My dear AMCAS, would you like tomato or onion with that Baloney sandwich?

Once again, I am reminded that nothing in this whole damn place is personal. Nothing.

Whether you are tipping the waitress at IHOPs for your Lumber Jack breakfast and getting a "You have a nice day, now", or tipping the belly dancer at Le Femme for the lap dance and something else as she says "Don't you know you are my dream come true?", or sending in your application to AMCAS in the hopes that you will gain exclusive rights to membership only to be told, indirectly, that your MCAT scores, your profile, your lineage is not good enough because of some arbitrary standard placed on your head and if your fortune is not good, may pose a curse on your besotted soul.

Nothing is personal.

All those who know about my obsession/campaign/crusade/vendetta against the medical establishment will know that I did not get exclusive rights to this medical establishment and hence, did not have the luxury of obtaining my education in the US.

What is it now? You're saying I sound like some 3 year old who didn't get to have chocolate ice cream at the fair?

Well, I really don't give a shit what you think and you've missed the point. I am at war with the principle behind a laziness called "Standardized Test" and the rest, you've heard before. So, lest you call me a nag, I won't repeat it.

Yes, I am one of those back door people who try to bend the system.
Yes, I sneak around the rules.
Yes, I am one of those "foreign" grads whom you have shoved a big sign over that says "I'm with Idiot."

At the end of 4 years, I am going to have an M.D. after my name, so what's it to you?

What has incited this new rage of tirade is the fact that at registration today, on the cusp of entering my third year of training, who should I see but the graduate student, no less, who taught my MCAT preparatory class way back when in the Jurassic era. She was registering for the same semester and I can tell you we didn't start out our medical careers together.

So much for that. I have lost all faith in preparatory courses that prepare you for disillusionment, which is perpetuated by the venerable Medical College Admission Test. If someone who knew the loop holes and how to take pretty little standardized tests, that is somehow supposed to show your ability to be a doctor, is in the same hole I am in, then, all this amounts to bullshit. So much for standards and broad sweeps that pass up even those who know to perform "well".

Baloney.

So, my dear AMCAS, since nothing is personal, I know you wouldn't mind my shoving that Baloney sandwich up your rear end until it reaches the base of your tongue at which time you will be able to taste the dijon.

Living on the trimmings of an upscale restaurant

Is there ever a day off in the restaurant business, like observing the Sabbath?
Ever?

Is the tooting of the horn at the back door to the kitchen really necessary at 8 o'clock in the morning?
Does one really have to deliver tomatoes and carrots?
Is there an absolute necessity of washing dishes for 18 hours a day? Haven't you heard of paper?
Do people really have to eat out?

Isn't there some law against putting a residential district side by side to a commercial establishment?
At what time should I start pulling my hair out?

Directions to keep sane:
Stuff index fingers into both ears and repeat "It's the sound of the city" fifty times.
And then lay down and go to sleep.

It'sthesoundofthecity, it'sthesoundofthecity, it'sthesoundofthecity....

..............................................................................

Bolton? Bolton? Bolton?
Can things be more obvious? I cannot watch the news now without asking myself about the political agendas of the news agency reporting the "news". CNN? Fox News? MSNBC?

I guess impartial is not the word, or never was as Walter Cronkite envisioned. And by the end of the day, they would have either hung, quartered, and disemboweled or lauded, glorified and venerated, depending on which channel you happen to pledge allegiance to.

Let's drag all the dirty, dirty laundry out in the public just because some Republican president wants him in a seat at the cesspool of humanity. What would anyone have said if the President was a Democrat? Probably just the opposite. Let's be forward and hear what one, just one, Democrat say something positive because he really felt this guy should sit in the cesspool of humanity and not because some group pressured him to think dirty, dirty thoughts about who someone on the other side nominated.

Truth? Whoever said anything about the truth?

What about the case of oil for food business down there in the "forward" thinking center of history and culture which is Europe? Sensationalism - the driving fuel for the media engine. Controversy - it's fuel additive, making whatever it is pistons do in an engine better. School children invented the smear campaign in playgrounds and sandpits the world over and the media legalized it. Isn't just obvious?

