A series Nats got me watching. Done with the SCRUBS phase already but I just can't get enough of the medical jargon. Vasculitis! Trach! Intubate! Lumbar puncture! If you've seen SCRUBS, you will recognize Dr. Cox (JD's sarcastic but warm-and-fuzzy-deep-deep-deep-inside pseudo-mentor) in Dr. Greg HOUSE, the main character in this series who is a world-renowned expert on diagnostic medicine. He is, like Cox, brilliant and sarcastic, only a lot more egotistical, embittered and hated by everyone, suffering muscle death and high on pain killers. If you think Cox's acerbic behavior couldn't get any worse, then you have to watch this show.
Like SCRUBS, HOUSE MD has the potential to be a definite laugh trip, however, in the latter, it's not the jokes but the patients and what happens to them that DO MATTER. Hence the investigative slant and the focus on drama with comedy not appearing quite as comedic as the normal sitcom typically has but is more on the sarcastic, even scathing side. By "investigative", I mean that House MD is CSI in a teaching hospital: the mystery of solving whodunit primarily involves a medical illness and the investigator is not Gary Sinise but more like an Eton- and Cambridge-schooled Brit actor (he was Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility--I only found out last week when I saw that movie, yet again, for about the hundredth time I really can't remember anymore) who's lost his sense of humor except for things tasteless and offensive.
You would find it really hard to laugh at the jokes in this show. You'll probably feel guilty for even half of a smile. The jokes, or quips I should say, are often from the never-congenial House and so they are often badly placed and are what the normal person would consider insensitive and uncaring to ANY patient's particular condition. That House totally lacks bedside manner is understating his peculiar character. Still he is fascinating, and may actually even be considered attractive, for all his roughness, figuratively and literally (all that facial hair! ewww).
The people in House MD also seem a LOT smarter than those in SCRUBS: you will want to take them seriously even if one looks like a rapper homeboy, the other too pretty to be believed intelligent, and yet another too brit and too blonde and looks more like a boyband drop-out than an actual medical specialist. But hey, if someone throws words like paraneoplastic syndrome, pure red cell aplasia, thymoma, myasthenia gravis at me like armalite bullets in 5 seconds, and look like they know what they're talking about, I sure would listen.
Hugh Laurie as Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility. Even as early as 1995, you can already see the House character forming in him. You really can't blame the guy, though. His character is the quintessential Austen symbol for a man forced into marriage with a woman of gargantuan airheadedness and mindnumbing sillyness, needless to say a woman he does NOT love, much less RESPECT. Mr. Palmer here is therefore doomed with no other choice but to treat her with no other attitude but with contempt, should it happen that he feels good any given day, or with ridicule, which is how he treats her most of the time.
2) FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE.
So shoot me it's summer yet I'm reading, in my free time, a book on the history of western culture from the 1500's to the present--and here's the ultimate catch: I CAN'T PUT IT DOWN! So I read philosophy textbooks for fun. So I spent one summer in high school reading Rizal-related stuff and memorizing his Mi Ultimo Adios. Nuff said. I've only read 30 pages of 800+ so there's more to chew on for me. A notable quote I've jotted down (yes, I keep a notebook... oh I'm SOOOO implicating myself down the verdict of nerdiness now): "What then marks a new age? The appearance or disappearance of particular embodiments of a given purpose. Look out of the window: WHERE IS THE TOWN CRIER?" Despite my enjoyment, I've found I can only read this book sitting down. Tried reading it during Praise Theme practice but I couldn't give it my full attention, hence I couldn't fully appreciate it. Best to read it also with a shot of Macchiato con Caramelo from Bo's Coffee Club. Yummmm.
3) CROSS-STITCH.
Argh. The mother of all give-aways. I'm doing a pattern called Little Women. Yep it's based on the Louisa May Alcott novel and has the four girls Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in the pattern. (By the way critics say a good book to read now is MARCH, by Geraldine Brooks, about the patriarch of the Marches in Little Women, about what happened to him during the war while his wife and daughters were doing their best to get by back in England.) I started this last year but haven't gotten around to finishing it... it's been more than a year now and I would like to think I'm just completing what I started.
4) ...oh yeh, the CALL CENTER STUDY.
This is the ONLY THING I'm supposed to be doing this summer. It's a nerdy thing, actually the nerdiest of all four. Yet it's the ONE THING I'm always avoiding, the ONE THING I'm always saying "bukas na" to. Nonetheless I've managed to make some progress on this despite my procrastination: I have some statistics and some listings. The only thing to do now is to write the blasted thing.
IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, I'd rather do the previous three than do this last fourth. The other three may be nerdy but not as nerdy as the industry study. At least I'm enjoying myself doing those other things... hey, given that that's the case that means there is hope for me doesn't it? That I'm not as nerdy as I think? You think? Asa pa.
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