English Well Talking

These are real english translations of signs posted in other countries that didn't quite work out for them...

In a Bucharest hotel lobby: The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
In a hotel in Athens: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9am and 11am daily.
In a Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers: Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.
Outside a Paris dress shop: Dresses for street walking.
In a Rhodes tailor shop: Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.
From the Soviet Weekly: There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years.
A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest: It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.
In a Zurich hotel: Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
In a Rome laundry: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.
Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: Would you like to ride your own ass?
On the faucet in a Finnish washroom: To stop the drip, turn cock to right.
In the window of a Swedish furrier: Fur coats made for ladies from their own skin.
Detour sign in Kyushi, Japan: Stop: Drive Sideways.
In a Bangkok temple: It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner dressed as a man.
In a Tokyo bar: Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.
In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
At a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.
In the office of a Roman doctor: Specialist in women and other diseases.
In an Acapulco hotel: The manager has personally passed all the water served here.
From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner: Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself.
From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo: When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor.
Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
- English well talking.
- Here speeching American.


I'm off to go tootle my horn melodiously at some passengers of foot..

It seems to me that a lot is said about the state of modern society by the very existence -- to say nothing of how common it is-- of the phrase "professional help." That it's considered normal to go out and buy a shoulder to cry on, or a listening ear; to rent a wise friend; to put some fair-minded relationship advice on the credit card; to purchase a guided tour of the depths of your soul and your deepest fears.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, y'know. Me and capitalism, we go way back. In this case though, I have ask, "hasn't it gone a little too far? Aren't there some things that don't belong on the open market? Should these things really be subject to the laws of supply and demand?" Now it could be argued that capitalism has improved help just like it improves everything else it touches -- that by making it a profession, by inducing competition, capitalism has made help more available, more effecicent and more effective. I'm also well aware that many people (including some that I know) have found the help industry to be, well... helpful. Still, I don't think that I'm saying that I wish they were left to deal with things alone -- or that I'm abandoning my good old favorite economic system -- when I say that I think there's something pretty essentially wrong with "professional help."

Griping

I feel so beaten-down and dejected this evening. In about 20 minutes I have to leave for work... and won't get home until after classes tomorrow afternoon. That is so wrong. What's worse is I don't know what else I'd want to do if I didn't have to work tonight. Sleep? Not really. I'm too restless.

I feel like I spend a couple months trying to get a routine down pat. And then once I've established that routine my skin starts crawling with dissatisfaction and the desire for change. There is nothing worse than getting too comfortable with your situation. Than always knowing what to expect. Except for when you don't have any clue what to expect- then that's worse. And we're always constantly bobbling between the two extremes.

If only I could take a roadtrip and just drive from all this cold, barren land and emptiness...

Winter needs to end.

Today's Outing

So I've been indefinitely putting off putting together a package for Phil cuz things have been so busy lately. Today I didn't have classes, though (long weeked), so Danny Boy and I went on a little outing to see figure out what we could possibly send to him over in Iraq.

Here were a couple of suggestions:

1. A designer, commemorative, diamond-tipped bullet. After discussing it in brief with the sales clerk at the jewelry shop it became clear that that just was not going to happen.

2. The absolute coolest retractable Star Wars light-saber I have EVER laid eyes upon. So much cooler than the tree branches we used to use as kids.

3. A ball that calculates how fast your throwing it. Velocity ball, or whatever. Come on... those are COOL. But I don't even know if phil LIKES baseball.

You get the picture. The list went on and on, extending all the way to miniature remote-controlled machine gun turrets. (Why is it that anything in miniature is so fantastically adorable? I even have a soft spot for a freaking miniature machine gun...) Given how cool (though impractical and generally absurd) some of the things we brainstormed to put in this package were, it's actually going to be a pretty boring one in contrast... but whatcha gonna do.

I gotta say, carepackages are incredibly difficult to make interesting...

Wal-Mart Cake

So wrong. I recommend everyone order their cakes in person with it written down to illustrate.

