pole

people here are rude. if you are different or new or learning a new place, they take advantage of that and poke fun at you and use you for their amusement or, if you're lucky, they don't bother you much. they use social power to make you hurt until you gather enough social power or verbal prowess of your own to fight back and etch out your own little niche in the power structure which you maintain by abusing those below you. fellowship is a hoarded commodity--but disdain is free! and rather palpable. and almost a sport, people are so eager to jump to it.

management shits on supervisors; supervisors piss on labor; labor does other things to new guys; new guys scrabble for position. onward marches the cycle, each looking to his own, all squinty-eyed and posessive.

[sigh] i am tired of mankind. and womankind.

i like trees though. and bicycles. and snow. and thank the sweet lord for discmen, because if i didn't have the The Postal Service playing ("don't wake me/i plan on sleping in") i'd have to be listening to what my housemate and his girlfriend are doing in the next room over. they woke up pretty quickly after i got to sleep and i don't think sunday morning means church for them--so i guess it means no peaceful slumber for me either.

i want to go back to Tanzania. people there are civilized. or at least civil. or, hell, i'd go to Hawaii. check out deanna, who has finally posted after a long absence, during which she apparently died after a life of sainthood and went to heaven.

true to form

(i) "You bring the mammoth, I'll bring the mead." -Dan Perrine

(ii) "Overwhelming firepower is always the solution." -Mark Lemke

(iii) "Boys... [sigh]" -Becca Ballard

my conclusion of the evening is that (Gustav, listen up!) the key to really enjoying beer is the food that you eat with it. for instance--Don Pablo's + dos Coronas + dos limes = amazing culinary happiness. yessss! another beer that I enjoy! life is full of good things.

including--my new baby. i cannot describe how incredibly happy i am. we were made for each other.





--i can pick it up with two fingers, and it's exceedingly fast. and smooth. and quick around the corners. and incredibly good looking. like its owner. :)

ahhhh...

sleeping soundly; waking up well rested, no alarm clock; 99c early bird special at Amy's; a morning stroll through the park; hiking boots and blue jeans; my old battered travelin' sweater; the soft noise of rain sheepishly going about its business; nickel creek on the stereo; emails from friends in faraway countries; people who get needing to take a long walk in the fall rain and know well the full joy of poly and wool and waterproof boots and mud.

a good morning to remember who i am. had a moment of spartan brevity and poetry with Jared last night; a longer conversation with Seth: men who drink deeply from life, both of death and resurrection. good compañeros a peregrinar comun. (gr?)

time.

bizarre, "only dan could manage this" kind of week. i realized several hours ago that it was sunday, 3 a.m., not saturday 3 a.m., that it was the fourth/final day of my rotation, not the third, that i had completely forgotten about an entire day of work somehow, and that for at least one day i was completely Disoriented to Time and Events. which, if i were one of my patients, would make me incompetent to make medical decisions. well. i made them anyway. it's a good thing i got it straightened out before sleeping another day away and making the discovery while reporting to work next evening.

in a bizarre twist of fate, i took a patient to the hospital tuesday night; wednesday night, i ferried in the transplant team and then took that team back to the airport with his heart (he had no use for it anymore). huh. wierd. i took a nasty gunshot wound, an ugly knife wound, a diabetic near-coma, and (shocker!) a drunken college student, too. and Andy the MD resident let me watch him stitch the knife wound up, too! it's inspired me to look into getting a suture kit for my more seriously long-range adventures.

and, I talked to a patient for twenty minutes through her apartment's locked door before the BFD managed to find someone with appropriate keys to get us in. what a week. I'm staying up for another few hours to catch the early-bird breakfast special at Amy's. then, maybe morning mass, and find a park to sit and read in until i find some better way to stay awake until the Houghton College Choir performs as St. Andy's. By then, if I make it without collapse, I'll be ready for bed and the resumption of a few days on a real sleep schedule--the kind where you get to see the sun shine...


--------------


pt. II

so i was thinking about how badly my feet smelled after four consecutive days smashed into my work boots and it reminded me of the godawful reek that was my first clue in Tanzania that my blisters were seioursly infected. and that reminded me of how awesome it was to bathe my feet in Dettol, a medical wonder unmatched in Western civilization, for reasons i cannot comprehend. and that reminded me of bryan, my friend who recommended the Dettol. so later in my perusing of various webs of blogs and livejournals, it was no surprise to me later to suddenly be reminded of something bryan said once. many people laughed at the occasion. but the more i think about it, the more it sounds like basically exactly what i'm thinking about love and marriage. maybe this is a bad sign that something so many people thought comedic strikes me as so profound. but i like it right now:

"What I want is a woman to have adventures with--I don't want the woman to be the adventure!"

ladies and gentlemen, the great Bryan Adkins.

confessions of the bibliophile (i)

after months of excitement, extended lulls and momentary all-night euphoric multichapter blitzkreigs, I have finished David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse. many of you have witnessed my excitement over this book--some perhaps enough repetitions to make you sick. but I have to say it again:

this is one of the most important books of [now]. what the communist manifesto was to the poor politically and economically disenchanted masses of the world, this book is to those disenchanted with every soul-destroying force bastard-spawned by our long, simultaneously glorious and ignominious Anglo-Saxon-American civilization. (I'm starting to sound like Ian Kanski...)

in honor of this moment, I give you my list:

The Nine Most Important Books of my Short Life:

1. C.S. Lewis' 'Til We Have Faces
2. Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island
3. David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse
4. Matthew Stover's Traitor
5. Eleanor Vandevort's A Leopard Tamed
6. Donald Miller's Prayer and the Art of Volkswagon Maintenance (now republished as Through Painted Deserts)
7. Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog
8. J.R.R. Tolkein's Silmarillion
9. Plough Press's Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

I suppose I could have rounded it out to ten, or kept going on to twenty, but these are the nine that came to mind within five minutes of realizing that Apocalypse was going to be one of the most important books I'd ever read, no browsing or searching necessary. There are a lot of books I've been excited about--but these nine are a part of me. The ideas that live in them live in me to the extent that I don't have to think very hard to remember reading them or figure out where I found them.

