.

At this point, the student will wish to go wash their eyes out with bleach. Let them.

Dragon's Tail! Monkey's Paw! Uh... Knee To Face!

2005-02-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday night I went to see Ong-Bak, a film which really marks a return to the best - and worst - of the early martial arts films.

In the pro column: ridiculous stunts, no wire work, no CG bullshit. Just absolutely insane physicality. It's the kind of movie that forces you to stop and say, in a strong, clear voice, "What the FUCK?" because some guy just got kneed in the chest thirty feet above the ground and fell. Hard.

Con: plot? What plot?

The main character's martial art is Muay Thai, which I'm guessing is the same thing as Thai kickboxing. It's a fluid, graceful, and remarkably asskicking art in the hands of Tony Jaa. However, two of its odder characteristics are a) a reliance on knees and elbows, which while powerful come with a severely reduced range as price, and b) a particular move I like to call 'The Shove of Doom,' wherein Jaa stands in place and pushes people. Crude, yet effective.

My personal favourite mixed blessing of this movie, however, is the enemies our hero, the marvelously named Ting, faces at an underground fight club. Each appears to be an exemplar of some particular form of martial art. They include, in order of appearance:

A) A gargantuan Australian man who appears much like what would happen if Slash had been injecting steroids into his arms in lieu of playing guitar solos with no amplifier during the November Rain video. His martial art appears to involve slapping people very hard and molesting women. In short, he's much like most Australians.

B) A skinny Asian guy with an afro whose skill appears to be shuffling his feet back and forth rapidly. I don't think he actually hits Ting at any point, he just stands there shuffling his feet like some kind of retarded minstrel show.

C) Some wordless white guy who fights exclusively with furniture. Seriously; every move the man makes involves hitting Ting with chairs, hitting Ting with tables, hitting Ting with bits of tables, or defending against Ting with the occasional sofa bed.

My goal in life is now to develop a martial art revolving entirely around furniture. I'll be the first Ikea-ka in history, teaching my devoted students how to manipulate the enemy's futons and affordable blonde-wood cabinets in such a way as to defeat them using nothing more than an Allen wrench.

Man, FUCK medicine. I have a new dream now.

Love in an Elevator

2005-02-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

The romance started quietly enough; I held the door for a woman. I wasn’t so much attempting to be chivalrous as simply polite, but she must have read more into my gesture than I intended. The smile she cracked lit up the hallway like a sudden dawn over the limb of the earth.

I turned slightly, took a closer look at the beneficiary of my courtesy. Shoulder-length brown hair framed high cheekbones, a pert nose, and disturbingly blue eyes. Her lips were twisted upwards on the right, a sardonic grin quickly replacing the beaming smile she’d displayed only moments before, perhaps realizing the ludicrousness of appearing so grateful for my not letting the door slam in her face.

“Thanks,” she said, with the barest hint of a laugh at the tail end.

“No problem,” I muttered. I was shocked at how gravelly my voice sounded, but upon reflection I realized I hadn’t spoken aloud in several hours. Paperwork and the drive home had given me the voice of a B-movie villain.

I cleared my throat and licked my lips, dried out from the winter air. There was a high-pressure system sweeping down from the Arctic, hugging the eastern edge of the Rockies and sucking the moisture – not to mention most of the fun – out of the city.

She raised an eyebrow quizzically, noticing my wandering tongue. Shit, I thought. She thinks I’m coming on to her. I thought some more. Wait a minute. Maybe I want to come on to her.

I let my eyes flicker downwards, just long enough for her to notice, but not for her to know that I knew she noticed. She was wrapped in a nylon parka, in the same red that would adorn a Chinese restaurant, for luck. She’d opened the garment in the parking garage, however, and practicality parted ways to reveal a deep brown sweater, horizontal stripes highlighting her breasts, the sweater tight enough to reveal a bra worn one size too small.

I moved through the door into the hall, and repeated “No problem” with a voice suddenly clear. Her mouth dialed up to the right even more, and for some reason she reminded me of Elvis Costello: Little sniggers/on your lips. I broke eye contact, turned, and sensed her follow.

We passed through the next door into the lobby, repeating the same social niceties – “Thanks no problem” – but with that sudden undercurrent of eroticism throbbing beneath.

I leaned against the mahogany rail, and stretched. The far edge of my vision caught her eyes searching me as I did so. Long-quiescent capillaries suddenly dilated, and I felt a surge of blood. I looked at the ceiling, my mouth a parody of her smile, and hoped she noticed.

We found ourselves the only two passengers on the elevator. She pressed the button three floors below mine, and our hands briefly grazed. Her skin was warm and just barely damp with sweat. She withdrew quickly, embarrassed, taking in a small breath through suddenly parted lips.

I smiled in a way that I hoped was reassuring, but which probably came out looking predatory. She smiled back, her cheeks now reddened.

The elevator jerked to life, grinding slowly up the rails. It was an old seventies model, the electronic beeps announcing the passage of each floor now as grating as my voice had been. We tried not to be caught looking at each other, failing miserably. Finally, somewhere around the tenth floor, I fixed my eyes on hers. She drew in a deep breath this time, her nostrils flaring from what I assumed was her arousal.

“Jesus,” she said. “Was that you?”

What? “Um…” I forced out.

“What the hell did you eat? Oh, Christ.” She looked away as my eyes began to water.

“Oh… oh, shit. God, I’m sorry,” I stammered, my deflating erection revealing my penis’ disappointment with me. “Look, I just started this new medication, and it’s got all these intestinal side effects…” The words rushed out despite the awful and immediately apparent futility of the situation.

“Yeah. Whatever. Just…” She broke off in disgust as the door clanged open at her floor. Her figure, mirrored in the battered steel side of the elevator, shook its head as it stormed down the hall. She gleamed through the film of tears now standing on my eyes.

Gasping for oxygen, I stumbled out of the elevator and into my apartment, sagging against the wall, too tired to move. Eventually, I picked myself up, tossed off my boots, and went into the kitchen to search for a meal with no simple carbohydrates whatsoever.

Rollin', rollin', rollin', fuck you Fred Durst

2005-02-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

So: I know it's been a while since I've posted much of anything on this blog. But that's because I've been busy, honest! Third year med does get kind of insane, to the point where you wonder whether you'll ever have time to do anything else with your life. But I'm assured it gets better as it goes along.

In any event, tonight I want to talk about a simple pleasure, [i]viz:[/i] rolling coins. My sister bought some little plastic coin rollers, and gave the extras to my mom, who gave the extras to me. This prompted me to go out and buy some of my own, and get the giant pile of coin off my desk.

The end result? $67.50 in dimes, nickels, and pennies. No quarters. It was a big pile, I'm telling you.

