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 551-560<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/501-600/561-570.html">Entries 561-570</a><BR> <a href="#560">Entry 560</a> January 12 2009<br> <a href="#559">Entry 559</a> January 9 2009<br> <a href="#558">Entry 558</a> January 6 2009<br> <a href="#557">Entry 557</a> January 3 2009<br> <a href="#556">Entry 556</a> December 31 2008<br> <a href="#555">Entry 555</a> December 28 2008<br> <a href="#554">Entry 554</a> December 25 2008<br> <a href="#553">Entry 553</a> December 22 2008<br> <a href="#552">Entry 552</a> December 19 2008<br> <a href="#551">Entry 551</a> December 16 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/541-550.html">Entries 541-550</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="560"></a> <U><B>Eight Weeks With The Headologists</b></u><p> I don't recall exactly when I decided that I would be applying to medical school. It certainly wasn't something I ever thought about back in high school or CEGEP... back then, the idea that I might attempt what is widely considered one of the hardest educational paths in existence seemed entirely ludicrous. My grades in high school, CEGEP, and even university were always stellar, at or near the top of the class -- in English and the humanities. In basic science, I always had a natural aptitide but never brilliance, and the more mathematical fields such as physics were horrors for me. When you get right down to it, the simple truth is that when I finished CEGEP, my CRC -- that's the overall assessment of your average, analagous to a GPA for the benefit of those never to go through the system -- was on the lowish side, possibly even below what I likely would have needed to apply for an undergraduate in, say, physiology or something. It was more than high enough to get me into psychology, however, where no one was surprised to see that I had a natural and unholy aptitude. My GPA rose to an A average. It was likely some time during my second year of undergrad that I began to seriously consider the idea of entering medicine, in part because it was only at this time that my academic performance was up to their standards and in part because it was becoming obvious to me that, what with my relative distaste for research and narrow range of research interests, my shot at getting into a good PhD program wasn't stellar. I switched from a specialization in psychology to the honours program, wrote a couple of fifty-page theses, and padded my resume, and when the time came to send out my applications, one of them went to McGill's medical school. Against all reason, they accepted me, and that's why I've spent the last three and a half years of my life buried up to my neck in material I dislike. All that being said, I made it through my eight-week rotations in family medicine and internal medicine getting positive reviews from my professors. During all those long hours, I always knew that I wasn't doing what I really loved. Most people who enter medicine do so expecting to end up in either family medicine -- general practice -- or some offshoot of internal medicine, but from the very first days when I began to consider medicine as an option for my future, I always just assumed that I would find myself in psychiatry, sorting through peoples' thoughts, hopes, terrors and dreams to earn my daily bread. At long last, the time came when I walked up the street to the hospital for the first of my eight weeks of psychiatry training. As I approached those steps, a single thought dominated my phenomenal mind: if it turns out that I hate psychiatry, I'll have wasted three and a half years of my life and, with another year and a half to go, and won't actually have a job waiting for me at the end that I could picture myself spending fifty years doing. Somewhere mixed with that was the second fear, that if I was merely incompetent at the work, then I'd be in just as much trouble, except with added embarassment. Clearly, it would be an important two months of my life, one way or another.<P> Today, those eight weeks are over. To no one's surprise, the same natural aptitude I had for psychology turned out to carry over perfectly well to psychiatry; I was excellent at it. I impressed the professors, learned the skills, wrote the reports, and genuinely healed some patients. I won't say that I loved the work -- even saying that I had fun wouldn't be strictly accurate -- but I didn't hate it, and I think that I could do it for a living without hating my life. And you know, maybe it's the cognitive dissonance talking, but I think maybe I actually did have a little bit of fun here and there. At any rate, starting pediatrics today and getting back to "real" medicine is going to be a rough readjustment, kind of like slipping off a nice fluffy towel and putting on an ugly, scratchy shirt. <p> I'm really good at psychiatry. I'm far from perfect, and I made mistakes, and the difficulty I have with reading humans that has been the bane of my existence defintely made some parts harder than they might otherwise have been, but still, every supervisor I had agreed that I had a natural aptitude for the work. "It's like having a resident working with me" several doctors said. The odd thing is that I've never understood why I'm any good at this sort of thing; by all rights, someone with my weaknesses and eccentricities ought to be terrible at it. For whatever reason, for most I've my life, I've just been the sort of person other people enjoy talking to, and people have a way of feeling that they can say anything to me, even to the point of sharing secrets with me before they're aware of what they're doing. It's a fun talent to have socially, but it's downright useful in the psychiatric emergency room. It's always seemed to me that as long as you nod your head every ten seconds or so and occasionally repeat and adjective that the other person's just said, to make it look like you understand the significance of it (and that you're still paying attention), people will feel like you're a wonderful listener, and when people think they're being listened to they'll tell you all kinds of things. From the patient on the wards suffering from severe schizophrenia who described to me in detail how he rationalizes his visions of and messages from god with the fact that he knows he has a disorder to the lady admitted to the medical floor who talked to me about some of the horrors she lived through during the inter-tribal genocide in her home country, it seemed to me for eight weeks that people who hadn't been willing to share emotionally with anybody else just opened up instantly when talking to me. I don't understand it, but I definitely appreciate the utility of it. It helps me get good grades these days and it'll help me get a job in the coming years... and in the meantime, it seemes to help patients feel better completely independent of whether I'm trying to help them, or indeed, whether I'm paying any attention at all to what they're telling me. <P> Could I actually spend the rest of my life as a psychiatrist? It's probably still a bit early to say. There were a lot of parts of the last eight weeks I didn't like and a lot of parts that I merely tolerated, and the parts that I "enjoyed" were either few and far between or were the moments when I was doing the least work. There are certainly aspects of the last eight weeks that I would dread having to repeat, but if I really think about it, there was nothing in the past two months that really made me misreable. I think that I *could* do this with my life, and I think I'd be good at it. Granted, I still have to make it through another ten or so months of "real medicine" mixed in with another two or three months of psychiatry before I'll even have the option of getting a job, and based on prior experience I know that some of those big exams are going to be a major challenge for me -- because even if I learn psychology very easily I still have a hellish time learning everything else in medicine -- but if I can make it through the next year and a half, I think there might yet be some hope for me. At the risk of getting my hopes up... this just might actually work. <HR> <a name="559"></a> <U><B>Drug Dealers</b></u><p> One of the more peculiar niftydays on the Imperial Calendar is National Pharmacists Day, which is celebrated on the second Thursday of January, being yesterday. Given that most of my holidays are days related to at best ephemeral concepts and at worst utter nonsense, it may seem out of place that my calendar includes such a concrete and comprehensible day. It may be doubly odd because "pharmacist" is the only career celebrated on my calendar, unless you count "computer nerd" or "liar" as careers. I've been asked a few times in the past why the holiday is there, and I've wondered it myself from time to time in the last few years. The main block to me removing it from my calendar has always been laziness -- it's always a bit of a schlep getting onto my website via FTP and editing files -- but since it's not a big deal I've never gone ahead and removed it. I suppose that in theory I might need the approval of the Imperial government, being its Senators, before editing the national calendar, but to paraphrase one of history's great wise men, "it's good to be the emperor." Either way, the holiday remains on my calendar where it's sat for many, many years now, and if anybody were to ask me why it's there I'll just have to answer "cottleston pie" and call it even.