ÿþ<HEAD> <title>Eric's Archive</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Eric's Journal, the irregularly updated journal of Eric Lis"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="eric, lis, emperor, aerica, aerican, journal, eric's head"> </HEAD> <left><font face="Times New Roman"> <font face="Monotype Corsiva,Bernhard Modern Roman,Unicorn,BellGothic,News Gothic MT"> <center> <big><big><big><big> Eric's Archive<br> Entries 541-550<P> </big></big></big></big></font> <I> Those who forget the past<Br> Are doomed to reread it.<p></i> </center> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/551-560.html">Entries 551-560</a><BR> <a href="#550">Entry 550</a> December 13 2008<br> <a href="#549">Entry 549</a> December 10 2008<br> <a href="#548">Entry 548</a> December 7 2008<br> <a href="#547">Entry 547</a> December 4 2008<br> <a href="#546">Entry 546</a> December 1 2008<br> <a href="#545">Entry 545</a> November 28 2008<br> <a href="#544">Entry 544</a> November 25 2008<br> <a href="#543">Entry 543</a> November 22 2008<br> <a href="#542">Entry 542</a> November 19 2008<br> <a href="#541">Entry 541</a> November 16 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/531-540.html">Entries 531-540</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="550"></a> <U><B>Exagium!</b></u><p> It goes without saying that Yoda never wrote essays. The reasons for this statement will be explained below, but most people won't pick up on it. You really need a brain like mine, for better or worse, to appreciate the logic.<P> It seems to me that these days I have a harder and harder time thinking of things I can write about that aren't related to medicine. I find this terribly depressing sometimes; I refuse to believe that my vast intellect and nigh-boundless imagination is incapable of coming up with anything aside from "what I did in school today," no matter how many hours per day that school takes up or how little there is to my life aside from that school some days. I can't help but think back to earlier days when ideas seemed to come to me more easily and I was able to think of all kinds of ridiculous essays I could post. My life may be dominated by medicine, but my fantasy life will not be so constrained. I will not write about my patients... I will write pointless, fallacy-based essays!<P> On that note, let's talk about essays.<P> Webster dates the word "essay" to about the mid 14th century, arguably the time that English in its current form was just taking its first tentative steps from the priomordial ooze that was Anglo-Frisian/Lower Saxon. The word is thought to be derived from the French word for "try," which will surprise nobody who speaks that language. The primary definition of the word in English is, indeed, "to put to a test" or "to make an often tentative or experimental effort." The definition most people think of when they hear the word is, indeed, quite some way down the definition ladder, some five rungs lower, after such meanings as "test" and "effort." Amusingly, the word in its most classic sense actually implies a first or initial effort, which will come across as terribly ironic to anyone who has ever slaved into the wee hours on the eighteenth draft of a term paper. Being a natural-born writer, of course, I've got no clue what an eleventh-hour eighteenth-draft sleepless night feels like, since I've never worked past the fourth or fifth draft of any text in my life, but I can only imagine it's quite tedious and frustrating, which is probably why our word to describe it is derived from the French. In any case, the closest definition to the Platonic "essay" in Webster is "an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view." I find this quite fascinating myself, as it suggests that a proper essay is, by definition, biased and unilateral; any text that presents a counterargument can thus no longer be called an "essay" at all, a fact which would surely chagrin most English teachers (if they knew about it in the first place). <P> You know, this moment here, when I'm typing this, joyously abusing the English language to my own manipulative ends, with the soft strains of Danny Elfman in the background, this is the most fun I've had in days. Thank you for being a part of this moment, albeit belatedly. <font color ="white">fnord.</font> So anyway...<P> Let's not overlook, of course, all of the other definitions which preceeded this one, which Webster clearly feels are truer and more important definitions. To essay is, of course, to try... the more initial and ill-conceived, the better. The flawed prototype which explodes in one's face is a better example of an essay than a final and perfected finished work; why, you might even say that a true essay ought to openly invite catastrophe or else it isn't doing its job. In the sciences, we speak of "assays" as being analyses of a character or composition, usually using the term to mean "to test for the presence or absence of a given chemical." One might link this with the very similar-sounding verb "to assail," "to attack violently with blows or words," one of those words which we regretfully don't find many chances to use in casual conversation in these days when very few of us spend our days beseiging keeps and storming castles. It might even be within the realm of believability to suggest that, since the French word "essai" is believed to be ultimately derived from the Latin "exagium" (or, "the act of weighing"), the same root could be the basic root of the verb "to exaggerate," "to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth," which is certainly what most people would consider to be the main thing which essays are good for. <P> Students, take note. The next time a professor asks you for an essay, to get the highest possible grade, whatever you do, do not hand in a thoughtful, well-balanced discussion of multiple points of view regarding a problem. This is exactly what they expect you to do and the trap they expect you to fall into.Instead, submit to them a first draft of a tentative interpretative literary composition dealing with its subject from a limited point of view that violently attacks opposing arguments while enlarging favourable arguments beyond the bounds of truth. The frightening thing is that all kidding aside, this strategy is probably a good one, especially if you're studying political science or theology. Or writing for an online Journal.<P> I regret only this: despite my phenomenal mastery of the English language, my superior creativity, and my ability to free-associate to a degree normally associated with clinical diagnoses, I was unable to find any plausible way to link the etymology of "essay" to the etymology of "catapult." I tried, I really did -- one might even say that I essayed -- but in the extensive twelve seconds I put to the task I simply couldn't find any way. The important thing is simply to have given it a good try, and take solace in the fact that I probably could have done it if I was motivated to put in the effort, and could probably have even written a thousand words about how I did it. <HR> <a name="549"></a> <U><B>Malled</b></u><p> This past weekend I broke one of my own cardinal rules and set foot in a large store after December first. I'm usually pretty good at protecting my own life and limb, certain knife or fire-related accidents notwithstanding, and I consider going within fifty meters of a shopping mall or department store to be a major safety risk around this time of year. Granted, this wasn't too bad of a situation; I was dropping by a Zellers, which is certainly less risky than a Wal Mart or a Toys-R-Us, and it was only the sixth of December rather than, say, the 22nd. None-the-less, the parking lot was full beyond an extent you'd normally see and I had some trouble making it in through the front door for the confused and helpless humans milling about. None-the-less I presevered and made it inside of the store and out, alive and sane (or at least, as sane as when I went in), so I have no cause to truly complain, but it's certainly abundantly clear that if this is what the stores will be like on December sixth than the Goddess herself couldn't entice me back into that store in the next two weeks, even for eighty percent off Games Workshop products and a gift certificate for free books.