deep within the bowels of the bronx
the life and times of ohiosnap




29 November 2004

california

OMG OMG OMG i watched so much O.C. this weekend. i could get into it right now but i'm going to hold off.

OB clinic life seems pretty cush. i don't have to be in until 8:30a, and i think i have 2 half-days this week. which is nice, because then i can get some christmas shopping done without sacrificing study time (yes, i'm thinking like that now). and the resident and attendings from my last rotation are attempting to track me down so i can give that presentation that never happened. which is so irritating. i thought i had escaped. but alas, i will have to give a talk on endometrial biopsy, probably on thursday. the same day as the other students on the service will be giving talks on "assays" (yeah, just that.. sounds fun) and "chemical receptors". both topics sound broad and boring, not necessarily in that order.

but it's nice that i can stay up a bit later, get in a bit later, and on occassion leave a bit earlier. i like it.

my main man rodbard and his ladyfriend tam'ron hooked a brotha up yesterday with a dvd-r chock full of R&B goodness. well actually there was no R&B but it was full of quality tunes. it's going to take me a while to get through it all. acquiring music faster than i can listen to it has been the reason for the season.

**

after re-reading this post, i have decided that writing about my medical school life is insufferably boring. i don't even want to read this post. of course, if i only update after exciting events, then this blog would die. maybe i will blog about what i eat. for lunch today i had chinese food. for dinner i had cold turkey and mashed potatoes. also today i have had 2 diet cokes. and some ritz crackers.


**

nope. still boring. guess all future posts will be about the O.C.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 7:13 PM |




25 November 2004

i am starving myself in anticipation of giving thanks

that presentation i was up late working on? never happened. the clinic morning was busy, we had to leave for an OR case at meriter by 12:15, it got pushed back until 2pm, i had lecture at 4pm -- never gave my presentation. on the one hand, i feel like i got a "get out of jail free" card, since i never really wanted to give the talk. on the other hand, i had it all ready to go and lost sleep over it and everything, for nothing. well, i guess i LEARNED, but i can learn without putting together an elaborate powerpoint presentation. freals.

anyhoo. last night amy and i went to beloit to have dinner with the folks and go out and experience the Annual Beloit Areas High Schools Night Before Thanksgiving Class Reunion(s). honestly. a class reunion would be sooo unnecessary, since every year, the wed before thanksgiving, everyone and their mama goes out to suds' (a local townie bar -- is that redundant?). seriously. everyone AND their mother. the crowd last night was a whole bunch of kids my age, some a few years younger, some a few years older, and then the 40+ bracket, which may have outnumbered us last night. i can only imagine that while i've been doing this for the past 7 years or so, they've been at it for the past 20. shudder.

it was entertaining. i was reunited with some old friends i hadn't seen in a while, some people got married, some people are traveling the world, making nice money, some people just turned 21, some people had kids (mostly the 40+'ers) -- i even saw a girl i went to grade school with and hadn't seen since, oh, since i was 11 or 12 or something. (i could still recognize her) amy and i had to return last night to madison, since she's working today, but we're heading back south this afternoon.

we also made tentative plans with the beloit crew to gather thursday and friday nights and watch the OC on dvd. i think i'm becoming an unabashed fan. and i found out a lot of my old friends are into it too (mostly the girls). everyone's favorite is seth. i like seth. but i don't think i'm allowed to say he's my favorite because he's EVERYONE's favorite. so i'm going to go out on a limb and say my favorite is sandy, because he surfs.

helloooo, four day weekend.

soundtrack for a long night and lazy morning:

Nas "Street's Disciple"
Murder City Devils "Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts"
Chin Up Chin Up "We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers"
DFA "Compilation #2"
The Walkmen "Bows and Arrows"
The Kleptones "A Night at the Hip-Hopera"


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 12:44 PM |




23 November 2004

strong work

long long day.

