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Mar. 5th, 2012 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. So...
Me (to coworker): Off to see the doc, will see you tomorrow.
Coworker K: You okay?
Me: Fine, neurologist for the essential tremor, did you know by the way that March is International Essential Tremor Awareness Month?
Coworker: You're kidding? (I shake my head) You should tell your boss that.
Me: That's what I thought...or just put up a sign in my cubicle stating this is national essential tremor month which basically promotes awareness against discrimination of people with essential tremors.
Coworker (who is also former boss from another company) bursts out laughing.
We are discriminated against though. I told my neurologist about it.
Neurologist: I kept looking at you reading in the waiting room to see if I could see a tremor, but I don't. It's stable.
Me: Well today it is. And generally speaking. Just when I pick up anything heavy, or get really nervous or upset. Like when I went to see my boss and he attacked me, and said, why do you shake? No one else shakes?
Neurologist: Well, that would do it. You know what you can do? You can take a slightly higher dosage, maybe half a second pill - before you know you have to go see your boss about something or have a really stressful event.
2. Loving this book that lj user green_mai recommended, entitled The Fault in Our Stars - it's told in the first person narrative voice of a sixteen year old girl with lung cancer. And it's hilarious. Also deeply touching and captures the teenage voice fairly well.
In addition it manages to explain Mark Watches style on his blog. He's going after a teen audience, guys. He wants to write a YA novel - so he is trying to write in the style of a 16 year old boy. Which is basically lots of Caps and OMGs'. I noticed it in this book as well. Although only for a few sentences and only in regards to text messaging.
The novel has a very snarky sense of humor. I'm 20% of the way through - I had to do something in the doctor's office and on the way to the doctor's office. You see the doctor for ten - fifteen minutes tops, but have to wait 45 minutes. It's annoying.
Took me two hours and a half for a 15 minute visit. An hour to the office, an hour waiting, and a half home.
I should give an example? Because John Green rocks at dialogue. Finally, someone who can write dialogue, was beginning to lose hope. Dialogue is apparently harder to writer than I thought.
In this sample - Hazel, our protagonist, is at a Cancer Support Group in the Basement of an Episcople Church. Issac has just told everyone that he is going to lose his vision to eye cancer. He's brought his pal, Augustus who suffers from bone cancer, but is currently in remission.
Patrick said, "Augustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."
"My fears?"
"Yes."
"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."
"Too soon," Issac said, cracking a smile.
"Was that insensitive?" Augustus asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings."
Issac was laughing, but Patrick raised a chastening finger and said, "Augustus, please. Let's return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"
"I did," Augustus answered.
Patrick seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"
I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person - not the hand-raising type.
And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, his delight evident, immediately said, "Hazel!" I was, I'm sure, he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.
I looked over at August Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this "- I gestured encompassingly -"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that everyone else does."
I do have quibbles about a few sections. The author stereotypes gender something fierce at times. Seriously, dude, I'm female and I LOVED "V for Vendetta". And yes, women like boy's films, we have to. There are so few films made for us. Boy's on the other hand, don't have this problem. The author is such a sexist "Man" at times, albeit no more so than any other male writer that I've read or watched a tv or movie from to date. But other than that..no problems so far. Well, except that I don't get the whole video-games bit - the male characters are into video games (they are also 17 years of age) - Hazel isn't, but that's just me, I've never understood the appeal of video games. Neither does my brother or father. The only one in our family who has an iota of patience for electronic games seems to be my mother. Odd, I know. But there it is.
But so far? This is a good read. Really good.
Off to make dinner.
Me (to coworker): Off to see the doc, will see you tomorrow.
Coworker K: You okay?
Me: Fine, neurologist for the essential tremor, did you know by the way that March is International Essential Tremor Awareness Month?
Coworker: You're kidding? (I shake my head) You should tell your boss that.
Me: That's what I thought...or just put up a sign in my cubicle stating this is national essential tremor month which basically promotes awareness against discrimination of people with essential tremors.
Coworker (who is also former boss from another company) bursts out laughing.
We are discriminated against though. I told my neurologist about it.
Neurologist: I kept looking at you reading in the waiting room to see if I could see a tremor, but I don't. It's stable.
Me: Well today it is. And generally speaking. Just when I pick up anything heavy, or get really nervous or upset. Like when I went to see my boss and he attacked me, and said, why do you shake? No one else shakes?
Neurologist: Well, that would do it. You know what you can do? You can take a slightly higher dosage, maybe half a second pill - before you know you have to go see your boss about something or have a really stressful event.
2. Loving this book that lj user green_mai recommended, entitled The Fault in Our Stars - it's told in the first person narrative voice of a sixteen year old girl with lung cancer. And it's hilarious. Also deeply touching and captures the teenage voice fairly well.
In addition it manages to explain Mark Watches style on his blog. He's going after a teen audience, guys. He wants to write a YA novel - so he is trying to write in the style of a 16 year old boy. Which is basically lots of Caps and OMGs'. I noticed it in this book as well. Although only for a few sentences and only in regards to text messaging.
The novel has a very snarky sense of humor. I'm 20% of the way through - I had to do something in the doctor's office and on the way to the doctor's office. You see the doctor for ten - fifteen minutes tops, but have to wait 45 minutes. It's annoying.
Took me two hours and a half for a 15 minute visit. An hour to the office, an hour waiting, and a half home.
I should give an example? Because John Green rocks at dialogue. Finally, someone who can write dialogue, was beginning to lose hope. Dialogue is apparently harder to writer than I thought.
In this sample - Hazel, our protagonist, is at a Cancer Support Group in the Basement of an Episcople Church. Issac has just told everyone that he is going to lose his vision to eye cancer. He's brought his pal, Augustus who suffers from bone cancer, but is currently in remission.
Patrick said, "Augustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."
"My fears?"
"Yes."
"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."
"Too soon," Issac said, cracking a smile.
"Was that insensitive?" Augustus asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings."
Issac was laughing, but Patrick raised a chastening finger and said, "Augustus, please. Let's return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"
"I did," Augustus answered.
Patrick seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"
I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person - not the hand-raising type.
And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, his delight evident, immediately said, "Hazel!" I was, I'm sure, he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.
I looked over at August Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this "- I gestured encompassingly -"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that everyone else does."
I do have quibbles about a few sections. The author stereotypes gender something fierce at times. Seriously, dude, I'm female and I LOVED "V for Vendetta". And yes, women like boy's films, we have to. There are so few films made for us. Boy's on the other hand, don't have this problem. The author is such a sexist "Man" at times, albeit no more so than any other male writer that I've read or watched a tv or movie from to date. But other than that..no problems so far. Well, except that I don't get the whole video-games bit - the male characters are into video games (they are also 17 years of age) - Hazel isn't, but that's just me, I've never understood the appeal of video games. Neither does my brother or father. The only one in our family who has an iota of patience for electronic games seems to be my mother. Odd, I know. But there it is.
But so far? This is a good read. Really good.
Off to make dinner.