one of the saddest songs of the 90s

in my book is that Jewel song You Were Meant for Me:


Put on my pj's and hop into bed
I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead
I try and tell myself it'll be all right
I just shouldn't think anymore tonight

Because dreams last so long
Even after you're gone
You were meant for me
And I was meant for you...


The alternate name for the song is Phyllis Barnabee Finally Gets a Bra, which was the title of the promo single it was originally released on back in 1995. Don't ask me the significance of that title.

wryness wasted at work

Since I work mostly with ESL Filipinos, word play is largely lost on my co-workers, and the whities that I work with are the usual hyper-literal types that the med tech profession seems to be rife with. But there are a few who appreciate a fucked up view of the world.

I especially hate it when people ask a question from across the room. For example, when someone yells across the lab "CCU wants to know if the blood is ready on Williams,"
I'll yell back something like "What? A succubus wants to gnaw on my booty in a wigwam?"
And of course I'm ignored, but I feel better about the tedium.

those are flat noodles disguised as scalloped potatoes

Sometimes when I'm really hungry and tired I like to fantasize about going to a restaurant and just ordering everything everything that strikes my fancy. Way more than I can eat, with no concern about waste. But I never do; instead I spend inordinate amounts of time deciding what to order, and feeling like it's never enough, and eating every last bit, even if I didn't particularly like it.

My best meal ever, hands down: Back when I was doing insane on-call back in T or C, occasionally, after a gruelling 12 hour shift followed by even more gruelling call-back, I would guiltily go to the McDonald's drive through and order the super-sized chicken mcNuggets meal with large coke. Then take it back to my barely-habitable rehab project of a house, pour all the grease-glistening Meg Nuggets and crispety fries on a big plate and eat it all in one unbroken motion of machine-like orgiastic self-indulgence. Then I would hate myself for hours, but still, it was so satisfying.

I enjoy hanging out at the Haight Street McDonalds munching on broccoli or radishes or some other roughage that I've brought from home and surfing the web. I always buy a coke, so it's not like I'm picnicing there, the workers don't seem to mind. There's something about the hard molded plastic benches in the booths, the artificial plants moderating the light, and the homeless punk kids coming in to buy coffee and use the bathroom that I find soothing. This Mickey D's is also special because it has no drive-thru.

My Struggle with the Equestronauts

I decided to take the "Lower Rhyolite Trail" at Chiricahua National Monument (Arizona) to find some good rocks to climb, or if I couldn't, just tire myself out trying to do the 7 mile loop as fast as I could. Unfortunately, a party on horseback had gotten to the trailhead before me. There were about six of them, all apparently middle-aged, men and women; I figured they were from a dude ranch or something. The trail is pretty narrow and cut into the side of the canyon, so there wasn't any good way to pass them. I was following a few feet behind the last horse, who was being ridden by an older gent whom I guess was one of the leaders. He became aware of my following him, and warned me "don't follow too close, I'd hate to see him kick back and hit you" referring of course to the horse he's on. I told him "don't worry 'bout me, I'm fine" and was just biding my time until a wider spot in the trail came up so I could pass these riders. At that point the trail was sorta wider, so I shifted into high gear and bypassed these annoying equestrians (I mean, like one of the women is wearing one of those felt-covered horsey hats you see people wearing on fox hunts!), going up the side of the escarpment that bounded one side of the trail. This of course sent the party into a tizzy, the rear guide cries "everybody stop!" like I'm going to cause a stampede or something. As I pass the lead horse, I reach out and rub him on the cheek, and say in a soothing manner "hey there buddy..." Once I get in front of them, the guide at the head of the party says "you were really taking a risk there, miss!" I shrugged and said, "not really, I've been around horses a lot," which is not entirely true, but I'm certainly not afraid of them, and have done some risky things around them, like the time I jumped on one and tried to ride it bareback, so I kind of have an idea of what's dangerous and what's not. Plus I found these folks just so annoying. The guide shoots back "then why aren't you riding one?" I'm habitually non-confrontational and deferential, but this time I just couldn't help myself. "Because I don't like abusing animals," I said. The guide of course couldn't let that one go and started in on how horses were bred to be ridden and don't mind a rider, et cetera, et cetera, and I just wanted to say "gee, I bet you couldn't do the entire loop on foot without having a heart attack, you tub of lard!" but instead I put my iPod earbuds back in my ears and put distance between us.