i have to give a presentation tomorrow. on the merits of endometrial sampling as a means of predicting ovulation in fertile and infertile women (i did not choose the topic). the shitty thing is, i just gave a presentation yesterday, and i just found out about this one yesterday as well (it had been suspected, but is now confirmed). also, there is a stack of about 10 specific articles that the staff want me to review expressly for this presentation, which they were unable to give me until today. also, my senior resident thought i should "get my learn on" and stay for the resident's lecture, which began at 5 and ran til a bit past 6. he then made some joke about how now he bets i'm going to go home and stress about this presentation while working on it and lose sleep. i told him that he'd win that bet. he said he was kidding. i wasn't.

so i guess i could start on that. he also would like me to go to the library, find the journal, scan all the articles and email him a copy of the 40 some pages in pdf format. grrreat.

it's almost 7pm. i haven't had dinner yet. the fucking garbage disposal is still indisposed (but supposedly the "emergency maintenance" guy is coming over to "check it out" -- on a side note, when i called the emergency maintenance number, it sounded like house party 2 all up in that bitch. it was noisy, all sorts of shouting and music, and then a whole lot of laughter when the guy repeated "your garbage disposal doesn't work?" also he said "please hold" about 15 times in a row within the span of about 1 minute.

by all best estimates, i should be done with eating, reading, and waiting for the disposal to get repaired... i should be starting work on this powerpoint presentation around...9? 10? damn. (didn't david byrne make some powerpoint art project thing like a year or two ago? i should look that up. in my free time.)

oh and in more interesting news, apparently a med 3 or med 4 (the dean won't divulge who), was trying to page a resident through our paging service the other day, and couldn't remember the resident's last name. when the service couldn't figure it out (like it's their job to just know), the student called them a FUCKING IDIOT. and i guess it somehow got traced back to the student and the dean sent out an email to the entire med 3 and 4 listserve, stressing professionalism and also basically stating that this student is henceforth fucked.

If any student is rude to the staff, they are taken off the match list - we know that they are not going to be good to work with, will be rude to people in the hospital, and will not be the type of colleague we want.


and this is exactly why as a med student, it is our role to be endlessly respectful, charming, willing to work hard, show up early, stay late, and do all kinds of other menial/stupid/boring/busy work, just to get a good eval, so we can get into a good program, and have a nice life.

it's kind of like being an indentured servant, except the other servants are constantly trying to outperform you -- did that happen back then?


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 7:42 PM |




21 November 2004

fourth coast chronicles

the weekend came and is presently going.

1. tha 446 descended upon the isthmus yet again. our "performance" at the slipper club was the drunk icing on a confusing cake. true to form, the set was full of shouting at the audience, technical difficulties with the microphones and monitors, miscues, starts and restarts, general disorganization and by the end, more people on stage than in the audience. there was an encore which degenerated as quickly as it began, and random people came and grabbed the mic in an attempt to soak up some of the end-of-show limelight. we came armed with a grocery bag chock full of double-discs; we had to have sold at least 5. shortly thereafter, we began handing them out to anyone who would take one. of note, a delivery was made to the origianl 446 on west wash; they were asleep - we woke them up.

there were several points during the evening where i truly had no idea who was talking/rapping and what was going on. i deem the evening a minor success.

if any of the above is too difficult to picture, then let the golden brain walk you through the memories.

*a random pile of clothing - blue shirt, falcons jersey, 446 jersey - abandoned here. i blame lozone.

2. we made about $170 or so after cd sales were calculated in. this bought everyone in the crew and extended family free breakfast the next morning (and free pizza earlier that morning for the lucky few that managed to stay awake; i passed out about 2 seconds after arriving home).

3.1. badgers lost, AGAIN. i blame stocco. no really, this time it really is all his fault.
3.2. packers are gearing up for a loss [Editor's note: n/m, must be that post-weekend pessimism], it's been a great weekend for football.

4. tomorrow i begin REI - reproductive, endocrine, and infertility rotation. plus: start at 7:30am. minus: only 3 days. plus: that's because i have a 4 day holiday. minus: i have to give a presentation tomorrow, which was supposed to be given on thursday, but cancelled at the last minute due to poor scheduling by the administration. minus minus: supposedly i have to give ANOTHER presentation this week as well, as part of the REI rotation. what am i, a lecturer? a walking power point presentation? the answer man?

