15 down

I am exhausted and cranky, but I am done (with a day of August left, to boot).

Now we wait.

Freedom fighters

It is not difficult to shout about freedom, or liberty, or happiness, or other nice things. A happy side effect is that it is even less difficult to convince people that because you are shouting for freedom, someone--the dreaded "other"--must be shouting against it.

That's where Glenn Beck comes in.

I was going to write some things about his "Reclaiming Honor" rally, but you'd be better off reading this.

It really worries me when people who barely have a child's grasp of reality are in positions of influence.

American

Father: Look at my new lawn mower! Do you want to sit on it? I am going to ride it to get cigarettes!

[Note: He is not a smoker.]

Me: You are really awkward.

Father: I am American.

Later...

Me: I'm going to get a haircut. Do you have any input to offer?

Mother: What input? You have chicken hair. Just tell them to give you shorter chicken hair.

Not exactly rocket science

It's a bit eerie to see a thin 20something young woman lying there completely unconscious, completely naked, her limbs being repositioned and sterilized by four female nurses, six male surgeons, being watched by two med students and one terrified undergrad, all of us completely hidden behind scrubs, caps, and masks.

She could be someone I know. Until they turn her around and I see the giant lump protruding from her shaved head. This isn't her first brain tumor.

A craniotomy is exactly as violent as it sounds. But there's more blood than you're imagining. The neurosurgeon I am shadowing, along with his resident, worked almost silently for two hours, occasionally adjusting the overhead light or their seating on the stools.

The med students kept trying to narrate the procedure to me (it seemed like a competition?) until they switched to asking if I was going to puke. "It's totally okay. It's normal to be queasy the first time. The important thing is you do something about it." Read: don't you dare do it on my shoes. These have to last through all my rotations.

A live brain looks significantly different from the kind I am used to seeing. I wasn't queasy, but I was definitely worried. I'll be seeing post-op patients next week and hope to see her. I'm also hoping I won't say something stupid like "Hi I've seen you naked!" or "That sure was a lot of blood!" or "Can you believe they just put a chunk of your head in a bowl on the counter?"

All in all, a far cry from the tedious, fat-snipping stomach stapling I saw earlier in the week.

Definitely up there on the Life-Changing Experiences list. Not in the way of writing a "Describe a life-changing experience" essay, more like, being grateful to my fifth-grade self for making a good decision.

Welcome, new readers (or, old readers of whom I have only recently become aware). I'm afraid my straight male readership is now heavily outnumbered.

Déjà vu

'“Woman suffrage wants the wife to be as much the ruler as the husband, if not the chief ruler,” warned one antagonist.'

-the olden days

"The feminist agenda disrespects men. Unconditional respect was pushed aside in favor of respect conditional on what men do for women and one man for one woman."

-modern times

We've come so far.

Almost time

This is a feeling of rather wholesome tiredness after a day of eating burgers and doing the crossword and self-congratulation.

But I have to remind myself. August is almost over and there are 3 left and there are petitions to create and biochemistry to re-learn and data to quantify and clothes to sort by color and by sleeve length and backpacks to prep and mothers to appease and there is a lot of work to be done. It is not the time for self-congratulation.

I want to make a blogroll but it would consist of the whole internet.

It is the twenty-second and it is almost time to panic.

First!

Well, it got published.

I highly recommend delving into the comments section. My favorites are the ones that "don't buy" my, um, scientific evidence.

All studies cited are on my currently sick computer. I'll post them here when she's up and running.

Edit: here are cites.

Farr RH, Forssell SL, Patterson CJ. Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter? Applied Developmental Science 14(3):164-178.

I can't find the original Pediatrics paper for this, but

Jim Giles, "Children of lesbian parents do better than their peers." New Scientist. June 2010.

P.S. Thank you Amelia for helping me brainstorm and edit. You are pretty cool!

Happy 90th!

"Woman's cause is man's: They rise or fall together."

A couple people need reminding of that, even now. (By "a couple people" I mean depressingly vast swaths of the country.)

Opinion Exchange

Half of my current tabs are different views on the proposed Islamic cultural center in Manhattan (more on that later, maybe). The other half are different views on Ke$ha's blue lipstick.

That about sums it up.

I don't have the energy to systematically refute every point in Kersten's column today. Maybe I'll write a letter to the editor, though. Hormones even get a mention! Link provided for your own amusement/disgust. Actually, really liking that letter idea.

Worried

I might be becoming a music person.

"It's a band," I heard myself saying. "You probably haven't heard of them. They're ungoogleable."

Also a:

bad feminist

bad Hindu (see below)

bad atheist (see above)

I was reading some of my old linear algebra proofs. They are laughably bad. At one point the TA had, justifiably, written "Why??" five times on one problem. I remember calling the professor at his house to ask him if I should drop out of the class. He said no, that I would need linear algebra for neuroscience.

I agree with everything in this blog post. Trying to add more thinking-y things to my regular blog reading. Many thanks to David for his contributions to that goal.

Rat #6 bit me today. It didn't hurt...except my feelings.

There was a teen self-help book I read with some zeal a few years ago. It suggested counting the number of times one says "I" in the course of a day, then cutting it by a certain fraction/amount/something. And almost every time I say "I" or type "I" I think of that book and feel guilty. And then think of another book: Ayn Rand's "Anthem". Whoops. Just outed myself as a

bad Objectivist.

