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I had part two of a three part rool canal today. My tooth had died and there was an inflammation in the attached bone. Part two involved getting all the dead nerve out of the inside of the tooth.
Normally, it would all be done in one shot but after drilling me for a while, he told me had to wait for the swelling in my bone to go down before he could finish filling my hole.
I agreed.
I’ve decided upon a new rule to enact whenever I purchase a single muffin at a coffee shop or somewhere that likewise sells solitary muffins. I find out which kind of muffins they have (or just look at them all), and I get the one the sounds the least appealing (or looks the least appetizing). I recommend trying this out, as it has led to some very tasty discoveries. Today’s Raspberry Almond, for instance, which didn’t sound as good as my old preference, Blueberry, but was in fact delightful. Of course, it has also led me to eating some awful ones…so adopt this rule at your own peril.
(Or if you don’t like muffins, you can apply the same rule to the chicks in a coffee shop. The results will be pretty much the same.)
Backstory: I moved a couple months ago.
There are lots of cool things about my new place, but most are your standard-issue cool things that I knew about well in advance of moving in. (Proximity to things, the solitude, the weird ladder/stairs hybrid…) Then there are those things that I had no idea about until after I moved.
The first is that when I search for “St. John’s” in Google Maps, I’m living damn close to the default pin location. No more centering it around my address first, or bothering with my street address for directions. It’s the little things. Check it:
(On a related note, my new street doesn’t look like a penis.)
Looking at my flickr stream today, I noticed an inordinately high…well, just look (bottom-left corner):
Almost one hundred views? Of a blank white square? Really??
My sister asked me to write an MCAT essay as an example using the sample topic: In politics, the end rarely justifies the means.
The instructions were as follows:
Write a unified essay in which you perform the following tasks. Explain what you think the above statement means. Describe a specific situation in which a political end might justify using questionable means for accomplishing that end. Discuss what you think determines whether or not a political end justifies the means for accomplishing that end.
Here’s what I wrote (Time limit, 30 mins, I used ~15):
To say that the end rarely justifies the means, as it relates to politics, is to say that regardless of the positive results that may be garnered from a particular action, that action should still not have been undertaken if the action did not have merit or nobility in and of itself.
I believe the end can certainly justify the means, however it is highly dependent on the circumstances surrounding the means used. Specifically, in politics, the level of transparency, the potential damage of the means and willingness of constituents to allow the behavior.
For example, it is common practice for a government to ease taxes or provide subsidies to attract corporations to set up in their jurisdiction. The means, being the subsidies, are undoubtedly questionable — they hurt the free market, they show favoritism to certain industries, and they use community funds help an organization that has no particular vested interest in helping the community. The ends, however, an economic shot-in-the-arm and reach for increased stability, are often worth the sacrifice.
The reason this is allowed to occur is three-fold. One, it is a very transparent process. The general public knows the details of the arrangement, as they are widly published and approved via a legislative body. Two, the potential damage is limited. The worst-case scenario is that the company moves back out. The third is that the community members are okay with the practice. The more jobs in the community, the better the quality of life for those who live there.
The ends in this case justify the means. There is a particular danger in basing an economy around subsided industry, however. One need only look to the crumbling Michigan economy, once based around the subsided auto insdustry. So if the community in question didn’t support the action or the financial incentives were kept secret, it would be much harder to justify the means.
It started at midnight on Friday and before I knew it, I was dozing off Monday night, three days older, one book richer and twelve cubits more insane.
In the end, I hit about 22,000 words. Initially I was aiming only for 30k, with no concerns of quality or plot or editing. But on day 1 something magical happened. My story came together. Day 1 is usually filled with fear and doubt and general longing to be anywhere but in front of your computer. But not this year. This year I typed like mad on that first day, and when I wasn’t typing, I was connecting dots in my head. By the end of it, I was 10K words in, and had taken my vague 8-point outline to a 24-beat, laid-on-in-front-of-me story frame.
The title: The 12 Mistakes I Made When I Was 17
It’s about a man in his 30s looking back at the one fateful year in his life where he made an escalating succession of mistakes that led him down the wrong path. I don’t know if that makes it sound interesting or not.
Day 2 (and the beginning of 3) was spent writing to the outline, and deciding how to fix all the things that weren’t lining up quite right. Then, almost all of day 3 was patch-and-backfill to get everything lined up, and then a single pass of editing. It couldn’t have gone better if I tried.
Lastly, I have to write that I was wholly unprepared. I had almost no food around, I had no beverages of any kind, my place was a mess and I had no clean underwear. I should’ve fixed all that last week before starting. (I can write commando for one day, but not three.) I’m writing this down so I don’t do it again next year. Having to do real-life stuff like finding food and doing laundry kept me from going completely nuts I think, but also kept me from sleeping or writing more.
So anyway, it’s over, and this week I have two things to do: mail the manuscript that I think may be the best thing anyone has ever written, ever, and read it through again to cure my delusion.
“Angus wept.”
Ok, I didn’t really put that sentence in my book, (though I may have named a barely-a-character after me) nor did I weep. But today, while thinking about the ending to my story, I welled up.
I don’t know if I’m starting to crack or the mania is setting in or what, but there’s something messed up about being in Starbucks and having an emotional response to something that you haven’t even really created yet.
This is the 3-Day magic.
Day 1, and everything came together. My vague outline turned into to a perfectly laid out chain with not a single missing link. Now it’s simply a matter of, you know, writing the rest of it. I put up 10,050 words. Big numbers there. In fact, it was the most I’d ever written in one day.
Today’s goal is to kick that number in the balls.
I took a long nap last night and got up at midnight to start. I got 3,000 words written before I packed it in around 4:30. I laid down some beautiful groundwork last night.
I got up again at 9, and I’m ready for another sprint. Writing at home worked very well last night but today I’m going back to the old writing-locale standby, coffee shops.
All I have to say so far is: yee-haw!
12 hours, 11 minutes to go…
The stokage is climbing, the last-minute prep-list is being written (batteries for my wireless mouse, snacks for my wireless body) and an idea is forming. I’m going with something I thought up a few weeks ago. Sadly, telling you about it would take the piss out of the whole thing, so I can’t do that right yet. I’ll post a description when I get it rolling.
This year, I’m not going it alone either. A couple friends are joining in on the pressurized deliciousness. Why aren’t you?
12 hours, 9 minutes…