5. the garbage disposal broke AGAIN. this is the third time in the last month. currently i am making this post while waiting for the water to drain. this is digusting because i just washed out the pot used to warm up marinara sauce for the pasta, and the salad bowls we ate out of, which means the sink is full of a tepid mixture of soap and warm water, olive oil, chunks of tomato and random bits of mixed greens and carrots, all sorts of oregano and tarragon and parsley and minced garlic, and some caesar dressing. ugh. it's still not done draining yet.

6. amy bought the first season of the OC on dvd yesterday. i had only seen the 2 new episodes of this season and she had been attempting to bring me up to speed. well, thanks to the dvd set, i'm now 3.5 episodes deep into the first season. except now her dvd player and mine are both dead (read: refusing to even spin-up the DVD in the tray), and i will be forced to finish episode 4 ("the debut") on the computer. also we need to get a new dvd player (after reading random reviews of random brands of dvd players online, it seems that many players are prone to inexplicably "dying" after 9-12 months of use. sounds fantastic).

7. checking on the sink...


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:59 PM |




19 November 2004

the pirates of the fourth coast



the crew should be arriving soon, trickling in over the next couple hours.

ARE YOU EXCITED YET

footage for the next 446 video will hopefully begin filming tonight...

in the meanwhile, A Visual History of Tha 446, courtesy of A-Ron and his gold grain brain.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:20 PM |




18 November 2004

red red blood/i don't think they're ready for this jelly

in all seriousness, the new gwen stefani single is O.F.F. THA HOOK. freals.

yesterday was a looong day. in at 6am, out at 7pm. i was scrubbed in for three cases, all of them being laparascopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomies, which average about 3 hours per case. the last case, the attending was pulling real REAL hard on the uterus, trying to "birth it" through the vagina, when it finally popped through, spattering me from head to toe with blood. luckily, we are required to wear masks, eye shield, hair covers, etc etc etc, but STILL, man. that shit was so not necessary but so inevitable and definitely won't be the last time that i get covered in blood. might as well get used to it, but DANG, it's still kinda gross.

my senior resident felt bad for keeping me so long yesterday that she promised me short days today and tomorrow. true to her word, she sent me home at noon today, which was nice. i spent the afternoon running some errands with amy, sending off 446 cds to the england and korea, checking the onion and the isthmus for mention of tomorrow night's show (negatory), and running into a small group of protesters standing in the rain, protesting at the army recruitment center in u-square.

so now i've got my evening in front of me. i need to study. i need to do laundry. i need to clean up the place a little bit, since tha 446 will be invading it tomorrow night and i need to make room. i need to tape the OC for amy (i watched my very first episode of the OC this week. it is exactly like 90210).

i was on a hip hop hiatus for a little while. i think it was because i was so disappointed with the new mos def. i'm not into that neo-soul shit. well, that's not TOTALLY true. i do have a soft spot for alicia keys. but that's her thing. mos def is an emcee! i don't want to hear him sing! (this goes for snoop dogg as well) but the hott shitt i've been listening to this week has included:

1. oh no "the disrupt" - madlib's younger brother, producer/emcee. sounds like it. but a bit different. man it's good.
2. MF doom "mm.. food" - i had this for a while, "advance copy" with no track titles and it didn't sound this good. hot damn.
3. tha 446 "pirates of the fourth coast" - i heard that the members of this group are more beautiful than the cast of the OC, and better rappers than them too.

also this was sent out to the medical school email listserve last night:
THE EVENT OF A LIFETIME (or weekend)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH, 2004 (that's THIS FRIDAY)
SLIPPER CLUB, 121 W. MAIN, MADISON WI (they sell drinks)

THA 446 ("Pirates Of The Fourth Coast" CD release)
DRIFTLESS PONY CLUB (ex-Driftless Pony Club)

TEN O' CLOCK PM - FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS

Welcome back tha 446, Madison ex-pats and the midwest's most magnificent hip-hop entourage! This time around, the critically ignored (but self-acclaimed) 446 has added even more members to their swollen ranks (you may even recognize a few emcees), growing in leaps and spurts in the puberty of their already awesome career. Known for their incendiary performances (read: drunk) and blurring the lines between hip-hop, rap, and embarassing karaoke, tha 446 combines deft lyricism with impeccable production and elaborate costumes (sometimes). Come celebrate the release of their brand new double-album "Pirates of the Fourth Coast", featuring a whopping total of 50 new tracks, it's guaranteed to be A VERY LONG ALBUM!