And what's most damning is how the media sways public opinion, like a pendulum swinging on its weight, rotating ever so slowly with the slow spin of the earth. The mindless mob willing to believe every single iota of "truth" as reported by the media, upon which the media feeds on. Without this mindless mob, there'd be no media. And so, humanity bored out of its wits, gets fed mayhem, destruction, scandal, murder, car bombs exploding, mangled bodies and the public hanging of Michael Jackson and they like it. It was not so long ago that the Lindberg kidnapper was condemned to die before he even went on trial.

It takes too much work to question. Way too much. So living on the trimmings of an upscale restaurant is the only way.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

There is a campaign here in Miami to have a law passed, giving employers the right to terminate the employment of someone who lights a bunch of tobacco leaves and tar and cancer and is stupid enough to inhale the shit.

For once, I am thinking much good things about the Law. However, this might challenge some constitutional rights, like the right to free speech, the right to bare arms, and the right to slowly singe the insides of your lungs so you won't be able to cough up your phlegm by the time you are fifty. That is your right, you moron, but it is also my right to be able to enjoy the same sunshine as you while surfing the internet and not having to be burnt by your damn cigarette ash blowing in my direction.

Oh, I have great doubts the cigarette companies will veto the issue because they have nothing but to profit from this abject inanity. The law will not pass, unfortunately. The desire for a "healthier" nation is a good desire but you can't legislate something that over 50% of the population is against. Healthy is a fashion fad that does not encompass "No Smoking".

So I will continue to say swear words and move into the confines of a refrigerated room while the great idiocy out there steals my fresh air and compacts their own suicide pact. Shall I help them along?

It occured to me that apples fall from the tree to the ground

It occured to me that some of us are born with beauty. This comprises roughly,oh say, 1% of us. The rest of the 99% have to rely on our wit.

For those fortunate enough to be endowed with both beauty and wit, God bless(ed) you. Make good use of it. Since I cannot rely on my beauty, having genes that have somehow conglomerated into the beauties that are my sisters (my mother refuses to refute the claim that I was picked up from the garbage can) and have somehow come out short, compressed into the stubby mass that I am, I will spare no more moments in trying to assume that I am the belle of the ball.

Walking through the halls of the local mall, I am struck with a peculiar sense of realization - there is no possible way I am going to fit into any apparel lounging so casually on a mannequin but if I stuffed myself into that size 0 thing and sucked in my gut. If I were able to hold my breath for eternity (it would certainly make my chest look bigger), perhaps then, it would be realistic to see myself in those clothes.

On the other side of the spectrum, right beside the waifs of mannequins all women aspire to be, there is Kripsy Kreme, glazed, unglazed, rainbow toppinged, chocolated, and stuffed.

Why oh why is there such a damn dilemma? Why tempt with such things as desirable, even pleasurable and then deny that pleasure for the waifs and the anorectic stick figures that men and women find all so attractive?

The meaning of beauty is malleable, much like the play-doh I once delighted my childhood in.
What is "attractive"?
What is "beauty"?
Who knows. I only feel sorry for the ones who have yet to have gathered a sense of their self worth to realize that all these things are but smoke at a demolition derby.

When it blows over, then maybe things would be clearer.

However, there is always the temptation to subscribe to convention so one doesn't feel like a three breasted, pot moled, elf eared, hairy alien. Resistance seems futile, as surely as apples fall from the tree to the ground.

Mi casa e su casa

Technology is amazing. Can you believe that this came from my cell phone......I'm in heaven.

For the love of Cuban cigars!

I currently have no need to leave the confines of my garage/home/room. My fridge is stocked. I have enough TP to last at least a month, I did my laundry and, therefore, have fresh underwear to live in and I just had DSL installed. I won't even have the pathetic excuse of going to Starbucks any longer unless, of course, I really wanted a Mint Mocha Chip Frappucino with real whip cream.

I mustn't forget the simple rules of engagement here: lose 10 pounds so you can fit into the dress pants you bought in January so you can spare the medical establishment the horror of seeing you in flip flops and denims.

It took but just an hour before I became connected to the World Wide Web. I feel scandalous and espionagy, and can almost, but not quite, leap over buildings with a single leap but for my extreme lack in stature and superhero gifts.

