My blog-pals Roy, Dinah, and ClinkShrink are hosting this week's Grand Rounds over at Shrink Rap.
Even if you are not excited about the prospect of lots of health- and mental-health-related blog posts, it's worth it just for their awesome interactive iPhone graphic. (Which has a little purple gerbil in it!)
My cell phone and I have a love-hate relationship. I do not care for bells and whistles like call waiting, text messaging, or camera functions; and I always have a devil of a time explaining myself to the guys at the Verizon store. I also do not care for cell phones' collective implication of round-the-clock availability of their owners. But I like being able to talk to certain people for free, as well as to call Mrs. Gerbil to check on the little gerb while I'm off on my errands.
But alas, my cell phone's battery is dying a slow, horrible death. It demands to be charged at least once a day, regardless of whether I have been using the phone; and the phone now starts beeping its "feed me!" beep 30 minutes into a conversation. Yet if I hang up but don't plug it in, it will miraculously find a partial charge after only a few minutes' rest.
(Perhaps my trusty rusty phone is jealous of the baby--I like to talk on the phone while nursing.)
I don't really want to get a new battery. I have no idea whether I can even get a replacement battery for my no-frills phone; and besides, Verizon will give me a new phone, or at least a credit toward a new phone, in September. So I'm content to put up with its constant demands for attention for a few more months. I just wish that I'd known ahead of time that the battery would begin sucking this much less than 18 months into my relationship with this phone. Isn't that what all this R&D money is for?
There has been a lot of kerfuffle in the media and the blogosphere lately about a certain Harvard researcher's failure to disclose some of the money he's received from industry sources. This researcher, whose name begins with a "B" and ends with an "iederman," has been churning out scientifically solid work on pediatric bipolar disorder for a long, long time. (His CV probably requires at least a ream by now.)
Some are taking his disclosure malfunction as an indication that his research is shoddy, and, by extension, that bipolar disorder (and, for that matter, the entirety of DSM-IV-TR) is a load of bunk. This is one big logical fallacy--the straw man, to be precise.
If you have not spent a lot of time in academia, you may not be aware of the process by which research like this gets published. After you've obtained the necessary human subjects approval from your local Institutional Review Board or its equivalent, after you've collected and analyzed and interpreted your data, and after you've written up your manuscript, you must figure out which journal might publish it. Then you send your manuscript to that journal's editor, and the editor sends it as a de-identified document to three people who know your subject matter inside and out.
If you're trying to get psychological research published, one of these people might just be yours truly.
As a peer reviewer, I read your manuscript thoroughly, check your analyses and your interpretations thereof, determine whether it's appropriate for this particular journal, and write up a few paragraphs on my findings. I make a recommendation to the editor as to whether your manuscript should be published as is, with minor revisions, considered as a "revise and resubmit," or rejected outright. The editor then sends you a letter containing all three reviews and his or her decision.
I get about a month to complete my review, and it typically takes me about 20 hours, but I don't get paid. At no point do you know who I am, do I know who you are, or do I know who my two compatriots are. If your manuscript gets published and I recognize it, I sure hope you thank your anonymous reviewers in your acknowledgments footnote.
In my time I've saved the world from a lot of crappy manuscripts.
Although research ability and ethics overlap, they are not one and the same. Yes, conflict of interest is a huge problem. But before dissing a researcher's entire body of work, as well as the work of his or her colleagues, consider the lowly peer reviewer... who along with two other unidentified colleagues decided that each of his or her publications was worthy of ink.
Confidential to Motorola: Revise and resubmit, yo.
After Mrs. Gerbil determined that she writes like a man, we had ourselves a lively discussion about what, exactly, makes for manly vs. womanly (girly?) writing. When I analyzed several sections of my dissertation, I found that I write like a weak (girly?) man, or possibly a European man, or maybe a European metrosexual. But other writings of mine--especially letters of complaint--came back strongly male.
I freely admit: my nickname in late adolescence was "Manly Woman," on account of my death-grip handshake and my arm-wrestling prowess.
Mrs. Gerbil's theory was that scientific writing, especially in social sciences, contains more "weasel words" than in other areas. Social scientists such as yours truly are taught never to write "X is," but rather "X may be," or "the data suggest that X is" or "it appears safe to conclude that X." This is an unfortunate effect of the scientific method, whereby you can never actually prove anything, just disprove its opposite (i.e., the null hypothesis) within a reasonable margin of error (i.e., less than 5%).
