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

Swashbuckling:	11
Drunkenness:	9
Booty:	11
Weapons:	None
TOTAL:	31

bDeadly Ninja Josh
Sneakiness:	1
Pajamas:	19
Pointy Things:	19
Weapons:	Poison Dart

TOTAL: 40

There you have it. Ninja me versus Pirate me, and ninja me wins. Ninja me also has a blowgun…coincidence? I think not

want to try it yourself?
http://www.majcher.com/pvn/pvn.cgi

-J

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

Today’s procrastination sensation is the draw a pig quiz…you draw a pig and learn about your personality…here is my pig

cute little feller, aint he?…now lets see what we learned

According to my piggy picture:

I am a realist
I believe in tradition, am friendly and remember dates (bdays, etc)
I am emotional, naive, care little for details and am a risk taker
I am insecure and living through a period of major change
I am an okay listener
I have a good quality sex life

and now back to my regularly scheduled microbiology

More china posts coming soon—getting tired of hearing that yet? does anyone even want me to post the remainder of my china trip? is there a reason i keep using the web as a forum to talk to myself?

The answer to at least one of those questions is yes…you guess which one. In the meantime, finals are about to begin and so rather than study, i though i would go stumbling about the interweb in search of things to do, which is what the posts you will see in the next few days will be about. Here is a color quiz that tells you your personality

Color Quiz!

According to the results I am

My existing situation
Acts in an orderly, methodical, and
self-contained manner. Needs the sympathetic understanding of someone
who will give him recognition and approval.

My stress sources
Wishes to be independent,
unhampered, and free from any limitation or restriction, other than
those which he imposes of himself or by his own choice and decision.

My restrained characteristics
Distressed by the obstacles with
which he is faced and is no mood for any form of activity or for
further demands on him. Needs peace and quiet, and the avoidance of
anything which might distress him further.

Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity.

My desired objective
Wants interesting and exciting
things to happen. Able to make himself well-liked by his obvious
interest and by the very openness of his charm. Over-imaginative and
given to fantasy or day-dreaming.

My actual problem
Seeks to avoid criticism and to
prevent restriction of his freedom to act, and to decide for himself by
the exercise of great personal charm in his dealings with others.

on the whole, i think it’s fairly accurate…those color psychologist must really know their stuff. Would those of you who know me well enough to respond to this tend to agree with the assessment?

-J

While Uploading pics for the next Japan at Last Post (coming tonite to a website near YOU!)

I came across this here little quiz and got the best response ever:

Your Life Path Number is 5

Your purpose in life is to life freely and collect experiences. You love life – new adventures, new people, new ideas. You are very curious, and you crave novelty in all forms. You tend to make friends easily, and you enjoy the company of all types of people. In love, you are fun and even a bit intoxicating. But you won’t stick around for long. You are impulsive and spontaneous – which sometimes leads you to do things you regret. Sometimes you can be overindulgent with food, sex, or drugs. You have many talents, so many that you are often scattered and unfocused.

Aside from the love thing, i would say this is pretty accurate…not bad for a random number generator, wouldnt you say?

Not only did this comic make me laugh, it also brought back a very
strange memory. My grandfather on my fathers side had donated his body
to medical science. And knowing what i do now, more power to him for
that. Anyway, what you may not know is when you donate your body to
science, they cremate it and return the remains to your next of kin.
When my family moved from New York to California, the literal day we
were pulling out of the street, the UPS guy (or whoever) pulls up and
gives us my grandfathers remains. Well, not knowing what else to do
with them, we took grandpa’s ashes with us to california, figuring we
would bury him out there where we could visit him, rather than in New
York.

However, what with one thing and another, we never really got around
to burying him, so for about 15 years after we moved, he kinda sort
just sat in a filing cabinet in the garage for lack of anywhere else to
put him. The running joke in the family was that he was filed under “D”
for dead dad dworetzky, and that if successive deaths in the family got
cremated, we could have our own family mausoleum in the garage.

I know, we were a weird family. still are.

