With a title like that, you might think this post more properly belongs on the head lemur’s blog, which bears the title “raving lunacy – oxymorons for the 21st century”.

Lately I’ve been receiving more spam comments on this blog, many of which get past Akismet, that attempt to read like real comments. They make general observations about the wisdom of the post, or complain about some technical problem. That’s probably why they elude spam filtering, because they sound germane — although a human (like I pretend to be) can quickly recognize that they don’t address the topic of conversation at all. They usually occur on older, high-traffic posts, too. So I delete one or two of these per day.

Today I happened to notice this one:

In case you aren’t viewing images (or can’t make it out), the comment reads:

I will tell fairly … the first time has come on your site on purpose “clever spam”. But to write that that close on a theme it is necessary to read. Has started to read – it was pleasant, Has subscribed and with pleasure I read. Very to be pleasant your site – interesting The maintenance, pleasant design for reading …

Ironically, Akismet caught this one.

“Ouch, dammit!”

Harry and Halley suddenly forgot their need to escape and turned back towards me with remorseful eyebrows peaked.

We had been near the end of our walk on a sunny, frosty morning when a neighbor’s dog surprised us from behind, suddenly barking the “you’re on my territory” bark that every other dog knows means it’s time to move out on the double.  This particular dog isn’t usually out on our morning excursions, so I wasn’t prepared for it.  But since we were, in fact, on neutral ground (the paved road), I called to the dogs to “walk!” and dug in my heels to pull them back down to a normal pace.  My heels, however, did not find adequate friction on the frosty pavement, and decided instead that a position somewhere above my head would be more appropriate.  I instinctively turned as I went down to avoid landing on my back or taillbone – and encountered the pavement with my elbow instead.

I knew I should have worn a coat.

I could tell that I was bleeding inside my sweatshirt, but rather than examine it there in the road I decided to get back home and attend to it.  I walked the dogs back to their kennel, then entered the house.  My lovely wife greeted me.

“Hurry, help me move this to the front door!”  It was a TV cabinet she had listed on craigslist, and the mark – er, I mean, buyer – was on his way over.  So we moved the cabinet, and he arrived.  He dickered over the price, naturally, and we took a while to make change and then carry it out to his truck.  Then I went back inside and showed my wife my wound.  There were actually two – a broad flaying of the underside of my forearm, and a smaller, deeper cut behind my elbow.  Of course, I had to explain how it happened, and of course it was all my fault for being stupid.  She cleaned it up, and said she’d bandage it properly after I took a shower.

In the shower, I happened to flex that arm and noticed a spurt of blood against the side of the stall, which stopped as soon as I extended my arm again.  Naturally, I had to repeat the experiment a few times out of curiosity until I began to feel dizzy and nauseous and my field of vision became interrupted by bright blind spots.  So I ceased my attempt to earn a Darwin award (too late anyway, I’ve already peed in the gene pool four times [apologies to my offspring for that metaphor]), rinsed off and exited the shower.  My wife came in to continue her nursely duties, complaining about the blood I got on the white towel.  She bandaged me up, and I went to lie down until my head and stomach felt better – while being serenaded by my wife’s witty remarks concerning the well-documented male tolerance for pain and suffering.  I’ve never fainted from bleeding, but I’ve never felt closer to doing so than I did that morning.

I just happened to have a doctor’s appointment scheduled a few days later.  My arm was still swollen but no longer bleeding by that point.  The doctor looked it over, made me move it around, and concluded that there was no break.  “Don’t re-injure it,” she warned.

So, I haven’t been walking the dogs for the last few days – I want to let this fully heal first.  Every time I go out to feed them, they look up at me silently as if to say, “We’re really, really sorry.  Are you ever going to walk us again?”

The wind of a passing semi blows the pages of my book into confusion, and I lose my place.  I look at my watch – a few more minutes until the Kitsap Transit bus should arrive.  Here comes one now – I squint to make out the “SORRY NOT IN SERVICE” on its marquee.  Two more like that one go by before the “90 POULSBO” bus pulls over to greet me.

It’s a big, smooth riding bus.  I settle into my window seat, find my place again, and resume reading The Art of the MetaObject Protocol.  Like all things Lisp, the simplicity, elegance, and completeness of this protocol impress me – though not as much as I was hoping they would.  There have been no moments of euphoric revelation for me in this book – it just makes perfect sense.  I start thinking about how this concept could be applied to Ruby, and wondering if someone already has.

Then it occurs to me to question why Lisp has defgeneric at all.  Isn’t there enough information in defmethod’s parameters to construct the generic case internally?  Defgeneric seems to roughly correspond to the methods of an abstract class in other languages – and while abstract classes are sometimes useful, they don’t always need to be expressed.  Sometimes statically typed languages require abstract classes in order to allow objects of any derived class to be passed as a parameter, but duck typing languages like Ruby relieve us of that requirement.  Why does Lisp need to define an abstract prototype of a method?