But theologians such as my better half don't engage in a whole lot of hypothesis testing. They just come up with an interpretation, hopefully think about it for a while to make sure it's internally consistent, and present it. They don't need to do validation studies to see if their conclusions hold up under different conditions. I suppose it's all just a matter of faith for them.
So then this begged the question of how social scientists insult each other. (Trust me. It did.) If we social scientists really wanted to be true to our hypothesis-testing heritage, we might have to say things like
The data suggest that you suck.
It appears that you suck.
We can confidently reject the null hypothesis that you do not suck.
You suck (p < .05).
It appears safe to conclude that you suck. However, further research is recommended to determine what factors, if any, mediate or moderate your suckage.
And now, if you will excuse me, I must go calculate the Spearman's rho of your mom.
The City of Berkeley has an ordinance which prohibits smoking in various public locations, including bus stops. Being the comprehensive city that Berkeley is, there is another chapter of the same ordinance detailing exactly how this information is to be posted. The penalty, supposedly, is fine and/or imprisonment.
Unfortunately, the Berkeley police have their hands full with such weightier issues as drug dealing, vandalism, the occasional assault or homicide, speeding, expired parking meters, and kids who ride their bikes on the sidewalk; and so I have yet to see a single officer of the peace confront any of the hardened criminals known as bus-stop smokers. Thus, enforcement is left to such health-conscious and/or respiratorally challenged citizens such as myself. And, except for one memorable incident, I have found bus-stop smokers to be quite willing to light up elsewhere if asked politely.
Several days ago, while waiting for the bus in downtown Berkeley, I was suddenly accosted by the smell of cigarette smoke. I turned around and realized, with horror, that I knew the offender. He had once been a client of mine--one toward whom I'd had some pretty intense, negative countertransferential feelings. He did not appear to recognize me. It had been well over a year since I'd encountered him in a clinical setting; we weren't acquainted for very long; and plus I'd since chopped off my (formerly ridiculously long) hair.
I really wanted to remind him, for the sake of my lungs and the gerb, that smoking is prohibited at the bus stop. But I did not want to risk him recognizing me--and possibly striking up a conversation with me (see countertransferential feelings above). In addition, I didn't think I'd be able to be perfectly polite in my request (again, see countertransferential feelings above), and I feared I might accidentally address him by name and find myself in awkward conversation. On the other hand, my bus was already late, and if I didn't say anything, I would continue to breathe his secondhand smoke until my bus finally showed up.
Finally, I decided just to get up and move to another bench. This was a fine solution until his bus pulled up near me, whereupon he ambled over, continued to puff away until it was his turn to board, and tossed his still-lit cigarette by the curb. He still showed no sign of having any idea who I was.
I briefly debated stomping on the discarded butt, but then my bus arrived.
Was avoiding interaction altogether the right thing to do? I don't know. My rule of thumb on greeting present or former clients in public is to let them greet me first. On rare occasions will I be the first to say hi; but I only do this when I'm out alone. But this situation was not about saying hi--and therein lies the rub.
I get a lot of calls from people who want to go to detox, or who want their family members to go to detox. Often they are legitimate candidates for immediate, do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200 detox. For example, they've decided to go cold turkey from alcohol and now are tremulous and sweating. Or they've been quadrupling their Xanax and their psychiatrist won't write another prescription. Withdrawal from alcohol or benzodiazepines can be fatal; and detox is a medical procedure which (hopefully) keeps the withdrawal process safe. I can't begin to count the number of alcohol- or benzo-dependent people I've had to convince to go to the hospital immediately... not tomorrow, not the next day, not next week when they already have time off from work. I've found "Withdrawal can kill you" to be a fairly effective tactic.
Opiate detox is another story. Opiate withdrawal is highly unpleasant, to say the least; but it is not necessarily dangerous. Managed care does not always cover opiate detox, especially of the inpatient sort. I have no idea why. But if I get a call from someone who wants to detox from Vicodin, I tell them to go to the hospital immediately. Some will ask whether withdrawal will kill them. I reply, "At the very least, if you try to do it yourself, it will be extraordinarily uncomfortable."
But then I have some people who want to detox from cocaine. There is no medical detox procedure for cocaine. Cocaine is rapidly eliminated from the body; so even if there were a way to do cocaine detox, it would have to be done very quickly. When people ask me for cocaine detox referrals, I tell them to go to the ER right away if they have any unpleasant physical symptoms or pre-existing cardiac problems. But unless they are suicidal, homicidal, or using alcohol or benzos with their cocaine, they can most likely wait until the next day for an assessment for some other level of care.
