December 29, 2006

• Year in Review

  In the words of Ice Cube, Today was a good day. I got my grub on, but didnt pig out. I did not however get a call from a girl named kim who can go all night. However, I did go to a party with my brother and pick up a girl there. One whom, again in the words of the great poet, i would not mind “digging out”

  Oh ice cube, you sassy bard you.

  What i dont understand is what the heck is wrong with chicago. How come every time i leave the state of illinois, i manage to secure some play, or at least find a decent scrimmage in terms of femal interactions, but once i am back in med school, its like any abilities i have are instantly lost.

  *rereads the line, back in med school*

  oh. nevermind then.

  Well, anyhoo, it is a little pre-emptive, but once again here is the internet meme, year in review. Take the first paragraph of the first post of each month from the last year, and post it. Groovy. Or here is a link to last years, where it was the first and last sentence of each post in the month

  Jan:
  So you all know what the baggage claims look like at the airport? with
  the circular conveyor belts that drop your luggage and then disappear
  behind rubber flaps until they come out for another round?
  
  i have always wondered what is behind those flaps, and in my dream i
  climbed up onto one of the belts lookinf for bahrams luggage and the
  belt took me behind the flap, and what do you think i saw?
  
  a willy wonka-esque wonderland, replete with oompa loompa baggage handlers, who were singing :
  
  
  
  where in the world did your luggage get lost?
  
  we do not know because the bags we toss
  
  you may be here, but your suitcase is there
  
  and now you have no un-der-wear
  
  you’ll have to go commando!

  Feb: I actually dreamt that i fell asleep in a cadaver tank and didnt wake up til someone opened it up to study. creepy

  Mar: At last I am finally getting around to posting about my japan trip.
  Photos were done a little differently this time. Since I took around
  600, it will be damn near forever before they get up on the usual
  picture site. Instead, they are all posted in albums under my yahoo
  account.
  
  
  
  So go to www.photos.yahoo.com/rveblade and just search through my
  various albums to see the parts I am talking about. I will also even
  post a few photos here.

  Apr: So Andy and I decided to walk from takashimaya back to shinjuku to grab
  some kujira for dinner. On the way, Andy wanted to show me one of his
  favorite places in tokyo, and gave me an impromptu photography lesson.

  May: I’m always surprised at what interesting e-mails I receive.
  “You girl is unsatisfied with your potency,” states one subject line in
  a very authoritative tone. This excites and concerns me. First,
  excitement – I thought I was single, but apparently I am not. I hoped
  to find her name and contact information in the text body, but no such
  luck. Second, concern – I unknowingly have potency problems? This
  doesn’t seem like a professional manner of breaking the news. However,
  there is a link, that if clicked on, promises me she won’t leave me for
  another man. Another e-mail is offering me an opportunity to refinance my
  house. Once again two things I am unaware of: Apparently I have a house
  that I have already financed once. This house must be where Amber (i hope that is her name) is. No hint of the house location was given.

  Jun: in the beginning i thought i was a muggle
  but voldemort is back and now i’m caught up in the struggle
  i don’t need no love potion to get me these hoes
  i went right out of hogwarts straight into the pros
  it’s like
  if you try to mess with me, i’ll hit you with a confundus
  you know me and ron weasly mother fucking run dis.
  just me and my boys and my boys have got my back
  remus lupin and sirius black
  even draco malfoy had to get to steppin’
  ’cause i found out that prophecy was voldemort’s secret weapon!
  even though i crashed into the whomping willow tree
  snape is teaching me to be l33t at occlumency

  Jul:Early in the morning, my mom, bro, and I swung by the
  friendship store (yes, it really IS called that, and they are actually pretty
  friendly) and the silk market to browse around for tchotckes and other tourist
  crap. The silk market is, as they say, the shit. On the one hand,
  I feel bad knowing that the reason I am getting all these ridiculousy good
  prices and shopkeepers willing to bargain is because of sweatshop labor, but on
  the other my participation or lack thereof in the process is not going to
  change any of china’s human labor laws, especially when there are hundreds of
  stores in the silk market and even more people buying from them…sorry PHR, but
  I will have to settle for feeling guilty in a badass yet cheap silk suit ($85,
  when standard is around $280…ya damn right) The silk market sells everything
  from suits to weapons to art and electronics…I am going to buy a lot of crap
  there, I just know it.

  Aug: great leprechauns of lebanon. i may have to revise my first estimate for posting china pics, folks
  
  of course i am sure you are saying by this point, that’s okay josh, as
  we were not actually reading your site anyway since you dont bother to
  update anymore. There is something so frustrating about studying in the sense that at
  the end of the day, you have no tangible evidence that you have
  accomplished anything. I mean, if you install a new showerhead, or air
  conditioner (both of which i did this week) or even cook a meal, you
  have something to show for it at the end. With studying however, you
  sit there and read and read and the next morning you have no clue if
  anything that you saw will seem familiar or be remembered…dang.

  Sep: I just learned the other day that the Mongols used to drink their horses’ blood when there was no food to be plundered. As in: Mongol
  raider: hmm, tough day of looting and pillaging today guys, and the
  damn chinese still have that wall up, so we can’t get takeout -looks
  like we are going to have to eat our transportation.Hey horse, stand
  still a minute That’s pretty badass…and
  also much harder to do with a civic. Although I suppose siphoning gas
  might come close, if i used said gas to go to the grocery store I
  mean, talk about oppression, this is ACTUALLY drinking the blood of the
  workers. Cart around some guy all day and then he goes vampire on your
  ass! The nerve!

  Oct: It sure was nice not to know anything. Those days are long
  gone. Before medical school-or even just last year-I didn’t know a
  thing about disease. What makes you sick, how you can die, how your body can
  fail on you. And now that I do, it’s a frightening knowledge. With every new organ we study, I basically learn
  more ways
  that I can die. More things that can go wrong, more ways that I can get
  sick,
  more complications and symptoms I could have in the future. First with
  the
  heart, you can have a heart attack. Duh. But you can also have sudden
  death-your heart just stops. Or you could have a clot that you have no
  clue
  about go to your brain or your lungs or anywhere else and kill you.
  Then with
  the lungs, there’s a ton of really nasty diseases that end up in
  honeycomb
  lung. Or you can get a number of respiratory infections that’ll do you
  in. Then
  onto the kidneys. Plenty of ways those can just stop out of nowhere. or
  there’s GI, with cancer everywhere. (What’s worse, a significant number
  of
  these diseases are what medicine likes to call “idiopathic.” That
  basically
  means no one has a freaking clue what causes them.)

  Nov: picking up right where we left off, i swear, the next stop on the
  china trip was a foray to the temple of heavenly harvest, aka Temple of
  Heaven. You gotta hand it to the chinese, they know how to name their
  monuments The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven (天坛), is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in southeastern urban Beijing, in Xuanwu District. Construction of the complex began in 1420, and was thereafter visited by all subsequent Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is regarded as a Taoist temple

  Dec:

  

  Well there you have it folks, another year of Josh in review
  

  • 2:30 pm
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