Or even better: Just freaking bake your own and cut out the incompetent middle-man.

Slightly unrelated: Did you know that the acronym C.A.K.E. stands for "Cops Care About Kids Excelling"? I think the cops should care a bit about their own need to excel; don't they realize there're two C's in there??

"Why We Fight"

This evening I was coerced by my parents into watching documentary by Eugene Jarecki called "Why We Fight." Personally, I was expecting to be infuriated and upset by it since it was highly recommended to my parents by one of my brothers who I to a large extent disagree with on matters of war. I didn't want to watch it. I thought it would be inflammatory, emotionally charged, anti-war propaganda. There's a little trailer for it here, though I daresay it didn't sum up the points that interested me most very well. Also of note, Senator John McCain is featured in it talking about the United States military-industrial complex. I still want to rewatch those parts and see if I can fit what he was saying there in with what he's saying now about war. But at any rate, I must say it didn't get me near as upset and angry as I had expected. Far from it; it more had me sobered and pensive afterwards. Some of it was a bit too extremely put (use of the word "empire," for example), but certainly had a lot of information worthing thinking long and hard about. Definitely worth looking into.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go look up President Eisenhower's farewell address from back in '61...

As a nursing student, I make plans at 4am via text messages to check out the Body World exhibit at the museum the day before. Planning doesn't really require much notice. Life is very different nowadays. I also get cool text messages like: "What was the substitute solution for the HCl in the digestion experiment? cg" at 2:30 in the morning. Come on. That's pretty badass nerdy right there.

... Until I clicked reply and realized I didn't remember either. Sigh. I really gotta step up my nerdiness.

Abortion and Fetal Rights

The other day in my class on Childhood Development the professor brought up the issue of abortion. The way she did it, however, was by bringing up the issue of a mother's rights versus fetal rights in a very different context. She passed out handouts for a "critical thinking activity" that began by discussing how the medical community's ever-increasing technology and understanding of prenatal hazards raises important questions regarding the balance between the mother's rights as an individual and those of the developing fetus she is carrying. Increasingly, doctors are able to treat the fetus itself as a patient with distinct medical needs. The question, then, was that as technology advances, should women be expected, and even legally required, to submit to medical intervention- even surgery- that might save a fetus but risk their own lives? So then we were asked to break up into groups and discuss just that: what should be done if there's a surgery that could save the life of a fetus but risks the life of the mother in the process. And further, should there be legislation on such a matter. Okay, didn't seem TOO hard. But maybe that's because I sit near a group of fairly intelligent, responsible other students that I get along with and with whom I happen to share relatively similar views. (Which, by the way, I learned in my communications class is a form of prejudice- to choose to sit with people who are like-minded.)

After we'd discussed for a while we got together as a class to talk about it. Wow, was it tense. Very tense. So tense that a number of people specifically asked that we don't talk about it. Granted, it was a very diverse classroom with a lot of people from very different backgrounds, and this IS bordering on a hot topic, but given that we're going into the medical profession, you'd think we'd be able to discuss something like abortion. Particularly when moments before the professor had specifically made a point of "soothing" everyone by gently reminding them that "everyone is entitled to their own opinion," and "there is no right or wrong answer here." The latter was repeated at least 9 times by my count.

So right, we got into it. A lot was said about autonomy. Ultimately in the case of the surgery the things that were being considered were, 1) the mother has to have surgery too in order for the fetus to have surgery, and 2) parents are looked upon as decision-makers for their children. As such, it ultimately should be the mother's choice. Furthermore, as far as fetal rights go, you're not actively doing anything to harm the child, so if you choose not to undergo surgery (which of itself can be very risky for the fetus, too) you'd just be allowing nature to take its course. This would be similar to an elderly person who was incapable of making the decision as to whether or not they should undergo surgery have their son or daughter who had power of attorney for healthcare make the decision for them not to have it after weighing the options and risks and letting nature run its course.