My favorite callers, though, are the parents who want their teenagers to go to marijuana detox. (Oddly, no one ever seems to call for detox for their own pot habit.) Again, there is no medical detox for marijuana. Marijuana hangs out in the body for a while, but there's really nothing to do about it--and no real need to do anything, either. I am often tempted to tell these folks that marijuana detox is a home procedure involving a couple bags of potato chips administered over the course of a few hours. But I don't, as this would be poor customer service.
I should preface this by admitting that I am a spelling champion. By this I mean I won the school spelling bee when I was in the fourth grade (and still have the trophy somewhere to prove it).
And now, with the aforegoing disclaimer: Please do not write "parody" when you mean "parity." For, honey, this makes my teeth hurt.
A parody pokes fun at something by imitating and exaggerating its style.
Parity, on the other hand, refers to identical coverage of mental and physical conditions under an individual's insurance policy. In my humble opinion, this ought to be more of a standard than it actually is.
Sometimes parity only applies to specific disorders, often referred to as serious mental illness (SMI) or biologically based mental illness (BBMI). Parity diagnoses may include major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and developmental disorders; as well as emotional disturbances in childhood.
Parody diagnoses, on the other hand, include Intermittent Hook-Up Disorder.
If you've ever tried to do anything remotely related to health care of any sort in the United States, you've hopefully heard of HIPAA. (For the record, that's one P and two A's--as in Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.)
The gist of HIPAA is that (except in very specific cases) personal health information cannot be released without consent. This is a good idea in theory. However, in practice, it can get messy. Even if you pay for the medical care for your 18-year-old daughter, her doctor is not permitted to tell you about her treatment without her consent.
Or let's say your husband, who has never been in therapy of any kind, attempts suicide, and he's admitted to the hospital. You (back at home) want to make sure the hospital has called your insurance company for prior authorization. Unless your husband has already signed a release of information with the insurance company--not a common thing for people to do prior to attempting suicide--you're out of luck.
(And let's not even talk of situations in which an adult is not able to give consent--for example, he or she is severely psychotic, drunk, or in a coma. Or when a non-custodial parent is required to provide health insurance as part of child support--in which case the custodial parent must do the consenting, and I don't want to be a fly on the wall for that kind of conversation.)
Like I said, HIPAA gets messy.
But listen well, for here comes my point:
You cannot assert HIPAA against yourself.
As your provider, I cannot release your personal health information to another provider without your consent (except, again, as permitted or required by law). But HIPAA does not apply if you haven't yet told me anything about yourself.
I kid you not--people have said to me, "You can't ask me to give you my own personal information. That's prohibited by HIPAA."
Um, no. Not quite.
Paris Hilton's psychiatrist, Charles Sophy, says she's "emotionally distraught and traumatized" from receipt of a 45-day jail sentence.
I could go on a snarky little rant to the effect of "oh, how traumatic it is to be held accountable for one's actions." But I'm not going to go there.
Instead, I ask: Did Dr. Sophy obtain permission from Paris to release information about her mental state, or even to acknowledge that she is receiving treatment from him? Did she consent to the disclosure of the length of her treatment by Dr. Sophy (apparently, 8 months)? Did he specify the reason for the disclosure in his request? Did he discuss with her the possible risks and benefits of his report?
The story here is drawn from "court papers," which I guess are a matter of public record unless marked otherwise. But it seems to me to be a giant violation of Paris Hilton's privacy for the Associated Press to distribute her personal health information--her own historical lack of concern for privacy notwithstanding.
Yesterday our block hosted an enormous garage sale. You wouldn't believe how excited this made me. Garage sales were an important part of my youth. Unfortunately, I have difficulty getting rid of stuff; and when I was younger I would often decide, midway through the sale, that I actually wanted to keep various items.
So my parents instituted a rule: Nothing that leaves the house can go back in the house. It worked.
Well, Mrs. Gerbil and I made a small wad yesterday. But the tragedy of it all was that I had to go to work after a few hours. I would much rather have been sitting out in the driveway than telling callers that I honestly do not have their claims information. Alas.
