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

I have learned a new fact today, on what i believe is the 7th night of hanukkah, chaunkahh, or whatever we are calling it now

(update: apparently hanukkah is over. my bad)

Anywho, i went to a hanukkah party and was offered a veritable bevvy of jewish foods for the holidays including lox, bagels and cream cheese, jelly donuts, latkes and many more.

Now perhaps you are saying to yourself, there is something in that list that does not belong there. A jelly donut, say? what in the world could a preserve filled confection have to do with the festival of lights, or judaism in general?

well, brace yourselves, because you are about to learn the religious significance of the jelly donut

After asking every single jew at this party (no really, i actually said is there a jew in the house who can tell me why there are jelly donuts here?) I was given this explanation

First off, this is strictly an israeli/Sefardic tradition which is why i had so much trouble learning the answer as the great majority of jews in the united states are ashkenazi jews, famous for filling medical textbooks with conditions like tay sachs and others. but i digress.

The explanation i was given said the donuts are called sufganiyot/ Now i am given to understand that this is similar to the jewish word for learning. So the fried bread part of the donut is the significant as all fried foods are for hanukkah, something about the temple oil lasting for 8 days so they fried a lot of stuff in it. But here is the kicker…the jelly is sweet. remember before about how the funny word in italics has something to do with learning? Well, the sweetness of the jelly is supposed to make the eater of said donut associate sweetness with learning and presumably get scholarly in an attempt to recapture that delicious memory.

SO there you have it kids. Learning tastes like jelly, and the donut is religiously significant. What a wonderful world we live in

-J

::Update: This link has a better and probably more accurate explanation which you should check out

And now, a brief xmas history lesson:

In the northern Europe of the late Middle Ages, gangs of young men
would engage in ”wassailing,” a cross between Christmas caroling and
home invasion. The gangs would visit wealthy homes, often in disguise,
and sing songs that threatened violence if they were not invited in for
food and drink.

In agrarian societies, practices such as
wassailing served as a critical safety valve, giving people at the
bottom of the social ladder a release that would keep them in line
during the rest of the year.

WHY DID THIS STOP?! I WOULD SO DO THIS.

JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, GIVE US BEER AND MEAT
DON’T MAKE US BUST DOWN YOUR DOOR AND HANG YOU BY YOUR FEE-EET!

seriously, lets get some people to wassailing beverly hills

-J

Self doubt is not a state of mind I’m intimately familiar with.

I
tend to run my life based on instinct, on gut and accept the
consequences of my actions as they come (and there are many). I believe
firmly in taking the risks, in understanding that we only get one shot
at life and I refuse to live with regret and that there’s nothing this
world can throw at me that I can’t handle.

With a smirk on my face, I’ll meet it, whatever it may be.

As
I get older, this confidence in my abilities are only getting stronger,
with a few notable exceptions of course, but that’s not where this
thought process is heading today.

What I’m trying to figure out,
is whether this is a good thing or not, and maybe, just maybe I should
start looking before I leap a little more. Should I let a few tendrils
of self doubt creep in now and then? Should I assault myself with
thoughts such as “am I doing the right thing”? Am I being selfish? Was
saying that a mistake? Will doing this help or hurt my family? Was any
of it real? Am I faking emotion? Can I do better? Do I have what it
takes? Will I succeed?

In the past, i have made three major decisions based
solely on feeling, on what felt right. They did not all work out but I know that I couldn’t have done anything differently. My
recklessness (which some might define as stupidity) is a big part of
me, it defines me. It’s who I am and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So
that’s the topic of the day, folks. Self doubt, caution, hesitation,
risk, opportunity. I want to hear from you, your take, your stories,
your results. Let’s discuss.

As for me, will I ever really look before I leap?

Probably not, but I’ll smile.

-J

I think it is a safe bet to tell you that most people from southern california have never eaten a chestnut. We hear about them every holiday and think
how great it would be to live in a place with seasons and snowmen and icicles
and pine wreaths and White Christmases.

Having spent the last three years living in Chicago,
I can testify that seasons and snowmen and icicles and pine wreaths and White
Christmases are all OVERRATED. As are chestnuts. Okay sledding rocks, and I love the first few weeks of winter. it is the remaining 6 months of it that grate on you. but i digress

Given that we are going to be performing this song soon as an a capella thing, i figured, hey, perhaps i should see what all the fuss it about. I got the unassuming looking nuts and did a little
research on the internet about preparation. I went and picked up a few to cook while I was making some cioppino and reading from the brs. Hey,
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”, right???

