luponus's Xanga

an apple a day...

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:44:14 GMT

doctoring is a funny term to me when I imagine how it came to be. I follow this thread of imagination every time I see a doctor as well as every time the profession is referred to as something fine and noble, when it is being bragged about or esteemed, and then I cannot help but to cringe a little for it. It is the doctor who is said to cure disease and save lives, thus it is also the necessary affectation of doing so which becomes inevitable, as doctors are necessarily human. Every patient a doctor sees is a test of his ability to diagnose and treat. The test can only be passed or failed without gradients of success; there are, however, gradients of consequences to failing, and in between degrees of said gradients are the spaces in which doctoring occurs. Each doctor’s ability and experience differs quantifiably. To think numerically, if one hundred graduating medical students were to take a test consisted of identifying then treating one hundred diseases from common to very rare, none would be able to identify all of them, maybe ±12 would identify most of them, the majority would, by definition, identify 75% of them, and the rest would know what half of the diseases are. Then perhaps half of the 12 top percent would know how to correctly treat all the diseases in theory while the others need to mess up once or twice in practice to get it down. This would break down in much the same way with the rest of the ±70 majority and the ±12 dregs of the class as well. These test results would be fairly normal and widely acceptable in any other class taking a test, but when it’s a doctor, and every patient is a test, these numbers become less and less acceptable. In the worst case, the doctor would diagnose wrongly and treat incorrectly, or diagnose wrongly and treat the wrong disease correctly, or diagnose correctly and treat the disease wrongly. Whether a doctor is very wrong once, resulting in extensive bodily damage or death, or habitually wrong with milder cases resulting in failure to heal, his career is seriously threatened. As most doctors are, by definition, average, so would society’s view of medical professionals be as well..if not for doctoring; so also would their salaries and the prestige be lacking. But this is not the case, I realize, as I also realize that every time a doctor makes a mistake, he can “doctor” up a reason that lays the blame elsewhere i.e. “complications.” For example the only way to know a surgeon did not kill a patient is to have another surgeon catch him in the act AND rat him out, because if a surgeon accidentally kills, he would lose everything his life is built on, and of anybody on earth who could move some organs and vessels around to make a death look, well..any way he wants it to it would be a surgeon. And were there to be a surgeon standing next to the one who messes up, he would not likely speak up due to the fact that he has either: 1) messed up before as well, 2) hasn’t messed up yet, but realistically realizes he will probably do the same one day, 3) been buddies with the other guy, 4) doesn’t want the hospital he works at to close down from being sued, 5) doesn’t want another case for raising malpractice insurance rates for himself and all struggling doctors. Or most of the above. It also doesn’t help that whenever a doctor makes a mistake the integrity and superiority of all doctors and the respectability of the hospital he works at suffers and is lessened. This is why I think that when a doctor makes his first major mistake, which I am sure all do, the choice is predictable if not easily made. Throwing away 10+ years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in schooling, losing the house and cars, marring the family name and having to go to South America to perform illegal plastic surgery for the rest of your days is the one choice. The other is to unfortunately lose another brave patient to unforeseen and unforeseeable medical complications despite having tried everything humanly possible…AND by not being malpracticated you get to save more lives in the future(quantity, not quality), while saving the innocent hospital you work at undue shame and humiliation. When the fat, tired looking nurse sticks that needle into my iv and tells me I’ll be conveniently unconscious for my minor surgery, I look at the masked surgeon nearby and absently think of other professions which involve masks and sharp knives but no prestigious degree(slaughterhouse guy, serial killer, assassin) and I think I understand doctoring; I just hope I don’t get doctored, which absurdly would be my last thought in the case that I do, haha.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:01:48 GMT

i do not agree with the idea of bodyguards. the only reason to get one implies a situation wherein there is reason for a person to expect the threat of death or kidnapping. the bodyguard is therefore paid to prevent these things from happening. the person as well as the bodyguard must know that any attempt will be premeditated, with ample consideration for bodyguards if the premeditator be competent. it will also be for a specific reason that, if it is not money outright, can be made to equate to a dollar amount, as in how much it is worth for party A to target party B, which in turn should be enough to warrant such an enterprise and thus allegedly necessitating a bodyguard. it occurs to me that any bodyguard does their job at their own bodily risk for a dollar amount as well. i assume there is no amount of money worth more to a bodyguard, (or anyone for that matter), than his own life. i am also under the impression that bodyguards do their job for money. this leads me to imagine a sort of situation where someone says to a bodyguard,"hi there. i stand to profit one million dollars from the death/kidnapping of the guy who is paying you to stop this from happening. how much is he paying you, by the way? because in addition to that amount, which you will keep either way, i am willing to pay you half of one million dollars in order to obtain that one million and i thought i would ask you first; you see, the motivational amount i offer you is twice that of what i could offer the next guy if you turn me down because if you turn me down i would only be offering my next choice the same amount only he'd probably have to kill you too, since by turning me down you are asserting that you would rather guard your client than kill him, which technically shows up on his invoice as a quarter of a million for you and a quarter of a million for your client." i do not know how much a bodyguard is paid, nor if there exists an amount that he can be paid so that he would not rather kill his client and save his own ass, even though this would probably violate many clauses in the contractual agreement between the bodyguard and the client. so maybe that is why i do not think that bodyguards are a reasonable option.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:28:47 GMT

