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I flipped a coin, and between blogging about health, cats or the Deeper Meaning of Life, the latter won.

Then I realized I had very little to say about the Deeper Meaning of Life tonight.

…

Health is good.

I’m told it’s a good sign that I have stopped spitting blood.

Damn, I meant to mention: if you are planing on reading, you may want to stop eating now. If you are planning on eating, you may want to stop reading now…

Of course, I’d appreciate this news even more, had it not been replaced by recurrent bouts of blood sneezing. It would appear that, despite near-seasonal-record temperatures registered all over Europe for the past two weeks, I have managed to catch, of all things, a cold.

I think I know exactly when I caught it. Right after my surgery. Not only were the conditions memorable, but they also featured some very strange insights in the utterly fucked-up way my poor excuse for a brain seems to work:

Dunno if that was due to the longer-than-expected duration of the surgery, but apparently, my post-op wake-up was a bit more shaky than should have been…

The usual procedure goes something like this:
1) open eyes 2) say “hello world” and give my bravest sickly-young-boy smile with a thumb up worthy of the most ridiculous afternoon soaps 3) feel intense pain in every parts of my body, barely mitigated by the horrible aftertaste of anesthetic in the back of my throat 4) give the International Sign Language version of “please more painkiller in my I.V. drip” 5) go back to sleep…

Instead, it went something like:
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In the spirit of sharing the pain and suffering, I figured I’d make an entry dedicated to the kind of stuff I currently spend my days doing. Well: apart from giving you gruesome details of my current state of health or finding new, inventive, ways to scratch my ass.

Yes, brace yourself, for today is about Mathematics. Physics may come in another post later this week.

Probabilities

Since, I’m confident none of you, the nerdiest included, really want to hear about quadratic integration and advanced set theory (basing this guess on the fact that I would myself be much happier not knowing anything of their existence), I’ll talk about the only mathematical field remotely interesting to the common: Probabilities.

Unfortunately, probabilities are a very minor part of my curriculum, in what is probably my personal gods’ way of telling me: “see that finger? well that’s all you get, so stick it wherever you see fit and don’t hope for anything better”.

Mathematics, past early college level are fairly useless. The farther away, the more completely, utterly, devoid of potential real-life applications they get. And I don’t mean merely for those who later go on working full-time as stunt doubles in the San Fernando valley: even advanced engineering hardly ever requires mathematical tools that go beyond a first or second year university program, the rest is all for the mere glory of it. That leaves you with research and teaching as the two only career somewhat approaching full use of the curriculum.

Since no institution sane in their mind would ever let me anywhere close to a research lab (least of all: pay me to do so), while the degree of contempt I hold for my fellow humans happens to peak around the age group that frequents universities, it is safe to assume that I won’t ever be needing most of the stuff I am currently expected to master.

Lost in this ocean of tediousness, the barren islands of semi-useful fun that are Probabilities and Game Theory are the most paradisiac coasts you’ll ever lay an eye on. They let you actually glimpse into real uses for some of the wildly abstract mathematical constructs you’ve been using for years… That’s pretty unheard of for a student of Mathematics…

Even if the gist of it is: you would have to be a complete moron to ever lay a chip in a Vegas casino and, in the long run, we are all dead. If you squint really hard, you could nearly imagine that hypothetical situation where an idealized version of yourself, self-assured and composed, would step forward amidst the panic-stricken crowd of your fellow plane-crash passengers, and proclaim loudly: “We may as well save ourself the jump in these shark-infested waters: our chances of survival regardless are below 1% with a 97.48% probability factor. I would know: I am a mathematician.”

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5 Scars, off the top of my head:

  • age – body part – shape – tool used – location: comment
  • Before 1 – upper-lip – all over – scalpel – some hospital: Don’t remember much of that one.
  • 8 – lower belly – straight line, a good two inches long – scalpel – some other hospital: Dangerously closer to vital reproductive organs.
  • 12 – left shoulder – kinda star-shaped, rather tiny – surfboard+wave+basaltic ocean ground – bottom of the Indian ocean: The wave didn’t look that big at the time. Volcanic stone will really rip your skin apart.
  • 17 – left shoulder – neat incision, half-an-inch – girlfriend with a knife – Paris: Not nearly as bad as it sounds.
  • 22 – knuckle on medium finger of right hand – crescent-shaped – blunt object held by Bad Guy – Tokyo: more blood than damage. Didn’t end up all that well for Bad Guy.