Okay. But then the professor started taking liberties with that first bit about the mother's rights and slyly manipulating it into pro-choice arguments for abortion. This was troubling, to say the least. Particularly after the "there is no right or wrong answer" speech. And well, yeah. I couldn't keep quiet on that one. There were two of us actively arguing against her. Maybe three willing to vocalize actual arguments on her side, and the remainder of the classroom making uncomfortable protesting and muttering noises. It was unfortunate and not very productive. It could have been very interesting- particularly seeing as how its one all of us will need to be thinking about more once we have careers in this field. But still. I have to say this conversation was dismal.

And moreover? Perhaps I'm not giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I'm vaguely concerned about my grade for the class now. I know I really ought to give her the benefit of the doubt that her disagreement with me on such issue will not interfere with her objectivity as an educator-- but I really have to wonder from what I've seen so far. It really is unfortunate. I think the downhill part happened when she used the language of political and religions agenda in relation to pro-life advocates, and I said, "Agendas- you do mean beliefs, right?" and then explicitly demanding fair use of connotation and word choice between pro-choice and pro-life contingencies. She didn't like that much. Her glare nearly blinded me. Part of me wishes she hadn't forced me to play my cards so soon. And the fact that I even need to think that- particularly in relation to a woman who adamantly preaches about there not being right and wrong answers and how everyone is just fine and dandy with their own beliefs- well, that's just depressing.

Things that piss me off

1. Having three exams scheduled next week in the space of 20 hours.

2. Having a teacher who can't teach worth **** in a class that requires mastery of an OBSCENE amount of information, and being tested on stuff that we haven't even gone over. What a waste of two hours that class is- two hours that COULD be spent actually teaching OURSELVES the material instead of having to just do it later. Not to mention the 6+ hours a week I spend doing busy work for it-- the kind of busy work that doesn't even aid in your learning the material.

3. Unclear expectations and standards. All you have to do is establish what it is you want- it takes maybe 5 minutes and saves people all sorts of stress and misfocused effort.

4. Lazy, incompetent coworkers. Particularly ones that are routinely late coming back from their break-- hence cutting into mine. I have soooo many choice words about that one. Also, ones that ignore their call lights. This infuriates me.

5. Supervisors who intentionally make themselves unavailable. Especially when people are calling OVER and OVER and OVER trying to get a hold of them.

6. Papers that are about your personal life. Granted, the course is "interpersonal communication," so it's not a far cry for her to expect us to be applying these principles to our personal lives... but it's still a little awkward having to share those applications with our teacher. I don't think I like those realms overlapping quite that much, and I'm not quite creative enough to completely fabricate it. For my next paper I have the choice of either analyzing my present relationship, or a past, terminated one. I'm not too keen on either. Why would I want to spend x amount of hours thinking about a past one, and why would I want to be sharing information about my present one with her? I don't care if it's confidential-- she's still reading it. Anyways. I guess I'm going to be writing about our relationship this weekend, Phil. Should I pass it along?

7. Unnecessary noise. Maybe I'm just chronically tired or something, but sounds that normally are nice like whistling, background music, etc. just piss me off lately.

8. Unsolicited conversations. "Yeah, I'm reading. Does it LOOK like I want to talk to you right now? " For the first time in my life I came out and told an acquaintance (coworker, actually), "Hey, I really need to get this done right now...?" and cut her off mid-blabbering. I gave her NUMEROUS non-verbal cues indicating how unwelcome her blathering was first. Turns out being a bitch and just saying it is far more effective.

9. Laundry. It never ends. It always needs to be done. I'm giving up clothes for Lent... never you mind the cold. Think of how much less time, water, soap, and modesty would be wasted.

10. Scraping off my windshield. I just want to get in the car and GO... is that so much to ask??

Okay. That's all I got. Thanks for the outlet.

I have written...

A total of 24 pages worth of scholastic papers and two blog entries in the last 24 hours. Not to mention all the notes I've taken. That's just sick. I think my brain's run out of words....

I think some sleep might solve this.