<P> There we go. I've been looking for an excuse to mention cottleston pie in this space for about two months now. Good to have that out of the way.<P> Pharmacists Day was among the first niftydays to make it into my calendar. I borrowed this date from the same huge list of holidays which gave us Topin Wagglegammon, which means that it dates back to at least 1998. I'm uncertain if this is a day which is celebrated by people other than those who use my calendar; a quick review online does find a few scattered mentions of it and even hints of the existence of some large state societies dedicated to its celebration, but I also found significant confusion regarding what date it's celebrated, which suggests to me that there's no vast organizing force behind it the way there is for Christmas or Towel Day. A small number of e-card companies offer Pharmacists Day greeting cards, but most aren't very nice and the ones which are well done are kindof disturbing, depicting as they do shadowy figures giving out hideously large pills that look like they might be the "happy pills" produced by Friend Computer. I couldn't find any records of any widely-accepted way of celebrating the day; presumably the best way to celebrate is to go visit your pharmacist and buy some medication, but I'm faily certain that if everybody did that the pharmacists themselves would live in mortal terror of the event. It should be very clearly noted that the only thing about which all sites I saw agreed, and which several sites made a very clear point of stating repeatedly, is that the day exists to honour pharmacists themselves and not pharmaceutical companies... one almost picks up a certain hint of bitterness over this issue, which I suppose I can understand.<P> Even if the reason why the day remains on my calendar isn't clear, I suppose the reason why it ended up on my calendar to begin with is actually pretty simple: my father is a pharmacist. I grew up admiring the idea of pharmacy because the people I knew who worked in the field -- a highly biased sampling, to be sure -- were all warm, friendly, hard-working people who appeared to know everything about every medication and, more importantly, who gave me presents. When I was very young, I thought I might want to go into pharmacy myself, though as time passed it became apparent just how terrible I really was at dealing with people in general and customers in particular and the idea of doing any sort of retail job went to the place where all of our least well thought out plans go to die and rot. I even spent some time working in my father's pharmacy when I was young -- not doing any exciting work, but counting out pills, straightening stock out in front, and hiding in the back and reading my book when nobody was looking for me, all of which taught me useful skills which I've applied at every job that I've worked since then. Since those early years, I've had a number of interactions with various pharmacists when I was very impressed by them. For example, during my two month rotation through internal medicine, I spent a lot of time in close communication with the ward pharmacy team, no less than three full-time pharmacists whose sole job it is to monitor the medications and prescriptions of the thirty or forty patients on the ward, and their efficiency, friendliness, and depth of knowledge was really a sight to behold. A good pharmacist isn't merely a shopkeeper, but is a true health care professional with their own field of expertise and an essential role in a health care team. All that being said, does any of that justify having a holiday in their honour? Rather, does any of that justify giving them a holiday when the Empire doesn't have holidays in honour of other jobs? My calendar doesn't list a day celebrating nurses, for example, though unsurprisingly a quick look online will find some ten or twenty different "national nurses day" dates. My calendar doesn't list a day celebrating doctors, even though if I were being maximally selfish that's certainly the one I'd include. It has no day for other professionals -- plumbers, electricians, trapeze artists, explodaphone players -- and doesn't even include National Social Workers Day (which is, apparently, the second Wednesday of March or the 24th of September depending what nation one is in), which is what my mother does for a living and which I suppose I'd have to include if my father was the only reason I celebrated National Pharmacists Day. I haven't got any sort of logical basis for any of these inclusions or ommissions... I'm sure that ten years ago this sort of setup seemed like a good idea at the time, and today it remains unchanged more than anything due to inertia.<P> In the meantime, so long as the date remains on my calendar, I make some small effort to mark it, because it seems like a good day to me, even if I can't quite explain why. Maybe, when it comes to the question of whether or not to take note of a day that gives us an excuse to take notice of someone who helps keep us well, and in my case also gives me an excuse to call up my parents and say hi, it's not so much a question of finding a reason to do it as much as finding a reason why not. Lacking a reason not to celebrate, I wish everybody a happy Pharmacists Day. Enjoy your drugs. <HR> <a name="558"></a> <U><B>Character Protrait: Alexon Brewerson</b></u><p> <B>Background:</b> Alexon was born on the outskirts of a frontier town on the border of human and kobold lands. His father, Jhonn Brewerson, was the owner and operator of The Mountain Flagon, a warm and welcoming tavern whch catered to the town's population and the steady stream of adventurers passing through in one direction or another. A sorceror of modest power, Jhonn Brewerson had built a thriving business attracting travelers to the tavern and using modest hedge-magic to provide impressive service -- his drinks were always cold, his tankards always clean, his larder always stocked. The Brewersons had been tavern operators back more than four generations, and by tradition the firstborn son of each Brewerson innkeeper would inherit the tavern from his father. Alexon was the third-born; where his eldest brother was destined to own the tavern and his elder sister free to choose her own path, Alexon was promised as a child to the service of Tahnak Ra'ad, patron deity of adventurers and pubs and the foremost god of the region. It was most fortunate for Alexon that, as a child, he discovered that he hated working at the bar but very much enjoyed throwing out the rowdy customers, and thus he was all to happy with his lot in life, and so became an acolyte of Tahnak Ra'ad at the age of fourteen. <P> Among the priests of Tahnak Ra'ad, Alexon studied hard. Though far from their most promising student, he took easily to healing magic and equally easily to combat training, becoming skilled in fighting with both mace and bare fist. When it was discovered that he had a natural aptitude for healing magic Alexon was changed from basic acolyte training to specialized training for the Wandering Servants of Tahnak Ra'ad, an order within the church which sent clerics off into the world to bring hope and healing to travelers. <P> <B>Current Sketch:</b> Alexon has turned 18 just recently and, after years of training, is prepared to venture forth as a Wandering Servant. Gifted with the finely-crafted armour and weapons of his order, he has left his home and become one of the traveling adventurers his family's tavern caters to. As yet untested in true battle, Alexon has no idea how he will fare on the road, but trusts in his healing magic (and his heavy mace) to protect him. Among the first lessons that he was taught by his order were that a wise traveler walks alongside others, who he can serve and who can, in turn, help to protect him, and so mere weeks into his travels Alexon has joined up with several other newly-minted adventurers. He hopes now to go forth and spread the glory of Tahnak Ra'ad far and wide.<p> <B>Appearance:</b> Alexon is a young human male, as yet unscarred by adventuring life. On inspection he is obviously a Wandering Servant of Tahnak Ra'ad, as his ornate half-plate armour and heavy mace bear the sigils and markings of that order. Alexon carries a light coin-purse but a heavy wine-skin, and bandages and other healers' tools dangle from his backpack where they have been hastily stuffed.<P> <B>Roleplaying notes:</b> You grew up around adventurers. You know a great deal about their ways and their peculiarities. Face each new situation with pragmatic caution but clear optimism; trust in your abilities and your companions. Be ready always to heal a comrade or aid a fallen innocent, but be realistic -- some people will never respond to diplomacy and some situations can be solved only through the carefully balanced mixture of divine justice and mortal violence. Allow the words of Tahnak Ra'ad to guide you and you will not stray.