In any case, it's all part of my 'get my life back in order' plan. Step one is to clean the fuck out my apartment. Step two is to get back writing. At the present time, there is no step three; but really, is any self-improvement plan ever done? Can you ever say, 'OK, I'm perfect, don't have to work now?' Unless you're, like, NHL hall of famer Ken Dryden, you probably can't. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that one shouldn't settle for how they are. There's always room for improvement. Especially in you.

Calgary: YEEE-HAW!

2005-01-10T01:20:00.000-07:00

I went down to Calgary to visit Ryan for a couple of days over my all-too-brief Christmas break. Fun was had by all, as well as steak. Lots and lots of steak. This at a place called the 'Cattle Baron,' which is a decent steakhouse despite the name, and not, say, an Arby's knockoff or possibly a gay bar.

Our initial plan was to hit Outlaws, a bar where Ryan's disturbingly attractive friend apparently works. Unfortunately, Outlaws is closed on Monday and Tuesday nights. Instead, we went to a) Frank Sisson's Silver Dollar Casino (And Bowling!) where we killed two hours and I learned how not to look like a complete moron playing blackjack. We also went to b) Ceilidh's, or one of the other infinite variant spellings thereof, which is an Irish-pub-cum-meat-market. Like most meat markets, but with a paler, more potato-oriented clientele. It's the kind of bar where the bartender...esses... get up on the bar and perform a faux-lesbian show, and then pour shots down the throats of bystanders. I'm only a little miffed that Ryan got his free and she decided to charge me $5.25 for mine. I'm not entirely sure what that indicates, but it can't be good in the long run.

The following day, once I'd recovered, we headed to the shooting range, which was brought up in the following conversation, had on the preceding day:

Me: Hey, a shooting range.
Ryan: Wanna go?
Me: Sure!

I figured, hey, when in Calgary, do as the rednecks do. It was pretty easy to get into the range - minimal safety lectures were had. Once in the firing range, I noticed several things. The first is that guns are very loud. The second is that I jump like a little girl when loud things go off within four feet of my head. The third is that ammo clips are a goddamn bitch to load. And the fourth, according to the range warden, was that my Glock was jamming because I was holding it 'limp-wristed.' That's right: I'm apparently too faggy to fire a weapon.

Still, it was admittedly fun firing off fifty rounds of a police weapon. But after we were through with a box of ammo apiece for the pistols, Ryan rented an AK-47. I got to fire off five rounds, the legal maximum for an assault-rifle clip in Canada. And man, those fuckers are disturbingly powerful. You feel the recoil down to your feet. The guy firing his rifle across the range creates a pressure wave you feel splash over your cheeks. You realize, 'man, I could take on the entire city with this,' which is why it's probably a good thing that the range warden is right there beside you with a loaded weapon on his hip, to discourage any Grand Theft Auto-inspired thoughts.

The gun store also sold bumper stickers, one reading 'Terrorist Hunting Licence - #911-01 - No Bag Limit No Season.' Wow. Those people sure are never forgetting. When they're old and grey, their grandchildren will ask them, 'What happened on September 11?' and they'll look up with moist eyes and say, 'Something I'll never forget.' But they'll forget anyhow, because they're old and old people do shit like that and the universe has a sense of irony.

Thoughts on White Christmas (1954)

2004-12-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

One of the more joyous Christmas traditions in which my family, and I suspect indeed most families in the civilized world, participates is the watching of Christmas movies. The Christmas movie is a peculiar entity, considering how gawdawfully bad most of them would be considered if they didn't involve Santa or snow or Jesus or some shit. Still, they do function remarkably well to get you into the holiday mood, and I really wish I'd done more watching in the days leading up until Christmas, considering how much time I'd been spending with patients with pancreatitis and how very un-Christmassy that is.

In any event, I spent the evening of Christmas Day watching the 1954 classic
White Christmas, featuring a somewhat sober Bing Crosby, a Danny Kaye in full camp, Rosemary Clooney before she got all humongous, and That Chick That Nobody Actually Knows The Name Of (Vera Ellen, for the record). Thoughts on my umpteenth viewing:

1) Wow, how was it a surprise when Danny Kaye eventually came out of the closet? The man was flaming. Right, you don't want to get married because you're 'scared stiff.' Uh-huh.

2) Didn't Irving Berlin write this song? Wasn't he Jewish? I guess it's pretty non-denominational. Not like Good King Wencescesincestislaus or whatever the fuck his name is.

3) The 'Minstrel Number' is pretty offensive when you remember what minstrel shows actually were, with the blackface and all. But what may be more offensive is that red plume on the back of Rosemary Clooney's ass. My family refers to this as her 'fartcatcher.'

4) Jesus, they've got, like, an entire army of gay men as dancers. You could storm Tikrit with these guys.

5) Heh, Nameless Dancer told Danny Kaye she was looking for a man who was "charming and gay." Heh heh. Oh, Jesus, I've been in Alberta too long.

6) Look, Rosemary Clooney freaked out and left for New York. And she brought her homosexual army with her! Oh, that one guy was in West Side Story. THAT'S where he's from.

7) Oh, shit, the tree fell over. No, really, the Christmas tree fell over during the movie and I missed the last half-hour trying to set it back up. There's sap everywhere. This sweater WAS new.

Bronchitis, Death, and Fruit Bars (In No Particular Order)

2004-12-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

In addition to being a lazy bastard (see below), I am also a sick one. Coming off a snowboarding trip to Panorama, I appear to have contracted the lung version of that dreaded medical student’s disease, the CancerAIDS. Might even be EbolaCancerAIDS, I’m not sure. But I do know I’ve been coughing pretty much nonstop, occasionally producing some blood, for the past three days. This is unfortunate, since I’ve just started Internal Medicine, one of the more demanding rotations, and not a time to be getting sick.

Things came to a head on Wednesday, supposedly my first night on call. It was hellaciously busy; the internal medicine service got six consults from 4 until 5, and at 9 PM we had 11 patients clogging the emergency room. Of course, as I’m new at this, I’m very slow in processing patients so I’d gotten one done by myself while the rest were split between the doctor on call and the resident.

Granted, matters were not much helped by the lung infection of doom. During one particularly nasty coughing bout, a passing nurse dragged me over to a thermometer, stuck it in my ear, told me my temperature was 38.2 degrees, and got the resident to tell me to go home. At that point I realized that a) I’d tell any one of my patients with a fever and coughing their lungs out to stay home from work, and b) I was probably not inspiring much confidence amongst the patient population witnessing me slowly die from oxygen deprivation. So I finished my patient writeup (only took 3 hours in total!) and bailed. Er, after I laid down on a cot until the walls started melting, that is. And I’ve been stuck at home, doped out on NeoCitran ever since.

