This Could Be a Job for Mulder and Scully

Crank

2011-12-25T01:03:00.004+08:00

Minsan iniisip ko na sana ay pwede rin akong magka-regla. Ito ang sinabi ko kay Amoketh isang araw habang kumakain kami ng sushi sa ambulance parking lot. Sa mga nakalipas na araw kasi ay napapansin kong masyado akong cranky. Kaunting bagay lang ay para na akong pinagsasakluban ng langit at lupa (at dahil fun gamitin ang expression na iyon). Halimbawa, madiskobre ko lang habang naglalakad ako papasok sa ospital na maluwag at bacon-ish pala ang medyas ko dahil unti-unti na silang bumababa sa sakong ay parang gusto ko nang mamatay. Exaj. Hindi naman mamatay. Dahil pag sinabi mong gusto mo nang mamatay o pag sinabi mong feeling mo mamamatay ka na ay nakakainsulto ito sa mga totoong mamamatay na pero ayaw pa nila. Pumoprofound.

Back to wanting to have regla. Dahil pag may regla ka ay kahit papaano meron kang sisisihin na organic sa pagiging masungit. Dati ay inaaccuse lang ng mga tao ang mga babae na nagsusungit-sungitan pag may regla, pero ilang kaibigang babae ko na rin ang napapansin kong specially masungit sa spesipikong linggo ng buwan. Halimbawa, ang lagi kong kasamang si ****** ay masungit, umiiyak nang wala sa oras, at lethargic all at the same time pag last week of the month na. At totoo nga, ito ang linggo ng kanyang regla.

O baka dahil lagi lang akong gutom dahil sa abnormal na oras ng tulog at trabaho whine whine whine. Nung isang araw, habang nagkiklinik ay inatake ako ng matinding gutom. In fact nakita ko palang ang mataas na pile ng charts ay nagutom na ako lalo ng husto. Ang mga pasyente sa aming klinik ay medyo galante in general, at naisip ko na since magpapasko naman ay baka mabiyayaan ako ng pwedeng kainin sa oras na yun. Pero, habang palakad-lakad ako sa klinik ay napansin kong ang ibang fellows ay parang may panederya na sa mga lamesa nila, puno na ang mga ito ng mga cake, brownies, Wafu, at lahat ng varieties ng hopya. So far, for the day, ika-pitong pasyente ko na out of the twelve ay wala pa rin sumasagot sa gutom ko. In pure gutom, in pure kakapalan, in my head: please please kahit tasty bread with sandwich spread, and Plus King Size, basta pwede kong kainin RIGHT NOW. Oo, pathetic na kung pathetic, pero gutom na gutom na talaga ako.

Finally, ang ika-walong pasyente ay nag-abot ng supot pagkatapos ng kimo. Supot! Kinuha ko ito, nagpasalamat, naglaway, at naghanda nang tumalikod at kainin ang mga posibilidad na ito: sandwich/donut/hopia/tinapayan special. Hindi muna ako tatawag ng next patient, kakainin ko muna ito.

Binuksan ko ang supot. Tinignan ang nasa loob.

Achara.

Thymes and The Lochia

2011-12-22T18:13:00.004+08:00

Met Thymes and Lochia for dinner in kantunan last night. Eat-outs with these people are few and far between so we had to catch-up with all the stories really fast and put up three threads of conversation at the same time.

Thymes has been mentioned quite frequently in this blog. A few years ago while walking along Orosa Lloydie saw the two of us walking together. In the middle of the street, with lots of people around, Lloydie asked, "Nag-sex kayo?" We just shrugged. Last year Thymes was the star in their section's dance extravaganza where she played a demon who made sampa over one of her male co-fellows' shoulders. Presently Thymes is an incoming senior fellow in the section of cardiology, or as her t-shirt last night said, Cardiologist ng Bayan.

The other cardiologist ng bayan is Lochia. Lochia has not always been known as Lochia. He has earlier been known in this blog as Pyro, but eventually JD-Lu has christened him Lochia and until now I call him Lochia in real life. Lochia is popular for his powerful, remarkable lines such as "Ako ang pinakamakapangyarihang doktor sa ospital na ito ngayong gabi!" and "Ang katulong ba na lumayas, pag bumalik ay tatanggapin pa ng amo?" Truly nothing is more powerful than Lochia, and we should affix an article in his name and call him The Lochia.

We retired to Whore House. Thymes brought up that as she was watching the incoming fellows' interviews she felt a little sheepish as she remembered her own answers then. When asked "Why cardiology?" the current applicants would say the usual but not necessarily untrue stuff such as "to serve; no cardiologist in our provice; etc". Thymes remembered her answer two years ago, which she has said with such deep earnestness. Why cardiology? Thymes: Because it's glamorous!

We then asked The Lochia what his answer last year was. Truly The Lochia must have never failed to astound. This was The Lochia's answer to the question: Why cardiology?

The Lochia: (in front of the top cardiologists of the country) I've been thinking about that question since last night, because I knew you were going to ask that question. But you know what, cardiology is not the question. It is... the answer.

*slow clap* *slow clap* *slow clap* *slow clap*

One Day At A Time

2011-12-18T20:53:00.001+08:00

Attended this morning the baptism of Papa Ruter's super cute daughter in Fernbrook Alabang. Ruter is one of my residency batchmates, and you might remember him from my post where he ripped off his shirt in our sweltering callroom, lifted the entire damn airconditioner unit, and rammed it against the hole in the room all by himself. He is the sort of person who just does what needs to be done while everyone around him is whining, in that case, we were all whining that it was so hot when is the technician going to get here to put up the aircondition. I thought I got into a wrong chapel as there was no baptism, there was instead a huge furry dog with people dressed in Middle Earth costume while a couple was getting married. And then I realized I was two hours late so they were of course already dining somewhere else.

And already seated were my residency batchmates who are some of the most interesting people I know. Just because I want to I'd enumerate them: Lloydie with his wife Rhose, Hurricane Katrina, Fulet Esplana, Tits, Jd-Lu with Beh, Tessieloopagooparoop, JLL, Renrerenrenren, Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore, Vampirella, and Lochia. We suddenly remembered it was also Ruter's 4th year wedding anniversary when he showed us the video of his wedding in 2007. We were all invited then, but none of us attended the wedding, being caught up then in the first days of residency.

In the midst of it all people were discussing plans on where to practice medicine after completing fellowship, plans of marriage, further training abroad, hospital stocks and bonds and visiting privileges and stuff, kids, our parents' medical conditions, kids, money, and all these adult stuff. These things make my head spin. I have no plans for the future whatsofuckingever, I don't know what should ever become of me, and my long term goal is good only for the next meal. Kumbaga sa insulin, short-acting at pag naubos na ay intayin na lang mag diabetic coma. In times like these I find solace in the fantastic Snoopy's Street Fair game where Charlie Brown succinctly explains his new philosophy in life: I will only dread one day at a time.

Speaking of one day at a time, Oxali has recently seen the movie One Day. Grainy pirated download, of course. Oxali is an Oncology co-fellow. While in the car on our way to our Christmas party Oxali revealed (spoilers!) that the girl in the movie One Day dies in the end.

"CANCER?!?!" four of us said in unison.
"Hinde, nasagasaan sya ng truck," Oxali said.

Not everything is about cancer.

May 1 Syndrome

2011-12-14T21:26:00.002+08:00

Jeff Libuit has reminded us that tomorrow would be their last day in residency, in his succinct Facebook shout-out which goes "last day na bukas".

We envy him, and all the residents finishing up tomorrow, because once again they would experience the May 1 Syndrome on December 16, ie, waking up with a start at 7 am only to realize you could wake up at 2pm, or not at all. That you could choose not to take a bath! Or brush your teeth! And you can eat your parents' food! And not pay anything! And your hand starts to itch to write something, something really long that requires many pages, and then you become happy that you don't fucking have to! And you remember that there are thousands of pages to read for the upcoming boards, but you tell yourself rightfully that you could give yourself a break, at least for a day! Or two! Or at least until the holiday ends!

Ending residency is surely a sad event, as things would never be the same, and the fantastic stuff we used to take for granted would no longer be there, such as the callroom bed, and responsible batchmates who would asikaso papers that need to be signed and you would only need to sign. Come hellowship everyone would be... running. You would be hard pressed to tell anyone a funny anecdote in full, because everyone's Amazing-Running to finish at 5pm and by the time you get that leisurely time together after weeks on end, said anecdote is no longer funny. Last year we thought we would all be getting senti and stuff on the last day, but the toxicity of finishing things that needed to be finished, moving out of the callroom, endorsifications, and other stuff turned senti mode into, what else, whining. "HUUUUUUNGH!" Djana and I had whined in the ambulance parking lot as we were eating sushi. But all in all we did get quite senti, specially with the fantastic send-off our junior residents then gave us.

A temporary farewell and congratulations to our graduating IM residents!

Gunk

2011-12-13T20:46:00.002+08:00

After taking strong, bitter coffee at five in the morning I rushed to the bus stop and dozed off a few minutes after taking my seat and paying. I woke up somewhere in Quirino, only to feel something crawling up my left leg inside my jeans. It crawled up, up, up, until it reached my thigh. The bus is decrepit and obviously harbors all sorts of bugs, so I squirmed and squirmed and squirmed as I realized it could only be my personal nemesis, the cockroach, who found the perfect opportunity make me look like an idiot as I squirmed and squirmed and squirmed as I tried to make it pagpag down my leg which was quite impossible as it was a fairly tight pair of jeans, so I squirmed, etc.

I had no choice. The cockroach was rapidly climbing the region no cockroach should ever climb. So as soon as I felt its body's outline under my pants in the thigh area, I squished it. Yes, I fucking squished it, and I heard the crackly squish and felt the squishy goo as the cockroach bleeping died!!! Now that it was immobile it was only a matter of making pagpag my leg and it rolled down and fell on the floor. There it was, the dead brown cockroach with tan stripes, squished as fuck.

Normally I would freak out inside my head, as nothing elicits a supersonic girly scream from me other than cockroaches. Specially those that fly and those with moving antennae. However, the situation required me to be calm, or else I would have looked like a frantic character about to die in the movie Saw, and the cockroach would have succeeded in making me look like a frantic character about to die in the movie Saw. The bus finally came to a stop in Pedro Gil, I leisurely ate breakfast in McDo while using their WiFi to receive the lavish gifts Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore and Smurfbarry have given my Snoopy's Street Fair, all the while trying to ignore the icky gunky feel on my thigh. I then walked back to my dorm, took off my pants and told myself as I looked at my bare thigh: Now THAT is gunk.

Chocolate Coins. In A Net!

2011-12-10T17:12:00.001+08:00

I was looking for Smores in the supermarket because just five years ago Smores was available even in Mini-Stop but now you can't seem to find it anywhere. It's relatively cheap, maybe because most of the bar is taken up by a more pedestrian marshmallow. This is one of those posts being typed after skipping a meal, about an event that happened after skipping a meal. I heard from someone that you should eat a full meal before going to the supermarket to lower your purchasing desires, so it was probably not a good idea that I went there after a weekend of roundsing.

So there was no Smores. And for more, I've remembered that rent was due today, so I had exactlly P50 to spend in the supermarket. Fun fun fun. Back in college Mrs. Therese and I had this Comm 2 (COMM 2! AHAHAHAHA!) activity where we had to go to the mall and spend only fifty bucks each. It was apparently a training for FP, ie, Future Poverty.

And what should I see but... chocolate coins. In gold foil! Chocolate coins in gold foil in a small net (lambat) have been a source of comfort in my childhood, because they are just so golly gee whiz cool. But they have to be in a net. The Goya Chocolate Coins are in a regular plastic wrapper. I nevertheless got it and consumed the whole thing in a few minutes. It would have been more fun if they were in a lambat, but poverty precludes such kaartehan.

Come to think of it, poverty precludes so much kaartehan in life, making you realize that they are, indeed, just kaartehan. For instance, I used to buy a lot of brand new fiction books in National or Powerbooks. I would say that ooooh I love the smell of the paper of a freshly printed book! So if I see for instance, a downloadable soft copy of The Marabou Stork Nightmares, or a Booksale copy of Raise High The Roof Beams Carpenters, I would scoff that I would just buy a brand new copy because of the smell of the fresh ink and paper of a brand new book! KAARTEHAN! And the hard cover ones, those with the jagged edges, they are so quaint and I love them so! KAARTEHAN! Or an expensive pen with point something specifications, because the pen dictates thought processes and my thought processes would only be as smooth as the way the pen runs on paper. KAARTEHAN!!!!

You were right, parents, you were right.

Tatarin

2011-11-30T21:12:00.004+08:00

I saw a local movie called Tatarin in ATC years and years ago, back when I could still watch horrific movies in theaters and stuff. It was supposedly based on a Nick Joaquin short story we've read in Hum 1 back in college, but there were too many exposed breasts, vegetable phallic symbolism, and moaning in the movie which we've never seemed to notice in the short story. The movie is incomprehensible crap. The final scene has the main guy (I even forgot actor) licking girl's foot, which seemed like a metaphor for cunnilungus. I don't know how we've reached that conclusion, maybe we were just bastos, but it did seem like cunnilungus. Credits suddenly rolled, lights turned on, the end. A woman in the audience stood up and screamed "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!"

I am reminded of this when we went to Ocean Park today for a section annual meeting. After the meeting where the year was capped off and I got ecstatic that I have once again triumphed in my goal of minimum requirement, we went to see the attractions. We fell in line for the penguins. Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore loves penguins, and I love Batman's villain The Penguin, so the half-hour line should be worth it. After watching the cute penguins dive and swim and stuff we fell in line yet again for the snow room. Truly there would be penguins gallivanting and jumping around and all golly-gee. Wearing our jackets we excitedly went to the snow room. It was cold and... it was cold. There were no penguins. But there were benches. And a few steps to the right we saw a door that said: Exit. We exited. Attraction over.

All together now: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????!!!!

Except, only we were screaming that. Families and crap were sitting on the benches and playing in the huge ref and taking pictures and gallivanting frolicking traipsing fun fun fun and stuff. Which incurred a second round of an even louder: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?????!

Vanishing Room, Cinoroborate

2011-11-23T21:11:00.003+08:00

Pinaalala pa kasi ni The Daw aka BOTD aka Supervillainess Helliza. Natatakot tuloy ako ulit bigla.

Sa mga panahong ito ay nagtatrabaho ako sa isang lugar na kung tawagin ay Cancer Institute. Tuwing tinatanong ako ng ibang tao kung hindi ba raw ako nahihirapang mag "disclose" ng diagnosis sa mga pasyente at pamilya nila, sinasabi ko na kalimitan ay hindi. Dahil tignan pa lang nila kung nasaan sila ay dapat medyo alam na nila, so ika nga, we don't need to beat around the bush (pilit na pilit ang expression, gusto ko lang kasi sabihin ang salitang "bush") Hindi ito tinatawag na Wellness Institute, or Recovery Institute, o kahit man lamang Institute of Neoplasms. Direct to the point, alam ng lahat, kung ano ang Cancer. Dati nga nung bata mga bata pa kami at naglalaro kami ng nanay at mga kapatid ko ng Scrabble ay bawal magbuo ng salitang Cancer. Bawal sabihin o isipin.

Pero ang pinaalala bigla ni Helliza ay ang supposedly mga katatakutan na nangyayari dito. Nung mga intern pa lamang kami, isa sa mga malulungkot na duty ay ang CI. Ilang oras ka kasing uupo sa isang sulok, magbabasa basa kunwari, at mag-iintay na may lumabas na mga tray na pang swero o dumating ang oras na mag-monitor ng mga kinikimo. Kikimo talaga. Minsan isang 12 midnight habang naka-duty tumakas ako. Pumunta ako sa malapit na Mini-Stop at kumain ng ice cream. Wala namang nangyari.

Pinaalala lang bigla ni Helliza na may mga ghosts and stuff sa building na ito. Kung tutuusin hindi naman ganun karami ang namamatay dito, dahil bago sila mag-toxic and stuff ay kaagad na silang nililipat sa ward. Pero sabi ni Helliza, may mga small kids na multo daw na tumatakbo-takbo taas-baba sa malapad na hagdan. Minsan sa kakatakbo nila ay umaabot sila sa katabing Ophtha building kung saan kinukulbit nila ang mga intern at clerk lalo na pag natutulog. Tumatakbo-takbo rin daw sila pag gabi sa gitna kung saan nandoon ang fountain.

Pero ang mas nakakatakot, at cinoroborate (ano totoong tagalog dito?) ng iba pang tao, ay ang small room na... nawawala. Minsan habang nagmomonitor ka daw ay bigla na lang may kwartong hindi mo makita. Para ka daw nasusukob or namamatanda o nakakapre, basta hindi mo mahanap ang kwartong ito na malapit sa elevator. Na paglingon mo, andun na ulit! Ang hirap-hirap na nga mag monitor at mag insert ng linya at kumuha ng dugo sa mga sunog na ugat, magva-vanish pa ang kwarto for MORE kahirapan. Hell talaga. Hellellel.

Kaya kung dati, hindi lang ako tumitingin sa mga salamin sa CI pag gabi, ngayon di na rin ako tumitingin sa fountain. At sa hagdan, pinakamabilis akong bumaba. Hindi pa nakatulong na nagpictorial pa bigla ang Cardio section dito for their winner presentation, kaya pang Kilabot Komiks na talaga:

(credits to photographer)

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Pinakanakakatakot ang pag-tilt ng ulo ni Melgar, parang may hawak na kutsilyo sa likod.

Blog Minefield: Random Conversations With Total Strangers

2011-11-20T21:07:00.002+08:00

While comfortably sitting in Shrine Motherfucker 1 trying to write a short story about a guy who thinks he's so ugly he slashes his face with a razor blade, who should strike a conversation with me but the guy (a newbie) sitting in Shrine Motherfucker 2. He initially asked about politics and stuff, so I said some vague stuff that can only be translated as: I don't know anything about it. Spontaneous conversations with total strangers can be fun at times specially when my friends have no new blog entries to read (Alert: BOTD, HTGOF, SIU, Walking on Water). Interestingly there was no uncomfortable silence, because there was... no silence. So I could just type, download, click like, write, and read comic books while muttering vague "uh-huh's" while the soliloquy was going on.

"But you look so young," newbie guy said.
I find this expression corny, but the only appropriate response to this (in my head), is: ahem ahem ahem. Once again I've opened up 30 minutes of my attention because of this opening line. Maybe he has read my blog specifically http://specialagentfoxmulder.blogspot.com/2011/10/nno.html When I've told Popopopoker Face Popopoker Face of a similar random conversation in SMF1 years ago, his input was: Maybe he wants to fuck you. Why thank you Popopopoker Face Popopoker Face, I need all the flattery I could get in all forms, shapes, and sizes.

Newbie guy went on and on about politics, growing up in the States, speaking English in Manila, the plight of the Filipinos in the States, etc etc etc. Meanwhile I've finished reading the disgusting Red Hood and The Outlaws issue #3 and Catwoman #3 in my laptop. I've also updated my iPod and discovered ways to recover my lost Smurfs Village. Finally I found the most opportune escape clause when he asked,

Newbie Guy: How do I make sure I don't get stabbed while walking in Ermita?
Me: Easy. You need to go home early.

In a few minutes he was gone and thus endeth the conversation.

Murder Mystery in CI

2011-11-19T18:40:00.002+08:00

Not really a murder mystery, but I've been perusing through my old Hercule Poirot stories and it's just fun when he screams, in David Suchet voice, of course, "MURDER!"

The mystery I'm referring to in this instance is, of course, the sudden disappearance for more than twenty-four hours now necessitating a search and rescue operation... of the interns' Cancer Institute logbook! That precious logbook, containing endless thrills in the form of your intern stalkees' cell phone numbers, those puerile but fun doodles, and most importantly, the much treasured ever-growing list of residents and fellows nominated to be cast down to hell in a form of a really fugly effigy washed in gasoline to be burned--BURNED!!!--come the ceremonious May 1 Sunog! I might be one of the suspects, being a fixture in the building and stuff, except that I know that I'm not in the evolving Sunog list, because I know, I know, because... I've taken a peek! While the intern-on-duty was busy inserting an IV line to a totally veinless chemo-fied dehydrated patient!!! Now I'm implicating myself more!!! AHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!!

I didn't do it. And I wasn't on the list not because I'm totally lovable, but because... nobody knows who we are! Because we're just these expressionless, zombified Hellows lugging around chemicals and stuff who only have one thing in our minds: when can I go home. AHAHAHHAH. AHAHAHAAHAH!!!!

So there. Now that I've totally ruled myself out maybe the right suspects would be fingered. I'm not even sure if the verb "fingered" is right, it doesn't sound right, in fact it sounds totally bastos, I'm just translating directly from Tagalog, ie, turo. Obviously I am writing this in the event that something bad happens to me, because I know, I know..... The List.

Purge!

2011-11-19T17:27:00.003+08:00

Been having quite a difficult time in many respects lately (as if I haven't whined about these things enough), but I've declared a couple of days ago that what would push me to the edge is if my gadgetifications start going insane. There's just something specifically infuriating about gadgetifications going insane, and I always recall that ad of a cable TV show about computer problems where an office cubicle employee gets so infuriated at his desktop he rips it off his table and throws the damn thing in the trash can while screaming like crazy.

So OF COURSE I've incurred a gadgetification mishap. As soon as I've declared that getting pushed to the edge drama. In the hurly burly of the upcoming onco section accreditation there have been a lot of file swaps through emails, USB's and stuff (ie, I didn't get the powerful virus from downloading porn. We're no longer in high school shame on you). Now I've always been pretty mayabang about my first generation Lenovo, as it has never broken down in 3 years and a half. So of course it has to happen in the midst of--just because I want to say it--a hurly burly.

I've fixed it soon enough, of course, after a quickie run of internal screaming, whining, cursing, moaning, groaning, and we can go on and on for more similar verbs. And in true empath fashion what should suddenly play in my intelligent iPot as I was finally getting successful in reformatting was... EHeads' Alapaap. AHAHAHAHAAHAHAH. The good thing is that now it is totally purged of trash, and I feel like a new man. For synchronicity I got a haircut, also because no amount of powerful hair gel/wax can flatten the damn thing down and it's starting to look really big like a separate creature on my head. I've once tried my brother's hair wax which was still not able to flatten it, but was able to mold my hair into different shapes and sizes. Even after washing it off for days and days on end you could still mold the bleeping thing into a fucking anvil.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

2011-11-13T22:25:00.003+08:00

One of the things I like doing when I'm at home on weekends other than stare at the ceiling for hours on end is looking at stuff I can throw in the trash or give to other people or sell. So I opened my closets wide open to look for useless crap! 90% of my closet space contains comic book long boxes, and I realized I don't have any clothes in my room!

