There are no sick days in residency

Of the numerous sucker punches residency has to offer, I think the most baffling is the way we deal with falling ill. As in, the residents themselves being under the weather.

I know! That happens? Bunch of pansies...

It's okay for our patients to get sick, I mean, they kind of have to in order to eek a living out of this popsicle stand, but we, as care providers, can not. 

Our daily zigging and zagging of snot is irrelevant. Our very job description of promoting health, wellness, and recovery, doesn't apply to us. We must defy the principles of communicative disease, be the commander of our own physiology, make ways to rest/hydrate/exercise within our 80hr work week, and not get sick.

Okay. Let's be fair. That might be a bit extreme. There is a contingency plan in place if you are delirious or in a coma. 

Or, if you are a weakling who doesn't want to bring your virus laden wet rag of a self to the oncology ward because you're "concerned" about the "vulnerability" of patients "without an immune system," then you can fall back on the a fore mentioned contingency. It's called Jeopardy.

Jeopardy. Sure it may refer to the Alex Trebeck themed monologue running through your head -  "You chose this career you nincompoop for 100", "Nut jobs in charge of scheduling for 200," or, today's daily double, "Schadenfreude," - but in reality it refers to the word's dictionary definition:

Jeopardy [jep-er-dee] noun 

1. harzard or risk of or exposure to, loss, harm, death or injury

2. peril or danger

3. the danger or hazard of being found guilty, and of consequent punishment, undergone by criminal defendants on trial

Synonyms: See Danger; menace, threat

Antonyms: Security

So, see? You're totally covered! 

Vomiting, immobility, fevers, explosive uprisings of rebel recruits in your sinuses? Nope! Doesn't sound like death to me! Walk if off you whiner.

If you really are in peril, you can call in a jeopardy person. Go ahead. See what happens.

Who is the jeopardy person, you ask? One from a shiny cavalry of good hearted souls on call to be our back-up? Close... it's a fellow resident.

365 days a year there is a resident on jeopardy call. Actually, three. One for each year -- there's an intern jepo person, a 2nd year jepo person, and a senior jepo person. If you can't come in on a given day -- your grandmother died, you're in a car accident you can't leave the scene of, you've just found out you have two months to live -- then you call the jepo person in to cover whatever shift you're going to miss. 

Am I the only one who finds this sketchy? Cause, I mean... yeah you get a break, but you're screwing over your counterparts by succumbing to your body or circumstance, you lame-o.

It gets lamer.

If you DO call somebody in to cover your shift because you're dying, what do you get in return? Sympathy? Chicken soup? Nah, how about a healthy serving of guilt and immediate e-mails asking when you're going to PAY THAT PERSON BACK.

If you're sick, and someone has to cover for you, even though you're miserable and are making what is probably a considerate decision for anyone working with you who might pick up what you've got, you need to pay whoever covers you back.

Not with money, mind you. With another, comparable, shift. 

Last February I was hypoxic (low oxygen in my blood) and dyspneic (short of breath) and physically unable to walk from my couch to the kitchen (sooooo sick). I'd worked four 12hr ED shifts in as many days with a waning voice and a progressively looser grip on reality, taking care of angsty teenagers and snotty kids who weren't half as sick as I was, and finally said, ENOUGH. 

Well, my husband did. He said enough. He thought I was dying and forced me to stay home.

I had to jepo someone for the first time in 22 months of residency. Because GOD FORBID the ED would be down one resident for 12 hours (when there are always at least 3 residents in addition to 2 mid-level providers and 2-3 attendings)(plus med students).  

While it was great not having to go in that day, and probably best for the health of everyone involved, I then had to work with the covering person to find a time when I could cover a 12 hour shift that they had in the future. So I ended up covering the PICU, NICU, and peds ward at the city hospital overnight on Thanksgiving, because that's the only time we could find that jived.

Be ye warned. There are no sick days in residency. And in fact, you get insult to injury by having to cover another shift for that person in the future.

While I get that the payback expectation is largely to discourage people from abusing the system, why on Earth isn't there a better way? A medical diploma didn't make us superhuman. Why does the system expect us to be? 

