2005-05-21

sevendials: (eh)
2005-05-21 11:02 pm

Stuff That I Am Thinking About (Part 1,346,012)

Yay, [livejournal.com profile] vermachtnis liked Seuche Chapter 15, even though it was twisted. That makes me feel happy, and rather better for writing deeply twisted fanfiction featuring some deeply twisted individuals. But I think all my writing is goddamn twisted on some level. Honey Trap ain't much better. In fact, in some regards it's much, much worse. Honey Trap is meant to be funny...

Is this because Weiss Kreuz is a goddamn twisted anime, or is it because I am a goddamn twisted individual, or is it perhaps a bit of both?

(Shameless plug for my recent updates met. Onward!)

Whee. I posted my fic updates to my webpage. Great, that's my achievement for the day and it took all of fifteen minutes. Apart from that and sleeping a lot, I'm really not doing much of anything. Damn, I feel enervated and not entirely with it at the moment. I hope this is just boredom and not a symptom of some other malaise. The last thing I need is to get poleaxed by some nasty little virus on my upcoming placement. Damn my generic and all-pervading feeling of malaise.

I'm not in the mood for this right now, I'm really not. Give me a week's holiday and I swear I'd be doing a lot better. Right now, though, I'm just burnt out and bored and generally not giving much of a shit about anything. Except fanfiction. And Ken. Damn fangirl background noise.

(I hope I've passed my exams. I cannot stick the thought of more freakin' revision.)

Would you believe I've got to start this bastard placement on my 23rd birthday? I thought having a birthday that fell smack bang in the middle of exam week was bad, but having to spend my birthday on the first day of a placement on a ward specializing in colorectal surgery really strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment. Yeesh, and here's me inclining away from ward nursing, too. Happy Birthday Me. Why couldn't I have got a placement on an endoscopy unit or something? I'm interested in that side of nursing care. But colostomies at dawn is doing less and less for me the further on I get through my course.

Anyway... in related news, I hear Kylie Minogue has breast cancer. Okay. That's sad. I'm supposed to care about this because?

Yeesh, it's Rock Hudson and the AIDS epidemic all over again. I hate it when the media gets like this over disease-ridden celebrities. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of people come down with these things every day and nobody gives a shit, but just let one celebrity come down with something and suddenly it's News. Front-page news at that. Look, I'm sorry Ms Minogue has carcinoma in situ. But I just can't bring myself to really care that much. I don't care about other complete strangers who come down with breast cancer in any other way than to feel vaguely sorry for them, because I wouldn't want anyone to get cancer. Why should I care that much more about this one because she wears corsets and gets her picture in the Daily Mail for so doing?

(Random, tangential thought in the key of Ken 'what the heck's an Ukifune?' Hidaka: How can anyone sing in a corset? I bet she's lip-synching. You can't wear a corset designed to present the illusion of a sixteen-inch waist and belt out a song at the same time.)

Besides which - hate to say this, but you don't need a brilliant knowledge of pathophysiology to know that Ms Minogue's breast cancer really isn't that big an issue, as cancer goes. From what I've heard (which isn't much as I'm trying to avoid this non-story as much as possible, she said from the depths of an LJ post on that very issue), she's got carcinoma in situ. All this means is the cancer's sitting there whistling to itself and looking rather bored. It's not actually doing much. It's not spreading like wildfire. It's not bullying the lymphatic system into taking it places. It's just kind of there - so it's basically pretty easy to treat.

(Random, really tangential thought: the songs from Team America: World Police kick ass. I want that soundtrack!)

But that's not the issue. The real issue is that I don't give a damn about Kylie Minogue because (get this shocking fact!) I've never met her. That she's got breast cancer is sad for her. It's sad for her friends and family. It's not sad for someone who turns the radio on from time to time, or who occasionally flicks through a magazine. It's got nothing to do with the rest of us. Why don't we - that is, the rest of the world - leave sick celebrities the hell alone? We don't have any stake whatsoever in their wellbeing.

It's a radical thought, I know, but why don't we save our worry for the people who really need it? People who aren't rich and famous, and can't have cancer operations days after discovering they've got the condition? People who can't afford private medical care, and have to deal with waiting lists, with cancelled operations, with overcrowded and perhaps insanitary wards? Who don't have the press knocking on their door as a result, and sympathy by the truckload? Why don't we feel sorry for them instead?

Or am I perhaps being hopelessly naïve?