The other 10% contains:
College and med books- useless crap, but too heavy to carry or throw to the trash. They carry no sentimental value whatsoever, and whatever reservations I had then that I would probably read them when I have the time have been pulverized years and years ago. Keep.

College papers, newspapers, magazines, folios and other publications that carry my published stuff. Will not throw out. In the off chance that I die soon and I become posthumously famous, people might get interested in that old essay where I wished I were a cat. Or that short story where I swapped brains with a cat. My deceased cats would be proud. Keep.

Cassette tapes, VHS recordings of X-Files, mixed tapes which carry a lot of memory- since mixed tapes and the X-Files bring comfort in nostalgification: Keep.

And finally:
Medals- the term "useless crap" does not even begin to describe their uselesscrapness. They gather dust, might contain deadly metals, and do not even carry any nostalgic or self-esteem-boosting worth. If anything they signify the most embarrassing portions of my life. AHAHAHAHAHA. I looked at the medals' labels and my favorites: Grade 3 mini-olympics: CHESS. Mini-olympics! AHAHAHAHAHA. But nothing takes up space more than... a TROPHY. I've just remembered: I have a tall bleeping trophy! This might sound totally cool except that the label reads: Quiz Bee on Consumerism. CONSUMERISM! What the hellellellel! AHAHAHAHAHAAH. I've just remembered one question in this quiz bee, something about from how many meters must a price tag on a grocery item be visible for it to be a valid price tag. THROW THROW THROW! THROOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!! When my mom's not looking.

Supervillainess

2011-11-07T20:12:00.003+08:00

Chanced upon Supervillainess Helliza and HTGOF in Shrine Motherfucker 1. Strangely Shrine Motherfucker 1 is quite devoid of people, probably because it's sem break. Having run out of blogs to ridicule and having exhausted all valid points on being cat or dog people Helliza brought up something out of the left field.

Helliza: Special Agent Fox Mulder, why not date Smoketh? Smoketh: Because it would be incest and that would be gross.
Helliza wouldn't be stopped. She was on full supervillainess mode tonight.
Helliza: HTGOF, why not date Special Agent Fox Mulder?

Back in clerkship while I was on duty in the OB admitting section I was tasked to monitor the cervical cancer garden. All of a sudden a patient sadly went on code and I had to scream code and had to do the chest pumping and stuff in the area beside the patient rest room. As we were conducting the code a pregnant patient happened to be walking out from the rest room. She saw the events, and she immediately fainted. I was at the time being relieved by Helga in doing the chest compression, and, being a bibo-bibohan busy-busyhan clerk who should never be caught not doing anything, I leaped to the fainting patient and caught her in my arms. In pure nervousness at what she has just experienced not only did she faint, but she fucking crapped. All over the floor, and all over my pants.

In the two seconds that it took me to shift from being quietly bewildered and mortified to letting out a bloodcurdling scream as I stared at the human crap on my pants, my interns and residents said that my facial expression was such that it was so contorted that it could not be described. That is, it could not be described back in 2004.

Because now it CAN be properly described! It is exactly akin to the facial expression of HTGOF when Supervillainess Helliza suggested us dating! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And for that we give HTGOF's facial expression.... the prestigious 2011 AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Awards! All together now: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAH!

Alternative Career for Lochia

2011-11-06T12:09:00.002+08:00

Back in high school I actually thought I would like to become a lawyer. Gross. Utterly, utterly gross. This is probably borne out of my being thrusted into a couple of debate competitions within the school. Again, utterly utterly bleeping gross. I did not know a single thing about debating, in my head i would rather be watching WWF, and really, debating is for people who can actually maintain a train of thought uninterrupted by "do I have a blank VHS tape on which to record The X-Files tonight?" Our favorite debate moment was that at one time, a judge was announcing percentage scores for each speaker. I'm not sure if this is how debates are really conducted, but at one point the the judge announced the scores: "JAPT, 94%!!! Namtab Pots, 96%!!! and Crashalimar... 32%!!!!" At which our classmates let out raucous laughter unabashedly. At one point when our teacher was asking for topic suggestions on what to debate about a classmate suggested quite earnestly:

Sushmita Sen, did she really deserve to win?

Which a classmate tried to one-up with: High tide, or low tide?
So 1994.

Have been watching for a few weeks now the ANC debates with law schools dishing out their arguments and stuff in front of judges and stuff. Today the topic was essentially on how to deal with MILF. MILF has recently taken on a new term, and every time somebody argues, "Give concession to the MILF!!!" I always imagine a different form of concession being given to a different kind of MILF.

As much as I hate these debates and stuff they do have their entertaining value. We like it when we see alar-flaring, forehead-slapping really high-strung contestants. I am probably just jealous: as I said I cannot maintain a coherent thought, in two-seconds I can confuse myself on which side I'm really on, and when I have nothing else to rebut with I would probably just say, "Bakit ba." You know who would be a good debater? Lochia. Lochia can easily confuse his competitors with such statements as:

"Are you not aware that despite the government not having to not address without prejudice the non-withdrawal of military resources that were not disclaimed yesterday, there has been no unequivocal response from MILF that did not merely result in them not withdrawing their own supposed non-attack?!?!"

In which case the opposing side would just have to answer, "er... yes. No. Yes."

Crap and A Sell-Out

2011-11-06T08:13:00.001+08:00

Years and years ago during semestral or summer breaks one of my personal projects would be to write as many short stories as I could, which I would later badger Mrs. Therese to read. She was a good friend like that, having to endure endless pages of neurotic ramblings. She would return my stories a few days later with lots of comments, which are funnier than the stories themselves. Since residency happened I've stopped reading a lot of fiction, which led to me not being able to write fiction as well. My theory is my short story writing style is greatly affected by the last author I've read. The last time I've written fiction was in July 2010. It was a short story about a young doctor's first experience to sign the death certificate. Just typing that already makes me retch. I've asked Smoketh to read it before I submitted it to a national publication, and she labelled it as "crap" and a "sell-out". It got published in a national publication. I showed it to Smoketh after I got a copy in 7-11, now in magazine format. Smoketh still labelled the story as "crap" and a "sell-out". I never told anyone in the callroom about it, until someone got hold of it for some reason. Eds read it out loud. Everyone fucking retched at every sentence AHAHAHAHA. Rightfully so.

Fiction is just more difficult to write than, say, a blog entry where everything goes. The structure is more complex, you can't go on forever unless you want everyone to go back to facebooking, and in terms of submitting one for actual publication I find it tricky to sort of balance what the current standards of short fiction are with my own personal style. In the aforementioned story there appeared to have been no balance, hence it being a total fucking sell-out. It is also infuriating that, having been in the hospital for the past ten years or so the first characters that come to mind are healthcare-related characters. The setting has becoming very limiting, which is obviously just an excuse for stunted imagination.

Certain events have led me to want to try my hand at fiction again. Maybe I'll pepper this blog with those practice stories and bore everyone to tears.

Self-Indulgent Entry

2011-11-05T23:28:00.002+08:00

Consider the following events that happened in the past couple of weeks:
1. Lalaloo has been blogging again! And she has listed her twenty favorite things in response to an ad where the writer wrote his twenty favorite things. Check out her blog at lalaloo10.blogspot.com.
2. In a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother Barney's girlfriend suddenly blared into the Sound of Music song "My Favorite Things".
3. Last week Callistus Netromedev enthusiastically texted me as he was leaving the theater, "I've just watched The Sound of Music musical! It's fantastic!" and being a downer I've just replied "I fucking hate musicals!" Yes, I'm a total jerk like that.
4. In a recent blog entry, Neurologist Shipper Jack Knight has posted a comment... to the tune of My Favorite Things!!!

Obviously My Favorite Things is begging to be discussed. Hence, I will also list... my favorite things!!! Ahahahaha. More specifically, these are the things I want to ram inside my mouth right now, because I am just so very hungry. I am usually anorexic and subsist on two meals a day, but my cancer seems to have been spontaneously regressing the past few days and I actually have an appetite. So these are... The Top Ten Things I Want Want Want To Ram In My Mouth Right Now Because I Am Just So Fucking Hungry!!! I usually have an aversion to entries about wanting stuff, but I am just... so... hungry.

1. Cherry Coke. The last time I drank one was years and years ago, and I'm still DREAMING (OA) of it every single fucking day (for more OA). Is this gone? Is it? Is IT?!? If it is, would Ventolin syrup-spiked Coke taste the same? Would it? Would IT?!?!
2. Chori Burger from Bun on the Run. Is this also totally gone? Do I really want want want it, or is it nostalgia?
3. UP Diliman isaw in a cup of vinegar, the one in Ilang-Ilang. Calling Mrs. Therese!
4. Toffifee, because it tastes good, is also a piece of nostalgia, and is also expensive and hence unattainable making it seem like it tastes better than it probably does. Also, it's fun to say Toffifee.
5. Chicken curry.
6. Cornik.
7. Subway. Somebody bring bleeping Subway to Rob! We want a sandwich bursting at the seams with all sorts of vegetarian stuff with vinegar and stuff! Also, there are these Subway ads in DC Comics where sports figures are raving about... avocado dressing! Yes, we are sosyal, we want want want avocado dressing!
8. Ampalaya.
9. Sunflower seeds. Because I've always imagined I'm Mulder who always chews on sunflower seeds and... wears gray boxers! AHAHAHAHHAAHHA I know, disgusting disgusting image.
10. Pizza with lots and lots and lots of gulay.

So bleeping hungry.

Getting Some

2011-11-05T22:09:00.002+08:00

We are now in issues 2 and 3 of the DC relaunch issues, and whatever steam the relaunch has created has, as expected, been quickly lost. That's because, as I've said, this relaunch is totally unnecessary. After the first issues I had the following scores for these titles, as usual represented by action figures:

Action Comics by Grant Morrison, Batman by Scott Snyder, Wonder Woman by Brian Azarello, Aquaman by Geoff Johns, Green Lantern by Geoff Johns, New Guardians by Peter Tomasi, Superboy by Scott Lobdell, Voodoo by Ron Marz, Batwoman by JH Williams, All-Star Western, and Flash by Francis Manapul.

Assessment: Each gets 4-5 quality DC Direct action figures, for just being strong stories in themselves, or for being over-all entertaining, fresh, and promising. These stories kind of made me want to eat my own words full of vitriol which I let out at the news of relaunch.

Justice League of America by Geoff Johns, Detective Comics by Tony Daniels, Batman The Dark Knight, Teen Titans by Lobdell, Mr. Terrific, Suicide Squad, Hawkman, Hawk and Dove, Red Hood and the Outlaws, and SUPERMAN.

Assessment: Each receives an unsightly Marvel Legends action figure as relaunched by Hasbro back in 2008. Because they are quite... not to be nega but they are quite... awful. Superman is one long, ranty, incomprehensible mess, and just for being specially disappointing being a major title and all I am awarding this title in particular the disgusting White Queen Hasbro action figure. Birds of Prey, Oracle, and Batgirl have been my favorite characters in the old DCU, so just for changing the status quo I am also giving each of them an ugly action figure. They can have my Deathlok Marvel Legends action figure which I've bought only to build the damn Galactus build-a-figure.

The rest just tread the middle ground: Green Lantern Corps, Nightwing, Legion of Superheroes, Blackhawk, etc. Justice League Dark is at least funny for sounding like a chocolate variant, like Justice League with Mint, and Justice League Coconut.

Having said all that I am reserving a special paragraph for Catwoman. See, as it happens, I've been catching up on back issues of Ed Brubaker's fantastic Catwoman run when the relaunch happened. Brubaker's Catwoman is strong, problematic but level-headed, and quite multidimensional. And in the relaunch we get a very unlikeable Catwoman who might eventually grow on me, and of course she's a reboot so she might get emotionally-stable and be more heroic in the future, and all that, but my problem with the Catwoman relaunch is this:

I have no problem with Catwoman getting some. Or Batman getting some. Of course they get a lot of some. But there's dirty sex, and then there's dirty sex. Catwoman has just been chased by thugs and ran through the streets and all that, and we know what they say about sweaty black leather. And also, in this scene Batman has like 20 packs.

Flipped

2011-11-03T21:26:00.000+08:00

Still avoiding the threatening 12-hour Godfather folder from The Helliza Files, so what should I click next but the movie Flipped. Secret shame: I have these sporadic compulsions to watch these hour-and-a-half rom coms, specially if they are extremely funny, and most specially if they are extremely formulaic and bad to the point of unintentional hilarity. And most specially if I don't have to download them myself, and I can just copy them from the supervillainess Helliza. Enough rationalization. Bakit ba. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

As it turned out Flipped is more of a coming-of-age movie than a traditional rom-com. At the onset you get the feeling that this is a movie based on a short story or a novel, and because this paragraph is starting to sound like a review like totally, I will now drop lazy, random movie review terms just to get it over with: gravitas, pathos, versimilitude, parallelisms, vivisection. Maybe not vivisection. I just have a fondness for these sort of growing-up stories with the classic elements: summer, neighborhood, endearing grandparents, the awkwardness of first love. And the unique elements, in this case we have the sycamore tree and being a basket boy.

I informed Helliza that although things started to turn around at the end and nothing horrible really happened like the girl falling from the very tall sycamore tree, Flipped is actually a pretty depressing movie. I had no idea what was at the core of feeling quite sad at the end of the film, but supervillainness Helliza who can psychoanalyze by text had this explanation: Nakakainggit kasi na bata pa lang sila ay may true love na sila.

All together now: AHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAH!

The Helliza Files

2011-10-31T18:41:00.001+08:00

Happily there were relatively few patients to rounds and kikimo today, as everyone is probably in the beach. I am thinking that they are all in the beach because for some reason the All Saints’ Day weekend feels more like a summer Holy Week weekend, with very few people and cars in the vicinity, or as I would like to call it, the vinicity. I figured maybe everyone was in Robinsons’, but I got to Mc Do and was first in line. With more time on my hands than usual I popped open my hard drive folder named “Helliza”, ie, all the porn I’ve managed to copy from The Daw, who shall henceforth be called in this blog as Helliza as Helliza sounds more fun and actually sounds like a super villainess, like a super villainess of Wonder Woman or Supergirl. This makes sense if you consider that some of the super villains of Supergirl in the past sixty years are named Satan Girl and Buzz, The Demon.

I opened the sub-folder The Godfather. Yes I haven’t seen it, because I always get distracted by things. If I were in college I would be able to sit through the trilogy, except that my attention span is now irreparably damaged. I know it’s fantastic, mind-blowing, seminal, etc etc etc, but I no longer have any pretense that I’m a cinemaphile or whatever fancy name you call those people who watch all movies in existence and make sure everyone knows they do and write reviews that have the terms "gravitas", "pathos", or "versimilitude" and crap. There are things you just don’t care about anymore.

So I scrolled scrolled scrolled through the Helliza files and watched instead the much much much shorter… Friends With Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake! AHAHAHAHA. Friends With Benefits is a realistic movie if all the people we ever know are extremely witty comedians with great comedic timing and the eloquence to deliver a series of long funny retorts in quick succession. A few years ago I’ve always pretended that I was in a sitcom, specifically The Office, as everyone around me seemed to have a high comic index. Come Hellowship and a closer approximation of real life the comedians started to degenerate, not even into soap opera characters, but more like into zombies. Friends With Benefits also has the perfect pretext to do the cliché romantic habulan ending, because it cleverly proclaims that it is a cliché romantic habulan ending. All in all no regrets at ditching The Godfather for Friends With Benefits. AHAHAHAHAHA.

And that’s one perfectly entertaining quiet afternoon courtesy of… The Helliza Files.

Generativity

2011-10-27T19:39:00.000+08:00

And just because we are wrinkled old prunes doesn't mean we don't marvel at the cherries. On the contrary, we love the cherries. We love watching them gallivanting and frolicking and getting plumpier and redder and brighter by the minute. Obviously I am talking about brand new doctors now coming to the fold, including The Daw of course, who will be in their 10th year of college. Yes, we should just label college in such a way so as not to fool ourselves with those damn "graduations" because truly, it doesn't end. It doesn't ever end.

And so in the spirit of cherrieness I will now re-post what I used to write when I was still quite a cherry myself, which has since then been plucked, left under the sun, and transformed into a fucking pasas. This entry has originally been posted in my blog in.... Friendster (AHAHAHAHAAH!) and it's entitled, "Chancre".

My MD friend recently tested positive for syphilis in the routine serum RPR testing for pre-employment in PGH. He was quite annoyed. He whined "UNFAIR!", because he once had an extremely promiscuous patient with chancre (painless penile ulcer of syphilis), who still tested negative for the damn test. I think my friend was particularly annoyed because of one of these possible reasons: a) he was a virgin, or b) he was always very careful and wore triple-layered condoms to the point of penile asphyxia. Of course the test has extremely low specificity, but my friend neither has malaria, lupus, or yaws as far as he knows. In fact, he doesn’t even remember what the heck yaws is. One of his colleagues said he must have taken the test on full stomach accounting for the false positive. There could be some truth to this but this is the first time he’s heard of it, so for now it still sounds like the drinking milk prior to taking a chest x-ray thing.
Okay let’s cut the friend crap that friend is really me. I tested positive for AIDS, I mean syphilis, and I am quite annoyed. Because dang it if I’m going to test positive for STDS I would rather that I enjoyed acquiring them.

NNO

2011-10-23T22:17:00.001+08:00

I have a pathologic inability to escape situations. Such that if a talkish person suddenly accosts me in the corridor and makes kwento for hours on end I would find it too difficult to push her aside and run to wherever I need to go. Or if someone all of a sudden invites me to something I would hem and haw and stutter and stammer before I could give an excuse making it obvious that I'm lying so I would just say, with much dread, SURE! I'D LOVE TO COME TO YOUR PERFORMANCE POETRY EXHIBITION! Mrs. Therese regards this as part of a syndrome I am afflicted with (can't say no, afraid to offend someone, inability to lie quickly and convincingly), ie, some kind of a Wuss Syndrome. This is the reason why I was for a time vortexed into attending a couple of weird religious events in UP Diliman, which deserves another ranty, self-deprecating, shameful blog entry all together.

And just recently, a patient was quite chatty. During weekend rounds I plan to make a maximum of five minutes-per-patient rounds. I set a timer. Because if I stay and chat with everyone leisurely I would get home at 10pm. Except Faciphaga Emasculata was strangely chatty and I just... couldn't.... escape. He wouldn't let me, and he made it clear. "Wag kang aalis," he said.

Interestingly, he delivered quite a number of points. And even exhibited some kind of skill on how to deliver a story, make sure the listener is engaged, and make sure he CAN'T ESCAPE. For an hour. The salient points being:

1. "You look like you're 21 years old." (Ahoy! Way to get my undivided attention)
2. "We live in a crazy country." (POINT!)
3. "You need to pray for God to give you a good wife." (Talagang PRAY ahahahaha)
4. Viagra rules.
5. Money drives the world.
6. That his girlfriend, in a rating scale of 1-10, is an ELEVEN.
7. Connections rule.
8. and his last advice to me: "Marry someone rich."

After minutes and minutes and minutes on end of inability to escape, I finally did a rote physical examination and managed to sheepishly slink away. My entry in the chart: continue present management.

14

2011-10-22T22:34:00.006+08:00

On a regular consult with my pediatrician many many many many years ago, she took out a prescription pad and outlined to me my career options. I was in grade 6, and she was already concerned about my career. Maybe she sensed that I have The Force, or at least a potential, or potentials, but I wasn't pleased in any case because what she didn't sense was what I really wanted to be. And that is... to be extremely obese and hairy and smelly and have my own action figure and comic book shop where I would regale my customers with endless comic book tidbits dating back to the 30's! And do comic book podcasts on the side.

So she wrote down: LAW. And beside it: four years college, four years law proper.

And then she wrote MEDICINE. Four years college, five years medicine proper, three years residency, two years fellowship= 14 FUCKING YEARS. She did not write the word FUCKING, but she might as well have to stress the point. She should have underlined "14", encircled it, highlighted it, drew asterisks and stars and encircled it again many many times, just so I would get the point. The blasted point. That 14 years are bleeping long. I could have had a child at the beginning and he would now be in high school. I could have started drinking heavily at the onset and now have cirrhosis. That long.

In all fairness to her, she did tell me directly, "Wag ka na mag-doktor."

Kids, you should really really really listen to your elders.

Warm and Fuzzy

2011-10-22T21:35:00.001+08:00

Been in the dumps lately.

So you guess this is another one of those whining, moaning, groaning posts right? Wrong. On the contrary, this is a post on being warm and fuzzy.

In an attempt to somehow crawl out of the dumps a few notches up I took my brother's DVD player and rammed in the DVD of... Super Friends! I figured an overdose of nostalgification for the times when things were simple blather blather blather would somehow lift me up. Speaking of lifting me up, I've blogged a few years ago that the neighbor's loud music rivals my iPod in being an empath, ie, it plays songs that would somehow fit my frame of my mind at the time. For instance, after a toxic WAPOD duty when a patient died on my watch a few years ago I went home to take a bath. While rehearsing the tragic events of the night and ruminating how I've directly caused the death and stuff, what should play in the neighbor's radio but Apologize by One Republic, ie, it's too late to apologize for the delayed intubation, delayed referral, inadequate management, ruminate and cry some more. And just more recently when I was once again in the dumpiest of dumps what should suddenly blare out of the neighbor's radio but.... Through The Rain by Mariah Carey. I choked out laughing and was instantly relieved of misery for a while.

Back to Super Friends. Many, many years ago Super Friends was the highlight of the week. You could not download anything yet, there were no DVD's or whatever, and I would have to wait one whole week for Thursday 11 am for Super Friends. I would mark my calendar and get all gleeful and shit if there were five Thursdays. My favorite part of the show is the iconic intro.

"SHOOOPERMAN! Batman and Robin!"

Of course I figured that I would probably hate the show now and be turned off by the ridiculous stories and inferior animation. Or if I would like it it would probably just be nostalgification.

I was wrong. I've enjoyed it immensely. The stories are excellent. The animation is fantastic. The voices are wonderful. The intro gets me all giddy and crap. The show is FUN. And in light of the current DC comics reboot which is not getting any better, when you have to follow stories for months and months and even years for some kind of pay off, Super Friends is golden.

And I never understood all the hate for the Wonder Twins. Their powers are fantastic. I for one would like to know what it feels like to be a stegosaurus. Or a glass of water.

We Would Like To Commend The Daw

2011-10-20T18:42:00.003+08:00

For treating us to Jollibee!!!