God bless America.


so far i have received one reply. from my friend nichole:


Do you honestly think third year med students can handle this?


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:02 PM |




17 November 2004

slut



LET'S IMPEACH HIM

(eagerly awaiting the pics of bush slipping alberto gonzalez the tongue)


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:40 PM |




black heart profession

so i've been browsing sorryeverybody.com, again, because i like to feel the the pain well up in my heart.

but then i found out about apologiesaccepted.com, a european site based on the same theme: photos of everyday people, holding up signs accepting the apologies from the people in the aforementioned site. quite touching really. or funny. like this guy:



i just started laughing out loud when i saw that picture.

anyway. i've also taken a gander at the countersite, werenotsorry.net, and man that shit is nasty. i mean, i know i'm biased because MY party lost, but come on. the left never said "let's kill these people here because we are in a morally superior position" and "let's deny these people rights because we are in a morally superior position" and "let's rebuild this nation because we are in a morally superior position" and "let's ignore the geneva convention because we are in a morally superior position" and "let's allow criminals to hold leadership positions in senate because our leaders are criminals and fuck it, we're in a morally superior position" and and and... i just don't get it. i can not understand the stranglehold this close-minded party has on our country. it is fucking appalling. and it CERTAINLY is not morally superior (to anything), let alone "christian." find me the bible verses that say its ok to kill (anyone who disagrees with you), lie (to the public), steal (everything from everyone), discriminate (all who are different). someone point that out to me. please. because i don't fucking get it. i went to catholic grade school. the way i see it, if our king really was receiving orders from God (which basically means you're a saint or fucking crazy, and homeboy ain't a saint) then we'd be a very peaceful, generous, forgiving country. right now we're batting 0 for 3.




whoa. that was a detour. sorry.

WAIT! WE'RE NOT SORRY!


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:00 PM |




16 November 2004

come to daddy



this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:47 PM |




bring the pain

in memoriam of ODB's untimely passing, i am currently enjoying:



is that some shitty album art or what? what's with the candy cane background? and it makes no mention of the fact that the entire album is live. i would have thought this was a greatest hits album, if they hadn't just released one.

but anyway. this new live wu-tang album is pretty ok. it's not like the sound quality is amazing or anything, but it sounds so LOUD. (which is good) when all 9+ of them are shouting the hooks like "WUTANGCLANAINTNUTHINTAFUCKWITH" repeatedly, it really drives the message home (the message being, the wu-tang clan is not something to be fucked with). plus it features ODB. (and he sounds glooooooorious)

and in other news, dick cheney didn't die yet.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:49 PM |




11 November 2004

sweep the legs...

ever have one of those days where it all seems like it's unraveling? try having one of those months.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 7:37 PM |




10 November 2004

Dr. Strangeglove or: How I Learned to Stop Sleeping and Love OB/GYN

ok, not really true. i am still sleeping and i don't love OB/GYN. that being said, i don't necessarily hate it, either. i'm only on day 3, i mean, come on people, give me some time to absorb it. not that anybody's been pressuring me for an opinion on it or anything. (editor's note: i was going to title this post "Looking Down the Barrel of a Speculum", but deemed it inappropriate. apparently, not inappropriate enough for me to remove entirely from this post. i am such a jackass.)

a bit of a non-sequitir: a friend was over at the crib a month or two ago, and we were talking about my very slowly progressing medical schooling. he asked what i wanted to go into, i said "pediatric oncology," to which he laughed his ass off. i was a bit taken aback by this, and after a moment stated "look, it's really not that funny. actually it's about as far from funny as it can be." and he looked at me, stopped laughing, and gave a puzzled look. "dude. you can't tell me you want to go into pediatric gynecology and not expect me to laugh." true story.