Coursing through the rituals of being "set-up" and trying not to look as bored as I feel, I make an observation that Cable Guys like José have the fondness of assuming that nobody knows anything about their computers. He is navigating through my Mac's various many isles as if he knew what was on isle thirteen or where to find the Network pane. I try not to scowl or let my jaw hang loose as if ready to bite, but it is hard not to assume what is only natural. Nevertheless, there is no blood-filled coup and no strewn body parts about my accommodations and I can still turn on the computer. Lucky for José.

José can be said to be lucky in many ways. His unmistakable accent accounted for much of my interest in his origins, just as he was curious about mine, wondering if I shared Imelda Marcos's passion for shoes and her love for broiled pig feet. If we were in Arizona, I would have guessed Mexico but since we are in Miami, I would have to say the next logical thing: Cuba. And with a name like "José", how else was one to preposition the thought? It is a little pointless to me, as a total outsider of events in the sunshine state, that some force designated a geographical locale like "Little Havana" to lend some credence to the Cuban settlers that have swarmed the shores of Miami when all of Miami, it seemed like, is one huge Havana. The person who chopped off my long, straight, black hair smiled often and nodded his head often because he didn't understand 2 words I was saying. There was a lot of pointing and saying "no bueno" in the hopes that my mop of hair didn't turn out like a dust mop, or worse, a bristle broom. But it didn't. My landlady's mother says a lot of "Ah okay" at the words that are coming out of my mouth as I gape at my insufficient, kitchen spanish with a roughly 50 word vocabulary, consisting mainly of food names, as I try to ask her if she knew anyone who could alter my dress pants. Turns out she used to be a seamstress in her past life. It's shaggy around the edges but it summarizes human desire to want to reach out to other humans, whether for necessity or otherwise, that is debatable. So the next time I am reminded of rape and pillage, of death, gore and violence and of which idiot decides to detonate himself into oblivion for a cause I don't think he fully grasps, by the popular media that makes one think that there is no hope left in humanity, I will think of this.

And back to José's fortune who was fortuitous enough to escape Havana and all that Havana represents in Castro's eyes. Although this has been debated, said, discussed, and opined in ad nauseum, I will still say that he has eyes, but somehow, due to a servitude to an ideal long dead and proven by history capable of implosion, an ideal that has refused to be remodeled by progressive thought or perhaps due to old age and some sort of encephaly affecting the whole cerebral cortex; Castro has eyes, but he cannot see. Or at least he refuses to see, some type of willful cortical blindness, which is the worse evil. And for that he deserves the very appropriate Jumping Joe's Flaming Hot Sauce award of a man deserving to be Stupid. If life were that simple, if only they taught this basic concept in despotism school. But, of course, what naïveté.

José's father became a prisoner of conscience when José was just 45 days old (all this information in just one hour. Somehow I am guessing that José would rather there was some sort of blood-filled coup and he'd lost an arm rather than face the Asian inquisition). If I were José's mother, I would have smacked his father silly. As it turned out, I was born in another continent, on another island, in another time. Having been given the death penalty via a bullet to the skull for daring dissidence, Cuba would have gained another victim as a son were it not for a lawyer relative who commuted the sentence to 31 years. Must have been some lawyer. I was half expecting a life sentence and his father still languishing in an unknown cell but after serving his sentence, José's father took the family and left for greener pasture to Little Havana.

It's a tear jerker and I, for one, jerk a lot of tears. But José didn't ask me for charity so I have no cause not to believe in the validity of his tale. For one, he was just the cable guy, installing someone's DSL modem. I am guessing that Cuba cries of many stories such as José's. It is José's conviction that the Bay of Pigs, although another huge Kennedy fiasco, was an incident that could have saved Cuba from a long history of Stupidity but someone got cold feet at the last minute (and told Castro that a group of covert soldiers from the Special Forces was coming to end his life). It is the notion of ability but not one of willingness. I am no student of war or strategy and I am guessing that even if I tried to find out the "truth" I would have been faced with the courteous slap in the cheek by something named Classified Information. But despite it all, whatever the motivations, whatever the consequences, José's family found comfort and a new life in the US, with no hopes or desires of returning to the soil which gave them birth. There are also many stories of hope such as this, not just from Cuban dissidents, but of Albanian refugees and persecuted muslims from the former Yugoslavia, of economic refugees from Argentina and Mexico; they flock here, not to China or the Philippines, not to Russia, but here. We don't hear enough of their stories because the world is busy, in a frenzy to devour anything about how America has no right to go to war, how America is bullying the (qouting another author) "cesspool of humanity", the United Nations, how nobody in their right mind can like America and what America represents to the majority of Americans, adopted or native, of how America is eradicating cultures that have been in existence for thousands of years, people who were "happy" with their way of life until Coco Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken showed up at their doorsteps. That's what's newsworthy these days. But they forget that thousands upon thousands of people chose to come here because if it were not for America, American way of Life, the American "culture", they wouldn't have stood a chance.