And she really meant the treat, too. In fact, she went out of her way to wake me up and suggest ways on how I could drag myself out of bed, and has regaled us with inside information on the seedy goings on in the recently concluded Internal Medicine tribal council/rose ceremony. And for more, she treated us to Jollibee because she is now back to the shore, where she would be swimming, fighting for fish and lumot to eat, evading sharks, and interacting with piranhas for the next 3-5 years. Congratulations, The Daw, you have toiled to near-craziness for the past year to get where you are, and as Smoketh has told me in 2007 when I got accepted into the program, "Welcome to pseudo-hell!"

For 3 years I had no idea why it was called "pseudo-hell". The concept of a pseudo-hell is difficult to grasp to begin with, because I don't know where the word pseudo comes in, and I sure don't think the demons I've met along the way were "pseudo". They felt quite genuinely demonic, thank you very much.

So I don't know why Smoketh had called it pseudo-hell. Until I graduated into... fellowship, or more appropriately, HELLOWSHIP! Ahoy! Fires a'blazin, nude demons prancing galore!

So to quote Smoketh again, who should be commended herself for her precognitive abilities because she wasn't even in hellowship when she originally said this, "Welcome to Pseudo-Hell!"

Girlfriend Material

2011-10-12T20:06:00.000+08:00

A few weeks ago Mary Anne Sue, a close female friend, had some problems with her boyfriend. I wasn't there during the acute phase (welling of tears and throwing of breakable objects), but I was there during the subacute phase (no more tears left to cry--for the day). Now with Mary Anne Sue I have taken on a role I don't take with other people--that of a girlfriend. I've been a girlfriend to her when she found looove, lending my listening ear to the squishy and the saccharine, so I knew I should take that role now that things have come full circle, when the squishy and saccharine have turned dour and dreadful. So that night of the breakup, along with The Daw, I've transmogrified once again into... a girlfriend.

I was doing the job fantastically, if I may say so myself. I was able to strike the perfect balance between just listening in with nodding effects and saying something that was fitting to that rather precarious time of emotional instability. You couldn't say something too bad about the dude--she might still love him for all we know, and for all we know they could be getting back together right that moment through text. You couldn't say something too good either--what if she's been feeling so wronged in the whole situation and you sound like you're siding with him? The facial expressions count, I surmised. I couldn't put on my default listening ear facial expression--because the default is listening to someone cry how heartbreaking it is to have cancer. I couldn't put on a very neutral facial expression either--because what the heck we're not talking about bland coffee, this is relationship crumbling down (who raised you?!) So after all these analyses I had my girlfriend demeanor on. Saying the right nuggets of stuff of things.

The next day I chanced upon Mary Anne Sue having dinner this time with Queen Mum and Frichmond. I joined them. To my fascination Queen Mum and Frichmond gave their INSIGHTS. And the INSIGHTS were really INSIGHTS, something Mary Anne Sue could really think about, something she could REALLY USE. They were SOUND INSIGHTS, not fucking SOUND BITES. They had analytic opinions on the various sides of the story. And on the angles of the sides of the surface of. I was aghast. All this time I thought I was being the perfect girlfriend, when in fact I was churning... cliches.

Because it has suddenly dawned on me how craptastically craptastic the sound bites I've counseled Mary Anne Sue with were. Specially now that I'm typing them. Because you know what I told her that night?

COUNSEL 1: Don't worry, things will unfold.
COUNSEL 2: It is what it is.

Anyone for a girlfriend?

Floss

2011-10-09T21:02:00.002+08:00

One of my favorite daily activities is flossing my teeth. It may not seem like it, but I like flossing my teeth. To bleeding level. Truly I must have been doing it wrong for years on end, because after flossing my mouth always hurts like crap. I try to maintain proper dental hygiene at the behest of my high school friend dentist Tim Drake, who has now improved in all respects as a dentist. When he was still new in this profession he would commit tiny mistakes, such as asking me questions that require more than a yes or a no answer while metallic implements and stuff are being poked in my mouth ("Paano nagkakilala si Trina at si Troy?"), or getting so engrossed in a monologue that he doesn't notice that my shirt is now totally wet from all the water flowing from my mouth.

I am remembering this incident because right now I am so hungry and for some rather perplexing reason I have the urge to eat those floss-themed bread. A used dental floss would have to be the smelliest thing in all of creation (really, try it, try to smell a used dental floss), so I'm constantly perplexed why food called floss would seem appetizing, or why I want want want to eat it right now. Many, many years ago when we were in grade 6 Mrs. Platypi noted that my classmate Michael was eating in class. Of course she had to point it out out loud in front of the class, totally incensed and stuff. That would have to be my lasting memory of elementary teachers and librarians, they are always fucking INCENSED.

Mrs. Platypi: Michael ANONG KINAKAIN MO?!?!

Michael opened his mouth, took out the thing he was nibbling, and non-chalantly said:

Michael: Ma'am, TINGA.

TINGA!

Leaked Interview Questions

2011-10-09T20:46:00.001+08:00

And in a few days time, I think, the pre-residency live competition ends! I don't know most of them, basically because I'm old! And nobody wants to rotate in our clinic with those icky chemo stuff! Kikimo! Ahoy! Who will get in? Who will get the much coveted spots? Who will get a rose? Who will... spiral down to hell? Because really, again, WHY? AHAHAHAHAH.

A year ago I've posted the chief residency interview questions which I've managed to finagle through seedy people who've demanded me to do seedy STUFF. This year it's high time for me to give my service to the always-running, eternally-busy-busy(han), ten-page-writing pre-residents! Henceforth, I present to you, this year's stolen application interview questions! STOLEN I TELLS YA!

1. You are in the Emergency Room, your armpits sweating like crap. And there the patient sits, all anasarcous and stuff, and you've ruled out everything, so you don't know what the heck is going on. In other words, the patient's case is an S.A.T. (Sh#t, Ano To?!?).

Do you:
A. panic
B. ask your seniors and get reprimanded in a senior voice as if they themselves know what the diagnosis is
C. check Wikipedia
D. Drink JEKA juice
E. Go to ambs and LUR!

2. You've committed a HORRIBLE medical mistake. While frantically resuscitating a patient with no BP, in pure franticness, instead of screaming with conviction "LEVOPHED!" you've screamed with conviction, "NICARDEPINE DRIP! STAT! STAAAAT!!!" What do you do?

Do you:
A. Frantically search Pubmed for anything that will support your mistake. Any journal will do, even if the subjects are aardvark fetuses.
B. Shamefully cover your face and scream, "FUUUUCK!"
C. You will not dignify this stupid question, because you think you're smart and that I'm just messing with you.
D. You say, what's the problem, you can wash out the nicardepine ANYWAY by giving FUROSEMIDE. STAT!!!!

3. Your senior is a total whacked out bitch. In real life she's a totally nice person, but you just hate her because you think she's a total whacked out bitch. But in your heart of hearts you really LOVE her. Romantically, in fact. That bitchy way she asks questions, that condescending way she explains stuff during morning endorsements, her weird diagnoses which are totally wrong, and all those tiny annoying things about her which really makes you get up in the morning. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THIS?

A. You take anti-psychotics, because you're a wacko yourself.
B. You analyze if your heart of hearts has an even deeper heart of heart of hearts which declares that you ABHOR her ugly face.
C. You declare in the callroom that you will court her and get laughed at for years on end.
D. You tell yourself: It is what it is.

4. You are already a first year resident, and as is always the case five things happen at the same time demanding your undivided attention all at the same time: your patient in the wards is gasping, it's already four thirty and you haven't started your continuity clinic where ten patients are waiting for you, another patient in the wards is bleeding to exsanguination, you need to get a chart in the records section for your mortality report tomorrow and it's about to close, and a consultant is demanding that you call her NOW. Question: What is running in your head right now?

A. This is a test of character.
B. Damn it I should have come in at 4am so I could do all these things in an organized manner.
C. Truly my twenty batchmates will help me out.
D. FUCK THIS SHIT!

You finally get accepted! And in a few weeks' time, TEAMBUILDING! What will you wear?

a. Poison Ivy, specifically how she looks in the fantastic Batman mini-series The Widening Gyre:

b. Black Canary, specifically a lecherous internet artist's rendition of:

c. Robin, because I love Robin. In fact, I AM Robin! But since you're a girl you can be the short-lived sexy female Robin Stephanie Brown.

d. And before you accuse me of misogyny, here's a sexy guy costume for the guys. It's easy too, just paint some arrow heads on your chest and blood on your mouth and you're... Catman! From the very fun series Secret Six illustrated by Nicola Scott.

Get ready for the interviews! Or not. Just follow your heart. Or something. Or just give socially acceptable answers. Or not, because the questions might be trick questions. Or double trick questions. Or double negative trick questions. In which case follow your heart... of hearts.

Our Rant For The Day

2011-09-15T19:57:00.012+08:00

Does not come from me, much to your relief. I have severe sore throat that if I use too many exclamation points it would hurt so much more. What's that you say, that it could be lymphoma? OF COURSE IT IS LYMPHOMA! What ELSE could it be?!? I've been groaning this morning in the callroom to my co-hellows that I have tonsillar lymphoma. Someone reminded me that in the past few months I HAVE HAD the following: liver cancer, gastric cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, rectal cancer, and of course, pinna melanoma. I'm going through the entire gamut, but as paranoid people afraid of government conspiracies and black ops and cover-ups and such say, you're not paranoid if they're really after you.

Our rant for the day instead will come from Linda, the Juliane Moore character from the ever reliable movie Magnolia. The premise is this: Linda is the sort of cosmopolitan girl who married a really old guy for his money who is now dying from, what else, cancer. She realizes, in pure heartbrokenness, that she really loves him after all. So she runs from one doctor to the next who prescribed her husband some powerful pain-killers. As she is buying all these powerful stuff (Mmmmmm, powerful STUFF), the pharmacists eye her with doubt. When she couldn't take the judgmental comments ANYMORE, OR, when she couldn't ANYMORE take the judgmental comments, she lets out this fantastic rant. Take it away, Juliane Moore:

You motherfucker...you motherfucker....
 YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?
 WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

I COME IN HERE - YOU DON'T KNOW,
 YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM
 OR WHAT MY LIFE IS AND YOU HAVE THE
 FUCKING BALLS, THE INDECENCY TO ASK
 ME A QUESTION ABOUT MY LIFE --

And FUCK YOU TOO.  Don't you call me "lady."


 I come in with these things, I give it
 over to you, you doubt, you make your
 phone calls, check on me, look suspicious,
 ask questions, "I'm sick." I HAVE SICKNESS
 ALL AROUND ME AND YOU FUCKING ASK ME MY LIFE?
 WHAT'S WRONG?  HAVE YOU SEEN DEATH IN YOUR BED
 IN YOUR HOUSE?  And where is your fucking
 decency?  That I'm asked questions "WHAT'S WRONG?"
 You suck my dick, that's what's wrong and you,
 you fucking call me "lady."  You SHAME ON YOU.
 SHAME ON YOU. SHAME ON BOTH OF YOU.


Now THAT is one giant rant.

Which suddenly gives me an idea. I should
popularize this rant somehow and somehow trick people into thinking it's... a 
declamation piece! Now that should win grade-conscious, extra-curricular-grabbing 
students the medal over the other contestant who just bawls her eyes out 
over.... ALMS ALMS SPARE ME A PIECE OF BREAD!

Slurp-eth

2011-09-13T21:25:00.001+08:00

In grade 2, one of my most hated years in my life, like first year med, first year college, hellowship, 2nd year high school... wait if I go on I would sound totally miserable. AHAHAHA. So in grade 2 one fun fun fun day who should celebrate her birthday but one of our classmates, Cathy. The teacher egged her to go in front so we could sing to her, and she did. She smiled and giggled and cheered as we sang, not realizing that fifteen years into the future she would... wait I don't know what happened to her, so nothing there. So we sang sang sang and we clapped genuinely because truly birthdays are totally cheeri-o.

After the singing the teacher asked her to close her eyes for a few seconds and wish for something. She did. The teacher then asked her, "What did you wish for?"

And you know what she said? YOU KNOW WHAT SHE FUCKING SAID?!

She said: I WANT SPAGHETTI.

I am doing a pointless anecdotification because truly, right now, in total hunger: I WANT SPAGHETTI. Although probably not in the level that Smoketh WANTS SPAGHETTI. There is no way that I can WANT SPAGHETTI the same way Smoketh WANTS SPAGHETTI. This is obviously an aftermath of last Saturday, when we attended the dedication of Mrs. Therese's second child, Pipo. After the ceremony we lightened up as we saw a cute plate containing red spaghetti, hotdog-let with marshmallow, chicken lollipop, and cream puffs. We were poised to eat the luscious treats when we discovered that... the plate is for kids and adults have a separate buffet of rice vegetables beef buko pandan and other adult food!!!!

So you know you want it Cathy and we know we fucking want it too. We want to slurp it bite it get our faces smeared in it. We want, oh how we want, spaghetti.

Oh, Powergirl

2011-09-12T21:44:00.006+08:00

One of the casualties in the blasted DC Comics relaunch is Powergirl. To recap: Powergirl is the parallel Earth version of Supergirl, but her Earth's Superman has died in Infinite Crisis. For over two years she has grown from a joke of a character popular for her magnificent boob window, to one who is a well-respected completely fleshed out heroine.

In the final issue of Powergirl, a villain gives her only one minute to address the following crises: 1. save the old people in the leaning tower of pisa which is being attacked by a villain or 2. save a "useless girl fishing for a useless fish" or 3. save one of her fellow heroines. Of course Powergirl makes a way to save everyone in just one minute. This is a FANTASTIC issue, made more fantastic only by this scene showing the fishing girl being menaced by a z-list villain:

It's SPOT THE PINOY time!

And Powergirl successfully saves the kid!!! With just 12 seconds to spare!

And thanks the whole fishing community at that!!!

Good bye, Powergirl. May you live once more in the upcoming DC Relaunch, and we hope to see more of you in the Philippines!

Welcome Back To The Shore

2011-09-07T20:10:00.002+08:00

Was frantically running around doing the things I usually whine about, and realized I've been doing this thing for seven months now. Seven months, of whining, doing things ANYWAY, whining, doing things ANYWAY, because really, WHADDAYAGONNADO. And WHO should I see surpassing my franticness and secretly whining in their heads but... this year's batch of pre-residents! Pre-residency has always been some sort of an event, because really, with all the rote-ness going on in the daily grind, we welcome any sort of new face we could come across. New faces, red and plump and cherried, which we hope won't dry up and prunify at the slightest provocation. This of course leads to all sorts of nostalgification, as it has only been four fucking years ago that I was in those same darn shoes.

Pre-residency specially in this department can be quite tricky. Everyone is competitive as hell, and knowing what is coming to them once they get accepted you would wonder why they are fighting for these positions ANYWAY. Yet despite the competitiveness one should still project some sort of congeniality, but at the same time you don't want to be too congenial lest you be misconstrued as being too laid back, but at the same freaking time you don't want to be misconstrued as being a total cut-throat bitch, but at the SAME bleeping time with just three weeks of opportunity to shine amongst the fifty or so competitors who has time to NOT be a cut-throat bitch ANYWAY? So the best image to probably project is that of an unfazed busy-busyhan applicant.

We all have our dark, dirty strategies on how we got in, but we will not go into the details here. Too embarrassing, and even I have my limits on self-deprecation. Just remember, applicants, that this is not the end of the world, you are not fighting for one million dollars, you won't get cancer if you don't get accepted, and there are far better opportunities elsewhere. If those nuggets of advice don't convince you, just look at me. I got accepted, finished it, and right now I'm miserable as hell.

Baseline Karindihan

2011-09-04T21:25:00.001+08:00

On to my attempts to read every comic book ever written. I am presently resuming my reading of Peter David's 80-issue run on Supergirl, the version that isn't Superman's cousin from Krypton but is rather the Matrix-Lana Lang DNA-Earth Angel-Linda Danvers hybrid.

So this is what happens: Supergirl's sort-of-boyfriend Dick Malverne is struck with some stage 4 cancer, and through a series of misadventures she inadvertently causes the cancer to progress and worsen and he dies. A cult is formed that regards Supergirl as an angel who can work miracles, so people with cancer cancer cancer and stuff flock to her for cure. In pure baseline karindihan she flees and sees some people in trouble. One woman tells Supergirl to please help her because she has to get home because her husband has, you guess it, lung cancer. Of course Supergirl only has one thing to say, and, all together now (and special mention to Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore) ALL TOGETHER NOW:

Hello, Simone Bianchi, What Were You Thinking

2011-09-01T21:53:00.001+08:00

Since nobody in the vicinity ever reads comic books these days I resort to comic book message boards and podcasts like a sorry attic dwelling pathetic crap. During the round table interview with all the consultants in the subspecialty application last year I was asked what I do in my spare time.

"I read comic books!" I said.

"Wow! What kind?" consultant HS asked. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic. There's hope here, I thought.

"DC and Marvel," I said.

"Ay, mainstream," HS tsk-tsked.

"Comic books in your spare time?" the chair asked. "But you could read a comic book in FIVE MINUTES."

"Yes, but you see, in a month they release over NINE Batman titles," I explained. "There's Batman, Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Birds of Prey...." at which point they all zoned out and decided it's probably time to call the next applicant.

My favorite comic book podcast is Awesomed By Comics by the husband-wife team of Evie and Aaron. Evie is described as having an adult-onset superhero comic book habit, who confessed that she got into comic books because of a boy. So there is hope for everyone. The format of the show is they give weekly awards to the comic book releases for the week, such as Hero of the Week, Cover of the Week, and such, but my favorite is Crap of the Week.

In the Crap of the Week a couple of weeks ago Evie declared that her choice is Psylocke's outfit in Uncanny X-Force as illustrated by Simone Bianchi. Aaron described that in this outfit Psylocke's labia (aka beef flaps) could spill out. I follow X-Men related titles whenever I can, but I have not seen the latest issue of X-Force at this point, so surely this is reason enough to look for the damn issue! And here it is, ladies and gentlemen, just when I thought it was an exaggeration, here is Psylocke beef flaps and all:

Anybody interested in this for the next team-building?

I Wasn't Dead

2011-09-01T21:01:00.002+08:00

You mean you were gone? You asked. Yes, indeed, I 've been absent for quite some time. I've been in a parallel universe where everything is airconditioned, there's always dessert in the rationed food, the elevators are fast, the people smell good, everyone is polite, things happen without getting off your ass, where patients are partners, and people pretend they don't notice my pinna melanoma. Except when the coffers quickly ran empty, indeed, at which point we all screamed: get us the hell outtahere!!!!

And Now For Something Absolutely Disgusting: Pinna Melanoma

2011-09-01T20:39:00.001+08:00

And you're probably thinking, of course this will not be about anything disgusting this is just a hook and will probably be just about some self-indulgent crap like Wonder Woman's disgusting story line Odyssey or Superman's disgusting story line Grounded. Again. Wrong. This is about something absolutely disgusting, pus-level disgusting at that! Oh yeah!

Because I woke up one morning with my left earlobe swelling like crap. Maybe something bit it, but I kept on toying with it until the swelling swelled even further until it grew as large as my head. It was Jamielyn who noticed it first who theorized it was a disgusting ear zit. "Uminom ka ng antibiotics," she admonished. "Dahil hindi mo ako pwedeng iwan sa audit next week dahil dyan." Point!

But if it were a zit it probably wasn't just one zit, but ten coalescent zits. Smoketh theorized that it was probably a roach bite infected by hospital pseudomonas. Probably, except I knew for a fact what it absolutely really was: melanoma. Just because I've just had a melanoma patient doesn't make it not a melanoma, I wasn't just being biased, it looked absolutely like melanoma. Hence, in true IM PGH fashion this was the final diagnosis: Melanoma vs Arthropod Bite r/o Zit with Superimposed Bacterial Infection Acute on Top of Chronic.

The stares of disgust I could handle, as long as they were outright stares. Except, as I was talking to a fellow or a resident in another hospital they would talk with nods and crap as if nothing was the matter, but I would catch them taking the furtivest glance at my pinna melanoma! If you have something to say, say it to my face my irrational frenzied self thought, but really, if you have something to say say it to my face! Like Smoketh did: STOP TOUCHING YOUR PINNA MELANOMA! Or Frichmond did: KADIRI NA ANG TENGA MO! Or Sir J.O. said, WHAT HAPPENED TA YER EAR?!? See, sometimes we don't know what we want, because I'm sure if the furtive people started talking about it to my face, I would defensively retort, WELL YOU DON'T LOOK SO PERFECT YOURSELF!!!!

Pant. A few days ago I've incised the damn thing myself and out poured/spurted/egressed gallons and gallons of pus. I cried in absolute pain as the gallons and gallons of pus crept down the side of my neck and into my shirt and down to the floor. Now that's purulent shit.

Brown Envelope

2011-08-07T21:37:00.002+08:00

While thumb twiddling in the elevator hoping that the day would end soon (it wouldn't, it was just 9 am), who should come in when the elevator doors opened but.... The Daw! The Daw was visibly frantic, because she had to take a second look at my smirking face before she recognized me. Before she could make up some excuse (ie, "Errr, I am just here for my annual colonoscopy"), I immediately pointed out: "Whattup, The Daw, is that.... a brown envelope full of requirements you're carrying?!?"

Brown envelopes rule, because they can carry papers and stuff, but they are also a status of transit. Ooooh, pretentious. In my wilderness year back in 2006 when I've just passed the med boards and was trying to make some money in moonlighting I realized that I felt like a total aplikante as I rode jeepney rides after jeepney rides going from one clinic or hospital to the next for a fucking raket carrying, what else, a brown envelope.

The wilderness year, for all the sense of streamlessness it has brought, still had its blessings and... craptastic joy. For instance, I was thankful for that gig in the clinic in Enchanted Kingdom. Well not really, it bored the crap out of me. Or maybe it was still some sort of a blessing, because I got to read a boatload of books and comicbooks while sitting in the clinic waiting for someone to be wheeled in after getting dizzy from Space Shuttle (a.k.a. Post-Ride Vertigo, what the hell right). In what was supposedly the only exciting moment the friend (who was also a doctor) of a patient who got a "Post-Ride Vertigo" said:

"Baka nag-aarrhythmia na sya!!!!!"

She wasn't having an arrhythmia. She was just having.... a post-ride vertigo.

The Greater Depths

2011-08-07T20:14:00.001+08:00

In the midst of all this bitterness over the tragedy that our lives have turned into (exaggerated of course, we don't want to sound ungrateful for our blessings but we must keep up a veneer of whinified distress), Smoketh and I have sighed that truly we wish we were born with a silver spoon rammed down our throats. Of course Smoketh herself was born with a silver spoon and 6 bronze kanyons, but we are referring to those people who were born with a silver spoon, went to college, took up medicine, got married, went places, and still, after all those years, still have the fucking silver spoons epoxied to their ngala-ngalas. Truly it takes a whole lot of luck, intelligence, and great decision-making skills to maintain that thing you could perpetually suck on.