<P> <B>Tahnak Ra'ad:</B> Technically, Tahnak Ra'ad the Many-Handed is a minor human god of safe travel and welcoming hearths, but among the lay populace he is better known, rightly or wrongly, as a patron god of adventurers and pubs. Tahnak Ra'ad's priesthood is composed mainly of low-level clerics but because of their reputation for healing and feeding travelers of many different faiths Tahnak Ra'ad's curches are widely-frequented and well-respected. Clerics of Tahnak Ra'ad are encouraged to study healing magic almost to the exclusion of other divine spells, and it is rare for a Tahnakite to master any other field of magic. The single exception to this is one order within the church known as the Wandering Servants. Whereas the churches of Tahnak Ra'ad open their doors to travelers and offer aid and succor, the Wandering Servants are tasked to go forth and bring aid and succor to travelers on the roads. Frequently wandering the lands in the company of adventuring parties, a Wandering Servant of Tahnak Ra'ad is a welcome sight to many. Because they must criss-cross the land and cannot rely on heavy stone walls for safety, Wandering Servants still focus their energies mainly on healing magics but are not averse to calling down the occasional pillar of holy fire to crush those who stand in the way of their good mission. Trading on their reputation as healers and do-gooders, Wandering Servants typically wear decorative symbols of their order in plain sight adorning their armour (usually half-plate or full-plate) and weapons (stout heavy maces or iron gauntlets). <P> As a patron of inns and taverns, priests of Tahnak Ra'ad venerate structures that bring together a community and provide a place where all can come to warm themselves by a fire, procure good drink, and listen to a fine storyteller. To the Tahnakites, the tavern represents all that is good and worthy in the human soul -- the drive to bring light, warmth, companionship and joy to the dark wildernesses of the world. A priest of Tahnak Ra'ad is sworn to never damage a warm and friendly pub, although they have no such restrictions regarding wretched hives of scum and villainy, and in the face of a threat to a town a Tahnakite will protect such a pub with all the fervour (and sometimes more) with which they would their own temple. <P> The Tahnakite holy book is a small volume known as The Hearthside Wisdom. The volume consists mostly of parables collected from master storytellers, all of which illustrate some aspect of the Tahnakite holy code. Interspersed between these tales is the recorded wisdom of Tahnak Ra'ad himself, as handed down to the high-priests; Tahnak Ra'ad's wisdom exists in the form of simple, one-line truisms about travel and justice. Traditionally, a Wandering Servant's copy of the book is penned by another Wandering Servant who has retired from adventuring life due to age or injury. <HR> <a name="557"></a> <U><B>The Sound of One Glove Sliding Against the Strings of a Contrabass</b></u><p> After months of hard work in the hospitals, my winter holiday -- of which I'm now on the second to last day -- has been very welcome and very appreciated. I think that I adjusted well to the harsh reality of the 5-days-a-week-8-hours-a-day schedule that seems to drive so many other people nuts, but I will say that I've come to look forward to my days off far more than I usually did while I was sitting in lectures. The fact that out of every month one or two on my weeks are six days instead of five and I typically have at least one fourteen to thirty hour shift per week only makes this doubly true. I'd like to say that, in light of how busy my waking hours are, I make productive and fulfilling use of my free time... but I'd be lying, as evidenced by the fact that today I watched the last Godzilla movie I hadn't seen yet. To some people, I'm sure, "watching every Godzilla movie" might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but I think that even small victories have their place in life and in many ways they're even more important to enjoying life than the big victories are. <P> I've loved Godzilla movies since I was small. Deep down in the recesses of my cortex, where all of the half-lost memories get stored, I've got the last few synaptic traces of a memory of the day when my parents took me to a museum of film, one room of which was dedicated to an immense video screen of footage from the original black and white Godzilla film. I have no clue how old I was but I suspect that I was pre-literate and, in all likelihood, was still getting over a terrible fear of dragons that I had until about the age of five or so. At the time that I went to that museum, I didn't have much of an inkling as to what the scenes showed, except that it was to all appearances a big rubbery monster smashing buildings apart. Understandably, I was hooked at that moment. A few years would pass before, while on vacation at my aunt's house in Toronto, my brother and I decided to rent a movie, and against all common sense and intelligence we decided to rent a Godzilla movie. Continuing the theme, I no longer recall what that first movie from the series that I saw was... most likely it was either Godzilla vs. Gigan or Godzilla vs. Megalon, both incredibly cheesy films from the era when Godzilla was an unambiguously heroic character and the special effects made no effort to be any more than what they really were -- men in rubbery suits throwing fake rocks at each other. The film was simplistic, cheesy, perhaps even campy, but they showcased giant monsters crushing buildings, and that was enough to entertain me at that age. It was only with the passage of time that those around me would discover that, apparently, that's all it takes to entertain me as an adult, too.<P> On what is perhaps a related note, it amuses me that not far from my twenty-seventh birthday, I still write the word "adult" and don't really believe it applies to me. So anyway...<P> What's the appeal of the Godzilla series? It's a fair question. The two films I saw most recently were Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and the later Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (which, despite the lack of roman numerals, came after). Neither film is a work of art; in fact, calling them "good" would be well beyond "being generous" and safely into "complete fabrication." The stories are laughable, the characters are silly, and the special effects are exactly what you might expect of a Godzilla movie. I wouldn't have watched the movies if the only thing I was able to do at the time was watch the movies; all times I was doing at least two other things to keep myself amused and entertained (though even when I watch movies I like a great deal, I prefer to be doing at least one or two other things at the same time, so this may not prove much). The appeal of the movies is easily summed up as "The Toho Effect" which is defined by The Gamers' Dictionary as "the hypnotic effect caused by a film, game, car accident, or other source of entertainment which is so bad that it has moved beyond 'unwatchable' and 'boring' and has now become impossible not to watch and strangely amusing." Call me simplistic, but I get a lot of enjoyment from giant monsters done with bad special effects. I prefer good special effects when I can get them -- one reason why I'm one of only seven or eight people worldwide who enjoyed the movie "D-War" -- but good special effects are hard to find and sometimes bad special effects are just that much funnier. I watch movies to be entertained, not to be drawn into the story and to fee like I'm feeling events along with the characters, and when in the middle of the climactic battle scene you can catch a quick view of the wires supporting the villain's head, that's all part of the experience. <P> Then, of course, comes the feeling of a task completed and a job well done. It's good to know that I've seen all of the Godzilla films... it feels like I've accomplished something. Granted, I'll be the first to admit that what I've accomplished isn't necessarily of any value or importance whatsoever, but I think the same holds true of collecting stamps or winning the Stanley Cup or Super Bowl, so really, "importance" is a matter of perspective. It pleases me to know that there's an element of geek culture in which I'm a relative expert but it pleases me far more just to be able to say that yes, I've finished that. It's an achievement that might someday be obsolete, but if any Godzilla movies someday come out, which is by no means guaranteed, I'm sure I'll find a way to see those too and reclaim my medal. If maintaining my complete record means forcing myself to sit down, relax, and be entertained for an hour and a half, then somehow, I'll find a way to make that sacrifice. <P> As a pleasant aside, writing this brought back memories of an old Sesame Street sketch called "Imagine That" which I never saw the end of as a little child because I was scared of the dragon. Tonight I finally watched it the whole way through, and it's a charming little song. Doesn't it feel good to finish things? <HR> <a name="556"></a> <U><B>The Analysis of a Vector Into Two or More Vectors of Which it is the Sum</b></u><p> In these, the last few hours of the year 2008, our thoughts turn, once again, to that single driving force behind the new year: booze. Since I don't drink, however, I typically choose to instead dedicate a few spare synapses to the contemplation of this year's new year's resolutions. I had a pretty good year in terms of completing last year's resolutions; I may not have done a 100% perfect ob of fulfilling them, but I came close enough for weasel words to make up the difference and that alone is something to be proud of. Here's a quick summary of last year's resolutions:<P> 1) I will learn and master the skills of advanced first-aid. <BR> I did learn, though perhaps not master, the skills of advanced first aid; since last year I've become certified in both basic and advanced cardiac life support, learning both how to do optimal chest compressions and how (and when) to administer electric shocks to a disobedient heart. I passed the exams related to these skills by a wide margin and, several months after writing those exams, I still remember how to do things. I haven't yet been tested in an actual code blue, during which I'll most likely panic and screw up, but at the very least my foundation is strong.