A quick check on Google this year confirms that a search for "Topin Wagglegammon" yields more than a hundred results, almost every single one of which cites my version of the holiday. Searching for merely "wagglegammon" does find matches unrelated to Imperial culture, but the first matches are all mine. There's a curious sense of power that comes with this.

As every single one of you ought to know, tommorow is Topin Wagglegammon, The Niftiest Day of the Year. It is *the* holiday. It is the date for which the word "niftyday" was coined. It is a day of happymaking sillyness. It is Topin Wagglegammon -- its niftiness is inherent and exists independent of meaning. Meaning itself, in fact, as an ideal and as an ontological concept, is rendered meaningless and pale in the face of Topin Wagglegammon. It's just that nifty.

In preparation for Topin Wagglegammon this year, dark and shadowy figures from all over the world convened to discuss how this most holy and significant of days would be marked this year. The date falls on a Thursday, so it was unfeasible to declare staying up all night partying and watching cartoons. The Rite Of The Tactical Nuclear Ferret was considered, but we had done that once before, and it wouldn't do to fall into a pattern. Much debate was held and the very earth trembled with the force of the arguments. A common consensus was eventually reached that whatever else may be true, the celebration of Topin Wagglegammon required a few things which were 100% indispensable and were, conveniently, found in most homes already. Once the list of essential ritual components had been assembled, everything else just sort of fell into place, and thus, Topin Wagglegammon 2007 shall be celebrated all over the world with The Ancient Rite Of The Four Cookies And A Coat Hanger And Some Other Stuff.

two cookies
one stuffed toy
a large hammer
a copy of your local newspaper or a piece of smoked salmon
an icon representing all evil in the world
an image of the state of Florida
the lyrics to "Spaceballs: The Song"
an Earthworm Jim action figure or a reasonable proxy
another cookie
water from a river running through a battlefield which once ran red with blood, or some lint
an hourglass
one more cookie
a plastic or metal coathanger
a fnord
and a chainsaw.

 1) Put away your chainsaw. They aren't safe and shouldn't be left lying around. Next, prepare your ritual space. Clear out anything extraneous from a five-foot square. On a plate or napkin, place your four cookies reverentially in the center of the space. Put your coathanger on the floor next to them on one side and put your newspaper (or lox) down on the other side. Keep everything else within easy reach. Sit quietly and meditate until you achieve universal harmony, or you get bored, or nine seconds, or whatever you like.
 2) Eat a cookie.
 3) Pick up your stuffed toy and snuggle it briefly. Put it on top of the newspaper (or next to, but not on top of, the lox). Read the headline (or eat the lox). Remove the newspaper from the sacred space.
 4) Place your image of Florida on the floor. Place the icon representing all evil on top of Florida. Take your stuffed toy and have it bop, kick, karate-grip, or otherwise displace, move, or beat up the icon of all evil. If this feels insufficient, smash the icon with a hammer until satisfied. Remove the icon, the hammer, and the image of Florida from the sacred space. Snuggle your stuffed toy.
 5) Eat a cookie.
 6) Read aloud from the Hitchhiker's Guide briefly, and then sing part of Spaceballs: The Song. Place both reverntially outside the sacred space. Stand up and put away your coathanger properly in the closet.
 7) Go get your icon of evil and put it back in the sacred space. Laugh maniacally, quietly. Pick up your Earthworm Jim action figure and beat up, smash, tear apart, or otherwise bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate the icon of evil. Laugh maniacally loudly. Remove the icon and Earthworm Jim from the sacred space.
 8) Eat half a cookie.
 9) Invert your hourglass. Pour out your water onto the floor. Invert your hourglass again. Wait for the sand to run out. Stick your tongue out at it. Remove the hourglass from your sacred space.
 10) Snuggle your stuffed toy. Reverentially place your stuffed toy in its proper place. Eat half a cookie.
 11) Give someone your fnord. Under no circumstances explain to them what it means, except saying that fnords are meant to be given to people. If they ask why you are giving out fnords, explain that it is because it is Topin Wagglegammon. Under no circumstances explain Topin Wagglegammon, except to say that it is the day one gives away fnords.
 12) Return to the sacred space. Do a happy dance. Eat your fourth cookie.

Happy Topin Wagglegammon, everyone!

D-Curriculum: Unit 6
     McGill researchers announced this week that after several years of work, they had at last isolated the most elusive and long-sought organ of the eye. The organ, tentatively named Claremont’s Body, is believed to be responsible for firing lasers from the eyes.
     “We’re looking at an immense project with wide-reaching applications,” enthused one researcher. “We’re applying for no less than four separate grants, since we’ll need funds for special measurement devices, modified Snellen charts, and roof repairs.”
     Claremont’s Body, as isolated, is a small, ganglion-like structure in the back of the eye, measuring roughly one millimetre across fnord. Buried deep within the retina and visually indistinguishable from neural tissue, the structure was long unnoticed by investigators. McGill researchers began from the principle that the eye laser organ would have to be located within the macula or fovea and, from that point, investigated histological sections millimetre by millimetre until they found tissue they hadn’t seen before. The Body appears to operate on similar photoreceptive properties as nearby photoreceptive cells but, instead of transducing light energy into neural impulses, seems to be capable of storing the energy and releasing it anteriorly in some individuals. It is not yet known if the released energy is electromagnetic, kinetic, or thermal. A clear mechanism for the Body’s function has not yet been proposed, but this, along with the creation of fast and portable grilled-cheese sandwiches, will be a major focus of early research.

