My Prayers Answered

This article made me laugh almost throughout reading it. I found it entirely too funny to not post here (full disclosure: I am me, sleep-deprived delirious, and Atheist Plus).

Basically a group of American scientists, led by Dr. Herber Benson from the Harvard Medical School, asked three Christian groups to pray for specific heart surgery patients. The prayers were given first names and last initials of the patients and were asked to pray for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" for each patient starting the night prior to their surgery and continuing for two weeks. The scientists then studied what effects, if any, there were in 1,800 patients being observed over 30 days.

I started chuckling in the second paragraph, where Dr. Benson "emphasized that they looked only at the effect of prayer on the patients in their study and could not address questions such as whether God exists or answers prayers." But what really takes the cake is the conclusion; the results showed that prayer had no effect on the patients' recovery, and the kicker is that there were actually more complications in patients who knew they were being prayed for!

Okay, so it's funny enough that this study was done - let's not rely on the scientific resources that are required to cut open your chest, muck around in there, sew you back up, and load you up with drugs to heal it all up. No, I think chanting incantations to an invisible being in the sky is what will make for a successful surgery. In this study at least, it appears the latter option is not where you should be putting your faith for recovery from surgery, since apparently the prayers to God resulted not in better surgery results but increased complications. As a result, this Atheist Plus can't help but laugh her ass off at the prayer monkeys.

Overheard In New York #3 (kind of)

I was walking down some street in Manhattan when I ran into a crush of humans bottlenecked between sidewalk vendors. As I was weaving my way through the crowd, I watched women grabbing at the fake designer bags being sold off the pavement. One woman picked out a bag as I was approaching her and asked, "How much for this one?" The seller replied, "Forty-five." She didn't want to pay that much and stood there blankly saying, "Oh. Hmm." Quickly the vendor said, "Okay, how much you want to pay? You tell me how much." The lady answered, "Ahh. Hmm." So he repeated, "How much? You tell me!" By this point I was directly in her blind spot, and as I slid past behind her, under my breath over her shoulder with my back to the vendor, I whispered, "Say twenty." And continued to walk past her. I didn't look back, but I heard her movement and could feel her looking to see who had spoken in her ear. Then I heard her say, "Um. Twenty?" and the seller answered, "Yeah, okay, twenty dollars!" I smiled to myself and disappeared into the crowd.

One Reason We'll Be Stuck With The Conservatives For Awhile

Ashley MacIssac wants to be the new leader of the federal Liberal Party. Seriously.

On The Spot Parody

Often when somebody says something, it reminds me of a song, either because they've said the exact lyric out of one or because it's similar enough to a lyric. My instinctual reaction is to immediately sing it back to the person, much to their confusion. In Psych class we've talked a lot about 'memory', but the one time the prof referred to the plural form 'memories', I instantly started to sing "Memories, like the corners of my mind, misty water coloured memories, of the way we were, etc." Why? I don't know. Can't help myself. But many times nobody has said a lyric I know, just something close, so I simply write a new little ditty on the fly. These little impromptu songs are maximum silly since they come off the top of my head (or back of my neck if you prefer). Last week I was at my aunt's house for dinner, after we ate she started loading dishes into the dishwasher and said, "Looks like it's going to be a three load day." So obviously, I turned and replied by singing the tune of 'Three Blind Mice' with new words.

Three load day,
Three load day,
She went after them with a scrubby brush,
They cowered under the faucet rush,
Three load day,
Three load day.

Office Works

There are many quirky things about working in the unique environment that is the office. A few weeks ago, the absurdity surrounding the travels of some newsletters across the country captured my imagination and my laugh chords, so I must relate the story here.

I work in the BC/Yukon Division of my program and our head office is in Ottawa. Occasionally we get a box of pamphlets, newsletters, booklets, etc. sent from the Ottawa office to us, which we in turn distribute to everyone in the office, and our sites all over British Columbia and the Yukon. Once or twice a year, we'll gather all of our excess information packets and send them back to Ottawa. Sometimes these will get sent right back to us a few months later and we'll either invent a creative list of new people to send them to, re-send them to the same folks as the first time around, or wait a little longer and send them back to Ottawa again.

One of our regular mailouts is a seasonal newsletter updating everyone on what's happened since the last season. We get them four times a year from Ottawa and then send a few copies to each of our sites. About a month ago one of the sites, likely not realizing who was sending these out to them, sent a thick stack of the newsletters to our office as if they were relaying the information to us. I just sat there in disbelief holding this stack of newsletters. Was I supposed to send them right back to them? Send them back to Ottawa? So I decided, fuck it, and just stuck the whole thing in the site's file. What's even better? These files are all available to the public under the Access to Information Act. So if you put in a request to see this file, you could actually see for yourself the stack of newsletters that travelled from Ottawa, to Vancouver, to Northern BC, and back to Vancouver - just to be stuck uselessly into some folder. Now if that's not a ridiculous waste of time, energy, and resources to the point of absurd, I just don't know what is.

Is It The Piercings?

Yesterday I was asked for my ID when I was purchasing lottery tickets. At 26, it's interesting to know that I can apparently pass for 17.

Spageism #4

Wookiee and I were talking about a mushroom that grew through the foundation and up out of the carpet in the living room at one of his old basement apartments. It looked like big lasagna noodles with red sauce in the layers. It was disgusting, but we don't actually know what kind of growth it was. A word slid into my mind that I thought it should be referred to as. I said that is was "Funger. That means; fucking angry fungus."

Greetings

As I was walking past a cubicle the other day I witnessed a telephone call that was nearly identical to the ridiculous fictional phone call that Louis and I laughed at in Waterloo (#65 on The List).

I watched Mary pick up her receiver, dial a number, and pause for a response. As I passed by her, she said into the phone, "Hello? It's me. Is that you?"

Plant Tip Of The Day

Never grab hold of a freshly bloomed bird of paradise. They're insanely sticky. Trust me.