It's !%#!$@ cold here

It’s pretty cold here and I do not think that I can survive these arctic conditions. What is up with this white stuff falling from the sky? I think I heard one of the locals here calling it “snow”. It’s kind of neat and interesting… but I fear that “interesting” won’t be enough to keep me alive here in this barren winter wasteland. My body is supple and tender and weak and has been ripened by the California sun.

Even now, I can envision how in the not-too-distant future walking between the parking lot and the hospital will become an epic yet daily struggle between life and death. Already the piercing winds cut through my dress pants like a hot knife through butter, except that the knife is cold rather than hot and the butter is actually a metaphor for my pants.

Anyways, semantics aside, I’ve gone and bought myself some long underwear or “thermals”, as I’ve been told is the preferred terminology. I actually only have thermal pants right now but they will have to do.

Kung-fu handshake

I need to practice gripping harder when I shake people's hands. My gentle nature makes it so that my natural instinct is to lightly grab someone's hands when they offer to shake. Unfortunately, because of society, a gentle shake is considered "wussy" or "submissive", so from now on I am going to squeeze with all my strength. In fact, I'm even considering clasping my other hand over the handshake as it is in progress so I may exert double the pressure. Now who's submissive??

An Open Letter to the City of San Francisco

Dear San Francisco,

In the past week, I have received two parking tickets totaling one hundred dollars. This is unacceptable. Unacceptable, I say! To demonstrate and fully emote my outrage, I will employ exclamation marks and question marks liberally as I dictate my highly logical reasons why your excessive dispensing of tickets is very unfair!!!

For one, I am a vital cog to the economy of San Francisco. As an individual who works full-time in your fine city, I eat at least one meal there a day. The five to ten dollars that I spend dining daily at your local restaurants helps grease the wheels of your businesses and establishments. Where would “Moffitt Cafeteria”, or “Milano’s Pizza” be without me?? They’d be in financial ruin, that’s where they’d be!! Who will eat those Parnassus Burgers and sausage pizzas now?? You are essentially lining your pockets with money that would have otherwise gone to the coffers of your local restaurant owners. I hope that you can live with yourselves!

Another thing is that your reckless ticketing damages the culture of your fine city which is highly ironic given that one of the very things that San Francisco prides itself on is its culture! Well guess what? My fellow employees include people from Iran, Korea, Taiwan, and other places. In other words, my lab is a veritable RAINBOW of culture. Or it was supposed to be, anyway. Instead, the gifts you have been leaving wedged under our car hoods have made is so that the only culture in our lab is one of despair and incalculable loss. Yes… despair! In fact, just the other day I had to stop working on the computer because my vision had become so blurred by my bitter tears. You might as well withdraw my $100 in one dollar bills and “make it rain” in your offices since I doubt there is anything else you can do to further deepen my emotional trauma!!

Finally, consider the intangibles that are indirectly contributed as a result of my presence in your city. Surely my effervescent, bubbly personality is a source of constant joy for your residents. Surely, surely they are inspired by the bravado that I display when I U-turn in the middle of the street to snatch up a vacant parking spot, my zest for life never being put on display more clearly at any other moment! I ask you, how can your city’s residents be anything but delighted and amused when they see me coming out everyday at the exact same time to move my car to the other side of the street to avoid being ticketed? Or when they see me pull up behind their cars and start vigorously signaling for their parking spots when I see them leaving their homes? They can’t. Ultimately, my clever and daring parking strategies simultaneously entertain and stir the human spirit! Should such a valuable and productive contributor to your city be fined so heavily for so small a grievance?? I should hope not!

In conclusion, please stop giving me parking tickets.

Sincerely,

Dennis

Hurrah

Every once in a while, the team that I am rooting for actually wins.

FAFSA confusion

I've been trying to fill out my FAFSA for medical school and it's been kind of humbling. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I don't understand what half of these terms mean or refer to. If I were a cynical guy, I'd think that the government and IRS are intentionally being confusing and esoteric so that they can swindle as much money from common folk such as myself without us realizing it.