<P> Ironically, I wasn't even there to buy things. I was at the store to say hello to my father who was working at his pharmacy. On the one hand, this makes it much more ironic that I had to endure such suffering. On the other, I'm sure it was an infinite mercy that I wasn't doing anything that required me to pass through a checkout line. I suspect getting through medical school is faster than some of those checkout lines, even if you do it the long way like I've done. <P> It's no secret that I'm not big on crowds. I'm nowhere near as bad as I used to be, when being in a crowd of more than a hundred or so people would sometimes come very close to causing me to have panic attacks, but I'm still not happy to have large groups of people around me. At the best of times I'm not big on large department stores as a result of this (though the toy sections, which are relatively devoid of adults and also filled with lots of shiny distractions, are always fairly tolerable). The store today was certainly crowded, though to be fair I'd say it wasn't quite up to the level of "thronged" or "mobbed." There's no question that it took a few extra reflex checks just to make it from one of the store to the other. I have little to no patience for people who walk slowly, so I tend to zip through aisles; this was quite a lot more challenging than usual, but not so challenging that I struck any other patrons or their shopping carts. I'd be lying if I claimed that this part wasn't actually a little bit fun, being the closest that anybody with my physical stats is likely to ever come to participating in parkour. There's a fine line between when that sort of thing is pleasant or unpleasant, mind you, much the way there's a subtle distinction between racing a formula 1 car around a track and sitting unmoving in traffic for three hours, and the closer one gets to the holidays the more similar things get to the latter. <P> Even if I could tolerate the crowds -- which I certainly *can*, even if I very much choose not to -- it's the Christmas decorations that really get me. People, at least those in shopping malls, are by and large large, overweight, lumbering, and eminently escapable. In contrast, Christmas decorations are everywhere, adorning every single surface and emitting from every conceivable sound-producing device. Like some ancient and unspeakable cthonic chant it enters into your mind and infuses itself into your brain, so that even when you close your eyes you can still see the snowmen and even when you plug your ears and scream you are none-the-less assured that Brenda Lee is still rockin' around a Christmas tree. I don't mean for these comments to sound too harsh, since I'm well aware that many intelligent, worthwhile and wonderful people get a great deal of pleasure from Christmas music, but since I'm not one of them, it makes for a very predictable agony this entire month and presents an extremely persuasive reason for me to stay very far away from places where I may be exposed to it. As an aside, at the hospital where I'm currently working, both nursing stations have radios tuned to popular stations which means that for a significant portion of the day the air is filled with blindingly repetitive carols, and I can only imagine that this cannot be helpful for the patients there who are already admitted against their wills due to psychiatric illnesses. <P> Indeed, this time of year would probably be terribly painful for me if not for the Internet and for how little importance I place on gift-giving. Despite how Channukah is often perceived both by outsiders and modern Jews, present-exchange is really a very minor part of the holiday, entirely overshadowed by the true meaning of the holiday, which is the eating of fried foods. As I listen to my classmates agonise and ruminate about how many gifts they still have to buy and how hard it is to shop for everyone on their lists, I can only smile and take joy in their suffering. My gift list consists, at this moment, of three people, all of whom are quite happy to tell me what they'd like me to give them. One gift is already bought, thanks to the miracle of eBay, though I suspect that I overpaid (he wanted a copy of Kindred: the Embraced on DVD, for which paying the price o two blank CDs might be considered overpaying). Anything else that anyone on my list wants will almost certainly be available online for cheaper and easier than it would be to buy it at a physical location. This is fortuitous since 1) it plays to my laziness and 2) it means I don't have to go into a store to find things. Thus is my own life made simpler and more pleasant.<P> Only about two weeks to go now. If I can survive until then, the stores will be safe again, more or less. It just remains to be seen if my local gaming shop will have a boxing-day sale impressive enough to get me to take my chances... <HR> <a name="548"></a> <U><B>Dungeons & Dragons & Haloperidol</b></u><p> One interesting thing about psychiatry is how much role-playing goes on. If there's one field of medicine which really understands the value of having people get into a character to give them a chance to see the world through different eyes, it's psychiatry. The other day, for example, both my direct supervisor and the doctor presenting his research to a room full of a hundred physicians found themselves using the phrase "let's do some role-playing" in my presence. Of course, nothing in life is ever easy, and so while one might imagine that these are words I enjoy hearing, in actual fact they're words that typically fill me with dread and loathing. What we have here is a situation where two people -- being, say, myself and my supervisor -- both use the same words but mean entirely different things with them. Suffice it to say, when my supervisor talks about roleplaying, there are no dice involved... which is really his loss, in my opinion.<P> Psychiatrists tend to be big believers in roleplaying, and for much the same reason as most gamers I play with: it's a good way to get people thinking different thoughts, or at least speaking differently. When I sit down to play D&D, the whole point is to enjoy meeting unusual situations using the minds and personalities of unusual characters. I'm the first to admit that most of my favourite characters aren't too different from me, but I'm at least capable of creating and playing roles which are completly at odds with my own thinking. Doctors use roleplaying for exactly the same purpose; ask a patient or a family member to try being a character and you force them to experience a perspective shift without a clutch. I've seen this process be totally horrible, usually when the patients involved have zero acting talent or zero imagination, and then it all degenerates into a scene of horrid and sublime absurdity unmatched by anything short of, say, the Sesame Street song, "Put Down the Ducky." When it works, though, it works quite well, which is why it's a popular tool. I, of course, despise it, mostly because I've only ever been on the wrong end: that of an actor.<P> Here's the problem with medical roleplaying: it's all live-action. Gaming is one of the great joys of my life and something I spend each week looking forward to, but the gaming I love is tabletop. I like lounging on a couch with a character sheet and a set of dice, thinking and speaking like my character but not sitting or moing like them. In contrast, when my supervisor says roleplaying in my presence, it's usually the prelude to having myself and another medical student do a mock interview where one of us pretends to be a patient and the other a doctor. Playing the doctor is easy, because I'm expected to be myself. Being the patient is harder because, despite my love of creating and playing characters, I hate acting. I'm not an actor by nature, and I hate trying to move like and put on the mannerisms of a character... especially when the "patient" characters are usually such shallow, uninteresting figures as "agitated alcoholic" or "patient with hypomania." Given free reign, of course, I could come up with some *really* interesting characters for the "doctor" to have to interview, but that probably wouldn't be conducive to the learning process. Instead, I'm left, not merely LARPing, but platying a character I have no interest in. It's not my vision of hell, but it's certainly not the sort of thing that ever happens in my vision of heaven. <P> It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't call it roleplaying. That word should apply only to games and not to therapeutic or learning exercises, to avoid confusion and frustration. Obviously this is just one more thing I'm going to have to fix when I rule this planet.