Chris Dwan

Category: Uncategorized

  • Test

    Today I test for a new belt at the karate school. I’ve eaten my high-carb dinner and breakfast, I have my bottles of water, and I’ve got the *material* pretty much down (though at this point there’s enough stuff that I’m sure I’ll blank on something). I’m in good enough shape that while several hours of exertion will tire me out … there’s pretty much no chance that I’ll keel in the middle of a form or anything. The other people on the test are similarly prepared, so there shouldn’t be any injuries through carelessness or incompetence. Accidents happen, especially when people get tired, but it’s a good group and I trust them.

    Now all that remains is to pass the test.

    After that, I get on a plane to Baltimore to see my brother’s guitar recital.

    After that, I drive with my dad as far as Richmond, where I pick up a rental car and head to Hampton VA to work for NASA for a week.

    Rock star?

  • Grudging fan-ship

    After watching the “Demon Hand” episode of the new Terminator TV series, I am grudgingly going to admit that I’m a total fanboy. Bring unto me the next episode.

    It started off with the fact that Summer Glau rules. She’s the odd, quiet girl who knows kung fu. She’s River Tam and she’s the Terminatrix. As with Starbuck in Galactica, that’s enough to have me paying $2 a pop to download it, though not enough to order cable … the “devil’s highway” does not have an exit at my apartment.

    This episode though … it got me right between the eyes. The vindication of seeing the truth after decades of being called a liar. Revenge, a perfect right cross to the nose, after decades of waiting. The simple fact that realizing the truth of the world in all its awful glory is enough to reverse the roles of crazy and sane. The themes of “mother will always love you.”

    But finally the idea that the ultimate punishment inflicted on the human prisoners in the machine regime is to be shown machines making art beyond human art. To be brought to the realization that humans … in the very depths of our humanity … have been replaced. That the machines feel passion beyond our passion, as much as their speed and strength are beyond our strength. Perhaps that they commune with God more directly than we do.

    As long as that special and unique spark of humanity was sacred, they could keep fighting. Once they realized that a truly superior being had evolved … what else was there to do, and why?

  • Dentist

    I spent somewhere between three and four hours in the dentist’s chair today. As previously mentioned, we have the medical insurance that is made out of pure awesome … so I’m taking the opportunity to just do whatever the nice people tell me I ought to do. This includes a “veneer” to permanently repair a tooth that I broke in half (diagonally, faceplant in a gravel driveway, thanks for asking) when I was 14. Today was, it turns out, day one of two for the veneer.

    So first, they numbed my mouth up like there was no tomorrow. Easily the best anesthesia I’ve ever experienced. First the q-tip of local under the lip, then the pressure of the shot, and then the upper left quadrant of my mouth was dead to the world for three hours.

    Now it gets horrifying: The veneer is a hollow mold of a tooth that sits over a sort of post made out of the original tooth. That post is just big enough to provide structural stability and a home for the ever so delicate tooth nerve. They took a big ass dental drill and whittled my tooth down into what my mother used to call a “nubbin.” It was … disheartening to look in the mirror and see one of my teeth reduced to a little post.

    They had taken a negative impression of my teeth before. Now they took another negative with Mr. Nubbin in place. They plan to send these two molds (inside and outside) to “The Lab” so that they can fabricate a “veneer” made out of pure rubidium, or porcelain, or something. In the meantime, they made a temporary custom tooth for me. Same idea, much faster. I cannot tell you how weird it is to have someone popping a tooth cap onto and off of a nubbin-post in your mouth, all the while talking about how cool the movie “Persepolis” is.

    In two weeks I go back, they pop off the temporary and glue on the permanent. Good as new!

    The materials at these people’s disposal are amazing. They have tubes of stuff that are liquid until mixed … which then become, for lack of a better word, TOOTH in about two minutes. They have crap to dissolve the first materials. They have pastes that turn into TOOTH when you shine UV lights on them. Amazing, I tell you.

    Last, but not least, I wish to share with you about “lip retractors.”

    Actually, not I don’t. Just, if you don’t know about lip retractors, be glad.

    I’m gonna go have a beer now.

  • Recent updates

    Today I entered the Ocean State judo competition. It was a double elimination tournament. I fought twice. You figure it out.

    Here’s the video (mostly for other guys in the club):

    links below the cut

  • Middle way

    This resonates for me:

    Thus, may I deal with all my detractors.

  • Funny signs

    Thanks sejabop: Funny Signs

  • Atheist stuff

    By an odd confluence of events, I’m Vice President of the RI Atheist Society.

    We now have Custom stuff available. Buy it.

  • Judo

    Another weekend, another judo tournament. This was a small “developmental” competition at another local club.

    Four of us showed up (in my division), so I got beaten three times. Still, getting better. I feel that if I keep improving at this rate, I’ll start winning some matches pretty soon.

  • For $15 you play all day

    Got my money’s worth out of the health insurance today.

    First, the dentist. A second very, very detailed exam by a dental intern (is there such a thing? Is it called the zamboogen-year or something … or can I just call them interns?). I’ll be back tomorrow for my 2 fillings. In a week I’ll be going in for a “veneer” to replace a “temporary” reconstruction I got back when I was, like 15. Why not?

    Then, back to the doctor. Hey doc, your antibiotics didn’t do a darn thing about my cough (I’ve named it “Lungfish,” by the way). The doctor seemed smart, and he listened to me. That’s all I ask, really. So I got nasal steroids, a super-duper inhaler (literally, albuterol on steroids), an appointment for a “spirometry” test where I blow … as hard as I can, and a chest X-ray. We talked about the fact that I live with cats (just like I have for a decade now), and also that I do get some exercise, from time to time.

    My chest X-ray was “negative.” I found this unsatisfying and pestered my medical family for a better answer. “Negative” is a sign. It’s a polarity. It’s not an interpretation of a picture, unless we’re talking pure artistic opinion. I was told that “negative,” is relative to the detective power of the picture in screening for heart disease, various forms of lung gunk, neck gunk, and other gunk.

    So the plan is that I snort the rose-smelling steroids and breathe the minty gasses every day for two weeks. If I go back and “it worked,” then I we smile at each other and call the fact that I have to do this for the rest of my life “Asthma.” Or maybe we tell each other some story about snot dripping down my throat and irritating my bronchi.

    Or something. I don’t know.

    Hopefully by the time my follow-up comes around, I’ll have my 23 and me results to bring in. “Hey! I got my genome done, wanna see?” If he reacts with any sort of curiosity at all, he’s got a patient for life.

    All this for $15, plus the co-pay on the prescriptions. Not bad, says I.

  • Late thoughts

    A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man’s destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

    He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

    He took up the tumbler the judge had poured and he drank and set it down again. He looked at the judge. I been everwhere, he said. This is just one more place.

    The judge arched his brow. Did you post witnesses? he said. To report to you on the continuing existence of those places once you’d quit them?

    That’s crazy.

    Is it? Where is yesterday?