But before I went to work, I found myself with a little dilemma. Mrs. Gerbil and I live three blocks from a clean and sober house, approximately half of whose residents were my clients at my previous job. I've run into them at bus stops, in downtown Berkeley, in restaurants, and even in the corner liquor store (where they buy cigarettes and snacks, and we buy milk and Ben & Jerry's). It doesn't really bother me, and it certainly did not bother me while they were my clients.
Yet yesterday, I was pre-emptively bothered. I saw one of them walking down the street, then walking back up the street with some garage sale loot. Our building is set back from, and perpendicular to, the street; and there's a privacy fence around the driveway. Thus: I could see him, but he couldn't see me.
I started wondering: What if he comes to check out our wares? Not that he would buy any of our girly stuff, but what if he strikes up a conversation with Mrs. Gerbil and me? How would I introduce him? Should I introduce him? And is it a bad thing if he finds out where I live, even though I haven't worked with him in months?
(Mrs. Gerbil and I have already discussed what might happen if one of my former clients approaches both of us. The agreement: She is not to ask me from whence I know this person, as "I can't tell you" is fundamentally the same as "That's my client.")
My worst fears, however, were not realized. A short while later, he zoomed back up the street, garage sale loot in hand, without so much of a glance up our drive.
I still wonder what might have happened, had he checked out our stuff. It's hard to observe the "I'll acknowledge you only if you acknowledge me" rule when the person is literally at your doorstep. And what if he'd bought something? Would I have felt weird taking his quarter for one of Mrs. Gerbil's sci-fi/fantasy novels?
Signs point to "yes."
Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Gerbil went off to Walgreens to retrieve a prescription of mine. The staff at our Walgreens generally does a terrific job of authenticating their customers, even those whom they recognize (such as yours truly). However, Mrs. Gerbil reports that the pharmacy tech tried really, really hard to give her someone else's prescription.
Apparently the tech asked dutifully for my name and address--and then proceeded to hand Mrs. Gerbil the bag directly behind mine. Mrs. Gerbil protested, "That's not the right one!" The tech said something to the effect of "Did you move? It looks like we have the wrong address on file."
Mrs. Gerbil pointed out that not only have we not moved, but the name on the bag was not mine. They went back and forth about this for a bit before the proverbial light bulb came on, and the correct bag made it to Mrs. Gerbil's little paws.
I'm not even going to begin on that one. Hip-hip-HIPAA, dudes.
Mrs. Gerbil and I went to Kohl's yesterday, in hot pursuit of random items of clothing and accessories. I find Kohl's to be rather hit-or-miss. It's almost always a miss when I'm in search of pants, as they don't carry small enough sizes. (Go ahead, hate me now.) But yesterday, when I was not in need of pants, it was a hit. For just under $35 we acquired three shirts, two pairs of socks, and three pairs of earrings. Pretty darn good, if you ask me.
The cashier handed me a very familiar-looking pen with which to sign the charge slip.
"Hey," I said, "I thought that looked an awful lot like a Seroquel pen!"
The cashier replied, a little too quickly, "Oh, that's not mine. Someone must have left it here. I don't know where it came from."
I guess the stigma of mental illness extends even to abandoned pharmaceutical swag.
A man claiming to be Jesus is brought to the emergency room. The triage nurse hands him some carbonless forms and a clipboard and says, "Make sure you press hard with that pen. We need to be able to read all three pages."
The man stares at the forms for a minute, then tears off the first sheet and starts to fill it in.
"Hey!" says the triage nurse. "I thought I told you those are in triplicate!"
"One, three--it doesn't really matter," says the man. "It's all the same thing anyway."
Helping Our Lovely Individuals Eliminate Risk by Teaching Healthier Alternatives Naturally and Touting Happy Opportunities Universally (HOLIERTHANTHOU) is seeking an
ALL-AROUND ROCKSTAR PART-TIME COUNSELOR/ROLE MODEL/EDUCATOR/ADVOCATE/MANAGER/YOUTH OUTREACH SPECIALIST!
Job Description:
The Counselor/Role Model/Educator/Advocate/Manager/Youth Outreach Specialist (CREAMY) is responsible for the design, delivery, and evaluation of HOLIERTHANTHOU's social services program. We offer a wide variety of activities and support to the individuals who need them. The CREAMY is involved in all facets of HOLIERTHANTHOU's work. The CREAMY also provides administrative support to the Executive Director, including (but not limited to) stocking and ordering supplies, photocopying library books, filling lunch and Starbucks orders, and providing childcare for two-year-old triplets.