Return of the Dan'l

(Why does that read so uncannily much like "Devil" when I read it fast??)

At any rate, remember how I was missing this guy? Well he's back and bad as ever. There was no snow to shovel today, but soon enough.

Instead I had him help me out with a "current events" presentation I had- by that I mean I had him find me an article given a few basic criteria and start me up on what could be said on it. This was very helpful as I was still finishing up my other 8 page paper I needed to turn in today for my communications class about one of my other brothers, and what a good communicator he is based on our text. That was fun.

Anyways, after that I took Dan'l to campus with me and he read a whole book- the one I've been taking with me EVERYWHERE the last two months, always meaning to read, but never found the time to. It's called Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm a little jealous he got to read it today, but pretty inspired. If he can do it...

Then we swung by the only Trader Joe's in Milwaukee which happens to be a couple blocks from Cardinal Stritch and picked up something to make for dinner tonight. We're going asian and it's going to be awesome-- shamefully easy to prepare. That would be a win-win-win.

After that we tried to drive home. When I say tried, what I mean is between the slushy wetness, sleet, saltiness, my being out of washer-fluid, and WORST OF ALL having busted up wipers (they froze to the windshield without my realizing it and one of them snapped all crooked when I tried to turn them on) it just wasn't happening. You could hardly discern the shape of a car 10 ft in front of you, much less stop signs. So we stopped at a gas station. They of course didn't have any, but next door (without our realizing it) was a hardware type store and we got some there... after several trips to the car to figure out what type to get. Not only did I not know how long mine are, I also couldn't remember what the hell time of car I have. "Saturn" didn't cut it somehow. Picky, picky hardware men. I ended up just saying it's a wagon and making up the year. So then we embarked upon changing them, and believe it or not, between the two of us Dan'l and I CAN figure out how to change a set of windshield wipers! It amused me how both of us first tried it ourselves, then switched to trying to read the instructions, took one look at the instructions and went back to trying to figure it out ourselves. Whatever. It worked. We had a strangely disproportionate sense of accomplishment afterwards, but hey. Get your kicks where you can, right?

Since we got home Dan'l's been setting up his own blog with which to dazzle us all. It should be available for your enjoyment in the near future here: Hope is the Thing with Feathers.

Haven't slept since the day before yesterday.

Just got home from work. Leave for school in 10 more minutes.

Eating some oatmeal with flaxseed to re-energize.

Can't wait for coffee to be ready.

Class will be stimulating. Compensation for lost sleep.

Ahhh. Life is good...

When there're things worth doing.

MAIL TIME!!

Don't pretend. You guys have all seen Blue's Clues. You know all about Mail Time and can sing the song, too.

It really resonates with me. Considering that I have definite letter reception rituals, it fits in quite nicely. Whenever I get a letter I dance around singing it to myself, occasionally making modifications to suit my purposes: "Someone's Got a Letter! Someone's Got a Letter! Someone's Got a Letter! WONDER who it's FROM!!" ... as I plop down cross legged in an armchair and proceed to take a good sniff at it. For some reason I'm eternally waiting to recieve a letter that has the scent of exotic spices and herbs- the kind that were enough incentive for Vasco da Gama to sail around the tip of Africa to obtain from the Far East. This all is usually preceded by waving it around in the air and squeals of delight/maniacal laughter. Absurd? Perhaps. Endlessly diverting? Absolutely.

But this brings me to all the junk mail I recieve. It's developing into a pet peeve; a daily source of irritation (excepting Sundays, of course). I get so much junk mail, or worse, (*gasp*) BILLS that it's perverting my delight in the postal system. Granted, I DID win a free cruise to the Bahamas in the mail the other day. But that was just not enough to restore the magic. Make it a Jungle Safari, and you gotcherself a deal.

I think I'm gonna look into paying off the mail lady to weed out my junk mail for me...

Learn to Drive, Asshole

Today I nearly died.

I hate people who drive their cars in crappy weather when they clearly have no idea what they are doing. Take this morning for example.

