this week i

played the drums, drank beer before the evening rain..



..at least my portuguese is improving.

btw this is andrea.  she works for the brazilian census bureau.  she also plays drums.



understand it's a popular thing to say, but randall munroe is certainly a genius.

consider this a reasonable summary of the country.

read bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook.  in the years of the revolution, a physician fresh out of medical school sent to rural russia.

i suppose you've done a lot of amputations, doctor?

and since it was a man it could not be the worst of all - childbirth

'a transverse lie is a wholly unfavorable position.'  too true.  wholly unfavorable both for the woman and for a doctor who only qualified six months ago

for another hour after that, sipping my cooling tea, i sat over it, turning the pages.  and an interesting thing happened: all the previously obscure passages became entirely comprehensible, as though they had been flooded with light; and there, at night, under the lamplight in the depth of the countryside i realised what real knowledge was

the day turned out splendidly.  after doing my round, i spent the rest of the time lounging around my quarters, whistling snatches of opera, smoking, drumming my fingers on the windowpanes.  outside was a sight i had never seen before.  there was no sky and no earth - only twisting, swirling whiteness, sideways and aslant, up and down, as though the devil had gone mad with a packet of tooth-powder

no one is to be blamed for my death

hydrochloric morphium is terrifying stuff

and if the patient is a married woman, the husband will come to the surgery and throw a chair at you..we all smiled, although there is nothing very funny about people hurling chairs around the surgery

oh, don't worry - i killed him all right.  trust my experience as a surgeon

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