Really interesting article on dirty politics in American history...

I had no idea that the campaigns in the past had been so raunchy. Imagine someone giving John Quincy Adams the nickname: "the Pimp"!

The Spark Personality Test - here's what they think of me:

DREAMER
(Submissive Introvert Abstract Feeler )

Like just 11% of the population you are a DREAMER (SIAF)--reserved and imaginative. You are basically the shy, silent type. You don't have much interest in facts and figures or most of what's going on around you, but the internal worlds you build for yourself are rich and complex.

Luckily, your creativity and strong heart mean you have a deep personality evident to anyone who gets to know you. It's just that not many people do, because most everyone thinks you're a loser. Talk to yourself less, other people more, little shaver.

A pilot asked the passengers on his flight whether they were Christian.

Now, usually, I do my BBC reading with a faint smile of amusement on my face. I have realized that the BBC has a penchant for reporting on rather bizarre incidents throughout our world. Sometimes I've shared some of them here. But that article about a proselytizing pilot really terrified me. It reminded of Margaret Atwood's imagined world in The Handmaid's Tale. That book is eerie enough (set in a thinly veiled Harvard-in-the-future) as a fictional account. I don't enjoy reading actual articles that mimic its insanity.

I have to admit the pilot was right about me being "crazy" - but that's because my brain is over-populated with belligerent gnomes, not because I'm a dark-skinned, idolater from the Orient. You have to get these things straight.

I have performed an interesting experiment.
Let me preface by saying that med students are very pretentious about being health-conscious. I think it makes sense that med students would be healthy - I mean, you spend all day looking at slides and descriptions of what happens to you if you smoke, drink, eat badly and don't exercise. I have avoided becoming paranoid about my health (or conscious in any way, really) for the most part. Recently, in my constant attempts to push the barriers of what I can eat, I purchased a box of Twinkies. I was craving ONE, and I bought a box. It turned out to be too much, even for me. They are like little sugar bombs. In a bad way. So I had the box sitting on top of my fridge for nearly two months. Now, the interesting/annoying thing is that med school friends kept coming into my room and saying things like, "DUDE, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WOULD EVEN CONSIDER EATING THAT." Or sometimes, I would offer someone a Twinkie, and they would leap back in horror and disdain.

Finally, one day, in my attempt to rid myself of the box, I abandoned it in the dorm kitchen.
The box was empty in two hours.

Apparently they don't realize that even if you eat the twinkies with a flashlight in the middle of the night, they still are bad for you. That's also what I have to say to the med students who emerge from bushes and shrubs behind the building, smelling suspiciously of smoke. Smoking is just bad for you, it's not immoral. Twinkies are just gross, not illegal. Everyone relax!

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Shameless plug for my favorite coughdrop/throatsoother - Halls Honey Lemon Drops.

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Also - you can't choose your parents, but this kid really has my sympathy.