Dead bones do tell tales

SETTINGS: Chez Pride, the living-room
ACTORS: Representative From Nice Cleaning Service + Lioness

Representative From Nice Cleaning Service: All right then, it's settled, the cleaners will come on blablabla and will blablabla and blablabla. Do you have any further questions?
Lioness: Actually, yes. *deep breath* How do your employees feel about bones? Around the house, that is.
R: Bones?
L: Bones.
R: *clears throat* Human bones?
L: Well yes, there is most of a skeleton in a bag. *rambling madly* It's Charles actually. The skeleton, that is. It belongs to a friend, she's a doctor, I'm just keeping it here for her.
R: *faintly *Charles?
L: *still rambling* Yes well, that's what she calls him but he should be gone soon. And the bones are in a bag, very discreet. You wouldn't know they were there unless you opened up the bag which I assume your people wouldn't do, privacy and all, I don't suppose they go around opening bags. I just thought I should mention it bcs hoovering will require lifting it and it rattles a bit and most people are uncomfortable around skulls anyway. I wouldn't want them to drop the bag and crack the bones.
R: *squeak* Goodness! There are... skulls?
L: *mentally wringing hands* Oh just the one. You know, Charles'. But as I said they're all in a bag, a very colourful bag, you wouldn't know it held bones unless - well, we've talked abt this.
R: I see. It's not something that's ever arisen before.
L: No, I don't suppose it has.
R: I, er, don't think it will be a problem.
L: Excellent. There might be other bones, occasionally.
R: Oh dear! More human bones?
L: No, these would be cow bones, or pig bones, maybe sheep. Rabbit, perhaps. Mostly, er, on the windowsill.
R: *very faintly* The windowsill. I see.
L: I'm in vet school, I use them for studying, see. I'm afraid it takes them a while to dry.
R: They're... wet?
L: Not exactly, they come from the butcher's still with tiny pieces of muscle and tendons attached, I need to get them dry bfr I can use them. They need to be outside, I'm afraid they give off a bit of a nasty smell.
R: Quite right, quite right, smelly, I should think so.
L: Well then, I'm so glad we've settled this, thank you for stopping by!

They're coming tomorrow morning. Of course they are.

Spot the beauty!

Can you see it? Can you? Can you? Isn't it sweet? Melted my pericardium right off my, well, myocardium.

I loved it, it was the verification word over at Faggots on the Third Floor (BRILLIANT blog name, BTW, simply brilliant). And that is fine in so many ways, fine with a sultry US Southern accent, bcs, see, faggots? Faggot-y men? They wanted Uzi, my pretty boy, they dehydrated looking at him, such was the drool. They LOVED him.

Fuck. Who didn't.

On a happier note, bcs I can do that as well!

1 - You have, again, saved my flickering sanity. THANK YOU. Again. I very much want to read blogs and answer comments, especially the newcomers', but see #2. I have done my share of copious crying in the car on the way to school but that's bcs it's the only place where I can bear to listen to Israeli music. I suppose it's a good sign that I can listen to it again. And we all know when you're sitting in a car you're invisible, ask anyone doing impromptu Pessach nasal cleaning. Also, my psychiatrist kicks absolute ass. That wa sthe best decision I ever made, if I hadn't started seeing her I think the tsunami may have made another victim, indirectly. It's horrific and unbelievable enough that my Tig was killed, I will not allow it to not allow me to enjoy his memory. AMEN.

2 - VET SCHOOL

2.1.- Academic life is cylindering me right now, as we say. The presentation went well, I did the Mandible (lower jaw, yes, WELL DONE Dana!) and my he-colleague did the Hyoid and the Pterygoids, and then my she-colleague did the Basisphenoid and I ended it w the presphenoid. Behold the beauty of my ppts! I was actually mad happy when during the Hyoid one colleague turned to me and whispered You didn't do these, did you?

[I have recently found out my he-colleague's mum has been in the hospital and truth be told, after those weeks of wasted time, he started working like a maniac and hasn't stopped apologising for the whole mess. She, OTOH... Ten min bfr we were due to start she was still inserting the captions bcs she had wanted to know what we thought bfr she did them. Captions are a bloody pain bcs of all the different views but both my colleague and I had finished ours already and so I told her I thought she'd better get started on them after showing up for the meeting an hour too late, this was her responsibility and we were not going to do it for her and that she dared to show up with unfinished work was beyond belief. She said That's life! and I said no, at the most that was her life, life is not being lazy, life is owning up to one's responsibilities and group work means EVERYONE works, did she see the beauty in that, and she said well that's not the way it was in high school and I said I couldn't care less abt her high school experience but actually that wasn't high school at all either, that was her and why was she talking instead of typing already, and then my colleague said he'd never work w her again and somehow everything was finished on time. I had to interrupt her once during the presentation to add something (bcs she'd neglected to say it, yes?) and she looked at me as though she could kill me. Truthfully, I can only wish she'd try, she can't dislike me more than I dislike her sorry disrespectful ass.]

