hi.  alright, a few of notes on the last six months (not just about me...you know i can't do that, it's too boring):

1.) my life goal is to become a "they" (you know..."they ran some tests"..."they resucitated him"....'they disimpacted his bowells"..."they cured her herpes"....whatever).  i'm just now realizing how hard it is to do that (you know...with the 350 years of school and the no sleep and what not).  a milestone was reached, however, when i walked out of the delivery room the other day and the mom, who was on the phone with her baby daddy, i believe, said "they delivered him at 2:30" (followed by a "where the hell were YOU kinda thing i'm sure...i learned that my job in that situation is to get the hell out of the room once the baby's done being born).  at that point, for the first time, i felt like i had finally made it....of course i hadn't, but it felt like it....

2.) would you rather have a sane doctor or a good doctor??  because, right now, i'm not sure i can be both...

3.) could somebody PLEASE watch the wizard of oz and listen to pink floyd at the same time to see if that crap's true (i'm pretty sure you're gonna have to smoke weed, too...let me know if that's a problem).  if it is...it's still an average sound track....

4.) distraction's a funny thing.  we hate it when we have it (stress), and we can't live if we don't (boredom).  this, i think, is a horrible marass of human psychology.  here's a case in point: i've been locked in the study cellar for pretty much all of the last couple of months, and everybody who called me (not very many people) got way too much of me complaining about how much i had to do/learn/whatever and how i was tired of people wanting me to do stuff (again...not that many people) and how i wish everybody would just leave me alone.  as soon as i hung up the phone (or...in whatever way i stopped talking to them), i sat back down and wished somebody would talk to me so i wouldn't have to think about how much crap i have to do.  sure, it's an ass-hole way to think, but everybody does it.  why do we watch TV??  so we can not think for a couple of hours about our own evanescence (of course, we're a couple of hours closer to death...not to mention brain-fried...by the time we turn it off...nice logic).  why do we surf the internet for the latest news about the deaths of supermodels??  besides the fact that freak-shows boost our self-confidence (you should all be ashamed of yourselves....freaks), we'd like to distract ourselves with lives worse than ours for now.  whatever it is, there's always something keeping us from having an actual purpose in life (or, at least, from knowing what it is), and we totally put those blinders on ourselves.  it seems to me that we'd rather be stuck in the dark room or the room full of mirrors (you know...the one that's ONLY self-envisioning) than the wide-open, lighted path that at least leads forward.  i'm not completely sure why this is, but i think it's time to clear our self-made hurdles, here; so turn off the TV, put down the beer, trash the entertainment weekly (come on...who the hell makes a living off of writing that magazine anyway??  yeah i guess i'll address that below), because nobody wants to be 75 years old and still stuck in the same pitch-black room they were born in...  

5.) the media, as it conducts its business today, is one SLIGHT step above prostitution; they're absolute vultures who, despite their constant claims of it, care absolutely nothing about public service or effort toward the good of humanity.  to add to that, they're also freaking stupid, and progressively (and purposely) lower the IQ of the country they "serve".  and we, the zombified leaders of the world, pay their bills....

see you in another six months.

in spite of this, we're doing just fine, even diamonds start as coal.....

i'd say i woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, but i didn't really wake up at all (since, like, two and a half days ago anyway...and even then only a couple hours after i fell asleep).  I COULD complain about how this is normal for me and how technically i've done a full weeks work in three days, but i'm sure you get the point (which is, of course, that not sleeping makes me stupid...or i guess more stupid than usual.  anyway, i'll apologize ahead of time for my crappy typing).  just so you know, though, i stabbed myself trying to recap a needle (if you're in healthcare, you know you should never do that...but i wanted to save the cortisone for the kind doctor who was letting me give the shot to begin with), spilled pop on un-re-writable notes from last week, got the boot from my girlfriend, showed up at work and got immediately puked on (which happened again just about every hour on the hour until midnight), managed to piss off the entire nursing staff with my dissertation on the crappiness of grey's anatomy (hey i used to like it...i was crushed, though, when i found out that, in reality, everybody doesn't sleep with each other in every hospital.  don't ever base your career goals on a glorified soap opera), and just now managed to find a way to trip over a completely flat tile floor.  i am such a badass.

all that said, i vaguely remember a time when i was just a little bit happier.  believe it or not (and i KNOW it's hard to imagine), i used to be a much bigger asshole (YEARS ago...when i still played baseball) than i am now .  i almost wish i could go back to the way i was.  i think i remember getting way more chicks that way...which, of course, brings me to the age-old question of why chicks like assholes.  under normal circumstances, i'd stay away from the subject for fear of invoking the "women aren't shallow" riot, but i'm sure nobody's gonna read this anyway (judging by the whole "6 comments in two months" thing).  SO, here's my theory....