Opposite of Sycophant

All I've wanted to do this week was come home and send ANGER ANGER HATE HATE HATE out into the internet unknown, but I felt this was probably unproductive and would not necessarily be helpful. So, instead, I channeled my rage into writing. Thus, I give you:

The Opposite of Sycophant

By: Me. 

Forcibly spending a week with you

was like attending a lecture on Jerk

You showed off its malice, its bally-hoo

in mincing comments regarding my work

I skimmed the lecture’s whole outline

having taken this class times before

it’s clear you think you hide it with saccharine

but your charms and your tricks, I abhor

I can usually hide indignation,

and play right along with the games,

but with you I can’t hide my frustration

you’re Satan finessing his flames

I can’t stand your insincere candor,

with students and colleagues alike,

it’s clear that you want them to pander

to your ego that rivals Third Reichs’ 

You imply that I’m stupid and lazy

veiling thinly the truth of your joke

through questions irrelevant and crazy

that make my eyes seem appealing to poke.

What made your curriculum so bitter

worse than most assholes’ I’ve known

was your critique that my notes, they did fritter,

any story or use on their own

You told me to read what you wrote

about the team’s patients and plans

You asked that I pare down, not emote

you’d never seen something so rambling, so bland.

This hurt more than the barbs you had crafted

since it wasn’t intentionally mean

for you attacked all that had lasted

of the me that med school wiped clean.

You couldn’t have known that you’d done that,

but I know it’d make your short self seem tall,

to realize you won in our combat,

with an offhanded comment so small. 

Though I failed all your quizzes by guessing,

and despite all the spits and the swings, 

This week did teach me one lesson:

You’re a dick and you don’t know a thing.

Pure Pageantry

When you spend most of your days taking care of children with chronic illnesses who have parents that are scared suspicious (a gentler and more mistrustful form of shitless), having a life outside the hospital is key. 

When you’re only guaranteed four days off a month, you need escapism.

Lately, my favorite getaway is TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras. You can’t get further from reality.

The program is akin to watching an anthropologic study unfold. There’s a culture, a culture you even recognize as human, but it is completely foreign. Or in this case, jaw droppingly back-asswards.

The most recent episode I watched flashed a 3 day old baby boy donning a onesie that was basically the equivalent of a  t-shirt tuxedo. 

I’m not sure which voice in my head was screaming the loudest... HE HAS NO IMMUNE SYSTEM! HE’S A HE! FAKE-O T-SHIRT TUXES ARE ONLY OKAY IN ATLANTIC CITY!

Interestingly, they very well may have been in Atlantic City. The show seems to showcase locales that are generally well past their prime. 

Much like the contestants' parents.

I will give the program some benefit of the doubt though... It’s hard to imagine anywhere with a modicum of liberalism embracing junior tiny misses. By eliminating those, right off the bat you’re left with West Virginia, the deep South, Youngstown, Ohio, and most other destinations that would add steep competition to an “Armpit of America” crowning.

On the show the parents generally fall into three main categories:

1. Shameless former pageant princesses themselves (surprisingly the minority)(at least in terms of who is featured on the show)
2. Those who are obese, impoverished, insecure, or some combination of the three, and using their children as a public dumping ground for their own self hatred
3. Repressed gay men

It all boils down to one thing: projection. They may as well call the program Vicarious Living Goes Blingin'.

There is a mother on one of the episodes who enters all five of her daughters into competitions. The eldest two are fraternal twins who were about 6 years old when the show aired. In an interview their mother says, aloud, in front of television cameras, for people to see and hear, “Mary looks like mommy, and she’s the one who wins the most. I definitely think she’s the prettiest of the group. Her sister, Jezebel, has a bigger nose and is just... timid. I don't expect her to really do much.” 

The show then cuts to the two girls in separate interviews. Mary says she loves pageants b/c she wins. Jezebel says she doesn’t like competing against her sister because it makes her feel bad.

Uhm, hello. Pathology much?

She's three.

The irony being the years and years of therapy these kids will rack up will altogether probably cost less than the amount their parents have invested in toddler pageantry careers.

It’s insane.

They're airbrushed to boot. Airbrushed. Pretty sure skin is never nicer than when you're under the age of 5.