<P> 2) I will work hard and study in general. <BR> I have worked hard, studied hard, and read widely. I've had to work hard to pass the exams at the end of each rotation. I'm still a terrible studier and I know I don't work as hard as I need to and ought to, but I work a lot harder than I would have thought was within my abilities five years ago and it shows in so far as I haven't been kicked out of my program quite yet.<P> 3) I will read at least twenty novels. <BR> I did read at least twenty novels; as I wrote three days ago, I actually more than doubled that. Importantly, I read more than twenty novels that I actually enjoyed.<p> 4) I will edit more Journal posts. <BR> Over the whole past year, I think I edited about twenty posts. Not much of an accomplishment, obviously, but then again, I hadn't set myself a minimum number to do.<P> 5) I will stay in shape and exercise.<BR> This is probably the one at which I have done the poorest job of succeeding... which says something, given my poor performance at number 4. I have not held myself to working out oncce per week. I'm not sure if I've even held myself to getting a proper workout once per month. I certainly haven't been doing my pervious minimum number of sit-ups and push-ups each day. I've done little to no weapons training and and have consistently failed to take opportunities that I have had to do a quick 30 minutes of cardiovascular work. On the other hand, I have taken the opportunities presented to walk to and from the hospitals each day, including to the Montreal Children's which is a good 23 minute walk, uphill on the way home. I have thus been doing anywhere from 7 to 25 minutes of exercise daily, sometimes more, and because my natural walking pace approaches six kilometers an hours that's a respectable workout on its own. I've used this to justify why I haven't been exercising, but the truth is I don't really think that it counts. Worse, I'm actually quite concerned that if anything my endurance has dropped off from what it was at this time three years ago, and I haven't got much physical ability to lose. I've met the bare minimum of my resolution by ending the year at the same weight that I started it and not getting significantly weaker, but I certainly didn't meet the spirit of the resolution.<P> 6) I will make at least six book or magazine submissions over the year. <BR> I haven't kept good records of my submissions over this past year, but it's likely that in the end I actually sent out three, perhaps four only, thus failing to meet the promised number of six. On the other hand, I actually sold one of them and a copy of the magazine is sitting in my apartment right now. I therefore call this one a rousing success and I defy anyone who try to tell me otherwise. I invite any detractors to write up their comments and send them to me printed on torn-out pages from Weird Tales issue 352 (which is, by the way, now on sale, and in addition to my own story contains an entertaining interview with Neil Gaiman). On a semi-related note, a careful search on Pubmed will reveal an article with my name on it appeared in the Journal of the Canadian Acadademy of Child and Adolescolescent Psychiatry; I'm not the one who submitted the article, so arguably it doesn't count towards my resolution, but a publication is a publication.<P> 7) I resolve to work every day to remain, to put simply, a rook, a schemer, and a trickster.<br> And, of course, nobody can say I failed at this one. It's good to be me.<P> Overall, I rate myself as quite sucessful... less than I expected in some areas, much more so than I'd hoped in others. I certainly failed to exceed my own expectations in the fields of proof-reading and physical improvement, but such smaller-than-hoped successes are more than balanced by my excellent successes in the fields of creative writing and academics. I said a moment ago that I failed to exceed my own expectations, which is what I always strive to do (and I think it's fair to say that I have respectably-high expectations of myself), but failing to exceed doesn't mean failing. I met my expectations; I didn't exceed them because they were quite high. I've got my share of shames and painful memories from the last year, but let it be said of me that at least my New Year's Resolutions are not among them. We take our victories where we can find them because life offers precious few of them. <P> In that spirit, I hereby set down my resolutions for the coming year. They will be public and a matter of record; if I should fail to meet them one year from now, then I will have broken my oath and all those around me may mock me to their hearts' content. On the other hand, if I meet them -- and perhaps even exceed them -- then let me be celebrated for it, as anyone who strives every day to improve themselves should be. If nobody else is going to, I'll quite happily celebrate myself, because even though I'm very much imperfect, lazy, and cowardly, I'm also mind-bogglingly fantastic.<P> 1) I will read at least twenty-six novels over the course of the year. This will likely prove to be a challenge given my expected workload in the coming twelve months; by this time next year I'll have completed all of my surgical rotations and my month of geriatrics, and completed my application for residency... assuming, of course, that I pass all my exams and courses, which is by no means guaranteed given my history. Through it all, I will find the time to read, and at the end, I will be able to look back and say that I enjoyed the majority of the books I read.<P> 2) I will submit at least three pieces of writing for publication. I'm not promising that I'll repeat my grand success from this year, but I'll certainly give it my best shot. I'm confident that I've got a few more short stories in me, and I'm even working up the courage to try a formal book proposal, including submitting the first several chapters plus a synopsis of the entire novel. In all likelihood, every submission I send will be rejected and returned to me with a condescending letter, but you can't win if you don't play.<P> 3) I will proof-read and edit at least twenty posts in this Journal's archive. Last year I didn't set myself a target number and so I didn't reach a very high target; by setting myself a goal of twenty, I hope to be sufficiently motivated to break fifty. I love my writing and while I can't be bothered to proof-read as I go, I love my writing and the number of errors in some of my posts is really kind of embarassing. Professional writers have editors to deal with this sort of problem, but for now I'll make do on my own.<P> 4) I will do better at exercising than I did in 2008. That won't be hard; if I walk to the hospitals when possible and do a decent half-hour workout once a month, I'll fulfill this goal. <P> Quite frankly, that's all I can think of wanting to resolve. If the last few years have proven anything to me, it's that left to my own devices I'll do all kinds of amazing stuff whether I promised to or not. I feel no need this year to make resolutions about academic performance or working towards the growth of the Empire because that's all stuff I take as a given. By the same logic, I don't feel any need to resolve to remain a trickster this year, because it's been years since I knew how to be anything else and I don't see that changing. <P> Happy new year to all. I wish you all continued exposure to my wonderful presence. <HR> <a name="555"></a> <U><B>How I spent 2008</b></u><p> Among the many patients who have been under my direct care in the past year was one particular lady who stuck with me. A Secretary in her early 60's, this patient had developed a rapidly progressive dementia and in the course of about a year had gone from being a true wit to having the vocabulary and complexity of an eight-year old. Mercifully, she herself seemed to be pretty much unaware of what had happened to her and was as happy as ever, perhaps happier thanks to some comorbid delusions she'd developed. Among other changes she had gone through, this patient had transformed from someone who would read one or often two books per week to someone who was barely literate. Understandably, I couldn't help but find myself pondering this sort of thing when I would go see her, and often late into the night even afterwards. The idea of losing my fantastic brain frightens me a lot more than the idea of losing my already mediocre body (though of course I plan to maintain both of them for as long as I possibly can). Meeting someone who has lost the ability (and the desire) to read really helped me reappreciate how much joy I take in my books. The simple comfort of lying in bed with a mug of tea at my bedside and reading a chapter of some brainless, devoid-of-character-development comic-fantasy novel before falling asleep is probably one of the greatest joys in my life, right up there with writing and gaming. I could live without books, but I'm grateful not to have to. On that note, I proudly present every book I read in the year 2008. They've been grouped together for ease of commenting on each, but the number before each title tells what order I read them in.