TIME: 7:47AM. Rush Hour Traffic.
LOCATION: Milwaukee, WI
OFFENDER: AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar.

CONTEXT: So here I am in the right hand lane on a three lane road, going with the flow of traffic at 40mph in a 50mph zone. Reasonable considering the roads are not clear and it's slippery. The flow of traffic was working as one beast in unison. Until the AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar came along. Just AS I'M PASSING the right hand turn lane, whatshisface decides to swoop ahead of me at the last second, cut me off and swerve right, making an illegal right hand turn.

OPTIONS: The road conditions are such that stopping in time is simply not an option. My choices were as follows.
1) Slam right into the S.O.B. Tempting, to be sure, but my car would likely take most of the damage and I'D be hitting him (complicated) and I'm uninsured. No go.
2) Swerve left and hit the SchoolbusFullOfLittleKiddies. Yeah. I avoid schoolbuses when driving as a general rule in the winter. The only thing worse than an accident is an accident where little kiddies are involved.
3) Swerve into the HugeAssSnowDrift that's literally 3X as tall as my car at 40 mph. Seriously. It was unfathomably huge and looked like the equivalent of slamming into an iceberg.

CONCLUSION: So right, I took one for the team. It sucked. I was yelling "WWWHHYYYYYY?!?!" as I slammed into the huge-ass iceberg and spinned out. First of all, the impact really sucked, I nailed my head pretty hard (still have a headache). Second, my car whipped around after the nose got stuck in and I nearly hit the SchoolBusFullOfKiddies any way... some angel must have squeezed between us at the last second and acted as a buffer, cuz it was damn close. And by that I mean I'm a damn good driver and controlled my spin. (*twiddles thumbs*) Third, the iceberg- I'm NOT exaggerating.. iceberg.. FINE, snowdrift.- avalanched down on top of me. Fortunately there was a car-full of kindly consctruction worker guys with lots of muscles behind me that helped dig/push my car out the iceberg (*glare*) it was so deeply imbedded in.

AFTERMATH: My head hurts. I am SO MAD that AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar and he'd better pray I don't find him (Yup. He didn't even stop.). And I was late for my Anatomy&Physiology Lab. On the bright side I didn't seem to suffer any brain damage cuz I aced the quiz/test thingy postponed from the snowday on Wednesday. But I suspect that one was because it was easy-- I'm NOT on my "A"-game in that class... Yet.

At any rate, I guess this makes me a Hero... y'know... protecting the LittleKiddies and masterfully manuvering my spin so I miss them by a hairsbreadth. Talk about finesse. Or something. But in all earnestness, I've decided that the real trick to being a good driver in inclement weather is Avoidance. I mean this. I really do. Avoidance of other drivers primarily, avoidance of slippery sludgy icy snowy crap secondly, and avoidance of potholes thirdly. This is the trick. Avoid these things like the plague and you can be a masterful life-saver, iceberg-demolisher too.

Why Stress? Delegate

OR: I've been taking gross advantage of my momma lately. ... But I think she likes it.

So yeah, I've had a lot going on with school and work and what have you lately. Plus, however much I gripe and moan about not sleeping enough on here, the fact is with my warped schedule when I actually DO have time to sleep I find that I'm not mentally prepared to: I get all anxious and can't.

But on the bright side, my mother is easily obtained to delegate tasks to when they're stressing me out. For example: Taxes. Seeing as how I didn't file for taxes last year until August or September, I know you all must be surprised that I'm filing early this year. But that's only because I haven't been making my tuition payments on time this semester and needed the cash to get caught up. Smooth. Buuuuut I just haven't had time to figure out the whole turbotax program and what have you, and as much as I heart H&R Block, so long as there's nothing horribly wrong with your taxes (eg, you're filing way late and haven't filed the year preceding and have multiple states, etc.) you might as well save your money and do it yourself. Sooooo I dropped a few hints and delegated to my all-too-willing momma.

