Diagnostilicious!
I have been sick this week. Again. It's been a weird year for it. I took a couple of sick days, and worked from home another day so as to not spread the “wealth” around the office.
I really couldn't afford any more downtime than absolutely necessary, so I got in to see my doctor (the sublimely fabulous Lisa Capaldini) on Monday. She thought it might be strep, and offered treat me for that even though the results of the throat culture wouldn't come back for a couple of days.
“Yes, treat me now,” I answered.
“Pills, or a shot in the butt?”
“Butt, please,” I said, all atwinkle for her benefit. No, really.
When she returned to the office, she was carrying a preloaded syringe, something that looked more like a contraption than the standard disposable syringe+sharp that I'm used to seeing.
“Drop your pants,” she said, her turn to twinkle. “This is so 1950s! This tube of a syringe and good old-fashioned medicine.”
I dropped trou, furry ass catching the chill of the AC in the office. “Yeah, this has to be great for you.” I rolled my eyes. “Y'know, being a dyke and all.”
“Ahhh, I love my job! Left or right cheek?”
“Uhhhhh, wow. I was just thinking about which side I might prefer, and you actually did ask...Left, I guess.”
Getting an IM (intramuscular) shot is a two-parter of pain. First there's the actual needle stick of an 18-gauge sharp. Then there's the liquid pain of the not quite osmotically- and/or pH-matched penicillin. Don't get me wrong, it's not a lot of pain, but it did take me back to other times, when I was a kid, where the pain was the worst that I could imagine—and no, it wasn't in the 1950s, smart-asses.
“I love my job!” she says, with a nuanced glee that speaks to our long history as doctor-patient and as friends and, back in the day, as co-caregivers to Allen. “Remember, you have to stick around for 15 minutes so we're sure you're not going to have a reaction and die or something.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
•••
Lisa is a very good diagnostician. As he has been talking about lately, there's too much shame-based behavior and prejudice around sex and even simple human biology, but none of it with Lisa. She just “shows up” (her words) for her patients. And helps as she can, bringing to bear her clinical experience and her medical knowledge.
Regular readers will know I've been on a bit of a tear lately in response to the bit of a tear the crazies (Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly, specifically) have been on, and I chuckled when I <sarcasm>considered that maybe I was being punished by jod himself!</sarcasm>
Which then got me to thinking, what if others who led with that spiritual smegma known as dogma were my diagnostician?
Bill O'Reilly: we let the cellular terrorists have you.
William Dembski: your disease is too complex to have evolved on its own.
George Bush: God spoke to me and said He did it.
Fred Phelps: God hates you, faggot!
Sean Hannity: God did it because he's on our side. Shut UP. Cut his mic.
Rush Limbaugh: God did it. Want some pills?
Margaret Thatcher: who cares?
Andrew Sullivan: I'm sure you didn't get it the good way.
hoody: God did it because you're disordered.
green-flash: It's just sin.
Pat Robertson: God's turned his back on your immune system.
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Comments
You're talking about a medicinal inhaler, right, Tina? ;)
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 02:17 AM
God did nothing. You're simply disordered.
Posted by: hoody | November 18, 2005 03:14 AM
Hurrah! I did something God didn't!
Omni-what? Omni-who?
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 03:24 AM
free will, literalist doofus.
Posted by: hoody | November 18, 2005 04:36 AM
Unfortunately yes, Jeff.
:)
Posted by: Tina | November 18, 2005 05:06 AM
So God didn't know I'd "choose" to be disordered? Did I enter into my disorder of my own free will?
Free Will only makes sense from a relative (and Gödelian!) perspective, but that perspective also excludes the knowability of the existence of a creator, much less any qualities he/she/it/them might possess.
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 05:41 AM
Free will only fits into a relativist perspective if you insist on shoehorning it into that alone.
Posted by: hoody | November 18, 2005 07:55 AM
What shoehorning, hoody?
Free Will implies that it's just that, free. Absolutely. From *ANY* perspective, according to you.
So from your perspective, you have Free Will. From every other perspective—including your god's—it's also Free Will.
And yet, that doesn't reconcile with omniscience, does it?
Unless—wait for it—it *is* actually *relative to* point of view.
Disagree? Then explain it in your absolutist terms.