"Yayaman kaya tayo," Smoketh inquired as she guzzled in an extremely saccharine alcoholic drink.
"Rest assured that if I get rich, I will buy you.... a tub of green tea ice cream."

A common friend immediately popped in our heads. We realized that he is the perfect example of being born with a silver spoon and maintained it through sheer intelligence and more silver spoons.
"He does not only have a silver spoon," Smoketh enthused. "He also has all sorts of silverware."
"And soup," I said.
"And salad, bread and butter, salmon sushi, five main courses, palate cleansers, desserts," Smoketh whined.
"And post-dessert coffee, post-coffee mints, lur, post-lur mints, and crystal water," I said with finality.

See if you choose to you can always sink yourself further into the greater depths of depression.

Bula

2011-08-03T20:26:00.001+08:00

A few weeks ago my parents visited me and brought me dinner. Home cooked meals are precious and always a welcome change from the Jollibee/Wow Ulam/COOP trifecta, more so in this era of abject poverty. Precious does not even cut it, GOLDEN is more like it. I ate the longganisa with rice from the disposable container which I threw out afterwards, but kept the Tupperware from which I slurped ginisang monggo. Having no ref or microwave I slurped half of the ginisang monggo cold and kept the rest. Everything was fun and golly gee.

Except a few days ago, when what should I discover, among the rubble of my table, covered amongst totally unrelated things (books, pens, X-Files DVD, chemo drugs, wood shavings, Smurfs Happy Meal action figure)…. but The Tupperware containing the half-eaten monggo. I then remembered, it has been two weeks. Either the seal is fantastic, or I have NPCA.

With much trepidation I opened the damn cover and discovered…. froth. Occupying the entire fucking Tupperware. The smell is of course horrendous. I immediately threw the crap out and swished swished swished the Tupperware in tap water. Fantastically the smell and the bubbles sort of disappeared… even without soaping! So I immediately put the cover back on. And threw the damn thing back amongst the books, pens, X-Files DVD, chemo drugs, wood shavings, and Smurfs Happy Meal action figure.

Ibabad mo yan sa kumukulong tubig for one day, Smoketh and Frichmond have succinctly admonished.
Sometimes I wish I were a better person. Because while other blogs talk about touching patient encounters and such I talk about... fucking anaerobic craptastic bula.

Cherries

2011-07-29T22:03:00.002+08:00

How I love them. Those red, plump, round cherries—succulent and wet, rolling nicely in your mouth. You can pop them, concurrently crisp and chunky, and suck suck suck in that tangy-sweet sensation. Back in the days whenever my mother would whip up some fruit salad of sort she would open a can of del monte fruit cocktail, and I would have to compete with everyone for that lone red cherry mixed in the cocktail of pointless grapes, pineapples, and other pieces of crap. It was so alone, as alone as the pork in pork and beans. It would be years later that an elder would rebuke us. It’s not genuine cherry, he would say. It’s just a painted grape or some pedestrian fruit. Maybe he was tricking us, so he could eat the damn cherry himself. This would lead to me forgetting all about cherries.

Until years later when I saw an X-Files episode entitled Chinga where this evil girl with an evil doll was in Dairy Queen. She had just finished her ice cream, and she went to the counter. You know what she said? She said “I want more cherries.” And the snooty counter girl told her, “You gotta ask your mom for more money, sweetie.” And girl repeated, “I WANT MORE CHERRIES!” And you know what she did when counter girl wouldn’t give her any more cherries? She (or was it her evil doll?) telekinetically made counter girl’s hair get caught in some ice cream machine which pulled her scalp out. See, if someone tells you she wants some cherries, she means she wants some fucking cherries!!!

Recently went in the usual sponsored hotel dinners, and one of the desserts was this tiny cake on which you would put a cherry on top. I didn’t put the cherry on top—I got a plate of cherries and put the tiny cake on top! Because you don’t turn cherry into a garnish, it is food in itself and it is the food that you garnish!!!

I apologize for the cherry rage. I just want some cherries.

Research Paper/Tabloid Mode

2011-07-26T18:38:00.002+08:00

Pinag-uusapan lamang namin ni Smoketh nung isang araw na habang tumatanda kami at nagiging mga tinapay na may amag, or mismong amag, lalong umiiksi ang aming mga attention span. Halimbawa nagkukwentuhan kami nina Frichmond habang kumakain ng Subway sandwich, mga apat na threads na sabay-sabay ang pinag-uusapan, mapuputol sa gitna, at maaalala na lang ulit after 1 hour. Hindi ko na kayang manood ng pelikula sa TV or sa laptop, after two minutes magbubukas na ako ng window ng digital comics, o magsusulat ng blog sa isa pang window. Kung nangyari ito nung mid-90's maaari naming sisihin ang MTV, pero sa ngayon wala na yatang nanonood ng MTV. Hindi na rin pwedeng sisihin ang text messaging and crap, mga social psychologists whatever na lang siguro ang mag susulat ng mga ganoong bagay. Ganito siguro talaga pag nagiging prune, tinapay na may amag, o mismong amag.

Siguro ang isang bagay na maaaring sisihin dito ay ang ilang taong pagpapraktis ng intense na pakikinig kunwari sa nakakataas na doktor kagaya ng fellow at consultant, or ng intense na pakikinig sa klinik habang sinasabihan ka ng lahat ng problema at nararamdaman. May nodding, may token "aaaah", may hawak konti ng kamay, hawak konti ng balikat, na sa totoo lang ang iniisip ay kung kailan ba ako makakakuha ng kornik na nasa drawer ng lamesa ko. Or baka hindi iyon cause, kundi isang manifestation mismo ng short attention span. Ang corny, may pa-ita-italics pa ng terms, para tuloy itong isang pretentious... psych paper. AHAHAHAHA.

Nung isang gabi halimbawa ay naka-download na ako sa wakas ng isang episode ng Games of Thrones. Maganda daw kasi sabi ni Ardee Lugo, Callistus Netromedev, at iba pa. Hindi ko masyado forte ang mga high-fantasy stuff, pero dahil hindi naman daw ito high-fantasy sorcerers-and-dragons stuff pinanood ko na rin. And nandito rin kasi si Boromir. After one minute ay... na-bore ako at scinroll ko na bigla sa ending ng episode. AHAHAHAHA. At (spoilers, as if) napa-mura ako sa final scene. Mabilis naman ako mapa-mura talaga, may makita lang akong ipis na lumilipad napapamura na ako nang husto. Pero sa final scene ay malutong ang mura, kung saan umakyat yung bata sa mataas na tore, at napanood nya sa bintana ng tore na nag-sesex yung dalawang characters. Nilapitan yung bata nung lalaki at... tinulak sya mula sa tore down down to the ground. Blag.

To be continued. Hmmm... mukang maganda.

Happy Birthday Smoketh!

2011-07-14T21:11:00.003+08:00

We're taking a break from our regular programming of comic book wet dreaming, hell-owship rants, and nostalgification for that particular time when we weren't such bitter old prunes so we could greet Smoketh a happy birthday! We are henceforth putting on our personalized Cerebras and telepathically sending out our greets and well-wishes to Smoketh, because as Frichmond has so succinctly put it, mawala man tayo sa kalendaryo, tayo ay nasa thermometer pa rin!

And so to our ultimate source of wisdom, our ultimate absorber of rants which are too prurient even for this blog, our ultimate source of blog-worthy material, from whom we learned that we can say "I don't know!" with conviction, from whom we learned that everything can sound good and erudite with proper diction, and from whom we learned that a cherry can transform into a prune and transmogrify back into the most poppable, reddest cherry, we greet ya a very happy birthday!

Tutubi Girl

2011-07-14T20:39:00.002+08:00

Been reading a lot of comics recently, mostly catching up on the 90's Supergirl, the train wreck but slowly recuperating Flashpoint, and a bunch of others, but what really captures my fancy is the excellent run of Grant Morrison in X-Men (New X-Men) and Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men. 2001 was the time when I've started to gag on anything X-Men what with the multiple cross-overs and titles of the 90's, but the runs of Morrison and Whedon are nothing short of fantastic. But we will not do a review here. Instead, we will feature a character Grant brought into picture and was later included in the recent X-Men movie, Angel. Angel is this filthy-looking girl with tutubi wings, so it must be more appropriate to call her Tutubi Girl. Tutubi Girl has dirty-looking hair, looks really mabantot, is quite nega, and she belches out some sort of goo-acid-suka concoction. Ladies and gentlemen, just because hers is the power I really want to have right now, I present to you: Tutubi Girl.

Mallet and Claw

2011-07-14T20:10:00.002+08:00

While quietly reading some comics BOTD messaged me all of a sudden. BOTD has recently quit some high-paying job in the military-industrial complex treating lab tests such as urinalysis with a WBC of 2-4 to prepare for her upcoming downward spiral to hell (ie, residency). Also, she has taken up some side job from The Man, encoding rheuma charts of the past decades for some database or something.

The BOTD has alerted me that what should be one of the charts she was encoding but my entries back when I was an intern rotating in the rheuma OPD.
"Intense. 2 pages ang history!" she exclaimed. "And for more, meron pa sa physical examination na... (+) mallet finger!!! AHAHAHAHAAH!"

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA, i replied. But in my head: Why the heck would I write a two page history? And for more, what the fuck is a (+) mallet finger? More appropriately, is there really such a thing as a mallet finger, and if so, what the fuck is a mallet finger?! I have degenerated so much quite shamefully that I probably wouldn't know a mallet finger from a claw something. See, I can't even complete it, just claw something.

Recently I've been seeing a lot of Mrs. Therese doing her rheuma rounds in Pay, and she would sometimes regale me with their complicated, mind-boggling cases. Truly it must be one of the more difficult fields of med, because more than anything it would require a special sort of astuteness. I've developed quite a high degree of astuteness back in residency, but it is degenerating quickly, and rapidly plummeting to hell of paranoia. The paranoia that everything, absolutely everything... is cancer.

Negasonic Superhuman Crapahoola

2011-07-11T20:39:00.005+08:00

Someone has created a Facebook account for our batch UP Medicine class 2006, which caused a deluge of photos. Let it be known that I hate first year medicine. Hate it. Like hell. The set-up was annoying, the schedule was annoying, I was not mentally well. First year med is one of those things that no amount of nostalgification/sepiatification can make it seem better or happier, because it’s quite hateful. The only bright spots in there were my anatomy groupies who were quite a riot, and my dorm neighbors who would give me rice, press my clothes, tolerate the music playing loudly from my room, and indulge my dream to acquire a Bat Signal. It was, at least, uphill from that year, as things started to get more fun and less neurotic the succeeding years.

The pics reminded me all of a sudden of our Physio-Biochem group. May ganun-ganun nga pala. Apparently we had to do some study of sort then, or something like that. All I remember is that it involves rats. In the group I was one of The Assets, ie, the ones who volunteered to do manual labor so we didn’t have to think. I would carry rat cages from one table to the next, volunteer to label stuff, and other blue collar stuff. Anything, just so I wouldn’t have to think. We have to be smart sometimes and reserve our heads for more important things, like figuring out the whole Phoenix-Dark Phoenix-Jean Grey-Jean Grey Manifestation-Madelyne Pryor web of crap.

In one such manual labor occasion The Assets forced a huge white rat in the supine position and tied all four extremities such that it was spread-eagled. I don’t know why. The huge white rat squirmed and squirmed and tried to escape from being tied in all fours. Negasonic Superhuman Crapahoola then ordered me… to slice the belly vertically. And so I did, like a Nazi. I thought the rat was properly sedated, but as soon as I sliced the belly open all sorts of rat intestines sloshed out like a good morning appendix. Rat woke up, maximally bent forward… and munched at its own fucking intestines.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” we all screamed.

“Abort! Abort!” Negasonic Superhuman Crapahoola ordered.

In my head: How.

“Abort! Abort!” Negasonic Superhuman Crapahoola ordered.

Since then we changed our subjects from live rats with emotions into emotionless balut. I think we had to count the blood vessels on the amnion or SOMETHING. Or maybe I’m just mixing things up.

The TCBAJFMAS Reboot!

2011-07-09T23:10:00.001+08:00

Something was announced last June that sent Voltage spraying from my nose and into the laptop screen. Out of nowhere it was announced that DC Comics is rebooting everything starting September, ie, the past 75 years will essentially be thrown in the trash for "a fresher, more accessible blather blather blather". This sent me into a fit for a few weeks. I was fangry. In my years of comic book reading I've worked my way through the most difficult storylines, I form in my head my fantasy teams everyday, I've neglected work, friends, general hygiene and stuff just to read the books they bring out no matter how crappy they might be (ie, Superman: Grounded, Wonder Woman: Odyssey). And now this. Like a wet kumot thrown to my face.

After a few weeks of rumination and fan-griness I've come to realize that instead of being very, very cross about this I could instead take this as an opportunity... to reboot This Could Be A Job For Mulder and Scully!!! Yes! Everything will be retconned, everything will start from scratch, all code names will be changed or code names could be switched for no reason whatsoever, there will be no more cursing, and such!!! I've attempted some sort of reboot back in 2008 in my old Friendster blog, and it was a total failure. I wrote in my reboot entry that henceforth I would no longer talk about the same pointless things I talk about and instead focus on the environment and oil spills and such, except the very next entry started with the sentence "Smoketh was sitting in Shrine Motherfucker 1..." so fail.

But this is the zero hour. From this point on.... things will no longer be the same. Not a hoax, not an imaginary story, because these will be the foci of the blog henceforth!!!
1. Geo-politics
2. Chemistry. A LECTURE on balancing chemical equations and stuff. Yung may small numbers sa lower right ng chemical symbol and stuff. Also vectors, but I think that's physics.
3. Well-being, health, and chakras.
4. Monster vehicles and races because they are cool.
5. The complete works of Ben Okri and Doris Lessing.

We will totally abolish the following recurrent themes/topics/styles/cheapshots which produce negativity and stuff:
1. Complaints, whinings, unified whinings, group whinings
2. Cursing. We don't like our kids looking for stuff about Mulder and Scully in the net only to stumble upon this site and read: You bad ass motherfucker! (that's a reference to the hilarious podcast Awesomed By Comics by Evie and Aaron. Fantastic podcast)
3. Anecdotes that only seem funny because there's nothing really funny going on in the hospital.
4. Comic book stuff. Because Wonder Woman and company are not real. Damn it they're not real.
5. The Fake-It-Till-We-Make-It laughter: AHAHAHAHAHAH. We'll be serious. All the days of our lives.

This reboot of This Could Be A Job For Mulder And Scully will prove to be fresher, more accessible, and more energized. Can't wait.

Elevator Ahoy

2011-07-09T21:13:00.002+08:00

Truly it's quite disheartening that the events I find worth blogging these days happen in the elevator.

Nevertheless.

And so I went into the elevator in the first floor and who should happen to walk in with me but our favorite Dr. Emeritus Ras Al Ghul and a much younger consultant Chewy. Chewy is quite an authoritative figure himself, but he is dwarfed by the grandeur and all-encompassing power of Ras Al Ghul, hence the rather unimpressive code name Chewy. We all love Ras Al Ghul. Whenever he scolds us in our morning rounds we feel like 5-year olds being admonished by our lolo.

I was going to the 7th floor, so was Chewy, while Ras Al Ghul was going to the 6th. Ras Al Ghul started to strike a conversation with Chewy.

Ras Al Ghul: Ah, Chewy, sino ba tong consultant na....
Chewy: Yes sir?
Ras Al Ghul: na.... na.... na...
Chewy: Yes sir?
Ras Al Ghul: na... ah....
Chewy: Sir?
Ras Al Ghul: ah...

TING!

Chewy: 6th floor na po.
Ras Al Ghul: Ah. Bye.

October's Very Cold

2011-07-08T21:17:00.003+08:00

The past weeks when my gadget cords have all decided to go on strike I've contented myself with exploring further the unexplored recesses of my iPot after charging it from various computers, ie, I've finally listened to the thousands of songs demanding for my attention and fine critique. There were fantastic finds, ie, songs that weren't particularly popular or radio hits, or no one recommended them as they are buried as track 8's or 9's in someone's obscure album, but which turned out to be quite amazing. There were vomity finds, ie, songs that I used to like but now deserve to be erased not only from my iPot but from all existence. There were also regurgitant finds, ie, songs that deserve to be vomited in the right state of mind, but I secretly like them and will never allow anyone to know that I like them and I will take the secret with me to the grave. Hence, these notes:

1. My 2010 Album of the Year is October's Very Cold. Because we like Drake, we like Coldplay, and when we throw their songs in the air and allow them to mix and drop on the ground they sound fantastic. And we like that synthesized girly voice who just whisper "October's Very Cold" randomly in all the tracks.

2. Surprise of the Week: I was chatting with a friend while half-listening to a random song, and I suddenly heard the line "She take my money well I'm in need yeah she's a triflin' friend indeed". I naively thought cinocover na agad si Kanye West. I checked what song was playing and it was the ultimate sinauna song "I Got A Woman" by Ray Charles which is obviously the one being sampled in Gold Digger. Both excellent songs.

3. Career Move of the Week: If my band becomes famous in the future I would name my band something really unique which, if you type in Google or Torrents, would not be mistaken for something else. But first I need to learn how to play an instrument, learn how to sing, or form a band. Tuscaloosa Centauri has recommended the band xx to me last year, and when I started to look for the band in the net the search engine generated a lot of porn sites. Nevertheless Crystalised rules. The band always sounds lazy when they sing, but really, who is not tinatamad these days.

4. Crap of the Week: The Across The Universe soundtrack has the most over-produced, over-arranged, over-dramaticized, over-everything cover of Beatles songs. The cover of Let It Be starts quietly enough until the fourth or fifth line when the histrionic duo singing is joined by... a CHOIR! Also, you could see the tears streaming down the girl singer's face as she caterwauls. Bigay na bigay. But you don't mess with Let It Be! We like our Let It Be straight-up and served on regular platter sprinkled with bits of LSD.

Whiners, Inc.

2011-07-08T20:27:00.004+08:00

Morning rounds in pay would be quite boring if not for my batchmates also roundsing for their specific subspecs who make it a point to make me feel that you don't have the world on your shoulders, you're not the only one developing rickets and all sorts of vitamin deficiency from eating too much pancit canton stop this infernal whinification. The other perspective, the one I'm taking more often, however, is that they all make it a point to share in the whining for one all-powerful MK unified whining. Because if we whine high-pitchedly enough and whine more often enough and unabatedly whine loud enough in solidarity the whines would cross the space-time continuum to a parallel universe where there is a unified group of whiners called Whiners, Inc.

Because we've come to realize that hellowship is not fun by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike residency which is 70% work and 30% lounging around in the callroom or going out with your fun batchmates spending your huge salary, hellowship is just zombified work. So much zombified, mechanical work, that having friends and enjoying socialization are just huge bonuses, but for the most part it is something we just need to go through and finish so we can proceed to the deeper circles of hell.

Smoketh and I have tried to make a list of present hell-ows enjoying their present state of being hell-ows. Marth has been scratched off, as he has been looking genuinely distressed the past few weeks and to his credit his whines are telepathic; Renrerenrenrenren has been walking like a kuba with dragging of the feet to further illustrate being a kuba with dragging of the feet; Frichmond, Smoketh, Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore, Tessieloopagooparoop and I are the touchstones of Whiners, Inc. so definitely not us. We have therefore concluded that only ONE person is genuinely enjoying hell-owship, and for that we applaud him, and for that we shall out his enjoyment to the world and use his real name and not his usual code name, and that person is:

Lowe Chiong.
You bad ass motherfucker.

Crisis On Infinite Gadgets

2011-07-08T20:09:00.002+08:00

For the past few years I have somehow staved off my mutant abilities to destroy nearby gadgets. My first ever handheld device is the much maligned, and deservedly so, Palm Zire 71 back in 2003. It's that cute blue thing whose abilities I cannot remember, because it would break down one way or the other every two days. Len-Len Lim being my partner in everything back in clerkship has become my technological emotional vampirism receptacle, ie, he would be on the receiving end for all my endless groanings and complaints and high-pitched, incensed questions about the unit. It is to Len-Len's credit that he didn't just grab the damn thing and shove it down my throat. In 2007 while riding an ordinary bus I asked the ticket boy for my ticket. He brought out a Palm Zire 71 with a mini-printer attached to it and printed me a ticket.

Recently, however, my gadgetification proved to be quite fantastic. My first generation clunky-looking Lenovo has never broken down, and it has survived multiple drops, spilled drinks, and all sorts of physical abuse. The iPot has also been wonderful, and to quote Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley when he expressed how much he loved his new ice box: "I could fuck this ice box!" And the poverty Sun phone peddled two years ago in PGH--fantastic, fantastic buy.

Except. In the past week, for some reason, gadgetification united has decided to make inarte. And because they know that I've weathered all sorts of gadget tantrums in the past they've decided to make a different sort of inarte: all their chargers stopped working. But I wouldn't throw a fit, I said, having emotional-technologically matured from the dark days of Zire 71. I went to Rob, calmly bought all sorts of cords and sardines for dinner, and had them functioning again. Sometimes these things just want attention.

SMF 1

2011-07-08T19:48:00.001+08:00

Smoketh is on some kind of leave, so we've been imagining her doing all sorts of weird stuff in Cebu. Except as I was rushing back to the dorm after I escaped the OPD who should I see sitting in one corner but.... Smoketh. Apparently she has to do some stuff for her researches, so just after a couple of days she's back. I dragged her outside to eat a sandwich, then left her so I could nap for five minutes. Napping is the best way to deal with clinginess, sense of entitlement, and the general annoyance of things, which generally characterize my daily routine. And whinification, just like that sentence, don't forget whinification.

Amazingly I was able to finish all the things I had to do while the sun was still up and I was able to join Smoketh and The Daw for dinner.

"Let's look for cheap spaghetti," Smoketh said.

"Noodle Boy. It's swimming in oil," I said. "Now that I know I don't have retained stones I want to guzzle bottles and bottles of nefarious oil."

"It's Sbarro then," Smoketh said.

Still file under: No Wage So Whine About Poverty we ordered for the first time some budget meal with a slice of cheese pizza and spaghetti and a cuplet of iced tea. We consumed the damn thing in two seconds.

"Lalo akong nagutom," I said.

"I want to eat more cheese," Smoketh said.

So we went out and bought from the food court stalls some corn and fries with cheese and barbecue powder. Flavored powder is fantastic, and we can make fake pizza with cheese powder, bread, and ketchup. In the midst of it all The Daw was ruminating on her plans for residency. Smoketh was ruminating on whether she should spend her remaining leave outdoors or smoke pot in their attic for one whole week. I was ruminating on where to get my next meal.

