adventures in disaster

I smoke

Yes I do. I love to smoke. I wish I could say "oh that is a terrible thing and I wish I could quit" but I don't think it's terrible and I have no interest in quitting.
I can hear all those cigarette haters gearing up for their lectures..it smells , it will kill you and if you smoke around me you will kill me..you are absolutely right. So here is a hint..we already know and don't hang around smokers we are evil.
Evil,evil evil.
I would be thrilled if all those people who can't help but offer up their opinions would see me smoking and think of me as a demon and avoid me like the plague I am.I then wouldn't have to listen to their vicious attacks on my character. Just by the simple act of having a smoke you give up your right to be treated with respectful neglect. Complete strangers will snap at you and accuse you of killing their children.
My whole family has smoked at one time or another..I can only imagine my grandfathers reaction if some batty woman on the street started bitching him out..I don't think it would have ended well.

When I was a kid people seemed to mind their own business a little better. They may have known all about your peccadilloes but they never confronted you with them on a street corner. They just gossiped about you quietly among themselves. I think I liked that better.

Sometimes at work I will go out for a smoke, looking for a quiet corner and a little space. Invariably two people will approach me. They keep a respectful distance and light up too. They then begin trashing the nurses,the doctors and the hospital in voices loud enough for all to hear. I know this conversation is directed at me,standing in my scrubs, stethoscope around my neck.I never know how to respond. I am in fact eavesdropping aren't I? They didn't invite me into this conversation but I can feel how desperately they want my reaction. For years I just ignored them,smoked the last of my cigarette and went back to work but lately I have begun challenging them. I am curious about how they are defining bad care. Over and over they talk about being disrespected, not being given important information. They talk about their loved one being moved from room to room.One woman this morning talked of how her husband had been moved sixteen times in two weeks with no reasons given. I talked of how we delegate rooms, how sometimes we get runs of confused,sick,demented patients that need to be close to the nursing station for safety. How some patients have private insurance and they demand a private room and the merry go round starts to appease their need. Sometimes patients get too sick for a certain unit and need to move to another for closer monitoring and then they get moved to a different service and a different floor. It all gets bewildering and without good communication families get lost and frustrated and scared. She went back to her husband happy with the explanation, laughing at the insanity of hospitals and I went back to my unit happy that I had spoken up without feeling defensive, only curious and wanting to understand how we could do things better.
It's always communication, the basic way humans talk to each other. We can assault each other with words or we can shut up and listen,offer explanations that make sense. Be compassionate,show humour..let people know why we do what we do and let them know if we had a better way we would choose it.


From The New York Times by James Broder
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations" "It is a clash between two opposites , between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st Century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."
a quote from Dr Wafa Sultan previously Muslim now a secular human discussing what is happening in the Muslim world. I cannot agree more with the good doc. Islamic fundamentalists believe they are fighting the war of the world..good vs evil..Islam against every damn other person alive...regular Muslims know these people are equal to Fred Flintstone in their understanding of the 21st century. People who blow up other people and call it a victory..a religious victory no less are idiots..still rubbing two pieces of wood together and creating fire and thinking they have done something wholly new and important.
The good thing is their children will discover the world through television and the internet and they will realize their fathers were no better than murderous cavemen.
All these men are fools that history will look back on with embarrassment...baffled that someone would be so blind,so barbaric too think that murdering women and children would make them holy in a nonexistent Gods eyes.
What is infuriating is we persist in engaging these people. Us talking to "insurgents" is like us trying to reason with our cat. Like me standing in the kitchen yelling at the cat for killing the innocent mouse. My cat doesn't have the intelligence to understand innocence. When I tell the cat I will get the food or it's toy "later" or "soon" it doesn't have the ability to understand such advanced concepts. Terrorists or "insurgents" are no different. They aren't advanced enough to understand, They cannot delay gratification. They will murder thousands to get what they want right now..so we need to stop talking to them. We need to build a fence around them and get the innocent out. The Barbarians will finish each other off because they cannot work together for a common goal.
We need to stop fighting terrorism and actively ignore these monsters from our long ago past. Ignoring then means no more free television promotion, no more articles making them rock star legends in the homeland. Ignoring them means they don't and can't get any money because they are not recognized at any financial institution. Broke and unknown is how they should be living.Broke and unknown means no one sells them guns or bombs..It is hard to be a terrorist without weapons..Let's remove the weapons.
But if we did then George Bush wouldn't get his chance to be a hero and let's be honest this whole disaster is all about George wanting to be a hero wearing the big boy pants just once.
I think the president of the United States should have to pass a psych test before gaining office, we would have had a whole different history .


I am really in trouble on Sunday night. Greys Anatomy and The Sopranos...wow yeah..not as hard as I thought..Sopranos hands down. I am thinking about getting a DVR but it's not in the budget.Nothing is in the budget except get out of debt now. I don't owe really anything but still that little bit I do makes me itchy. I can only shrink in horror when I hear those Oprah horror stories of hundreds of thousands. Fifteen hundred and I get nauseated.
We drove up to Turtle Island today and got smokes..what a pretty place even in spring. Note: I have decided spring is here, I don't care if it snows for a week it's still spring, I cannot be dissuaded. I have had enough of winter even though this one was a walk in the park.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 8:06 PM