Our neighbor, after hearing this story, would not enter our garage for years. Actually, come to think of it, she still wont.

Anyway, when my grandmother died, we finally pulled grandpa out of
the cabinet and buried him and her together. They are currently share
the plot with my father, who i like to think would appreciate the irony
in the fact that modern cemetaries are getting so overcrowded, people
really are stacked together as if they were in a cabinet.

So that is what i thought of when i read the cartoon you have probably already forgotten i posted at the top of these words

Another good one. I think comics give us the best laugh when we can see
a bit of ourselves in the characters. I totally empathize with the pig,
cuz it really feels like I am that oblivious sometimes when it comes to
the opposite sex. Like there is some magical secret that will instantly
allow me to date whomever, wherever i want, nevermind personality
differences and what not. Other times, i definetly take on much more of
the egotistical slick persona, assuming that hey, what girls wouldnt
want me? Sadly for humanity, the second, more assholish approach seems
to be the one that works more often for attracting the opposite sex.
Girls may want to date nice guys, but its the jerks who they usually
turn to first.

Hmm…that last bit makes me sound bitter or as if i am currently
having issues. I’m not, no worries. just a personal observation i think
most males out there would agree with.

I’m not fat, i’m infected!
Not that this isnt fascinating research, but really, do americans need
any MORE excuses to be lazy. Maybe we would be all better off if people
actually took personal responsibility for their appearance and tried to
live a healthier lifestyle instead of just latching on to the newest
excuse for their condition.

News Flash! the government will give you money to research just about ANYTHING!
Now if we could deny some of these grants and maybe put that money to
use say, reforming the health care system, then we would be talking. Or
maybe my wet earwax is just clogging my thought process, and if i had
asian dry earwax, i could know why anyone cares about this aside from
the novelty of knowledge.

-J

The Josh once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, “Bang!”

Not thirty minutes before writing this entry, I held a human heart in my hands…then i poked my finger inside and felt around a little. Then I made another joke about the Aortic ARRRCH. I think that pretty much sums me up well, don’t you?

Lucky you readers, you get this quick entry while I am waiting to go to my interprofessional health teams class, which is just this side of useless. Honestly the class is like kindergarten. We all sit around in a circle and talk about what the various dieticians, p.a.’s podiatrists, etc do and how we can interact with them as doctors. Which is all well and good as cooperation is key in the health profession.

But honestly the way the class is structured, it feels like a condescending way to teahc us how to “interact” with “not doctor” professions. We get cute little book report things to do for the other professional roles, and we paly games and really all we are missing is naptime and cookies. And I could spend my time so much more productively doing just about anything else

On the other hand, there are a lot of cute physicians assistants in thast class, so i shall quit my bitching.

Oh and Wenyin and anyone else who could care less about my random links and actually wants to know just about my life (aww, shucks…) posts about what i am doing will always be at the very beginning or very end of an entry with linky goodness in the middle. like so.

What Kind of Killer Are You? Really, who didn’t see this coming?

You are a Samurai.

You are full of honour and value respect. You are not really the stereotypical hero, but you do fight for good. Just in your own way. For you, it is most certainly okay to kill an evil person, if it is for justice and peace. You also don’t belive in mourning all the time and think that once you’ve hit a bad stage in life you just have to get up again. It’s pointless to concentrate on emotional pain and better to just get on with everything. You also are a down to earth type of person and think before you act. Impulsive people may annoy you somewhat.

Main weapon: Sword

Quote: “Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest” -Mark Twain

Facial expression: Small smile

Damn there is my japanese fetish again. Oh well. How about some politicinzing.