We have these classes in an anfitheatre and the acoustics, well, I can barely hear my colleagues, so I decided I would speak louder and I did and kept expecting them to complain bcs believe me, it felt like I was hollering. Mouth-dried hollering at that, much mortification on my part over it. At one point I forgot what bones form the ethmoidal foramen (sphenoid + frontal + ethmoid), I knew there were three of them but couldn't remember the frontal so I just smoothly sailed over it and NO ONE NOTICED! After the presentation was over the Professor evaluated my colleagues' performance and then got up and started walking down the stairs to collect his laptop. I stood there, my body in the shape of a HULLO, WHAT ABT ME!, and I asked him if I didn't get an evaluation and he said No, we only do negative criticism, your voice projection was brilliant and your presentation was excellent, no need to speak abt you. Whatever works, dear teacher, whatever works.

*Start reminescence*

An Anthropologist in vet school may not make much sense to you if you are thinking abt Cultural Anthropology, which you shouldn't, ever, it is horrendous and you will be made to do field work in a very cold and ultra-ultra-ultra conservative Northern village where women smoking is frowned upon when you couldn't care less abt St. Sebastian of the arrow-riddled chest, really you don't, Catholic saints are very bizarre and somewhat perverse, you think, but there you go, there you are, going round being offered ALCOHOL for pity's sake and you can't say no to the natives so you probably ended up killing every potted plant in the village bcs you certainly are not going to drink beer-oh-blech, and your very mad - and the term is not used loosely - 40-ish colleague, your fieldwork partner, is sitting w you at the table in the home of the family that has most graciously offered you a bed to sleep in bcs the plan till then was to sleep in the village Chief's stable, yes a stable, in December, in Northern Portugal, no one would have been surprised to see the Angel of God come down and impregnate a woman AGAIN and, considering the rumours, it might have just been the Jewish female AGAIN and try and explain that to your family and friends and the TV crews, ha!, so yes, mad female colleague has just spent a good 15 min talking abt her several operations in great detail and also abt James, on and on she went abt James while you cringed bcs see, you know fully well who James is, and then the matriarch asks, full of village curiosity, Is James your husband? and mad colleague laughs and says Oh no, my husband's name is Felitius, James is my boyfriend and into the shocked silence that fills the ultra-ultra-ultra conservative Northern room so fast no one seems to be breathing anymore you gulp down a good portion of the horrible red wine and hope there will be an angel visiting indeed, the Death one, but it would all have been lost anyway when during the village dance she fled to Spain w a men she'd just met bcs she missed her children or something or other and who cared abt fieldwork, weren't people free to do as they pleased, the villagers would just have to understand, and you were the one left answering questions abt her absence bcs they were seen leaving, and then to top it all you ended up having to bitch-slap a man in the middle of the crowd when he drunkenly grabbed your ass and you must confess you didn't give a thought to the ramifications of said action to your fieldwork, you just reacted, what, he hangs on to your buttock for dear life and you stop and consider whether smacking a wanker across the mouth might be inconvenient?, hell no, so NO, Cultural Anthropology is full of perils and people, and you most definitely can't be bothered abt why they do the things they do, especially in a Catholic, pig-slaughtering environment (you were lucky to have just.missed.that), what you want is Ethology, animal behaviour, and you manage to work in the field, first in the Ocea*narium and then doing actual research in Israel w dolphins, no big leap really from there to realising that more than understanding why they do the things they do, which is quite interesting in itself, you want to make a difference in the animals' lives daily, you want to not be powerless, you want to *gasp* be a vet if it kills you, which it just mite. [Get it? HA! I kill me, as Alf says, albeit less delicately.]

*End reminescence*

2.2. - I have come to terms with the fact that yes, I WILL HAVE TO BONE UP LIKE A MADWOMAN to get this bloody degree. [As an aside, when I wrote that post I prepared myself for the ensuing slaughter. I truly expected many of you to say, as my American friends would put it, Get over yourself. That you didn't, and that you found it funny is still a mistery but at least you don't think I'm a rotten person. Yey!] I will have to work hard and no amount of running away or avoiding it will save me. I will, therefore, study. And behold! Last Sunday a colleague came round and we studied bones for 6 hours non-stop! I still can make no sense of the temporal but really, who can? The temporal is an experiment within an experiment designed by the white mice, see if I'm falling for it. We'll see who laughs last, white tossers, see you in the Bioterium, HA HA HA HAHAHAHHHHHHHH!