D-Curriculum: Unit 7
     A revolutionary treatment for motor neuron disease will be unveilved soon, a spokesperson for the Society for the Propagation of Unsafe and Dangerous Sciences announced yesterday. Numerous diseases can damage the motor neuron system, and a single non-specific treatment for neural damage stands to be, not only life-saving to many, but also obscenely profitable.
     “We’re really very excited about our new finding,” the SPUDS spokesperson told reporters. “We’ve been working from the premise that the human motor system has analagous aspects to other motors in nature. That pointed us in the right direction. With a single substance, we can cure nearly any motor neuron disease known.”
     The new miracle drug fnord being touted by SPUDS is, in fact, Valvoline.
     “‘Motor system,‘ ‘motor engine,’ it all has the same word in it. How different could they possibly be?”
     The new study demonstrates that out of a sample of nearly two-hundred volunteer participants with motor neuron damage, nearly eight survived following ingestion of Valvonine motor oil. The study does not report whether any of the patients experienced neural dysfunction before entering the trial.
     “Test if they had neuron damage before they drank the Valvoline? You know, you might be on to something with that.”

D-Curriculum: Unit 8
     Bacteriologists at the H.G. Wells Memorial Hospital announced today an incredible new breakthrough in the study of micro-organisms. The time-honoured paradigm that all bacteria are small is now being challenged by a soon-to-be-published paper which asserts that Norman in accounting is a bacterium.
     "Well, he is a slimy sort of fellow," one researcher told reporters. "Nobody much likes him, and if you watch him eat, he'll certainly make you feel ill. Admittedly, he is large enough to be visible without a microscope, but for the moment we have yet to definitivly test is he's multicellular or just, y'know, really big."
     Initial experimentation, conducted primarily during lunch hours over the last week, have led to some initial suppositions as to Norfnordman's proper classification. Gram staining suggests that Norman is gram-positive, as his outer membrane retained both crystal violet and safranin. He has furthermore been tentatively labeled a coccus, pending his going on a diet starting on Monday.
     "Also, we've classified him as a whiner. Honestly, he gets a little iodine in his eye and you can hear it from three floors away."
     Norman himself could not be reached for comment, as reporters sent to speak with him have been found mysteriously liquified.

Master,
I pray the sun shines upon you as you read this, for o'er mine own head, I feel only shadow. Bless the Light, we have cleansed the vile temple as you commanded. We camped outside of it for a day and a night struggling to undo the desecration around it, and began our assault at nine heartbeats past the sunrise. Two of your paladins died before they had even crossed the green mists which ringed the foul building, but the rest of us hit the doors and breached them as a sunbeam breaches the shadows. I shall report to you in full the atrocities we witnessed as we slew the evil guardians of that temple, but for now shall content you with reporting that the site has been cleared with minimal losses. As we had hoped and feared, the library was captured intact.
With this missive, I have sent a sample of the writings we found within. Much of the material we found was so blasphemous that I burned it out of hand, and I fear that Brother Marnt, who gibbers in his tent even and now will take neither food nor water, may never recover from his cursory reading of some of those now-destroyed parchments. Those papers which radiated the least palpable evil and which appeared the least horrific, we saved for study, though I almost hope we learn nothing from them.
May the demon who created this temple remain forever sleeping in whatever corner of the Netherhells he rests in. It may be months before I can look at green without nausea and sickness.
Gloria Oriens!
Karsus Solfrater,
Brother of the Sun's Searing Light

First, to consider the placement of the heart. In most humanoids, the heart sits in the center of the chest, slightly off to the left, directly between the lungs. It is protected by the ribs and the sternum, which is a very hard and protective bone but which has a pleasant crunch and contains much delicious red marrow. Stories in many cultures speak of evil priests pulling the heart from the chest of living men, which is just silly... to pull out the heart would require punching through several very strong mucles, sternum and ribs, often the large manibrium, tearing open the tough pericardial sac which is itself protected by nearly a full inch of fat and which is surprisingly resistent to even sharp blades and teeth, tearing no less than eight of the toughest and most elastic blood vessels in the human body, and pulling the whole mass out of the chest without cutting one's own hand open on the pointy rib bits. On top of which, the experimental subjects in question rarely sit still during this process. So, I dismiss out of hand the claims of such rapid and easy de-heartings.

The elven heart can be said to be basically the same as the human. It is slightly smaller in gross size but has thicker walls, allowing it to pump a greater volume of blood with fewer strokes and a lower heart rate. Unlike the majority of the elf body, which is rather more delicate than the human body, the elven heart is if anything tougher than the human heart and seems able to withstand more damage. It is however easier to pull from the body because it is smaller and less wedged into the space beween the lungs. The dwarven heart is larger than human or elf and far thicker, taking up the majority of the dwarf mediastinum such that one wonders where the lungs have room to expand.

The heart can be said to have two basic functions: to send blood to the lungs to fill with oxygen, and to send blood from the lungs to the body to empty of oxygen. I believe it is oxygen which is most essential because in other gasses, notably nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapour, and several others the subjects make a curious choking sound for several seconds and then die. It is the flow of blood which determines how the heart works and not vice versa because if one changes the volume of blood in a subjects veins the heart will speed or slow (but very rarely explode) in response. Many curious chemicals can alter how the heart pumps, notably the extract of the foxglove which makes the heart beat much stronger and many venoms which make it slow down or contract at the same speed but with less force. If the heart is transformed into foreign substances, such as wood or custard, death invitably follows, and so we conclude that it is very important that the heart be made of something able to contract and expand.

Let us now consider some modifications which can be made to the heart to enhance a humanoid. It is not enough to merely speed up the heart, nor to merely slow it down. The heart must be adaptable. It must pump forwards and not backwards or else the lungs fill with fluid and the subjects make odd fishy sounds and then die. And it is useful to have the heart inside the chest as opposed to the thighs or something because it needs a great deal of room in which to work and it is inconvenient if the heart stops beating when you sit down. So, we consider three initial modifications to the humanoid heart: protection, contractility, and flow control.

