A patient I saw last week had a history of a rectal fistula. I'd never heard of this condition, even as I spent months reading about recto-vaginal and vesico-vaginal fistulas last spring in preparation for research in Sierra Leone that never happened. At any rate, I searched and ended up at eMedicine:

For reasons of intrinsic anatomy, rectovaginal fistulas are found only in women.

That sentence right there is why, as a physician in training, Google is no longer the friend it once was.

Woah dudes. This one has to be both insightful and original: Art Brut's Formed a Band has the same rhythm as the first half of The Sugarcubes' Sick For Toys off Life's Too Good. And while I wish I could make that last sentence more internet-friendly, tough noogies to you.

I'm listening to:
The Sugarcubes- Life's Too Good
nothing but an observation this pointed could draw me away from my engrossing problem set on azotemia.

Many moons ago, I spent a summer volunteering at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. I catalogued slides of embryos, which I can guarantee was just as engrossing as it sounds. Today's actively repulsive article on the museum (which never once mentions whether it will remain open after the rest of Walter Reed closes) describes a pathologist's dream. As for the girl who can't stand being around preserved body parts, well she's happy she got out early.


I'm listening to:
Fugazi- Furniture EP

If I may be so shallow, I think the Brangelina spawn may actually be pretty strange looking. I get my vicarious genetically blessed kicks in the form of Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and his lovely wife Mary:










Their Prince Christian was baptised yesterday. He (Frederik. I'm not that pedophilic, fool) is just so dreamy:





I'm listening to:
Ladytron- 604

Hot damn.

I make a distinct effort to be insightful, and it turns out everyone already thought of it. It's not quite as sad as entitling a song 'Ironic' when not one of your examples is ironic, but close. Quite a bummer, though I will say that the quality of She Wants Revenge is such that I will continue to describe them as a poor man's Interpol, rather than a poor man's Joy Division. Take that, popmatters!

In other notes from the week, my presentation was well received, even though I was quite obviously petrified for the first few minutes. I think I turned a major freak-out into a rather charming explanation of protein expression in transgenic mice. More importantly, it's over now, and I may begin National Learn About The Kidney Week. We're off to a slow start this morning, as I'm still associating Potter syndrome with Joey Potter, and not bilateral renal dysplasia. *sigh*


I'm listening to:
Andrew Bird- Fingerlings 2

stop the presses

My new favorite Bloc Party song, Helicopter, is about President Bush? Seriously? After I took a break from Parting Gift but prior to moving on to Calendar Girl, I spent Friday and Saturday newly revitalized on the Bloc Party song that everyone else was listening to while I was obsessed with This Modern Love. And now, just having finally googled the lyrics as internet is out at home, I find this:

Three out of five, three out of five (it's not enough)
Six out of ten
Better luck next time
Just like his Dad, just like his Dad (the same mistakes)
Some things will never be different
Hungry and dumb, hungry and dumb (so wait in line)
Queuing up for some more junk food
It's not my fault, it's not my fault (just this once)
They're getting so much younger

I completely missed the boat on that one. I guess the song is now sort of less amazing than before when I thought it was an obtuse love song, in the same way that M.I.A. combining un-insightful political jabs with not-funny jokes about Kate Moss and mascara on M.I.A. is not very witty.

three easy steps to sad

My song this week is Calendar Girl, the last track on Stars' wonderful, wonderful album Set Yourself on Fire. Amy Milan sings a lot more on this album than the not-nearly-as-awesome Heart; she has my favorite kind of hauntingly pretty voice. Here's my lyric:

I dreamed I was dying; as I so often do / And when I awoke I was sure it was true /
I ran to the window; threw my head to the sky / And said whoever is up there, please don't let me die

I wonder sometimes why I'm sad sometimes. And then I realize, I'm listening to depressing shit while reading books about genocide.

Hannah Arendt writes some of the most lucid prose I've ever read as she breaksdown what happens when people are 'just following orders.' Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is both a history lesson and a moral one, more than I got out of Aryeh Neier's War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror, and the Struggle for Justice this summer. A still more disturbing read is Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak. I'm pretty commentless right yet, and I don't even know that I can recommend it... it was gratuitous and rough and terrorizing. And that's where I'm at right now, working on my presentation, staving off studying, and overly sad.