<P> Maybe I don't want to act in character. In fact, maybe it's against my religion! I can decide that, you know... the perks of being the high priest of a religion is that, in absence of the occasional lightning strike, you can pretty much just decide from moment to moment what is is isn't against your religion, especially if you worship relatively flighty and exception-prone gods like I do. Henceforth, maybe my supervisor can't make me take part in his mock interviews because my faith prohibits me from pretending to be other people. If Forsteri's such a big believer in seeking who you are and what you want, surely Forsteri frowns upon people confusing the issue by taking on the roles of other people. Forsteri has no apparent objections to D&D because there the lines between self and character are clear and well-defined, and besides, you don't move or sit like your character, but all LARPing and acting is certainly out of the question. Why a god who venerates lying would have so much problem with pretendig to be someone else I can't say, but then, I only convey the messages of my god, I don't invent them. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.<P> As an interesting aside, when I was watching the world-famous psychiatrist supervise a roleplaying activity the otherday in front of a big audience of physicians, he did something very interesting at the end. After the "players" had spent a few minutes in character, and before he would allow them to go back to their seats, he asked each of them to state, out loud, "I am not (insert character name here); I am (insert real name here)." It struck me as a funny thing to do, but then again, if you're conducting these exercises, as he usually does, with people whose grips on reality are a little bit tenuous, maybe it's important to deprogram them just to be absolutely sure they've stopped pretending. It's something that struck me and that's going to stay with me, and I'll remember it for the next time I have patients doing a similar exercise. It's certainly not something I'll do after a session of D&D, though... if I could find a way to keep in character beyond the duration of a game my life would probably be a lot more fun and a lot more interesting. <HR> <a name="547"></a> <U><B>Character Portrait: Jeff Secord</b></u><p> <B>Background:</b> Jeffrey Orville Wilbur Secord was born in Chicago during the years of the Great War. His father was a scientist in the employ of The Government, and his mother a homemaker, and Jeffw as raised in a middle-class life despite the harsh times. From before he could speak, Jeff was surrounded by stories of the heroes of the Great War, the proud soldiers who were out in Europe fighting for What's Right, and he decided early on that he would be a hero too. When he first realised at the age of six that the War was already over, he was nearly heartbroken, but a new kind of story dulled the pain -- stories of the brave explorers who were out seeking the secrets of the world, using the new marvels of science to brave previously impassable corners of the world. Jeff eagerly sought any and all news and legends related to the brave men and women like George Gammell Angell, Otto Lidenbrock and Clark Savage Jr who daily expanded the limits of human knowledge. As he progressed through school, Jeff devoted himself to the study of engineering and mathematics, considering this to be the most vital field for an explorer to master given how vital submersibles, hot-air balloons and drilling machines seemed to be to this new generation of adventurers. <P> Jeff was barely into his teens when the Great Depression hit. For the first few years, the Secord household endured, his father's modest income from his research keeping the family comfortable. As the years dragged on, however, and it became clear that the Depression would not be a short abberation, local government offices terminated all projects deemed to be of "minimal priority" and "limited applicability." This included the work of Jeff's father; the Secord family had lost their sole source of income. Young, headstrong, and more than a bit impulsive, Jeff responded to news of his father's firing by going to the laboratory intent on yelling at the laboratory's manager until his father's job was restored. He arrived at the lab to find that the building was empty and, the project having been terminated and deemed to be of interest to no-one, unguarded. Jeff broke in and, in a moment of impulse, stole everything in his father's workshop. He returned home, and only then examined what he had taken.<P> Jeff had known that his father had begun his contract work in the midst of the Great War, but had never assumed his father's work had military applications. He was shocked to find that his father's work consisted of plans for a regiment of flying soldiers armed with deadly gun unlike any ever seen before. The Gavriel project included two locked boxed: the first contained a curious harness resembling a small engine with a rocket on the end, and the second contained two matched handguns with strange, extended stocks. Though no genius, it did not take Jeff long to work out that the harness was some sort of jet-pack, while the guns appeared to be designed to carry up to twenty bullets each and able to accomodate a variety of calibers. With the Great War over and the Depression precluding any thought of the US entering another conflict, the project had been deemed expendable by the government, but to Jeff it was everything he needed to give up his boring life and become a famous adventurer, like his heroes before him. The very next morning he spoke to his parents, obtained their reluctant blessings once they were persuaded there was no hope of talking sense into him, and set off to find an unexplored corner of the world.<P> <B>Current Sketch:</b> Today, Jeff Secord is what he always dreamed he would be: a flashy adventurer throwing himself into unimaginable peril for the sake of advancing human knowledge (and looking good doing it). He has done a small amount of crime-fighting and been a junior member on several minor expeditions in the Rockies. Lacking the skills and the experience to be a leader, Jeff is content to be hired on by other groups of explorers who see the obvious potential of a flying man who also happens to be able to fix their cars and pilot anything with wings or rotors. This work has kept him comfortable though has not made him anything that could be called a fortune, and he enjoys the life tremendously. Recently, he has been moving up in the world of adventurers and has begun hearing stories of entrances to a vast subterranean network of tunnels known as The Hollow Earth. He is considering finding a group heading underground to see this frontier for himself.<P> <B>Skills and Abilities:</b> Jeff Secord is a rocketman -- one of those rare few individuals stupid enough to strap a jet engine onto their own body and talented enough to do it twice. A natural pilot, Jeff has proven to be an ace at piloting any and all sorts of aircraft, and is moderately proficient with ground and sea vehicles as well. Practice and necessity have made Jeff into a crack shot with his father's modified pistols as well; the same hand-eye coordination that lets him survive flying make him a natural gunman. Jeff has thus far proven to be the only person on any of his expeditions who can figure out ow to operate his jetpack; his father taught him the controls, but the odd and eccentric system is far too puzzling for anyone else to have easily worked out, and Jeff hasn't been keen to explain it. The true value of his jetpack, which Jeff has noticed but which few others have thus far caught on to, is that the jetpack has seen dozens of hours of flight time in the last few years but has never needed to be refueled. Jeff himself is an engineer and not a physicist and has no clue what power source the jetpack uses as long as it continues to work, the word "nuclear" not being in his vocabulary.<P> <B>Roleplaying Notes:</b> You're a pilot. No, scratch that... you're a GREAT pilot, maybe one of the best. Given an airplane you can make it dance or fly it through city streets without scratching the paint. Good as you are with vehicles, though, you're a real artist with your jetpack which is, let's be honest, the only thing that distinguishes you from anybody else and the only reason you've managed to get into the world of exploration. Well, the jetpack and your considerable, one might even say unhealthy degree of courage. If you ever stopped to think about it yourself or if you had an ounce of introspection in your body, you'd say that your mind is kind of like a jetpack: it takes a good kick-start but then it just flies in a straight line no matter what sorts of obstacles are in the way. In civilian life stubborness and crazy impulsivity like yours would be a major drawback, but in the rough and brain-damaged world of international adventurers it's a major asset. In so far as anything that's going to get you killed someday can be called an asset, of course. In the meantime, it's a big ol' world filled with incredible things that no human eyes have ever seen, with beautiful blue skies just begging to have contrails drawn across them. You're a nigh-fearless ninteen year-old, packing heat and with a rocket engine strapped to your torso... go out there and show them what you can do!