Just checking in to let any readers I have know that I am still alive. Although, I am on surgery right now, so just barely.
I just started watching the This American Life TV show. There is a fascinating season #1 episode about a guerilla theater group who "pranks" an obscure local band into thinking they have fans by going to one of their concerts.
Think about that for a minute. Charlie Todd, the organizer of this group, got 35 people together in order to make a showing at this new band's second concert. The 35 people in question are part of an urban theater network called Improv Everywhere. The 35 people downloaded the band's music, learned the lyrics and made t-shirts. Then they came to the concert and rocked out with the band. My question is, in what sense does this constitute a "prank?" This is just life. I can't figure out how this is any different from the "prank" I once pulled when I went to school for what will be going on 25 years now and worked hard and got good grades. Hah (slaps knee)! All my teachers thought I was a good and diligent student! Man, I really pulled one over on them. Or the one where I visited my girlfriend in the hospital when she was sick with appendicitis. I brought her flowers and balloons and everything. Man you should've seen the way her face lit up! She thought I really cared about her.
My point is that our entire lives are, in some sense, a "stunt." The mission statement of these 35 was to give this band "the best gig ever." Maybe some of them were also there to achieve some notoriety or maybe they enjoyed being a part of something bigger than themselves. Maybe some of them genuinely were fans of the group. But, when one of the band members found out that these so-called fans where there as part of an urban theater performance, he was devastated. He's being short-sighted. Here's why.
If you take the view that your performance is meaningless despite the crowd of people jumping and singing to your music, what meaning does anything in life have? What you see, hear, touch and perceive is as real as anything gets in this world. Don't think too hard about it - you'll drive yourself mad.
Housestaff members of the MICU team at University Hospital are slowly beginning to rebuild in the wake of attending physician, Marshall. Pulmonary and critical care specialist, Hugo Marshall, who reached an unprecedented level five on the malignancy scale, caused general devastation to University Hospital MICU service leaving behind broken dreams, flooded hopes and dashed egos. As no such attending had struck University Hospital since 1977, the residents and medical students in his path found their emotional infrastructure was not sound enough to withstand the torrents of sarcasm and belittlement that characterized Dr. Marshall's two weeks on service.
"It was horrible," recall internal medicine intern Amelia Cruz and family practice resident Michael Silverberg. "We lost everything - our confidence, our desire to learn, even our will to live. It's going to take months to rebuild our sense of worth and to start functioning effectively as doctors again."
Attending physician Marshall could not be reached for comment, but forecasters predict he will continue to move eastward across the hospital where he will strike the pulmonary clinic sometime early next week. Many housestaff in the area have no means of evacuation and have been sighted employing strategies such as barricading the call room doors and laying stronger emotional foundations.
My girlfriend and I watched the movie The Pursuit of Happiness tonight. Grossly overrated movie but it does include a really nice version of Simon and Garfunkel's song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" sung by Roberta Flack from her 1971 album Quiet Fire. Here's YouTube clip from one of Simon and Garfunkel's live performances:
I really love that song. I would kill to be able to sing it the way Art Garfunkel does. I really would. Most of the time, when people say they would kill for something, it's just a euphemism, "I'd kill for a doughnut right now, I could just kill someone, you kill me...etc" But I really mean it. I would actually commit cold blooded murder in order to be able to sing like that. I mean, I wouldn't kill my sister or my parents. In fact, there's a pretty long list of people whom I would not kill no matter what I would get in return. But the guy who gave me a parking ticket last week, the woman at the DMV who wouldn't give me my plates, Anne Coulter... I would truly consider killing one or more of these people in order to be able to hit some of those high notes in a song like "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
What a great song ;-)
I love the new incarnation of American Gladiators almost as much as the 1990's original. But, to the AG producers, please indulge me as I voice one small bit of constructive criticism. Your female gladiators - Jet, Venom, Phoenix, Siren - all get to wear dead sexy outfits that expose lots of abs and are tight enough to give us all the information we need about the size and contours of their thighs and of their respective gluteal regions. So, what's the deal with Helga's outfit?
Helga is your HOTTEST gladiator! And just like in all the later seasons of Xena, Warrior Princess (the ones where Xena was really buff), she has to completely cover up the midriff and she has to hide her legs and butt with some frilly skirt-like thingy. American Gladiator producers, take my advice; put the skirt on Jet - she's an amateur and there isn't much there anyway. If there's anyone whose costume should come in two pieces, it's Helga. You guys clearly are not shy about showing off the human form; let's see Helga's beautiful physique!
Been a long since I published anything! I'm going to start blogging regularly again but, in the meantime, here is a map of all the countries I've ever visited:
I feel like I used to really know something about web design. Now I feel like it would take me days to fix all the little details I'd like to change about jamesloganmd.com - days which I am quickly running out of. This is my vacation week. Much has happened since my last entry. I was in the hospital for a couple of days with a partial small bowel obstruction, for example. Upon retruning, I received a rather terse email from my chief resident about how she had to take my Sunday call because she couldn't find a replacement in time.
'Hey, you signed up to be chief resident. Nobody held a gun to your head.' I sometimes why I even went into OB despite a similar lack of gun being held to head situation in my case.
Anyway, I must leave now and used this so-called "vacation" to catch up on discharge summaries and finish my section of the CREOG review outline. This must all be done before 6:40am CST tomorrow when a Southwest Airlines 737 will whisk me away to SanFrancisco where I will spend 3 nights with my lovely girlfriend before returning for some miseralbe holiday coverage shifts at work.