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by ·Comments Off on The Adventures of Dr Dave in the Land of Tiny Apetizers

[Cue upbeat music, engaging footage of miscellaneous means of locomotion blended over map of Europe, traveling red dot drawing a sinuous line toward the southern edge of the continent…]

Barely surviving death at the hands of an army of vicious Nazi doctors and their merciless, yet incredibly well-endowed, Bavarian assistant nurses, the fearless dr Dave has been making way to the now familiar refuge of the southern territories, hoping for a quiet convalescence, auspicious to the urgent completion of his secret scientific research on immortality through the use of quantum superfluid vortices and hourly onanistic practice.

The town is peaceful and the sky is blue. For now! [cue ominous strings]

Two miles away: the sea and endless sandy coastline on both sides. Every single step of the way there: nubile locals, in various states of undress, their tan bodies for sole modesty, the casual languor of their demeanour, their ambiguous latin pilosity… all an overt invite to endless combination of amoral leg intertwining.

But the brave doctor mustn’t falter: the fate of the free world (and his already suboptimal academic curriculum) are in his convulsively shaking hands.

Fortuitously perhaps, the amount of gauze and surgical thread currently holding his body together would provide enough prop supply for the next twelve sequels to Bubba-ho-tep vs. Frankenstein: while the tender heart of a complete sleazeball beats softly on the inside, his figure is now that of a deformed freak. He has become a monster to the outside world! [cue flashback footage of the Creature, poignant in his desperate rage, trashing the laboratory of the mad scientist that made him so]

Beside, the strict interdiction to expose any part of himself from the waist up, to the nefarious action of the sun, makes casual beach courtship extremely awkward: the Doctor knows how incredibly ridiculous he looks in full upper-body suit and aerodynamic swimwear.

The Doctor vows to summon the best of his incredible scientific abilities to find a remedy to the conspicuously clinical paleness of his hairy legs. Then realizes it’s kinda late already and he has yet another 300 pages of fluid mechanics to read before supper.

[cue beach sunset slowly fading into the horizon. fade to black]

[…]

My medications run out tomorrow.

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Just a quick word to thank all my friends, fans, ennemies and indifferent readers, for their warm support and inform everybody that I did survive.
Everything went mostly as expected. I’m covered head to toe in gauze and been told everything underneath works as well, if not better, than before. Yes, everything: You haven’t enjoyed life to the fullest until you experience the ability to throw peanuts in your mouth without using your hands.

Nevertheless, there are still a couple old entries pre-logged for the next few days, and I plan on letting them be, the way they would have, had I been strong enough to stay away from the net one more week (but I felt like I had to post a little update anyway). While you enjoy all the canned wisdom I was able to pack in one go at the end of last week, I’ll be enjoying a peaceful recovery, speeding away on my magic morphine-propelled cotton cloud.

I’ll be back for real, soon.

Hug’n’kisses everybody…

by ·Comments Off on Auto-Post: My Grandma

Picture gran_club04.jpg This is an automated post logged on 05/25/05.

To put at ease conflicting rumours that the author of these lines might be either the fruit of extra-terrestrial genetic engineering, or spawned straight from the mouth of Hell…

Here is a shot of my grandma…

She was born in Cairo and grew up in colonial Egypt.

Her dad spoke 12 languages, worked for MI-6 and received a lethal gunshot wound while on mission in Vatican at the end of WWI (I couldn’t make that stuff up if I tried).

During the blitz in London, she drove an ambulance under the bombs, while her husband (my granddad) was hard at work figuring a way to Calais that did not involve swimming all the way across.

Nowadays, she does Tai Chi five times a week, goes to her club from time to time, and half-heartedly grumbles about the youth of today, the way only real grandmas can.

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This is an automated post logged on the 05/25/05.
No telling where I’ll be when you are reading these lines. Chances are I’ll be alive and well, provided my surgeon has finally kicked off the bottle. Bah, don’t sweat over my little self: most likely I’m laying in bed, trying to con my way into an extra dose of morphine in my IV drip…

Did you know that, when undergoing surgery, most of the risk usually stem not from the surgery itself, but from anesthesia.

Dosing the poison that will knock you out while a surgeon opens your inside, requires rather intricate calculations involving dozens of variables, weight, medical past, heroin habit, alcohol consumption etc. etc. Neglect one of them and you get acquainted with the laws of physiological chemistry the hard way. Being an anesthesiologist sure must be a fun job.

And if you think that dosing in excess is the worst that can happen to you: there’s a matter open to debate here.

Put it this way: would you rather not wake up, or wake up with a scalpel halfway up your abdomen. I know where I stand there.

