Fri, Oct 19, 2001 09:23PM -0600

Some fragments of thoughts, scurrying around in my mind like rabid raccoons:

1. Reading the words of someone who is just as insane as I am, if not more so, is somewhat comforting. I'm not the only one. See! See!
2. Now, I understand. Caught up in my intellectual snobbery, I really didn't get the point of talking about sports scores or pop songs or what the latest star wore to the latest entertainment industry function or what happened on TV last night. But at the same time, it isn't everyday you meet people who are able to talk in maddening abstractions (maybe I'll tell you my little anecdote about a conversation I once had on a beach at Malibu) or who can parlay deconstructionist lingo (although I must say that I have met a good number of interesting people who can.) Not everyone appreciates a good Camusian dilemma or Kafkaesque humor. So this is what 'NSync and the Yankees are for. A point of contact. Somewhere to start. Then maybe you can steer towards Kant and Bentham somehow.
3. But yeah. People. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Classical human condition. I'm glad I got to hang out with people I haven't seen for a while today.
4. So they should've given me a ball-gag this morning and played "Comanche" in the background as I took my Pharmacology exam. I swear I can still hear the crack of leather whips. Someone once told me that what you learn in the first two years of med school isn't really the material itself. It's the ability to survive the mental equivalent of a BDSM session. (The physical equivalent apparently comes in the Surgical and Medical rotations in the last two years, and the mental and physical torture are combined when you reach your residency.) I always thought that you had to be a little masochistic to voluntarily go through what is essentially 7+ more years of school after college.
5. But I am blathering now. Thanks to my Clinical Neuroscience class, I find that I am analyzing everyone I see and trying to diagnose them. The other day I saw a guy who kept walking back and forth, muttering to himself and laughing. I know they've told us to never diagnose schizophrenia unless you absolutely have to, but the pattern recognition capabilities of the mind are a force to be reckoned with. (Which is why illusions and delusions are incredibly hard to dispell.) I was reading a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien today, and the description painted him as some kind of manic-depressive with some other frontal lobe symptoms and possibly aphasia. And as you can see, I am exhibiting what is, in technical terms, known as "flight of ideas."
6. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My mind is blank. I'm tired. The day is shot. Bleh.