It is a very pretty night tonight.

First, we consider protection of the heart, for if the heart is pierced with even a small hole it can leak and blood will be lost and death follows swiftly. In addition, unlike the intestines or the oropharynx, a blade stabbed directly into the heart effectively causes instantaneous death, and so protecting the heart is quite useful. The simplest and most obvious modification is to toughen the bones which protect the heart, particularly the sternal bone. The sternum cannot simply be filled with iron because the red marrow in the sternum is necessary for staving off infection and illness in some way which I have not yet determined, and so unless the subject's immune system is modified as well (see chapter 21) the sternum should remain hollow. The bony portions of the sternum can be hardened, however, and hardening the bone to a consistency not-unlike iron does provide excellent protection to the heart in a single easy procedure. Note that this procedure must be done to more than just the sternum, for if the sternum is made very dense and the ribs are not, they have difficulty moving the sternum and they snap and puncture the lungs. Furthermore, hardening the sternum and even the ribs does no confer absolute protection, as any trained combatant will already know that to bypass the sternum one simply stabs into the gut below the xiphoid bone and then aims upward. The best protection for the heart is therefore to encase it totally in some hard substance, including sealing off the thoracic outlet. These areas cannot be totally sealed, of course. If the heart is placed in a metal sphere, then it has great difficulty pumping blood to anything outside the sphere. Small holes must therefore be left for the great vessels, and if sealing the whole of the thoracic outlet, one must take into account also the movement of the diaphragm and the passage of the esophagus and other tubes into the abdomen. Perhaps the most efficient solution is to forgo protecting the heart itself and instead toughen the skin and outer muscles, thereby protecting all organs, including the heart.

To make the heart more powerful requires making it beat faster or harder. I believe that it is inadvisable to make the heart beat faster because, counter to intuition, the health of a subject appears better if the same volume of blood is pumped in fewer beats than in more beats. So, we improve the heart's contractility, the strength of the heart muscle contraction. This can be done by toughening the heart wall, but then the heart is harder to fill and this is bad. The heart should rather be strengthened by making the muscles stronger or by increasing the overall size of the heart and all chambers therein. It is important to reinforce the valves of the heart if the walls are made stronger to prevent backflow of blood, and the valves, not needing to contract themselves, can be supplemented with strong metal quite easily. A study of more athletic and less athletic humans reveals that a stronger an tougher human has a longer and stronger heart which contracts fewer times each minute and yet supplies more blood with greater efficiency. A study of these differences illustrates some ways to exagerate these differences.

Finally, we consider flow control. The function of the heart is to ensure continuous blood supply to the tissues, and it does this by contraction because nature uses contracting muscles to do work and does not use, for example, water wheels or continuous flow. We are far smarter than nature and so we can use such systems. If the whole heart is removed, a new unit can be put into the heart. These units can have many configurations. One design which works very well is to create a "waterfall" effect inside the chest by simple manipulation of gravity. A simple variation of the Fly spell or other such magic is used to create a situation where blood entering the heart believes that it suddenly begins falling and so, like a river with a waterfall and then a river, flow is continuous at all times. The pressure of blood running down the waterfall forces blood in all other areas of the body to flow at the correct rates and there is always fresh blood falling down the waterfall. There is no pumping mechanism to malfunction, the unit requires far less apce because it does not have to expand and contract, and it can be built of iron or steel to make it very durable. One flaw with this unit is that it does not adapt blood flow to new situations. When a human becomes excited, his heart beats faster so that blood moves through his body faster and this let him act more quickly. The waterfall unit does not speed up and so the subject does not get as excited or move any faster when in danger, such as when he is being chased by a tiger or pushed off of a bridge. This is an important area for possible improvement.

End of chapter 6.

Possibly one of my least-known favoured gags is that I have a handful of holidays not listed on my official calendar and which get celebrated in a somewhat eccentric manner... by which i mean, even more eccentric than most of my holidays because nobody ever bothers to record the date on which these days are celebrated. There are three or four holidays which I've come up with over the years through the simple combination of over-percolated ideas, Muse Attack, sleep deprivation, and ALF comic books, and I've been celebrating some of these holidays for more than eight years now, although rarely on the same date twice. Among these holidays are such worthy celebrations as: "Abuse a Vorlon Day" wherein one draws pictures of Vorlons being mangled; "Eat Your Calendar Day" wherein one bakes a calendar out of cookie dough and chocolate syrup and eats the result; and "Give A Present To A Wall Day" wherein one gives a thoughtful gift to one's favourite wall and, should the wall not accept the gift within twenty four hours, one generously opens the gift on the wall's behalf and wears, plays with, or eats the contents as it appropriate. This list, sometimes known as the Floating Niftydays, grows from time to time, mostly because I tend to invent holidays on the spur of the moment and celebrate them whenever the heck I happen to think of them afterwards. This year, I am pleased to have added a new date to this list.

October 16th 2006 is Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day. But it won't be next year.