3. - I'll now go and try to inject a reluctant cow and that donkey in the jugular, wouldn't you know it. If they're anything like last week's sheep, well, what did they expect when we were given the only three sheep that have no jugulars? I swear it's true. Blood-drawing from sheep is a pain, they have all that fleece and you can barely see the vein engorging, and this is the best bit, for the exam you have to be able to walk into the pen, grab a sheep and haul her over and then have her literally sitting on her little sheep ass, with you positioned behind her, sort of sitting on her and holding her head to the side with one arm, and w your head hanging down and only one and a half arms and hands hold the syringe and the cotton swab, find the jugular, apply pressure on it, be so lucky as to notice it engorging, release vein, memorise its general vicinity, insert needle, stay inside the vein, check for blood, inject the fluid, stay in the vein, check that you're still there, inject some more, repeat it all, finsih injecting and still not have had your head exploding from the pressure or the sheep fighting you all the way.

4.- Go give Diana a hug, her dog is still puzzlingly ill. Diana dahling, we have your back, lean in.

Countdown

I've just realised something. It's true I have been overwhelmed w work lately at at most I've had time to briefly check how you lot are but. BUT. I have been avoiding Israeli and Jewish bloggers. Also, I STILL have not talked to Lila, at all - that also has to do with the fact that she hasn't downloaded google talk yet, but mostly not. Also to do w the fact that she's to understanding to properly kiss my bloody ass into shape.

You know why, right? Well I do. It's been almost a year. I also realised I have started an inner countdown and quite frankly, am terrified. I know I will want to hide away but as luck would have it, it's right bfr the beginning of exams, which MUST go well this year. I know I won't be watching any news at all, or listening to the radio. It will come whether I'm ready or not and I know I'm not. Above all, I'm terrified of my lack of words regarding him, am afraid that I have buried him too deep to be accessible anymore, and that I have lost part of us, part of him, in the process. Most of all, I don't understand how he can have been dead for almost a year. I still dream of saving drowning people/animals (or trying to anyway, I'm never successful even w a wetsuit, even in my sleep), I think abt him every single day, several times, I talk to him - do you know, I knew I was going to earn some money in the game show bcs a white butterfly flew right across my windscreen when I reached the last roundabout. I just knew it. I still sometimes toy w the idea that it was all a mistake. I don't want him dead, I don't want him gone, I don't want the rest of my life without his smile and his voice and his faces. Last year, bcs I was still a bit ill and deranged w worry, I managed to fall asleep at around 7 pm and sleep through the New Year. I didn't want to be celebrating, I didn't feel there was anything worth celebrating, he was missing and I was missing him and fearing the worst, nothing else mattered really. I wish I could fall asleep today and wake up some time at the end of February, past most of the ritual horror. If I were very rich I'm sure I could. The first time that X, the first time that Y, am so afraid of it. There are decades worth of it awaiting us. How will I do this? And a bang on the ear.

[UPDATE - Well. 4.30 am is also called the hour of the dead. I'm right on schedule.]

A woman after my own heart

The squeamish among you may wish to skip it. The squeamish AND curious among you - well, no need to blame me is there but let the comment fest commence anyway. [Aliteration, I know! Sophistication is the Pride's new motto.] The others may understand why I find it so instantly gratifying, I used to do it in Israel every once in a while when I was volunteering at the clinic. LOVE IT and can't wait to do it again - LOADS!

[Oh, someone I know won 200 E and came back feeling as stupid and ignorant as I did last week. Must be a game show feature.]

Bloody men

Bloody, stupid men.

That is all.

And then the man as well! And animal bones!

Oh, such fun! Remember The Vault from last post? Game show, TV? Weeeeeell..... I didn't make a lot of money this time, I was a Negotiator and they never make loads. I won 300 E which will pay part of the tuiton AND SOME BOOKS OH YES MAYBE EVEN MORE THAN SOME! I won't post the harlot pics as such EVER for ophtalmologic hygiene reasons; and there's no point in photoshopping them into B&W bcs what was amazing abt the look was what they did do to my face and hair and THAT only works in colour. So bite your tongues, o rushy ones! They'll eventually show it and I'll eventually tape it, w luck, and then I can photograph the screen and then I'll look at the professions to figure out which one I am [Anthropologist, *clears throat*] and then I'll photograph the screen. Are we cool? We're cool then. [Pardon my English, am still very much addicted to Veronica Mars, LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOVE it!]

Am almost revived. For those of you with knowledge of the human skull, and particularly for those of you familiar with animal skulls, you'll be horrified to know that I have been working since Mon on a powerpoint presentation of the mandible of: Horse, Cow, Sheep/Goat, Dog, Cat, Pig and Rabbit. The Chicken is another group's as a whole. No, I'm not kidding at all. And then there were also the Hyoids and the Pterygoids, which my colleagues did. And finally, and this will bring you to your bloody knees, THE SPHENOID! YES! Still not joking! And did you know that there are a plethora of inter-species differences?? Yes there are! And what fun it was trying to understand exactly what hole/thingy corresponded to what foramen on bones that were so old they had sprouted EXTRA ONES!

