A Day In The Life Of A Doctor

I have something a bit different today- the point of view of a certain doctor in a hospital in Calgary. Enjoy!

7:28 AM. Waking up at home. Slept as well as I can. Still too many hours on duty in the ER, and never enough sleep. Oh well, I knew that going into this line of work…

7:52 AM. Finished getting ready for the day and just about done with breakfast. I have to be in for my shift in a couple of hours, so at least I get a chance to slowly ease my way into the day.

8:36 AM. Stopping to get the morning papers. The store owner always knows me, and is as pleasant as usual. I thank her, particularly for never using my full name. 

9:44 AM. Stepping into the hospital, a few minutes ahead as usual.  Rockyview General never changes. Always busy.

9:52 AM. My gear’s stashed away and I’m in scrubs, talking with one of the nurses heading off her shift. She tells me there’s an entertainment reporter in a body cast who’s being treated by Doctor Wainwright that I’ll have to take over when he goes off shift. It seems he ran afoul of a grouchy Mountie.

10:02 AM. Wainwright fills me in. He tells me that our patient, one Scooter Anderson, asked the Mountie in question why he wasn’t on tour with the rest of Metallica. First, what kind of name is Scooter? And second… does it ever occur to these people that just because you share a name with someone doesn’t mean you are that person. Believe me, I know, from personal experience.

10:21 AM. Looking in on Scooter Anderson, who’s covered from head to toe with a body cast. He’s quietly groaning, muttering something or another. I’m careful to merely identify myself as his doctor, as opposed to my name. In my personal experience, entertainment reporters are idiots who can’t grasp basic facts.

10:22 AM. Anderson mutters something about ‘I thought Lars was supposed to be in LA’ before droning off. I instruct the nurse to up his painkillers before withdrawing from the room.

1:23 PM. Taking a break between my rounds. Having coffee with two of the nurses. The television’s on in the cafeteria, though the sound is down and the closed captioning feature is active. A reporter is filing a story from the courthouse. The banner at the bottom of the screen notes that the Jessica Fletcher case has another hearing today. Ah, yes, the crazy psychotic murdering novelist who framed thousands of people for murders she committed.

And she kept getting away with it for how many decades again?

1:24 PM. The reporter notes that the defendant was removed from court during the hearing, a pre-trial motions hearing, because of an outburst towards an unidentified individual in court. The words ‘your head on a pike’ were used.

The expression batshit crazy comes to mind.

3:06 PM. Near the ER entrance when a man comes in. He’s easily two metres tall, 140 kilograms of pure muscle by the looks of him, bald with a goatee. Dressed like a biker. If you saw the guy in a dark alley or holding a pool cue and looking pissed off, you might want to head the other way. Not so much right now. He’s holding his right hand, looking anxious, blurting out, “I hurt my thumb!”

I try not to roll my eyes. Men are such babies.

3:31 PM. Walking the biker out the front door after bandaging his thumb. Honestly, the guy gets his thumb accidentally stuck in the door leaving the bar, and he acts like it’s the end of the world and nobody has ever felt that much pain. It’s not even broken! Like I said… babies!

6:45 PM. Looking forward to getting off shift. Another hour. I can make it through another hour, right? Of course I can.

7:26 PM. Conducting rounds. Looking in on Scooter Anderson, who’s pretty much unconscious. There’s someone in with him, though. She introduces herself as his colleague. “Taffy Candy, Entertainment Tonight,” she says.

Again, I try not to roll my eyes. I hate these people, I really do. I only introduce myself as Doctor Dion, answering her questions as to her colleague’s condition and when he can be released into long term care.

7:28 PM. Out in the corridor with Taffy Candy, whose very name makes me feel like strangling her. Weird thought for a doctor to have, but when you’ve got enough experience with entertainment reporters, you understand why. One of my colleagues passes by, nodding hello… and making the mistake of calling me by my first name at the worst possible time. In front of an entertainment reporter.

Taffy Candy looks at me. With that deer in the headlights kind of look common to her profession.

“Wait a minute,” she says. “Celine Dion? Wow, I didn’t know you’re a doctor too!”

I sigh, speaking in a low, hostile tone. “I am not that Celine Dion.”

Taffy Candy shakes her head. “Are you sure?”

8:37 PM. Speaking with the ER chief, who is both cautioning me against hitting someone in her ER again, but also sympathetic about the reason why. She knows how it feels, after all. She gets to go through life with the name Anne Murray, and entertainment reporters have frequently confused her with that singer too.

We part ways after she adds, “nice left hook, by the way.”

Damn straight.

I wonder if Taffy Candy will remember that I’m not that Celine Dion.

Probably not. She is an entertainment reporter, after all, and they’re all pretty dumb.