As we all know, the Elder God Cthulhu lies in the sunken city of R'lyeh. We say that he is asleep because English lacks the proper verb to describe what he is doing, in so far as that is not dead which can eternal lie. One day, when the stars are right, the sunken city shall rise from the depths and Cthulhu has lay waste to humankind, shattering the sanity of all who live before devouring both flesh and souls of the broken creatures who remain. Until that day, though, cthulhu lies in the depths and, understandably, has nothing much to do down there.It is a proven fact, however, that Great Cthulhu can peer forth and see the world through the eyes of his cultists. It is a lesser-known fact that Unholy Cthulhu can also see through the eyes of any images crafted in his image, including statues, paintings, shirts, certain varieties of sushi, fuzzy Elder God slippers, and Chtonic plush toys. To this end, people all over the world choose one day a year to make an effort to keep Temperamental Cthulhu entertained and occupied, such that he does not get bored and decide to raise R'lyeh early just to alleviate the tedium. Inspired by the much-maligned Take Your Child To Work days dreaded by employers and employees alike the world over, those who know the ways of Mighty Cthulhu plan ahead that one day of the year, they all bring to work, class, or whatever they're up to that day a set of eyes by which the Elder One can see the world and decide that it's probably maddening enough as it is without his help. In the event that this is not enough to keep Cthulhu from rising, at least he will known who cared enough to carry him around and hopefully kill them quickly.

That "whirring" sound that you hear, by the way, is Howard Phillip spining in his grave.

In any case, today I actually did celebrate this niftyday. While filling my knapsac for the school day, I lovingly packed my small plush Chtulhu doll. I wouldn't have been allowed to bring him into the anatomy lab, I'm sure, but during small group activities he sat happily on my bag and during afternoon lectures I actually sat him on the empty seat next to me, which earned me some very amusing glances from those nearby. I know that the gods smiled upon my choice of day for this event, because in the morning small group activities, we had a new supervising professor who began the session by saying "tell the group your name, your educational background, and one interesting thing about you." If he only knew. Suffice it to say that a stuffed Cthulhu doll gets big laughs at 8 am in the morning, especially if it's introduced as "this is Great Cthulhu, the Elder God, who will one day devour humanity." My hat's off to my classmate who looked Cthulhu right in the eye and said "I look forward to meeting you later."

Will Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day ever be celebrated again? My powers of precognition aren't what they once were, so I can't say. On the one hand, I'm amazed that I rembered to pack Cthulhu in my bag between Saturday when I came up with the idea for the day and Sunday when I got around to getting the doll off my shelf, so I've got no confidence that I'll think of this next year. On the other hand, I've got a searchable written record of the date now by virtue of this Journal, so who knows if I'll be sitting around next September and decide to celebrate again? To be certain, Abuse A Vorlon Day has survived far longer than I ever imagined it would, so I know better than to underestimate either the power of a fun holiday or my own ability to accomplish weird stuff. Stay tuned to this space next year and find out.

International Moment of Frustration Scream Day may be the most fun holiday I've never celebrated.

Across the world, on October 12th, people put aside their lunches, button up where appropriate, step outside, and at the strike of noon, look up at the sky, stretch wide their arms, and scream like they've got the Eye of Sauron stuck up their nose. Screams echo from block to block, city to city, nation to nation, country to country, and across the face of the world. Shipping trawlers in the middle of the ocean rock gently to the tune of 340m/s. In darkest Antarctica, geological experiments are ruined as the ice rattles and cracks to the sound. From countless human throats, a single cry, a single word reverberates from castrato to incuso. And that word is "aaauuugggh!" with occasional "yargh!" for variety.

The astute reader will already have deduced I was not one of these people.

International Moment of Frustration Scream Day was yesterday, and I did not celebrate. In point of fact, I have never celebrated this holiday, even though its addition to my calendar happened somewhere between seven and nine years ago (records of the exact date are uncertain, by which I mean, of course, non-existent). It is known that since my first year in John Abbott at the very least, I was taking note of and telling other people about the joy of this niftyday. Somehow, though, I have never actually gotten around to screaming. This year, the excuse was predictable: I was in the middle of a lecture and it didn't seem like "I should go outside to scream for a bit" would be a good reason to miss potentially important knowledge. This is, naturally, in addition to the fact that my classes are in the heart of downtown Montreal and my begining to scream at maximum volume would probably attract attention or be of some small disruption to pedestrians, if not attract actual law enforcement activity. This latter reason is the main reason why I haven't screamed on October 12th in the past: it's rather too much of an attention-getter.

This is not to say that I haven't tried celebrate the day, mind you. I've graduated three schools and begun studying at a fourth since incorporating the day into my calendar, and at each of them there has been one question which I investigated: does this facility give me easy access to a soundproof booth? To date, the answer has been a pathetic series of disapointments. My high school understandably did not have such a facility, being that they probably had minimal need for such a thing (when my high school teachers tortured students, they *wanted* the screams to be heard). My CEGEP did have sound-proof rooms, but none that I was able to get access to by hook, crook, or rook, all of which I resorted to happily. The university where I did my undergraduate probably did have soundproof chambers, but the music practice chambers were very far from being perfectly soundproof (I believe this was a deliberate attempt to try to get the games club, down the hall from the music practice booths, to agree to reliquish their room) and Information, Security, and the Physics department all refused flatly to tell me where a proper soundproof chamber might be found. Concordia did offer plenty of nearly soundproof areas, as well as numerous areas that were simply out of the way enough that no one could hear you scream, but no areas of that sort which are easily accessible in the middle of the day. At McGill, finally, I did do some basic investigative work, but didn't put much effort into it because I assumed, quite reasonably, that I would only be in the building for one cycle of the calendar, which in retrospect was an unusual failure of contingency-plan formation on my part. This year, I did look into it, and it turns out that while our building does have numerous chambers which are effectively soundproofed, most of them contain DNA sequencing machinery or exotic deadly bacteria, so it was moderatly discouraged that I try to talk my way into one of them.