The documentary usually starts out in various competitors homes and they then follow the competitors through their categories on to crowning. Too frequently they have wide angle shots of low income housing with dilapidated roofs, outdated kitchens, and just other stigmata of hard financial times, and then pan to the mothers talking about their daughter’s $3,000 dresses. 

As in $3,000 for one dress. That they will wear as a 5 year old. Which means it will fit them for like five minutes.

How terrified are you right now?

These little girls get spray tans (at least it's just spray? slightly redeeming?), manicures, facials, pedicures, fake nails, fake eyelashes, and “flippers.” Not aquatic flippers as an accessory to the swimsuit competition like I originally thought, but rather a panel of plastic fake teeth that they can wear over their unsightly natural teeth. Mothers have said they choose this option to hide their child’s yellow teeth, lost teeth, crooked teeth, or abundant gums.

I mean seriously. You think you're gonna sleep tonight?

You can just see all the self-esteem the parents wish they had getting leeched out of their offspring criticism by criticism. 

And their routines... oh God, the routines. It’s so horrifying you can’t look away. You really can’t. It varies from comic awkwardness to painful foreshadowing of future stripper careers. The worst are the fathers who are choreographing the routines and are clearly looking past their kid to visualize the true calling as a Vegas show girl they (the dad) could have had if they weren't born into a den of evangelical Christianity. 

DSM-IV diagnoses at these things are more ubiquitous than hairspray. 

I understand the arguments for building confidence and supporting what a kiddo thinks they want their hobbies to be... but good lord. The parents will say in their interview that oh, their 30 month old ASKED them to do pageants. They WANT to be on stage.

The cameras then cut to the child’s individual interview and the kid has a speech delay so stark they have to run closed captioning on the bottom of the screen so that we can understand that they say, “Mommy makes me.”

Furthermore, the awards these kids get are things like, “Best Smile,” “Most Beautiful,” and don’t even get me started on the hierarchy of Grand versus Ultimate versus Supreme versus Brattiest Brat of all the Brats. What message does that transmit?

It’s fascinating, disgusting, and transfixing all at once.

I have to say though... even if some of these parents are way wakadoo and off the deep end, it's kind of nice to see them involved in their child’s life. And there are the rare families here and there who you can tell legitimately are doing it for fun and are able to keep their kid balanced.

But then there are the others, ohhhh the others, who make really terrible parents, but really great television.

I'm Pregnant!

That is, if I lived in Arizona, I would be.

(My husband just lost a year off his life.)(He HATES Arizona...)

Thank the holy good God that I don't live in Arizona. I can't imagine living in a state that is governed by such idiotic, racist, misogynistic, imbeciles.

Now signed into law, LAW, is the supposition that pregnancy begins TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO CONCEPTION.

As in TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO CONCEPTION. What? I mean... what?

If I am understanding this correctly, as far as Arizona is concerned, any woman who is ovulating is pregnant until proven otherwise.

Surprise! Your seventh grader's tampon isn't the only thing making her lose her virginity (don't get me started)! The Arizona state legislature is as well! Well, that's not fair. The loss of virginity supposes some sort of intercourse which this definition DOES NOT. Immaculate conception all around!

Regardless of whether sperm is in the equation or not, according to Arizona, the first day of the last menstrual period prior to conception (generally, for most women, 2 weeks prior to ovulation give or take a few days) is the start of pregnancy.

Oh my God.

Can they just... do that? I mean... isn't pregnancy a medical term?

I'm a doctor. I went to medical school. You can not be pregnant unless an ovum and a sperm have formed a zygote. Those are the rules.

OF NATURE.

OF BIOLOGY.

OF COMMON SENSE.

I hate to go all Elle Woods here, but if this is the precedent that's being set, how is it then that all women who don't have sperm introduced approximately two weeks following the last day of their menstrual cycle aren't recklessly abandoning "children" all willy nilly?

This is just stupid.

Ova are not "life." An ovum is a cell. It's a cell that when met with a specific other kind of cell can proliferate into more cells. LIKE A TUMOR.

