Bleeding Fiction

Little things can sneak up on you. Deadlines. Traffic signals.

Kidneys.

A sleepy Alabama night saw a young couple driving down the long road towards Birmingham. The husband was behind the wheel, a little bit tired, but pushed on by thoughts of the Labor Day barbecue that was waiting for him the next day at his parents' house. He caught himself sniffing the air for cornbread. His wife caught him, too, and jabbed him playfully in the ribs before turning towards the back seat to check on her baby girl, their pride and joy, who'd woken up and was starting to fuss. Neither of them saw the other truck until it was too late.

Hours later, the man wrapped his one good arm around his wife; the other, in a sling, had broken. His wife touched her hand to the clear plastic of a small creche. Their baby lay beneath that bubble, very still. A doctor, waiting a respectful distance away, coughed and the woman grimaced at the sound. The stitches in her cheek pulled her face too tight. "It's for the best, isn't it," she said into her husband's chest. "At least this way part of her will live on." The man took one last look at his baby girl and then nodded to the doctor.

That's how I imagine it, anyway. All I know for sure is that my parents got the call at 6:30 yesterday morning: a kidney was being flown to New York from Alabama and it was a match for my mother. Could she make it to the hospital? The day was a flurry of activity, but by 10:30 at night my mom was in recovery with another, tiny kidney working inside her. If all goes well over the next few days, my mom will be in the pink and healthier than she's been in ages.

Two strange facts, though. First, the doctors haven't bothered to remove either the pair of kidneys she was born with or the one she got from my dad a few years back, so my mom has four kidneys floating around inside right now.

Second, it really was a baby whose kidney she got, which makes the whole thing a somewhat mixed blessing. In medical terms, though, babies are pretty much ideal - succulent young baby flesh is highly adaptable and extremely hardy, with a long life ahead of it. The tiny kidney will grow to full adult size in about a month. Weird, no?

Got my hair cut yesterday. I don't think the girl was a very good listener. See, I told her how I wanted my hair cut - which basically came down to "like it is now, only an inch shorter" - but she did something largely different. Something that involved gel. It's not a bad haircut, per se; I've been getting compliments around the office, actually. It's just a little too short. A little too "bowly." A little too... well... Willard.

No photo of me (damn again my lack of a camera!), but for reference purposes check out Crispin Glover in the role:

I just keep telling myself that it'll grow back. Also, I don't use gel.

I went to visit my local comic shop today, just to see if they had anything new for me. I was only there for a few moments when I heard someone say "Seriously, Lobo would so beat Cthulhu in a fight."

I knew then that it was time to leave, but my head twisted round - choppily, as if on a gear - to see who'd said it. He was in his early 40's, balding and wearing a black leather jacket with "Bite Me Fanboy" enamelled onto the back. In other words, he had a copy of Lobo's jacket.

I knew then that it was time to leave. As I bolted for the door, a conversation - no, a serious debate sprang up behind me.

There are depths of fanboyish geekiness to which no one should ever sink...

The school year is starting up soon, which means that most of the some 2,000 international students and scholars the University of Washington takes in each year have shown up in the past two weeks. It's been my job to play ring-master for these folks when they wander into my office; I collect and copy their immigration documents and generally herd them to where they need to be to attend their initial orientation (part one of seven). I've got some experience at this sort of thing, but it's still keeping me hopping.

Some perspective: I'm contracted for 20 hours of work a week. I've worked about 35 in each of the past two weeks, and only kept the hours that few by completely ignoring all of the other projects I have going on and the general office work I have to do. Friday night, I dreamed that I was still at work. (I also dreamed that The Ogre™ and I were back in New Jersey, trying to dig a roving bio-van out of the snow. Then Nick showed up to help us along with his dad, who was actually James Hetfield. But that's neither here nor there.)

So, 35 hours a week. Less than full time, but every hour was on my feet, on the move and projecting my voice to the far reaches of the hallway. I didn't exactly have quiet evenings after that, either, as I was either out with friends or co-workers until late. I was going full-tilt, and by Friday afternoon it had caught up with me. I had a fever. Like a car, I overheated.

Idiot that I am, I went out Friday night and got together with friends all day Saturday. Fever was gone by Saturday night, but so was my voice. So today's a recovery day; tea and chicken soup and not saying a damn word. All this so that I can be fit to go to work tomorrow.

The craziest part of this? I'm looking forward to getting back to work. I really love my job.