<P> <B>Appearance:</b> Average-looking and unassuming, Jeff Secord doesn't stand out in a crowd on his own. He wears simple, functional clothes like jeans and comfortable shirts, eschewing anything heavy or baggy that might increase his wind-resistance. Jeff is rarely far away from his jetpack, a two-foot long assembly of what looks like three brass tubes with conical tops coming out of a rectangular brass box which glows an eerie shade of green. In his pocket, Jeff carries a pair of goggles which he'll put on when he goes to fly; the idea of donning a helmet or other protection has never really occured to him. Jeff's elbows and knees are habitually scraped and scratched, testament to the fact that, even to a truly brilliant pilot like himself, landing a jetpack is not the easiest thing in the world to do. When he's expecting trouble, Jeff will strap on his twin handguns, which he keeps in a set of hip-holsters with very secure clips to keep them from falling out when he flies upside down. <HR> <a name="546"></a> <U><B>Clinical Correlations</b></u><p> I've now finished my second week in my two-month psychiatry rotation. Thus far, it's been... different. I won't say I deeply love it, but at least I don't hate it. I haven't decided yet if this is something I could do with the rest of my life, but I haven't ruled it out, which is very important... since I entered medicine on the assumption that I'd be going into psychiatry, I'd have had a real problem if I discovered that I hated it.<P> So anyway...<P> Today I met a young man in the emergency room who'd been brought in following a suicide attempt. At the time I saw him, it was three days post-attempt and he was now being transferred to my hospital from the one where he'd previously been because of Quebec's bizarre regional health-care rules. I can't say what he'd have been like if I saw him the day he made the attempt, but today, he seemed like a fairly healthy young man... stable, talktative, and even smiling. He told us quite openly that he'd made a terrible mistake and that, since he'd called his family after taking some pills, he must not have really wanted to die. The doctor I was working with felt that this was a man who was probably at very low risk of repeating his suicide attempt, except for two details. First, the manner in which he attempted suicide was unusually well thought-out and planned; I won't go into details because I don't want to give people ideas, but suffice it to say that this was not an impulsive and desperate action... in fact, he went about it very similarly to the way I might have, which goes to show how clever he was. Second, prior to his suicide attempt, he'd written an eight-page farewell letter, which is not the action of someone doing something spontaneous. I read much of the letter, which I had every right to do as part of his health-care team, although I strongly suspect that he would have felt *very* strongly that he did not want me to see it.The first half was an extensive and very intelligent discourse about why he was doing what he was doing, explaining his feelings and motivations in brilliantly insightful (if somewhat cliched) language. The second half was composed of personal letters to one or two dozen of his close friends, and expressed to them all the personal thoughts he'd never before expressed, all the last messages he wanted them to have. The existence of this letter -- which he did not tell us about but which his father had found and copied for the psychiatrist -- was sufficiently frightening to the psychiatrist that she had been going to send him home but admitted him to the hospital instead, which is not an action done lightly even with a patient who has just attempted suicide.<P> The thing that really struck me, of course, is the fact that I'd got the same letter sitting on my computer. Obviously, I don't mean that I have his exact letter, word for word, but rather that his suicide note (if a two-thousand word essay can be called such) is remarkably similar to my own Apotheosis File, the document in which I store the messages meant to be delivered in the event of anything happening to me. The single difference between my letter and his is that mine is intended to be a little bit less pro-active. In principle, though, the thought that I had never had before today is this: I've been keeping a suicide note on my computer since high school.<p> Okay, let's step back and operationalize some terms. Clearly, what I have on my computer is not, in fact, a suicide note. I've been irregularly updating The Apotheosis File for about a decade now and if I intended it at the time to be a suicide note I'd certainly be further along with my plan than this. I have a very hard time imagining myself ever wanting to end my own life given how absolutely wonderful that life is. Importantly, my Apotheosis File doesn't include the same first half as his letter -- the part where he explained why he was killing himself is, in my letter; in my File, that section is replaced by detailed instructions on, for example, how to go about selecting the next Emperor of Aerica and how to fairly divide up my toys amongst those who'll want some of them to remember me by (which, might I say, is a much more pragmatic letter to leave your loved ones, most of whom won't understand why you killed yourself anyway no matter how eloquently and elegantly you explain). <P> It was quite interesting for me to see how strongly the doctor reacted to the existence of this suicide note. To her, the huge document was proof of how far ahead he had been planning to end his own life, and anyone who would put so much time, effort, and planning into into it is medically considered to be at very high risk of another attempt, and so he was hospitalized. On the other hand, here I sit with a similar document on my computer at this exact moment, with multiple redudant (and very well-hidden) backups stored in several cities worldwide. In his case, the existence of the letter was a flag so red that it would have stolen Superman's powers from two hundred feet away; in my case, simply due to the fact that mine doesn't specifically say that I *want* to die, it's merely another charming eccentricity amongst what is, let's be honest, an already large and ever-growing collection. Either way, it's a type of letter most people don't keep. Psychological research has shown that when an otherwise healthy and stable individual creates a will and some sort of "final messages" document, far from being a sign of poor mental health or desire to die, it actually predicts a lower level of suicidality and less death anxiety when the end does come. The theory is that the fear of death is based in large part on fear of the unknown and anxiety over that which cannot be controlled; when someone spends even a tiny portion of their life contemplating death and making sure that plans are made in the event of that death, the individual copes far better with their death, and so too do their families. It is, admitedly, a morbid thing to spend time thinking about, and it can be a bit depressing to sit down and write up last messages to people, but then again, it's quite cheering to close and save the messages with the confident knowledge that nobody is going to see them for another sixty or eighty years. I suppose it really depends on what perspective you choose to use; I see the creation of such a document to be nothing more than sound planning, exactly the sort of contingency plan you'd expect from a mind like mine (and, I suspect, from the fellow I saw in the emergency room). To plan for one's own death is, perhaps quintessentially, to scheme the impossible scheme.<P> Either way, when talking to the doctor about the case, I refrained from mentioning that I have my own letter ready to be sent out at any time. I didn't need to try explaining it to her. I don't think she'd have appreciated the moment. <HR> <a name="545"></a> <U><B>Entitlement</b></u><p> It has been said that the sign of a brilliant comedian is that no one gets their jokes. Lenny Bruce? Redefined comedy as a medium, transforming it in the popular perception from an art of storytelling into an art of political and social commentary, but a large percentage of the population never understood why they were laughing when he spoke. Police Squad? One of the earliest efforts of the great Abrahams and Zucker brothers, the show was hailed as one of the funniest and most original TV shows of all time, but when it first aired, it was a disastrous failure, because the viewers were too tired from a long day's work to put in the mental effort needed to follow the comedy. Gary Larson? Creator of the long-running comic strip The Far Side, perhaps the most sucessful cartoonist ever to receive letters from people after every single strip asking him to explain the punchline. If a comedian is truly innovative, truly clever, truly genius, people may simply shrug their heads and look perplexed, because genius comedy is sometimes too incomprehensible to actually be funny. Sometimes, a joke's so good, you don't laugh.