TUMORS DO THAT. Why aren't we all up in arms about their excision? Okay, so let's say that someone with a modicum of biological knowledge, which will necessarily exclude the members of the Arizona legislature that voted this heinous monstrosity into existence, shoots back and says, ho ho, but tumors don't have the capacity to generate LIFE!

Fine. So let's talk about pluripotent hematopoietic cells. Oh, I'm sorry, they didn't teach that vocabulary in the institutions of higher education that are now hopefully nationally shamed that they produced such simple minded idiots? Okay.

These cells are cells that each and every one of us, boys and girls alike, has in our bone marrow. They're what enables us to regenerate blood. We aren't born with all the blood we need. We are constantly manufacturing new blood.

You know, blood? The thing that carries oxygen all around the body?

Well, to me, and likely to most of the sound minded world, oxygen is necessary for life. Without oxygen, we die. Cells die, tissues die, organs die. That is a FAR more rational argument for life giving in my mind. But yet, pretty sure bone marrow transplants, bone marrow excision, bone marrow biopsies are all legal beagle, and if anyone were to suggest otherwise they'd be more or less a pitied laughingstock.

Where are these legislators coming up with this stuff? And more importantly, why CAN they? They are not doctors. They are not scientists. They can not just change definitions of conditions that aren't limited by semantics. Pregnancy is pregnancy, end of story.

Potential is not pregnancy.

We don't give NFL caliber contracts, paychecks, benefits, endorsements, et cetera to promising young athletes with potential. (See how I stereotypically gendered this to help out all those male legislators? YOU'RE WELCOME.). Sure, they MIGHT down the line be recruited into a formal professional athletic organization, just like an ovum MIGHT down the Fallopian line meet up with a sperm, but we don't know until it does or does not happen.

Arguments to the contrary are tantamount to fortune telling. But hey. At least those fortune tellers will be right at home with all the rest of the carnival and legislative freak shows going on in Arizona.

And, to be clear, there are zero fetuses in my uterus. ZERO FETUSES. (Interestingly, I think I just named of my next girl group.)

Double Jeopardy Indeed.

There's a whole lot of hoo-hah going on about Ashley Judd's face and Ashley Judd's retorts to comments about said face.

I'm impressed by the defense she launched.

I'm less impressed by the media outlets that are marveling that she wrote such an intelligent, insightful article. That is the news they're using as their hook. Is that because she's an actress? Is that because she's not a journalist by trade? Is it because she's a woman?

Fictional Ashley Judd: Hi. Please stop catapulting my face to the top of the day's news issues. Not only is it irrelevant, but it's perpetuating the ubiquitous media misogyny that is becoming as equally acknowledged as it is ignored.

Fictional Press At Large: Whoa. She spelled misogyny correctly.

Fictional Ashley Judd: Women are... wait, what? Yes, it's spelled correctly...

Fictional Press At Large: And... her prose is lucid.

Fictional Ashley Judd: I did in fact proofread this before sending it to international media outlets.

Fictional Press At Large: Hey look everybody, Ashley Judd is writing intelligent things! With appropriate syntax!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Well... yes, but...

Fictional Press At Large: She's defending herself! She's criticizing us for criticizing her! But we're so supportive of her cause ourselves we're going to publicize her remarks! Because holy crap!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Okay. Sure, but you seem to be missing...

Fictional Press At Large: Hey Earth! This actress constructed sentences with more substance than her waist line!... What? Oh right. Her waistline is expanding... well, please direct your attention to the beautiful woman that sure, might be puffy, but that's okay since her statements make sense!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Forget it.

I think it's awesome what she's saying. I think it deserves to be printed and deserves to go viral, but I don't think it deserves everyone else reading it and writing new stories about how "surprising" and "refreshing" it is to see such opinions publicized.

It's all very pat you on the head little girl.

You're too pretty to do homework, but turns out you're smart and don't need to anyway! My God! The revelation!

Let's write news stories about it and completely perpetuate the very thing she's arguing against!

This just in, Pretty Woman Writes a Literate Article! I Think It's About How The Media Should Stop Being So Ignorant!

Ohhh, progress.

Just... what?

This bonanza over birth control makes as much sense to me as Chris Brown still being on the airwaves.

