i'll never complain about acne again.

this is noventhree, and i'm watching a documentary about him on the learning channel called, with television's usual degree of tact, subtlety and pavlova-esque grace, FACE EATING TUMOR (hyphen left out by the network, and yes, it is killing me to not insert it myself). noventhree suffers from a disease known as gigantiform cementoma, which causes the middle layer of his teeth to grow uncontrollably. the lumps are bone, not soft tissue, and in this picture make up more or less his entire face. he's five years old there. you can read about his case and his surgery here, and this show will be airing on TLC several times over the next few days. it'll knee you right in the emotional groin.

every once in a while i like to slap myself around with something like this, just to make sure i'm looking at my life through appropriately colored lenses. "touching the void" kept me from complaining about anything for a while, because no matter how bad a time i was having, i sure as hell wasn't dragging my shattered leg down a frozen mountain with no food and no water for the fourth straight day. today i spent an embarrassing amount of time poking at two overly ripe pimples on my sweaty, premenstrual chin, but that's all done with now. let my entire face erupt into pustules and hemorrhagic lesions, i'll sing a little song about it and curtsy my thanks.

it's never any less amazing to me, what human beings will find a way to suck it up and suffer through. one of the best days of noventhree's young life was the one on which all of his basic facial features, like his nose and mouth, were recognizable. there is nothing, not one thing, wrong with my life.

my hospital wing has no windows.

there are days when you can't save anyone. there's nothing to be done for any patient you touch, and they know that, and their doctors know that, and someone will have to make a phone call and tell the people who love them that, and on those days i'm not so grateful for anything as i am for not having to be the person who makes those calls, one after another after another.

animals guard their disease. they flinch when you place your hand on their skin over the hidden tumor, reach around anxiously to nudge you away from their secret. sick but treatable cats get furious at being handled, they scream and writhe and lunge and demand that you let them sleep it off in peace, but the ones who can't be helped know, and they don't waste any energy getting angry. still, they can tell when you're about to make a decisive discovery, and they'll squirm in a pathetic way that proves they aren't really trying to get away from you, they're just embarrassed at being found out in such an undignified manner, in a strange room filled with strange people. cats want very much to be allowed to die alone. dogs want this, too, but they want it differently. dogs hide their mortality from their own people, but they don't worry so much about what the rest of us know. they don't want you to find their cancer, but it's because they're worried about whom you'll reveal it to. i've seen dogs lie flat and motionless for entire days while people walk in and out of their runs attaching monitors, drawing blood, aspirating tissues, poking and stabbing and shaving while the pet stares ahead glassily, not responding to even the most invasive of actions, and everyone around them will be sure they won't last through the night. but in the evening their families will come to the hospital to visit with them, and they'll stand up happily and bark, and when we say that we're doing all we can, or have done all we can, those families refuse to believe us. this is what their dog wanted--to rescue them one last time. i had to put my dog to sleep on my twenty-fourth birthday. she had a tumor in her spleen that had caused internal bleeding and she hadn't eaten in two days; by the time my mother called to tell me what was happening my dog was too weak to even lift her head, but when i walked through the door she looked up at me and wagged her tail. when i sat on the floor to talk to her i was crying, and she wouldn't look me in the face. i worry all the time that she died thinking she had let me down.

someone has to make those phone calls.

a lot of the oncologists and emergency doctors are compulsive runners, five miles before work, five miles on their lunch breaks, ten miles when they get home; i'm sure in that position i'd do whatever it took, too, to fall into bed too exhausted to think at all about what i'd done that day, or what i'd failed to do.

today was one of those days. every dog on the ultrasound table looked up at me and licked my nose as the radiologist inserted a needle into the inoperable mass in the pup's lung or liver or kidney, and after nine hours i walked out of the hospital into the barely breathing remnants of a hurricane that has killed what may be thousands of good, blameless people and watched as a woman in an enormous vehicle leaned on her horn because the person in front of her had chosen not to run the red light, and i thought that nobody gets what he or she deserves. i came home to my little cat who had missed me all day and who tried to climb up my leg, she was so anxious to be in my lap, whom i would give up anything for and will also not be able to save, and i thought that maybe i would take up jogging.

how does anyone have a child? i can keep the tiny life that depends on me safe inside of my house and know that the worst things that happen to her in a day are my going to work and shutting her out of the bathroom, and i feel awful knowing that i have to upset her even that much. but people have children and send them out into the world, this mad, murderous, unnavigable world, because sooner or later they have no choice but to do so. how do they manage it? how do they convince themselves it isn't a cruelty just to create that life in the first place, knowing what it's going to have to fight its way through? how do they convince themselves that they'll find a way to keep that person safe?

i couldn't do it. i would be too afraid that my child would turn out like me, and i couldn't condemn someone i would love so desperately to the sort of fumbling and guilty existence i've found myself in.

i would like very much, though, to adopt a dog.