GAHHHHHHH!

And the views??? We have to, aside from the .ppt pics for the actual presentation, photograph the whole skull, then the mandible, then the head minus mandible dorsally, ventrally, laterally, medially, rostrally, caudally - and THEN: rostro-caudo-lateral, rostro-caudo-medial etc. close to 300 pics altogether, it's all a bit of a blur by now. Presentation is tomorrow and my 1st year colleagues didn't really see the need to start photographing early enough OR to get in touch w me as I frantically left them messages on the noteboard and roamed the corridors trying to track them down bcs our originally presentation was scheduled for the 4th of November. So I showed up for class and told the professor I would be getting a 0 bcs *cringe* I couldn't locate my colleagues. When the blessed 18 year-olds finally showed up for class that day they told me our presentation had been postponed for a week and really, they weren't worried bcs they both knew, did I see, so it was alright. And I asked them if they didn't find the information worthy of sharing w me and BTW why hadn't I been contacted when I'd been leaving messages everywhere and they said Oh right, were you worried? Maybe we were naive? And let's just say I have been doing a fair amount of roaring and yet no hitting, sadly. That would vastly help my adrenal glands regain their normal shape.

So please, say a quick prayer for me bcs oral presentations absolutely horrify me and I can't think of anything I'd like to do less. Help!

Have you seen this woman?

This is how this post would be: I'd write I have and still cannot believe what they did to me, and then I'd post a pic of it. I just came back from yet another game show called The Vault where I earned some money, yet again, and they made up my face in such a way that I could barely recognise myself, and if you add to that my revolting and absolutely vile new haircut which causes my wavy and really full-bodied hair to hang limply in the vicinity of my ears, WELL. But, alas, no batteries, no pic.

WAIT!

Actually, my knight in pajamas has just found the old camera which turns everything deep red, I'll try and see if DCE Auto-enhancer can make something out of these sorry specimens. Must rush anyway bcs am absolutely overwhelmed w work for the uni and will remain so till Friday, am also fabulastically knackered and shoulders are sore from keeping arms un-naturally raised on the table, they adjusted all chairs so we all looked the same height and.

WAIT!

Pictures ARE all red and I look like some tired Kurfurstendam whore w horrific orange hair so let's skip saving this particular look for posterity, yes?, but I'll try and tape the show in a few weeks and then maybe we can discuss this subject again. I kept starting whenever I caught a glimpse of myself - OH! This reminds me, when I was in that German game show (I swear I don't do this often, this was only the 3rd time) my mother walked right past me. Now, my mother does not see too well and they did give me curls, of sorts, and really brown hair but still, memorable. [My German audience - Hi Udge! - might enjoy this tidbit: during the casting I wanted to talk abt the dolphins Weibchen and instead kept talking abt the Weiber. Yes, yes, you may laugh, it IS hysterical. In my defence, I hadn't spoken German in ages, in fact I rarely ever do. Also gut, weiter lesen.] Now I will go and spend 10 min in the bathroom not so happily scrubbing away. Twas fun almost talking to you again. *sob*

The donkey and the cow and the pig

The donkey and the cow trampled me. The cow shared her threads of saliva abundantly and took off half of my first skin layer, all 500 kg of her, bcs her tongue is a thing of almost-horned beauty. It turns out that pulling out and holding a cow's tongue may be all I need to develop my arm muscles, cramps and all. The donkey was a bloody pain in the ass [HA!] and it took 5 of us to manage to intubate the beast, plus the aid of a few choice instruments whose name in English I very much dis-know but it involved twisting his upper lip so he would allow us to get close to the nares, and then there was some residual bleeding even though we were really gentle but the donkey bit us and took us for a spin and stood on us and threw us against the manger and the walls and each other and blessedly seemed to have forgotten he could kick bcs the box is tiny and managed to injure himself in the process and I am sore all over and sporting lovely eau de bête, despite the coveralls, as the dog can atest to, sniffing and filing away for future use still underway. There was no pig, which is a good thing, pigs make excellent biters, I just added a pig to the title bcs I like them. I am knackered and can barely string 2 sentences together. I will answer the comments from the last post and address my fuguey psyche when I can think again, and will put together a post abt why for most of you it'd be safer to eat from your toilet than to use your kitchen utensils. Not kidding at all. Will go and vegetate now and pretend I won't have to get up in abt 10 h. Igit.

[DM, what the hell is a Lioness Lego/leggo??]