After her week-long leave was done I asked Smoketh what fun things she did.

“I stayed in bed for four days,” Smoketh said.

“Did you have sex while in bed?” I asked.

“I stayed in bed for FOUR days,” Smoketh replied.

“I see. So, did you fuck while in bed?” I asked.

And so on until everyone got bored and we left Shrine Motherfucker 1.

The Daw Is Alive.

2011-06-19T22:36:00.000+08:00

Smoketh was walking somewhere in PGH a few days ago, and said she saw an intern in scrubs with a frantic look on her face. A frantic look on her face while walking really fast, holding up an X-ray film against the light, while walking really really fast. We all know what frantically walking interns look like, and what they sound like, ie, the clanging of that bunch of keys clamped on their belts with dozens of paraphernalia (micropore, trodat, scissors, etc). Others would carry belt bags, which I think is cooler because belt bags with lots of pouches make you look like an over-illustrated Rob Liefield 90's X-Men character.

Back to intern-in-scrubs-frantically-walking-while-holding-an-X-ray-plate-against-the-light. Smoketh has described her more succinctly: Parang naintubate yung patient nya at malapit na syang kainin sa endorsements. Back in the wilderness years I would get nauseous every morning come endorsement time. Too much unnecessary shouting.

While watching the intern Smoketh thought she recognized her. It looked like... The Daw. She almost screamed "The Daw!" except... she realized that The Daw is dead. No just kidding, The Daw is still alive. But Smoketh has realized that The Daw has already graduated two years ago. Could have been a fantastic horror story, but let me clarify, The Daw is alive, very much alive and feverishly studying.

Luhaan

2011-06-19T22:15:00.004+08:00

If I get rich the first thing I'm going to buy is a secretary. Hire. The first thing I'm going to hire is a secretary. Person.

I just suck as hell when it comes to forms and papers and other adult stuff. Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore and I have both agreed when we got into the same fellowship program that there couldn't have been a worse combination when it comes to making asikaso stuff. We should have been joined by JD-Lu, Djana, BL, or any other batch mate, so we could just lie down and wait for already filled-up forms that would just need our signatures. But it has to be us, so we take turns doing these adult stuff with much high-degree whining.

It just dawned on me that the medical boards are coming, what with all coffee shops being populated by people frantically trying to memorize all sorts of things. The most toxic thing about the medical boards for me, however, would still have to be the PRC application. Of course I've waited until it was near deadline, so in the middle of the rain I traveled all the way from the province to PRC, only to be turned down immediately. They wouldn't honor my birth certificate, because I've brought my original punit-punit birth certificate which my mom has searched for in some baul, but apparently you have to bring that shiny yellow thing you order from some agency or something. I went home crying ie, umuwi akong luhaan. In the rain. Drama as fuck.

This sort of stress, of course, is just the sort of excuse we need to do crazy, self-indulgent things. I stopped by Glorietta, bought an action figure and boatloads of comic books, and ate a giant Subway sandwich with so much gulay. Subway sandwich with so much gulay. Mmmmmmmmm. Someone bring Subway to Rob.

Form Five, And Yet, Because. Yes.

2011-06-17T21:20:00.002+08:00

Finally had our first day of class. The word "finally" usually implies that we're waiting for something with excitement, but this time I just don't know how to start this paragraph properly and don't want to further think of a better intro. Our fellowship program has this compulsory masteral program attached to it, so a couple of days ago Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore, The Black Mariah, Lakitu, and I dropped our chemo-ing to attend in UP Manila.... the Freshmen Orientation!!! Complete with Students' Handbooks. The powerpoint slides showed us stuff like "Grades: 1.0, 1.25, etc." and "A grade of incomplete means etc." and I realized that we really cared about this stuff.... decades ago. We looked around at all the incoming masteral students, and we were surprised because we were expecting really old dudes. To our surprise, WE were the old dudes, or maybe we're just wrinklier and look totally drained of life force.

While frantically roundsing this morning what should UHBJAW text me but: first day of class pala ngayon, at 11am! Start of classes in twenty minutes! So I immediately ceased my chit chat with the patient while making timpla those damn chemicals. I tend to get so engrossed with their stories while I fix their meds, more specifically I get engrossed at some of their seemingly genuine... calmness. And even peace. Truly it must have been a long dreary process to get there, but there's just something inspiring about it all.

The four of us got to the classroom late, unprepared as fuck. To the level of:
Prof: Are you officially enrolled?

We just looked at each other, because we actually didn't know. Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore saved us all with an unintelligible string of words:

Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore: Sir, uhm, Form Five, but not, I was told, or the Office, Registrar, did not. Ahoy.

Something fantastic like that. And the lecture started without further incident. It was only later that we were told that we are not officially enrolled yet because... hindi pa kami bayad ng tuition fee. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

FF

2011-06-15T22:34:00.000+08:00

"May lecture mamya," Zombie 4 said while in the OPD.

I usually concentrate and try to zone out everything whenever I mix chemicals, for fear I might mix things the wrong way and accidentally create a weird living creature, but those three words broke my concentration. Like a wet blanket thrown in my face (sorry, have been trying to use that expression for quite some time. I just find it.... fun).

"FF?!?" I automatically asked.

"FF." Zombie 4 declared with finality.

FF, of course, stands for Free Food, for all of us perpetually hungry, soulless, wage-less automaton zombie androids. I now regret having missed those opportunities for free lunch at the mess hall back in the day. I would whine then that I no longer want to eat brown sauce, I no longer want to eat a silver fish in some sabaw, but now, I would eat a silver fish mixed in brown sauce in sabaw! In vinegar!

Before coming home this afternoon who should text me but my mom, who said she and my dad would visit me and would I want to meet her in Shakey's and what food do I want they would treat me to dinner. A couple of years ago I would offer to pay, or just tell them I'd go for the cheapest food if they would pay, but this time I could not help it and texted back in pure patay gutom fashion:

"Yes! Shakey's! I'll have chicken! And pizza! And rice! And milk shake!"

At which point I heard The Daw in my head declaring: That Tho Thad.

Mulder and Scully Recommend

2011-06-15T21:53:00.006+08:00

Our music recommendation for the night is the song Mushrooms and Roses by Janelle Monae from the fantastic album ArchAndroid. I've discovered her album while browsing through possible downloads, I mean purchases, a couple of months ago, and I had no idea who the heck she is or haven't heard her anywhere. But truly who could resist an album entitled ArchAndroid, with that look on the cover where she is wearing on her head... a city. A Kryptonian city. Kandor. Truly she could be a villain in a Supergirl comic book, or a villain who turns out to be a friend who turns out to be an alien-Kryptonian android-mutant hybrid--who is dying so Supergirl could have a dramatic moment.

For a while I've forgotten that Janelle Monae is in my iPot, what with thousands of great songs competing for my attention, until tonight while walking along Rob and what should play but this weird-sounding song and I suddenly snapped into a haze and mumbled: Mushrooms, mushrooms and roses. It's like this weird combination of Radiohead and... and.... I don't know why but she reminds me of a tiny female Prince. Or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. TAFKAP. The Symbol. The Prince. The.

My iPot is evolving into a fully-developed, living creature. It's starting to develop... empathy. Like it senses my current state of mind, be it a zombified state or whatever, and it starts playing apt music. Or if it doesn't sense anything, it just exhibits fantastic randomization skills. Unlike my old iPot 2 years ago, whose favorite song is Give Me Novocaine by Green Day. I could be happy, fulfilled, or already filled up with so much IV meds, and it would still play, from its thousands of songs, Give Me Novocaine.

Two nights ago I've received this text message from The Daw, a reaction to a song that suddenly plays in her iPot: Why the fuckery do I have this song.... Maghintay Ka Lamang by.... Ted Ito?!?!

See, iPots are sentient beings.

Disenchanted And This Plane Cannot Fly Fast Enough

2011-06-15T21:21:00.005+08:00

Soon enough you get through all these things and mature and have all of these experiences and survive them and and live through each challenge one by one by one, and you become stronger and your threshold for pain increases on a daily basis, and it would take so much to faze and unsettle you. The downside with having hurdled all of these trials is yes you get stronger, but at the same time you lose that sense of wonder, that sense of getting genuinely amazed at something. Smoketh and I have been discussing that it used to be that we would be brought to our pediatricians, and they would seem like the most remarkable, all-knowing, and compassionate figures of authority. That the very sight of them eases every pain instantaneously, and you hold on to their every word, and that the care is genuine. Or the wonder of graduating into something, getting into a new phase of life that promises wonderful transitions, like these kids at the bookstore happily carrying their brand new notebooks, or college students pleased at the schedule in their form five's. Or the wonder at your elders' insights, because they are full of conviction and you could cling into them, and be free from all sorts of danger. Or even the wonder and amazement that the lateral neck mass has shrunk by this much, and you get thanked profusely. Ultimately sadness--or worse, numbness--seems like one long default punctuated only by moments of transient happiness, like finishing a download of a huge file of old comic books, or eating fantastic pizza.

We get old and we become disenchanted. It's adaptive, but also kind of sad.

The Fantastic X-Men: First Class

2011-06-13T23:28:00.000+08:00

After escaping the OPD ran ran ran to the callroom to find.... boxes of free lunch! Ahoy! FF! ie, FREE FOOD! And for dinner, I tagged along in an RTD in Gumbo, an RTD which... does not concern me! Thank you Smoketh for letting me tag along the RTD about... anti-hypertensives! AHAHAHAHA. Round Table Discussions, ie Free Food, ie Entanglement, should constitute diverse subspecialties or so we believe, so Smoketh brought me, a pediatrician, a gastroenterologist, and The Daw who will someday subsubsubspecialize in clara cells or kupffer cells for.... Free Food!

And you know what Free Food entails.... enough money saved so I could finally watch The X-Men First Class! With Frichmond, Smoketh, and The Daw I watched the fantastic movie, and the movie is so fantastic my disbelief at the crapfest/trainwreck that is X-Men 3: The Last Stand has intensified to even greater unbelievable heights! I only minor in Marvel, so my X-Men knowledge is more limited but I know certain details: That Angel/Tutubi Girl first made an appearance much much later, in the early 2000s Grant Morrison reign, The New X-Men! Grant Morrison's X-Men run is excellent, and you should get it. I major in DC, but now DC is rebooting its entire continuity. More of my fangriness at this in future entries.

The Daw's expressions while watching were so genuine we all forgot she has already seen the damn movie. For some reason the four of us laughed at things nobody laughed at. In particular the bromance scenes of Prof. X and Magneto where one common thought ran in our heads: Master Frodo! Oh Sam. Master Frodo! Oh Sam.

After the last full show we marvelled at the emptiness of the mall as the strong winds were going insane outside. The movie was so fantastic it left some sort of cannabis effect: we laughed at everything. At the pail inside the mall catching rain drops dripping from the roof. At the wind. At... Tutubi Girl. At..... Master Frodo! Oh Sam. Master Frodo! Oh Sam.

The next day I watched the crapfest/trainwreck that is X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Where Dark Phoenix was more like.... The Magenta Phoenix! Where Cyclops, Professor X, and hundreds of people were.... disintegrated to smithereens by the Magenta Phoenix's awesome power!!!! Darn you to smithereens Halle Berry!

Retaliatification

2011-06-13T22:13:00.003+08:00

In the past month three out of the eight fellows in our section had CT scans done on themselves because after the fifth young person with some form of abdominal malignancy comes in with only some kind of "non-specific abdominal pain" as the initial presentation, you would get quite paranoid too. My weight has effortlessly crashed and I had been feeling all sorts of pain all over as I had whined many times before, so I thought there was an indication. I used to scream, "No to diagnostics!", that I would rather get surprised as I see myself all yellow and covered with lymphadenopathies all over and then I would just prescribe to myself: best supportive and palliative care. Except, the fear of some organs just popping inside like fully-blossomed... cherries (talagang dapat isingit ang cherries) and the constant prodding of everyone made me get a CT scan as well.

I was pleasantly surprised as I was getting a CT scan, because the aircon was in full blast, the people were nice, there was that nice whirring sound to remind you you're in some high tech device area, the gown smelled clean, and the CT scan machine looked gee whiz swell. I immediately regretted the damn kaartehan, however as I guzzled the 1 liter of oral contrast. Think of that old classic Magnolia Chocolait bottle, filled with Amoxicillin or liquid Paracetamol. Or Amoxicillin + Paracetamol, ie, mag-asawang gamot.

And so I lied down on that bed part of the machine where you lie down, then it elevated a few feet from the ground with the now louder whirring sound, and the bed swooshed far into the tunnel where the radiation blasted me. Before going in I told myself that this place being this place something would obviously go wrong, but so far nothing has!

But, except, of course, obviously, during the last ten minutes of the procedure.

Technician: Namatay po ang power ng machine, hindi namin ma-explain. Sabi ng consultant hindi nyo na kailangan ng delayed phase, so tapos na po tayo.
Me: No problem. Pwede na po ako bumaba?
Technician: Opo.
Me: (Waiting for the bed to move out of the tunnel and then move down to the floor)
Technician: Namatay nga po ang power. Kailangan nyo na po lumabas.

And so very much... bemused, I wriggled wriggled wriggled out of the damn tunnel while still lying down and then jumped down the floor. I had hoped that as I jumped down the gown exposed some of my disgusting nether regions for everyone to see. In retaliation.

Smoketh and I immediately looked at the findings on the screen.
"Well you don't seem to have liver cancer, or some stone, and your kidneys are OK," Smoketh chimed in.
"Look Smoketh, you could see my..... but in cross-section."
"Ah-huh."

Immediately after the procedure all sorts of abdominal pain disappeared. Yes, yes, we can now safely conclude: contrast media cures all sorts of pain.

Overheard in the Elevator

2011-06-13T21:12:00.004+08:00

True, you don't need to actively eavesdrop while in the elevator, except when people are whispering about suspicious activities, but it's more fun to imagine that you're eavesdropping, because then you feel like you're crouching behind some bushes, and you can write run-on sentences like this. Eavesdropping in the elevator could be quite depressing, as I have eavesdropped a couple of months ago that Elevator Girl gets a much bigger salary. Elevator Girl sounds like a super hero name.

I am suddenly reminded that classes have started because there are now clerkies walking around with excitement. Apparently kuya intern is touring or orienting the newly thrusted clerks as they were going up the elevator. Being a newly-thrusted clerk is a scary state, because I remember the first resident's order I had to carry out in my first ever clinical rotation. I felt totally depressed, conspired against, and... toxic when I saw my first order: For sputum AFB x 3. And whenever I see: Refer to SAPOD... parang guguho ang mundo. Until I became a SAPOD myself years later, and I would not read the damn thick referral forms and just get the name and locations.

So while in the elevator:
Intern: Alam nyo na ba kung paano magbasa ng chart?
Clerkie: (panicked voice) Paano nga namin malalaman kung anong labs ang dapat gawin?
Intern: Ganito lang yun, kapag "FOR serum creatinine", kailangan mo gawin. Pag "FOLLOW-UP serum creatinine", kailangan mo na lang i-follow-up.
Clerkie: Ah. (relieved)

And of course, because everything should be about me and I intend to be inggit of everyone, I am inggit that at this moment this is Clerkie's only concern. I apologize for all my whinifications back in 2004. Hopefully come 2018 I would apologize for my current whinifications, but I doubt it.

Friday

2011-06-05T21:55:00.001+08:00

After getting a haircut what should I see but the longest line for... X-Men First Class! Callistus Netromedev has already seen it and thinks it's fantastic. Having no money and having to subsist on Wow Ulam I am thinking of downloading a really bad copy. Also, any money I have set aside for movies this month has been usurped by last week's purchase of.... toys! In the Annual Toys and Games Convention in Rob. I got the DC Universe versions of Zatanna in her fishnet stockings, the 60's version of Dick Grayson Robin, and the 60's version of The Riddler. After buying them toys I stared at them in glee, but how quickly glee turns to hate when I realized I had no money for food. Because for all my claims of fishnet stockings fetish I would never eat Zatanna's fishnet stockings.

I had to be contented with what was showing on TV, and for some reason the past weeks Glitter has been on repeat, as if I hadn't seen the damn show too many times already. The hilarity of Glitter knows no bounds, as you can just check in on any scene and there would be something to laugh at. In this week's scene Mariah is making a video for her song Loverboy in silver underwear and being mauled by muscular men. Boyfriend comes to rescue. Doesn't sound funny when you speak of it, because some things are just unspeakable.

Turned the channel and yet another repeat of one of the many seasons of Top Chef. In the Judges' Table Padma was making toxic a contestant for the rather bland tomato something. Whenever Padma gets high and mighty we always expect a contestant to say, "Wag kang aarte-arte, napanood kita sa Glitter." AHAHAHAHAHA.

The next morning who should text me but The Daw, asking if I've seen First Class and if I had any inputs. I don't have any inputs because I haven't seen it, because what I've seen this morning is.... Alvin and The Chipmunks Part 2: The Squeakuel. Sometimes weekends can be just... sad.

The Sea

2011-06-01T21:17:00.001+08:00

is the title of the second album of one of my favorite artists, Corinne Bailey Rae. The Sea--the body of water-- is something you behold, I am not even sure what the verb to behold means but it just seems like the right word to use in your dealings with something as grand and as magnificent as The Sea. The Sea. I am just thinking of The Sea because it's been months since I've seen or heard or touched or became one with The Sea being washed up instead in worries and rejection, but right now I am imagining waves of water just getting crazy with my face plopping down against it--and I suddenly feel severe facial pain as salty water assaults my nose and the salty water crushes my cribriform plate and the bleeping salty water rolls over directly to my brain to snap me out of this pag-iinarte.

See, if you really want to snap out of whinification, emotional pain, ennui, or just plain mundane inarte, you can do it on your own, and in very few sentences too.

Grey's Anatomy

2011-05-31T22:15:00.002+08:00

Is a show I've never warmed up to. Probably because the first episode I've watched, while in the interns' corner in Rehab Ward with Smoketh, Mrs. T, Roxy, and Len-Len back in 2005, was the one with Meredith Grey craning her neck and whining, neck veins popping and all, "CHOOOOSE ME. LOOOOVE ME." After which we zoned out and resumed watching Saw 2, where Amanda jumped into a giant vat of capless syringes to look for a key.

Was surprised in the recent weeks that the show is still on going, and asked The Daw if they are already consultants. I gave it another try one week-end, and after that rather entertaining scene where the post-by-pass guy about to be discharged lit a cigarette while still in his hospital room with his nasal cannula still hissing- out oxygen resulting in a facial explosion, I zoned out again and resumed cheating in Smurfs and reached level 33.

My recent attempts at niceness-slash-pagtitimpi apparently came out of nowhere, until I realized that it is probably a subconscious fear at this Grey's Anatomy scene which The Daw has narrated. So there was this bantay asking the resident for hospital directions or something, and when the resident hemmed and hawed and showed hesitation, said bantay brought out a gun and blasted the resident, sadly not Meredith, in the face. Because truly:

Bantay: Pa-reseta po ng Ensure.
Me: Ah, eh...
BANG!!!!!

or

Bantay: Saan po ang ABG?
Me: Ah, eh....
BANG!!!!

There you go, discovered the root cause in one day. And also, as The Daw has so wisely explained: Masarap naman talaga ang Ensure. Smoketh's wisdom is leaking into The Daw.

Cheers!

2011-05-30T21:59:00.003+08:00

The whole day I resolved to be nice. Because it was the probably the best way through.

And I was nice. I greeted every patient good morning. I asked them how they felt, even though most of them felt like I've been smoking some cow dung whenever I asked them "whattup?" I've entertained every unscheduled patient who would stick their heads into the cubicle, and calmly stood up and walked all over the clinic looking for forms on which to write their prescription and diagnostic needs. I've apologized whenever I had to take a swig from my coke lite can (whatever's in that can) because my throat was hurting, and apologized whenever I missed IV insertions. I've made CTTHL as I was making timpla the chemo drugs, CTTHL being a forgotten skill I developed when I moonlighted in Boracay four years ago. CTTHL is Chika To The Highest Level, so much so that I've gotten weird looks when I would comment out of context as I was pushing the red IV drug, "So mahilig ka pala sa kape." I did not go berserk when someone interrupted to ask for prescriptions for Ensure and Nutren, because truly they must taste good. When someone asked me to rewrite his admitting orders because he lost the two other admitting orders I've given previously, I calmly rewrote the admitting orders and said thank you let's hope there would be a vacancy soon. Later I noted that a patient was hypotensive and hasn't been referred, and calmly told the monitor that we should be more vigilant for total patient care. Before going home a resident once again wrestled me to transfer the patient to our building, and I said yes we absolutely should for total patient care.

After twelve hours of non-stop zombified niceness (niceness by my standard), I developed dysphagia, all sorts of abdominal pain, uncontrollable arm twitching, and the resolve to stick my fucking head in an oven.

Niceness kills.

And In Yet Another Non-Event

2011-05-20T22:03:00.005+08:00

My seatmate Sikh Atar was late. And he lived just a stone's throw away from school. Our Reading teacher was livid. This was back in Grade 6, when people would get livid if you get late, or if you don't submit your notebook on time, or if you put gum on their seats. Now we reserve being livid to more important things, like if we get two packs of precious packed RBC approved but the bantay just lets the approved form sit there in the cabinet to expire. Yes, I'm having these issues again because I'm still doing first year residency-hood stuff.

Back to Sikh Atar. He finally arrived, and he was all sweaty. Sikh Atar is one of my favorite people of all time. If there were already blogs back in Grade 6 he would have been a resident character, except that there were no blogs then, or internet, or even a computer. After the entire dancing around with the teacher as to why he was late and if he would promise never to do it again etc the class resumed and then thankfully ended. This is the same class where RBTDS and I got in trouble because we laughed incessantly at the teacher when she said "The girl is lapping." Obviously she meant laughing, because we could think of four reasons why that sentence would be bastos.

"Why were you late?" I asked Sikh Atar.

"Nag-masturbate kasi ako," he said. Of course he didn't use the word masturbate, he used the Grade 6 tagalog word for masturbate which we shall not use here because we are mature individuals.

"I see. Sinong pinagmasturbate-an mo?" I asked casually. Pinagmasturbate-an sounds like a weird conjugation, because obviously I didn't use that conjugation either.

"Si Priscilla Almeda." he said non-chalantly.