I do plan to celebrate this holiday one day, of course. Some day and some how, and probably not any time in the next three to four years, but one day, I will scream at noon on October 12th. It's a life goal of mine, like seeing the Empire's flag up in a respected world museum (which I won't be able to pull off until *at least* late January) and reading every issue of The Fantastic Four ever written (and gods bless Joe Michael Straczynski for making it possible for us to see Reed Richards singing Tom Lehrer). Such is my dedication to this goal, in fact, that in all iterations of the design notes for the fortress which will be built when I rule this pitiful mudball, going back at least as long as I've been celebrating this niftyday, I have always included a Scream Room. This simple room's design has remained quite consistent while my blueprints for most other chambers have mutated wildly. The Scream Room is to be a simple white room, 10' X 10' X 10' with gently padded floors, cieling, and walls. The door will have a small window and the room will be lockable from inside. The room will be completly airtight and all walls will be thick and heavily insulated, to ensure 100% soundproofing. With such a chamber prepared, then any time someone felt the need, as we all do from time to time, one could enter the room, quietly lock the door, settle down, relax, center oneself, and then from the depths of one's soul, Scream. I think most people would benefit greatly from having access to such a room, and that's speaking not only in my capacity as arrogant know-it-all but also as a relatively highly-trained psychologist. Although not, perhaps, as a burgeoning otolaryngologist.

And if I do find myself with an overwhelming urge to scream, there's at least three scream-friendly holidays within the next month alone. It's something to look forward to.

About a month ago now, I was recruited to help with a VtM LARP which is being organized by a friend of mine. Out of a projected player-pool better than thirty people, I was flattered to be offered one of the most important roles in the city, that of one of the two characters competing for the title of Prince (or this story's equivalent), but because of my course-load (and the fact that I don't believe I have the personal presence -- no pun intended -- to play a charismatic political in live action), I regretfully declined. Instead, I was given this other and probably even more fun task of joining the two storytellers's small pool of staff-writers. In addition to creating a half dozen NPCs, which will quite possibly see the triumphant return of Clayton Paulo to my weekly gaming routine, I was tasked with composing several short stories which will be distributed to all players to give them a feel for the mood, themes, and history of the game world. This is one of those stories. A brief footnote at the bottom explains some elements which will go over the heads of non-gamers like a 747 on stilts.

      Trudge.
      Trudge.
      Kick a rat. Seems like there’re a lot of rats these days.
      The cart gets stuck. Fight to pull it out. It’s stuck in a crack in the “road.” If there were fewer bodies in the cart, it would weigh less, be easier to navigate, easier to get it out of holes in the street. As it is, the cart’s heavy. Very heavy.
      There are a lot of bodies these days.
      Trudge. Trudge. Trudge trudge, just for a change. Trudge.
      A door. It’s got herbs draped over it to keep out the Plague. If those worked, you’d be out of a job. Knock on the door. An old man… really just a young man, but sickness’s aged him twenty years this week… opens it, hands you a body. Don’t even look to see how old it is, male or female, human or scarecrow for all you know. Toss it in the cart, move on to the next house. Trudge trudge. Make mental note of this house… you’ll be back here in a few days, sure as Plague.
      Kick a rat. Watch it run to the leper in the alley. Always got a lot of rats around him, that leper. He’s welcome to them.
      Four runs a day now, and always a full cart. Two busy runs, two light runs. Lunchtime runs are easy… nobody dies at lunchtime, or at least, nobody takes out the bodies at lunchtime. Hauling the bodies means you’ve got enough money to afford a lunch most days. Makes you feel a little superior to everybody. Lunch, and not having the Plague. Run at the end of the day, that’s a tough one. Lots of bodies at the end of the day. Glance over the bodies, and all of them’ll have the Plague. Look at the spots and boils, see all the shapes and sizes. The infinite variety of nature. Evening run’s the worst because you’re already tired from a busy day of pushing the cart. Pushing the cart and digging graves. And kicking rats. Morning run’s the odd one. Lots of work, lots of bodies, but you’re fresh first thing in the morning and a full cart just feels lighter. Lots of people die overnight, more than ever die during the day. Maybe the Plague moves faster at night. They say it’s spread by witches… sure as Plague, witches come out more at night than during the day. No witches ever on the street at lunchtime. Lots of people die overnight. Funny how only about half of them ever have obvious signs of the Plague. Some people must get sick only on the inside, not show any Plague on their skin. Funny how the people who die during the day never get sick inside, only outside.
      You consider blaming the rats. That’s just silly, though… what do the rats have to do with anything? There’s a lot of them and they eat food, and sometimes they eat the bodies in your cart, but they don’t spread the Plague, sure as Plague. Hang around all the time with those lepers, and never see the lepers get sick.
      Trudge. Trudge. Kick. Trudge. Pause. Scratch. Trudge. Pause. Hop a couple of steps, just because it’s good not to be sick. Then, trudge some more.
      The cart’s heavy now. Too many bodies. They’ve all got the Plague, looks like. Sun’ll set soon. Maybe the witches’ll come out. Maybe they won’t. Be more bodies to pick up either way. Wager your lunch that half of them won’t look any sicker than you. They’ll be dead anyway, poor buggers.
      Turn the cart around (no small task). Look up the road. See how far the cemetery is. Sigh. The long-suffering sigh of the man who’s just a few miles short of finishing a long day’s work.
      Square shoulders. Brace feet. On three. One, two, three: trudge. Trudge trudge trudge trudge trudge. Make eye contact with a leper. Shudder, not sure why, look away. Kick a rat, and trudge.
      Seems like there’re an awful lot of rats these days.