ANYWAY. the way this rotation works is that it's 6 weeks, and every week they move you to a different location for a different specialty. right now i'm in gynecology/oncology, which encompasses cervical, endometrial, ovarian, vulval and vaginal cancers, for a start. basically it involves a whole lot of time in clinic, following up surgery and chemo patients, and also a lot of time in the OR. yesterday i spent 5 hours watching a laparascopic lymph node dissection and radical vaginal hysterectomy. it was pretty cool. basically they removed this woman's uterus and only made 4 tiny incisions in the abdomen, two of which were simply covered by band-aids at the end of the operation.

so the OR bit is cool. clinic is a bit slow. since i'm only a 3rd year med student, they don't want me dictating yet (the 4th year gets to though). so that means i can't go see patients on my own, only with the 4th year or a resident or the PA -- because whoever sees the patient, dictates the note. the way clinic works is, you see the patient and perform an external exam, staff (review the case) with the attending, go back in with the attending and finish the exam including pelvic/bimanual, then dictate the note. THEN go see the next patient. and so on. there is about 30 minutes blocked for each patient, and there is at least one resident and the PA available to see patients at all times, so in all theory everything should go pretty smoothly and patients shouldn't wait longer than a half hour or so.

well let me tell you about this resident i worked with today (and on monday). remember those commercials (i think it was chili's) about those ginormous burgers that were "monuments of inefficiency"? that's this guy. except without the delicious fried onion rings and twice as irritating. he is SOOOOO slow. today he was averaging about 30 minutes with the patient, 45 minutes to dictate. seriously. this guy would say a sentence. pause. think. read the chart. rewind. restate sentence. pause. think. read the chart. next sentence. pause. think. etc. IT WAS PAINFUL. the nurses had me go see a patient today (defying all rules! shock! awe!) because he took over an hour dictating one patient, and we fell over an hour behind. and that patient i saw, she bitched me out for taking so long to see her. like i could do anything about it. (what, you want me to turn back time and be more efficient? lady, what do you want me to do?) she ended up walking out while i was staffing with the attending. the nurses, bless their hearts, blamed the resident for being soooo sloooow and i was championed as the scrappy lil' student that tried to pull us out of the muck. (that was pretty sweet)

whew. glad to get that off of my chest. yeah so this resident is a schmuck. well, not really. he's not a jerk or anything. he's just slower than, oh i don't know, slower than some really slow shit. i hate inefficiency. i'd almost rather have him be a very efficient asshole. (sort of like my attending.. that's a different story).


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:08 PM |




09 November 2004

misery is a butterfly?

no, my friends, misery is setting the alarm for 4:30am, waking up at 4am, wondering why you woke up so early, rolling over, waking up at 4:12am in a panic, rolling back over, waking up again at 4:20am, giving up, getting up.

only one week of this 4am business. next week i'm in clinic.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 6:03 AM |




08 November 2004

(i got angry again).

so i've been hearing a lot about how it's fishy that the exit polls were SO wrong - giving nearly every crucial state to kerry, but all of them going to bush (so far, EVERYTHING that's been faulty - exit polls, electronic voting machines, etc - has erred on the side of giving bush the presidency. coincidence? i call bullshit).

dick morris wrote an interesting article for the hill on nov 4, saying that the fact that the exit polls were so wrong simply can NOT be due to plain old human error, and i agree. although morris argues that the polls were manipulated by pro-kerry exit-pollsters trying to suppress pro-bush turnout in the later timezones, i think it's actually a show of how the pro-bush local administrative/election officials/voting machine manufacturers manipulated vote counts to be pro-bush.

of course i'm biased.

hey! 51% of america! WE ARE GOING BACKWARDS. thanks alot. sorry, everybody.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 8:12 PM |




reading my mind, nearly verbatim

from the mirror (see front page graphic below)


GOD HELP AMERICA

Nov 5 2004


THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN..

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.


This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.


This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.


And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.


But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.


A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.


A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.


And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.


Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?


There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."


And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?


Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.


To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.