The internets told me that chestnuts are pretty much the first food that man may have
hunted/gathered. And that it comes in a near impenetrable cone with spikes. And
a near impenetrable shell. And that if you eat it undercooked it gives you
“Intestinal Distress”. Upon reflection, that’s nature’s way of
telling you NOT to eat something, short of painting it poison frog red.

I heard a tiny little “pop” from the stovetop and ran out to find my
chestnuts had popped and split their shells! How cute!

The flavor? Not so great. Sort of like a potato, nothing like a nut. In fact,
my research found that most chestnut recipes revolve around making the noble
chestnut taste as far from a chestnut as humanly possible.

So today, being make-leftovers since i am too lazy to cook and study day, I
decided to just cook up the rest of the chestnuts and do… something… anything
with them. I hate wasting stuff. So I tossed them on a baking stone and threw
them in the oven

Okay, I did see the warning about how some of them might explode, but I was
thinking like they did on the stovetop, which is what I wanted.

I did not expect them to go off like fucking M-80s.

The first one went in the oven and scared the bejeebus out of me, at which point i removed them from said device.

So I pulled them out and let them cool, then began cutting small holes to get them
started on shelling. Some hissed.One blew up on me. Literally blew up on
me. And covered my face and shirt with a spongy, moist white substance. It’s
like a Vegan Japanese pervert’s wet dream.

And so, i’m offering this simple phrase. To kids from one to ninety two. Although its been tried, many times, many ways,

STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM CHESTNUTS

-J

If you ever watched winnie the pooh as a child, you know are more than likely familiar with the character of Tigger. Now he was always my favorite character of the show, being the spaz addled child that I was, and I could frequently be seen (and still can btw) whistiling to myself his theme song

“the wonderful thing about tiggers
is that tiggers are wonderful things
their tops are made out of rubber
their bottoms are made out of springs
their bouncy bouncy trouncy trouncy
fun fun fun fun fun
but the most wonderful thing about tiggers is i’m the only one”

bit of a superiority complex there, don’t you think? I mean, i’m the ONLY one? presumably he had parents right? where did the first tigger come from?

Or Maybe he made sure that he was the only Tigger by systematically eliminating every last one of his people.

Imagine
a dark, blood-spattered hallway, strange silhouettes littering the
floor, one lone tigger curled in a corner trying to keep as much of
himself in the shadows as he can, knowing that every breath he draws
could be his last, while a haunting melody echoes off the mildewed
walls…

The wonderful thing about Tiggers…

-J

PentaroX (11:17:29 PM): heard on the internets, the best superpower ever:  the ability to turn lead into bacon

hey new procrastination quiz, found by crystal

Draw A HOuse!

this is my house…you can tell because of the clearly labeled me, also me, tree, moat, and motorcycle. WHat does my house say about me?

Based on your drawing and the 10 answers you gave this is a summary of your personality:
You are sensitive and indecisive at times. You are a freedom lover and
a strong person. You are shy and reserved. If you’ve drawn a cross on
each of windows, you always want to live alone. You are very tidy
person. There’s nothing wrong with that because you’re pretty popular
among friends. son.

You added a flower into your drawing. The flower
signifies that you long for love. We also see that you are sensuous,
sexual, and privately passionate. You don’t think much about yourself.

Not quite as accurate as the color quiz, but that is because i draw like a kindergardner. (which i do not think i spelled right). Then again, here are some of the question choices i had open to me…

how is the house located-in a row, or next to others? hey, the site is draw a house, not draw a neighborhood!
do you have a fence in the picture?                            no, but I have a moat. it is a shallow moat though.

there are two pictures of me because i added a picture of me to my house before i was told to. The motorcycle is there because i want one.

Anyhoo…click on the link to draw your own house, and have it added to my neighborhood. Then we can have a block party w00t!

we now return josh to his regularly scheduled studying

-J

While sittitng at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there is nothing you can do about it.

if you spent more than 5 minutes trying to prove me wrong, please leave a comment

-J

Hey.
Ho. I suggest that we go. There is a mysterious floating speck of something in
my cup of green tea. Instead of burning my fingers to fish it out, or sticking
any foreign object into the tea, I am playing a sort of Zen carnival game with
the mysterious floating speck. I concentrate on each sip and stare down into
the cup while doing so, to make sure the mysterious floating speck does not
find its way into my mouth. Of course, inevitably, at the end of the cup of tea
I will find that the mysterious floating speck is gone and is now inside of me.
But I am accepting of this inevitability! Like a rock in a stream, or a speck
in tea! Speck outside! Speck inside! All One!