The unfortunate aside to this is that a good friend of mine’s mother passed away of cancer that night, as it happens in the same hospital, on my service. They were aware that her son’s a medical student, so they kept her care out of the hands of those of us who knew her, but it still rams home the fact that, some (most?) of the time, there’s nothing anybody in medicine can do to save the patient. And we just have to sit there and watch them slip away. And it’s worse – so much worse – when you know the person going, and sit there helplessly while the nice woman who made you tzatziki and roast lamb struggles to breathe.

***

On to happier things: snowboarding! I still suck at snowboarding! The hill at Panorama was, sadly, covered in ice; since I’m still learning how to carve, I fall a lot, and falling on ice fucking HURTS. I probably only went about six hours total on the weekend before my knees and quads gave out, which is just as well given how much I’d been drinking. The weekend was fun as hell; however, I did realize that I’m generally happier sitting drunkenly in a hot tub in the mountains than falling down the mountain strapped to a fiberglass plank. Go figure. Oh, and the name of the resort (Panorama) is very apt.

I also made a fantastic discovery that weekend: Fruit Source bars. God, those things are fantastic; essentially, they’re compressed fruit, roughly the size of a small granola bar. Every (tasty) bar contains 3 goddamn servings of fruits and vegetables. Two of those and you’re set for the day! Say goodbye to scurvy, everybody! Your teeth are staying just where they are! Granted, we'll probably find out in a few years that ingredient number one is "Green, Soylent," but in the interim they're a good way to get all that heart-preserving fruity goodness.

So that’s my public service announcement for today. And that’s long enough, as well… My next update will be even more interesting, I promise: that’s where I talk about the morgue, and the Incredible Exploding Woman. Stay tuned!

I am a lazy, lazy bastard

2004-12-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

(Note: this was written Dec. 6 but my internet access has been limited for the last few weeks)

But a busy one, however. Hopefully that’ll excuse my neglect of this page for several months; apparently that’s starting to become an issue thanks to this nascent ex-GW webring, what with everyone linking to this ossified site and all. I promise I’ll get some links up of my own as soon as I figure out how to HTML myself out of a wet paper bag.

Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was returning home via Saskatchewan. Yep. Still flat. The final day of a long, long road trip seems to drag on endlessly. Any joy one feels at returning home finally is muted compared to the primal need to curl up in a ball and sleep for three days. At least, that’s how it felt to me. Maybe I’m strange.

The Monday following my return to Edmonton was something of a watershed, because it marked the first time I’d worked in a hospital for any length of time as a student. As trials by fire go, my elective in Neurology wasn’t particularly bad; not least of which because they didn’t expect me to do call. Probably a good idea, as I hadn’t gone through Link Block and didn’t know a medical chart from my ass. I was able to see some pretty neat cases, too: some strange forms of cerebellar degeneration that nobody – staff, residents, and least of all students – were able to explain; a case of somatization disorder, which is where the patient is, upon close examination, pretty obviously faking their symptoms and needs either a psychiatrist or an exorcist; and some hydrocephalic disorders which mimic Parkinson’s Disease.

If anyone reading this really, really wants to know what any of the above means, drop me an e-mail and I’ll explain it in gory detail. Professional curiosity is the worst kind of enthusiasm if you’re not in that profession, eh?

Of course, there’s the depressing downside of Neurology: stroke service. I can’t imagine a more awful way to go out than to spend the last several years of my life as an incontinent, incoherent semi-vegetable. We had one case of a basilar artery blockage – that’ll take out the connection between your brain and the rest of your body, but leave everything else intact. So you’re able to be kept alive on a ventilator, and you’re able to think and hear and see, but you can’t move anything except maybe your eyes. It’s called ‘Locked-In Syndrome’ for a very real and very horrible reason: you’re a head in a box, essentially. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It bites on the medical side, too; we’re very, very good at diagnosing strokes, but since there’s essentially nothing you can do after the first six hours or so, it becomes a depressing roundabout of futility.

“Good news! We found out what’s wrong with you!”
“Great! Can you fix me?”
“…no. I’ll have the nurse bring you your bedpan.”

Neuro was followed by a return to school for ‘Link Block,’ which is where they teach you all that practical stuff – like filling in charts, for example – that they didn’t quite get around to in the first two years while they were rehashing my undergraduate classes. Oh, and they do this in three weeks. The highlight of this block was doing my ‘mock ward day’ where I interviewed a patient. This patient had developed some kind of infection and had been laid up in bed for two weeks. Not a huge problem, except this patient developed pressure sores because she weighed well over five hundred pounds. I try and think of needing three nurses to turn me whenever I want to curb my appetite for whatever reason – works like a charm.

After Link comes not Zelda (ehl oh ehl) but the rotations. These are where the bulk of learning happens, where you remember everything you’d forgotten in the first two years of medical school because you had nothing practical to which you could relate all the information pouring into your skull. I lucked out and started with Psychiatry, which is a sweetheart of a rotation by any measure. Days started late: my preceptor didn’t arrive until 9:45, usually, which meant I could get up around nine, come in at 9:30, say hi to our THREE patients, and be halfway done my coffee by the time she got there. I got full marks for punctuality – and remember, I’m a man who’s routinely slept through an entire week of classes at a time. A woman after my own heart, this doctor is. Days also ended early, as we only had three to five inpatients at most times. And call was a joke: at no point did I get called past 9:30 PM, for any reason. Oh, and the nurses in the clinic gave me cookies. Psych ruled: I’m half-thinking of making my career in it simply due to lifestyle reasons.

The cases we saw were pretty interesting, too: at one point, one of the doctors called me downstairs to talk to a patient who’d decided to remove his genitals with liquid nitrogen and a hammer. Talking to schizophrenics is also fascinating, especially when they don’t trust you. To wit:

ME: So, do you feel you have any special powers?
PATIENT: (long, unblinking pause) No.
PATIENT’S HELPFUL ROOMMATE: Now, that’s not what you told me earlier.
PATIENT: (almost bashfully) OK, I’m a wizard.
ME: So, uh, do you use your powers for good or for evil?
PATIENT: For good. Mostly.

I also had a three-hundred pound manic woman with fifteen rotten teeth (I know how many there were, because she had them all removed on her seventh day of admission) try to hit on me. She gradually realized that it wasn’t going to happen, in no small part because her medication was kicking in and she was becoming a little more in touch with reality. I found I could measure her progress by how sullen and bitchy she was towards me.