<P> 1) Death's Dominion<BR> In actual fact I only read about one half of this book, because I had started it in 2007. This was a special book for me, however. Back in January 2007, through an act of preventable stupidity on my part, my car was broken into and the backpacks of myself and two good friends were taken. In addition to my beloved dice and my swiss army knife (which was a bar mitzvah present and had served me well for over a decade), I lost the book I had been reading at the time, which was this one and which I was only halfway through. Had it not been stolen, it would have been the first book I read in 2007. I finally got around to replacing it in late 2007 and, quite approriately, it was the first book I finished in 2008. Sadly, although the book was an interesting concept (a society where Frankenstein monsters are created to act as slave labour decides to eliminate the slaves, and the monsters must learn how to break their asimovs and resist), the writing itself isn't great and the characters are transparent, preachy, and annoying. I was very glad to have it over with and I regret having paid for it twice. <P> 2) The Armour of Contempt <BR> 12) Dark Apostle <BR> 17) Scourge the Heretic <BR> 28) Ravenor Rogue<BR> 40) Cain's Last Stand <BR> Warhammer 40K novels by several authors, these books are pretty typical of what I mean when I call something "my kind of book": They're mindless, violent, filled with advanced weapons and evil psychics. The book exists as a vehicle for the story rather than for the characters, and plot is of paramount importance; characters rarely change, evolve, or show any interesting personalities whatsoever. I'm actually not that big a fan of Warhammer novels, but they're pleasant and relaxing reads without any educational value at all and that makes them a pleasant diversion from my studies. The exception to the above is the last in the list; sixth book in the Commissar Cain series, this book features a title character who is thought to be one of the greatest heroes in the galaxy but is actually a liar, cheater, and coward who habitually finds himself in the position of saving the day despite his own best efforts. I'm a huge fan of the series, for the main character as well as for the fact that the author makes frequent use of Necrons. Cain's Last Stand was one of the best and funniest books I read all year.<P> 3) A Fate Worse Than Dragons <BR> 11) Heroics for Beginners<BR> 42) Bad Prince Charlie <BR> One of my bad habits is that I don't often try new authors, but rather tend to stick to authors I already know. This year I decided to try out a new comic fantasy author I'd been hearing about, John Moore, and obviously, I was pleased. I thought Heroics for Beginners was the best of the three but all of them made me laugh out loud. Moore has a style similar to Terry Pratchett (which he openly admits to in his own novels). I fully intend to have more books by him in next year's list.<P> 4) Here Comes The Sun<BR> 5) Odds and Gods <BR> 6) Paint Your Dragon<BR> 7) Open Sesame <BR> 8) Wish You Were Here<BR> 9) Djinn Rummy <BR> Another author I'm fond of is Tom Holt. Holt has the same kind of sense of humour as Moore, although his books tend to have slightly more depressing overtones and endings. I probably wouldn't have read quite so much Holt this year except I was able to get three omnibuses of his work cheap.<P> 10) Book of the Dead <BR> 39) The Wheel of Darkness <BR> The continuation of the Aloysius Pendergast series by Preston and Child. Nowhere near as enjoyable as the earliest books in the series, these two were still fairly enjoyable in and of themselves, and the character of Pendergast is always good fun and well-written when he's being used as a detective rather than, as is unfortunately the case in much of The Wheel of Darkness, a storytelling device.<P> 13) World War Z <BR> Potentially one of the finest books I've ever read, World War Z is written by Max Brooks, author of the Zombie Survival Guide. Written in the form of brief memoires recorded from survivors of the apocalyptic zombie invasion a few years ago, the book constitutes a realistic and fascinating view of the whole concept of zombies and how the world mighr react to the sort of outbreak that I and people like me constantly joke about. From the early days when governments don't believe zombies could exist, to Israel building a wall around itself to keep out the undead, to the inevitable "America to the rescue" to the characters discussing ongoing efforts at cleaning and containment, this book is truly remarkable for its richness, detail, and believability. <P> 14) Goblin Hero <BR> 41) Goblin War <BR> Last year, on a whim, I picked up a book called Goblin Quest, wherein a lone and hapless goblin is forced by cruel adventurers to guide them through a dungeon. I liked the book enough that I've since read the two sequels. The books are all kind of thematically repetitive but each is a good read. They were a lot of fun to me both as a gamer and as a believer in small, not-so-omnipotent gods.<P> 15) Bloodbowl: Rumble in the Jungle <BR> A football story, which just happens to have elves, orcs, and giant walking trees as players. Good concussion-inducing fun.<P> 16) A Stainless Steel Rat is Born <BR> Despite it having been around for a very long time, I'd never read any of the STainless Steel Rat books. I had some bad experiences with Harry Harrison in my adolescence, mostly in the form of his Bill: The Galactic Hero series, so even though many of my friends recommended the SSR series, I never got around to it. This year I found one of the later books (his origin story) cheap at a used book store, so took a chance. The book isn't very ambitious and doesn't strive to be either a brilliant or revolutionary work, but it's good at being what it is: a straightforward story of a moderately interesting character. Once you get over the fact that the dialogue comes across as very forced and artificial -- a common problem I've always had with the famous fathers of sci-fi, including Harrison -- it's a perfectly good book. I don't plan on reading the rest of the series unless I find it cheap at a used book store.<P> 18) Bride of the Slime Monster <BR> 19) Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies <BR> Ever since stumbling upon The Ballad of Wuntvor in high school, I've had a deep and irrational love for Craig Shaw Gardner. His books are childish, simplistic, and repetitive, but they make me laugh easily and frequently, and while his characters are two-dimensional and exist primarily to repeatedly deliver their signature line of dialogue, it's not because he's a poor writer, but simply because that's the way he chose to write them. The Cineverse Cycle, of which these were books 2 and 3, didn't totally change the way I approach books the way The Ballad of Wuntvor did, but they were enjoyable and I'm glad I read them. In point of fact, I'd been trying to find these books at a decent price online for years (they're old, out of print, and *very* hard to find at a sensible price) but they were worth the wait and every penny of shipping.<P> 20) They Hunger <BR> To be honest, I don't remember this book. I know I read some really lousy vampire story about midway during the year, the sort that made me want to strangle every single character and which I kept praying would end in just another few pages so I could be done with it... by process of elimination, looking at this list of titles, it must have been this one. The nicest thing I can say about this book is that it wasn't too long, though I dare say I could have trimmed 50 pages off of it. Easily the worst book I read this year... including my surgery textbook. I would seriously consider buying this book for anyone who had never read a vampire novel before and who I wanted to completly turn off of the genre.<P> 21) The Eye in the Pyramid <BR> 22) The Golden Apple <BR> 23) Leviathan<BR> Ahh, the Illuminatus trilogy. This was a re-read for me. You can't possibly understand this series on your first read through, and I suspect I'd need to read it a thrid time to really get everything from it. That said, it's a very fun if confusing walk through a drug-addled view of American culture, and much of the paranoia and fear that sit at the heart of the book, which drove its creation back in the 60's and 70's, remain just as true and topical today. I have no clue how to explain the appeal of this series to anyone who doesn't already worship Eris, but to anyone who loves chaos and disorder the way I do -- being, in a balanced and moderate sort of way -- this is a must-read. Probably a must read twice, just because it's so confusing.<P> 24) Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice <BR> 25) Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Inferno <BR> 26) Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury - July 12th, one week of summer break left<BR> 27) Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Revelation <BR> This time last yea, of the first four books in the LotF series, I wrote "between the four of them, there was probably material for one good novel." I'm pleased to say that books five through eight were better than 1 through 4, but that's all I've got to say about them. Fun books for fans of Boba Fett... not so much in their favour otherwise.