Compensation:
The position of CREAMY is budgeted for 20 hours per week (FTE $20,000). However, you should expect to work at least 35 hours per week, with anything over 20 hours unpaid. Evenings, weekends, and holidays are required, as is occasional overtime (up to 15 hours per week) and work from your deathbed. Please note that this is an exempt position. Travel (30% of time) is required. We do not reimburse for mileage or parking. The ideal candidate would be just as happy doing this work for free.
Qualifications:
1. Quadri-lingual in English, Spanish, and two of the following languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, American Sign Language, Russian, Vietnamese, Klingon.
2. Master's degree or higher in something vaguely related to social services. Life experience may be substituted for all or part of the education requirement.
3. Valid driver's license, clean DMV record, and reliable hybrid vehicle (preferably blue in color). You must provide a copy of your title and registration with your application. Applicants with Hummers will not be considered.
3. A commitment to HOLIERTHANTHOU's vision of diversity, cultural competency, and respect for everyone who agrees with us. Jaundiced lesbian women with three nipples and a pet iguana are strongly encouraged to apply.
4. A commitment to HOLIERTHANTHOU's commitment to provide quality social services in a committed fashion.
Benefits:
Knowing that you work for the best social service agency in the universe.
Please submit cover letter, resume, transcripts, K-12 report cards, photocopies of vehicle title and registration, photocopy of Red Cross blood donor card (including blood type), and five letters of reference (one of which must be from a previous babysitter) to the Executive Director by 1/31/07.
"Cultural competence" is currently quite the topic of interest in mental health services, especially in California. A lot of people here are peeing themselves over making sure that their agencies are "culturally competent." In my never-ending quest for a Better Job, I keep coming across ads that devote more space to the agency's interest in "cultural competency" than to the description of the actual job.
I disagree with the entire concept of "cultural compentency." How do you know when you are "culturally competent"? There is no exam to take, no set of prohibitively expensive workshops to attend, no embossed certificate to hang on your wall. And who gets to decide which "cultures" one must be "competent" in? Most of us aren't even "competent" in our own culture--let alone able to describe exactly our own cultural influences.
"Cultural competency," I think, implies a mysterious package of skills. I would rather be culturally aware. I think it's important to know at least basic things about other cultural groups, especially as may affect therapy. But we should learn from our clients as much as they learn from us. And we must be prepared to be wrong--and accept it when we are.
Once I was the only lesbian on staff and the only Jew, secular or otherwise. So my caseload kept getting padded with lesbians, Jews, and lesbian Jews. I'm not religious at all and was never even a bat mitzvah, so I'm not sure what really qualified me to be Super Jew Therapist. It was our practice to ask clients during their intakes whether they wanted their therapist to have any particular characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Maybe five percent of my intakes indicated some preference. The rest said, "I don't care. I just want someone who can help me."
Certainly, there are cases where therapist-client matching is a great idea, if not a necessity. A client who speaks little English is probably best served by a therapist who can speak his or her native language. A client who has extreme difficulty trusting white men should probably not be placed with a white male therapist. My move to California was precipitated, in part, by paternalistic heterosexism; and when I became depressed as a result, I specifically sought a lesbian therapist. Though I'd had an excellent straight male therapist in the past, I didn't want a straight man listening this time.
Recently I read a comparison of treatment-related philosophies from the 1970s and today. I think the context was how managed care has shifted psychology's priorities. There was this whole list of factors which were pretty much diametrically opposed, including length of treatment, emphasis on thoughts vs. feelings, and case conceptualization. One of the pairs was "individual differences" (the 70s) and "diversity" (today). At first I was quite confused. How were these mutually exclusive? And then it dawned on me:
Individual differences emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, rejecting the homogeneity of the group.
Diversity emphasizes the homogeneity of the group, rejecting the uniqueness of the individual.
(And all of a sudden, this interview made a whole lot more sense.)
Racism sucks. Sexism sucks. Homophobia, bi-phobia, and transphobia suck. Anti-Semitism sucks. Ageism (though completely legal under federal law unless you're over 40) sucks. Ableism sucks. Dude, discrimation sucks.
However, it's impossible to talk about "diversity" without endorsing stereotypes. There's nothing inherently bad about stereotypes. What's bad is assuming you know everything about your 10:00 intake... at 9:59.
Last night I made up a joke and I just have to share.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Therapist.
Therapist who?
I'll answer that in a minute, but first, I'm curious about why you ask.