To the uninitiated Priscilla Almeda was an ex-teeny bopper who successfully transitioned to ST films. I don't recall what ST stands for right now, but it refers to those tagalog movies where people pet and groan and pass off the activity as sex. Sort of like a soft-core penekula. The concept of ST films can be packaged with the concept of pre-tarpaulin movie posters which were hand-painted and posted-up in Cubao or in some theater called Ligaya. My dad has a theory that a town theater was doomed to showing only bold movies because the first movie it ever screened was called "Satan".

I don't know why I'm suddenly recalling this taste-less non-event or why I think I should waste five minutes writing about it. Maybe I recently saw some Priscilla Almeda photo somewhere or heard her name somewhere. Which begs the question: Marth V, what movies constitute the filmography of Priscilla Almeda?

Hickam's Hickie

2011-05-20T21:46:00.001+08:00

Neurologist Shipper Jack Knight has made a very interesting commentary on my high-level paranoia that I have all sorts of diseases.

"Are you aware of Hickam's Dictum?" she texted. "It's sort of the opposite of Occam's Razor of parsimony. It states that a patient can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases." I told her that this is the first time I'm hearing of it, but I'm loving the concept. In an X-Files episode Fox Mulder refers to Occam's Razor as Occam's Razor of Laziness. So far I think my chest seminoma has resolved on its own, but is now replaced with a multitude of conditions that present with muscle twitching, partial seizures, throbbing headache on walking, palpitations on seeing rare toys, and steatorrhea. Take it away, HAMI's, I know you already have differentials.

"I think I have 2 diseases per sub-specialty," I told Neurologist Shipper Jack Knight.
"Grabe not just 1 but 2 diseases pa!" she texted back. "Naisip ko tuloy si Vilma Santos in a Bear Brand commercial: not just 1 but 2 glasses a day!"

I miss my bloggable friends.

Supergirl As A Goo

2011-05-15T22:26:00.003+08:00

I am presently geeking out on the Peter David run of Supergirl. For most Supergirl is Kara Zor-El, the cousin of Superman, and that's also the concept I grew up with, and I really love those 60's Supergirl stories where she is Kal-El's cousin with the secret identity Linda Lee Danvers of Midvale. Some think that she is Superman's little sister, cute concept but wrong, but close enough. Peter David's run from the late 90's to 2004 however veers away from this Kryptonian familial connection as a consequence of the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths where Supergirl was killed, a maxi-series which I think is overrated but still very seminal. To understand Peter David's Supergirl we need a new paragraph. In Peter David's Supergirl:

Matrix is a character in the form of a goo created through the DNA of a pocket universe Lana Lang by a benevolent pocket universe version of Lex Luthor. I don't know the difference between a pocket and a parallel universe. Matrix is sent to our world to ask Superman for help for some mission, and for better understanding she takes the form of a female in a Superman costume, hence Supergirl. She is eventually adopted by Superman's foster parents, the Kents, and retains her Supergirl guise with some secret identity called Mae. Linda Danvers is an altogether different character, a very disturbed girl who joins the demonic cult of Buzz and is eventually killed. To save her soul, Matrix/Supergirl fuses her soul with Linda, so we now have:

Matrix/Supergirl/Linda

Eventually she discovers that Linda and/or Supergirl is an Earth-Born Angel, hence we have this collection of four personas in one: Matrix/Supergirl/Linda/Earth Angel with Burning Wings.

Through a series of steps which I am reviewing now each character has been separated from another as the years went by. In 2005 it was decided that this was so confusing so Jeph Loeb took the writing reins, sort of retconned the whole fused personality story, and restored Kara Zor-El as the one true Supergirl, the cousin of Superman. The story of this one true Supergirl took quite a few years to get its footing and I almost stopped reading it, until Sterling Gates took to writing the character with illustrations by the magnificent Jamal Igle.

In my quest to read all the DC comic books ever published I am now catching up on Peter David's Supergirl run. Back in the days when I was totally dedicated to the 60's Supergirl I hated that they totally changed the whole Supergirl concept, but now I think it's one excellent excellent run.

In this scene from issue 14 Linda tries to reveal to her parents that she is Supergirl. It has been one of my fantasies: revealing to a friend/family member that all these years I am actually a super hero with the ability to transfer my mind to a cat or kill noisy butangs with an exophthalmic stare. Of course before she could actually say it Linda's parents accused her of all sorts of things:

Hoping For A Pene-Kula

2011-05-15T21:18:00.003+08:00

Recently my dad has added himself to the group of people asking me to download stuff. Apparently everyone just assumes that I lay in bed all day either staring at the ceiling, whining that it's so hot, or forming my fantasy super hero group roster in my head. They are absolutely right, so I'm happy to oblige. I've been downloading stuff for my father for many years even when he's never asked for them, but those were things that I also like like like, like old Mission Impossible episodes, Twilight Zone, comic books, and stuff. The first personal request came very recently, and it was strange.

"Please download Ang Tunay Na Ina starring Rosario Moreno," he said.

What the hellellellel. Sounds either like a pene-kula, or a really old Sampaguita film. I was hoping it was a pene-kula because then there would be more seeders. For the uninitiated a pene-kula is something I've already defined years ago, so we'll just have our trusty Smoketh to define this for us. Take it away, Smoketh.

Smoketh: A pene-kula is an old pinoy film, usually during the bomba era of the 70's, that actually involves on-screen penetration. Penetration, hence, pene-kula.

So there. Obviously there wasn't any torrent of Ang Tunay Na Ina, not even Wing Tip would take pains to upload it, so my brother who was initially given this task directed me to You Tube, and there it was. Apparently Ang Tunay Na Ina starring Rosario Moreno is not only sinauna, but it was sinaunang sinaunang sinauna. Like 1938 sinauna, and the You Tube description even claims that it's one of the five remaining pre-war pinoy movies.

"Hey dad," I told dad. "The movie is in You Tube, a site where you could post videos and stuff. It's accessible all over the world, and the number of views is recorded. Popular videos like Rebecca Black's Friday has over 140 MILLION views. You know how many views Ang Tunay Na Ina has? SEVEN."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAH," he said.

See, AHAHAHAHAHAHA is not just an onomatopeia, it's an actual sound people make, and it transcends gender, way of life, and age.

All Sorts of Pointlessness, But Time To Get This Out

2011-05-14T22:52:00.000+08:00

Back in 1996 when I was in 4th year high school I started telling the girls in my class, in many, separate occasions because they kept on doing the damn thing repeatedly, that they should not comb their hair in front of me, or any guy, or any person for that matter. Of course they would forget and do it repeatedly. They had asked me many times why, but I never had the heart to tell them. I wasn't being prissy or mysterious, but I just couldn't get myself to tell them why. I remember that Ayla Ranzza Timberwolfalfa, exasperated at my supposedly pa-mysterious effect, accused me of getting a boner when I see her comb her hair-- she actually used more piquant terms than "get a boner". Well, Ayla Ranzza Timberwolfalfa, the gall, of all people to accuse me of having a strange fetish.

I don't know why nobody has figured out, even now when I tell this incident to my female friends, for all their college and post-graduate and medical and sub-specialty medical degrees, that when a pubescent high school girl in loose-sleeved high school uniform combs her hair she exposes her kinda gross bushy drippy armpit to the guy in front of her. Baka naman sinasadya mo talagang silipin, you snootily accuse. But maybe we can parallel this to that incident in the street when someone points out that there's a really disgusting strangely- configured mooshy yellow goop of a cat's crap and we give it a half-second peripheral glance instinctively.

Hello, Linda Danvers

2011-05-10T21:10:00.001+08:00

Recently asked Benefit of the Daw if she's friends with Pruit Igot, then realized the tone with which I asked the question so expectedly she asked, "crusheth mo?" I said no of course not, on the contrary I'm asking if you're friends with her because I recently had ten minutes of non-encounter with her and she seemed to emanate... nega-vibes. And just when we thought we had eradicated nega in the zeitgeist.

Truly there are people who just seem to emanate this sort of thing, like they have something we can't quite put a finger on but there it is and it is scary or more annoyingly it is... annoying. Have been afraid of a lot of people recently, probably because I'm dealing with a lot of fears right now: in the past two weeks I have diagnosed myself to have seminoma, bladder outlet obstruction, lung cancer, some mediastinal mass, or parkinson's disease, and myocardial infarction. I've been having ten different seemingly incompatible symptoms at the same time (whine whine whine), and for more I don't ever want to have diagnostic exams done. In terms of really bad diseases my mantra is "ignorance is bliss". Which is not exactly true as my differentials run and run in my head endlessly so there's nothing blissful about that. Zolofta is beckoning.

I recently told Troglodytes Troglodytes Troglodytitiphus that with everything I'm dealing with right now (poverty, undiagnosed disease, fear of things, this heat) I hope I don't turn into a Final Night monster doctor aggravated by the mental control of Gorilla Grodd. Of course you know I'm talking about the magnificent Supergirl volume 3 Final Night tie-in story as written by Peter David.

BW

2011-05-05T19:54:00.003+08:00

One of my favorite superhero groups of all time is the Legion of Superheroes, particularly their early adventures as told in Adventure Comics in the 60's, written by John Forte and illustrated by Edmond Hamilton and the magnificent Curt Swan. The Legion of Superheroes is a group of teenagers in the 30th century who took on superheroing upon the inspiration of Superman. The 60's would have to be the peak of their career, as the quality of the stories were downhill from there as evidenced by two horrible reboots. It was back in 2008 when we finally got our original Legion back courtesy of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Superman and the Legion of Superheroes, which I think is one of the best story lines of all time. Since that wonderful comeback Paul Levitz has taken the writing reins, and things have, once again, been quite unexciting.

More on the sense of plateauing of stories in the ongoing Legion of Superheroes series later, because I've just re-read Superman and the Legion of Superheroes and I can't believe I've never blogged about Night Girl's boob window before, or called anyone's attention to it in particular Neurologist Shipper Jack Knight. Now Powergirl's boob window I've blogged about two years ago, but Night Girl's BW should rival hers in terms of awesome creativity.

You see Night Girl was a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, applicants who were rejected for one reason or another. Night Girl has super strength, except she only has it in the dark. Back in the 60's she had on her chest the emblem of an owl's head. The 2008 version still has an owl, except the eyes are bare breast tissue and the beak is her cleavage. Balut na balot ang buong katawan except for.... the owl boob window.

Staring Contest, Die

2011-05-05T19:24:00.000+08:00

I've written a year ago in Smoketh's prune state that even inanimate objects were sensing her poverty. At her lowest--when she would describe herself as a lowly chesa, something lower than a prune--even the alarms in National Bookstore in Rob were privy. Them alarms just blared out wildly as soon as Smoketh passed them by, because indeed she looked poor enough to pilfer a pen.

This time all 52 known universes are sensing my poverty. To complete the poverty experience the universes are sending rats, cockroaches, and all sorts of weird insects to attack my room. Smart and agile ones at that. Fly traps would just be turned over after a couple of nights, with the cheese bait (classic pyramid-shaped cheese with butas butas) taken effortlessly. I woke up one afternoon sweaty and hungry, and thought I would eat my left over Jack and Jill potato chips carefully stashed inside my zippered lunch box. I unzipped the lunch box, and inside is the fucking rat, looking up at me, trying to engage me in a staring contest. No staring contest transpired, because I quickly threw the bleeping lunchbox against the wall and screamed the shrillest, most embarrassing, girliest scream of all time. Of course rat just jumped out of the flying lunchbox, did a cartwheel mid-air, landed with grace on the floor, and traipsed away with glee.

Only two things could make me scream the shrillest, most embarrassing, most scrotally-incompatible scream of all time-- a flying cockroach and a rat in a lunchbox. They are the only ones I would admit to.

I Want You To Do This With Your Tongue

2011-04-24T20:25:00.000+08:00

I don't usually get to talk to anyone these days, unlike in the past three years when you only need to bring a pack of MSD to the callroom and everyone would chat away and there would be loads of stories to embellish and blog about. Even Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore, whose cubicle (yes, cubicle, not clinic desk or anything, but cubicle, because we are soul-less automatons) is just beside mine, rarely gets to make kwento. In many instances when we get a chance the opening line would be something like this, "May kwento nga pala ako, nakakatawa, four days ago.... pero four days ago pa yun, di na relevant ngayon." Hence instead of stories I have sound bites, yes, sound bites, so here are my top sound bites of the recent weeks. Most of them are of the nega variety, so if you have positive sound bites of the Coelho sorts throw them in.

On ennui and pagmamabagal
"Kakapasok ko lang din. Wala na talaga ako gana. Beyond toys and gadgets na ang kalungkutan ko."

-Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore

On poverty and subverting Wow Ulam-ing
"May sweet sour meatballs dito sa Jollibee. 39 pesos. It's da best. Aabot hanggang friday, one ball a day."

-Suka All Over

On death, multi-organ failure, and intubation

"Shet!!!!"

-Hurricane Katrina

On solitude

"Gusto ko na mag-resign. I'm slowly dying. I'm becoming a Una-bomber."

- Callistus Netromedev

On failed attempt at de-uglification

"Uy nagpagupit ka na! Nagpagupit din si Moriarty."

-Marth V.

On poverty

"Huuuunggggh huuuuuunggggh HUUUUUUUNGH.... WALA NA KO PERA!!!!"

-Moriarty

Yes, quotables that are quite fertile for hours of conversation, debate, and collective annoyance, yet the hurly burly of things prevent any follow-up whatsoever, in fact most of them were either received as text messages or overheard in the hospital. I no longer have healthy interactions. I need a conversation whore.

Moriarty. Gaaaaaah!

2011-04-18T22:19:00.003+08:00

When asked recently why I wouldn't cut my damn hair off I've thought of two new reasons to add to the multitude of excuses that have accumulated through the years much to the major karindihan of everyone. "Among other contributions, it's yet another one of my contributions to ugliness," is one. Another is "I'm poor." Looking back these were some of my quips, which were just excuses to the one pervading theme in my life: laziness. Nakakatamad naman talaga magpagupit e.

1. I should revel in its shagginess because in a few years I'll get bald.
2. It protects my head from the rain.
3. Long hair prevents cancer and atrial fibrillation (kids, not true).
4. I'm still having hang-ups from the forced siete I got in ROTC.
5. It looks great and shiny and flowy doesn't it.

This time, though, the poverty excuse is not exactly untrue, because when you start surveying the price of Wow Ulam and you start fearing you'll have beri-beri and rickets you can safely say that you are in the financial dumps. For months I've remained unfazed at everyone's stares at my hair which has been growing exponentially taller by the day, until who should accost me as I was writing in a patient's chart but the fellow-costumed clean-cut Marth V.

"Cut your hair. You're starting to look like Moriarty," Marth said. Moriarty being another person who does rounds in the pay floors.
"GAAAAAAAH!" I screamed in my head. For two seconds. It's just one of the things I could shake off, like my recurrent abdominal pains which I suspect are from some cancer, recurrent palpitations which I suspect are from some cancer, and recurrent headaches which I suspect are from cancer.

It was a few minutes later that Smoketh chanced upon me in COOP surveying for the cheapest food in the menu. "I'll treat you to COOP lunch," she said. I said no, she insisted, and after three rounds of dancing around I finally said "Okay I'll have fried pork chop and a coke light thank God I saw you I was about to be contented with a pack of cornik!"

"By the way," I started telling Smoketh while we were falling in line, "I don't usually get affected when people tell me I'm ugly and that I should cut my hair, but when Marth V saw me this morning he told me that I'm starting to look like...."

"MORIARTY?!?" Smoketh said.
Gaaaaaaah!

At Around This Time: Five Years Ago

2011-04-08T21:56:00.000+08:00

Because they said you shouldn't forget. I don't know who said it or if it's even real, it's just the sort of thing someone would say in a B-movie or B-book or B-comic book. Speaking of B-comic books, have just been catching up on the DC title The Outsiders as written by Dan Didio. Now that's a B-comic book, made more B by the new character--the red-skinned villain Freight Train!!!! In any case forgetting is, most of the time, not a matter of should and should not--because right, as if we have a choice in the matter. No psychotherapy, for instance, would make me forget Alex Z chokeholding Callistus back in grade 6 which caused copious amounts of uhog to make talsik from Callistus' nose.

And so in a manner of flashback-flashforward motion with no sepiafication effect but with a loud swooshing sound because I always like to imagine that I'm a character in Lost, we begin with:

Five Years Ago: Doing MICU endorsement rounds, as interns. I was not listening most of the time, because we were too busy watching our blockmate Plocky aerating his armpits by making sabit his arms on the curtain bar thingie in front of each bed, with the full blast of aircon shooting directly to his armpits. At one point he forgot that it wasn't a monkey bar and pulled the whole thing down, which is quite long as the curtain bar spans all ten beds--the entire ICU, essentially. This mishap would have made history, except that it was immediately bumped off from many people's memory by the curious incident of the leg falling through the floor and into the ceiling of the isolation room the following year. The ICU endorsements were loooong, and I swore then that if I would be the one to conduct them I would cut the damn thing short. I discovered two methods how to do it: 1) Force everyone to present in haiku, which no student really took seriously. So I resorted to 2) Escape. Let Aids facilitate the endorsement, and escape.

To be continued. Next: Twenty Years Into The Future!

Pruning and Popping

2011-03-31T21:39:00.001+08:00

Was scrolling through my old blog entries and chanced upon a really old one last year when I was mocking, ridiculing, debasing, and all-around laughing at Smoketh's state-of-affairs as an unpaid fellow, in particular her poverty. How she would roll her car over a tube of toothpaste just to squeeze out any remaining Beam toothpaste, and how she would ask for the used ABG cups so she could drink the remaining water in it. In pure poverty. She was a prune, but now she is a self-confessed blossoming "cherry". Her word, not mine.

"A blossoming cherry waiting to be popped." My words.
"Do you pop cherries?" she and enjh asked. Obviously they haven't had any experience with porn.
"Yes. Smoketh, you can ask Churfuck (her boyfriend) to pop your cherry. You can say, 'Churfuck, please pop my cherry'. But practice saying it or you might accidentally say, 'Churpop, please fuck my cherry'." Although either way it's the same idea.

But now, poor, ugly, old, and dry, I am the prune. A poor, ugly, old, dry prune. And how could I forget rusty. Just a couple of months off residency and it already takes much effort to remember things. For instance an OB resident accosted me and asked how to compute for dopamine, and whereas before I would mouth it off automatically in the generic teaching-teachingan Gen Med voice (there's the generic Gen Med senior voice that I couldn't quite describe), this time I suspect the OB resident could my hear the clunky tiny gears in my head turning as I struggled to remember. I remembered it eventually, but not after a few brain cells popped and died to produce the information.

Prune. What can you do with a prune. Nothing. Except give it to constipated people.

The Art of Medicine--Oh Yeah.

2011-03-23T20:29:00.001+08:00

In a fantastic season 4 episode of The X-Files entitled Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose Clyde Bruckman is a sort of clairvoyant whose precognitive abilities are limited to knowing how a person will die. It is therefore apt that his day job be that of a life insurance salesman. In one circumstance he directly tells a customer that he should buy a particular form of insurance because he would die in a car crash. “Mister, you should really work on your closing,” man says.

I am reminded of this fun tidbit because more and more I realize that this particular new field I’m training in probably requires more human/social art than anything else. There’s the art involved with disclosure (probably the most difficult, so I’m still trying to mostly evade this part, don’t ask me how I do it I’d embarrass myself); the art in dealing with the C&N, ie, clinginess and neediness—a tricky one as clinginess and neediness should not necessarily be viewed as bad given the circumstances yet those two are what get to me the most at the present; and the art of closing particularly during the initial consult, as I am always under the impression that we should always somehow end a consult with a sense of hope. I personally know what it’s like to be at the opposite side of the desk during a cancer consult, so that probably confounds things as there is the tendency to be overly artsy.

It is somehow convenient, in this early stage of our training, when patients are as equally evasive of the issues. I would evade and dodge with them, because at this point we are both unprepared. Occasionally a few would opt not to beat around the bush and look at me directly in the eye and ask if they would get cured. I think I am good at beating around the bush because I love bushes and other bushy stuff and bushy stuff you could smoke, and I could probably tell them that “cure” could mean a lot of different things etc etc etc, but we all know what they’re talking about, and that’s total destruction of that annoying thing called cancer. The first thing I should probably learn is to how to look at them directly in the eye, and not say something stupid like “well, I think…. ano.” Just yesterday someone asked this question about cure, and the first thing I said was, “Well, cancer is… the new cough and colds. A lot of people have it. Siiiiige po!”

Cough and colds. Yes, I really need to work on my closing.

The Ketobora Phenomenon

2011-03-21T00:07:00.002+08:00

Back in 2008 when we were first year residents Tessieloopagoop got this perplexing text message from a nurse in the pay floors:

"Informing Dr. Ketobora that patient (name) is dyspneic."

This caused a general scratching of the head as no one in the planet is named Dr. Ketobora. No one in the hospital has a name that vaguely sounds like Ketobora, and we know no signature no matter how bad it is that could be misread as Ketobora. Calmly Tessieloopagoop texted back and clarified who the heck Dr. Ketobora is.

"Sorry hindi po pala Dr. Ketobora. Si Dr. Uto po pala."

This caused a general scratching of the head as no one in the planet is named Dr. Uto. No one in the hospital has a name etc etc (repeat all sentences from the previous paragraph and swap Ketobora with Uto). Really, who the hellellellel are Dr. Ketobora and Dr. Uto, and even if they exist in the 52 parallel universes how could Ketobora be misread as Uto? To this very day we've never learned who the heckeckeck those two strange doctors are.

This morning one of my favorite breast cancer patients texted me to inform me that there is no vacancy and that she couldn't be admitted.

"Good morning Dr. Adansan, di po ako ma-aadmit today."

Drs. Ketobora and Uto, whoever you are, you have a new colleague by the name of Dr. Adansan, whoever he is. I hope to meet you all in the next twenty lifetimes.

Plug Stuff With Stuff

2011-03-15T20:17:00.002+08:00

And so it was one fateful night that I discovered that music can give you a higher high. You know junkies, they yearn for new, escalating sensation of high with the substances they are addicted to, hence the phenomenon of autoerotic asphyxiation--which deserves another blog entry--ten blog entries all together. After graduating from my clunky walkman and discman in 2003 I started using my Palm as my personal music player. That was the time when such device was still called Palm Pilot and the Graffiti mode of writing could make you write "fuck" instead of "fuse". I used some extremely cheap earphones with it, which could be bought in Pedro Gil once a week. Once a week because it could cause all sorts of headache and would malfunction in all sorts of malfunctionification. And so during that fateful night, as what always happens, I fell asleep with the damn earplugs, face down on the pillow, with yet another pillow covering my head--fantasy position for those who want to kill me. I woke up in the middle of the night with Lauryn Hill not singing, but sending direct telepathic music to my brain. What the hellellell I thought, thinking it was some kind of alimpungatan, speaking of which, I've been really curious how you could conjugate alimpungatan into a verb.