<P> 29) The Golden Compass <BR> 30) The Subtle Knife <BR> 31) The Amber Spyglass <BR> See Entry 517. No need to repeat myself, except to say that on reflection, the idea of describing physics as "experimental theology" brings a smile to my face so wide that my cheeks hurt.<P> 32) Trollslayer<BR> 33) Skavenslayer<BR> 34) Daemonslayer<BR> 35) Dragonslayer<BR> 36) Beastslayer<BR> 37) Vampireslayer<BR> Once again, thank goodness for omnibuses. The Gotrek and Felix series is part of the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Whereas Warhammer 40K novels are pointless exercises in showing how many different ways people can shoot each other, these books show how many ways they can get stabbed. This is not a criticism. The series is mindless, simple, and a great deal of fun. Bonus points because, let's be honest, the title really does tell you exactly what the book is about. <P> 38) Making Money <BR> The most recent softcover addition to the Discworld series. It's well known among my aquaintaces how deeply I love the Discworld series, and this book didn't disapoint. I don't know how many more books Terry Pratchett has in him since his diagnosis with Alzheimer's not long ago, but for now, at least, he's still producing very fine books and not yet repeating himself. <P> 43) The Soddit<BR> A parody of The Hobbit that I picked up on a whim at the huge McGill used book sale, I assumed this book would be a silly little book with minimal entertainment value. Imagine my surprise to find it was actually a clever and engaging work. Although the art used in the book isn't great, in fact is often painfully different from the prose descriptions of the characters it represents, the story itself is a first-rate parody, twisting every element of the original story to the point of being well past the ridiculous. It even continues past the last page of the story, with pages and pages of fake ads for various sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise. This is exactly why I love used book sales... I'd never have had the courage to try this book if it had cost more than two dollars. My shock was later compounded when I read up on the author and found this is just one of numerous such parodies he's done, which include the Matrix and Star Wars... none of which I'll probably ever read but, at least I'll be amused by the knowledge that they exist and someone was paid to write them.<P> 44) This Rage of Echoes<BR> Amusingly, I started the year with a lousy book by Simon Clark, and I ended the year with a lousy book by Simon Clark. It's quite nice to have this sort of symmetry in one's life. In any case, the nicest thing I can say about this book is that it's better than They Hunger.<P> 45) Evil Harvest<BR> At the time of posting, I'm only two chapters into this four-hundred and sixty-four-page brick which, so far, looks to be an early contender for worst book read in 2009. I'll give it a fair try, though... people whose taste I agree with told me this one's supposed to be good once you get into it. It's safe to say at this point that I won't be finishing it before the 31st.<P> All together, that's 44 books (45 if you count the one I just started) over the course of 2008. I made a point this year of recording how many pages each book was, and the final count was over 14,000 pages. I couldn't say exactly how many words there were per page, but I'd say about normal for a pocket-sized paperback. This, of course, does not include the countless comics I read over the course of the year (currently averaging about 20 comics each week), the RPG sourcebooks (of which there weren't many this year thanks to my disinterest in 4th edition D&D) and, of course, my textbooks, of which I read quite a bit. It's a respectable amount of reading and I'm very proud of it. It was my unofficial goal to read one book an average of every 2 weeks, for a total of 26 books; I think I exceeded the target nicely, finishing book 26 on July 12th, with one week left to my summer vacation. I might even have broken the one book per week rate, but I had much less time to read in the last semester, since instead of sitting around between lectures, I found myself actually working in the hospitals and working hard; I think I finished only one and a half novels in each month of Internal Medicine, so busy was I and so exhausted when I got home (in contrast, I finished at least six during eight weeks of psychiatry). Next year, I hope to do about as well with my reading, and indeed already have a good 14 books sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to get to them. I predict a good year for books, hopefully reaching the same number that I did in 2008. Heck, maybe I'll even make that part of my New Year's Resolutions!<P> Speaking of which... <HR> <a name="554"></a> <U><B>Das Blinkenlights, Geblinken und Geblinken</b></u><p> December 25, 9:00am. Santa-traps empty. Better luck next year.<P> The last few days, I've spent a lot of time looking at lights. This year, due to an entirely unastonishing and wholly conceivable turn of fate, Christmas and Channukah fell within a couple of days of each other and, thanks to Channukah being leisurely spread out over eight days, they in fact overlapped. Channukah started four days ago, whereas today is, of course, Christmas Day, or so the plucky little orphan boy in the street outside my window tells me. The Christmas period arguably includes tommorow, being boxing day, on which the hospitals quite inexplicably but pleasantly continue to be on holiday schedules, and Chakkunah will last another two or three days beyond that. The only thing which Christmas and Channukah really have in common, in my opinion, is the fact that they both place a lot of importance on big, bright, shiny lights being left on for as long as possible, and as such, lights in general have been much on my mind and in front of my eyes these last days. Normally, light and I have something of a love/hate relationship at the best of times, but things are a bit more pleasant between us at the holiday season by virtue of the fact that holiday lights are colourful and shiny. <P> On the first night of Channukah, I lit candles in my apartment. This isn't totally unheard of for me, but it's certainly a little unusual for me. Last year was my first Channukah living on my own; my parents made very certain that I had a channukiah when I moved out (and this year, with only ten minutes of searching, I actually remembered where it was). To be honest, looking back now, I honestly can't remember if I lit Channukah candles every night last year, or if I only did it on nights when I saw my parents... I suspect it was the latter. This year, because my parents were going to be indisposed during the holiday season, we had a nice family dinner several days before Channukah started and lit the candles symbolically, saying all the important prayers while we had everybody in the same room. Come the first night of Channukah itself, it hadn't occured to me to find my channukiah, let alone take it out of storage or clean out last year's candle stubs. I did have a respectable supply of candles stocked up, but that's because I like candles and has nothing to do with the holidays per se. It was a pleasant Sunday night, my D&D group was coming over for gaming, I had a couple of friends over to watch Babylon 5 with me, and more or less inexplicably, the mood struck me to actually light the ritual two candles.<P> I can ascribe this only to a temporary and inexcusable lapse of cynicism. I have already done penance. In my defence, the candles I had were too big to fit into my channukiah, so they were just sitting on a plate, thus significantly reducing their ritualness to any casual observer. <P> Truth be told, holiday decorations do tend to get on my nerves this time of year. I've basically spent the last month either at home, at the hospital, or commuting the between the two. At the hospital, Christmas decorations are inescapable. Every floor, every nursing station, and very nearly every room has festive designs up -- white-crusted evergreen trees, cheerful-smiling santa-heads, red-and-white striped cylinders, and so forth. The cafeteria has signs up proclaiming the wonder of their Christmas-themed desserts. Some vestigal bit of Jewishness deep inside my black and twisted pineal gland actually takes offense at it all a tiny bit, because the Channukah decorations aren't nearly so ubiquitous. Walking around the hospitals, I've only found three sites were there were any sort of Channukah decorations up -- one of those was an individual's office, where she put up her own holiday sign, and another is a channukiah brought in for a patient by her father and left at the nursing station because it's pretty. Granted, Channukah isn't actually a major holiday to most Jews, and particularly to me it's a day of practically no meaning whatsoever except, perhaps, in so far as that it's the anniversary of when I received my pet stuffed weasel, Nukee. I'm actually quite curious if the same disproportion of holiday decorations can be seen at the other hospitals -- I've been working entirely at the Royal Victoria these last six weeks, but it's quite possible that I'd be seeing more Channulah decorations if I were at, say, the Jewish General Hospital.