assholes tend to invoke insecurity in women.  in other words, they make chicks feel like they aren't good enough.  nobody likes this feeling (i've felt it way too much lately), so their attempts are all aimed at making it go away.  the best way to do that, of course, is to gain acceptance by the person that invoked the feeling in the first place.  they do that by trying harder to make the guy like them...thus, the spin cycle.  it should be noted, here, that another dude won't make the feeling stop...just the one that they don't feel good enough to get.  so i guess a good analogy is the job you have vs the promotion you can't get (i guess you can insert whatever matters most to you here).  not getting that promotion invokes the "i'm not good enough", horribly insecure feeling .  again, everybody hates to not feel good enough, so they try to prove their worth to themselves (of all people) by working their ass off for a job they really didn't want to begin with.  if we ever get it, we'll soon realize that our security was in the wrong place all along...because we're not really all that happy.  therefore, i've noticed that most chicks tend to stop liking their boyfriends once they're treated well....and they go on to another guy that doesn't.  sure, it's an immature way to go about life, but it's more of a compulsion than a conscious decision.  i can't say i blame them, insecurity sucks...

so if you're a guy, the best way to get chicks, i guess, is to not want any (wierd how that happens...you only get ass when you don't want it).  and if a girl happens to like you, the best way to keep her is to not like her back.  in other words: to get chicks, be an asshole.  i should note that i refuse to take that advice (even if it's really my own), because it's completely against the whole "nature of love" thing....and completely against maturity.  for right now, i'm pretty happy to be single, but i like to think that if i'm ever not, i'll be above the games...

alright, the dissertation's done (if you skipped it, start here).  i also should point out that i work with napoleon dynamite, that i would really like a new career as a dust-spreader on the tilt-a-whirl, and that I have that "Greensleeves" song stuck in my head.  no more of this blogging crap (except maybe i should start one of those stupid myspace things).  i can't wait to go to bed....

this is me....in five minute intervals...

we both have pains, we both have eyes.  one in the same, two of a kind.  and neither of us can see....

for those of you who read the last article in its entirety, good work (i don't even think i did...anyway i hope you liked the superman valentine i just sent you all).  just in case you really cared, i am now officially too tired to sleep.  the more i work like this the more i recognize that life isn't much more than a delicate balance between caffeine and sleeping pills (niether of which seem to work anymore)....

in undergrad i inadvertently trained myself to become a perfectionist (at least when it comes to work...anyway, now, i can't imagine living any other way...i kind of wish i could go back to not caring).  the problem with this pursuit of perfection, though, is that i couldn't be further from it; and the more i work on my own to acheive it, the further away from it i get...and i guess the more i realize that it's absolutely not possible.  so, for me at least, all perfectionism has really led to is a ton of horrendous self-deprecation and depression when i can't acheive the thing i never really had a plan for anyway.  this exemplifies what we call a "vicious toilet cycle" (yeah i just made that up) pretty well.  recently i've circling the drain faster than ever (i'm sure i'm not far from the septic tank), and i guess the difference has to do with where i've looked to find the improvement (it's proven daily that i'm the worst place for that).  perfection can't be pursued anywhere else than in humble prayer.  the fastest way to fail is to forget that...

i tailgated a giant yacht-style cadillac today and it added 15 extra minutes of transit time...you can expect this anytime you're behind a cadillac (the car-equivalent of a double-wide...in kansas we know that that means).  they're perfectly engineered to go 30 in the left lane, make random, frequent stops, and make slow, wide, right turns (absolutely ingenius).  when i finally passed it, the driver (mr magoo...or mrs magoo, maybe...when people get old it's hard to tell) was oh so predictably bear-hugging the steering wheel in a full, painstaking squint.  like i said, you can expect this anytime you're behind a cadillac (you gotta love the trunk space, though)...

hahaha....trunk space....

i COULD comment now on the fact that the world is round (roughly, anyway).  i'm assuming everybody knows this (except for those smelly english), so i won't.  the point would've been, though, that you should watch who you step on when they're down, because soon they'll be the ones with their hand on your throat and their fist drawn when you're shoulder blades to the mat (believe me, i've been one of those guys).  life is a hell of a boomerang, so watch where you throw it...

it's a pretty good bet that i'll never make this list:

http://tv.msn.com/tv/gallery.aspx?gallery=10945&GT1=7756

i don't think motivation has ever been as hard to come by as it is right now (as indicated by the thirty million case studies that have piled up in my inbox).  i HAVE to get out of the funk (or med school will no longer be kind to me...not that it has been anyway), here, i don't care what it takes...

will somebody PLEASE lend me a flashlight (most of all, to help me find the funk).