(no subject)

For the last two hours, all I have dreamed about is finding things belonging to other people and losing things that I needed in order to get those things belonging to other people back to them. Seriously, it's exhausting. I spent like ten minutes crossing and re-crossing a street that doesn't even exist in Chicago because I couldn't figure out which direction of bus I needed to take.

So here's the deal: If you've lost something in the dreamtime, I have probably found it. (Dove, your keys, Lifty, your PDA, I could go on.) If this keeps happening, I'm going to leave it all with the dude in the comic book shop. Just...go find him, he'll have your shit, okay?

(no subject)

I have literally not had one good night of sleep this entire week.

It's not insomnia; I have no trouble falling asleep, and never have had. It's that I keep waking up every hour or half hour, for no apparent reason. It's not like I'm not used to sleeping through the train or my air conditioner going on. I'm just not getting to stage four sleep.

It is wearing my patience very, very thin.

I'm doing okay not snarling at staff, but I have a feeling the eight million delivery guys who have passed through my lobby today are taking the brunt of it. Except for the guy who brought me a cookie. He shall be allowed to live.

It must be quota time for the various sales agents around here; yesterday a woman from a local hotel conglomerate brought me cookies as a bribe to get me to send her business card around to all the admins, and today it was a catering company. Not that I'm going to complain; since the incident with the guys last year where I had to threaten to call security to get them to leave, BossBoss and I implemented a "policy" whereby I can tell solicitors "It's policy not to give out any information, but if you give me your card I'll make sure it gets where it needs to go."

In many cases, "Where it needs to go" turns out to be the recycling bin. Or, as Coworker J used to call it, "The Blue File".

I was all excited because today I get to leave work early for a doctor's appointment and I'm leaving early enough that I can head down to the Art Institute afterwards and catch a gallery tour. Unfortunately, if I am still feeling this miserable after the doctor's appointment, I don't think rooms full of stimulating colour are really where I want to be.

Still, it's not like the Art Institute is going anywhere, and I have a membership, so it will still be there when I don't feel like killing people with my brain.

(no subject)

Ohai: trigger warning on this post for (highlight to read) doctors mutilating and then diddling little kids.

So, I was asked to signal boost this story about child genital mutilation at CORNELL UNIVERSITY -- about a doctor cutting up five year old girls because their clitorises are "too big" and then, as a follow up, sexually stimulating those six year old girls to find out if they're still responsive after he cut a piece of their genitals off. I'd seen the story doing the rounds, but I felt a bit hapless, like, okay, let's raise awareness but...what then? Obviously most of the people reading this will be horrified, because most of the people reading this are not idiots, so how do we direct our horror?

So I said to a friend of mine, "I want to signal boost this, but I feel hapless."

And she said, "Allow me to give you a faceful of information!"

If you've read the above story, or seen rm's post on why this is not just about mutilating little children but also about homophobia and misogyny, and you're angry, here are some concrete actions you can take:

Write about your outrage and send it to Weill Cornell: http://weill.cornell.edu/visitors/contact-us.html
Or to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, ORIA at med.cornell.edu, (646) 962-8200
Or to the Dean of the hospital, Antony M. Gotto Jr, dean at med.cornell.edu
Or to the college's general address: Weill Cornell Medical College, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065.

And of course, pass it on.