Rise Of The Unholy Scammers

They are like a plague of the Old Testament, driving the Egyptians nuts. They never take a hint- you can tell them to go away, drop dead, assume room temperature, cease wasting oxygen- and they'll merely just keep going along doing what they do. On the one hand they are the internet spammers who try to send us spam email and leave spam comments. On the other they are the internet scammers with  scams-by-script. Such as the following, which turned up in email some days ago.

Dear Sir/Madam

This letter is not intended to to cause any embarrassment but just to contact your esteem self-following the knowledge of your high repute and trustworthiness.

I am Mohammed Abacha,the son of the late Nigerian Head of State who died on the 8th of June 1998.If you are conversant with world news,you would understand better,while I got your contacts through my personal research.Please,I need your assistance to make this happen and please; do not undermine it because it will also be a source of upliftment to you also.You have absolutely nothing to loose in assisting us instead, you have so much to gain.

The then head of state General Sani Abacha,transferred the money through a Lebanese businessman,Chagoury and a Jewish business man,Mark Rissar to bank accounts overseas,Instead,he used PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS (PIN) and declared the contents as Bearer Bonds and Treasury Bills. Also the firm issued him with a certificate of deposit of the consignments notes, which I have these information in my custody now.

You must have heard over the media reports and the Internet on the recovery of various huge sums of money deposited by my late father in different Banks and security firms abroad. Some of these banks and security firms willingly gave-/divulge their banking secrets and disclosed to the present civilian administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo,about my family's cash lodgement and monetary transactions with them.

Please my dear,I repose great confidence in you and I hope you will not betray my confidence in you.I have secretly deposited the sum of $30,000,000.00 with a security firm abroad whose name is withheld for now until we open communications.The money is contained in a metal box consignment with Security Deposit Number 009GM.

I shall be grateful if you could receive this fund into your Bank account for safekeeping. This arrangement is known to you and my junior brother (Abbas) only. So I will deal directly with you.I am proposing a 20% share of the fund to you for your kind assistance.I shall provide for you all the documents of the fund deposit with the security firm, and raise a power of attorney to enable you claim and receive this fund into your bank account.I have done a thorough homework and fine-tuned the best way to create you as the beneficiary to the funds and effect the transfer accordingly.Is rest assured that the modalities I have resolved to finalize the entire project guarantees our safety and the successful transfer of the funds.So, you will be absolutely right when you say that this project is risk free and viable.If you are capable and willing to assist, contact me at once via email with following details:

1. YOUR NAME

2. POSTAL ADDRESS

3. PHONE AND FAX NUMBERS

Also this transaction demands absolute confidentiality.On no condition must you disclose it to anybody irrespective of your relation with the person.Remember,Loose lips sinks ship.I am looking forward to your urgent and positive response via my email address above.

Best Regards,

Mohammed Abacha.

Well, where to begin? We have the usual tell tales of the standard internet scammer. The overly formal language with regular sentence structure that suggests the person has no idea what they're actually saying. "Your esteem self following the knowledge of your high repute and trustworthiness"? Seriously? First, nobody talks like that. Second, suggesting that I've got high repute and trustworthiness is an insult to me. Do we need to go all pistols at dawn dueling? Because one sentence in and you've insulted my reputation.

There's the usual issues with punctuation and spacing. Capitalizing words that don't need it. He dangles the usual story- the family member who's recently deceased and managed to squirrel away a whole lot of money that our friend (for the record, this nitwit is not our friend) wants to put in my hands for safekeeping. Thirty million dollars with a twenty percent commission for me. A complete stranger. Isn't that nice of our totally fake scamming scammer?

He says "I repose great confidence in you", that he found me through "my personal research", and yet has no idea what my name is, hence sending back my name, address, and contact numbers. Right. Yeah. Like I'm going to do that.

It turns out that there was a Sani Achaba, President of Nigeria from 1993-98. If you look at his background, we're talking about a real scumbag. Human rights abuses, corruption, seizure of power, real dictatorial sort of things. Sani bought the farm from an apparent heart attack, though odds are it might have been murder. And it also turns out that his name, as well as those of his family, have often been invoked by internet scammers. In fact, this particular letter has been making the rounds for years on end- googling the names involved finds that letter, or various similar takes on it.

He closes off by stressing confidentiality and begging that I not tell anyone. "Loose lips sink ships," he claims. Well, yes, but that's a wartime expression that had to do with the idea of enemy intelligence around listening in on conversations.

Nice try, Irritating Scammer. Seriously. But you'll have to hope that somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of random emails you've sent this to, someone's gullible enough to buy into it. As to that closing expression, it's too bad we can't put you in a sinking ship. Preferably locked in a small room inside as it plunges down into the deepests depths. Give my regards to the Titanic when you hit bottom.