MY secret boyfriend is dreamier than YOUR secret boyfriend.

malcolm gladwell is speaking at two events in this year's new yorker festival, both on saturday, september 24. the first explores the american obsession with precociousness (which is uncannily similar to the dominant theme of each and every one of my family gatherings, "grampy's obsession with joon's precociousness." these lectures vary somewhat but inevitably end with the touching story of how, as a toddler, i would go into my grandparents' refrigerator and spend what sounds like it must have been hours passing silent judgment on their strawberries, trying to choose the biggest and reddest one. i enjoy this story, even after having heard it all these trillions of times, because it proves that my maximizing tendencies are inborn and probably not something i should beat myself up about. after all, it's not too much of a problem; i was always very pleased with my perfect strawberry, and still am), and the second is a talk with the hip-hop group the roots. how deliciously multifarious! he's covering education, developmental psychology and pop culture, all in one twelve-hour stretch, not to mention the many exciting things he'll have to say about projects still in the works. he also has a piece in the 8/29 issue of the new yorker on the shameful state of america's health care, and this piece in the 9/5 issue about the food industry's frankensteinian attempts to engineer a perfect cookie. *swoonyfawningsigh* top that, chad michael murray! who's hot stuff now, bright eyes? not you, you whiny, formulaic little wank! NOT YOU!!!

here's the thing... i can't go. but all of you in the manhattan area, this is your big chance to step up and prove to me that we really will be Best Friends Forever. you, my darlings, my zealously faithful minions, will have to stalk him in my stead. remember the rules: bring plenty of candy, maintain enough distance to keep things from turning creepy, and sing a pretty song. but not while he's talking, that would be rude. don't be rude. remember, you're my ambassadors. grant him your undivided attention until you're absolutely certain he's finished, tell him he's lovely, and pour some sugar on him.

but joon, you might ask, why can't you be there? don't you want to stand by your man? what kind of slouching, deadbeat excuse for a secret girlfriend are you, anyway?

well, i'll tell you. i will, too, and don't think i won't. here it comes, me telling you, so you'd better take a deep breath and grab hold of a large stationary object with a solid foundation, because you're about to get told. right now. i mean it. i hope you're sitting down, and if you're not, you can't say i didn't provide you with ample warning. i can't go because

*hrrrmmpphhhmmmuhkkkkn*








what? i'm sorry, did you not catch that? oh, well, what i said was--oh, oops, hello? hello? i can't quite hear you... these stupid tunnels, they get me every time. anyway, buy your tickets right away, and maybe you should look into some of the other events too, there might be someone else worth seeing. this sure is a long tunnel. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN HEAR ME BUT I'M GOING TO HANG UP NOW. BYE.


update, 10:32 pm, 8/26/05: malcolm was just name-dropped on numb3rs, a show on cbs about another of my favorite nerds, this one a math genius. he's slightly less dreamy because he's imaginary, but my heart still went pitter-pat as the weight of the fact of one of them discussing the other right in my own bedroom gently warped the irridescent fabric of my silly little universe.

update, 10:47 am, 8/30/05: the precociousness lecture is already sold out. john updike's and ani difranco's events are not. i, um, well, we know how i feel about malcolm, but still... that's nuts.

aside, 1:24 am, 10/1/05: i see you, alissa quart. be polite and say hello.

this product is BOLLOCKS

i read a dazzling review of adidas' cotton-infused absorbent-deo in "jane," which i'm not usually afraid to take seriously, and was elated to hear that there was an aluminum-free product that would actually tame my ever-dewy pits, which, between nine hours of wrestling large goofy dogs, the hour walk home from the hospital, and the recent stretch of ninety-degree days featuring 112% relative humidity, needed more than a little taming. i shelled out twice what i thought should have been necessary, in spite of its pungent and not at all enticing aroma, and trotted home dreaming desiccated, shower-fresh dreams. look at it: wetness control, right there in small caps, smack in the center of the label. 24 hrs of it, no less.