<P> There's no reason why I should be bothered by the terrible Christmas : Channukah ratio, since for all intents and purpose I don't celebrate Channukah myself and thus have no personal stake in it. This is doubly true when I stop to think about the many Muslims, Hindus, and others among my own class, let alone among the thousands of people in the hospital at any given time; I don't think I've got much business making a fuss that my holiday is getting short-changed in the face of all the people who don't even have a holiday at this time of year but who still have to sit through all the talk of Christmas. Call it my tiny bit of... patriotism? I suppose it's not precisely patriotism if you're thinking of a religion (or perhaps more appropriately, a nation/culture), but I can't think of another word that fits more. More likely, it's just my natural egocentrism, wanting a bigger fuss to be made about my holidays and less of a fuss to get made about other people's.<P> Which, by all rights, means I should be going around right now a happy Happy Things Day, which was two days ago. I certainly *do* have every intention of making a big deal of Games Day early next week. And when you get right down to it, I never did take down my Topin Wagglegammon decorations.<P> In any case, I'm a big believer in trying to find the positive side of any annoyance and in drawing strength from my enemies' lifesblood, so no matter how omnipresent and irritating all the Christmas decorations, I can at least take pleasure in all the pretty blinking lights. Shiiiiny... <HR> <a name="553"></a> <U><B>At the Hour of Scampering</b></u><p> I first discovered Babylon 5 when I was in late high school. At the time, I had three really close friends, and by the time that I first learned that the series existed, all three of them were hooked on it. To my embarassment, the first time they told me about it I thought I'd already heard of it, having somehow managed to confuse it from their description with the original Battlestar Galactica. I was persuaded to give the show a try and, despite the very hit-or-miss nature of the first season, I promptly fell in love with what has since become my favourite TV show of all time (whether this says anything, given the quality of most of what I watch, I leave to finer minds than mine to decide). I was fortunate to be able to watch the series during reruns as opposed to when it first aired; in addition to being able to thus watch an episode every weekday instead of once a week, I didn't have to sit through the long break the first-run fans did when the show was canceled and no one knew it would be ressurected for its fifth and final season. The show had its fair share of lousy episodes, like any show does, but show me another series of scripts which bring together the writing talents of Joe Straczinski, Larry DiTillio and Neil Gaiman and I'll probably fall in love with that, too, no matter how good it is. Overall, Babylon 5 was a real and persistent joy to me, doing much to shape my own sense of storytelling and characterization. It's certainly the only television program which has ever inspired me to burn a seventy-minute CD consisting of nothing more than the best and funniest dialogue from it (I'm sure I could do the same with sources like Red Dwarf or something, but that series has never inspired sufficiently obsessed fans to compile all of their soundfiles online for easy downloading). <P> Such is my love for Babylon 5 that I am now in the process of trying to watch it the whole way through all over again. I've seen the entire series twice before, not counting one or two missed episodes -- once while it was on television and once when I got my own copy, which I obviously had to make sure worked. I've also tried and failed to watch the entire series once before, with an ex-girlfriend; we didn't get past mid season 3, if I recall correctly, but it still became some of the most pleasant nights of my life. This current attempt to go through it for the third time -- my second time watching it with good and nifty people alongside me, which makes it all the sweeter -- may yet be doomed to failure because of scheduling issues in the coming months as I enter my pediatrics and obstetrics rotations, but in the meantime I intend to make a valiant effort at sitting down and letting the story unfold around me and, once again, wrap me up in happy.<P> At the time of posting this, we've just finished season one over a total of three viewing days. The first season consisted of twenty two episodes, but I confess that we cheated and watched only about half of those. Season four of Babylon 5 is astounding, amazing, shocking, surprising, and laugh-out-loud funny; season one is long, drawn out, cheaply-made (in comparisson), and generally not quite that good. The first season has a handful of scenes that are really brilliantly done but broadly speaking it's probably the weakest part of the show, even bearing in mind how lousy some parts of the fifth season would eventually prove to be. When we sat down to watch the show this time, we started by agreeing that not all of the first season was really essential and, for that matter, there were a few episodes that I personally all but refused to watch again despite having some of my favourite Koshisms in them. Had we watched the whole first season, it would probably have taken us closer to five or six weeks, by which time I suspect we'd all have gotten bored or busy and moved on to doing something else, so I stand by our decision. To be honest, it was actually a lot of fun opening up an episode guide and discussing with another series fan which episodes were "essential" and which we just wanted to watch because they were a lot of fun on their own. Obviously, the whole point of watching Babylon 5 is to see the primary story-arcs, being the Shadow War and War against Earth meta-plots; it's hard to find any episodes in season 3 that aren't essential to those, but it's easy enough to find episodes from season one which are wholly peripheral and, in point of fact, intrusive and obfuscating. Even in the second season, I can already think of two or three episodes we might choose to skip over for the sake of timing and good taste, but we'll see what happens.<P> One thing I'll say about Babylon 5: it might be one of the very few forces in this Universe powerful enough to drag me away from playing Civilization IV. My obsession with Civ that started back in the end of January of 2008 was finally ended when the three of us playing the game together decided to spend some time watching Babylon 5 instead, and thus ended nearly a year of uninterrupted obsession.<P> We may make it the whole way through the series. We may have to cut it short partway through, medical school stealing this joy from me as it has almost every othger joy in my life for the last our years. Heck, for all I know, the Goddess will smile upon us and we'll finish the series, then watch all the movies, the "Crusade" spin-off series, and wrap it up in time for the next episode of The Lost Tales to come out on DVD so we can all it see together for the first time. Maybe we'll watch the whole thing and maybe we won't; this sort of unknown should be a source of enjoyment, and not a source of stress, since even if worst comes to worst I, at least, have already seen all the best episodes at least three times. Whatever the future holds, I have the utmost confidence that sitting in a darkened room in my apartment, two of my best friends sharing the couch with me, a mug of perfectly-made tea warming my hand, the promise of a cold bowl of ice cream just steps away, and my favourite episodes of my favourite TV show loading up on the computer monitor will come very close to being, as a very wise Vorlon might say, one moment of perfect beauty. <HR> <a name="552"></a> <U><B>Steamed</b></u><p> At the time of this writing, I'm sick. Actually, I'm quite sick, to the point where it's been actually interfering in my ability to function at the hospital. I seem to have picked up a nasty bug that's been going around town, a respiratory infection of some sort. I've been coughing quite unpleasantly and it feels as though my left eye is trying to pull itself out of my skull, presumably in the hopes of strangling me with my own optic nerve and putting me out of my misery. My nose has been so dry that it's actually painful to breathe -- when it's not so blocked up that I'm able to. All that being said, I'm coping fairly well, having drawn upon my vast medical knowledge to work up the perfect cure for my suffering: tea.<P> The more I learn about medications, the more I decide that there are a lot that I like a lot (and might even like to be on myself) and a lot that I really don't think work. I feel quite tempted, for example, to try myself on a course of levothyroxine or paroxetine; I don't need them and there's no clinical indication for me to take them, who doesn't want to go through their days a little bit more energetic and euphoric? Similarly, I wake up every morning thinking how nice it might be to use zopiclone each day. The trouble with medications is that modern medical science is at a curious stage where we can develop a medication for almost any purpose but we aren't yet so advanced that we can design it to eliminate side-effects, so even though all sorts of medications sound really tempting to be on, none of them are what I'd consider "safe," or at least, not safe enough that I'd take the chance of using them myself when I didn't really need them. Cost-benefit ratios have somehow never been my friend. On the other hand, for every medication I'd love to be taking, there's another hundred or so I much prefer not to be on, and the ones that come to mind right now are the cough syrups. Cough syrups can be made with all kinds of different and varied ingredients, but by and large, they all share one common principle: they don't work. Current controlled tests have shown that many over-the-counter syrups are no more effective than a placebo, and those which are more effective mostly work just by supressing cough rather than really alleviating a sore throat. In my opinion, the horrid taste of most cough syrups means that their cost outweighs their benefit, which is why when I get sick I don't use them unless I'm really, really desperate. Uncomfortable as I am at this moment, I'm not so desperate that I would use a cough syrup, especially when there is another medicine readily available to me which I think is equally or more effective.