With Love, Deutschy

Dear All,

A piece of "conceptual art", then, perhaps. A strange mention of the conscious, subconscious minds of individuals, and perhaps the collective subconscious.

Fragmented Mind.



Yours,
Deutschy, Friend of Tiny Carl Jung

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Dear All,

This idea is probably not practical, but it is, however cool.

Our cities cause a great deal of local weather changes; the roads in particular retain heat, tall buildings create wind tunnels...

One could imagine some sort of way of embedding the very large urban road network with ways of collecting this heat energy and converting some of it to electricity. Thus cooling the city, generating electricity and being environmentally friendly to boot!

Wind generators on tall building does not sound like a bad idea to me either...

Yours,
Deutschy, provider of energy friendly carbon neutral coal trains since 1842.

Dear All,

Medicine is in an uncomfortable, nascent stage. None of us like to admit it, but we do not practice evidence based medicine. At times we practice intuition or logic but not in any sort of systematic manner. We deal with our patients’ problems intellectually the way a tradesman does, rather than an engineer. This despite our training, despite advances in statistics, computational biology, bioinformatics, engineering and a multitude of other disciplines.

Why is this? I think part of it is the idea that if we take away the mystery then we are no longer magicians. We are just ordinary people performing unusual but mundane things, but in a top hat and tails.

Ideas often develop such:

• Theory A explains some of reality.
• Theory B dissents against theory A’s incomplete explanation and invokes a reactionary theory that revolves around the opposite idea. However, this theory is also incomplete.
• People realise that both theories have their merits and combine them into an integrated Theory C.

Currently in medicine we can say that “treating patients based on experience and intuition as all patients are unique” is Theory A. Evidence based medicine evolved out of a need to standardise care and base it on some sort of empirical science- a lot of “intuitive” ideas were total crap (e.g. bleeding people for no good reason). So what is Theory C? Well the problem of course is that all patients are different however we need to validate their therapy based on science. So perhaps it is what oncologists and infectious diseases specialists are doing now- tailoring medicine according to genetics, gene expression and other patient/disease specific characteristics.

However, there are problems with this approach too. Another theory will react to the first. Eventually Theory E will supplant them both.

While this is all lovely, unfortunately we are still stuck with scientists in either Theory B or C and most clinicians back at Theory A (some at Theory B and occasionally a Theory C- most but not all are physicians).

Progress is slow, and understandably no-one wants to “gamble” any sort of unproven “new” approach on their patients at first, I suppose.

Yours,

Deutschy, now complete with casino carriage!

Dear All,

I have been working on this one for some time.

You can think of the spectrum from pathophysiology to disease to symptomatology to be roughly as follows:

Root causes

Pathophysiology

Organ-specific disease

Signs

Symptoms

(As if layers on a cake)

We often concentrate, in clinical medicine on a small selection of these, often closer to the bottom. However, a lot of things are both easier to remember and make more sense when clustered into related and overlapping topics, or seen in terms of multi-organ disease.

A small handbook that gives a concise, visual reference would be helpful.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a computational biologist involved in order to define accurate (and often startling) relationships between various conditions- (to take a banal example, smoking is an independent risk factor for developing diabetes).

Yours,

Deutschy, organically developing our rail network!

Dear All,

For various reasons, this blog will cease to be personal, but rather be more about what it was originally meant to be- ie an “ideas” blog.

Yours,

Deutschy.

Dear All,

At first sight this seems innocuous. Until you remember that most of this "pride" was the imagery used after the Cronulla riots. Using the Australian flag as an Anglo nationalist "white pride" symbol.

What kind of country do I live in? One where people tattoo themselves and use the Australian flag in ways analogous to neo-Nazism? Where it is routine for our "heroes" (muscled sports players) to rape women in packs as a stylised symbol of masculine power? Where the mentally ill, non-English speaking, indigenous or disabled are routinely discriminated against in the hospital setting in terms of decision making and access to intervention? Where there is always the fear that you will be the next target of violence from young, spoilt, drunk, privileged "adults" who are "empowered" by their knowledge of martial arts or their strength in numbers.

Believe me, this is already an improvement after Howard left power. But there is an entire generation and a half who grew up in his shadow who spout some scary shit on a daily basis.

It is scary and disturbing.

I do not know if I want to be here in 20 years.

Deutschy

Dear All,

Four hours ante meridian is that hour where you start to realise it is only 2 hours before the sun comes up. It is a netherland between day and night. After the pubs are shut but before the bakeries are open. Nothing is going on (except somewhere else in the world).

Something blurs in your head. You are more susceptible to ... everything. Those dangerous, insidious, dark ideas and thoughts and words bubble to the surface - yours and others'. Your very presence is liminal.

