Doctors without borders

A good friend of mine who watches too much TV has been coming over lately with episodes of the "medical drama" House, and I have, after viewing about 8 episodes, rendered my verdict on it, 7 episodes too late.

This show is supposed to come off as hip and fresh - O'mah god, the opening theme is by Massive Attack,duuuuuuude - and unravel the fascinating inner workings of man and disease. Actually, it is the worst kind of fiction, namely, fiction that pretends to 'inform' it's audiences on real truth through the vehicle of dramatic story telling. Omar Epps throws around terms like 'MRSA", and "Epstein-Barr", and wiz-bang magically transports the audience to medical fact-land, where they take up residency, earning full bullshitting rights and privileges immediately upon entry.

I admittedly speak from a biased point of view against allopathic medicine, as I am now staunch believer in nutrition-based approaches to health, falling under the knife myself for no good reason no fewer than 14 times, and contracting crohns disease after being on antibiotics for 9 years. As much as some of my hatred for this program is based on the genuine awfulness of watching one's real-life experience with lumbar puncture, biopsy, and exploratory cameras up all ends dramatized for prime-time, the gut-wrenching clincher is in the message: drugs will cure, and doctors know all. This is pure B.S.

I do not mean any offense to medical practitioners. All doctors worth their weight in tuition debt should readily admit that diagnosis is tricky, and workable treatment elusive even under the best circumstances, whether they can admit it to their patients, who oft expect to be cured of self-made illness without the least expense of personal effort, or not, but you would never know that from House.

House teaches that no amount of restraint should be used regarding diagnostic or treatment methods. In one episode, a patient has exploratory surgery 4 times in under a week, because, hey, bringing a person to the very brink of DEATH just to find out what is wrong with them is hardly bad for their health at all. I don't know about you, but just can't start the day off right without a hardy cup of dark abyss of eternal nothing. One statistic that gives some idea of the trauma that surgery causes the human body is that surgical intervention during a pregnancy 25 weeks or under will result in the death of the fetus 90% of the time. That figure drops considerably as term progresses, but GODDAMN, that is just the affect of applying anathesia; that figure does not take into account the injury the required the surgery. Another factoid to kick Dr. House in the balls with that hopitalization, surgery, and PROPER application of medical drugs together is the 3rd largest cause of death in the United States today, surpassed only by heart and lung disease. That statistic also does not take into account malpractise and the abuse of medical drugs; that means doctors doing their honest best and patients taking their drugs exactly as they should be are producing a yearly body count that would make Stalin blush.

None of this phases House at all. For that team of wacky-fresh team of brutally honest medical geniuses who tell it like it is, the beauty is all in the mystery of diagnosis, after which inevitably follows cure, all this regardless of the reality that less than 10% of named medical conditions are curable by allopathic methods. While watching all the goodlooking people draw threads of connection between gout, cough, rash, and kidney failure, and come to their latent measles retrovirus conclusion is bloody fascinating, this process itself highlights one of the major flaws in the current medical system - no treatment can commence without a diagnosis. Not that this stops some doctors; my mothers boy friend was prescribed anti-epileptic medicine for non-specific insomnia for the sole reason that one of the side effects is drowsiness.

Diagnosis is paramount mainly because the only treatment options open to most doctors are drug related, and drugs operate on extremely narrow bandwidths, never strengthing the body's system, but instead selectively blocking the mechanisms that give rise to symptoms. Seratonin re-uptake inhibitors, SSRI, for example, block the action of the enzyme Monoamine oxidase, which breaks down seratonin, assuming that the overactivity of this enzyme is causing a seratonin deficiency: this assumption has never been proven. And when you assume, you make an ass of u and me. If seratonin is lacking for any other reason, SSRI do fuck all but keep a bunch of raggedy ass old junk seratonin hanging out in your brain and suppressing the production of the sweet new stuff. Come one, which tastes better, the pie your momma just pulled out the oven, or the one the whino in the alley scored during an afternoon of bin'in? Everyone knows fresh is better.

And for anyone who wonders who's ass I've pulled from figures from, I hereby refer you The China Study by Colin Campbell,and Pubmed, the National Institute of Health's online journal archive.

Watching a doctor call his patients lily livered idiots, undress his attractive junior partner with a state-of-the-art robosurgeon, and have a mans testicle explode in his face is great drama, but, please, leave open the window and let that whiff of truth out before it stinks up the whole place.

Enter the mind reader, again

Gotta remember, oh yeah, I was on an island with pirates and they had these dogs with no fur, then something about the ship being a helicopter, and then I was naked in the bathtub and started having a seizure, was that a man or fish?

Automatic doorlocks at the Heartbreak Hotel

Several months ago, following a period of intense heartbreak, I decided to run a personal ad on a rather ubiqitious personals site to see if I could, as the old adage goes, "get over an old man by getting under a new one". It was a tempting theory, and living in a tiny town seperated by water on all four sides, it seemed far more likely that I would meet someone 'filling' online over waiting for the one to come riding a white steed across the Overwaitea parking lot with roses in one hand and 200$ worth of Canadian Tire money in the other. It was to my greatest surprise and dearest dismay that this proved not to be the case.