<P> One of my favourite thing about writing these posts is often coming up with the title. The titles of my posts are pretty much always something related to the main topic in only the most peripheral of senses, and then further obfuscated to ensure minimum possible comprehension. It's a lot of fun trying to send my thought patterns along tangential lines to see what I can come up with. The titles aren't always good, but they're always good enough. Since many of them aren't comprehensible to anyone except me, tonight we plug in the tried and true Joke Translator to see if we can shake some sense out of a lot of nonsense. The following contains leaps of logic which may be unsuitable to some paradigms; viewer disgression is advised.<P> One of my favourite ways to come up with the title of a post is to take some moderately well-known quotation and then make a tangential or obtuse reference to it. This gives me all the fun of having used a famous quotation while also getting all the fun of making a reference that nobody is going to get it. Maybe I'm perverse or maybe Andy Kaufman was a bad influence on me when I was little, but either way, it's tremendous fun. Looking back, there have been at least four times that I've done this job well enough that intelligent and clever people have had to actually ask me what the title referred to. Entry 73's title was "Thank You, Sir Walter Scott." One of my early posts about the joy of lying, this refers to one of Scott's most famous quotes, which most people don't know to attribute to him: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." I find the idea of comparing lies to a complex web to be a compelling and beautiful image -- hence my long-time fascination with the African trickster god, Anansi, and the reason that my all-time favourite Raffi song is the one that it is. For entry 296, I used the title "The Thing With Feathers." The post itself was about why no humans have ever spontaneously evolved feathers and the ability to fly, but the quote is actually one by Emily Dickinson, who said that "the thing with feathers" is hope, though the first time I ever read the quote was in a work by Woody Allen, who countered that the thing with feathers is actually his nephew. Entry 386 used the title "Screw You, Luke 4:23" which is, of course, one of my least favourite of all biblical verses, namely "physician, heal thyself," a line I found very annoying whenever I catch a cold or feel otherwise down. Entry four eighty six was entitled "The Suicide Note of Thomas Jefferson." Jefferson, of course, once wrote that "I cannot live without books" and the post was all about what I did one day when I ran out of books to read. Finally, not long ago at all I wrote a post all about dreams, calling it "Of Babylonians and Martin Luthers." Martin Luther King Jr., of course, was known for the fact that he had a dream, whereas the ancient Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II was the first to utter the timeless lines, "I have dreamed a dream, and now that dream has gone from me." <P> Sadly, not all of my quotations are obscured; some start out sufficiently obscure that I can simply quote them and call it even, safe in the knowledge that only one or two people will get it. To date, such titles have included: entry 385, a post about Facebook ("If the book is holy, and I am holy, then it is my duty to bring you closer to the universe. Put your face in the book"); entry 424, all about the joy of doing a minimal amount of work and pretending that it's scientific innovation (where the title was taken from a lovely little song called "Plagiarize"); and entry 488, all about the importance of having fancy letters after your name, which makes reference to an old Sesame Street song where Big Bird sees the alphabet written down and exclaims that it's the most remarkable word he's ever seen. What is it that makes using obscure quotations inherently nifty? I couldn't say, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying it.<P> Third, if a post is all about a meditation on some specific word, I'll often take just a snippet of webster's definition and use that as the title. Somebody clever going throguh Webster could certainly figure out where the name comes from, but it would be tricky, because I've often free-associated two or three steps down the path by the time I copy and paste something into the title spot. These are mostly titles I've done relatively recently, meaning, within the last year or two, despite my long-time love of using and abusing Webster's Dictionary. Entry 434, a post about new year's resolutions, was entitled "Boldions and Determinions" -- "bold" and "determined" being synonyms or "resolved." Entry was called "To Roll In, Cover or Invade" which is, of course, the meaning of the Hebrew word thought to have been the root of the word "philistine." Entry 492, which was about architecture, is named after definition 2b of that word, "A Unifying Or Coherent Form." Finally, post 483, which was about the boardgame Talisman, was called "beguiled," but I seem to have outdone myself because for the life of me, I can't remember why. <P> Fourth and lastly, my favourite titles are the ones which are self-referrential in a way which someone could only possibly recognise if they were inside my head. Some of them can be figured out, but by and large, only I will ever know why the title is what it is, and the only way anybody else will ever figure it out is if they ask me, which people do on a moderately regular basis. Even when these ones get explained to people, they often remain somewhat incomprehensible, grounded as they are in highly indiosyncratic leaps of thought. Entry 247 was the first time I ever used the phrase homo sapiens callidus, which has since become what I call my species for lack of a better term, and thus was entitled "erase," being a play on "E race" (though by all rights it should have been "especies"). Entry 324 is all about leadership, and so it's only appropriate that the title should make reference to Albert Camus, who never walked in front of or behind anybody else. Entry 326 was one of my early meditations upon the idea of when something is or is not possible; the title "Where You Put The Apostrophe" is my own private joke, because I've always liked the fact that if you stick an apostrophe into it, "impossible" becomes "I'm possible," a play on words that only a six year-old could get a kick out of. Entry 459 was entitled Tlhlngan Hol VljatlhlaHbe'; all I'll say about it here is that this literally translates as "I do not speak Klingonese." Finally and perhaps least comprehensible to anyone lacking in my education of completely useless facts, entry 505's title makes reference to La Nyctalope, one of fiction's earliest superheroes who starred in a series of novels published in the very early twentieth century, and whose ability to see perfectly in the dark meant that the word "night" had minimal meaning to him.<P> And that's far too much said about all that. Go do something else for a while and in a few days I'll have some new, exciting, completely incomprehensible titles for you to enjoy. <HR> <a name="544"></a> <U><B>In Case of Emergency...</b></u><p> This past Sunday, I had the dubious pleasure of learning to see my workplace from a whole new perspective, vis, from that of a patient rather than a health-care provider. Last week, I spent three afternoons working in the emergency room; on Sunday, I was there as a patient. I ended up in the ER after sustaining a very large cut to my leg when I slipped using a heavy knife to cut a plastic rod. Since my life is filled with small ironies, it should be pointed out that when I injured my leg, I was working on building my new cane at the time.<P> The first thing that struck me about the whole process was how long I delayed before going to the hospital. When I first cut myself, I couldn't decide if it was bad enough to need stitches, and in fact firts tried to tie a makeshift bandage at home and wait to see if the bleeding stopped on its own. It was only after there was no improvement after quite some time that I decided to actually go get repaired. In retrospect, with the twin blessings of hindsight and cognitive dissonance, I think I knew immediately upon seeing the cut how bad it was. For decency's sake I'll spare my readers a detailed description of the wound itself, but suffice it to say that I've got enough medical knowledge now that as soon as I saw it, I think I recognised it as "requiring healing by primary intention" but hesitated to admit it because, more than anything else, the trip to the hospital is such a schlep. When I meet patients, it's quite frequent to find people who really should have come to the hospital right away but who put it off for hours, days, or even weeks, to their own detriment. Much as I like to think I don't lie to myself (much), it's important to remember that even people who know better will go to considerable leaps of rationalization to avoid a trip to the doctor.