Four of these books are works of fiction; of the other five, one is a collection of excerpts that read like conversations, three move with compelling narrative style, and one is a series of extended meditations. Fiction and narrative put abstract things into context, like fish into water, where they can breath and swim and cavort and be observed in life. Truth dehydrated, preserved and presented divorced from story is no truth at all, like a fish out of water is not very long a fish.

Finally, of the four works of fiction, two are fantasy and two science fiction. I feel a bit sheepish for it, but a bit relieved too: like coming out of the closet or being caught picking my nose. I like science fiction, and fantasy more, and people who are snobby about their genres are missing out on a whole lot of good writing. so there. and yes, Traitor is a Star Wars book. It's called incarnation, guys!

[unthinking]

there are times when it is bad to think. every thought leads back to myself. i try to escape in others, but their faces keep turning into mine with wide, empty eyes. instead of their words i hear the cold empty wind, and my voice--cold and biting too. everything is twisted: friendship to comparison, joy to a harsh measuring stick, rejoicing to sick laughter, anticipation to scheming, sharing to hoarding, fellowship to competition. desperation feeds on itself and grows by leaps and bounds. i try to close my eyes but the vision changes not. dark orange tints the landscape to monochrome, trickling into the crumbling sky.

it is for times such as these that god gave us mindless labor, to forget ourselves in soil and toil and splitting wood. simple all-consuming tasks to distract us from outselves. like starcraft. god made mindless computer games too. being averse to mindless labor and out of wood to split...

midnight cuisine

for Dan P, and others who follow the music of the night, a guide to post-midnight cuisine in Buffalo, culled from my recent experiences, and still growing.

Timmy Ho's (Tim Hortons for the uninitiated): 24-7, always there for you--in the Apple Zone, Clinton and Bailey; in the Charley on Delaware near Hertel; in the David, Kensington and Eggert; for honorable mention, the mini-Timmie's at the gas station at Main and Winspear. Pastries and the best free cuppa joe a hard working civil servant can ask for.

Jim's Steakout: open until 5 am, Elmwood and Allen, Elmwood North of Lafayette, Main North of Hertel, and Chippewa East of Delaware, if you can force your way through the crowds of drunken partyers on the notorious "Chip Strip". Tacos, wings, subs, specializing in steak things and burning hot things.

That Little Greasy Place with the Hard To Remember Name and the Bulletproof Glass and Dingy 70's Dining Area: Main and Fillmore, if you need anything--and I mean anything--24hrs a day. French Toast, a dozen different burgers, souvlaki, tacos, subs--the only thing they don't do (as far as I can remember) is pizza.

Don't pass up the Wilson Farms and assorted gas stations; especially gracious are the Wilson Farms operators who give free cappucino from the mini-Timmie's--rock on!

The find of the night: Louies, the best hotdog/burger joint in Buffalo, is open until four! Possibly the best chili dog I have ever et. Locations at Elmwood and Hodge, and elsewhere! (hmmm...new street mission: find all the Louies!)

Of course, let us not forget the last desperate stands: McDonald's, available at Main and Utica-ish, and William and Jefferson (oddly, the next road south on Jefferson is Clinton--go figure): 99c parfaits/sundaes if your craving is ice cream, or splurge on a McFlurry! 24hr drive through! and if you're completely desperate, there's always Burger King--but seriously...you have to be really desperate...Delaware and Amherst + Main just north of North.

If it's not too late--bar/pizza joints and bar/eateries are also an option.

And this is only scratching the surface: I haven't even scratched the surface on the Buffalo's specialty: pizza parlors. Compiling and comparing would be a life's work. A delicious life's work...

Well, it's six a.m., and in Detroit my dad's getting up to work out. I'm going to bed. cheers!

a bit of clarification, for the sake of my dear mother

Fillmore Wesleyan Church in no way condones or supports the consumption of blood, human or otherwise, nocturnal feeding habits, or covens of immortal dark avengers fighting eternal struggles.

Nor should newly shaven scalp and the appearance of my red streaked face be taken as any more than the result of boredom meeting electric razors and, later, an overenthusiastically shaken glass-marker pen meant for Josh Hazelton's little Jetta's windows in a wedding-reunion-sorta deal.

These are perfectly explicable and as they are provide no reasoning for the ridiculous notion that I would be a vampire. Seriously. Pay no attention to such foolish notions. I am an ordinary mundane mortal just as yourselves...

good...evemorningish whatever

for all those who have heard my nonstop *itching lately about work and coworkers, i feel obligated to now state: i just got off an overnight and work is great. i love the quiet, the chill, the open roads, the low call volume, the free coffee, the ability to read an entire issue of BusinessWeek in one shift, the interesting calls, TV at Charlie and David quarters...i actually feel like i'm gettin the hang of this...today i am one cheerful creature of the night.

of course, maybe it's just because of my recent rebirth as a vampire at Fillmore Wesleyan Church. :)


at any rate, it's time to curl up and get my eyes closed before the sun comes up.

currently listening to...

my super-cool awesomest newest CD in the rack:

Emmanuel Jal + Abdel Gadir Salim = Ceasefire (One Sudanese Rapper + One North Sudanese Arabic Oud Player = Awesomeness)

I don't think I've ever heard rap languid and tight before...much less in four languages at once: English, Arabic, Nuer, and Swahili. Pump it up! It's like belly-dancing/jazz/Eastern/rap/choir...hmmm...chant-hop.