I'm listening to:
Stars- Set Yourself on Fire

I hate people

I'm half-listening to She Wants Revenge while working on a presentation I have to give this week.

I'd been spacing out, but suddenly came-to: this shit sounds like a hipster friendly Interpol. And while that last sentence makes no sense at all, it's one of the truer statements I've ever made on this weblog.

Robin Givhan is out of control:

On the first day of hearings, her red suit with its contrasting piping matched his red tie. On the second day, she echoed his pale blue shirt with her blue sweater, which fell discreetly to mid-thigh. On the fourth day, her white jacket over a red dress mirrored his white shirt and red tie.

She's so grand-fathered in at this point that even bat-shit insane articles like the one on Condi Rice's boots well be printed. Bless her heart.

Sub-statement: Martha-Ann Alito left crying yesterday because Lindsay Graham, who's supposed to be their staunch ally, asked her husband if he was a bigot. Not, my dears, because the Democrats were asking too many tough questions.

I have been told to read Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss. He is a psychiatrist who in the process of performing hypnotherapy on one of his patients discovered that she had lived, well, many lives. He could guide her through these different incarnations of herself.

I hate to be a skeptic dudes, but on page 30 the girl says, "The year is 1568 B.C." Um, years weren't labeled as 'before Christ' prior to his birth (I want to use an exclamation point there, too, but I'll abstain). I could gloss over it, were Weiss not so adamant about quoting her exactly in his text. I'll finish the book, dear reader, and let you know.


I'm listening to:
David Bowie- Aladdin Sane

on being a belladonna

Nary a suitor gazing into my pallid blue eyes has failed to notice the enormity of my pupils. I spend my days with permanently dilated pupils; I'm your pseudo-strung out medical student. I've always rued this fact of my physiology, as I'd prefer to show off more blue iris.

Turns out, I'm one sexy lady; pretty women all the way back to Cleopatra have used to apply atropine to their eyes in order to dilate their own pupils. (if I could code captions, I'd say something about the exceedingly dilated pupils in this bust of Cleopatra. My pupils are not quite so large as to take up my entire eyeball.)

Thanks to Pharmacology, I've learned that atropine is a competitive inhibitor of the ligand-gated muscarinic acetylcholine receptor. By applying it to their eyes, the Bella Donna blocked the effects of acetylcholine (Ach) on the parasympathetic nervous system, which acts to constrict the pupil. When atropine is around, Ach can't bind to its muscarinic Ach receptor in the neuromuscular junction, and so the receptor can't open its sodium channal and depolarize the post-synaptic cell. So the sympathetic nervous system goes unopposed: pupils are dilated.

And in earth-shattering news, my Marion Barry is still using crack to achieve the same effect.


I'm listening to:
Fiona Apple- Extraordinary Machine
the new version has grown on me. And Parting Gift has recently become one of my favorite Fiona songs ever, believe it or not; I can't believe I missed its greatness for so long. The lyrics are perfect (though to make it more personally relevant, I've replaced "you never learned that much from me" with "you never once enchanted me.") The song also makes me want to do plie exercises at a barre, and I can't tell you the last time that sounded like a good idea.

The new Bachelor is a doctor, a fact which bore no weight in my decision to watch last night's premiere; I love all the Bachelors. The combination of the ridiculous possibility for romance and the crazy bitches that sign up for the show have made it a favorite for me since the early days of Trista.

Highlights from past seasons include the vegetarian who ate meat for the first time in 12 years because, well, "at least his fingers touched my lips" and of course the alcoholic who responded to the millionaire bachelor's comment of, "I like Italian food" with, "I love the Olive Garden."

But I think the first episode is really when the crazies come out to best effect. Take the lady who peeled open a strawberry at the bachelor and said, "when I met you my heart started to open," and then took a bite out of her metaphorical heart.

And last night brought a crazy Oncologist (!) who declared to the Bachelor in her 5 minutes with him, "I'm ready for my reproductive phase." Someday I'm going to be a single doctor, but please, please, let me never use that as a come-on. Other exciting moments were the return of the 1980s in the neon floorlength gowns these girls chose for themselves.