To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?


Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves?


How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?


Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover.


He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world.


Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation.


A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.


A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.


A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions.


America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.


A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement.


Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.


You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out.


These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one.


As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity.


Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.


The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".


You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out.


He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up.


These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.


Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive.


Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man.


Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.


VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism.


The queues for hours to register a tick; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.


Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush.


But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face.


Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...?


Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.


Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.


And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.


God Help America.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 7:56 PM |




real quick-like, cuz i still need to brush my teef

1. blonde redhead, last night (holy shit)
2. new gwen stefani single (holy shit)
3. beginning OB/GYN rotation in about 30 minutes (holy shit)


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 7:29 AM |




05 November 2004

attn: thelizabeth

ok, here's a 2004 map of the election by county. it makes things more depressing. the last update for this map was yesterday, so not all precincts had fully reported yet. and there is a lot less blue (not that there was much to begin with). but look at all that red. it's like a sea of blood washing through the bible belt.



and in 2000:


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:02 PM |




thank you, mr. president, may we have another...

remember bush attacking kerry during the debates, saying that his push for more federal programs and reduced taxation would lead to a "tax gap"? that kerry would never be able to afford all the programs he promised? Bush has now been quoted saying "I earned capital in the political campaign and I intend to spend it." how's that for fiscal responsibility? the new york times reports that the Treasury department has announced it will be borrowing at least $147 billion in the first quarter of 2005, which is a new quarterly record for such an obscene amount. the times estimates that the budget deficit could be greater than $5 trillion over the next 10 years. bush's proposal to make his tax cuts permanent could add another $1 trillion to the deficit in 10 years.

in other news, the air national guard strafed an elementary school in new jersey, and the bushes got a new dog.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 8:45 AM |




more pictures. less sleep.













the last one is from finland. more here.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 3:53 AM |




04 November 2004

nevermind, i'm depressed again. (yes, already)

here's a breakdown of the election by county. note that there is even LESS blue on this map. um... nevermind. the, uh, stats aren't out yet.

...on second thought...



sympathizers from the UK:



from Switzerland:



i know the main headline says "Europe's Nightmare".. but the lower part, something about "to the second"? someone help me out here.

want to read about more headlines? it's pretty depressing.

at least this is funny:



this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:13 PM |




a new rebirth

i wore black today. i'm a lot less depressed. that's not because i feel better about the election or the state of the nation (or world). it's more because i just didn't think about it as much. it's less-emergent as a newspiece. yeah, the country sucks, the electorate sucks, electoral colleges suck, the president sucks, big deal WE KNOW. what else is new... oh i know.. i have an exam tomorrow (and a pretty major one too, this being a pediatrics rotation, and that being the field i want to go into to. it's imperative i perform well on this rotation).

but then i read something that REALLY made me feel a lot better. anent (to quote b.smiles): my friend nic, who has been a republican as long as we've cared to have a party affiliation, and one of the most well-read and well-educated people that i personally know that care to spew forth politics (more so than many of my liberal friends, but since i side with them, they receive the benefit of the doubt.. i know, i know), had this to say this morning on the esteemed west wash blog:


After much thought and review of this past election, I'm truly thinking about joining the Democratic Party. I know you may think I'm being insincere, but I'm really sincere.

Several things brought me to this conclusion:

1) I was talking to one of my best friends Zakiyya about the election last night and I came to realize that I have lost perspective on the how my religion is co-opted in politics by religious fundamentalists. The discussion was actually brought about by our equal displeasure with the gay marriage amendments and how we both felt that it showed Christianity as a message of hate.

2) I then read this column by Thomas Friedman with this insightful quote:

The Democrats have ceded to Republicans a monopoly on the moral and spiritual sources of American politics," noted the Harvard University political theorist Michael J. Sandel. "They will not recover as a party until they again have candidates who can speak to those moral and spiritual yearnings - but turn them to progressive purposes in domestic policy and foreign affairs."