How is everyone not looking at each other, aghast, wondering, “Uhhh... hello? What’d I miss?” Birth control is responsible. Chris Brown is abusive. Done and done, right?

Well, interesting.... The Right. Yes. That is where a lot of this seems to be stemming from. The masochistic, inane, completely flabbergasting rhetoric being thrown around by some of the presidential candidates and their party cronies is just... I don’t even know a word that would properly encompass my feelings.

Pitiable? Infuriating? Stupid?

Do they not realize that without the use of and access to birth control they’d have a pied piper following of illegitimate children all their mistresses would produce? Show me a politician who hasn’t had an affair. It’ll probably be easier to find a frat boy who’s never tasted beer.

Oh, I’m sorry, are those broad sweeping generalizations not even remotely based in fact? Guess where I learned to do that?

The idea that the government, the GOVERNMENT, is making inflammatory decisions about women’s health care based on moral rationalization rather than, oh I don’t know, legitimate data outlining how this issue is even remotely relevant, makes me livid.

Hi, you’re not doctors.

The short sightedness and... I don’t know, again, stupidity? that’s not even a strong enough word... of these people truly makes me want to... vomit feces, I guess. I can't think of a bodily function repugnant enough.

If you’re really so concerned about lost souls or innocent children or whatever the hell you’re calling zygotes these days, DO SOMETHING WHEN THEY’RE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UTERUS.

You don’t want to imbue public education with any funding, you don’t want to expand social services, you’re cutting down on the already scant mental health resources available, you’re ignoring the reams of scientific literature linking unwanted children and risk of abuse, and you’re making statements outside the realm of your expertise.

Unintended pregnancies know no socioeconomic limitations, but the resources available for them once they slide down the chute are obscenely imbalanced amongst societal stratification.

I see the evidence of this every hour of my 80 hour work week.

How is birth control viewed as anything but preventive medicine? Pregnancy is not a benign condition. Women shouldn’t have to be penalized (HA!) for choosing not to put themselves at high risk for medical morbidity.

It’s on par with refusing to pay for someone’s statins because they CHOSE to eat all that McDonald’s and trans fat and blahbity blah - insert any American cuisine - and have a massive heart attack. In covering their anti-cholesterol, anti-inflammatory agents aren’t I just giving them carte blanche to go eat willy nilly whatever the hell they want? Veritable permission to go be junk food whores? (I'm looking at you, Rush Limbaugh.)

Why does everything change when you substitute in “birth control” for statin and “pregnancy” for myocardial infarction?

If you’re thinking of an argument that involves Jesus, then it should be off the table. Pretty sure there’s separation of church and state. Pretty sure that the justification you’re providing, that your God says it’s bad (paraphrasing), is completely unrelated to the governance of our country.

I could bring out Harry Potter and tell you what Dumbledore tells us to do. Would that be useful? Then at least I’d be speaking on your terms. Oh, going through Platform 9 3/4 is impossible is it? So is walking on water.

Believe what you believe. I don’t care. Just don’t make it law to believe what you believe.

There is absolutely nothing in these campaigns or in these politician’s track records that smacks of God’s love, forgiveness, justice, equality, unconditionality, concern for the least of us, on and on and on... so quit using it as an excuse. Walk the fucking walk, boys.

A Sure Sign of Spring

Oh yes. The Shamrock Shake.

I once nearly missed a friend's wedding trying to snag one of these babies. My roommate at the time and I were McDonald's hopping, hell bent on treating ourselves before they disappeared for a whole year. We kept trying one more Mickey D's, then one more, and oh, there's gotta be another one around here somewhere... Ultimately we dashed, empty handed, into a pew just as the sanctuary doors were closing to unveil the bride.

Turns out the Southern Ohio chains eschewed it. Which, I guess, figures, Southern Ohio being a sink hole for fun and delight. Unless you count racism and gun slinging. I do not.

The friend's wedding was on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. They requested all of the guests wear green and bedecked their reception tables with shamrocks.

No, they weren't Irish, just theme oriented. It was cute.

But you know what would've been cuter?

Having a Shamrock Shake in my hand.