With much amazement I discovered that I was sleeping with my nose pressed against the earphones, and with the pillows surrounding my entire head the earphones were sending music directly to my brain through my nostrils up through my coke-damaged cribriform plate and directly to my brain. The joy at the discovery was akin to having discovered by myself for the first time in my hormone-ravaged youth the pleasure of... let's say playing tetris in our Mitsubishi family computer. I tried it multiple times--I plugged the tiny earphones up my nostrils and covered my ears with some earmuffs and yes--Lauryn Hill, Radiohead, Creedence Coldwater Revival, Alanis, etc were sending telepathic songs directly to my brain. I looked it up on the internet and apparently some other freaks were doing it too, and when I saw what the freaks doing it looked like I felt embarrassed and resorted to some other addiction, preferably one that involves plugging something with something. This is obviously the reason why iPod earbuds are white--so I would feel guilty doing disgusting stuff to it.

A Second Call For Marth!

2011-03-10T20:48:00.003+08:00

In the pure absence of things to talk about in our current zombified state Frichmond, Smoketh, and I started waxing nostalgic. Truly I had no stories to tell them.

"I tried breaking open an ampule today. The ampule fell on the floor. Luckily it didn't break. So I picked it up," is the most exciting story I could tell, hence the desperation to rummage old stories.

"Let's try to imagine what Robinson's Ermita looked like when it was still poorita before it transmogrified into Midtown," one of us, whom we shall call Zombie 1 instead of their proper codenames, said. "Where was Starbucks before?"

"A stone's throw away from Fridays, near the Pedro Gil entrance," Zombie 2 said. There is no point discriminating among the zombies, as everyone is now properly zombified. "What restaurant was beside Starbucks?"

"Some restaurant. That area is cursed. It used to be...."
"Cucina Victoria!"
"And then in a few days it became...."
"That crap restaurant that serves expensive crap food, Oody's,"
"Which is beside...."
"Faggaro!"

Stay away, all sorts of political correctness activists, we did not coin the term. Faggaro used to be a popular colloquialism for Robinson's Ermita Figaro, because it used to be a tambayan of all sorts of drag queens surrounded by young, heavily-made up women in tiny skirts. We're not morons so let's cut the political correctness crap--those drag queens were pimping the girls to foreigners. When Robinson's was expanded and Figaro sort of underwent a transformation, however, all them draggies disappeared. Frichmond started to ask whatever happened to one of the mainstay drag queens there.

"One of them became my patient in the ER in 2009," I explained to Frichmond. At that time he was totally devoid of make up, and he had a very scary manly voice. He's been admitted for chronic kidney disease with creatinine shooting to a thousand and he had absolutely no money. Or a bantay. A few times a couple of them short-skirted girls visited him, but that was it.

Luckily before we fell into the boring trap of tracing all the establishments from Starbucks to Dymocks or Tower Records or Cinnzeo in the Faura Wing, Frichmond went farther in the nostalgification and time-warped to the year 2001. We used to go to UP Diliman and one of the restaurants in Katipunan was called Ken Afford. I'm not sure if it's still there, but Frichmond frequented the place back in college. One time after a weekend in Mount Banahaw for a PI 100 class Frichmond and her friends went directly to Ken Afford. They've become so accustomed to screaming to hear each other in the mountains for two days that by the time they were in Ken Afford they were still screaming.

An old mestizo guy behind them called their attention and nicely asked them to lower their voices. Mestizo guy looked familiar, but they couldn't properly identify him, but he looked quite familiar, like he was some Sampaguita Pictures actor but who is this, they thought, maybe he's, no that guy is dead, maybe he's...

There was no need for further guessing as the old, more familiar woman beside him spoke, eyebrows shooting through the orbit, and in true kontrabida fashion scolded them:

"Don't you kids know you're practically shouting?!?!" scolded Rosemarie Gil. Guy beside her is her husband, Eddie Mesa.

There was nothing else to talk about, so we tried to identify all the local actors and actress from the Rosemarie Gil-Eddie Mesa clan and it proved to be too confusing, not being regular watchers of local soaps or subscribers of Yes magazine. We need emergent help. Calling Marth V!

Positively Providential, Said Smoketh

2011-03-07T22:16:00.003+08:00

Smoketh had a rather disheartening experience today in the hospital, hence the five lurs being lurred all at the same time. Truly, positively providential could turn into a negatively.... see, even my alliterative abilities are failing. Positively providential could turn into a negatively.... Nega. Let's settle with that: nega, although that term is quickly falling into disuse, and deservedly so.

This reminds me, back in 2009 during one of my duties as the night MHAPOD (night ER duty) and that post was still quite toxic, having to take care of up to thirty patients (and during the lepto craze, Tessieloopagooparoop had a record number of 43 patients), there was this one patient everyone has been having difficulty transferring to the ward. This guy was practically brain dead, and since he did something really nasty and unspeakable to his children he had no bantay, and as we all know bantay equals life. Someone should probably make a study on this: quality of bantay to chances of making it alive in our emergency room.

So this patient was all brain dead and stuff, or as I was insisting in the chart, he probably had "lock-in syndrome". I know, playing all neurologist and stuff, and I think I did refer this patient to Neurologist Shipper Jack Knight. I was just embarrassed to admit my basis for the referral then: I saw this on CSI.

After weeks on end some distant relative finally arrived at around 2 am and approached me, saying she would request to have the respiratory support and all removed and she would take him home. But then when I talked to the police guy on the phone I was basically told that: I can't let this patient go home as he still has a criminal charge for the disgusting stuff he did to his three female kids.

What the hellellellellellel, with extra ellellellel's for the insufferable heat, kaantukan, stench, and over-all infernal condition of the blasted ER. I think I whined some lowly, unprofessional whine to the police and ordered him to get out of bed and to come to the ER right that moment. He got to the ER in two seconds. Ordering a police is fun--this is for all the almost-tickets I got, you police guy still in your sleeping shorts, how could that possibly be speeding when I am always a nervous wreck when I drive?!?!. So much angst building up, only to come out in a whiny: Pe-pe-pero.... di na po sya makakatakas.

But in my head of heads of heads of heads of hearts of heads: Or couldn't he?
In exasperation with all the legalese I just had the guy admitted after hawking and making tiktik and guarding a potential vacant bed for hours on end. To this very day finding a vacant bed for that patient is one of my finest accomplishments.

If there are any lawyers reading this, I want to know: If I allowed to have the guy go under a "home against advice" waiver, and he escaped because he has been faking brain-deadness all this time, would I go to a selda, get gang-raped, and grow weird boils all over me? I am deathly afraid of selda. Which makes me miss my batchmates all of a sudden: Let's have a batch viewing of Selda!

Premature Whinings

2011-03-02T21:33:00.000+08:00

Last graduation each graduate received a fun, tiny Oblation trophy--perfect for endless batch peekchurifications with all sorts of strange/erotic/esoteric poses. Marth V has done peekchurification wonders with all sorts of weird implements in the past, so an Oblation trophy was a no brainer. Strangely, specifically for the batch, there was very little peekchurification. Gone were the days when every single tiny nook and cranny must be snapped by five different cameras, all to be copied around and uploaded in Facebook, every single photo to be commented on by everyone involved, each comment wittier and funnier than the ones before it. As if instantly, after the whiplash events, everyone has prematurely grown weary and old and tired of life. And for more, just after a couple of days in this new state of life called Hell-owship, I see my batchmates walking around the pay floors like soulless vessels of... sleepiness. We miss a lot of things, but more than anything else, we miss that chance to just take a twenty-minute--or a four hour--nap in the middle of the day. Very early whinings, so we know things can only get worse.

"This is my Grammy for best new artist as a fantastic singer-songwriter," I told Popopopoker Face Popopoker Face as we posed for the official group photo.

"Well this is MY TONY!" Popopopoker Face Popopoker Face exclaimed. Popopopoker Face Popopoker Face is currently an Internal Medicine consultant in Samar. We need to have contingents all over the Philippines for one purpose: so they could get rich, come back, and treat us to dinner.

Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore has made karir AVP's as tribute to our consultants and families. Remarkable quotes were put up. Our favorite would have to be "There is nothing in fairness about it!!!" as said by one of our consultants during a rather toxic audit in response to the presentor Franny Glass's "Ma'am, in fairness to the service..."

"It's okay, Franny Glass," we told our beloved Franny Glass in the ICU afterwards, "it could have been worse, like if you instead said subconsciously, 'Ma'am, in FAIRVIEW to the service..."

All together now: There is nothing in fairview about it!

Yung Tipong Walang Effort sa Pagsusulat, Kung Ano Na Lang ang Maisip

2011-03-01T21:35:00.000+08:00

Maraming salamat sa lahat ng nagbigay bati sa aking kaarawan, kahit in general weird ang pagiging non-existence nito. Kahit hindi na dapat ito big deal sakin dahil hindi naman sya ganun ka-special, in real life, ang tanda-tanda ko na ay naiirita pa rin ako, at bakit naman hindi, looking forward ka na birthday mo kinabukasan tapos biglang ibang date ang darating. Nung grade 2 ako, dahil walang 29 ay wala ni-isang nakaalala sa mga kaklase at teacher ko. Kahit parents ko ahahahahah for more drama. Dahil dito pinapaalala ko na ito sa mga kaibigan ko every year. Every year ay tinatanong ko rin, more like bina-badger, ang nanay at tatay ko na baka naman nagpapakaspecial effects lang sila kaya 29 kunwari ako pinanganak. Hindi daw.

"Or baka malapit na yun mag midnight at March 1 na talaga?" tanong ko pa.
"Hindi, lunch break ka pinanganak," sabi ng nanay ko, sabay kwento ng mga details sa small clinic kung saan ako pinanganak, na kesyo kilala raw nila yung ibang tao dun etc etc at which point ay nag shu-shut off na ako.

Nung med school ako may nakilala na 29 din pinanganak, yung kaklase kong si Mildred.
"Matalino ang mga pinanganak sa 29!" sabi ng isa pa naming kaibigan. Except--EXCEPT!!!--as if on cue ay renal physio exam namin yun. Highest si Mildred. 98 sya. First year med pa lang sya naiintindihan na nya ang mga creatinine at tubules and stuff. Ako, 51. Ahahahahahah. Hence grand finalist ako nung final exams na. Grand finalist ako sa lahat ng bagay na pwedeng mag-grand finalist. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. In fact hanggang ngayon, nakapasa na ako ng boards at naging doktor, nakapag-residency na ng internal medicine sa PGH at nakapasa sa specialty boards nito... ay in real life hindi ko talaga nauunawaan yang mga sodium transport whatever crap na yan. AHAHAHAHAHA.

Next year may birthday na ako ulit. Madaling tandaan, basta divisible by four ay may Feb 29. At basta may Olympics. Laging may isang Feb 29 sa bawat stage of life--high school, college, medicine, residency, and this time, fellowship. Ano na kaya ang kalagayan ko next year, ngayong walang sweldo ang fellowship. Dati inaasar ko si Smoketh na sa sobrang hirap nya bilang fellow ay iniinom na lang nya yung tubig sa baso ng ABG. Walang ABG involved sa onco.

And, as if on cue, ang biglang nagplay sa aking iPot ay ang pinakamalalim na kanta ni Janis Joplin entitled Mercedes Benz with the first line: Oh Lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz?!?

Oh Lord!

Gee Whiz Fun With Thymes and RD-Kid

2011-02-23T20:50:00.000+08:00

Finally saw a movie in the theater again after a long time with RD-Kid and Thymes. Whenever I watch with them we turn into those annoying people who talk to each other and give endless comments and laugh loudly, so it was a good thing very few people were watching 127 Hours. 127 Hours is extremely fun, and although ("spoilers!!!!") everyone had the same thing in mind upon entering the theater ("kailan nya puputulin ang kamay nya?") it didn't drag one bit.

Before the actual arm-cutting event I told Thymes: Eh ano ngayon, mas marami pa silang pinuputol sa Saw.
Thymes: Pero hindi true-to-life ang Saw.
Me: Isn't it.

So sadly Saw is not based on actual events, but more than that 127 Hours manages to make the cutting thing seem much much more painful and visceral than the auto-hepatectomies and all sorts of self-mutilation in all 7 Saw's. We thought we were prepared for a blah self-amputation scene but we still squirmed and squealed and yelped like panicking little wimpy girls. Of course there were lots of other harrowing stuff before that, including Aron's attempts to hydrate himself. He did the obvious and slurped his pee using a straw, but he also did other things we wouldn't think of like sucking his tears from his contact lenses.

Me: Meron pa syang one other bodily fluid na hindi nagagamit.
Thymes: Gross.

And true enough by the next scene Aron was jerking off.

Thymes: Pero bakit hindi pinakitang iniinom nya yung...
Me: Gross.

Watch 127 Hours!

In The Unlikely Event, 1000 Years From Now

2011-02-22T00:47:00.003+08:00

The recent events that just swooshed by—the end of residency with the very toxic moving out of things, the holiday season, the PSBIM reviews, the two graduations, the announcement of the specialty board results, the sudden commencement of fellowship—have given me a total whiplash. Spinal cord injury is more like it. “It’s like you’re just picking up where you’ve left off,” Smoketh has admonished in her wisdom. True, except there are a million broken, jagged pieces and I couldn’t pick them up for fear of getting wounded. Yes, I’m a failed song writer. Damn it.

I didn’t really feel like attending the rather anti-climactic graduation, but there were great speeches that made up the four-hour event. Got all misty with The Man’s speech, although now that Ging has turned over the position of being The Man to Djanah, I need to come up with a new name for her. Suggestions welcome. Having HIV speak in behalf of the batch was a treat as usual. And we couldn’t have found a better keynote speaker than Sir Kilgore Trout, whose unique inspirational speech had us in stitches. Vampirella had me write the introduction for Sir Kilgore Trout. I remembered Ellen Degeneres’ intro for Steven Spielberg in the 2005 Grammy Awards: “The following speaker needs no introduction”, after which she immediately left. A few months ago when asked who we would suggest to be the keynote speaker I suggested in jest our PMA oath taking speaker in 2006, Patricia Evangelista. "She can quote Spiderman," I said.

Kilgore’s fun and inspiring words of wisdom had me thinking: no one will ever get me to speak in front of a graduating medicine batch, and rightfully so, being messed up and all. However, in the same way that I always have this fantasy of going up the stage to get my award for Grammy Song of the Year while my song plays in the background or an Eisner for Best Comic Book Writer of the Year I henceforth deliver my speech to the graduating class of 2091. With the Kilgore Method of giving specifics. So:

To the graduating class of 2091, 2028, or 3028, etc etc etc congratulations etc etc etc here are my tips on how to live your life post-residency/post med school.

There is this Simpsons episode where they all go on a vacation and Lisa, hating herself, adapts a new identity. Marge tells her some crap that she should just be herself and all, and Lisa retorts, to which I agree: I was being myself for eight years and it didn't work! You can't be yourself if you don't know who you are, so am I suggesting that you pick up self-help books or get psychotherapy? No. I'm suggesting: do whatever the heck you want to do and stop reflecting on whether that's really you.

Waste time. Not all the time, okay, just some of the time. Just lie down and stare at the ceiling for hours on end. As long as there’s no one in the other room desperately waiting to be intubated. Sometimes no one will miss us, so just lie down and kill time. Kill it!

Get an iPod and fill with all kinds of songs and listen to them in full blast, but keep your eyes and noses aware in case there’s a fire or a bomb exploding or something. Put the damn iPod in shuffle, we hate predictability.You misfits are lucky you can get thousands of songs in a device. In my time (AHAHAHAHA!) I had to bring my worn-down Walkman and twenty cassette tapes in my bag, and a pen in case the bleeping Walkman chomps up the tape.

Read at least one comic book a day. Except the ones written by Felicia Henderson and drawn by Mark Bagley. I would recommend an actual paperback novel a day, but there are charts to write and patients to see. If you insist on paperback novels get some sort of buddy or support group to nag you to finish the damn book. We hate unfinished books.

For the graduating medicine class: if you’ll go into residency, see all referrals. All of them. Don’t whine, don’t complain, don’t ask too many questions—the time spent being a whiner could be spent drinking coffee or clipping your toenails. Seeing all referrals works on two principles: 1. The principle of PTN (Para Tapos Na) and 2. The principle of mas mabuti nang pagod kesa ma-guilty.

Don’t introspect. Or reflect. Or think too much about undertones of things. Introspection kills. It’s more fun to sleep.

Spiked Kool-Aid For More

2011-02-14T21:35:00.001+08:00

While studying for the specialty boards and getting scared crap that I have ALL those diseases I texted Mrs. T: "Your music recommendation for tonight is Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes by Beck, and also the original version by Korgis; and Always On My Mind, all seven versions of it." I needed my phone to contain something other than the frantic: "Pop Quiz! Multiple true or false. Regarding Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease..." You see Mrs. Therese had previously tasked me to fill her iPot with songs, a job which I take very seriously and with much glee. Nothing screams power more than getting the chance to influence people on what songs to listen to. "Wag mo lang iju-judge yung mga 90's pop songs. It was a phase, okay." I had sheepishly told her.

Mrs. T obliged and listened to Always On My Mind. Always On My Mind is the ultimate Kool-Aid song, ie, it's the sort of song that overstates/caterwauls pain with the intention of making you do a Jim Jones and drink Kool-Aid spiked with hundreds of poisons. For more drama. The oldest version of the song is by Brenda Lee, which is great, but I have a special fondness for the Elvis and Willie Nelson versions.

"Nakatitig sakin si Brenda Lee," Mrs. T then replied. I turned on my own iPot and on the screen, indeed, is the album cover with Brenda Lee challenging you to a staring contest, bee-hive hair and all.

Swedes

2011-02-14T20:43:00.001+08:00

Never been much of a brat, but I wish I were. A brat wields power, and being a great brat requires great skill with one end goal in sight: to get what I want want want. Because it should be mine mine mine.

Two months ago Mrs. T, Uni-Horned Beef Jerky Alanis Whore, and I were supposed to enter this fellowship program, let's call it Swedish Pottery. This got me all giddy. "Kayo lang ang dahilan kung bakit ako mag Swe-swedish Pottery," I told Mrs. T, unable to make adult, independent decisions myself and all. So it was with great mortification that while I was eating kwek-kwek by myself in MSU Mrs. T approached me to say something like something happened, she changed her mind, she wasn't into Swedish Pottery after all! She's into, let's say, Klingon Poetry.

"What the hellellel!" I exclaimed.
"It's just that..." Mrs. Therese said.

Throughout the conversation I had the following inputs:
1. Maybe you should sleep it off. And when you wake up refreshed and all, you'll probably realize that Swedish Pottery helps more people, which is in your nature.
2. Swedish Pottery would allow you to touch people's lives more than Klingon Poetry ever could.
3. Okay, if that's what your heart really desires, I'm aching with the thought but I'm... letting you go. Enjoy Klingon Poetry. You've got all our support.

How civilized. But while it's not in my nature to tell the truth I could no longer take it and told her the next day with much bratty whining: I didn't mean the nice things I've said because what I really want to say is... HOW COULD YA DO THIS TA ME?!?!?! Huhuhuhu (fake tears)

Truly Mrs. Therese has chosen her path and we wish her well. We've just had our first day of class today, the twentieth first day of class in my entire life, and tomorrow Mrs. Therese would have hers. And truly, Swedish Pottery is just that--Swedish, ie, we couldn't understand anything, and it takes more pagpapanggap abilities. Truly there are better things in life, like Swedish porn, but it's a two-year program, and watching porn for two years would be exhausting and at our age, kinda gross.

Holy Crap!

2011-02-10T16:27:00.003+08:00

Wherein we pretend that we’ve been using this expression all our lives and not merely as a product of years watching juvenile American shows and reading American comic books. So here is a list of my weekly… Holy Crap!!!!

Got to watch the MTV Video Music Awards 2010 a few days ago. Haven’t seen this show in many, many years, but it’s fun to see Eminem et al, although Eminem now looks all dried up and he now always needs one major back-up rapper in case he becomes dyspneic. Rock video of the year apparently goes to a band called 30 Seconds to Mars. Band climbs up the stage to get their award and… waitaminute, is the lead singer… Holy Crap, it’s Jared Leto, AKA Harry from my favorite Requiem For A Dream, the guy whose arm gets all gangrenous and stuff from too much IV drug use while Jennifer Connelly is getting banged-up and his mother Ellen Burstyn is getting all sorts of crazy!!! I remember re-watching Requiem in the callroom last November, forcing everyone to watch. They never forgave me for the final scenes.

Channel surfing and in Star Movies was the much maligned Glitter. Secret shame: I’ve seen this in the theaters ten years ago. More secret shame: I know it’s crap but I still get hooked whenever it’s shown on TV, probably in the same manner that you can’t turn away when you see a dead, mangled animal on the street. I re-watched the first few scenes and in one scene Mariah is ghost-singing for this supposed star, Sylk, who can’t sing to save her life. And who should play Sylk but…. Holy Crap, it’s Padma Lakshmi hostess and food critic extraordinaire of Top Chef!!!

Haven’t read Superman in months so it was with much excitement that I cracked open the latest issue and I could no longer recall what the previous issues were about only to discover that... HOLY CRAP Superman is still walking! And I suddenly remembered everything: Superman is doing this sort of pilgrimage crap by walking through different states helping people in their domestic problems and holy crap it’s still boring as hell!

Harrison's Telepathy

2011-02-10T15:15:00.001+08:00

While nervously wolfing down KFC in Rob I asked Pyro a question.

“Hey Pyro,” I said, “Category: IDS. Question: 8-16 hours?”

“Bacillus cereus,” Pyro said nonchalantly as he munched on a drumstick.

“Correct!!!!” I exclaimed.

For years Pyro has wolfed down, regurgitated, and re-eaten Harrison’s so much that either the smallest buzz term could trigger chapters and chapters of knowledge, or he has totally mutated into a telepath. This panicked everyone.

“If I don’t pass the specialty boards,” Ecurb Enyaw Pots said with much drama, “I would totally disappear and erase all traces of my identity from the internet.”

“If I don’t pass the boards,” someone else said with more drama, “I would not attend the bleeping graduation!!!!”

“If I don’t pass the boards,” I said, “I would attend the graduation so I could see how people would sidestep the issue when I’m around and I would catch their secret glances and hear their carefully diverted conversations and self-restrained congratulations and sense the general discomfort at having me around while trying to avoid the giant fucking black elephant in the room and STUFF!!!!”

“Or so you think,” Pyro said. “So you think that people would sidestep the issue. For all you know the department chair would go in front, and say ‘Congratulations to everyone for passing the specialty boards, everyone EXCEPT Special Agent Fox Mulder!!!! And he attended my review for free, if I may add’.”