3) I then read another good article about how the question of "religion and politics" has been narrowed into abortion and gay marriage and the issues of social justice and poverty have been ignored. (The reading of this article was prompted by the sojourners ad campaign God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat)

Now I'm really politically confused. I don't have the hatred that many have for George W. that many have, but the slide to the right by the Republican Party is really starting to concern me.


even a sweeping victory across the land won't fool everyone. and this is what's really important. yes, it's funny to joke about moving to canada (not that any of us could any time soon, since articles are reporting that there's at least a year-long wait for immigration to our liberal (read: ideal) neighbors to the north), but what's really needed is for the educated left to educate those willing to listen on the right. not all of the right is bad (take nic, for example). or the waitress mentioned in the mcsweeney's excerpt in an earlier post. and then there are those that ARE bad. those that vote blindly, religiously, and will never be swayed. leave them alone. you'll never convince them of the truth. there are others to be swayed. those on the far right fly confederate flags and await the rise of the south. they pass legislation to deny certain classes of citizens their basic rights (they pass legislation to make sure that those classes remain in place). they believe that they are sent by God, have a mandate from God, or are God Herself. (note: to anyone who is religious and votes Republican, please let me know what religion okays killing for ANY REASON. remember your commandments, Religious Right.) they reek of hypocrisy. they advocate persecution. they impose their "family values" on the populace. they are the people that deny evolution happened. and they're living proof that maybe it didn't.



and in much better news, sunday night i will be attending a fine musical performance by blonde redhead (whom i'm never seen live), to cap off my first full weekend off, the ending of my 3rd year pediatrics rotation, and the beginning of my OB/GYN rotation.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 4:36 PM |




where did we go wrong?

or, how the hell did this happen?

From McSweeny's:

We order Reubens and hot plates. We ask the waitress who she is voting for and she says everybody asks her that. She says she hasn't voted yet but she's voting for Bush. She feels he's a good person. She says she's very worried that Kerry is going to win. She can't sleep she's so worried.

"I don't trust him," she says. "He's going to pull all of our troops out of Iraq and it's going to be a mess there." We ask her where she gets her news and she says she gets her news from her mother, who is a Republican. The waitress says she is an Independent. She is not religious. She is not bothered by gay marriage. She is pro-choice.

We talk with her for a long time. We tell her we are pollsters and we don't have opinions; we're just interested in what other people think. Technically, this is a lie, and Josh almost blows it by asking angrily if she had seen Colin Powell admitting that the war is lost, that Iraq is another Vietnam. (I hadn't seen this myself. Apparently, it was a couple of days ago and got eclipsed by the bin Laden tape.)

Her big issue, it turns out, is education. She wants to be in school but she has to work at the same time, just to have enough money to go to a community college, which costs $1,000 a semester. "I don't qualify for financial aid," she says, "because my mother makes $60,000. But neither candidate is going to change that."

What she's saying isn't true, and on the issues she cares most about, she would appear to be a Kerry supporter. But she has no idea who Kerry is and she feels strongly that Bush understands people like her. She refers to Kerry as rich and snobby. She despises Teresa Heinz. And it's obvious to all of us, this is the core Bush voter. Once you remove all the religious loonies hoping to blur the lines between church and state, and the obscenely wealthy who are more than willing to sacrifice the rest of society from their golf communities with their private security forces, you have our waitress. She works in a crappy restaurant. (Don't order the roast-beef hot plate.) She lives or has friends who live in trailer parks. She thinks that George Bush understands people in trailer parks. The deficit is not her issue because she doesn't understand how the deficit affects funding for education. She doesn't like unions. She doesn't have health insurance. She gets her news from her mother.


there's more of them than there are of us.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:03 AM |




03 November 2004

black wednesday

maybe this is just a dream? or maybe this is a nightmare.

worse. this is really real.