<P> All that being said, the whole trip to the hospital was quite rapid. In Montreal, where the health care system is so over-taxed you'd think it was a particularly unlucky serf under the reign of John Lackland, people take it as a given that a visit to the emergency room will likely turn into a full-day trip. Certainly, my time working in the hospitals has done nothing to change this impression; during my two months of internal medicine, it was quite normal for any patient I admitted from the ER had spent the last two to three days there. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was in and out of the hospital within two hours. I reached the emergency department, saw the triage nurse within five minutes, saw the registration clerk within ten minutes of that, and within ten minutes of that had been led to a "minor procedures" room (easily identified because one wall is taken up by a glass cabinet filled with sutures, sponges and anesthetic) and a doctor had shown up. Admittedly, the doctor who came to see me was not exactly the chief of surgery -- he was a first-year obstetrics and gynecology resident, hardly out of medical school himself, but at least qualified to suture a wound. The only sizable delay was a nearly twenty-minute wait between the time when the resident saw me and when he came back to do the actual suturing; from my own education, I knew to expect this, because this is the time it takes for a junior resident to go report to their supervisor, present the case, have five minutes of teaching about it, and finally be given permission to go back and actually fix something. The suturing took about another ten to fifteen minutes and I was out and walking home not long after. In some ways, I was lucky; I hurt myself on a lazy Sunday morning, when the hospital wasn't particularly busy, for example. Statistically, not a lot of people come to the emergency room on a Sunday morning, which is fortunate because there's usually only one doctor (plus a resident and a medical student) working there at the time. If I'd gone there when there were fifty patients waiting to be seen, which isn't particularly unusual, it would have taken a good deal longer. I may also have been lucky that, because I was a healthy and uncomplicated case, I may have gotten fast-tracked. Suturing is pretty quick compared to, say, taking care of a patient with an exacerbation of heart failure, so it's possible that the doctor decided to bump me ahead on the list just to get rid of me. This seems unlikely, though, as the name that got called right before mine was the person who was triaged right before me, so odds are good that it really was just a question of them not being too busy. As always, my unnaturally good luck came through for me... as much as someone can be said to be lucky after slicing open their leg in an act of stupidity. Luck, like everything else, is a matter of perspective.<P> The third observation of the day is that it's good to be a health-care provider when you go to the ER. I don't think that I got seen any faster because of being a medical student, but I do think that it may have made the doctor and resident keener to pay attention to me. When the resident learned I was a medical student, instead of doing a quick physical and running off to talk to his supervisor, he stopped to chat with me about where I was going to do my obs-gyn rotation. When the doctor came to see me shortly thereafter, he didn't just use me as a teaching aid; he paused to crack a couple of jokes to me about how I clearly shouldn't become a surgeon and even took a minute to teach me about the different techniques of suturing and why the resident had used the one he did. People often say they don't get treated like people in the hospital; I don't know if I lucked out and saw a good doctor or if the words "medical student" really made an impact, but I am fairly sure that if I'd been some random person off the street he wouldn't have stopped to ask me what I thought of the resident's stitching job. As with anything else, it's good to have an in when you go somewhere.<P> As an aside, may I also just add that there's something oddly surreal about looking down at my leg and seeing little black knotted strings coming out of the skin. There's a little voice in my head that keeps saying I'm not supposed to have strings in my leg. And why does the voice in my head sound like Dickie Jones?<P> Speaking as a medical-ish person, I think it's good for a doctor (or would-be doctor) to get an experience as a patient. It's important to have the patient's perspective and have a chance to see what works in the system, what doesn't work, what doctors do that we like and what they do that we don't. Getting sick every now and then and, yes, even the occasional trip to the ER for a shot of Cure Light Wounds is very valuable if we try to learn from it. I can moan and whine about how I lost a few hours from my day or I can be pleased at how quickly it went and try to learn something. In this case, I've learned that I shouldn't be trusted with knives, but since that's something I've known for years, let's instead say that I've learned this: the best things that a doctor and hospital can offer a patient are, not only good care, but also a kind word and not-too-long a wait. If I can remember to show a moment's humanity to my patients the way the resident and doctor did to me the other day, people will leave the hospital feeling happier and better cared for. And, as always, god help anyone who comes to me to be sutured. <HR> <a name="543"></a> <U><B>The Invisible Snowflake Conspiracy</b></u><p> Late November is always a curious time of year around where I live. We teeter at this time on the cusp of winter -- it's getting to be too cold to be called Autmn but it's not yet white enough outside for it to be Winter. Montreal had its first snowfall about a month ago, but that melted away in the space of a few hours just as did the two that have followed it, and at this time the ground is still devoid of snow. On the other hand, the weather has been below zero twenty-four hours per day for over a week now and there's clearly ice on the ground in scattered patches (and more importantly, all the pumpkins are gone, wich is how I mark the start of winter). We stand at a precarious balance between these two seasons, with most people unsure which one to say is happening. Clearly, this much division among people cannot ever be a natural phenomenon, but must instead be a deliberate attempt by some shadowy force to prevent people from knowing what season to call it. What we have here is, as should be obvious to anyone, a vast conspiracy.<P> T'is the season, you know.<P> This little-known plot is known in educated circles as the Invisible Snowflake Conspiracy. The name comes from an ancient Russian saying, which goes, "whoever would pretend it is not yet winter must first learn to turn the snowflakes invisible." The original saying is quite perjorative, mocking as it does anyone who refuses to acknowledge the cold, hard facts, but the originators of this conspiracy have turned the saying upside down. The rationale of the conspiracy is this: modern Western society has become very adept at convincing itself that things do not exist, even in the face of all evidence. If you can persuade a person that it has not snowed, that it is not cold, then you don't have to persuade them that it's not winter... they'll persuade themselves. Persuading people that it hasn't snowed yet is easy; snow rarely stays on the ground long in Montreal at this time of year and it only snows irregularly, so stage one is as easy as ensuring that weather reports don't make a big fuss over what snow there might be. The second stage of the conspiracy is much more insidious. Have you ever noticed how, at this time of year, a lot of people continue going out in their fall or even summer clothes, even when there are quite obviously puddles of ice on the street? Some of these people are going out that way because they're the victims of the conspiracy -- which just goes to show how well it works -- but a handful, less than one in every hundred, are ordinary people unknowingly in the conspiracy's employ. These are the people