At any rate, I had one today for the first time in many many years. And oh, I'll just say it, they are indeed worth nearly missing the nuptials of a friend who six years later you don't even pretend to keep up with on Facebook.

Act fast, their minty days are numbered! Get you yours: http://www.shamrockshakefinder.com/

Rage Against the Vehicular Machine

I tend to take it very personally when I’m honked at. Even when I’m stopped at an intersection and hear a honk from several cars away I take it personally though there’s no way it could be directed at me.

Yesterday I was en route to work in the midst of rush hour and there was this dude behind me who was riding my ass, but you know, what else is new in traffic decorum. It’s the road equivalent of some sleeze-o in a club finding justification in again, riding your ass, just because it’s there.

When we reached a stoplight he abruptly zipped around me, lingered next to me, laid on his horn and gesticulated wildly.

He first gave me the international, “WTF” arms and sneer, which I promptly reciprocated, but then he started bringing his thumb and index finger about an inch a part as if to say, “this close; this close.”

Pretty sure that’s the wrong finger maneuver you’re looking for in this instance, buddy.

Unless you’re trying to show me the size of your wanker.

He had an Obama sticker on his car so I tried to be less angry. Maybe he saw my Ohio plates and was saying the election in ’08 was this close and it’s probably my conservative fault mother fucker.

Which, you know, fine. Not true, but fine. I could see the misunderstanding.

But instead of taking comfort in the fact that he’s an idiot and I didn’t intentionally or ostensibly do anything wrong, I welled up and wondered why he’s being so mean.

It was almost as bad as the time I started crying while walking the dog because I thought she was mad at me for not moving fast enough.

Yes. I have issues.

These issues tend to come to the fore when I’m stressed, tired, hungry, PMS-ing, sad, feeling defensive... basically whenever I’m existing. There’s a whole post/dissertation I could write on the ins and outs of my mental fragility, but that’s not my point today.

My point is… why are people so quick to get angry?

A few months ago I was driving down a two lane road, that yes, was pretty generous in the amount of space allotted to the curbside lane, but yet still, TWO LANES, and there was this man in a humongous SUV whose nose hairs I could make out in my rearview mirror.

Clearly me going 45 in a 40 was not cutting it.

I was in the right lane. The right lane is the SLOW lane (and also in this instance, the Correct and Just lane). Also? Speed limit. I was already breaking it.

I mean, not with reckless abandon, but still; not going 10 miles under either. At any rate, after honking, flashing his lights and just generally being a bimbo by swerving in and out behind me, he takes it upon himself to pass me.

In my own lane.

Again, it’s a generous lane so it’s not like we were going to bumper car it out, but WHO DOES THAT?

So he swerves next to me and I lay on my horn. An appropriate use of the horn I feel.

He cuts in front of me.

I’m still honking.

He then slams on his brakes and stops his car in the middle of the road. Stops. As in, no more forward inertia. On a 40mph 4 lane road.

He then leans out his window and purses his lips as he tilts his head back in some kind of thug movement and flashes his hands around. A gang symbol? Attempting to take flight? Some kind of Ross Gellar-esque gesture he uses to avoid having to actually give the finger?

Who knows.

The point? What the hell did I do? I laid on my horn. But he was being a jerk. I see nothing amiss in this scenario.

I mean, I don’t know what I thought. That laying on my horn would summon the fuzz? That he would recognize the error of his ways and use his headlights to Morse code out an apology? I guess. But I wasn’t just going to sit there and let him be a freaking asshole.

But, again. Why so mean? Even though he was clearly, CLEARLY, the one in the wrong, I found myself getting riled up and felt my lower lip start to swell.

I tried to tell myself that maybe his dog got run over this morning and that it wasn’t personal, but still, I wanted to cry.

Why are people so mean when driving?