No one warned me that, in the course of my training in psychology, I would develop a Therapist Clock.
I learned early on how to check my watch as subtly as possible (the "itchy wrist" is always a good technique), where to place the furniture for maximum clock visibility (you need at least two clocks, one across from each chair), and how to structure the last 10 minutes of the session in order to segue smoothly into "We need to wrap up for today" at 3 minutes before the end.
But I never learned about the Therapist Clock until it was too late.
The Therapist Clock is an internal timekeeping device that divides up one's waking experiences into 50-minute chunks. The Therapist Clock also contains subdivisions, at 10, 15, 25, and 35 minutes. The Therapist Clock is capable of running longer than 50 minutes, but it is not always accurate in its second cycle (indeed, it is frequently 10 minutes behind).
The Therapist Clock cannot be shut off, and it does not care what you are doing. The Therapist Clock is useful in many situations, such as waiting for the bus, making pasta, or gauging how much longer the washing machine will be running. The Therapist Clock is also frighteningly good at predicting plot twists during Law & Order, which, for the curious, generally fall at or around :15, :38, and :50.
But the Therapist Clock is very much a handicap with respect to other activities, such as sitting through a slow movie, talking on the phone ("hey, it's so good to hear your voice, but our time's up for today"), or *ahem* intimate relations.
The Therapist Clock frequently malfunctions on airplanes, but not on trains, buses, or cars. It never malfunctions in the waiting room at the doctor's, nor in the emergency room (provided, of course, that one is fully conscious). The Therapist Clock also never malfunctions during one's own therapy. I find it absolutely hilarious when both of us start to fidget after 45 minutes.
Yesterday morning I went to Target, in search of some random items. I entered the store at about 10:10. When I left the store, I estimated I'd been shopping for about forty minutes. I'd forgotten my watch--I knew what time I'd gone in from the car radio--so to check my estimate, I pulled out my trusty cell phone (which, for the curious, has a bitchin' Law & Order ringtone).
And lo! It was 10:47.
Quite pleased with myself, I called Mrs. Gerbil to brag.
"You scare me," she said.
I think I've been working on this post for about 50 minutes now... oho! Indeed I have. Well, we need to wrap up for today. See you next time. Bye bye, take care.
I had one of the worst interviews of my life a week ago. It's taken me a week to recover. This interview was really over after ten minutes, but it lasted an entire hour because I haven't yet learned how to bow out gracefully.
How would I describe this interview, if I had to use but a single word? A few possibilities:
Violating.
Inappropriate.
Power-struggly.
Godawful.
In an attempt to reframe my experience, I decided to come up with a list of the Top Ten Things Not to Do in an Interview. Now, mind you, there already exist a ton of advice sites for interviewees on what not to do during an interview. These are pretty obvious. For example: Don't put your feet up on the interviewer's desk. Don't snap your gum. Don't giggle if you fart.
No, I'm talking about advice for the interviewer. Because it's not just the candidate who has to make a good impression.
Inspired by actual events, I present:
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF INTERVIEWING
1. Thou shalt not ask thy candidate about his or her personal philosophy and then declare that it is wrong.
2. Thou shalt not ask thy candidate vague questions, refuse to provide any additional useful information, and then declare that his or her answer is wrong.
3. Thou shalt not preface thy question with, "I know I am not allowed to ask this," and then proceed to ask thy candidate a disguised version of thy illegal question.
4. Thou shalt not compel thy candidate to elaborate on any matter to which thy candidate referreth as "personal."
5. Thou shalt not interview candidates whom thou hast no intention of hiring in the first place. If thou interviewest candidates whom thou hast no intention of hiring in the first place, thou shalt not convey this information to thy candidate.
6. Thou shalt not belittle thy candidate.
7. Thou shalt not get huffy when thy candidate sayeth that he or she honoreth the Sabbath. For I am a jealous G-d and besides I have already made it quite clear about my feelings toward the Sabbath.
8. Thou shalt not cut thy candidate off by saying, "you really believe that?"
9. Thou shalt not present information which is incorrect or untestable in order to prove thy superiority over thy candidate.
10. Thou shalt not do all of these things which I have commanded thee not to do, and then inform thy candidate that thou really liketh him or her and that thou really wouldst like to hire him or her, but thou canst not do so and is that not a shame.
I have this new favorite joke. It was on Prairie Home Companion over the weekend. But it's very difficult to retell.
See, it's a knock-knock joke, and it goes like this:
Knock knock
Who's there?