Anyway, in such matters, being a pathologically thin boy is never a good idea. To all the overweight people with a complex out there, you can at least find solace in this. Putting some weight on is much harder than you’d be led to think. It can be a pretty daunting task, actually. Of course, there are pills on the market, but personally, I am deeply prejudiced against any pill that does not make me hug strangers or wiggle rhythmically to trippy house music.

The upside of this risk, is that once a surgeon cuts you open, he might as well do some extra work. According to my esteemed physician, provided you don’t crowd a particular area at once, it’s a surgical free for all. Surprised as I was, I did not skip this rare occasion, of course: I told him to go for it. It’s always been my dream to have a prehensile penis.

Otherwise, as you’ll have noticed, I won’t be behind a keyboard for quite a while: hospitals seem to be still lacking on the Wifi, and so will likely be the mediterranean beaches where I’m hoping to enjoy a healthy recovery. I’ll miss you all, I’m sure you’ll miss me. But just in case, I’ve left you a few automated gifts, that should come up on this blog at regular intervals…

See ya….

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Against all odd, I’m done packing and still have 30 minutes to go catch the Narita express.

I could just go now and insure that I am actually early to catch a plane once in my life, but why bother.

Actually, when taking a flight out of peak-season, it’s always a better strategy to show up fashionably late for check-in. This may sound like dubious advice, coming from the guy who missed a few planes in recent years, but on the other hand, I have also boarded hundreds of flights without hassles. Check-in employees are way less stressed once the rush is over, it’s easy to make small talk and get whatever you want, whether it’s a potential upgrade, or just a seat on an empty row (there’s always one or two fully empty rows on off-peak flights, and getting them at the end of check-in means you stand good chance they’ll remain so).

So instead, I’m running a last-minute assessment of current situation, before moving on for the month.

  • Neighbourhood cats seem a bit worried to lose both their main source for food distribution and access to the dry shelter of my room, which I understand can suck, especially when monsoon season is geared to start in a week or two. They have been following the packing process closely and, as I speak, there’s a fair chance I might be about to smuggle unwittingly some of Tokyo’s finest stray cat on the European continent. I guess it’ll be the surprise on arrival.
  • Herb garden is going through another rough phase: while the cat problem has been successfully dealt with, my once flamboyant arugula is suddenly showing signs of decay. Simultaneously, I couldn’t help but notice that caterpillars in the vicinity seemed particularly healthy and well fed. If the situation hasn’t somehow stabilized by the time of my return, I am afraid we will have to consider chemical warfare. Napalm or agent orange are the two top options at the moment.
  • Underwears are packed. I had a strange dream last night that essentially involved forgetting to pack my undies. My subconscious really has fucked-up priorities. The socks supply dearly needs replenishing (single socks have been disappearing at an alarming rate lately: I suspect the cats. Wouldn’t put it past these thieving bastards). Good thing, you don’t have to remove your freaking shoes to eat in a restaurant where I’m heading.
  • Passports are packed in separate places, and color-coded, which will avoid repeating embarrassing mistakes and having to spend unnecessary time with an immigration officer convinced he has caught Al Qaida’s number 4.

Ok, see you on the other side!

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When the apex of your kanji reading abilities is being able to handle automated furikomi (money transfers) on your own (the mere action of paying my monthly rent, fearlessly navigating 50 screens of instructions on the local ATM machine, is enough to bring me a deep feeling of achievement for the remainder of the day), it is dangerously easy to fool yourself into thinking you can actually read some of this barbaric language.

Lucky for me, just when it might happen, something comes up to remind me that I’d still get my ass kicked at japanese crosswords by any 5-year old.

Even if that reminder is some utterly stupid technical detail of tear-inducing banality. The fact that it resulted in the waste of a complete afternoon and nearly failing to secure my plane ticket in time for my departure, sure helped giving it due attention.

For those of you wondering, just note that Sumitomo Trust (住友信託) and Sumitomo Mitsui (三井住友) most definitely aren’t the same bank. And moreover: Sumitomo Mitsui is spelled freaking backward in Japanese (Mitsui first), thus appearing under the マ (‘ma’ and other ‘m’ sounds) section, not the サ (‘sa’ and other ‘s’ sounds) section. As such, even if 住友信託 is the only bank appearing under that section and your brain tells you it looks close enough to be the bank you are supposed to make your transfer to, believe me: It’s not.

Well, all that to say that I’ll be off the island from the end of this week until the end of next month. Please feed the Godzilla when I’m away and take him out for a bit of city-stomping at least once a week, his cans are in the top left shelf in the cupboard. Rie is taking care of the garden and the cats.

bipppu no ato ni, messeiji wo rekohdo shite kudasai…

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