After psych came a month in Grande Prairie doing rural family medicine. There is NOTHING to do in Grande Prairie, except apparently pick up at bars. And, from my privileged position in the health clinic, I knew that was a bad idea due to the RAGING CHLAMYDIA EPIDEMIC going ‘round town. You treat symptomatic STDs with Cipro. We ran out of Cipro.

Finally – and I promise I’ll write more later, but it’s late and my battery’s running low – I came down to Calgary to do two weeks at the medical examiner’s office, working with the deaddies (as I like to call them). And I realize how much I need to write, which is why I’m up at 2:30 in the AM writing on my laptop: can’t sleep because of ideas going through head. Great feeling, that. More later.

Cross-Country Road Trip Day A Million: A Slow Day in Devils Lake, North Dakota

2004-08-09T23:33:00.000-06:00

If there’s an appropriate adjective for the trip through far western Michigan, northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and most of North Dakota, it’s ‘boring.’ Or maybe ‘stultifying.’ Certainly not ‘engaging,’ or even ‘oddly arousing,’ that’s for sure.

But one thing I’m coming to realize is that it’s not really an emotion that goes away with time. Everybody here appears to be bored, including the state troopers in Devils Lake, ND. Because that’s the only possible reason I can think of for why they pulled me over: doing 75 in a 70 zone would hardly cause the cops to bat an eyelash anywhere else. Hell, the cops do 130 on the 401. I’m not really annoyed or inconvenienced by the stop; it’s only $25. I’m just baffled. I guess the cop just wanted somebody to talk to.

Oh, and I locked my keys in my car in Grand Forks. I’d pulled over to stretch my legs and take pictures of the eerily massive University of North Dakota arena. 11,000 seats and $110 million for an arena in a teeny little town in a dinky little state. I never got the American obsession with college sports. Anyhow, I was a tard and left the keys on the passenger side seat. But Triple-A saved my ass. Thanks for the membership, Mom!

Minot, ND, is even smaller than Grand Forks. But the hotel is cheap. Which probably explains why the phone doesn’t work.

Cross-Country Road Trip Day I Forget: Nothing Much Happened

2004-08-09T23:32:00.000-06:00

Except in St. Ignace, Michigan, just over the Mackinac Bridge, I pulled into a rest stop and asked for the number of a mechanic. In Mackinaw City, where I’d stopped to rest, I’d noticed that my car was dripping (water, I think, from the engine area). This obviously worried me.

The guy in St. Ignace asked me, when I said I thought the dripping was water, if I had the air conditioning on. I did, and he said: “oh, it’s condensation.” Yeah. I don’t use the AC much in Alberta.

Oh, I also met a couple on the shore of Lake Superior, whose son is starting grad school at the University of Alberta in the fall. Cool coincidence.

Hamilton to Toronto: Big Waterfalls, Amusement Parks, and the Korean Meat Coma

2004-08-09T23:31:00.000-06:00

The last couple of weeks of my vacation fairly flew by in a blur. I spent the first few days after Kingston hanging out with my old roommate Shannon. She took me to Niagara Falls, where her folks live, and I finally got to put my digital camera to good use. Those falls are big, and require many megapixels, yo. We also went to stay with her brother, Scott, in the Beaches area of T.O. I spent roughly 20 minutes looking for parking there, too. Fuckin’ Toronto. I think Scott was glad to have me over, though, since he finally had someone to play Halo with. Someone who kicked his ass while being a total shotgun bitch, coincidentally.

After that, it was off to the wilds of Yonge & Sheppard to visit Polly (another old roommate) and Jen (an old friend). Fun times were had; Polly’s moving in with her boyfriend in Sept., and that makes me start to feel old. Or, rather, that my friends are maturing and I’m not. Score! On that Wednesday, after Geoff had rolled into town, I convinced him to take the day off work (who needs to do clinical research?) and go to Paramount™ Canada’s® Wonderland© , the land of many coasters. And it was fun. Even the white water ride, which got us thoroughly soaked, leaving underwear riding up my ass for hours.

Finally, I topped everything off by staying with Matty & Eric (two more old roommates) in downtown Toronto, at Queen and University. It’s wicked-awesome to see a city when you have friends who do cool shit for a living, like be DJs. At the very least, you meet cool people. Including those crazy 80s kids with the bad hair at that one club in Koreatown. Seriously, scenesters? You’re the ‘hip guy’ for maybe a dozen people in your little social group. Everyone else thinks you’re that knob with a bad haircut who plays Morrissey too loud. I’m just saying, is all.

My last night there (last Monday) Eric took me to the Korean Grill, down the street from his apartment. We had a lot of meat; several trays full, each. I think, due to the overdose on that quantity of animal flesh, we entered into some kind of meat-induced trance state, where everything was deep and meaningful and tasted char-broiled. It was like Zen meditation, but based on barbeque.

And then, after collecting two private parking tickets that apparently I don’t have to pay (thanks, City of Toronto councilors!) I left. And my trip was satisfying. Yeah.

Kingston

2004-07-31T17:09:00.000-06:00

Man, there’s a lot of nostalgia involved in going back to the place where you spent your undergraduate years. You start recognizing landmarks on the way into town, say around Cobourg. You drive though Kingston’s shitty, rundown neighbourhoods – hi, North of Princess! – and the memories start coming hard and fast. By the time you get into the Ghetto, you start having clear flashbacks to your time there. "Hey, I got drunk there!" "Hey, I puked in that alley!" "Hey, I was beaten by Kingston PD in that doorway! Wicked!"

Got to see a whole bunch of friends in K-town, too, which was awesome. Jenny put me up for a few days: her cat likes me, I think, and that’s never bad. Oh, and I ran into soon-to-be Professor Yonek outside the shiny new chem building, and went for drinks later with him and probably-never-to-be Colonel Ryan. Also, at various points I saw Dave, Sian, and Kem.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that nobody ever leaves Kingston. I half expect to wake up and find that the last years have all been a crazy dream. If that's the case, I fully plan on being a guy like the Arts ’72 dude who wanders around in his jacket. Because that guy's awesome.

Sudbury

2004-07-31T17:05:00.000-06:00

I was late getting out of Montreal; I slept in, I got lost in the city. Apparently the concept that ‘major roads should lead to the highway’ is foreign to the Quebecois. In any case, as I was trying to make up time to get to Sudbury to pick up my parents from the airport, I got busted by the OPP. Since I was trying to catch up to the Winnebagos in front of me before we hit the oncoming passing lane, I was going… fast. Like 143 in a 90 fast.

The ticket was only $157 (got busted down; thank God I’m white!). I probably could’ve gotten it reduced if I’d paid it in person, but $157 is a reasonable price to pay to stay the fuck out of North Bay.