About twenty minutes later I found a nice tower of rock by the side of the trail that I couldn't reist, so I slipped on my climbing shoes and did some dangerous free climbing on what turned out to be incredibly crappy rock. The volcanic tuff at Chiricahua is really flakey and even porous. No wonder the sign at the ranger station said that climbing and bouldering is not allowed!

So anyway, I'm about 50 feet almost directly above the trail, and I hear voices and the clomping of hooves. They've caught up with me, and pass by directly below me, oblivious of my presence. I can even make out their inane conversation: "...he's not making manure, he's fertilizing, haw haw!" refering, I suppose, to the horses. Then one of the women stops and points directly up to where I'm hiding in the rocks. "Wow, look at that rock formation! Isn't it lovely?" but she doesn't even see me! I quickly hide myself and sit tight until they pass by. I climbed down from the tower and put my hiking shoes (which are actually tennis shoes) back on. What to do? I was in no mood to have to come up behind these folks again and have to pass them, although I'm sure it would puzzle the heck out of them how I had gotten behind them AGAIN. So I just turned around and hiked back to the trailhead to try another trail.

Perhaps Pearl Jam's most puzzling lyric

"everything has chains, absolutely nothing's changed
take my hand, not my picture, spilled my teacher, spilled my tincture..."

From the really good song "Corduroy," with perhaps the most distinctive intro of any song from the 90's. And the only song I can think of that includes the word "tincture."

I'm guessing iodine.

I've always appreciated that the label of the Morton's salt (or any other brand) states that it contains
iodide, not iodine, which is chemically accurate, as iodine in its elemental state exists nowhere in nature. In the US, iodide must be added to salt by law, but not so in Canada. Cannucks like goiters or what?

In some Native American/First Nations tribes, goiters were considered attractive.

A Couple of Sundays ago...

I worked a shift over at the Berkeley Free Clinic. I had only one client, but he was amazing. a 42 year old heroin junkie, spitting image of George Clooney (only better, if you cut his dirt-dreadlocked hair from living on the streets). He was pos for hep B and C, wasn't sure if he wanted treatment, very fatalistic. He was high when I talked to him, but still-- this guy was funny, erudite, and eloquent. It started when he used the phrase "wrack and ruin," and I made an off-hand reference to Ragnarok. He then proceeded to expound for 15 minutes on the difference between Ragnarok and Gotterdammerung, Norse theology, the Viking expansion, the ethnohistory of Western Europe. For the next hour as I tried to counsel him, it was the same way, one scintillating digression, one wry observation, one self-deprecating one liner after another. He was freakin' amazing. And for a junkie he had the best damn veins I had ever seen-- I didn't even use a tourniquet when I drew his blood! All the while he was also doing an intricate cat doodle in magic marker on a little pad of paper he held. He left reciting an elaborate and hilarious Star Wars parody dialog he had concocted. Amazing.

Youth of America

We get emailed sex questions at San Francisco Sex Information as well as phone calls. I usually answer a couple on my shift each Friday.

Here's a sample from last week:

Hi,

I'm a young female. I only really discovered masturbation when I was 16. However, I don't do it that often. I'm concerned about the kinds of things that turn me on and make me orgasm when I do. This has been bothering me for a long time and I hope you can shed some light on this for me.
First of all, I can't just watch pornography of two people going at it and just enjoy the fact that they're going at it. I have to add some perverted circumstance to it in my head. Most of these little scenarios have to do with manipulation or non-consensual elements. I like to imagine that one of the people participating, usually female, is being used against her will and that the person using her regards her as nothing more than a "screwtoy" or a "dumb whore." I hate these thoughts. I hate that this is what turns me on and it's like I'm a completely different person once I'm done. To know me and talk to me you would think that there were definite shades of feminism in my personality. When not turned on, the thoughts of someone sexually controlling another person are horrible to me. I completely hate men with misogynistic and shallow sexual ideas.
Do other women like this sort of thing too? Does getting off on these hateful things make me a bad person? Why would I hate this kind of thing normally, but find it exciting when I am feeling turned on?
Even if this isn't necessarily a horrible thing, it's not sexually healthy. My ideas of stimulating sex are obviously flawed. How can I turn myself away from sexual fantasies were people are being tortured and mistreated?
Please give me some comforting words, I'm feeling horrible about myself.


my reply:

Hi, thanks for the email!