In Poulsbo, I transfer to a much smaller bus heading to Silverdale.  The first seat I take leans too far back and won’t come forward, so I move to another row.  When we get out onto the 60MPH highway, the little bus rattles as if it’s going to fall apart.  I find it impossible to read without a headache, so I patiently await our arrival at Kitsap Mall.  There, I step off the bus and walk through the mall – nothing open, it’s 8AM.  I proceed out the back door and down Silverdale Way, turning left on Ridgetop to head towards The Doctors Clinic.

It’s a beautiful morning, great for a walk.  I spot a little coffee stand up ahead, and decide to grab a triple grande breve since I’m early for my appointment.  I’ve been off coffee for about a month, but what the hell.  My wife and I have also been off alcohol for more than three months, except for one night on which we shared a bottle of wine.  The wine didn’t do that much for me, and I can honestly say I don’t miss drinking.  But when the barista hands me the cup and I take one sip – euphoria!  My entire body tingles all over, and my vision grows suddenly brighter.  I know it isn’t good for me, though, and I’ll stop again after this cup.

The doctor hears a murmur, and orders an echocardiogram.  Later in the lab, I’m lying on my side with my shirt off while the technician presses the greasy ultrasound sensor to my ribs.  Over my shoulder I can see the screen.

“Is that a valve?” I ask.  It looks just like the textbook pictures.

“Yes,” the tech replies.  She spends about forty minutes getting all sorts of views of both valves and recording the murmur, which sounds like a loud swoosh after every beat.  As I watch the screen, it occurs to me that I’m looking at my own heart.  Here’s this pump that’s been reliably doing its job 24/7 for more than fifty years (including duty in utero), yet this is the first time I’ve ever inspected it.  Keep on keepin’ on, old fella.

I arrived at The Doctors Clinic (they omit the apostrophe, so I guess the doctors don’t own it) for my blood draw a week before my regular check-up.  At the front desk, I noticed that they had acquired new monitors and keyboards since the last time I was there.  Even though that was more than a year ago, those things catch my attention.

In addition to my name and insurance card, I offered the survey that I had filled out prior to my exam.  But the nice lady at the desk replied, “Bring that with you to your appointment.  We can’t take that now.”

I guess my puzzled expression must have had “Why not?” written all over it, because she continued to explain.

“We don’t have paper files anymore – it’s all electronic.  We’d have no place to keep it.  The doctor will want to read it when you’re here, and then we’ll scan it into your file.”

So, they can’t scan it in now because the doctor wants to read it on hardcopy?  Sounds to me like the whole digital records concept is meeting with some physician resistance.  Or maybe it just doesn’t work that well.  Perhaps the doctor likes to hold these things in his hand and read them as he’s walking between examining rooms, but he can’t get to them from his mobile device.  Or maybe it’s just institutional lag and they’re still getting used to the idea of not having permanent paper files before they take the next step.  Or perhaps they just don’t want to be bothered with it right now, because that’s not The Way They Do Things.

Ideally, even the originating document shouldn’t be on paper – they should have a secure web site where I can fill out the survey instead.  For patients that don’t have an Internet connection, make them sit down and fill it in at a workstation in the doctor’s office.  You’d only need one, in a private room – if there’s a waiting line for it, remind them that they could access it from home if they had Internet service.

I took a seat in the lab’s waiting room, along with more people than usual – about a dozen.  The nurse apologized in advance for the wait, which turned out to be only about fifteen minutes.  I overheard a lady telling her husband about a friend of hers who had to wait for a whole hour at the doctor’s office – boy was she mad.

When I was a kid, our little one-stoplight town also had only one doctor’s office run by two brothers – the Drs. Bond (neither one named James).  Although the town was only a mile across, the Bonds also served the surrounding county.  Almost every time I had to see the doctor as a child, the waiting room was so full that quite a few people had to stand.  I don’t know how my memory colors the perception, but it seemed that we often waited for most of the day.  If it hadn’t been for Highlights magazine, I would have driven my mother crazy.

The nurse who intended to pierce my vein and take my blood called me back into her torture chamber.  She greeted me with a smile and asked, “Are you hungry?”  This was her way of insuring that I had followed the directions to fast for 12 hours prior to the draw, but it confused me initially.

“Yeah, I usually eat before this time of day, so I am getting a bit hungry.”

“I don’t usually eat breakfast myself,” she replied, “but today my husband made me the best breakfast – pancakes and bacon!  It was delicious!  The pancakes were hot and buttery, and the bacon was crisp and thin, just how I like it.”  My stomach registered its approval of her menu with a sad groan.  On and on she went, while tying the tourniquet and inserting the needle.  I couldn’t help noticing that her rather large body didn’t need the addition of pancakes and bacon.  How can someone in the medical profession let themselves go like that?  I was also a little put off by her thoughtlessness, talking about food to a hungry man.  Maybe she was trying to get my veins to pop out.