Not only does my personal ad elicit responses from potential lovers who state that their ideal first date would involve running over a deer on the highway and taking it home for dinner," after which rompous time would ensue", but there are locals I KNOW and have SPOKEN to on more than one occasion who respond to my personal ad as if we have never met before. What are they thinking? That I would say, "Who was that masked man?...Only with..out the mask...oh. The only other potential explanation is that my photos are completely inaccurate representations of what I look like in real life, despite being unmolested by photoshop. If this is true, I am logically forced to conclude that I look much worse in person than on picture, which runs into a downward spiral of regret and diminishing self esteem, concluding with me sitting on my fat, pimple-ridden ass in the basement eating soggy gluten-free sponge cake and listening to Sarah McClaughlan; I just don't want to go there.

In any case, I have not only abandoned the web an appropriate place to seach for ones life partner (though Shaadi.com still has my number), I have also abandoned the search; the position has been filled. As it turns out, I had no trouble finding people even here to share the cold nights with, and I am rather embarrassed to admit that I have recently had to break out the other hand when tallying up the notches in me britches; however, during this experimental adventure into 'ho-dome on Operation "F*ck the Hurt Away", it has become mightly apparent that this sort of behaivour is alienating to the soul, and makes it in fact more difficult to piece Humpty Dumpty back together again (whoever said he was an egg?).

When love that was is gone, it is far easier to attempt to deny it's existence in the first place, as is a common habit of mine, because that denial protects the believe in the unwavering and eternal nature of that one feeling that is constant even while we are not. I would prefer to believe that love is a relative constant, but that it is easily subsumed by the negative and uncompromising emotions of the ego, and that desire to obtain an impossible happiness that is ours and ours *alone*. That doesn't change the bleak reality that when we "lose" the love we had for someone, we face the horrifying prospect of never sharing anything meaningful with that person again; never hearing them sing or seeing them naked or reading their minds, and it is this fear that breaks us. It cuts us to the quick.

That being said, adaptablility is mankinds greatest assest, and with the right stiching, and a liberal supply of multivitamins, the heart and soul can and do mend, despite our best efforts to the contrary. And as much as it also sucks to admit this, it doesn't really matter who it is: love is always our gift and even though we may give it away, we are apt to retain the greater part for ourselves as a starter ro grow more to be given away.

You know, like sourdough.
And I can bake some sweet-ass bread

Hey bitch! How do you spell "misogynist"?

A couple of nights ago, some friends and I had the opportunity to enjoy a free viewing of the very stats orientated documentary titled "Tough Guise: violence, media, and crisis of masculinity" at the local community centre. Given that the majority of the male population of PR is employed in the traditionally manly arts,ie. forestry, auto repair, Metallica cover-band, it was a highly appropriate choice. And then there was "Beowulf", in all it's animated "we hear you have the finest mead and wenches in the land, let us partake of them, and then we'll kill your monster" glory. If I had not seem these films virtually back-to-back, I think much of the point might have been lost, but with it still fresh as morning baked bread in my mind, the point came screaming through crystal clear: men are fucked.

I don't mean that the way that it sounds, because men can't be fucked without women being all assbackwards and upsidedown too: the "fucked" in this case is not meant to lay blame, but simply to sum up the state of things, and fucked they are.

A couple of excellent points the film makes are that a) that the values most men associate with masculity, ie; strength, stamina, bravery, physicality, are largely portrayed through a lens of violence, not character, and are in many ways more damaging to men than to women. 75% of the victims of male homicide are men, 90% of the victims of male physical assault are men. And b) the emotional side of that, the anger, calm, distant, detached ideal also prevents many men from fully enjoying the warmth and support that truly loving, trusting, nurturing relationships might provide them. No wonder they turn to the drink!

Of course, the best part about this complex is the misogyny. It never fails to amase me how many of my male friends can recognise the most subtle insinuations of racism, agism, and almost every other -ism, but draw a complete blank on sexism. When I think of this, I am drawn back to late night game of Shadowrun I shared with a mixed table in my first year of university, where the topic of conversation somehow turned to the sexual habits of male gynacologists. One guy at the table remarked to the effect of, "How do you go home and get it on with your wife after you spent all day looking at strangers hoos hoos?" To which, a female member replied, "Well, you're wife's not a cunt, yeah". The silence that followed would have chilled the blood of Odin.

Women and their "emotions" are the enemy. Beowulf taught me that. In the present, and past, state of Masculinity, women have been portrayed as little more than obstacles on the path to Man's true, righteous self. They are liars and manipulators, immoral and selfish. These objects are either enjoyed and quickly cast away, or "fallen prey" to, in which case the man tends to suffer great humilation and ends his life full of abject self hatred.

The biggest problem with all of this is that, self-evident as it is, just because we can identify the wicked-sick-and-f*d-up gender politics that shape our worlds, and by extention ourselves, we can't easily be personally freed from them. Women are equally taken up by the expectations of the patented "strong dumb-ass" brand of masculinity, and therefore must bear some of the responsibilty. When the narrator and director of 'Tough Guise" talks about the need for men to open up to their own feeling and emotional realities, a small part of me thought a) he must be gay, and b) I don't want men crying all over me, shit. These are not my actual feelings, they are basically media/experiencial implants, but that doesn't negate the potentially damaging influence they have.