Requiem For A Clumsy Gungan

I have another eulogy today, this one of a more sci-fi vibe...

“Friends, we come together today to pay homage to the legacy of one of our most illustrious figures. He was unique among our peoples. He touched lives beyond our planet, in ways he didn’t intend to. He did things that he might not have seen the consequences of. Though to be fair, no one else did either. He was known for his boisterousness, for his unique way of saying things, for his devotion… and, well… for occasionally being clumsy.

We come today to say farewell to Jar Jar Binks.

He was an unlikely sort to end up a representative for our Senate delegation in the Old Galactic Republic, and after the fall of the Empire, he never again sought to involve himself in such affairs. Perhaps it was guilt over one particular moment in his diplomatic career. Who can tell? But he was one of us. He was of the Gungans and he was of Naboo. And so our peoples must pay tribute to him. 

Jar Jar was of the Gungans, but was at first exiled from his people before he stepped into history. Boss Nass had exiled him for clumsiness, and so he quietly made his life walking about Naboo, trying to stay out of trouble. Even if trouble came looking for him.

Those who knew him back then remember the happy go lucky Gungan that he was. Occasionally they would have to ask him to repeat himself, because, well, let’s face it, he could tend to be incoherent. Sure, he was clumsy at times, and sure, disaster seemed to follow in his wake, but he was affable about it.

And then along came that whole Trade Federation thing.

And those two Jedi.

Jar Jar Binks found himself thrust into the forefront of history. Helping to defeat the droid armies. Helping to reconcile the Naboo and the Gungan people to come together as friends. Ending up a representative in our Senate delegation on Coruscant.

Little did anyone know at the time.

None of us could have known that Palpatine- one of our own- was a Sith Lord.

None of us could have understood that our own Senator, who became Chancellor, had been spending years on end pulling strings to put himself in power and create the Empire and rule it with an iron fist.

None of us could have realized that one day our own Jar Jar Binks would end up making a motion that gave Palpatine executive powers in a crisis. Those same powers that allowed him to forge his Empire.

You could say that was a pretty big mistake.

For whatever it was worth, after the Republic fell and the Empire rose and Jar Jar realized he had made a mistake, he was sorry. In his own words, mesa very sorry, okey dey?

Time went on. The Rebellion rose up. Naboo tried to stay out of the way of everything. We had a collective shame of knowing that the galaxy’s most evil dictator came from our planet. Jar Jar stayed out of the way of history. Oh, sure, there was that time when he bumped into former chancellor Valorum and knocked him off the waterfalls. And sure, after the Empire fell and the new Republic rose, on a trip to Bespin he made one little mistake that ended with Cloud City crashing down into the planet below. But he was always sorry about being clumsy. And isn’t being sorry enough?

In retrospect, it’s surprising given how accident prone he was that he lived as long as he did.

Boss Nass once told me that he always thought Jar Jar would have stumbled his way into a hyperdrive or trampled by a Bantha. It was something of a miracle that no one anonymously bludgeoned him during the Imperial era for his part of the rise of the Empire.

Well, all that is in the past.

All we can do is commit our late friend, Representative, and Senator… Jar Jar Binks to the ground.

At least what’s left of him.

Who would have thought that in this day and age that the Hutts were still in business?

Well, the Hutts were never known for being polite. Or hospitable. Or merciful. Or patient.

Jar Jar might not have realized any of that.

He went back to Tatooine for old time’s sake.

Was it nostalgia? Was it trying to figure out where it all went wrong?

Who knows?

What we do know is that he spilled his drink onto Grappa the Hutt at the pod races.

And after many attempts at apologizing, Grappa threw him into his own personal Rancor pit.

We’ll never know what was going through Jar Jar’s mind as that Rancor monster advanced on him. Maybe he was very, very sorry. Maybe he was trying to reason with it. Maybe he was yelling in panic and stumbling over both of his feet.

What Grappa did admit to is that Jar Jar’s last words were wesa be friends, okey dey?

And then he got his head bitten off.

Goodbye, Jar Jar. We’ll miss you. We’ll miss your happy go lucky attitude and your pratfalls. We’ll miss your vernacular and your strange expressions. We’ll even miss your clumsiness.

Even though we can all rest assured that you won’t end up breaking fragile vases in our homes anymore.

And don’t worry. None of us bear any grudge towards you over the whole making it possible for Palpatine to take over the galaxy thing.

Though Tala Valorum probably still hates you for knocking her grandfather off of the Naboo Falls."

Curse Of The Girl Scout Cookies

I have an image blog today. Enjoy!