The Camp (which is what we call our family’s cottage) is nice, as ever. Restful. There’s nothing better than going for a swim at night, when the lake is like glass, and the Milky Way is there in duplicate, one version slightly rippled. Got a lot of reading done, too; all my insanely geeky sci-fi novels in the safety of the family compound, saving the more ‘literate’ novels for when I’m with friends. Shallow, I know, but I guess I’m just a superficial man. In any event, it was perfectly restful.

Oh, except for that tick that bit me on the eyelid. Yeah, ew. The fucking eyelid. Of all the places to potentially get infected with Lyme Disease, it’s there. I thought, initially, it was a glob of mascara, but then realized I hadn’t worn mascara since that one night in Tijuana. Picked it off, but apparently gave myself an ingrown hair on my lower eyelid. Ew ew ew ew ew. God, biology disgusts me sometimes.

Montréal: Best. City. Ever.

2004-07-12T10:19:00.000-06:00

Montréal is the best city ever and I love it and I'm going to marry it and have its babies.

Probably not that last bit; birthing city-babies would sting.

In any case, this city is awesome. For those of you from Edmonton, picture Whyte Avenue. Now picture it being eight times as long. Oh, and there's two dozen Whyte Avenues, each hipper than the last. In fact, it's fair to say that this city is probably the hippest city on the face of the planet.

I could be wrong on that last statement, though; I've never been to Abu Dhabi, and I hear the ladies there get FREAKY underneath their robes. But I might just be starting rumours again.

I rolled in on Thursday; I spent the evening walking around Le Plateau and being awestruck by the sheer hipness. It takes a couple of days, but most people get over it.

Friday I went for a run on Mont-Royal; I'm most likely going to go again today. Nice spot for a jog. After, my friend Sofi, who's donated a bed in her apartment, hosted a party. Sofi throws great partys; let's just say it took me less than 36 hours to accomplish, in Montreal, more than I have in two years of living in Edmonton. Did I mention I love this city?

Saturday I slept most of the day, (and read Breakfast of Champions) but Sofi 'dragged' me to go see By Divine Right, who rock the motherfuck out. Yeah. Top 10 shows ever, man.

Sunday I went for sandwiches at Santropol (great restaurant); it's kind of neat how in Montreal everybody switches languages four or five times during the course of ordering a meal. You judge how well the other person is understanding you, and switch between English and French accordingly. There's no rhyme or reason; just people muddling through their Activities of Daily Living as best they can. After that we went to go see Les Tamtam, which is this crazy hippie remnant where a bunch of people go hang out on the slopes of Mont-Royal and play the bongos and smoke weed. You kids and your hippie shit. It kind of loses its counterculture credibility by being scheduled 'every Sunday.' Oh, and Vice has some good pictures of this. We saw the "Zurich-looking motherfucker" there. He didn't have any pants on.

After that, we went to go check out the Jazz Festival. They've blocked off a bunch of streets near Place-Des-Arts and put on a bunch of free concerts. Unfortunately, the only thing going on was the Cirque du Soleil production, and we couldn't get in to find seats, so we had to stand outside and watch it on TV. After it ended, I saw a bit of actual jazz, but I left early because it was 11:15 and my feet hurt and I had a 40-minute walk ahead of me.

Today I'm going to go check out the old city, and buy a hunk of meat from Schwartz's, and go see Los Straitjackets, who dress in Mexican wrestling masks and play surf music. Wicked-awesome.

God, I hope McGill doesn't have stupid Quebec red-tape nonsense. I'd love to come here for residency.

Cross-Canada Road Trip Days 3 & 4: I Never Want To Drive Again

2004-07-09T12:05:00.001-06:00

July 8, 2004

I didn't write anything yesterday because I was ensconced at the Kelly Family compound west of Sudbury. Ha, 'compound' makes it sound like we should have an arsenal of firearms and a rabid, racist version of Christianity going on. Instead, we have a sauna and Sleeman's. I prefer our kind of compound, frankly.

It's good that I stopped and took some time to chill with the grandparents (who are named Kelly, if that wasn't glaringly obvious) and my aunt and uncle and cousins. It's probably the only thing keeping me from shooting myself in the face, the stretch from Sault Ste. Marie to Mattawa (east of North Bay) being the worst stretch of highway on the face of the planet. It's potholed and rough, and passed through scrub and rock and shitty little mining towns, and is one lane with no passing lanes to get around the Winnebagos. Christ, the motherfucking WINNEBAGOS. The unpassable hulks are EVERYWHERE.

One thing I noticed on my way down is the patented Northern Ontario Rock Graffiti (tm). There's no overpasses along the highway from about Winnipeg to North Bay - 2000 kilometres or so. However, since the road's been blasted out of solid granite, what there are are tons of roadside rock faces. Nearly every one is tagged with spray paint, either declaring the eternal love of two seventeen-year-olds who broke up three months later (PAM + MIKE 4 EVER) or the supremacy of WHITE RIVER HIGH SCHOOL GRAD '86. Highway 17 is a 21-hour film reel of kids from small towns mutely trying to leave their permanent mark on the world through gallons of white paint.

I can't imagine feeling any accomplishment in that, though: "Boys, we've done it. Everyone will know that GRAD 95 does, in fact, RULE. Now let's go home, be unemployed, and drink!" This 12-hour drive from hell gets a hard F.

The Ottawa Valley, by contrast, is really nice, and the roads are better. The road from Mattawa is hilly and lined with giant spruce forests; it reminds me of B.C., but with less in the way of pot. Ottawa itself is a gorgeous city; I might have to try for residency there if U of O doesn't suck ass. The road to Montreal gets a hefty A.

Cross-Canada Road Trip Day 2: Wow, That's A Lot of Trees

2004-07-09T11:50:00.000-06:00

July 6, 2004

I take back what I said yesterday about Saskatchewan being boring: It's got nothing on northern Ontario. At least there's people in Saskatchewan. The stretch of highway between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay is bordered by a featureless wall of spruce, poplar, and birch. That's it. For seven hours. Nothing else.

Of course, I'd probably be in a better state of mind about the trip if I hadn't spent most of it stuck behind assholes who thought it'd be a great idea to do 75 on the fucking HIGHWAY. I've got six cylinders of Detroit steel* here, people! Let me use them! At least give me a passing lane more than every fifty clicks! This stretch of ass gets a D-.

*steel may actually be from Oshawa.**
**steel may actually be some kind of aluminum-containing alloy.

The landscape gets a lot better once you hit the shore of Lake Superior, though. I stopped at the wonderfully-named Kakabeka (hee hee) Falls, and took a random turnoff at Ahma- er, Ahunt- er, Awaskawinaweekawoona Gorge. I don't know, it started with "A." It was next to Terrace Bay. Don't judge me. In any case, it was nice and I have good pictures but have no idea how to host them on blogspot. And the stretch of highway between Thunder Bay and White River gets a big B+ from me, with all its passing lanes and hills that you can pretend you're on a rollercoaster on. But not too much, because you don't want to be taking your hands off the wheel when you're passing semis. Trust me on this.