You are never quite clean at this hour. Even after a shower you feel dirty, unshaven, grimy. Noises are noisier. The hum of the computer becomes a background drone. Things become a very regular, hyperacute continuity, but it is as if you are seeing this augmented reality from afar.

It is the time we make the best and most dangerous things. The most truthful and rewarding revelations. The most shocking mistakes. The most ambivalent decisions.

Alone, but not lonely. Stealthy hunters in the night.

Yours,
Deutschy.

Dear All,

Anyone noticed how there is not a single non-white person on Neighbours except for an extremely stereotypical "Asian exchange student"? No Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Indian, Singaporean, Chinese, Lebanese, Sudanese characters.

For that matter, not even any Greek or Italian characters! This is apparently meant to be a show set in Melbourne, one of the most multicultural places in the world! I very much doubt you could find a single street like in this fictional "Erinsborough" in Melbourne with only Anglo-Saxon people in it.

Just imagine, those foreigners, stealing our TV acting spots!

Yours,
Deutschy, Equal Opportunity Community Sponsor, Germany 1937

Plunging down the asphalt,
Hot dust breeze screams.
Tearing the road
Destroying it.
Sinking upwards past the valley and
into the hills.

Disappearing without a trace into the backdrop only to find
The car slinks
at night
into the driveway and
close to home.

Dear All,

A phenomenon has surprisingly taken quite some time to come to my attention. Let me give you some examples:

• "I'm happy to be in a relationship"
• "You don't deserve to be a doctor"
• "I'm not very good at being bisexual"
• "Being a surgeon makes you unhappy"

There are all examples of this curious phenomenon of people seemingly treating characteristics and situational things as "stuff" that is owned, and furthermore, stuff that "makes" people happy and that you may or may not be entitled to.

Let me expose this rather insubstantial little lie. Things that are stuff are objects and in grammar, nouns. Characteristics are properties of the aforementioned "stuff" and so, adjectives. Relationships are not a "stuff", but rather a dynamic personal bond between individuals. "Stuff" cannot make people happy. Characteristics and relationships are also not things that you are or are not entitled to having. Emotions, characteristics and relationships exist because we work to achieve them or sometimes merely because we experience and are them. It's not a question of entitlement or ownership- it's a question of existence or non-existence.

You're either a tulip or you are not. You're either happy or you are not. Entitlement isn't really an option or a pre-requisite for "being".

So to all those people who think that they can commodify their marriage, career, kids, relationships, sexual orientation, race, friends by calling these things "stuff" that they "own" and "deserve" - get fucked. You do not even make logical sense.

Yours,
Deutschy, Three Times Deserved Winner of Happiness

Dear All,

After awhile I moved from my broken house, war-bombed to a new one. I had a little money and was in a state to acquire new things and so I was in the market for a new place. They were making some new rooms fashioned in abandoned factories and other buildings and so I thought, why not.

There was the smell of sawdust and fresh paint. Bright, airy light. A warm, sweet breeze.

I had got into a little business with a few people I had met here and there. Exchanging details and just putting myself forward was enough, it seemed. I was once again excited and interested in this city reborn and my joy was shared.

I found myself in a routine but walking about in the sunlight, new suit on my back and attaché in hand I felt nothing but freedom and the simple joy of a quiet, industrious life.

But as life grows more normal, humans find something new to complain about. The weight of others' concerns pressed upon me. And I was bored.

A couple of kittens found their way into my house and I fed them scraps until they were no longer afraid of me. A few birds nested in the exposed roof beams above my lounge room. I acquired some timber and built myself some new furniture and bartered for some old things.

My place became a home, for myself. Alive.

Life was festive and calm. People celebrated with flags waving, music playing. There were parades. Trade links were re-established. Shops were prosperous. There was a hope, a liveliness. Excitement in the air. And I was part of it.

Yours,
Deutschy.

Dear All,

A difficult week, certainly. I got broken into, unawares and without "inn sewer ants". Thus I am $3500 down on my capital gains for the year.

However, I am in myself feeling much better and in rather chirpy spirits. My dreams go to new and exciting places rather than in circles. I feel satisfied.

I just need some more work and to do some more after hours things rather than sleeping and dreaming my nice dreams.

I will be doing a neurovascular project on clipping and coiling cerebral aneurysms. Fun times. Need to finish my case report too, hopefully tomorrow I will bust out another draft. With luck I will be doing either a urology or vascular project later in the year, as well as a ... neuro-endoscopy weekend course? I believe it is on using devices to remove anterior fossa tumours transnasally. Cool.

We had an earthquake of magnitude 4.7 yesterday. It was not particularly strong, but it was quite interesting. Hopefully no bigger ones to come. I did not even know that Melbourne has earthquakes but there you go.