And then there was the 50 year old women in several of my nursing classes going back to school because she's in the middle of an icky divorce and well.. you know... life changes. It'd been quite a while since she'd written a paper. So right, after draft 3 I was running out of time to do revisions and supposed to meet her again after class to go over it again. And there was mom. Soooo I told her my classmates sob story and soon enough I had delegated AGAIN and mom was revising her paper as I showered, brushed my teeth, and got ready for class. Excellent. She made all the same revisions I would have- and was more pleasant about it than I would have been, nonetheless.

So here is the question, really. My mom is willing to do these things for me, and it gives us things to talk about and what have you. Yet... I am technically taking advantage of her kindness. Then again... think of how many people you know who would be better off if they let their mothers do a thing or two for them. Everyone would be happier. Mom's like to help. Then again.... usery. Interesting conundrum.

Either I'm rather wise or heinously selfish.

SNOW DAY!!!

Having slept a paltry 2 hours since Monday afternoon, my enthusiasm levels about this snow day are THROUGH THE ROOF. I'm more excited than a little kid on Christmas! I have spent all yesterday afternoon/evening studying for two Tests I was supposed to have back to back at school this morning- one in Chemistry, one in Anatomy & Physiology. And they're the first for each class, so I really don't know what level of difficulty to expect. I was supposed to go straight from work to school to take them. In fact, I spent a good 3 more hours at work (inbetween rounds and on my breaks) studying, I was so nervous about it.

But not anymore. Milwaukee's getting a good 12-16 inches of snow today. And the roads are crap. We're being blanketed in violent ThunderSnow (yeah, they actually call it that). I'm not too excited about the snow itself, but my gosh is it great to have more time for studying. And now those test won't be on the same day, and I'll be well rested for them. PLUS, I'm already prepared for them and can focus on long term memory as opposed to cramming. This is excellent. Simply outstanding.

And with that, I'm off to bed...

sprint is the devil

So after a few YEARS of having trouble with my Sprint service- being overcharged, ridiculous hidden fees, being falsely charged for "free" upgrades, unmerited service interuptions, poor customer service, failure to fully disclose terms of their agreements (ex: "you're qualified for a 5% discount on your bill because you've been a customer with us so long! Isn't that great!"-- just to find out by accepting I renew my contract, even though they didn't tell me that.), and spending countless hours on their crappy customer service line talking to 5 different reps just to "resolve" any little problem, I decided it was high time to get the hell out. Forget you, Sprint.

Also, Sprint is the Network Provider for "Planned Parenthood Wireless"-- they donate 10% of their revenue to planned parenthood to help educate people about their reproductive rights- you know, like the right to murder babies. Out of control. "Family Plan," anyone?

So now I've made a clean break and I'm a happy and healthy T-Mobile customer. In a moment of angst and rage at Sprint after an hour on the phone with them today I decided that even though I haven't slept in 24 hours I was going out in the rain and gloom to the T-Moble store to set things right. In addition to paying $20 less a month, my plan makes it so I can't go over my 1000 minute limit (which I don't anyway) while still allowing me to use it for nights and weekends. ALSO all calls to other T-Mobile customers (pretty much my whole fam and then some) are free, and I get to keep the same phone # I had with sprint. So I'm pretty much made in the shade.

So there, Sprint. I despise you and I'll curse your crappy company with your crappy overpriced phones and services 'till the day I die.

Oh, and PS? I despise you.

And now I'm gonna go curl up in bed with a smile on my lips and sleep the sweet sleep of the liberated consumer. Victorious I shall lie.

Shoveling Bites.

I really miss this guy.

Yeah, he might look like a lazy SOB, but in reality he's a way better investment than a snowblower- he even scrapes off your car, no extra charge.

Sigh. Please come back from Texas soon, Dan'l!!!

Stem cells in Space

So about my Anatomy & Physiology professor? I don't mean to gush, but my gosh is she awesome. She has these fantastic stories related to whatever we're studying about. When we were talking about retraining cells to serve different functions, she told us about a NASA grant for stem cell research (yeah. NASA. And they were not using stem cells from unborn children.) she had worked on. Keep in mind as you read on that this is my layman's memory of a lot more complicated situation that she explained to us. A lot of it was over my head. So this is the gleanings.