Footnote:
The above story is an illustrative case of active vampires in the middle ages, at the height of the Black Death, generally believed today to have been bubonic plague (which is only subtly distinct from pneumonic plague, which some authors believe will be the great disease pandemic of the 21st century, in ways which I won't get into right now but which are really neat if you're interested in diseases). The premise of the game in question is that due to a single change of events historically, the Masquerade never comes into effect and vampires never have reason to conceal their activities very energetically. During the height of the plague, therefore, we see what is presumably a vampire of clan Nosferatu disguised as a beggar and feeding freely from the ill population. Most humans happily rationalize what they observe to find less horrific explanations for events around them, but none-the-less there is a pervasive sense that there is something around which is a Bad Thing.

Possibly the single greatest impediment to the cure of countless patients in modern health care is the shortage of viable organs for transplants. Countless patients throughout the world lie untreated because their conditions require transplantation of an undamaged heart, lung, kidney, liver, cornea, sparkplug, bone marrow, cathode ray tube, spleen, brain, or other vital organ. Currently, the modern medical system is very good at finding patients who could be helped by transplants and is excellent at offering palliative care until a transplant is located, but is very poor at actually locating viable transplantable organs to give to a recipient.

Fun fact: the word "palliate" is derived from the Latin, "to cloak." Make of that what you will, but I take it as just one more reason why we should all love our towels.

There are several major blocks to giving the average person a transplant. First and foremost, there are numerous people who require transplants (thanks to the miracle of fatty foods and alcohol, there are more transplant candidates every year) and an unsurprisingly small number of transplantable donor organs to go around. Consider: to require a new organ, all you have to do is live the high life, abuse your body, and wallow around in hedonistic joy, whereas to be a good organ donor, you have to live a clean life, stay away from drugs and booze, stay in decent shape, and, of course, die, usually by unnatural causes. Understandably, there are more people who need than who are giving away, which leads to what's known in the hallowed halls of medicine as "a seller's market."

The second block to providing easy transplants to people is that of rejection. The human body has really incredible systems for identifying cells which should and should not be inside it. T cells are able to identify things that are in the wrong place if they have foreign markers, for example, whereas Natural Killer cells are in turn able to identify things as foreign because they lack the "I'm supposed to be here" markers. Between these and other cells, such as the macrophages that clear carbon out of your lungs when you walk down the street and turn into tattoos under your skin when ink is injected, the body identifies, isolates, and (ideally) removes anything which ought not to be inside you. In general, this is a good thing, since it helps stave off infections and get catchy songs out of your head. In the single peculiar case of organ transplants, it's incredibly difficult to find an organ which matches an individual's own tissues closely enough that it won't be attacked as foreign. The organs of a sibling may not even be close enough, and in general, an individual with an organ graft will have to spend the rest of their life on immunosupressive drugs, so that they have a working heart but get infected by every bacteria they meet. An organ which gets rejected is really something to behold -- as immune celles flood the tissue, it effectively rots at hyperaccelerated speed. The person gets Not So Good, the expensive and valuable organ is reduced to fertilizer, and the immune system sits grinning happily and obliviously like a doberman that just ripped out the mailman's throat and now hopes to get a treat. Overall, it's not a perfect system.

The third block to transplantation is social interest groups. This is less of a problem with human-to-human transplants but is a major block to one of the alternative sources of transplants. Pig and ape organs have been sucessfuly (in the short term, at least) put into human bodies, and assuming rejection can be staved off (which is feasible, though unpleasant), an individual can live like that for some time, at the very least buying them more time for a proper human organ to be found. Animal rights groups and religious groups alike have caused problems here -- column A objecting to the sacrifice of animals and column B objecting to putting bits of lesser species into human bodies. In addition, some people simply get squeamish at the idea of having a pig's heart in their chest, which is only exacerbated when the doctor tells them that the pig's heart is bigger, stronger, and healthier than their own.

Fortunately, medical science has recently been investigating new alternative sources of organs for transplant, and whole horizons are opening. A new hope may yet be in store for individuals desperately waiting for a new spleen. The ideal organ source would be to find an animal basically human, which is rarely if ever recognized by a body as foreign, which is plentiful, and which nobody would ever object to being killed in mass quantities: orcs. The future of medical transplantation is green.

The harvesting of orcish organs will mean the solution to most problems facing modern transplantation. Orcs are extremely plentiful and at any given moment young warriors are practically lining up to go out and kill them of them. In all probability, individuals could even be found who would pay the hospitals for the priviledge of going out to kill orcs, meaning that the health-care system would actually profit from accumulating organs. No reputable social interest group in the world would object to the slaying of orcs, and any disreputable group can be dealt with simply by allowing them to discuss the issue with some orcs briefly (and then whatever's left of both sides can be used in still more transplants). Finally, orc organs are known to be adaptable and, in a sense, "hypoallergenic." Orc surgeons have proven to be able to fuse themselves to all manner of things, from crude bionic limbs to pieces of armor to small animals to large furniture, so it is reasonable to suggest that orcish organs can probably be inserted into human bodies with a minimum or risk of rejection. Even if there is rejection of foreign orcish tissue, this is still no worse than the problem of rejection of human organs, and leaves over more human organs for those individual for whom no suitable orc match can be found. It's the perfect solution for everyone -- except for the orcs, but they're just orcs, so it's okay.

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, is one of the very few Jewish services I attend. Barring weddings and bar-mitzvahs, I enter a synagogue only three or four times each year, and I ersonally feel that that's rather high a number as it is. In point of fact, I make an effort to stay off of holy ground in general where possible; for two years, every school day, I had to cross twenty feet of consecrated Christian soil to enter the Concordia campus, and every single day I envisioned myself bursting into flames. None-the-less, one of the most religiously-important parts of Yom Kippur is fasting from the sundown before to the sundown (and the end of religious services of) the day itself, which comes to roughly 26 hours of neither eating nor drinking. The law actually prohibits a variety of other things on that day, including working, bathing, buying or selling, wearing leather shoes, and many of the other things which one might imagine are forbidden on such a day. Despite the precise degree to which I am Jewish, I fast on Yom Kippur. I also shower; there are limits to what I'm willing to do for someone else's faith.