So you have a little kink in your sexuality that's un-politically correct-- it's not the end of the world! At least you're not male, which would make your turn-on not only fairly common, but a really bad stereotype. Although we can't say just how common it is for women to have fantasies of this type-- let's call them "degrading sex" fantasies-- we've certainly heard from other women who have similar feelings.

Remember, feelings are not "good" or "bad," they just are. There's scant little one can do to influence what turns one on. The programming of our libidos occurs mostly when we're young and mostly on an unconscious level. So it's not your fault, if "you" is the rational, awake, self-aware, analytical part of your consciousness. Besides, its your imagination, the one place where society's mores and standards have no business mucking things up. We would be telling you this even if you had written that you were a male who had fantasies about sex with children; as long as it's just in your head, it's nobody else's business.

But if you were a male with a pedophile kink, we would also pity you, because there is no legal, let alone socially acceptable, means for bringing those feelings out of your head. Because in that scenario, consent is not possible, no way, no how.

For a woman who gets turned on by images of forced sex, there are lots of outlets for your fantasy, if that's where you want to go with it. As you mentioned watching porn, we're sure you realize how common the themes of sexual degradation, bondage, and even rape are in some of it. Also, if you wanted to act out your fantasies with like-minded consenting adults, and you live in a large city, I'm sure there is a BDSM (bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism) community nearby that you could get involved in. But in our experience, most women who have fantasies about forced sex (which can run the gamut from being the victim, the victimizer, or an observer) are content to keep it at the fantasy level.

Remember, every sadist needs a masochist, and vice-versa. But even in the BDSM world it's all about consent; all the participants are willing participants. There is something strangely seductive about playing with power inequities in a sexual context. If we were forced to generalize about such things, we would say that most people in the right situation and the right state of mind can get a little turned on by being totally helpless or having total domination or maybe even both. Do you remember ever wrestling with someone, a friend or a lover, just playing of course, and being totally pinned down? Wasn't it a little exciting knowing you couldn't escape? Or how about being the one on top? A different feeling, but also tinged with pleasure. You may be the most placid, agreeable, fair-minded person to walk the earth, but you're still human, and your sexuality can have twists and turns that fly in the face of your politically indoctrinated consciousness. Don't think too much about it or it will drive you nuts. Personal perversions are best regarded like birthmarks or being double-jointed: cherished little artifacts of your uniqueness, not things to smother with guilt and shame.

Quality Assurances

Anyway, one of the phlebotomists at Davies screwed up collecting a specimen on a patient about a month ago; the patient had to be called back, and then the phlebotomist (a different one, I think) screwed up a second time. The patient was angry and sent a scathing letter of complaint to the director. The director forwarded the letter to the phlebotomy/specimen handling supe demanding some kind of explanation. The supe, who is something of a nudnick, made all the phlebotomists/specimen handlers write individual responses to the letter (which he gave copies of to all), even if they had nothing to do with it. My bud Lilian, a specimen handler, asked me to write her response for her. Here's what I wrote:


Okay, so the main problem here was that those handling the patient and the sample failed to ask questions. Questions such as “what kind of tube should I draw?" "How much blood?" "Did I draw enough for all of the tests ordered?” Even if there were no other specimen handlers to whom one could ask these questions, there is always a tech somewhere, or one could call Pacific Campus and ask them, or even call Quest. There is always someone to ask!!! Was it just laziness? Shame over not having all the answers? Just wanting to get the patient the hell out of there so one can take a break? Lame, lame, lame!! This isn’t rocket science, just take your time, focus, and double check everything before you let the patient go. Hard stick and iffy amount? Don’t guess, don’t assume, draw the amount the book or whatever says, and if you don’t know how much that is, find out!! The patient would rather see you going to great lengths to find out the answer in order to do it correctly than for you to seem like you have all the answers only to find out later that you had your head up your ass!!

Thank you for the opportunity to vent!

Your faithful chimp,

Lilian