Pyro is ruthless. A ruthless mutant Harrison’s telepath.

Usurping Oar House

2011-02-06T21:51:00.004+08:00

“We should drink alcohol. Off to Oar House!” Enjh proclaimed while we were comfortably ensconced drinking Voltage in Shrine MotherFucker I. So off we went to Oar House, which was apparently just a stone’s throw away from Shrine MotherFucker I. It was 12 midnight and Oar House was already deserted, and Enjh was right, it was the sort of cozy, intimate watering hole in the mold of those Irish pubs or something, not that I’ve ever seen an original Irish pub. Or an original anything for that matter, in fact we used to have a transistor (transistor! AHHAAHAHAH!!!) branded not Sony, but Sonya. Now Oar House is the sort of place that old customers have a tendency to be secretive about, so I can now be categorized under Usurpers Who Make Our Cool Hang-Out Places Commercial. Nothing against them elitists because we used to call the usurpers of our favorite coffee house seats, well, Mother Fuckers. I’ve been walking by that corner for over ten years and I’ve never seen Oar House before.

While taking a swig the bar was playing U2’s Walk On from the fantastic album All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

“And the music is good, too,” Enjh said.

“Yes, not kukuru-kuku,” Godwin agreed.

It’s the sort of place I could very well be comfortable in, because for years on end I’ve been attempting to drink by myself for more Holden Caulfieldish drama, but every time I get near those bars in Nakpil my head hurts from the club music and the pulsing lights and the seedy people around asking if I want to have sex. So in the remote event that you're reading this: I just want to drink alone and ruminate and sometimes be suicidal and ruminate for more drama, okay, I don't want to have sex!

Which reminds me, All That You Can’t Leave Behind is one of my ultimate favorite albums of all time and I need to listen to it right now. Back in 2001 while waiting for my turn in the admission interview at the UP College of Medicine I was sitting in a corner in MRL listening to the Grammy Awards in Magic 89.9 in my Discman (Discman! AHAHAHAHA!) and All That You Can’t Leave Behind was not nominated for Album of the Year because its release didn’t make the deadline or something. Eminem went on stage as the final performer and sang Stan with Elton John. After which they went backstage as the nominees for Album of the Year were announced. We were all rooting for Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP and besides he has just performed, so this could be a good sign. Presentor then goes, “And the Album of the Year goes to… Two Against Nature by Steely Dan!!!”

Who the hellellel.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago I’ve downloaded Two Against Nature. I listened to it and still went: What the hellellel.

Hearth! Blok Blok Blok

2011-02-06T21:50:00.001+08:00

During our hospital-wide residency graduation the first week of January Mrs. Therese gave me a copy of Diary of Wimpy Kid. I showed this to Smoketh, who exclaimed, “That’s you!” I initially thought it’s unfair to label me as wimpy, but right now every time I’m in a drugged, introspective mood and I look back at what sort of kid I was in elementary I always want to get a Flux Capacitor, go back in time, and beat the crap out of my younger self. Beat the crap out of is not even accurate, it’s more like “blowtorch younger self to hell”. Yes, you may say that this is the sort of self-hate that creates serial killers, but that would be an insult to serial killers everywhere. I hadn’t mangled any animals, but then again I once tried to bring my totally dead pet beetle back to life by carefully blowing at it fully believing I was transferring life into it, until I lost control of my blows and blew the damn thing into a crevice on the wall where the carcass was later attacked by ants.

“D.P.!” the emcee calling the graduates one-by-one announced, and in my head, D.P. has been our senior resident in Surgery over six years ago back when I was a fourth year medical student, and she’s still graduating, this time from a fellowship program. And aptly, Mrs. Therese writes in her dedication on the Wimpy Kid book, “Happy 6^th graduation!”

“Hey Marth,” I said to Marth while he was reading Urinary Tract Infection Guidelines (truly there is no time to waste). “Hey Marth, I’ve just realized, you’ll be graduating from Cardio Fellowship in 2014. And if you’ll proceed with Interventional Cardio you would graduate again in 2016. By that time there would probably be a new sub-sub-sub-specialty, probably Bundle of His or Left Atrium. You could probably take that as well and end by 2029. There’s no end to this penniless hell.”

“Yes,” Marth agreed. It’s great when friends agree with your rants.

Indeed, there is no end to this hell. Why the heck did I ever go into this career path? Why did I just go with the band wagon back in 2001? Why didn’t I just muscle up and make sure I’d make it as a porn star? Or more seriously, why didn’t I just muscle up and make sure I’d make it as a porn star? This is why you shouldn’t follow your friends, your parents, your head, or your heart in making career decisions. You should just watch reality shows (except the modeling and hair-styling ones)—because being a pastry chef, an outcast, an amateur singer, a matchmaker of bisexual millionaire swingers, or a bachelor/bachelorette would seem much more fun. And since we’re just going to live an average of 60 years anyway, fun is the way to go. Fun! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! Fuuuuuun (psycho laughter)!!!!!!

And Just Because I Haven't Changed Clothes in Two Days: Social Commentary

2011-02-06T21:46:00.004+08:00

Been watching TV for ten straight hours now, and haven’t changed clothes in two days. Ahahahahaha. My only regret is I’m not the sort of person who grows disgusting beard with ticks just after a few hours of incubating inside a room. I am so dirty and so poor that of all the bleeping things to pop up on TV is… the senate hearing on the AFP corruption! And here I was thinking we are talking about a couple of million pesos, when all of a sudden someone divulged that one high-ranking AFP person was given… P120 million pesos!!! And another one was gifted with… P80 million pesos! And poor third person, as he was just given a measly P50 million pesos!!!! Stealing is something that we don’t usually put in the same league of evil like mass murder or gay incest pedophile sex, but this is… P120 million pesos!!! Why the heck would anyone need P120 million pesos?! But more importantly, how could you have P120 million pesos and still look like that?! I’m just saying.

Click click click, and in another channel, Oprah with another one of her Favorite Things episode where she gives lots of stuff to her audience who then become quite berserk. “That is so embarrassing,” I later told Nosferatu, “to lose your composure and go all crazy on national TV just because someone’s giving you an expensive leather bag and an expensive pair of shoes.”

“Not really,” Nosferatu opined. “Wouldn’t you go crazy and jump up and down and roll on the floor screaming like a little girl if Oprah tells you you’re receiving series 1-8 of the recently released but very expensive and difficult to find Blackest Night action figures plus the entire set of the very elusive 2002 Legion of Superheroes?!?”

“Of course not… yes. YES! YES!!!!” I said.

Tutututuw! Tutututuw!

2011-02-06T21:45:00.003+08:00

Back in 2007 I wrote in my Friendster blog (back when, all together now—it still wasn’t spammed by invites for orgies in Ortigas!!!) something about the ill-fated show Dayuhan. Or more appropriately, how I thought it was a childhood hallucination when I was 8 years old, as there is nothing on it on the internet and no one I know ever has a recollection of the damn thing. It got a couple of replies, with Mike S. succinctly saying, “no, you haven’t imagined that shite”. Dayuhan is a show starring a bunch of young actors led by Hero Bautista as a young alien who has the power to inflict pain on anyone by removing his thick-rimmed glasses and staring at the person, with the background sound effect going “TUTUTUTUW! TUTUTUTUW!” Yes, this was in the early eighties, and it could very well be the predecessor of that other crap show, Roswell.

Strangely years after I’ve abandoned the Friendster blog I would still get notified thru email that there are a couple of new comments. This is a sign that there still isn’t a lot of Dayuhan material on the internet, and whoever’s looking for references is directed to Friendster, which is sad in many levels. One of the commenters introduced herself as one of the kiddie stars of the show. I don’t remember her role as she described it, because truly I could only remember Hero and the evil girl whose sound effect is always a much louder, much baseline karindihan TUTUTUTUW!!! TUTUTUTUTUW!!! to illustrate her higher level of powers. Obviously this is a sign that if the major networks have run out of fairy tale and local comic book materials to copy and put their spin on, they should just do a remake of Dayuhan. But they couldn’t call the show Dayuhan because it sounds boring, instead they should call it, all together now, TUTUTUTUW! TUTUTUTUW!!!!

Our Topic For Today is Hate

2011-02-06T21:44:00.003+08:00

Our topic for today is hate. Yes, hate, because there isn’t enough nega already and we want to add to the general nega of things. Ya got that, the general nega of things!!!! How do we define hate? Because we’re so lazy to even check the dictionary for an operative definition and our brains have turned to mush from old age we are instead just going to define hate by giving examples! Hate is that feeling we have towards mutant alien cockroaches after they have outsmarted us by walking on crevices so we couldn’t stomp on them, or whenever they resort to the very cheap but very effective—gasp!!!—flying! FLYING!!! Eeeeeep! Hate is when we see in Facebook that our friends from decades ago have now gone places and are actually mature and whose profile pics in fact are their transvaginal ultrasound results, while we still get all giddy at the thought of having Jollibee Chickenjoy for dinner because it’s the most gourmet thing we could afford!!! Hate is what we feel when we’ve been falling in line all day for cotton candy in the school fair, only to be told by the time it’s our turn that they’ve run out of sugar!!!! Hate, is when we start referring to ourselves in plural, because we have multiple personality disorder and we claim that it’s a true disease entity!!! Hate!!!! Hate!!!! Hate, only to be transformed, by the Red Lantern of Rage, into… RAGE!!!! RAAAAAAAAAGE!!!!

This is what happens when you listen to rap songs about hate on constant repeat for one whole day. I’ve just realized that the things I write about are always affected by the music playing at the time, like two years ago when I was listening repeatedly to that song which was subliminally about cunnilungus all my entries turned out to be all about caves, crevices, bushes, and fig trees. So I don’t have the urge to kill at 3 am in the morning or wrap my cousin in Christmas lights and push him in a stinking bath tub, but I get to write an entire paragraph on hate. Henceforth, to counterbalance things I am now shifting to Carrie Underwood and it’s starting to take… immediate effect. Because you know what, sometimes the mountain you’ve been climbing is just… a grain of sand. And when you see that love is all that matters after all it would sure make everything seem… so small. Zoloft, roight.

Snarl!

2011-01-30T23:37:00.001+08:00

With much delight I pulled from the ref a bunch of lettuce, sliced some tomatoes, and had some bacon fried for me. Then I made a sandwich. Because that's the extent of my food preparing abilities. Unlike... those kids from Masterchef Junior!!!! These cooking shows are on constant replay in three channels, and you can catch them all the time. In Masterchef Junior these 8-year olds cook lamb or some sauced chicken with those greens or something, using cumin, curry or foie something, and they turn in excellent-looking food.

This reminds me, back in Grade 3 for some reason our HELE (HELE! AHAHAHAAH!) teacher had us make up some recipe as an assignment. There was no internet then, so I had someone do it for me, some gourmet-ish breaded fried chicken of sorts. The next day we were to read the damn thing in front. Miriam was the lucky girl called to astonish us with her recipe. This is exactly what she said in front:

"Fried Fish. Instructions: Trim the fish then fried the fish."

Which, without sarcasm, makes sense in the bigger scheme of things, because why the heck do we need to churn out recipes at that point in our lives anyway? Miriam went on to become a total Math and Chess wizard, winning contests left and right and is now some high ranking CPA.

And back in Grade 6, in... HELE (HELE! AHAHAHAAHAHAH!) our seat work was to fry an egg. If you can fry an egg perfectly, like the yolk is intact and it's perfectly round and stuff, you'll get 10 points out of 10!!!

"Yehey!" Neleah screamed in delight as she watched her egg get fried perfectly on the frying pan. Mrs. Let's Buy Pig In The Market was about to write 10/10 in the grading sheet just as Neleah was excitedly transferring the perfectly fried egg from the pan to the plate. With a yelp she accidentally dropped the egg on the floor, and out splattered the yellow gooey thing on the floor from the once perfect sphere of yolk. "Ay," Mrs. Let's Buy Pig In The Market said nonchalantly. "Zero over ten!!!" she then snarled.

These cooking shows are dredging up the most pointless experiences.

New Year's Hell, Because Hell is Starbucks Queue That Doesn't End

2011-01-30T23:20:00.000+08:00

“What do you have planned for today?” my sister asked the morning of January 1. I said nothing, I will just sleep, because it’s already four hours since I’ve last slept. With her husband and our mom they went to Tagaytay, which is a 20-minute drive from where we live, so after 6 hours I called them “Where the hellellell are you?”

“We’re still in Tagaytay!!!” my sister, whom we shall henceforth call Skullky, caterwauled. “It’s sooooo traffic! It’s soooo fun!!! We ate in… CHOWKING!!!”

Apparently everyone just decided to flock to Tagaytay, as all the roads, restaurants, churches, malls, crevices, and motels were packed like hovels and it took them over three hours to get there. Upon reaching back home I planned to gloat, but decided against it upon seeing genuine emotional distress.

“Ang pila sa Starbucks hanggang labas. Pang number 28 kami sa Dencio’s. At sa Chowking, walang yelo ang iced tea. At… walang tissue,” my mother declared, as she sprinkled Prozac powder on her milk.

“It was like the end of the world na,” Skullky declared, shaking, still reeling from the 7-hour ordeal, dried mascara on her cheeks.

“There, there,” I said as I patted them on the head. And in my head, “gloat, gloat”.

Because you see, we all have our different forms of hell. My own personal hell is when I get an extreme, debilitating allergic rhinitis attack that the image of smoke on TV is causing me to sneeze like crap, sneezing and tearing like hellellel that I don't care what the textbooks say I wouldn't want that ketchup bottle with sodium bicarb or salt or some douche thing near my nose, because if I could I would scrape out these turbinates, scrape them out with a razor and then bring down said razor to my neck, my neck I tells ya!!! (sorry been listening to a lot of Eminem lately) To other people it's endless queues, particularly in Starbucks. Speaking of queue, back in grade 5, when I had exactly two English words in my vocabulary, I would pronounce queue as kwe-we. There, I said it.

Lurs and Expletives and BRP and Washed-Out Prozac

2011-01-30T23:12:00.001+08:00

I didn’t care. I went out to our balcony, lit a bleeping cigarette, and blew carcinogenic smoke into the open air! And of all the bleeping people to see me.

“Nakita ko ang anak mo sa balcony nyo. Nag-lulur!” the snitch told my mother. And who should this snitch be but... my grade 4 English teacher.

Of all the plucking people.

Totally Frozen Brain With Tumors Inside

2011-01-30T23:02:00.002+08:00

After waking up at 2pm on December 16 with the May 1 thought, “Now what,” and two weeks of pure nothingness, with no internet in sight (vinta, mayor’s permit, and NBI clearance required), and no significant personal interaction other than with my action figures, my brain has totally frozen. Which is preferable to a bleeding brain, bleeding brain from too much thinking in IM. Would still opt for a frozen brain--all those anticoagulants and drugs and criteria and protocols and learning-learning crap! Speaking of which, I have been having persistent headaches and of course I’m thinking of cancer. My mother thinks it’s from too much sleep. Upon coming home when residency ended I declared once and for all in the house, “Ayokong maghugas ng pinggan ever, ever.”

And since my brain has totally frozen (with tumors inside), I cannot compose proper reviews for the delightful and disgusting pop culture… stuff I was able to immerse myself with in the past two weeks, hence I will just LIKE and DISLIKE them with a few rants, in true frozen-brain-with-tumors-inside fashion.

Lost Finale- finally got the time to watch season 5 and season 6 (final season). Lost is still mostly boring, and these seasons are very manipulative, drawn-out, melodramatic at times, gimmicky, but still gee-whiz fun, and I still got all misty at the final, final scene. The last time I cried while watching something was… Toy Story 3. Lost Finale: LIKE.

Justice League International- For a twice a month title this series is fast-paced and action-packed, which is what we want want want from a comic book, not some introspective crap like Superman who is still walking, I think he’s in Nevada now. Ice is doing a Dark Phoenix, but I still LIKE this title, so LIKE.

Masterchef USA- LIKE. Because Whitney dropped the chicken and she still got to fry something properly in seven minutes, so there’s that supernatural aspect there. So LIKE. But my mom and sister would probably not like, as after every episode I would tell them something like: I want buttermilk fried chicken on a bed of collard greens but I want you to drop the chicken and fry another one seven minutes before I get to the table and it has to be cooked properly.

No Internet- Whereas back in residency I would grow hair in weird places if I don’t get to have internet for more than 48 hours, I noted that without internet I can do more productive stuff, like arrange my paperback novels alphabetically, make and unmake my bed 7x a day, sit alone in the veranda thinking of what diseases I probably have, and stuff. LIKE.

Adele's Rolling In the Deep- Like, because it's playing over and over in my head even as I toss and turn insomniacally on my bed and it's driving my crazy get out of my head Adele! Still, Like.

Quick rundown of old movies I’ve watched recently (some spoilers like you care)

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997)- Murder mystery which suddenly gives you a whiplash as it turns into an X-Files episode 3/4ths into the movie, plus the bitchy Smilla and really what the heck kind of name of Smilla! DISLIKE.

I Love You, Man (2009)- For the endless AHAHAHAHAHAAHAH’s from Paul Rudd and Jason Segel plus the girl from The Office and the peacocking guy from 17 Again: LIKE LIKE LIKE.

The Back-Up Plan (2010)- Starring J-Lo. Dislike is probably too mild for this, but hate is not appropriate either, as we reserve hate for more important things, like expensive lost X-ray plates. So we will just pretend that The Back-Up Plan does not exist. Or—OR, more appropriately, to quote BOTD’s movie review by text: “chaka!”

Vertigo (1958)- Because we enjoy seeing people free-falling from towers and such and we want to claim that we’ve watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie: LIKE.

Disturbia (2008)- DISLIKE the movie, but LIKE the idea of getting house-arrested for 3 months.

Cabin fever setting in. Headache, nausea, fasciculations in strange places, the desire to pull out hair strands and eat them. I love it.

(This is a really old post I've discovered stashed away in my laptop, for more filler effect after a long hiatus.)

Too Many People

2011-01-01T13:32:00.000+08:00

In the malls. Everywhere. Because it’s Christmas. Not to be Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin in the X-Files episode How The Ghosts Stole Christmas, but I’ve been ranting to everyone that I think Christmas as an annual event is too much, too much I tells ya! I can still remember exactly what happened last Christmas Season. Or two Christmases ago. Because not only do we get temporarily insane this season, we also end up permanently poor. Of course Tits doesn’t think so, in fact he thinks Christmas should be held every quarter. Imagine that, Marks & Spencer would be really happy. I also also also think that people in the hospital are at more risk for death every Christmas season. Because for some reason, the CT skull, the diagnostic centers, the dialysis centers, the clinics, and the consultants all find it within themselves to celebrate the Christmas cheer and just leave patients and residents to hang out and dry. Once a year lang naman daw, but I still wouldn’t choose to develop uremia this season.

This year for more Christmas cheer I decided not to go out for days and days on end. After residency officially ended last December 15 and we had our gee-whiz batch goodbye’s and Christmas parties I’ve decided to… not go out of my room. Not exactly true, it’s been five days and I sometimes go out to the balcony to eat a sandwich. I’m finally reaping the rewards of my nefarious hoarding behavior. After years and years on end of downloading stuff in Shrine MotherFucker 1 I now have gigabytes of magnificent stuff to entertain me for weeks and weeks more, stuff to watch while I’m lying down and drinking Coke Lite supine. And I intend to never go out of the house for weeks and weeks, until I become a totally pale and obese and bearded troll, like Fox Mulder in the much rightfully maligned 2nd X-Files movie I Want To Believe. And right now I’m watching the wonderfully cheery The Virgin Suicides. For more Christmas cheer.

Duma-dive

2011-01-01T13:29:00.000+08:00

Recently put a close to another chapter when residency ended, and fortunately the last few days were so bleeping busy and everyone was bustling with too much stuff to finish and submit and crap, or we would have been overwhelmed with senti-han portion. I don’t look like the senti-est person, but truly I couldn’t have found better people to have spent this three-year residency stint with. Of course there was the occasional nega, as could probably be expected from the intense, high-strung nature of our job, but at the end of the day these are the people I’ve spent more meals with, more time whining with, more drama, laughter, tears, and most importantly, peekchurifications with. Chief told us at the beginning of senior year, you are brothers and sisters, and like siblings you would have your differences, but no matter what you would still... love each other (dive!). I entered the program without really knowing most of them, but am now leaving with twenty-two friends I know I could just pull aside for synchronized whining. Thank you IM-Perfect, for taking turns injecting me with pain meds, for being such fun characters in this blog and being a great sport about it, for allowing me to take your picture wearing my Lantern rings. We've seen the best and whiniest sides of each other, and right now I’d want nothing more than to have action figures of each of you. Start thinking of your accessories.

Turn You To Soot

2010-12-16T17:17:00.002+08:00

I would like to thank the wonderful now 2nd year residents (yeah!) batch IM-Possible for giving me the opportunity to finally make the speech I've been practicing in my head for years and years on end. I didn't know then what award the speech would be for, but I've been practicing it over and over, thinking it might be for some literary award, or Grammy for Song of the Year for more drama, or even some fun award like getting first place in a Useless X-Files Information quiz bee, or something nasty like Zero Plan Award In Life. Or ano. Yes, my prepared speech is all-encompassing, and I've always visualized myself behind that podium and proudly scanning the weeping and bewildered audience and stuff. It never happened.

When I did win some award and had to speak behind a podium in Shangri-La five years ago I never got to deliver that well-rehearsed speech because of the literary luminaries in front of me, but instead delivered some cliche crap, because really, how could I follow the speech of a guy who just said in front: Ibagsak ang gobyerno!!! To everyone's cheers. Back then Callistus Netromedev told me I should have delivered this speech: To all the Palanca winners here, to all of you established writers with volumes of published books under your belt, to you, to you, and to you: o ano ngayon? I told him I would make the speech next time, but there was never a next time, so they could now gloat.

And so to my delight they gave me the Hyperthermia Award a few days ago. Yes, I am extremely hot I can instantly kill everyone in sight. I am hot. Readers, five minutes to digest that. Or ten hours. Now that you've regained consciousness, read it again: I'm hot. Ya hear that! The hottest. I know, looking like this. This should serve as an inspiration to all troglodytes everywhere, because you can never can tell.

And just in case somebody missed that super important and extremely fun event, let me do my speech again. Imagine me standing from my seat, shaking hands with everyone around me, walking slowly to the podium with tears starting to accumulate in everyone's eyes as the Grammy Song of the Year which I've composed blares in the background. Ready those hankies, ready that orchestra music cue in case my long speech bores you, here goes my speech:

"Thank you. I deserve this."