Given how loathe I am to give up the pleasures in my life, it's understandable that people might be unsure why I would choose to fast. The answer is threefold. First, and more importantly, I'm very fortunate to have a family I really like being around and which does very nice things for me on a regular basis. It matters a great deal to my parents that I observe this particular ritual, and given how little they ask of me compared to what teh costs I've incurred over the years, it's the least I can do to fulfill their wish. I could cheat, of course, and I'm a more than skilled enough deceiver that nobody would ever know, but none-the-less I play fair in this one instance. The second reason is less religious. It's happened to me more than once in the past that I've forgotten a lunch or not had easy access to food for a day or so. It's hard to imagine a situation in which I'd be truly incapable of finding sustenance for myself somehow, but still, it feels good to prove to myself once in a while that, if I ever had to, I could go more than 24 hours without eating and still remain functional. Not only was I still functional by hour 26, I was still perfectly able to stand for extended periods without fatigue, and I'd been studying quite productively right up to hour 23 or so (at which point I stopped to watch cartoons). I'm the sort of person who'll occasionally practice navigating my own home blindfolded just so that if I ever lose my vision I've already got some experience moving around; fasting for a day is a simple way for me to prove that there's yet one more physical challenge I can easily overcome. Third, last, and probably least significant in my own mind, I don't *worship* the Jewish god, but that doesn't mean I don't believe. If doing this one ritual is something I can do to get into the fates' good graces for another year, I'll do it and smile, albeit grudgingly.

Of course, honesty (such as it is, in my case) compels me to admit that I don't fast 100% properly, although for once, my cheating is not my choice. For the full 26 hours, I ate nothing, but I did drink. The human body, if properly hydrated at t=0, is designed to easily and painlessly go about 30 hours without water, barring unusual heat or exertion. As I've repeated whenever I have the slightest excuse, I'm not quite human, and even under resting conditions I hit late-stage dehydration, complete with cognitive failures, blood-pressure abnormalities, and hallucination as early as hour 18. In theory, medically speaking, I shouldn't even go twelve hours without drinking, because by that time weird things start happening with my salt balance and pulse rate. Quite fortuitously, the bible (and my family) states that one can break any commandment for the sake of genuine health concerns, and so I drink water during the fast. The fact that my cheating is justified does not stop me from finding people who fasted properly, looking them in the eye, and pointing and laughing. After all, I've just worked off practically my entire sin load... I've got some room for new ones.

And on that note, it's time to go get lunch. Fasting's all well and good, but I wouldn't want to do it every day.

Starting today, this Journal will officially be mirrored at this livejournal. I had initially wanted to give the account some sort of clever name to really set it above and beyond the common masses, but when I found that this name was free, I took it as an omen. Let this be definative proof that, once in a great while, I'll make things easy on you all. I'll be posting my entire archive backdated, although this may take a little time, so anybody browsing can expect to find a few things missing, at least for a short while.

So anyway...

Between having an exam this coming week, Yom Kippur beginning at sundown today, and a general lack of inspiration (at least, for anything that could turn into a good journal Entry), I'll be posting some filler today. Here are more issues of the D-Curriculum, the column I wrote briefly for a class newsletter.

D-Curriculum: Unit 3
      Harvard scientists announced yesterday that they had uncovered the cell responsible for intelligence.
      "It was really quite simple," explain doctors Romero and Liotta. "The key was figuring out what there was about the brains of genuises that was missing from others.”
      While other researchers have fnord investigated the genome for the key to intelligence, Romero and Liotta looked for unique cells within brain sections. Different cells within the brain can be seen only with specific stains; the Harvard team stained their sections with coffee.
      "I'd like to say we did it on purpose, but that's science for you. I think it was the extra sugars that did it."
      Stained with coffee, a new cell type is visible in the brain, which stains deeply caffeinophilic. Tentative correlations suggest that the more neurons are in contact with one of these cells, the smarter the individual.
      “We can’t cut open brains to test how smart people are, but we can take autopsy results and know whether or not we should be mocking someone. We also want to lobby that political candidates be required to have CNS biopsies to check their levels of this cell; if they’re damaged a bit, they won’t really miss it.”

D-Curriculum: Unit 4
      A new study has linked aphasia to typing, researchers announced this week.
      “We began by working from the premise that people who stay up late start having trouble speaking clearly,” explained Dr. Robert Dillon of the Montreal Neurological fnord Institute. “It was apparent that some people lose less of their faculties after a sleepless night than others. We began looking at what people were doing during their time awake.”
      It was this line of questioning which led researchers to suspect that the greatest cognitive deficits and the most severe aphasias, appeared to be in students writing term papers overnight. According to the current working hypothesis, use of language processing is cognitively taxing at any time, but writing more so, academic writing more taxing than casual, and academic writing while tired most taxing of all. As a result, students staying up several nights in a row writing papers appear to suffer more severe aphasias than individuals who stay up performing less draining tasks. Researchers are excited by the hypothesis and intend to pursue the research question as soon as they finish grant proposals due tomorrow.
      “Squiggle amspnok gibbon and plastic,” concluded Dr. Dillon. “Peanut ia ia cthulhu fhtagn hamster.”