I didn't make it to Sault Ste. Marie, like I'd been planning. Hell, I didn't even make it to Wawa. I made it to White River, 300 km up the road from the Soo. Why? The moose came out. Mooses. Meese. Whatever the plural is, they're fuck you up bad if you hit them, since their legs are exactly the right length for the nose of your car to take them out and launch a thousand pounds of angry, thrashing woodland critter into your lap. You think your airbag's gonna stop that?

In any case, it got dark and rainy and full of moose and I had to stop. Unfortunately, all three motels in White River were full, but one of the owners was nice enough to rent me a trailer for forty bucks. Which is why I'm writing this in an RV that smells like chemical toilet.

Cross-Canada Road Trip Day 1: I Can See My House From Winnipeg!

2004-07-09T11:29:00.000-06:00

July 5, 2004

Distances have been rendered largely abstract by air travel. We look at a map, see that Edmonton is 3000 kilometres from Toronto, and say: "Huh. That's a five-hour flight. Wonder what the movie's gonna be."

Driving, however, you feel on a visceral level how incomprehensibly vast the Prairie is. Saskatchewan sprawls endlessly in front and behind and to all sides - the illusion is completed by the sheer distance you can see on the flatlands. And when you realized that you're only seeing a small slice of the entire plain, you feel awed by the sheer expanse.

Driving is a layer of disconnect away from WALKING that distance, however: one day of experiencing the flow of the land as opposed to several weeks. But it's as close as any of us are liable to get in our lifetimes, and we watch the repetitive countryside scroll by like the repeating-hallway background in a cartoon.

I figure I'd add a review of the places I've been. You feel so much more meaningful when you're passing judgement...

Alberta: is surprisingly lush in early July. The wheat is still young and green and hugs the contours of the land, and the canola is early enough that it provides only a hint of the mustard explosions that'll dot the land like a spastic work of modern art. Also, if you're an idiot and forget your camera, you can buy a cheap digital one in Lloydminster without paying PST! Sweet! Alberta gets a B+, because they were nice enough to twin the damn highway.

Saskatchewan: kind of boring. The landscape gets drier and scrubbier, with short grasses replacing the crops in places. And the highway is single-lane, which sucks when you're stuck behind farm vehicles. Bleah. Saskatoon has some nice bridges, though, and I stopped for gas in this small town called Lanigan, which has a nice main street lined on both sides and in the middle with shade trees. It's cute, albeit in a Village of the Damned kind of way. Saskatchewan gets a C.

Manitoba: seems almost impossibly green after Saskatchewan; if you're driving along the Yellowhead, you'll find yourself spit out into the trees and water of the Assiniboine Valley and, if you make it around 7:00 or so, you'll see the opposite bank set on fire by the sun. It's something.

I laughed my ass off coming into Winnipeg: the signs greeting visitors have the motto "ONE GREAT CITY!" and I finally get the title of that Weakerthans song. Not that I HATE Winnipeg, per se, since my experience is limited to the Comfort Inn off the highway I'm writing this in, but still... in any case, Manitoba gets a B.

Mystery Writing 101

2004-07-05T03:45:00.000-06:00

I originally wrote this for the Gateway, the University of Alberta's much cooler version of the Queen's Journal. There's no GW-analogue here, you see, so you get the funny people who WOULD have gravitated there together with the Journal twats. Unfortunately, the Gateway doesn't print fiction, as I found out. Pity. There's little outlet for semi-insane ravings at the U of A... anyhow, perhaps someone will read it here, and get some enjoyment out of it.

***

Welcome, class, to the eighth installment in our exclusive course, ‘Writing Airport Fiction.’ As you’ll recall, last week’s lecture was Legal Thrillers: Oh No, My Law Firm Is Corrupt! (John Grisham version: Oh No, My Law Firm Is Corrupt and Southern!) Today, we’ll be discussing what makes formulaic mystery novels tick.

Chapter 1: The Murder

Never begin by introducing your protagonist. That’s cliché. Instead, be like everyone else and begin by taking the perspective of the initial victim and describing her (invariably her) murder in graphic detail. Let the reader think that the victim is your protagonist. It makes you a better writer, you see, because you’re messing with their heads.

Chapter 2: The Hardboiled Detective

Introduce your protagonist – whoa! It’s not who we thought it was, says the reader! – with a phone call, waking him up from a fitful slumber. Alcoholic comas are also acceptable. He’ll be unsurprised to hear it’s another murder, which will make sense, as he’s a homicide detective, and probably expects chalk outlines to crop up at his daughter’s school play. Anyhow, if he’s not already drunk, have him belt down five or six shots of scotch while looking at the photo of his wife who left him because he’s married to the job. This shows the reader just how very hardboiled he is, as well as introducing a convenient character flaw. Exploit this in a tense confrontation with his superior officer in Chapter 15.

Chapter 3: The Crime Scene

Our hero will, despite the booze, hold it together long enough to make it to the crime scene without hitting any pedestrians. He may run over a squirrel if you’re feeling saucy. He should, however, hold it together in a gritty fashion. ‘Grit’ and its derivatives are key words in the genre, and you should use them as much as possible, to the point of having every character constantly devouring grits while gritting their teeth.

At this point, our hero will meet the tough-as-nails-but-gorgeous future love interest, who is deeply involved in this investigation. They will have a personality conflict, based on him being hardboiled and her being tough-as-nails.

Chapters 4-18: The Filler

The details of the investigation are unimportant, because the reader doesn’t have anything better to do except watch Jack Frost on the teeny little LCD screen above him. You’re up against Michael Keaton as a snowman; you really don’t need to put much effort into this. Just rip off CSI. At some point, the detective will say: “We won’t know until he kills again.” Three pages later, he will kill again. And they will, most likely, know.

Chapter 19: Requisite Sex Scene

Flight’s over, time to wake up the reader. You don’t even need to build up any sexual tension, you’re just expected to write about sex now. Remember, your characters are too hardboiled to fuck in a bed. Kitchen floors work fine, and are easy to clean if you’re a stickler for excruciating detail.

Chapters 20-24: More Filler

Rip off CSI: Miami this time, for variety’s sake.

Chapter 25: The Shocking Conclusion

Everything in the book should have led up to one character being the murderer. Above all else, the murderer cannot be that person. Instead, the real killer is someone the detective knows and trusts; bonus points if it’s the tough-as-nails love interest. Don’t worry if every mystery writer uses this plot twist: remember, your audience is composed of idiots, and everything surprises them, particularly shiny things.