As you know, stem cells are unspecialized cells that are able to renew themselves indefinitely and can also differentiate into specialized cell types with specific functions, such as a nerve cell or liver cell. Eventually, stem cells may be used to replace damaged or dysfunctional cells in the body with healthy new ones. But right, that's assuming we can figure out what determines or cues the cells to develop these specific functions and train them to do it ourselves.

For some reason that's over my level of comprehension at this point, their experiments were based on the hypothesis that they would be able to make more progress in this area and learn more about it if they were able to grow these cells without the impediment of gravity. And that's where NASA stepped in and allowed them to send their experiments up on their shuttles in this constantly rotating device on a regular basis. From what I understand, they're still conducting these experiments. From what she said it was really neat... but the resulting tissue was something they had never seen before and they had NO IDEA what the heck it was.

But right, the whole thing is pretty fascinating. Why did she trade that job for this one?! Apparently other jobs she's worked are as a scientist in a hospital setting-- she helped train back muscle so that it would contract with heart muscles every second of every day even though that's obviously not a normal function of back muscle. And right, they then wrap that muscle around the heart to strengthen it. Pretty freaking crazy.

I love being in class with this woman. Every little boring thing we learn becomes fascinating as she ties it in with clinical application and/or stories along those lines. She makes things you'd normally have to memorize make sense. I love listening to her... I wish I could be like her...

Got jokes?

Thanks to countless hours spent on guard with little else to do, I have finally become a passable teller of jokes. Unfortunately, it didn't take too many of those countless hours for me to exhaust my rather small supply and recirculate all the jokes I could get from others in my platoon. And so I come to you, dear reader. Please help rejuvenate our joke pool. You'll have my gratitude and that of many others who will be less bored.
In compensation I offer-
The one about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac; he stayed up all night wondering if there is a dog.

turns out I actually meant "indifference"

I guess it's time for another "I know I haven't posted in ages, here's an update" post. Well, why not? You have to start somewhere, neh? Even if you've already started a few times before...
Anyway, since my last known post:

Smoking is not something that I do anymore. I couldn't find my lighters and got tired of running out of matches so I quit. About the same time, I lost yet another pocket knife - bringing my total to at least 6 in the last 3 years. The one upside to all of this is that I now have a reason to carry my big, fuck off, shiny knife and it's not a problem that it makes it harder to get into my left pocket (the right one is already inaccessible because of my pistol) because as a nonsmoker, I'm not incessantly getting my cigarettes out of my pocket.

I still hate nonsmokers.

Do I need a new picture now?

We need MORE STOCKINGS!!! (no, not really)

I grew my hair out longer than it's been since I had a bihawk. (a little over 4 years ago)

I shaved my head.

I couldn't remember the word "mnemonic"

Found a cache of puppies (we were digging around in an area where we suspected weapons/explosives were hidden and instead a litter of puppies came tumbling out of a hole where they had been sleeping) and a nest full of baby mice (in the middle of a pile of tank Basic Issue Items in our room) within a week of each other.

I really, truly, deeply, genuinely hate officers.

Shot 120mm main gun for the first (not counting basic, where it was simply a matter of pulling the triggers and getting the hell out of the way) and probably last time.

Visited an Iraqi pleasure resort complete with disco dance room, swimming pool and rotating beds with built in stereo systems. Obviously closed down many years ago - stop worrying, Mags - but surprisingly still intact for the most part (the bars were still stocked, except that all the whiskey bottles were mysteriously empty.)

Played hacky sack as a platoon while waiting for the go ahead to roll out on a mission.

I've rediscovered my love of teaching. (starting, randomly enough, with an explanation of how you determine the correct battlesight range for a given weapon system/ammunition combination. ..which I won't go into unless anyone actually cares.)