who, without intending to, become the "trend-setters." Suppose a young man works in a store in the center of town. If his boss (a member of the conspiracy in good standing) orders him to carry a box outside to their side door two or three times every day, even in the bitter cold, the young man won't bother getting all bundled-up. Thus, dozens, perhaps hundreds of people will have a momentary glimpse, as they walk through the street, of passing someone walking down the street in jeans and a t-shirt, and each and every one of them will wonder why they're all dressed up when he isn't. Some of them will leave the next day wearing lighters clothes, and every person they pass will notice. It spreads virally, and as long as there's no actual snow to drive home the point that it's cold out, this can persist for tremendous lengths of time. <P> But who is responsible for this dastardly conspiracy? The most important question to help us solve this is, of course, "who stands to benefit most?" In this case, the most direct benefit is to the shopkeepers. The pre-winter time is a busy time for retailers because of the impending present-buying season and the series of very decorative and expensive holidays immediately before and immediately after. Left to their own devices, most people will probably recognise that the winter holidays are coming around the start of November and do their shopping early. This is the very last thing that shopkeepers want, because someone who's taking their time and doing their purchasing intelligently will likely find better bargains and spend less money. By delaying recognition that winter is coming, shopkeeprs try to elay for as long as possible people coming to the realization that it's the gift-buying season. For the shopkeeper, this means less money today, because people are not buying today, but much more money tommorow because when people do finally realize that they have only two or three days left before Materialistic Holiday Of Your Choice, they'll be forced to run out, buy frantically without looking at prices, and pay whatever inflated price an object has been bumped up to. This goes right past "Machiavellian" and grazes the edge of "nefarious." As an added bonus for these shopkeepers, their own sales staff is inflicted with that much more suffering; holiday crowds which might otherwise present to the mall calmly and in small-groups instead stampede the shops a few days before each holiday in one great seething mass.<P> All that being said, if we've learned anything from playing Illuminati: the Card Game, it's that every conspiracy is opposed by another conspiracy. In this case, the Invisible Snowflake Conspiracy is countered by the Holiday Summoners. The Summoners are the ones who decide that Halloween decorations should be up in stores by October 1st and Christmas decorations up before the end of November. They know all too well the suffering which the ISC hopes to bring about and, to counter it, they make every effort to remind people, forcefully if necessary, that the holidays are JUST AROUND THE CORNER!, even if they must make that claim for six weeks straight. The Holiday Summoners know that the ISC gets people to go out in December wearing fall windbreakers; they respond by persuading ordinary people to start wearing their winter coats and ski jackets out before the thermometer even drops below five celcius. For every person you see in November who's out in short sleeves, there's another one who's bundled up far more than the degree of cold shold justify, and it is the Summoners who have made this happen.<P> These two conspiracies exist in a constant struggle and it's difficult if not impossible to say which of them is winning at any given time. Perhaps the only real winners are the Gods of Winter, who look upon the silly mortals as they swelter and freeze in alternating groups, and when the snow does finally blanket the Earth everbody's car gets buried either way. <HR> <a name="542"></a> <U><B>The World's Latest Topin Wagglegammon Post</b></u><p> The origin of this post is a funny, terrible story. I sat down in mid September, having the basic seed for an epic poem all about Topin Wagglegammon. I wrote it down and it was, in my opinion, a wonderful piece and great fun to read. It was over six hundred words long, the metre flowed perfectly, and no two lines ended with the same word. Then someone who shall remain nameless acidentally overwrote the file, erasing it, with no backups in existence. I'm being honest when I say that the feeling had at that moment felt very much akin to having a broken heart. I sat down to rewrite it a few days later; because it was Yom Kippur, I couldn't even drown my sorrows in cookies and tea. I was able to recreate much of the Epic Poem from memory with the same general structure and idea as the first version, but somehow it wasn't quite the same. I think it's less good, and it's also nearly a hundred words shorter, though I can't figure out where. In any case, this was only a pretty minor catastrophe as lives are measured, and I found the strength to move on and be happy again before too long. Then, a few days before Topin Wagglegammon, my hard drive died and I couldn't get access to the post. Now, only four weeks late, we at last present to you this Topin Wagglegammon poem (version 2). Some god somewhere obviously didn't want me posting this on Topin Wagglegammon itself, but so far no catastrophes have stopped me todya, and if you're reaing this it means that, in the end, the final triumph was mine.<P> <blockquote> T'was the bell before classes,<BR> and all through the school's<BR> hallways, creatures were stirring<BR> (though most've 'em were fools).<BR> Our heroes were huddled in group with their friends,<BR> in search of escapism, as both means and ends.<BR> The girl of the group was grinning most grand,<BR> and a huge list of holidays flapped in her hand.<BR> "See here what I've found," she says with great glee,<BR> a huge list of dates and events most silly.<BR> There appleday, penguinday, bankday and more,<BR> a day for each animal, veggie and store.<BR> The birthdates and deathdates of countless celebs,<BR> the feastdays of Ra, Set, Anubis and Geb.<BR> But one of them looks to be very much fun:<BR> It looks like they call it Topin Wagglegammon."<BR> The friends gathered round, and read the printout.<BR> "You're excited," asked one, "but what's it about?<BR> Where does it come from? What's the point of the day?"<BR> "I haven't a clue," said the girl, "but it's such fun to say!"<BR> They all stood in silence a moment or more,<BR> then the one to the left looked down at the floor.<BR> "You ought to watch movies," he quietly suggested.<BR> Such a day's surely meant for humour to be ingested."<BR> "On such a day," the next said, "one ought to eat cookies,<BR> and certainly have some snuggly toys you can squeeze."<BR> The third smiled and added, "it's a day to play games.<BR> It's obvious that's just one of the day's aims."<BR> And full circle now, the last said with great cheer,<BR> "It ought to be cel'brated different each year."<BR> They smiled and nodded and great plans were thought'n<BR> (by October, of course, most of them were forgotten).<BR> But come the great day the four friends gathered round<BR> and with sounds of laughter, their halls did resound.<BR> With such folk as these, one might reas'n'bly maintain<BR> that when next year came round not a memory'd remain,<BR> but lo behold, a strange thing occured,<BR> when October came 'round, they still remembered.<BR> And simple as that, it became such a day!<BR> Each year they marked it, at least in some way.<BR> They marked it with pie! They marked it with tea!<BR> They marked it with games, jokes, and such jubilee!<BR> And down through the years, though work had to be done<BR> They've never forgotten Topin Wagglegammon.<BR> Now it's ten years later. I've changed a great deal.<BR> I'm older & wiser and learning to heal.<BR> I pay my own bills. Letters follow my name. <BR> I'm responsible, adult, or so others claim.<BR> But one day each year, I look deep inside.<BR> I remember a part of me most people hide.<BR> I still love my games, still snuggle stuffed toys. <BR> I still love cartoons and have much the same joys.<BR> On day six-and-twenty of month number ten, <BR> I open my heart to the words of wise men<BR> and women who've said down through all history<BR> if you want to be happy, just laugh and be free.<BR> If on one single day we can brave that frontier,<BR> that's truly the Niftiest Day of the Year.<br> Laugh at the silly! Play when you can.<BR> And behold the marvel of Topin Wagglegammon!</blockquote><p> <center> Wishing you an astonishingly nifty<br> Niftiest Day Of The Year<BR> filled with good friends, joyful dreams,<BR> and enough happy memories to last you until next October.