Congratulations! You may now sell this book to people who think reading Maxim on planes makes them look shallow. Next week: The Romance Novel: 1001 Useful Euphemisms for ‘Fucking.’

Vegas, baby: how I got kicked out of Bellagio

2004-06-28T19:59:00.000-06:00

I am not a Las Vegas person. There are people who enjoy gambling, my friend Dave particularly; I’m not so big on it. There are people who enjoy clubbing, my friend Richi particularly; I look at it mainly as a night where I go out to dance to terrible music, drink too much, and not pick up. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, at home “at least I can listen to music I like.”

However, some friends were going down to Vegas for a bachelor party, and I went. The bachelor didn’t, oddly enough, but we went anyhow. I’m still not sure how that worked out.

We stayed, six to a room, in the Stratosphere Hotel. Every hotel in Vegas has a theme; Mandalay Bay is Indian-themed, the Luxor is Egyptian, Caesar's Palace is Roman. And so on and so forth. The theme at Stratosphere is kind of high-concept; it's a reasonable representation of what would happen if Communists built a casino. Lots of concrete. And phallic symbols. But it was ghetto-cheap, and so are we, so it’s a good fit.

Saturday night: we got sold some cheap passes for a club called Light, in Bellagio, by a short, bald guy named Mark. The line got packed real fast, and after about an hour of the bouncers letting in nothing but women, it became clear that tonight was not a good night to be a group of six guys trying to get into that bar. (I’m not sure what all those women were doing up there without any guys to dance with. I like to think it was a giant lesbian orgy, but then again I like to think that about a lot of things.)

Now, at this point, we tried to unload these passes. We’d gotten a couple sold before security found us and kicked us out. They bought that we’d been taken by someone else and were trying to make our money back, but they still don’t look too kindly on people reselling complimentary passes. Now, I’m willing to admit here that the fact that we were all drunk as hell and shouting angrily at security may – MAY – have coloured their opinion of us negatively. But that could just be my impression.

One of my cardinal goals in Vegas was to not get my ass beat by casino security guards. Call me strange, but that’s really a turn-off for me. At this point, I was trying to convince my friends that maybe we should move along out of the doorway of the casino, particularly since those large men over there looked kinda menacing. It took a while, but eventually, we were politely but firmly booted into the street.

Coda: Fortunately, the fact that we never made it into the regular club meant that we were EARLY for the after-hours club. This is a positive thing, because apparently there’s like a two-hour wait if you get there at the wrong/right time. And, despite my general dislike for clubs, Drai’s was pretty goddamn fine. Great house music. And – this is key here – I can at least say I’ve been kicked out of a casino now. I’m a fucking rockstar now, man.

A walk in the park, or, why I voted NDP

2004-06-28T19:31:00.000-06:00

Last weekend I went and sat in a park to read a book. Hawrelak Park's a beautiful place, really; a few acres of green space in the middle of the city. Kind of the ideal representation of civic-mindedness; it’s tangible proof that at one point people cared enough to set aside a prime chunk of land for such intangible uses as recreation.

The book I was reading was Fast Food Nation. A tangential point of Eric Schlosser’s is that, as part of the commercialization of the Western world, we have abdicated the use of public spaces in favour of private ones. McDonald’s Playlands are popular not simply because they provide an attraction to children, but because there are fewer public options remaining. We can’t be arsed to provide such ‘frivolities’ as recreation; that would mean paying TAXES!

“Taxes! My God, the government’s taking our money! Stop them!” The problem inherent with that mindset is that it ignores the reality that such things as civic spaces are necessities for a modern, well-functioning society. We need places to assemble, to regenerate, to feel as though we are citizens, part of a broader whole. There’s something missing when we have to rely on a peddler of cheap hamburgers to provide that for us.

Let’s call it what it is – a spirit of meanness. This attitude that no public service is worth funding has gutted not only our parks and rec departments, but our schools and hospitals. Schools in the States sign contracts with soft drink companies, sell advertising on their busses and on the roofs of schools lucky enough to be near airports. Worse, they rely on ‘corporate-sponsored’ educational tools that, by the way, provide a hefty dose of advertising in the kids’ fucking textbooks. When you get to that point, you basically have to admit that you’ve abandoned all pretense at a democracy and essentially conceded to corporate rule.

As I read this book, with its depictions of soulless suburban strip malls and gated communities, I took my socks off and ran my feet over the grass. The air was soft and warm. And the park was full of couples walking around, kids sprinting through the playgrounds, and teenagers trying not to appear desperately horny.

When it got too dark, I walked home. I cut through a neighbourhood west of the university, full of small bungalows and alleyways overarched by elm trees in full leaf. It felt almost Kingstonian, really, and anybody who’s walked through the old part of town there will recognize what I mean. I looked at the houses and imagined the people inside; they’d bike to work and gladly pay their taxes and raise their kids without television and go out to locally-owned restaurants all the time and come home and fuck without feeling guilty about it. It was a nice thought and, upon reflection, there’s probably even an element to truth to it. It's a nice little neighbourhood, and there were tons of little NDP signs to go with it.

Further along, I came to a new art installment on the lawn of one of the university buildings – a collection of metal sculptures. One had an inviting shape to it, a smooth half-circle that looked like an exotic piece of modern furniture. I laid down in it and thought that, all told, there’s hope for the future, at least in places. I knew that the strip malls were only a couple of km down the road, but they seemed much farther away at that point in time with the stars coming out and me in my cocoon of scrap iron. I thought about how precious, in this day and age, any kind of civic responsibility, any kind of broader thought beyond ‘don’t take my money,’ has become. Since there’s an election next week, I thought, perhaps I should put my vote where my mouth is.

We’ll see how that turns out.

Brushes with death!

2004-05-19T01:36:00.000-06:00

The opening piece on the local 11 o'clock news was about a child's body, found inside a burned dumpster off Whyte Avenue (the only hip street in Edmonton). If it bleeds, it leads, I guess, although in this case there's not much bleeding to be done. What with the burning and all.

Once I got done gazing longingly at Olivia Cheng (decent writer, too), my eyes began to pick out familiar details of the surroundings. A brick wall, some big factory-style glass windows... wow, that looks a lot like that parking lot behind the Orange Hall off of Whyte.

Wait, that IS the parking lot behind the Orange Hall.

Wait: I was there on Saturday night. In that corner of the lot, too. I wasn't ten feet from that burned-out dumpster.

Holy shit.