For years, I've called Scrubs my favorite show that I never watch, and it's true. I love the show, absolutely love it, but for whatever reason I've never ended up watching it regularly. Honestly? I think I've only ever seen maybe three episodes. But even still I love it.

So it's to my infinite joy that Comedy Central has decided to show Scrubs in syndication twice nightly (back-to-back, starting at 7pm), from the start of the series. They're showing it, too, on the station that is the unholy love-child of the WB and UPN; the same episodes, but at 6 and 10. I'm hopelessly addicted.

Here's the premise: Three young doctors are interning at a hospital. Hilarity ensues. Now here's what it's about: being surreal. Take this situation: the main character, J.D., tells a patient that she's got to go on dialysis or else die. She chooses death. Into her room walks a delivery guy, asks J.D. to sign for a ton of bricks. Distracted, J.D. signs. The delivery guy steps back. Bricks fall from the sky and bury J.D. (Follow up joke: "Can I get my pen back?") Then a quick cut and we're back to the conversation.

And if that weren't enough, the whole thing is set up earlier in the show by the delivery guy standing prominently in the background. The show's damn smart, in other words.

Scrubs also treats its music importantly. Early in one episode, two doctors in surgery are arguing over what song to put on while they operate. The song is then either playing in the background or sung by a character at various points throughout the episode.

The whole cast is perfect, but I only want to talk about two people. First up, Zach Braff. The dude wrote, directed, produced and starred in Garden State, which is not only where he's from but also one of my favorite movies. Ever. Dude's riding pretty high on my list of awesomest people in the world. Second, there's Sarah Chalke, who I'm weirded out to know was the second Becky on Rosanne. However, she's adorable and awkward and very, very cute in Scrubs. So that's okay.

Okay, I'm done gushing now.

Except for one thing: sound effects. When someone turns quickly, or when someone checks their watch, there's a noise not unlike the snap of a whip. Though I'm doubtful, I hope that you understand the produndity of the next thing I type: It's just like Parker Lewis Can't Lose. 'Nuff said.

As you may have noticed, almost all of the entries from the old bleedingfiction.com are now up on the new blog. This is thanks entirely to my totally awesome web hostess, Bettina. I moved on from there and assigned categories to most of the old posts.

Still ahead, I have to re-load all of the old pictures I'd stored on the server and put into my posts. Also, I need to fix the internal links - where I link one of my own entries in a later entry - because MovableType uses a different naming convention than Graymatter does.

I'm not sure if anyone cares about any of this, but I like looking through my blog archives on occasion, seeing where I was and what I wrote. And I think it's neat that I can now do it by category.

Foreign students at The Wash have tons of opportunities to get to know each other, the school and Seattle before classes start. Yesterday's came in the form of a boat cruise. I tagged along because the cruise (like most of these activities) was run by my friends at FIUTS (Foundation for International Understanding Through Students), who I got to know through my awesome job (which I keep meaning to talk more about).

The cruise itself was nothing special; a three-hour jaunt around Elliott Bay and out into Puget Sound, dinner included. But it made me feel like a kid again. I used to ride the Circle Line around Manhattan, out to the Statue of Liberty and back, with my summer camp or my folks. I loved that trip: the view of the city skyline, looking up at the Statue as you got close, the motion of the boat and the watery breeze, without that discomfitting sense of being too far from land. That all came back to me yesterday, and I spent the cruise chatting about it and a bunch of other things with friends from FIUTS and international students I met.

This afternoon, a friend of mine from work, Bill, came up to me and said "Can I ask you a personal question?" I agreed, and Bill said "how long have you been dating Alicia?"

I blinked. I said "Buh?" I explained to Bill that the first time I'd met Alicia was yesterday, on the cruise. Then I turned an interesting shade of pink. Here's the story: Bill is friends with one of the FIUTS people, who saw me and Alicia (also a FIUTS person) talking yesterday, jumped to a conclusion and related the whole thing to Bill. No clue where the idea came from; it's not like we were spooning on the foredeck or anything.

Don't get me wrong, Alicia's cool; fun, smart, very cute and with superb (though not quite perfect) taste in music. I wouldn't right now, as I expressed to Bill, mind dating Alicia. I also expressed that I didn't do much towards any sort of dating; I didn't get the girl's number, for example. It simply didn't occur to me to do so. Bill, for his part, expressed that Alicia may or may not be dating someone right now. Helpful, that.

Alicia is dating someone.

This fact did not stop her from saying "yeah, it's crazy, I've been going around telling everyone about this great guy I met and how we have the same taste in music and how awesome he is."

I am bitter and filled with hate.