Saturday, August 30, 2008

This ain't balla



P. Diddy, the gentleman who is known for his white party, proprietary vodka (or "vokka" as he says it) and slave-labor built clothing line is now complaining that gas prices are just too high to fly his private jet. His intensifiers, such as "muthafucken" are especially poignant. Really makes you feel for the guy. Check out his video blog:


Friday, August 29, 2008

I'd Hit That


John McCain has chosen his running mate in Alaska governor Sarah Palin. She may be conservative, but she's a lot hotter than Joe Biden, or Hillary for that matter. Nice work McCain, at least you have good taste in women.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Confident or just retarded?

My adventures in unemployment have been well-documented and not without twists and turns that have generally led to further unemployment. I don't know what to believe, because I keep hearing that the economy sucks and that there are no jobs, then I hear about people getting work, and everyone else I know seems to lock into something. This isn't to say I haven't had any offers myself, but I haven't had an offer that foreseeably leads to what I want to do, or that will let me spread my wings and be creative. I have been holding out, applying to job after job (must be well over 100 in the last 6 months) with no results.

This leads me to ask a simple question: am I just confidently awaiting something that fits my skills, or am I just retarded? Am I doomed to years of paper filing, Excel inserting, coffee grinding, and dingus slurping until I reach the point at which I can actually make a decision? The answer to which my magic 8 ball is indicating:


Because when I asked if I will ever work again it said this:

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Super High Me



I just watched the movie "Super High Me," a spoof on "Super Size Me." When I heard the title for the first time I thought it would be about a Mexican grocery store (Super Jaime), but it wasn't. In the movie, a comedian and stoner, Doug Benson, goes 30 days without smoking any weed, then goes 30 days high the entire time. He takes SAT tests, health tests, memory tests, and goes to work, which is doing a standup comedy routine about smoking weed.

It was interesting that he really suffered no consequences from smoking weed. His memory didn't get much worse, neither did his health, and the only thing that got bad was his math skills. It made me think too; if I were a standup comic I could be high all the time also. People with normal jobs that have to do math and interact with people don't have the luxury of being able to make people laugh and get paid for it.

I think maybe I have been applying to the wrong jobs, because doing standup seems like the easiest job of all time, and since I am still unemployed for the time being, I may just get really high, go tell some jokes, and get paid.

Monday, August 18, 2008

57% of Americans 100% delusional, study finds


CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand that treatment continue.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.


"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

Pat Loder, a Milford, Michigan, woman whose two young children were killed in a 1991 car crash, said she clung to a belief that God would intervene when things looked hopeless.

"When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

While doctors should be prepared to deal with those beliefs, they also shouldn't "sugarcoat" the truth about a patient's condition, Loder said.

Being honest in a sensitive way helps family members make excruciating decisions about whether to let dying patients linger, or allow doctors to turn off life-prolonging equipment so that organs can be donated, Loder said.

Loder was driving when a speeding motorcycle slammed into the family's car. Both children were rushed unconscious to hospitals, and Loder says she believes doctors did everything they could. They were not able to revive her 5-year-old son; soon after her 8-year-old daughter was declared brain dead.

She said her beliefs about divine intervention have changed.

"I have become more of a realist," she said. "I know that none of us are immune from anything."

Loder was not involved in the survey, which appears in Monday's Archives of Surgery.

It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.

Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital, was the lead author.

He said trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists "are much more heavily engaged in the death process," he said.

Jacobs said he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue.

"You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that" and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent, he said.

Relatives need to know that "it's not that you don't want a miracle to happen, it's just that is not going to happen today with this patient," he said.

Families occasionally persist, and hospitals have gone to court seeking to stop medical treatment doctors believe is futile, but such cases are quite rare.

Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face.

Sise, a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, said miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near.

"That's just not a realistic situation," he said.

Sise recalled a teenager severely injured in a gang beating who died soon afterward at his hospital.

The mother "absolutely did not want to withdraw" medical equipment despite the severity of her child's brain injuries, which ensured she would never wake up, Sise said. "The mom was playing religious tapes in the room, and obviously was very focused on looking for a miracle."

Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner-tubing earlier this year came close.

The boat backed into her and its propeller "caught her in the side of the head. She had no pulse when they pulled her out of the water," McCormick said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: '"God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here."'

Like many hospitals, Duke uses a team approach to help relatives deal with dying trauma victims, enlisting social workers, grief counselors and chaplains to work with doctors and nurses.

If the family still says, "We just can't shut that machine off, then, you know what, we can't shut that machine off," McCormick said.

"Sometimes," she said, "you might have a family that's having a hard time and it might take another day, and that's OK."

Friday, August 1, 2008

The life of a prolific writer

Well, friends and blog readers, I have finally made it. Today I received via PayPal a large sum of money for an article of mine published on a website. The article was about 300 words on the benefits of flip-flops. Evidence of payment below.


If I find 8 cents I can buy something off the El Pollo Loco value menu.