Now, I can't remember if the dumpster was there or not when I was, or whether it was burned out at the time. But it's still disconcerting to realize that you may have set foot within spitting distance of somebody's remains, in the very recent past. I realize I shouldn't really be disconcerted by that - after all, I go to school next door to a hospital, which has been the deathplace of many a person - but I suppose it's the fact that this is such a gruesome site that gets me. Rarely, if ever, are patients in the hospital charred beyond recognition. (Look, it was one time, I was drunk, I was playing with the lighter near his oxygen tank... won't happen again, I promise.)

***

Speaking of Saturday night, I apparently drank myself into a delusional state. I could blame the fact that I decided to have ~9 beers after skipping dinner, but I prefer to blame the pint of Polish lager instead. You can't trust those crafty Poles; all that solidarity makes me think they've got something to hide. Like Communism! (Seriously: Zywiec is damn fine beer and I plan to have it again if I can find it.)

In my ritual post-blackout rundown, I asked somebody I remembered talking to if I'd inadvertently said something I needed to apologize for. Tally said, "Not really, but you talked a lot about techno and how there wasn't any good music in Edmonton, and then you said you were lonely." Sounds about right.

I may be an alcoholic, but I'm a charmingly depressive one, goddammit!

the ethics of dying

2004-05-13T19:36:00.001-06:00

An acquaintance of mine took offense to a morbid comment I made on a mailing list. I wrote something in rebuttal to his angry reply. The argument leading up to this is unimportant, but I like how I've articulated the medical mindset, and reproduce it here:

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I don't care about patients, because I do. I want them to live, and I want to do everything in my power to make that happen, and when it can't be done, I want them to be given the dignity they've been accustomed to their whole life. And even though I hate the thought of doing it, I need to be the one to tell them, clearly and as honestly, that they're going to die. Because, goddammit, somebody has to do it.

At this point, I've only had to give 'the talk' to hypothetical patients in role-playing situations, and it's heartrending even then. The worst part, from where I sit, is having to kill any hope the patient has, but it's far, far crueler to leave someone with a false hope that they will get better, than to give them the chance to prepare themselves and have as good and as peaceful a death as is possible. The whole thing is devastating for them, but that's why they teach us to do it as compassionately, as straightforwardly, and as honestly as possible.

Do most doctors crack bad jokes about everything in the business? Of course. But that's because it's the way most deal with the cold reality that, despite the fact that you've dedicated your life and career to saving other people's lives, and no matter how close your relationship with your patients becomes, eventually every single one of them will die and you won't be able to do anything about it. The futility of it all is enough to make anyone nihilistic, unless you keep a sense of humour about it. Morbid and twisted as that is, the alternative is staring mortality directly in the face, every day, for the rest of your life.

The conversation with a terminal patient, however, would involve none of that, because it's my responsibility and my privilege to help them face the end of their life with dignity. We ask them if they'd like a family member there for the diagnosis, because they'll see their family as their source of support and consolation. We explain carefully and straightforwardly what we found, and the implications of those findings, and make sure they understand. And we talk about getting them into palliative care, so they can be at home for as long as possible and be made comfortable and dignified until the end. And I'll spend as long as it takes for them to collect themselves and to let the news sink in, because I do give a shit that they're given the best care possible, if only because I want someone to do the same for me when my time comes.

An exercise in futility

2004-05-13T19:05:00.000-06:00

This being my first experience with the blogging universe, I'm somewhat taken aback by the freedom offered by this space.

"I can post anything?"
"Yes."
"And people will read it?"
"No."
"Well then."

In any event, I feel a need to use this as an online journal of sorts. It's been a while since I've written anything, and this, hopefully, will shatter the 'ossification of the mental faculties.' Plus, I'm going on a wicked-awesome road trip this summer and plan to take along a lot of Vonnegut and drugs. If that ain't journal material, I really don't know what is.

***

Last night, I went to see a play with my friend Diana (and some guy that I apparently know named David). "Dialogue and Rebuttal" by Gao Xingjian, Nobel Laureate in Literature (2000). Part of me feels that I'm simply unable to fully experience a work of art centred in a cultural tradition I'm unfamiliar with, and part of me just wonders how this fucker won the Nobel Prize. The play is billed as a 'modern Zen drama,' which apparently divests it of the need for Western conventions such as 'a plot,' and 'characters.' (And, incidentally, 'clothing.' I've now had at least 300% of my recommended daily allowance of scrotum.)

The lines are spoken by 'Man,' and 'Woman,' who are more or less archetypes of their genders. If they were actual patients, I'd say he has antisocial personality disorder, and she histrionic PD; they're taking their genders to extremes, in other words. I see Gao's intention in having the audience's experience be one of reflecting their own lives in the words of the characters; in that sense, the first act works rather well. There's some nuggets of wisdom there. Unfortunately, the first act ends with a double homicide and the nuggets get stuck and turn into intellectual dingleberries, as the 'afterlife' becomes absolutely incomprehensible.

Death, apparently, consists of some crazy bitch yammering on about 'crumbling walls' and 'one crack! one crack!' before a Confucian monk opens a curtain to reveal an expanse of white nothingness. The play ended on that beautiful visual note, the characters silhouetted against the white void (nirvana?), but that's not enough to redeem my headache.

Di drags me to these things, and in her defense they're usually quite good: 'Lysistrata' was excellent, and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was an unbelievable production. Ironically (as everybody kept their clothes on), the latter was far sexier than 'Dialogue and Rebuttal.' Funny how nudity can be desexualized based on content. It's good, at any rate, to have a friend who will expose you to art beyond the photos of anorexic models in the lobbies of the shitty nightclubs that dot this town. We went for a drink with David afterwards: I told her I couldn't decide if she liked him or not, and she hit me and said she couldn't decide either. Heh.

***

In other news: I have purchased items of a consumer nature. Including some great Converse shoes for $40, and some workout gloves. Those'll come in handy at the gym; I've started lifting more often, and the callouses that are developing are a pain in the ass.

Today's workout:
Flat bench (10X3X105 lbs.)
Incline bench, machine (10X3X~100 lbs.)
Pec deck (10X3X105 lbs.)
Bicep curl (6X3X~50 lbs.)
Bicep hammers (10X3X20 lbs.)
Infraspinatus pulls (10X3X20 lbs.)
Subscapularis pulls (10X3X30 lbs.)

Add the 5K run I'm doing tonight, and I wonder why I'm going to sleep like a goddamn baby. Well, that and the staggering boredom from reading oncology notes all night.

I actually didn't mean to write this much, and I don't anticipate doing this daily: I do, however, want to see how this looks.

I made this blog

2004-05-13T18:30:00.000-06:00

...for the sole purpose of posting comments on Sofi's blog. And, at the very least, to inform people of the horrors of Stevens-Johnson syndrome.