Chief Injustice

For those of you who didn’t know, Chief Justice Earl Rehnquist died recently of some kind of cancer, and that means someone new need sot be appointed to the supreme court. Now with Justice Sandra Day o Connor also retiring soon that gives Bush the chance to appoint two people to the court, when in the last century only 2 presidents even had the option to appoint one. This is frightening people. Bush has been pushing his nominee John ROberts. Originally slated to replace the retiring O’Connor, ROberts is now set up to take over as the numero uno justice the youngest man on the court, and the one with the least experience before coming to the bench

Although the chief justice has no more votes than his eight brethren, he presides over their conferences, sets the initial agenda for considering cases and, when in the majority, assigns which justice will write a ruling, defining the extent of its reach. He also wields a variety of administrative and policy powers not only over the high court but the broader federal judiciary and has a number of unique responsibilities, such as presiding over presidential impeachment trials and appointing the court that reviews secret wiretaps by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Most chief justices have been appointed from outside the Supreme Court, but in the past century they typically had long tenures on lower courts or had served as governors, Cabinet secretaries or, in one case, president. With just two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Roberts boasts no such credential and would be much younger than the colleagues he would lead.

Documents released from his government service in the past few weeks revealed Roberts to be a strong conservative with a sharp pen opposed to many affirmative action programs, open to more religion in public arenas and deeply skeptical of what he called the “so-called right to privacy” that undergirds abortion and other rights established by the Supreme Court

So international readers, he again is the warning that America is being run into the ground by a coke addled monkey who cares more about imposing his way on the world than working for the common good. Who needs rights anyway, you pinko commy bastards?

I’m High on Life said the med student

A new study of young doctors who are notoriously overworked shows that they’re often so tired that they perform some activities as if they were hammered had been drinking. The University of Michigan study was the first of its kind to do this kind of sleep/alcohol comparison–previously used on truck drivers, for example–on medical residents. The young doctors who were on a “heavy schedule” slept an average of 3 hours per night and performed as if they had a BAC of .04

So, all that heavy drinking I am doing is just preparing me for my later work life

Off to class. Maybe we fingerpaint today!

-J

Josh has some apples. Loo Loo Loo

You’re Fiji!
As calm, relaxed, and removed from life as they come, you’re just so chilled out, it hurts people to see you.  Everyone aspires to be where you are, but most of them just can’t put their stress away.  Little do they know that even you sometimes have inner turmoil and struggles!  For the most part, though, it’s sun and fun for you, and that’s the way you like it.  It’s just sort of hard to get things done with all that partying.

http://bluepyramid.org/ia/cquiz.htm

That has got to be one of the funniest quizzes I have taken online in at least a week. What else has gone on in that week…hmm. Well I need to put together another stand up set for april, probably last weekend of, for the next comedy show I intend to do. I have been studying like a crackfiend for Japanese, and I have been basking in the comments that ranting a little grants me. Would you like me to rant…give me topics to rant about. If i feel strongly, enough you will get a rant on your behalf! Woot for you.

Having passed through despair and come out the other side into the sunny vegetation of “Plan B”, I am in the midst of preparing several grad school applications. Tehcnically the schools I am applying to are all special masters programs desgined for those who , for whatever, reason were unable to make it into a medical school. What caused me to make this decision? Okay well that is obvious. But what caused me to actually act on it.

As of March 15th, according to AMCAS, over 80% of U.S. Medical Schools have filled their fall classes. This means that the majority of med schools have sent out the majority of acceptances that they are going to, and if you have not heard from them by this point, you are probably not likely too. Once this was brought to my attention, I realized that while I am still waiting to hear from 5 medical schools, they are not waiting to hear from me and if I have any intention of becoming a doctor, I am going to have to find some alternative route to accomplish it. If these programs get me in, then so be it, I will do what I need to to succeed.

Rafiki was excited when he found an acceptance letter to med school after checking his tree-mail

Sorry if that last caption seemed a little wooden…i will endeavor to leave such puns out of my web…log. Or not.

So, long story short, I will remain Fiji, and continue on my way with my Hakuna Matata attitude. The only person I have to live up to the expectations to is myself…and Batman.

St Patricks Day is Tomorrow, and I am going to strategically position my green articles of clothing so i can best evaulate my pinching options. Until then, this post be through

-J

“We’d love to support the girl scouts, but we’re on a diet”
“That’s okay, you girls can just buy the thin mints”

Funniest part of this post’s quote? It was a real argument in a sorority at UCLA. *sigh* never understimate people’s stupidity