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 08:04 AM
You say: Free Will only makes sense from a relative (and Gödelian!) perspective, but that perspective also excludes the knowability of the existence of a creator, much less any qualities he/she/it/them might possess. So, Free Will is limited.
Then you say:Free Will implies that it's just that, free. Absolutely. So now, it's unlimited. Pick one.
You are slipping. Usually your confusions take weeks and multiple comments to occur. Here we have a solid one within the space of a couple of hours.
Posted by: hoody | November 18, 2005 09:40 AM
Absolutes are limits, hoody.
But please, do explain it, instead of these personal attacks and name-calling.
Oh, and also notice that I did not imply, in this post, that god created my "disorder" (I smile every time I get to call myself that, thank you!), only my disease.
Anyhoo, pony up, hoody. Please explain how truly free will lives in the face of omniscience.
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 10:17 AM
Michelle Malkin: Throw him in a concentration camp!
Posted by: Sister Nancy Beth Eczema | November 18, 2005 10:20 AM
Sister Nancy Beth: couldn't you at least rouge anyway?
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 18, 2005 10:59 AM
I have bronchitis and a possibley strep throat.
I have this pretty little purple puffer though.
:)
Posted by: Tina | November 18, 2005 12:41 PM
Yes, humorless-hoody, my "gross and inaccurate generalization" was part of my attempt to convince you all that Margaret Thatcher, W, Pat Robertson, Bill O'Reilly, et al actually did weigh in me having a cold.
Now, about omniscience vs. free will? You have no point except to attempt to sustain your unsustainable position (a position, I am assuming, one wouldn't even see in the kamasutra).
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 19, 2005 02:38 AM
You make the presumption that omniscience also means the omniscient creature MUST or WILL act when observing a poor choice made by one of his creatures. This is an anthropomorhpic assumption. The omniscient creature may choose for reasons we cannot comprehend NOT to act.
Or maybe we can comprehend it.
Who would you rather have loving you, Biscuits? A Sam who chooses to love and follow you out of desire, or one who is FORCED to love and follow you through repeated exposures to your omnipotence?
I would expect you would prefer that Sam choose to love you, rather than be forced to. Like the rest of us and our partners.
Just because a creature is omniscient/omnipotent does not mean that the creature must exercise those powers. And if that creature desires our love, so he/she/it may choose to restrain usage of those powers. Else that creature compels following, rather than encouraging it.
Posted by: hoody | November 19, 2005 09:23 AM
Isn't that a fine bit of legerdemain, introducing omnipotence to trounce omniscience? But then, by definition, it trounces everything, does it not?
Because if you'd stuck to omniscience, you wouldn't be able to answer the question probably even to your own satisfaction. If god knows what you're going to do, and you do evil, he's created evil himself. If god knows what you're going to do, then there's no free will, there's just Gödelian blindness in the created.
I don't expect you should have the right to argue Sam or any part of my relationship as an example, hoody, given that you take every opportunity to not only tell me the sole reason behind the sex that I have and that I'm "intrinsically disordered".
Now, back to the original: I didn't say god gave me this cold. Why did you say I did?
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 19, 2005 11:02 AM
You're dodging my point, but then what's new?
And I never said you gave you your cold. Nor did I say God did or didn't. I was only responding to your gross and inaccurate generalization: "hoody: God did it because you're disordered.
Posted by: hoody | November 19, 2005 12:00 PM
Aw man...I got left out.
Posted by: The Masked Avenger | November 19, 2005 12:35 PM
(Whoops, didn't mean to post that yet...)
And I'm sorry you're feeling under the weather, even if you don't think I'm worth satirizing. I'll just have to go home and think up my own absurd reason to explain your current disease.
Posted by: The Masked Avenger | November 19, 2005 12:39 PM
My. Even fewer clues here.
You say you have an advanced degree???? Remarkable.
Posted by: CluePatrol | November 24, 2005 08:41 AM
You're why they invented the redundancy, "reading for content", Moonbat Patrol. Because you don't.
What advanced degree?
And hoody, scroll up. You're initial stupidity was: "God did nothing. You're simply disordered."
But then, most recently, hoody: "Nor did I say God did or didn't."
Oooh, must be one of those religious paradoxes y'all run to when your dogma gets caught with its pants down.
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | November 26, 2005 01:37 AM