C'mon gov, I'm just a lowly researcher... I need all the financial assistance that I can get! You might think that playing with lasers will get you money, fame, and love but it doesn't quite work that way.

The inevitable suffering of the new year

For the past couple of years, I have become extremely ill around the end of winter. Two years ago, I contracted a cough that lasted for over three months. At one point, the coughing got so bad that I pulled a chest muscle. Unfortunately, despite the tragic nature of my grievous injury, the fact that I strained my pectorals simply by coughing served to be a source of countless ridicule and mockery by my bosses and peers. For those that laugh and do not understand, I can only say this: you use your pecs for a TON of things, man. One doesn't realize how vital your pecs are to daily living until they gets pulled, so maybe you should pull your pecs and try living life normally before you laugh!


Then last year, I contracted a flu so virulent that I actually thought that I was possibly going to die. My throat that was so sore that each time I drank water, it felt as if someone was scraping my throat from the insides with a fruit peeler.


I'm sure there were other maladies in the previous years but I'm an old man whose memory has failed him.


I have chosen to take precautions this year. I now wash my hands around ninety-percent of the time before I eat. Unfortunately, I still have managed to come down with a sore throat and cough. I've also come to learn something interesting and somewhat lamentable about my body and that is that apparently there are no oil glands in my hands. It sounds weird, but it's true. My hands are now drier than the Sahara because of the soap that I have used to wash my hands and now my hands are more delicate than silk. The current tally of the new year thus far: one sore throat and one pair of old lady's hands and so it seems that I am doomed to suffer during the early months of every new year. Inevitably, inexorably. Regardless of what precautions I take, I cannot escape the rolling tides of futility.

Period, the underappreciated punctuation symbol.

I've realized that our little punctuation friend, the period, gets very little respect these days. Compared to its cousins, the question mark and the exclamation mark, the period seems boring in contrast. Its existence, banal, its sole purpose seemingly only to serve as the end to sentences in which we do not wish to convey any emotion. When people are angry or upset, it is the exclamation mark that becomes the sentence-ender of choice, for example, "I'm getting very angry!". Similarly, when there is confusion, the question mark is the only choice, i.e. "What's going on?". If things are really crazy and there is confusion AND anger, the period is always left out of the ensuing orgy of punctuation symbols, such as in "What were you thinking?!?!?".

After much rumination, I've come to the conclusion that the period is capable of conveying just as much feeling, if not more, than the exclamation mark and the question mark.

For example, compare and contrast the following AIM conversations:

superstud19: i think i'm gonna flake
girlie32: fine!

superstud19: i think i'm gonna flake
girlie32: fine?

superstud19: i think i'm gonna flake
girlie32: fine.

First of all, the second conversation doesn't even make any sense and this would only happen if girlie32 did not have a firm grasp of the english language. With that said, I argue that the third conversation carries significantly more emotional weight than any of the other sentences. The combination of a single world plus a period convey a cold sense of finality, a feeling of "this is it" that the first conversation lacks with the exclamation mark. "Fine!" seems chipper almost, infusing the conversation with unnecessary enthusiasm. In fact, if I were superstud19, I would think that girlie32 was making a funny joke. In fact, I would laugh! "Hehe! girlie32 is expressing her anger in an exaggerated and over-the-top way in the style of George Costanza!" On the other hand, "fine." seems dead, it's not just "fine", but "fine... PERIOD."-- the conversation has ended and there is nothing left to discuss. I would be infinitely more crushed and soul-bruised if the third conversation were to take place. In fact, if the third conversation were to take place, there would be grave consequences, so grave that the resultant conversation would be laced with many more unnecessary periods to illustrate the seriousness of the situation. Possibly along the lines of:

superstud19: i think i'm gonna flake
girlie32: fine.
superstud19: why are you so mad.
girlie32: i'm not.
superstud19: yes you are.
superstud19: now i'm mad too.
girlie32: fine be mad.
superstud19: }=( .

Okay, now wasn't that conversation just dripping with malice and emotional gravity?? I thought so.

So yeah, the next time someone makes you mad, you might just want to think about adding periods to the ends of your sentences and letting your little pal period do some work for you.