I recently learned that 'zine is pronounced exactly like the last syllable in magazine. I've spent the last 12 years, since at least the heyday of Sassy, pronouncing it to rhyme with nine.

And, I'm an idiot

another movie I won't make time to see

They're making a Clerks II. The trailer is here. It's in color and co-stars Rosario Dawson, neither of which bodes well for the sequel to one of my favorite movies. Dante looks old in color, though Randall seems to have aged appropriately. His grimace at the end of the trailer is pretty priceless. Both can still only express themselves through eye-rolling.

I could spit out a bunch of quotes, but imdb is far more accurate then I'll ever be. For a girl whose current job is basically to memorize facts, I'm startlingly incompetant at regurgitating any movie quotes or even song lyrics.


I'm listening to:
The Pixies- Trompe Le Monde

on Michael Jackson

I am sore at muscles just below my behind that I did not previously know existed. I dissected the leg of another human being, and I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling in my own body.

I went dancing tonight (I'm sore from the pilates class I took at noon today, but the feeling I want to impart is tied to the dance party. Never you mind). The boys were breakdancing; there was a circle of 7 fellows and then we all stood around and watched. Not really enough bouncing for me, but I can play the good sport and watch for a few minutes. Guys came into the center to solo, when suddenly Billie Jean came on. Everyone stepped it up three levels to dance to Michael Jackson, dancing not only to the beat but also to the story of the misaligned lovers. I feel that each of them must have listened to those albums a hundred times before getting the nerve to come and dance for us. They'd role-played Michael's part so often that the acting just came organically.

And all I could think is, How could it feel to have influenced these young men so profoundly? What would it be like to have created music for the ages? So suddenly, for a few moments, it became ok that Michael Jackson acted out on his lost childhood by molesting children, because we have a handful of unforgettable albums.


I'm listening to:
Bloc Party- Silent Alarm

on resolutions

My New Year's resolution this year is to be more efficient. Now some might argue that keeping a semi-secret weblog epitomizes inefficiency; I would tell them to fuck off. So this efficiency kick means that I'm going to send out the annoying emails that weigh on me every day for months and in other ways streamline my life.

It's Day 4, and of course I've only sent a single email out, the one that was assigned a due date by an outside party. I did, however, just take out a money order on an overdue trafffic violation, meaning that within a few days (depending on when I get up the motivation to find a stamp and mail the damn thing), there will no longer be a warrant out for my arrest in this state and the next.

It's a start, right?


I'm listening to:
Pretty Girls Make Graves- The New Romance

My step-father gave me this incredibly geeky Medical History CD collection to keep me entertained while I was laid up with my knee ailment.

I didn't listen to it until this break, and while I think Dr. Sherwin Nuland comes off as haughty in the opening lecture, he rather grew on me by the end. I learned to like William Harvey, whom I'd previously falsely associated with an imaginary rabbit. I also learned that John Hunter performed the following experiment in trying to distinguish syphilis from gonorrhea from a co-infection: he paid a sailor to rub his infected, pus-leaking penis on a swab of cotton, then abraded his own penis with sandpaper and rubbed the cotton on it. Surprise: he came down with what looked like syphilis.

Now I'm not yet a trained epidemiologist, but it strikes me that this method only proves how these diseases are transmissible (and not even that, really. It just narrows it down to either mucous or blood), so still no way to know whether the sailor was infected with one or the other or both diseases. Also, his method of infection is just plain nasty.


I'm listening to:
Jesus and Mary Chain- Darklands

happy new year to me

I guess someone decided to do something about the wealth disparity in the District and held up my adored Marion Barry.

For my own posterity, of the 600,000 tax-paying DC residents, only 50,000 make more than 30K/year. Just from one consulting firm, Barry made an average of 50K during previous years. Furthermore, "As a council member, Barry is paid $92,520 a year. He also is eligible to receive a $34,000 annual pension from the government."


I'm listening to:
Sigur Ros- Agaetis Byrjun
Every time I hear Staralfur, I want to be a radiant bride making her way down the aisle to meet her beloved. Every other minute of my life, not so much.