D-Curriculum: Unit 5
      The long-missing third portion of the Bible was found early this week in the McGill anatomy laboratory. Experts have begun examining the scroll and believe it explains all the mysteries of the first two.
      "We found it in a routine dissection," explained one of the young medical students who found the scroll. "It was just behind the mylohyoid muscle. Boy, you could hide anything in there if you tried."
      Archaeologists could not be reached for comment as to how a fifteen-hundred-year old manuscript came to be buried in the tongue muscles of a twentieth-century Montreal resident, although the authenticity and age of the scroll have been verified.
      "I'm not embarrased that we didn't see it while creating the prosection," one professor informed reporters. "I'm a bit more embarassed that we didn't find it when we did the saggital cut. Fnord You can get so distracted tracing the course of the lingual nerve that it's amazing the things that you can miss."
      Asked to comment on the irony of finding the scroll at an institution of science, McGill officials stated that spirituality and religion are important parts of health care and that it was entirely appropriate. Asked to comment on the donor screening process which allowed the situation to arise, McGill officials laughed nervously and changed the subject.

My apology this year has been a sucess so far. While I still have yet to hear back from several of the people I had hoped to, this is most likely due to their not realizing I wanted a reply rather than a lack of interest or forgiveness. I am thus confident that I enter the new year entered into the Book of Life and not, for example, destined to be attacked and devoured by a mountain lion when I'm walking to temple. And, while we're on the topic, to the kind person who filled in the HDF as Captain Bluebeard and the clever lad who submitted it three times as Colonel Sanders, please let me know who you are so that I can do some things to you that I will apologize for next year.

I've heard a surprisingly clear consensus from people that there actually is a desire to see me mirror this Journal on LJ, so I'll be creating and account and retroactively adding old Entries to it. This will probably take me a few days to get up and running, so watch this space for details. I'm confident that the name I pick, when I settle on one, will be distinctive enough that you would all be able to guess that the account is mine. I regret that I'm fairly certain that "sapiensetcallidus" is too long to be selected as a username, so I'll have to think of something. In the meantime, anyone who feels up to suggesting a name is invited to do so.

So, all that being said, let's now digress into one of my favourite topics: unecessary etymology.

The last week or so of my life has been largely dominated by looking at lungs, and I mean that literally, as opposed to how many males my age conduct such studies. We're currently studying lungs in class -- flow rates, volume, gas diffusion across membranes, pulmonary versus bronchial circulations, squishy-organ poking, and all the other medicine essentials related to respiration. One amusing aspect of respirology is that some of the terminology used involves words which are seen elsewhere and therefore have multiple, sometimes amusing meanings. Cardiology gets away with phrases like "inotropy" which you won't find in common parlance, but respirology was either founded by simple and unassuming or dull and uncreative physicians. In either case, lung physiologists constantly use the words "inspiration" and "expiration" which means, of course, that they're motivated and dead.

Inspiration is, of course, one of my favourite words, in so far as that every third day of my life I battle the Angel Of Silly Ideas for the right to steal an Entry topic from their ancient legendary hoard. Inspiration is the life's blood of the writer, to say nothing of the compulsive schemer. It's entirely appropriate that the word "inspire" should apply both to creativity and inhalation, since I consider both to be equaly vital to my life, even if one of them is much more frequent and harder to reshedule if I've got a busy afternoon. In defense of the respirologists, the root of the word is the Latin inspirare, which literaly translates as "breathe in," which means that the artists probably stole it from the physicians and not, as usually happens, the other way around. When one inspires, air flows into them, bringing life, energy, and if one has the right set of skills, a pretty good high. Furthermore, once air is inspired, it can be used to sing, chant, tell a story, lie like a sociopathic weasel, or otherwise be artistic. I think there's actually a lot of poetic beauty to using the word "inspire" in the muse sense, because I find the image of the creative spirit entering one and filling the soul with life to be very captivating. I should think it would be twice as funny if I were a user of marijuana, but there you go.

As an aside, anyone with a particular interest in language should take a moment to look up the definition of "inspire" in a few dictionaries, particularly Webster. Much like "honour" and "respect," inspire (in the artistic sense) is one of those words that everyone has something of an implicit understanding of but which most people can't effectively define or synonymize. Among other words, Webster equates inspire partially with motivate, bring about, and incite, all of which capture interesting facets of the word without really giving any idea what the word means. Delenn knew what she was talking about.

On the surface, expire is a much less interesting word. Meaning both "to exhale" and "to die" as well as several variants of the latter, expire is believed to have derived from the Latin exspirare ("to breathe out") after a tempestuous journey through Olde English as either a synonym for "to bear the plague" or possibly "to owe money to a Spanish bishop." Curiously, the modern definitons of expire include to breathe out and to breathe one's last breath, but does not have any official definitions which relate to food going bad. The closest that mister Webster comes to the common household usage of the word is "to come to an end" which suggests to me that when food passes its expiry date, it has ceased to exist on an ontological and teloelogical level and has transmogrified into some wholly new form of matter, typically possessing the common attribute of being "yucky." I do find some inherent aesthetic beauty to taking a word which means "to breathe one's last" and equating it to "die", so that use of the word seems quite appropriate and charming, but The word has no business being applied to food being past its prime and a new, more accurate word might profitably be chosen for that usage. The new word should properly embody something being rotten, stagnant, unhealthy, despicable, waste, wasteful, squishy, mooshy, and disease ridden... my tentative suggestion is to give all foods a "realitytelevisionry date."

So, with that wisdom dispensed, I should take just a moment to get back to the basic idea of tonight's essay. If there's one take-home message I feel that I want to get across to people, it is this: lungs are really squishy and make a funny crackling noise when you poke them. That's it, you can go home now.