advertising is as natural a part of life on earth as any of the other essentials required to maintain a healthy, functioning, and robust society of interacting, interrelated beings. it is the method by which each living thing presents itself to the universe, and is a condition so deeply innate that advertising has itself evolved in its role within the life process, in addition to having always been an integral part of it. it largely shapes the way, the quality, and the successfulness of life as one of the major organs of the corpus societal. those in the business of marketing have long since noticed that promoting anything relies upon fabricating and/or indicating the essence of its appeal to those who themselves want to be more appealing. consumers can but feel, when newly exposed to any idea, either gravitation towards it, or repulsion away from it; both for varying reasons of all kinds. there is a full range as to the intensity of the feeling with either response, to be sure, but the slightest tug or nudge will make the absolute difference in influencing the final assessment. therefore, each such tug or nudge should engender the very soul of meticulousness finely honed, with a diligence so keen as to be ascribed to the same painstaking precision as that of a decisive, master-stroke of a surgical scalpel’s razor edge, expertly wielded by the surest, most deftly intuitive of hands to consummately demand a substantial enough measure of motivational stability from the tempestuous inconstancy of the patient’s fickle-mindedness, aggravated exponentially by the chaotic storming over a murky sea of emotional detritus; and such is what pure advertising would then be. to draw the most appeal by whatsoever means possible, to be able to distill the most beautiful, most desirable, and most exquisite essences of a thing, and translating it perfectly into the urgency of desire. for, there is no such reaction as perfect indifference, after all.

while ‘advertising’ in general has always targeted the majority of consumers in general, and likewise the majority sets within each specific market group, it would be most absurd not to note that many a thing being advertised for the consumption of this majority is so done via the endorsement of alpha beings, the most perfect samplings of the populace, depicted amid the enjoyment of these products. such advertised products are appealing to most due to the superficially imposed desire to emulate those who are endorsing in the way of aspiring to better lives. thusly, there has been a brooding spirit of malcontent amongst the masses who have been denied entry to the upper echelon, despite constant exposure to it, that has back-lashed against the marketing of these dream-worlds.

to be fair, advertising has also lately been bent over to assume the ‘scapegoat position’ for certain societal ills such as girls being “pressured” to have nicer bodies, and kids on killing sprees because they “saw it on tv,” and that kids are fat and stupid because they are immobilized by idiot programming, etc… honestly, the (1)fat, ugly girls, the (2)whiny, loser, friendless kids, and the (3) stupid, fat kids, will always remain in those same sad, pathetic states with or without tv, perhaps with slightly less attention called to them for amusement purposes without, but who cares? maybe if we got the tv watching fucktards from all three groups together and call them commercialized sellouts, it would discourage them! this is why the term “commercialism” is so very pejoratively, yet popularly peddled nowadays. it is, essentially, the repulsion from beauty by those supremely lacking it; which is worsened by the abundance of advertising showing all the varieties of beauty in people effecting a constant reminder of what they are not, as well making beauty seem more commonplace than it truly is-a false raising of standards to the increased sorrow of all below them. in a move away from this, the TIVO and other such devices are now available to record television programs, free of commercials, to moderate the somewhat-excessive and literal inundation of commercials i.e. “commercialism.”