Moving backwards

It seems my discussions with my mother have regressed in maturity/intellect. Where once we would have (unfailingly) dissected the American education system, with a few uterus jokes thrown in for good measure, it has now come to this.

The scene: my return from another fail day at lab.

Mother: Have you eaten any lunch?

(I should note that this is the first sign of strangeness. My mother does not inquire as to her children's health, only her guinea pig's.)

Me: Yes. I had cookies.

Mother: Cookies are not a lunch! Here, let me get you some rice.

Me: They were pretty big cookies...

Mother: Shut up and eat your rice.

Actually, that last bit hasn't changed.

Tips

Here are some useful things you can do with dark chocolate m&m's.

1. Mix with peanuts. Pretend they are peanut m&m's.

2. Mix into vanilla yogurt for a colorful, crunchy concoction.

3. Just eat them already.

On the occasion of this, my twentieth blog post (!!), I would like to thank you, reader, for sticking around. One of you is in the eastern hemisphere. One's in the southern hemisphere. One is from Australia, which basically takes care of the remaining quadrant. So could you say this blog is bringing the world together? Yeah, probably. Anyway. Thank you for reading my complaints on the internet, and probably listening to them in real life too. You are a good kid and I'm grateful to count you as a friend. One day I will tell you that outside of cyberspace, and maybe there will even be eye contact.

My favoritest singer accepted my friend request today (yes, this means creeping on her baby pictures). I was almost left inside a locked bus today (again). Are these two events related? I'll leave you to speculate.

Hustle and cuss

• Spider solitaire is considerably more difficult than I remembered.

• A few years ago my mother and I got our noses pierced together. I brought her pictures of puppies to distract her and held her hand. She still screamed. I apparently forgot about her pain tolerance issues when I suggested we get tattoos to celebrate our respective graduations...and she took it seriously. whoops.

• Hormones get a bad rap. Actually studying endocrinology this year helped me appreciate how important and tightly controlled they are. So, people blaming their actions/mood/behavior on "hormones" make me cringe. Take responsibility for yourself already.

• The dog is smiling at me. creep.

• If I had any sort of credibility while cussing it would happen a lot more often. Wait, already have the facial piercings, leather jacket, mysterious scars, and imaginary tattoo. Maybe a motorcycle is key?

Faster than ice caps

• Gold Peak tea is delicious.

• A new College Board report says the country is 12th in terms of 25 to 34 year olds with college degrees. Canada, South Korea, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Israel, France, Belgium and Australia are all ahead of us. The NYT article I read this in was well-written but for one glaring problem: the writer consistently equated Lady Gaga and Snooki. ("Putting our brains on hold", Bob Herbert, 8/7/10)

• Within fifteen minutes of being lined up on a table in view of each other, my rats start doing the same things at the same time--sleeping (in the same position, no less), grooming, whatever. Any ideas how/why this happens?

• No seriously, gold peak tea, I need more.

• I also found it interesting that the college board president "called on educators to develop curricula that are more 'interesting and inspiring.'" Err. Somehow I don't think that will help much.

• "American politics is apparently cursed by the fatal allure of free cabinetry." Gail Collins = best NYT columnist? I think so. (First typed "communist" instead of "columnist".)

• "The most horrifying of the lot was [the] green backless disaster, which looked like something a concubine would wear to the annual Harem Achievement Awards ('Harries')." Funniest clothing review I've read in some time.

• I'm going to write a mystery novel where the identity of the killer is totally obvious and there are a bunch of clues and it should be open-and-shut, but through a series of hilarious mishaps and general displays of incompetency, the detectives still take the length of the novel to figure it out, by which time the reader thinks I must be pulling their leg, there's no way it could be that obvious, but then it actually is the obvious person, and the reader's mind is blown by the obviousness. Blam, bestseller.

It's not the third

I blog too much. But think of it this way. It's a lot easier to ignore a blog post than a wall post.

I'm veering wildly between

1. Of course I'll get in. In fact I'll get in to multiple places. I'll get in to so many places I will bemoan having to choose between them.

2. Under what audacity did I spend so much of my parents' money applying this year. There's no way I will get in anywhere. One school has a ratio of 5000 applicants for 88 seats. Really? I'm going to beat those odds?

Currently in #2. The premed student forums don't help. Everyone there is insane. They raise my blood pressure like nobody's business. I can count the number of premed people I genuinely like on one hand.

There's a really cool combo of coffee, energy drinks, and self-doubt running through my veins. But it might just be all those existentialist webcomics.

Update: Pep talk received . It went like this.

Me: Mother. I'm having an existential crisis.

Mother: Again? Well, you have to have one every month or so to make sure you exist, I suppose. What is it this time? You won't get in anywhere?

Me: I won't get in anywhere.

Mother: Huh. That's okay. I'll teach you to make parathas.

Sister: You want her to be a housewife?!

Mother: No, no. She'll make parathas in tiffins for all the bachelors. Every day they'll pay her to pack tiffins.

Me: But they'll have creepy mustaches.

Mother: No, hire a delivery guy. You just make the parathas.

Me: (...)

Mother: I don't care if you don't want to write. Go.

And so I went and here we are. I'm good now.

Spicy Indian noodles

I think the arsenic is working.