BOLLOCKS. i'm sweatier than ever. i think my mistake was assuming that "breakthru" means the same thing as "breakthrough," as in the sudden opening up of some new way of scientific achievement. in fact, "breakthru" is defined as "a sharply packaged product containing water (aqua), fragrance (parfum) and ext. d&c violet no. 2 that will not do anything its promoters will tell you it does, but that you, a sucker, will buy after an unscrupulous 'jane' staffer lies to you about its efficacy."

well, as an infinitesimal consolation, when i ask people if they like my new dress i can now offhandedly mention that it's made entirely of gossypium herbaceum threads.

the final haiku

you have served me well,
my seventeen devoted
allies . . . now you die!


this is the end. once upon a time i decided that all of those boys with their shapely and impact-free consorts could fall down a well; i aim to live a life unburdened by the desire for vengeance. not that i was exacting much vengeance slapping meaningless handfuls of words together, but it was the self-serving mission i started out with. anyhow, no more. i crave a guileless language.

but i won't advocate achieving it through trickery or software. watch this space for my lengthy diatribe on how the jerk-o-meter is destined to bring a definitive end to worthwhile interpersonal communication.

i adore you. that's sincere. i am 100% invested in this conversation.

canada produces quality goods.

sleep well, big guy. thanks for everything.

are we all such old dogs?

my grandfather was
wounded in japan. he bears
the folks no ill will.


yesterday stephen walker, author of shockwave: countdown to hiroshima, was on book-tv discussing his work, and he said some things i have problems accepting but no trouble believing. apparently the united states developed the atomic bomb as a precaution against germany developing a weapon of the same caliber. fair enough. but even after it was indisputable that germany was making no attempt to do so (thanks in no small part to hitler's dislike of "jewish physics"), the u.s. decided they still had to drop it somewhere; the president wasn't about to face the american people with the fact that he'd spent millions of taxpayers' dollars on a weapon that was just going to sit around in a storage facility. so the folks in charge selected japan, even though they had no comparable weapons to speak of, either. there was a fledgling atomic program in japan, but nothing had come of it by that time. someone, at this point, will always attempt to argue that it doesn't make any sense to wait around until something does come of it, and i'd concede to that argument, especially when talking about an enemy who had already attacked us once, if we had dropped the atomic bomb on a target where known atomic research or weapons development was taking place. but that isn't what happened.

the united states selected a target that had been more or less untouched by previous bombings, so the population wouldn't be too emotionally dulled. hiroshima was bordered on three sides by mountains that would significantly magnify the bomb's impact. they studied one hundred and fifty years' worth of weather patterns in the region so they could attack at a time of year when conditions would be conducive to a maximum of destruction. it was known that the bomb let off an incredibly bright flash at the moment of detonation, visible for a radius of between fifty and a hundred miles; a memo was circulated suggesting that loud sirens be released alongside the bomb so people on the ground would look up, and anyone who wasn't killed by the blast would at least be permanently blinded.

there was no military base in hiroshima. there may have been a few hundred military personnel among the tens of thousands of civilians in the city. there was a munitions factory, and some of the torpedoes fired by japan in the attack on pearl harbor may have been built there.

the scientists who had designed the weapon petitioned, pleaded, with the coordinators of the manhattan project to halt its production. they maintained that there was no longer any call for it, and they couldn't see any good coming of the existence of a thing so terrible. robert oppenheimer, the head of the project, intercepted the petitions on their way to president roosevelt and stuck them in a drawer.

this was not a preemptive mission, and it was not the only way to end the war. it was vengeance. it was us showing them.

remind you of anything?

people will always see things the way they want to see them, i guess. i think blind patriotism is an affliction, but other people can't seem to get past the good old days of manifest destiny. from an associated press article published this morning:

A group of veterans offered a...message across the park from the more than 500 activists [in favor of nuclear disarmament]. One sign read: "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima."

In Washington, G.R. Quinn, 54, of Bethesda, Md., held a sign across from the White House reading: "God Bless the Enola Gay," referring to the B-29 that dropped the first bomb.

quotes of the day

ah, the miracle
of communication--not
what we'll witness here.



i will make you vomit! and my poison will make your heart stop! i could rot your insides!
--ruud "the bugman" kleinpaste, "the island of giant bugs"



make no mistake about it, we are at war; the violence in recent days in iraq is a grim reminder...
--george "the duh-man" bush, "address to the american legislative exchange council"