<P> When I get a head cold, my medication of choice is tea. Cheap, plentiful, and tasty, I find that tea is the best treatment for a cough, blocked nose, and painful breathing. Probably, that statement should be qualified to indicate that I think tea is the best treatment for a viral cold; a bacterial infection or strep throat will probably respond better to penicilin than to Camellia sinensis, and I probably wouldn't advocate tea as my first-line therapy for tuberculosis, but for my current purposes (and my current cough) I'm hard-pressed to think of anything I'd say is more therapeautic than a cup of tea (or, more to the point, a huge mug of tea). <P> Strictly speaking, of course, the curative element isn't the tea, but rather, the steam. When I get a cold, the part that bothers me the most is the blocked nose and sore throat. I don't mind a runny nose, because I always carry tissues with me, and I can cope with headaches. General malaise doesn't bother me particularly; I'm tired most of the time anyway, so I don't feel that different. The blocked nose really bothers me, though, because it interferes with my breathing, especially at night (some reason, I've never been able to fall asleep if I'm breathing through my mouth). Steam from hot water is, in my experience, the single best way to unblock a clogged nose (or at least, the best way that doesn't involve specialized tools and very steady hands). If I'm having a bit of trouble breathing, I can get myself some very rapid relief just by holding my nose and mouth above some steaming liquid for a second. I need to repeat the process pretty frequently, but it's no great stress to keep a supply ofsteam near me. As fr the accompanying sore throat, I've always thought that the best treatment for that was to swallow a how liquid. Fortunately, since hot liquid gives off steam, and flavouring is easily added to hot water to make tea (the addition of tea flavour and sugar doesn't add medicinal effect, but it is good for the mind and the soul), all the really troublesome symptoms can be treated with a single therapy. If only all sickness was this easily dealt with.<P> The real question this leaves me with is, if I wasn't self-medicating, would I still have tbe energy and wit to write a thousand words about how I'm sick? The only way to test that would have been to try writing this post without the benefit of a great big mug of raspberry white tea, and that's just crazy talk for a whole bunch of reasons. Even if I wasn't feeling sick and even if I wasn't writing a post, I'm sure I could still find a reason to have a cup of tea. And in a few days, this cold will be gone and I'll be back to my normal mighty self, and I'll still have more tea. This suggests to us that tea is actually a terribly ineffective prophylactic medication, but I suspect I'll keep taking it anyway. <HR> <a name="551"></a> <U><B>And Other Imperfect Things</b></u><p> In stories, characters are, of course, quite cavalier about wounds. Severe injusiries and lacerations tend to get ignored because nobody wants a story to get slowed down by several days just because the hero cut his hand or something. I'm getting a renewed appreciation for the ridiculousness of that, since it's now about two and a half weeks since I hurt my leg in a silly accident and I'm only now finding that I've regained the full range of motion without pain, though it still hurts to genuflect, It's been a lot of fun getting to see how my body heals -- watching the wound close slowly, seeing and feeling the stitches getting removed, seeing the granulation tissue turn into skin one day at a time -- but it still annoys me that, had I been a fictional character, I'd no doubt have been able to run cross-country within hours of having cut myself instead of still having a bit of pain when I walk more than fourteen days later. I mean, I'm suitably grateful to my gods for providing me clever ideas and unnatural luck, but I don't see why some healing spells should be so much to ask for.<P> On a related note, I've recently begun watching Battlestar Galactica. I say "related" but, to be honest, it's four or five steps down an already very tangential logic chain, so if you don't see the link, don't look too hard.<P> I was never a fan of the original Battlestar Galactica series. I saw the pilot movie and some of the series itself but never got into it, although I do admire the stuff they were doing with science fiction at a very awkward point in history for the genre. For the last four years, I've heard non-stop from many of my trusted friends that the new series is a must-watch and that's it's absolutely stunning. I'd been putting off watching the series up until now because, quite frankly, I haven't had that kind of time, in part because I'm watching other stuff but in part because, much as it pains me to admit it, I've really been making an effort to study hard and keep up with my classes. My feeling was that I would wait until the series ends and then watch it the whole way through, which to me seems like an excellent plan given how upset I heard people getting about cliffhangers and such. Now, though, through a peculiar congruence of events, I find myself doing my psychiatry rotation -- probably the easiest 8 weeks of medical school according to most students, although understandably I've been making sure to work hard and impress my supervisors -- at the same time that my current favourite TV show, Boston Legal, is coming to an end, as is Battlestar Galactica itself. Also importantly, my brother decided to buy the first season on DVD, meaning I could watch the series for free. All told, this seemed like a good time to pick up a new TV show. <P> Thus far, I can't say I'm truly impressed. Everyone I spoke to told me that the series only hits its peak around the third season, but if a show's first two seasons aren't particularly gripping, it makes one wonder how a show managed to reach the later seasons without being canceled. For my part, I find that watching the show at 1.5X normal speed makes it much more watchable; the long, boring parts pass much more easily and the many slow-speaking characters are significantly less annoying (plus I can watch more episodes per night without losing more time). The dialogue does get a bit hard to follow when it's playing at higher speed, but thanks to the miracle of subtitles that's not a problem at all. This does, however, bring me to my biggest problem thus far with the show: the subtitling of the DVDs.<P> I always assumed that people who work putting subtitles onto movies and TV shows must have a very hard job, because they have to inter[ret all kinds of odd sounds and translate it into text which an average viewer (i.e., someone who reads slower and less well than I do) can understand. This has to be a long, painful, often tedious job, especially when you find that th only captions you're inserting into a movie for a five minute period are things such as "people cheering," "people whooping" and "crowd continuing to sheer." Since I've got a friend working at a subtitlign company right now, she's been able to confirm all my assumptions about the work, being that's it's tedious and often very, very tricky. Still, some of the subtitling on these disks is really quite astonishingly bad. Characters' names are repeatedly mispelled on screen and entire words (unessential words, but still words) tend to get left out. Even more unforgivably, the text translating sound effects is second-rate; a text box will pop up saying "guns firing" when a character is clearly firing landing thrusters. It shows a lack of appreciation for the film and, worse, a lack of appreciation for the importance of writing good text. Few things in life, in my opinion, count for as much as good writing.<P> Typos notwithstanding, anyway.<P> I'm sure that when I get a bit further into it I'll start enjoying the series more. Unfortunately, at this stage, I'm having trouble getting past the simple fact that every single character annoys the heck out of me. The mark of a good show, to my mind, is that a character makes me actually care what happens to them; this is not the case with Battlestar Galactica, where I almost hope that a few more of them will be killed off or shockingly revealed to be killer robots just to thin the herd a little bit. Maybe it's simply not a shock that in any given TV show I'd be rooting for the killer robots over the annoying humans, but this program really pounds the point home and reinforces my own innate biases. If only these Cylons had half the style of my beloved Necrons.<P> And now, back to trying to cast "cure minor wounds." It's all a matter of persistence, you'll see... <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; //-->