the ecological imperative, necessity, yea, the undeniable logic, of naturally-occurring advertising has always been abundantly evident, seen in so many rudimentary, life-sustaining biological cycles in nature every time the brightest rose gets chosen by the insects and birds to pollinate, the most splendidly plumaged peacock receiving the first and finest choice of mates, and the green frog with the most dominant croak gets to mate the most in general. what’s important to note is that as all this is going on, the other unremarkable roses exist still, in that banal state of shared semblance: the wallflower indeed. as do the plainer peacocks look on as their flamboyant betters claim all the tail, and not to forget the weak croaking green frogs, who all croak regardless of success or futility. so we see, as Mother Nature tends to dote upon the ‘fittest’ of her children, the ones who are most able to indulge in these, their vainglorious “advertisings,” by bestowing non-stop-reproductive-action privileges upon them. not to be outdone by nature, the human counterparts to nature’s fittest animals, are.….o, so compensated for, well, being better! haha. it is interesting to think that the group of elite, exceptional personages of mankind that are the geniuses, athletes, professionals, artists, and celebrities are basically the human species advertising, in a sense, to all of the other species; it just so happens that they often times advertise to the common human beings as well, hehe. but i see the biggest “sell” for these paragons of mankind in the exerting of their unduly potent influence, in the manifestations of each his own peerless brand of decadence inimitable, and, with no small emphasis, in the dictation/direction of their own eras by personifying ‘mass appeal.’ just as these exalted few comprise the pinnacle of the societal pyramid, so must everyone else give the bolster of their support from every step (this is a mayan step-pyramid, folks) beneath- such is the figurative and literal, purpose and philosophy of the pyramid itself as a foundation,- except the top, i guess. the advent of modern advertising, by way of flaunting the pyramid-top’s extravagance-steeped existence to the rest of it, threatens to topple this ageless, cherished, geometrically solid model of civilization. inverted pyramids don’t stand, plus i wouldn’t even want to think about what a pyramid on its side would represent, hehe. well, i like to take solace in the fact that chauvinism has at least ensured a disproportionately large amount of gorgeous females to do most of the advertising in my lifetime! this wallflower ain’t hard to please at all

Monday, November 14, 2005

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:09:08 GMT

death is the ultimate cure to life; or at least a healthy, looming threat of it. i can think of no activity that in having death as a possible outcome/consequence would not enhance. even after the fact; if it was made known to the contestants of a game, after the game ended, that the penalty for losing was to be death, that game would immediately become more exciting as the losers realize that they are going to die for losing, and the winner would also feel exhilaration to learn of his close brush with death. it’s kind of like adding spiciness to an otherwise bland food. no matter what i eat these days, it seems capable of tasting better if only made spicy, even if i eat tobasco after chewing on the spiciless food awhile. the interesting parallel is that there is actually a method for measuring the spiciness, (amount of capsaicin), in peppers called the Scoville scale. peppers exceeding 100,000 scoville heats units tend to burn through paper, esophageal tissue, and stomach linings. this can translate into certain death for people who haven’t a high enough tolerance to capsaicin-rich foods, and yes, unlike with other spicy substances like piperine (black pepper) and gingerol (ginger), the body builds long-lasting selective desensitization to the pain and discomfort of capsaicinoids. i believe this explains, to a fine point, the literalness behind the expression “spice up your life,” which gets increasingly spicier as it nears death. gambling is based upon this concept. no matter how wealthy the gambler is, the appropriate stakes he bets must make financial ruination possible in order to achieve the “rush” of gambling. which is why play-gambling never works and why some very wealthy people have lost it all at a casino. and also why some of these people commit suicide- it is due to the fact that the wealth that was risked, and lost, was pretty much equivalent to life and death, obviously, haha. even Christopher Columbus’ mission to find motherfucking India, was for the sake of spices; and for this, his crew sailed off the edge of the planet. how much plainer can it be? when death comes a visiting and offers to play a game of your choice for your soul, say “chili pepper-eating contest to the death, Death! and side bet my life savings on me winning.” on the same note, monopoly should be played with real money, and the water balloons in a water balloon fight should be replaced with grenades.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:31:55 GMT

it’s been awhile since ive played with mercury…long gone are those carefree days when a bright-eyed, curious lad could walk into his local chemical supply shop and pay cash/no id for such memorable fun times that can be had with phosphorus, potassium permanganate, hydrochloric acid, and, of course, mercury. so then what do i find myself doing? pouring a small puddle of water onto my cupped palm, which i guess is the next best thing when mercury cannot be had. switching that puddle from one palm to the other without spilling any, and furthermore keeping the rest of the hand/palm dry is the whole trick to it. and, that, is how i play with water in lieu of mercury; it’s oddly, though serenely, amusing sometimes. and it was during one of these times that i imagined the puddle in my hand freezing, which i thought would be even more amusing- kind of like a miniature ice sculpture-type deal; of course i wasn’t intoxicated at all or anything... but now, i really DO want to see the shape of my cupped palm as an actual piece of ice. so, i figure if i mold my hand in clay and bake that, then make a mold of that, i will then be able to fill it with water and fulfill this short-term goal. maybe i can also get one of those old music boxes with a revolving platform to place this physical nate-made manifestation of boredom atop- physical, cuz it already exists in my head. then perhaps a small cocktail party to display it at,(i’ll even do birthdays). sometimes i overachieve, i know, haha