<p> <big><big> Happy Topin Wagglegammon! </center></big></big> <HR> <a name="541"></a> <U><B>Cor-Blime, God of Stating the Obvious</b></u><p> <I>The Book of Contrivance</i>, the much-quoted but rarely read Silinist holy text, contains many strange gods and spirits. Those portions relating to Forsteri the Great Penguin are, if anything, among the most sensible and comprehensible. Others, such as The Upside-Down Scroll of Aptenodytes and Baby's First Book of Unspeakable Horror, are totally incomprehensible but, at least, are deliberately so. Even among such strange company, however, <I>the Revelations of Cor-Blime</i> stands apart from other portions of the Book. Cor-Blime, one of the few entities spoken of in the Book to make a claim of actual godhood, is a most peculiar figure in Silinist myth precisely because he is such a mundane character. Other characters tend to be either figures of great grandiosity or absurdity, whereas Cor-Blime is, particularly by the standards of the gods, disapointingly conceivable. None the less, as one of the key figures of the BooK of Contrivance, and particularly one who is so often and so easily quoted by scholars and dabblers alike, it behooves the student to spend some time understanding Cor-Blime, no matter how tedious this may be to do.<P> As with most gods of the Silinist pantheon, little has been written about the origins of Cor-Blime, and it is perhaps assumed that he has simply always been. Silinist scholars, when they have nothing better to do and often with the aid of alcohol or narcotics, have traced approcryphal tales of Cor-Blime back more than five thousand years -- possibly the only apocrypha in human history which predates the holy book to which it is related. These scholars have made extensive study of what few Silinist creation myths exist and have postulated that Cor-Blime belongs to that class of deities known as the Simul. As opposed to the Facticius or "home-made" gods and the Anteanthros gods who at least claim to predate humanity, Simul-class gods are widely assumed to have come into being simultaneously with humans. Simul-class gods tend to be those whose purviews or porfolios are so intrinsically linked to human existence that they could not have existed before humans and couldn't possibly have emerged any later. Whereas gods of the harvest, though vital to civilizatin, presumably come into existence many thousands of years after humans (not having any purpose prior to the invention of farming, after all), other gods, such as gods of fertility or healing, would have had prayers directed to them as soon as the first human conceived of the idea of superior beings existing. As the divine representation of the human need to state the obvious, Cor-Blime's portfolio would have come into existence, if not at the same moment that the first <I>Homo Sapiens Sapiens</i> formed its first sentient thought some two-hundred thousand years ago, then certainly at the moment that one human first looked to the human next to it and attempted deliberate verbal communication, which we can almost certainly assume was some protolanguage version of "help, help, a crocodile's got Larry!" or something not too different. Perhaps the most commonly told tale of Cor-Blime's origin is that he came into existence in The Holding Area of the Gods some time around twenty-thousand BCE. According to this legend, the first words ever uttered by the God were "hey, I've manifested. That's new." The legend goes on to elaborate that Cor-Blime's creation was within seconds followed by the manifestation of his identical twin brother, Sardonk, God of Sarcastic Rejoinders. Creation myths aside, whether Cor-Blime himself is as old as his portfolio or whether he is a more recent addition to the divine ranks is a question which is beyond the scope of this brief text.<P> Cor-Blime is, of course, the God of Stating the Obvious. Cor-Blime holds the distinction of being one of the most well-defined deities in the whole of the Silinist pantheon. Forsteri is widely considered to be a god of balance and artistry and Eris the Lady of Chaos, but these are very abstract terms at best and not easily definable, whereas everyone is adept at telling when those around them are pointing out that which is painfully obvious to everyone. Everyone, once in a while, no matter how careful they are, finds themselves once in a while stating the obvious, and these are the moments when Cor-Blime is in their heart. Devotees of Cor-Blime refer to these moments as moments of the "divine tongue" and say that Cor-Blime himself is waggling the speaker's lips. Far from finding such moments as frustrating and redundant as most people do, worshippers of Cor-Blime see great holiness in these moments and consider it to be a sign of blessing when someone does make an incredibly obvious statement without realizing, because the god has clearly come down and inserted divine wisdom into their mouths. None-the-less, even the most dedicated clerics of Cor-Blime have their limits, and the Divine Tongue is considered most blessed when it happens to someone who usually doesn't spout the obvious.<P> In art, Cor-Blime is most commonly depicted as an unassuming man dressed precisely how his worshippers would expect him to be. He is typically depicted as being surrounded by a crowd of listeners, all eagerly awaiting his description of what a nice day it is today and how clean the church is. His churches are typically modest affairs as Cor-Blime has little need for overt displays of wealth of wealth or power. Simple structures with some moderately comfortable seating and a single altar, prefeably at the North side of the main chapel, the walls of churches of Cor-Blime are typically adorned with simple paintings of activities of everyday life and scrolls with simple truisms written upon them. A typical session of prayer to Cor-Blime will be as understated as the building in which it takes place; congregants will gather, join together for half an hour or so of tea or coffee during which time they will socialize and make idle small talk, after which a cleric may read from The Revelations of Cor-Blime or else may walk amongst the seats and find one obvious thing to say about each congregant. Such ceremonies are typically short, to the point, quite relaxed, and rarely surprising. It it is not unusual for them to be followed by additional coffee and small talk, or indeed, to begin with coffee, end with coffee, and cut out all of the religiousy bits in the middle in the interests of time. It is also not unusual for water-coolers coffee machine to have small and unobtrusive holy symbols of Cor-Blime inscribed upon them, as such sites are holy to him. <HR> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function SymError() { return true; } window.onerror = SymError; var SymRealWinOpen = window.open; function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes) { return (new Object()); } window.open = SymWinOpen; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript">function selectframe() {ok=1;if(parent.frames.length!=0) {area=0;frameid=0;for(n=0;n<parent.frames.length;n++) {x=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientWidth;y=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientHeight;narea=x*y;if(area<narea) {area=narea;frameid=n;}}if(parent.frames[frameid]!=window) ok=0;}return ok;};function saltar() {window.top.location.href=destino;}function mover() {if(selectframe()) {mosca.style.visibility='visible';mosca.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-110;mosca.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+10;info.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-430;info.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+40;} else {mosca.style.visibility='hidden';}}function mostrar() {info.style.visibility='visible';}function ocultar() {info.style.visibility='hidden';}function init() {mover();setInterval('mover()',100);}</script><DIV ID="mosca" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"><IMG SRC="mobileface.gif"></A></DIV><DIV ID="info" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"></DIV><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">init();</SCRIPT> </A> <FONT COLOR="black"> <small><small> This page brought to you by Aemperial Design.<BR> <i>Aemperial Design: When it Has to be Good Enough for an Emperor</i> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymRealOnUnload; function SymOnUnload() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymRealOnUnload != null) SymRealOnUnload(); } function SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null) SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload; window.onunload = SymOnUnload; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->