With misogyny and masculinity going so hand and hand, it must also be difficult for many men to know if they are misogynists or have such tendencies or not. The word itself conjures up notion of such virulent hate that few would feel it applied. I know some who seem to think the mere presence of women in their lives (mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, oh, and there's a Lesbo in there somewhere too, I just know it) precludes the possibility of their having misogynistic feelings towards women in general. Does having a woman for a mother preclude being sexually attracted to women in general? Come on dudes, get with the program.

I think there could be a self examination that might put things in perspective for those who dare to try it. Are you ready, here goes the

ARE YOU KINDA MAYBE A MISOGYNIST QUIZ

1. When you talk about woman in the general, are your comments

a) Mostly derogatory, with or without context
b) Sometimes derogatory, but only when I thinks it's really funny
c) Rarely derogatory, I talk about women mostly as individuals

2. Do you think women are "playing games" with you?

a) All the time
b) Sometimes
c) Never, no more than I do

3. Can you socialize comfortably in the company of mostly women?

a) Not really, I need booze to take the edge off
b) For a while, but not indefinetly
c) No problem, as long as they aren't a steaming pile of A*holes

4. Do you like going down on women

a) Hell no
b) As long as it's clean
c) I have my diving gear at the ready

5. How important is it to you that you get your partner off good and proper?

a) Not at all, just so much as I get off.
b) I won't enjoy it as much if she doesn't
c) It's of paramount importance that we scale the heights of pleasure moutain together.

6. Would you share your vulnerable emotional moments with a woman more often than a man?

a) Only if it was tears, cause my man friends would beat the shit out of me
b) Equally between both
c) Why not, she's more likely to make me drink some soothing camomile tea afterwards

7. Will you still respect her in the morning?

a) No, she's a dirty whore, sweet, dirty, dirty whore.
b) We know each other, right?
c) Well, she knows what she's wants, and if it's my hot man meat, I'm cool with that.

If you answered mostly A, you need to look over your baggage, search for items that some unscrupulous dealer planted in it before it was checked and removed the offending items before you end up doing life in a Thai prison. Ask yourself why you are excluding women from your emotional life and how that might be hurting you.

Now that you have used these 7 muliple choice questions to radically improve your life, go enjoy a plate of homous and warm pita bread, cause you deserve it!

Join the evil empire now and get one month free

There is a new phrase lately popularized that summarizes the state of being by which a person, or persons, expend vast amounts of energy getting fit without doing any of the activities traditionally viewed as exercise, ie. swimming, farming, running from rapists, bar fighting, and training ones blade on wild tundra beasts. Hence forth, indoor euro-weenie techno music aerobicoolies are to be called "gym potatoes". Until 2 weeks ago, I was not among their rank. I have exercised vigilantly in the privacy of my own home for 5 years now, and am proud to call my ass my own, but recently due to the urgings of my roommate and the irresitable home lull of the season 6 DVD box set of Angel, I was connived into joining the only gym within walking distance of our house: Curves International.

They first got us with the promise of a free trial week: bring a friend! Apparently, the week according to Curves lasts only 3 days, and closes early enough on Saturday to allow the Seventh Day Adventists ample time to enjoy the tomato soup and cucumber sandwich portion of their worship. We arrived a few weeks after receiving the invitation at the Newcomers social, feeling pretty special about it, and were promptly weighted, measured, and asked to set the some "goals". Like, SCORE!
It was nice in a way, as a woman amongst women, not to have to worry about too long stares at the camel toe of my too tight spandex exercise pants, nor about any potential feelings of competition from fellow workouters, since they were all old and overweight, and therefore, who could possibly care. There are also no televisions, only Curves approved hydraulic workout machines, and techno remix Bryan Adams and Billy Idol hits to set the beat for some low intensity fat flogging. Their campaigning is relentless: there is not a moment that goes by that there is not some promotion that must be taken advantage of, or some fee that will be waved for a limited time only. We got in on the half price off the membership and rest of the year free deal, which ends...oh, right around now.

I deliberately investigated as little about them as possible before making the decision to join, but having been at it for a couple weeks, I finally felt compelled to find out what my hard earned cash was buying besides firmer thighs. And it is a horrible travesty.

The founder of the company is a Texan named Gary Heavin, who found Jesus in rich white mans prison, where he was serving time for failing to pay child support. He has since dedicated his life to taking money from overweight middle aged women and using it to pay militant anti-abortionists to harass pro-choice doctors and proponents. The thought that my fitness fund is going to print off more "Support retroactive abortion for unwanted Liberals" bumperstickers makes my blood run cold.
Although the Dorothy Spornak look-a-like who runs this particular facility assured us that the franchise is 100% independent and that Gary won't get a red cent of me moolah, the fact that she gasps in horror when towels are placed only half in the laundry hamper makes me wonder at her ability to grasp the in's and out's of the businesses financial dealings.

Once the term is up, I think it'll be back to wrestling fish and fucking in the bushes, the way exercise is supposed to be.