Life is interesting and the battle is on. I have my left arm and my shield back. Good timing I say. When I am dreaming, when I dive into the sea, my heads-up display comes on and I have air to breathe. I see in infrared until I am close to the undersea platform where the navy has a base...

Yours,
Deutschy, Surreal.

I grew up, grew some balls. Learnt to be an asshole and how to smoke. Started wearing expensive pants and watches. Carried a business card. Spoke professionally. Ate the right things at the right places. Got fat. Had sex. Got an STD then got rid of it. Met a girl and borrowed some money and never paid it back. Learnt how to swear in French, in French only. Blew my nose and wiped my bum with raw silk.

And one day, I bought a first class ticket to Amsterdam.

You don't know this but in Amsterdam, people eat ginger cake as if it was bread and cheese as if it's butter.

I was feeling cashed up. That's why I did it.

I learnt to lie and how to walk at the same time.

I was feeling cashed up. That's why I did it.

I found a family of swallows and donated them to a passer-by. I blew a balloon and then popped it, immediately. Because I could. I got in my new care and drove down the highway that circles the town until the night turned grey and the wind turned into a sandstorm and I died and was reborn.

I felt cashed up.

And I, I felt the voices of the ghosts of the past slide past the windows as I slid down, down in my car, down the road, into the tunnel that burrowed into the earth.

The words, they said, they said- it was you.

It was you all along.

I slid, deeper and deeper
until
there
was
nothing
But You.

Dear All,

This:



is to be "checked out" as it were.

Yours,
Deutschy

Dear All,

It was eerily quiet as I headed back home.

Yours, Deutschy

@calamari this is kind of cool! hey btw :)

Fuck I have no idea what is with my blips today.

Can't touch this...

Dear All,

As I knew we would, we outgrew our small corner of the destroyed city and left our house. The house we had constructed out of the wreckage of a burnt ruin. The small life, the world, the piece of beauty and warmth. One day we both hugged (the way we always do) and went out for the day. And never returned.

For days I walked in a daze. I could think nothing but of survival in this warzone. I ran from shade to shade avoiding the gunfire rat-a-tatting from cars, windows, buildings. A bomb exploded not far from me one day; walking past afterwards I saw that three children had died in the blast. A severed hand clutched a toy. I shuddered.

I ate where I could, in the dark. Snatched bits of sleep in abandoned doorways. In tattered beds I shared with cats. On mattresses huddled with fellow orphans of the city.

I was far too wild-eyed, disshevelled, shell-shocked to feel alone.

Then the Armistice was signed.

I only heard about peace coming to the City days after it had happened, in dribs and drabs, in snatches. But something had changed almost overnight in the city. You could feel... not a silence, but a warm buzz in the air. An energy.

Peace.

The streets became safe again and people started to walk around, timidly at first. Every now and then you would see a car patrolling in uniformed insignia. There was no more gunfire.

Not long after that I found another corner to sleep in. A house with a spare room. and I slept and slept.

My dreams were of the war. Missiles careening down into my old house. Nations torn apart. Armies of death, with silence in their eyes. The world ending with billions dead. Tactical warfare. And of a hot hot dry wind blowing harsh sand across the desert and into my city. Burying us alive.

I would wake occasionally to take a piss, to eat some of the food at my door, to drink, and then back to my never-ending dream.

Eventually I started to explore the house I was in. It was one of the few mansions left. An old, massive house in disrepair that was once worth millions. Marble floors. An elegant, sweeping staircase. There was even a piano, and a courtyard filled with light. And dust.

I started to play the piano once more. My fingers creaked and stumbled to begin with but I slowly pieced together what I was aiming to say, in those notes. I evolved a long, slow piece of wandering music. And this music filled my dreams, and my dreams slowly took on the meaning of the present; peace, quiet, harmony.

And then I started to walk down the street. I started noticing people once more, saying hello and smiling. I got to know a few of the local people. Their faces had the signs of wear and tear, of horrors experienced. But they were smiling.

A few shoots pushed up from the cracks in the concrete. Devoid of constant destruction, life was coming back, in the form of growing, sturdy plants, to the City. Houses started to become solid and sturdy- actual walls made of mud-brick rather than corrugated iron shacks. People set up stalls and started to sell all manner of things they had created. And even better, people would huddle around and joke and talk.

I even saw some of the people I used to see a lot. And they were putting on weight, joking, smiling. I started to make plans...

At night I sometimes hear a lost, lone wolf howling at the moon. I am sure I have heard him padding past my door, sniffing, then moving on. Every now and then I try and espy him before he leaves, but I never quite catch a glimpse. I dream about putting furniture and books and luxuries in my house now- not of the war. And I dream about this wolf. I wonder what it all means?

Yours,
Deustchy, contemplative