we hadn't even heard the news yet. we weren't even aware. jen and i were busy, looking up the most recent lab information, checking up on our patients, and making sure that the orders for the next day's procedures were in. i had just admitted a new patient and was busy getting the paperwork squared away for him before our noon conference (we hadn't planned on going, since it was about library research - BOORING - but then clyde, the chief resident, came in and asked us to go since there was only 1 person attending so far). since work rounds had finished early, around 9:45am, we spent a few minutes clicking around on the internet(s), looking up election information and crossing our fingers that ohio had snapped for kerry. it was still going 51-48 for bush. we were all in different stages of optimism and hope. i was still trying to rally their spirits, telling them that we may still win ohio, and if not, we could drag out the election with unfulfilling lawsuits, but still, still! there was hope. tom didn't really think it was going to go our way, but he found it far more comforting to be optimistic. jen said she felt like crying. even our attending was joining in on it, doing his best impression of the average republican voter.

but we were just too busy. by the time we made it to our afternoon lectures with clyde, jen and i were the only ones that didn't know. we all talked about how depressing the election had been, how little hope there was left. i made some comment that "it ain't over till ohio's votes are in"... and that's when we found out. kerry had conceded.

it was so depressing.

i had heard all morning that the youth vote didn't pull through; that they had been the same dwindling percentage of the total turnout as they had been in 2000. i was bitter. (later i learned that the youth vote had, in fact, increased - but so did all the other demographics, including the religious right). we tried. and we failed.

tomorrow we will wear black. it's kind of a joke among the pediatrics house staff. wear black to mourn the election. we mourn the loss of hope. of decency, intelligence, and reason. we mourn the loss of civil liberties. of women's rights. of progressive policy. of even-handed and benevolent foreign policy.

america, you asked for it. we have had a difficult four years, and now we will have an even more difficult four. we have given back the power to a government that we know has lied to us, will lie to us, and will lie to us again. we have chosen an administration that is arrogant and ignorant. we have voted in a deceitful leader of a deceitful party that tried to suppress the vote this election. i fear what this administration will be capable of, with a "mandate" of 51% of the vote, and no re-election campaign in 4 years to worry about. now we will send ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, citizens of other nations into war. we have bought into the administration that walks and talks as a corporation. we have surrendered all three branches of the government and are asking to surrender our freedoms in the name of patriotism and fear. we have foolishly labeled our candidates with values that we could never possibly know and are only veils with which they drape themselves to conceal the fact that they are gunning for our vote, and it worked. and it is not only americans that will suffer.

we are divided. we are a global laughingstock.

(seriously, i'm totally pissed. and depressed. but i vow to be even more politically active over the next four years.)


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 10:11 PM |




....it's not looking good right now

but i have hope.

and if that's not enough, then i can always apply for residency in canada. if the american people want to reinstall one of the worst presidents in history...



i'm crying.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 12:57 AM |




02 November 2004

HEY, DAVE MAGNUM!

why don't you go EAT A DICK


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 6:41 PM |




OMG today is the day

i've been real busy. i'm on call today, i have to make time to vote, and i have a final exam on friday. and i'm just stressed out overall about my rotation.

ANYWAY

EVERYONE GO VOTE TODAY

it is sooo important. the media is predicting record voter turnout this year, especially among our generation. i credit this to massive dissatisfaction with the current administration - those that were once complacent are now enraged.

all throughout the campaign trail, i've been biting my nails and freaking out and living and dying with the turn of the tide on electoral-vote.com, as have many others. and i have bemoaned the fact that the election is even close (there's THAT many people that can't think for themselves in this country?), and complained that no poll has ever asked me or any of my peers' opinions... WELL.

WE PICK KERRY

a new poll of 18-29 year olds that only have a cell phone (and no landline) has been released, and that voter bloc chooses Kerry, 55-40. THAT's what i'm talkin' bout. i knew our generation wouldn't fall for that shit. now, as long as the talk of record turnout holds true, and our generation floods the polls ... frankly, this is no 50-50 race. it only looks that way when your polling base is 70% republican to begin with (*ahem* gallup polls). Kerry will bury Bush.

PLEASE HELP END THIS (INTER)NATIONAL NIGHTMARE. seriously.

tamar mentioned this weekend "what if... on tuesday.."

we couldn't even stand to hear the question. it makes me sick to my stomach.


this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 6:55 AM |




^ ^



 © the life and times of ohiosnap 2005 - chopped and screwed by the life and times of ohiosnap, stolen from these guys. powered by these guys.