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:38:02 GMT

what is one to say upon finding out that an acquaintance has died of: eating too much, or from excessive online computer game play at an internet café, or from workaholicism related health detriment, or from a crash whilst street racing? or maybe someone who has merely lost a job, their health, their family, or a social life to one of those things? it would be kind of an awkward choice of responses for most people to make in my imagining, but i think that i have a quasi-solution; just pretend that this person actually died from an overdose of your favorite illegal drug to bash on! this would not really require too much of an imaginative stretch because the deceased in question is evidently and undeniably a fuck-up, plain and simple-like. does it matter, then, what this person specifically fucked up on? and whatever that particular weakness may be, it could easily have been, probably would have been, any number of other things to claim his wretched life, had it not been for the actual thing that did. for example, i think that it would only be right and progressive to focus on personal weaknesses as a cause of fucked-uppedness instead of, say, drugs when a person abuses them; but it IS a whole lot easier to blame an “addiction”. pretty soon, they’ll be making up some kind of “congenital food addiction/fat genome” to explain away obesity…o wait, they did and apparently 80% of americans have it, haha. tis a rather droll segment of society, would-be-addicts, that has caught my notice lately, and mayhap i am not alone in so noticing. don’t we all recognize stellar examples of ticking, fuck-up-timebombs in the people that we know; people who are bound to, well, fuck up? all that’s left to do is to try and guess how- it’s spectator sportish. i would even include “relationships with people” as a favorite area in life for people to perpetually self-sabotage/undermine. i mean, everyone has relationships, and at least a lot of them are sick and twisted specimens of fouled human interaction. there can even be irony when the case is that a person should start doing things undone instead of ceasing an overtly abusive habit(as compared with substances). well, i guess it’s a ceasing of not-doing, eh? i cannot wait to see the excuse-makers-that-be try to fabricate an “addiction” or “disorder” to blame for that...dammit, i remember the olden days of yore when those who ‘suffer’ from ‘social anxiety disorder’ were just referred to as losers. but if you are such a one, worry not, loser, for you get happy pills to help cope with your misery!-just don’t get addicted, hehe, but when you do, be sure to end yourself in a violent manner AND leave a note so there's no confusion, lest the only friends you ever had(your happy drugs) take the heat for your deficiencies

Monday, November 07, 2005

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 09:43:53 GMT

aren’t bees mother nature’s biggest bitches? they are worse off than drug addicts. firstly, they fly about all the day long looking to get their fix of nectar from flower to flower. of course, this is just a ruse from plant life that enables them to fuck each other without moving, which is called pollination. whatever is in that nectar, it’s got bees coming back for more. then the bees take back the nectar to feed the fattest bitch bee of them all, who just sits there like a plant while all her lackey bees approach to feed and fuck her; once again we see the fucking-without-moving motif in nature. then, the entire hive is either hosed down by suburbanites or interned into a farm so that people can take the honey, the honeycombs and the beeswax for their own consumption. if the bees have a problem with this, they have the option of detaching their abdomens, dying in the process, for a chance to sting the enemy who is in a bee suit; i guess the short end of a short stick. the only sucky part is that they only get all of this fun shit during spring and summer, for in winter, it has been decreed that bees must huddle together into a huge ball to share the collective warmth of their bodies. and no fucking whilst in the ball because only the queen is privileged to partake of that carnal pleasure. without moving, i might add.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:58:46 GMT

always, ever

were they ever, ever dreams;

was it never, never real?

for as real as it did seem,

must i ever, never feel?

was i always, always numb?

have i never, never feared

for myself, or anyone

have i always, never cared?

Monday, October 17, 2005

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:23:45 GMT

Fuck you and what your going through cause im in jail.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 10:55:21 GMT

any good movie has a twist in it, and all a twist is, is a betrayal of trust. the difference between the good guy who dies and the one who lives is the anticipation of betrayal, which means the realization that the trust was never there, or was false. the irony is that trust can only exist with the possibility of the betrayal of it, which is what makes loyalty so valuable; it is also what shames it a little bit. a man’s loyalty is not defined by another’s betrayal, only by his own unwillingness to commit that vile act. because if he cannot commit the act, then he isn’t really trustworthy either; he’s just a good person. it is tempting to think then, that every person is capable of betraying trust, and that his worth is in whether or not he is willing to forsake another person. is it better to die having given trust over to betrayal, or is it better to be alone in the end, having proof that there is no one to trust? perhaps the good guy that died is the one that should have been trusted, but that is only known in his death by betrayal. this means that there is no trust in the living. and furthermore, perhaps the good guy that died was never betrayed because he never really trusted- he was only incapable of playing the game, and we feel that he was a good guy because it would be noble of him to die of another’s betrayal. there may not be good guys, just smarter bad guys, or, just smarter guys. how else can the goodness of trust be seen but that it should be maliciously violated.