For the fear of sounding like a "Come to the folds of America, all ye weak and homeless and penniless" campaign, I will say that the world is a two sided coin. Dare to flip it, for the love of Cuban cigars!

Flip flops, jellyfish, sushi and salad

Disclaimer: Correct my misconceptions bred in ignorance if you don't see the monster for what it is.

A new sort of life has been splayed before me, open only for one kind of interpretation; a pork cutlet that can assume only one shape. I have some clue why it is that this new realization makes my skin shift from under me, makes my hair stand on end as if they were afraid of being razed if they didn't, makes me grow gooseflesh when I am neither cold nor suffering from an opiod withdrawal. But I still haven't learnt enough.

It was made known to me that if I'd wanted the personal audience of any faculty member at the 7000 building here in Miami, that I was to come dressed accordingly. Roughly translated: if I were to wear flip flops, a respectable, holeless shirt that covered certain parts of my body, which by convention would be shameful to show, and a pair of jeans that would also cover certain parts deemed shameful, I would be sent home with my tail between my legs. It is not the mere fact of what the medical profession demands that raises such alarm. It is not even the fact that I do not mind this mindless exterior held up by a tradition of ostentation that is the hallmark of the medical profession in the Western world, a thing it prides itself in obtaining as a badge of courage, if it were that, that we in the profession are asked to uphold as a rite to passage. It is not even for the fact that a lay person eyes a "properly professionally" dressed individual with a sort of reverence undeserving of the person wearing the monkey suit or that he demands this facade of professionalism with no thought or regard as to the content of structure behind the facade. The mindless mob.

First impression counts. Dress to the ninth in a three piece suit and a tie, with matching cufflinks and a tie pin. Add in a pink carnation for good measure and alligator leather shoes that you can eat off and then turn around and prescribe Viagra and Vioxx to the mob bosses in exchange for personal favors. Is this what professionalism is supposed to be? These doctors were dressed professionally. I laud them for their impeccable fashion sense so they can hide behind what they haven't got - integrity. A fit fodder for the media, crazy bent on slaughtering and sacrificing every medical professional lamb they can get their hands on, so as to set an example, a burning cross, a hanging body, for all to see and not to follow. They were setting themselves up from the very conscious step when someone in medical school told them to "dress professionally" and they obeyed, without thought or consequence because there was none; an empty piñata. What puzzles me is why we continue to give them the ammunition they need to justify this war that has no justification?

No matter how you dress it, a salad is a salad; romaine lettuce, mustard greens, broccoli, carrots. Red wine vinaigrette makes it only more palatable, not necessarily more digestible. A potato cannot be a carrot, just like a broccoli cannot stand in for cauliflower. And most certainly, jellyfish cannot pass for sushi. Similarly, an institution cannot teach integrity; no one can teach it neither can it be bought or sold. It can only help you dress up and hide the lack of it. It never seizes to amaze me the lengths at which the medical profession seeks to make much ado about nothing, as if bells and whistle, frills and glitter can represent something quite so frill-less.

I despise the idea of labels, arbitrary monuments of self importance erected for the benefit of others who will be shown how high one has climbed, how far one has reached, how wide one has conquered. But here it is, unavoidable, inescapable. I am being lumped into the mass of shapeless clay and therein lies, perhaps, my Chinese water torture. Hopefully, I will retain enough of me, recognizable bits that will be spat out whole. Bitter is not a good taste in the mouth and bitter cannot know what it is like to be sweet, hence palatable.

What have I gotten myself into?