How We Decide Part 1

Over spring break I read this:



I intended to read it back in January hoping to gain some insight and perhaps figure out how I could make a decision already and pick a cussing residency. I didn't come up in the library queue until a few weeks ago just before I left for the Midwest and the book's content turned out to be uncannily apropos:

"Even though pundits are trained professionals, presumably able to evaluate the evidence and base their opinions on the cold, hard facts -- that's why we listen to them -- they are still vulnerable to cognitive mistakes. Like partisan voters, they selectively interpret the data so that it proves them right. They'll distort their thought process until it leads to the desired conclusion." - p. 207

"In other words, ignore those commentators that seem too confident or self-assured. The people on television who are most certain are almost certainly going to be wrong." - p. 209

"When you see a painting, you usually know instantly and automatically whether you like it. If someone asks you to explain your judgement you confabulate... Moral arguments are much the same. Two people feel strongly about an issue, their feelings come first, and their reasons are invented on the fly, to throw at each other." -- quoting UVA psychologist Jonathan Haidt p. 172

Beyond truly being a gifted writer (I mean, how many people can make neuroscience not only accessible to the lay public, but ENJOYABLE?) Mr. Lehrer posits some interesting assertions regarding the operations of the human brain.

It gave me interesting food for thought as I sat in restaurants with people who herald Glenn Beck and believe the President of the United States is a socialist robot who hates money and wants to punish it.

Four Stars

I am a grade A procrastinator. I think most people in graduate education have to be to some degree. You know, for sanity.

It's vital to take a break from quantum physics or Thoreau's existential machinations or rectal exams, whatever your poison, to remind yourself that those things aren't ACTUALLY our whole lives, it just feels like it. I mean, God help us if you had to curl up and live in a rectum.

One of my favorite escapades is Fantasy Online Shopping.

Far too often this becomes Actual Online Shopping, but I certainly start out intending to browse.

I usually keep it within a degree of reality (which perhaps is why I end up actually buying) by only perusing the websites of stores I could actually shop i.e. Target, Old Navy, or if I'm feelin' really saucy, Ann Taylor.

I usually just look for patterns or colors I like, styles and cuts that have worked for me in the past and basically go nuts over accessories. Sunglasses, jewelry, handbags... I hate to say the gaudier the better, but... if the shoe fits?

Anyway, I was genuinely looking for something the other day, a pair of red flats (clearly a necessity) and encountered one of my greatest downfalls: the online review.

Now, I'm not an idiot. I'm not. In two months I'll have a medical degree to mostly prove it. But I am a sucker. And oh, how I am a sucker for a well reviewed product. It's taken me a good long while and more than a few disappointing online shopping endeavors to realize that oh, it's probably an employee of that company writing the review. Because really, who types: THESE SHOES CHANGED MY LIFE! OMG! SQUEE! BUY THEM NOW! THEY BEAT WITH A HEART OF AWESOME UNPARALLELED IN FASHION!

There also must be secret competitors on there, the ones that go more along the lines of: These shoes arrived and I put them on. Immediately they pinched my toes which caused me so much pain my toes went numb. Because of this I fell down the stairs. And landed on my dog. Killing him. He wouldn't have died if I never ordered these shoes. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU.

I think I may be projecting my recent experiences going through apartment reviews online trying to find a new place Out West. These people are either on way too much Prozac or are the most vindictive, hateful creatures West of the Mississippi because sweet goodness, how important is it really to have granite countertops!?

I digress.

So, the hunt for red flats. I wanted something to spice up the very many heather gray clothes I have these days (residual from Depression Online Shopping). So I went through the usual suspects: Zappos, Piperlime, Overstock and finally settled on Target. Largely, I admit it, because of the reviews of this one shoe:



Beyond being positive, the reviews seemed sensible. They talked about accommodating bunions. I have bunions! They talked about how comfortable they are. I like comfort! And also they kept emphasizing how cute yet functional they were and hey, for $16.99 it was worth a shot.

Anyway, this is probably the epitome of the online review because basically my point is OMG. I love these shoes.

(It took this long to get here because I needed to prove my thesis. I am a grade A procrastinator.)

I do a ton of walking in NYC and they don't kill my feet. Sometimes flats are a little too free form to support a trek to the subway, but these with their sturdy (faux?) leather have held up. They don't rub my twisted bunioned feet in any which way and have such a pleasant hint of elfin charm I want to wear them with everything.

Now, if I could just find an apartment meeting that criteria we'd be all set. Mama needs a lot of square footage to house these bunions.