Control freak. Now, you say "control freak who?"
People seem to get tripped up and say "control freak who?" And that just ruins the joke.
My wife says it's up there in funniness with the feminist light-bulb joke:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's not funny.
Ah, intellectual humor.
I watched The Sixth Sense for the fifth or sixth time yesterday. I love this movie. I don't like spooky movies as a general rule, but this one rocks my world. And oh, the Phuludulfian accents! Music to my ears. I have no desire to put down my roots where I was born, but the accents are like home, yo. I swear, what little accent I have has gotten stronger since I moved to California.
So I'm watching this glorious movie, letting the accents (or damn good imitations thereof) wash over me like the wudder of the Dullaware, and I realize that there's something very off about the very beginning of this movie.
See, when Bruce Willis gets shot in the beginning, it's cold enough that he and Olivia Williams have the fireplace going. Then we fade to the THE NEXT FALL, and the leaves look quite perfect for early October. It's usually too warm by April for a fire back East, so at least six months must have passed since the dropping of Donnie Wahlberg's trou.
And Bruce Willis is thinking he's got an appointment with Haley Joel Osment that very day.
I mean, I know I should suspend disbelief. It's M. Night Shyamalan, you know? I can suspend disbelief where M. Night Shyamalan is concerned. M. Night Shyamalan decided that my little hometown needed diagonal parking spots with parking meters for the filming of Signs, which was pretty ridiculous given the actual width of State Street. But the Book and Record Exchange got a complete facelift out of the deal, Mom's Bake-at-Home Pizza (which doesn't serve or bake, only assembles) got a table and a placque that says "Mel Gibson Sat Here and Pretended to Eat" or some such, and the Advance of Bucks County got to publish photos and tidbits about Mel and company for weeks. And this was all great and fun and put Newtown on the map for something other than the Law School Admission Council, whose mail once came to my mom's office by mistake and they all but scanned her retinas when she tried to redeliver it herself.
So anyway, Bruce Willis tells Haley Joel Osment that they were supposed to have had a session that day. Haley Joel Osment does not seem bothered by his apparent no-show. And I started thinking, you know, if Bruce Willis really were Phuludulfia's son, this eminent child psychologist at this famous clinic, the clinic must have a receptionist. And since Bruce Willis couldn't exactly call in dead himself, the receptionist would have canceled all of his appointments.
But even if he didn't have a receptionist, at least six months have passed since he became dead and didn't know it. Psychologists who do weekly therapy aren't known for scheduling intakes six months (or more) in advance. Plus, Bruce Willis appears to have written some notes already, in September. (I love the pause button.) But he and Haley Joel Osment don't actually meet for the first time until this scene.
So the question is: Who referred this kid to a very dead psychologist, and provided enough information in the referral that said very dead psychologist could formulate an initial diagnostic workup?
I can only suspend disbelief for so long. There's got to be something in HIPAA (which came out four years later, but whatever) about your personal health information seeing dead people.
This morning I had to have some bloodwork done. I had to fast for 12 hours beforehand, and I get really icky when I don't eat, so I wanted to get to the lab right when it opened. Plus, in the past, I have actually passed out after this particular panel. I have a very distinct memory from about age seven of coming to on the sidewalk outside St. Mary's Hospital, with this enormous nun standing over me with a cup of orange juice in her hand and a big ol' halo around her head. I was really confused by the halo, but when my brain started back up again, I realized it was the sun behind her.
So I was not happy when the lab did not open on time. By the time the phlebotomist got there, half an hour late, there were three of us waiting for tests, plus two, well, chauffeurs. One of the other people waiting for a test was this guy who wanted to know whether my chauffeur wife and I were students. I said we were. He asked what we were studying. I said I was studying psychology. My wife did not answer, which I guess was okay because then the guy launched into this whole thing about photography, children, and color psychology. Also about his swim trunks and taking pictures of kids up at some pool where a lot of people learn to take pictures of kids.
Anyway, color psychology is not really the most scientific thing out there. It's all about meanings that are associated with colors, which sounds great except these meanings are not inherent properties of the colors themselves, but rather are assigned by cultures. For example, in the US, white is associated with weddings; but in China, white is associated with funerals. In the US, red is associated with anger and Republicans; but in India, red is associated with purity and weddings. There are lots of internet quizzes one can take about color psychology (aka Colorgenics). I took one of them and "learned" the following about myself:
Your Existing Situation
Working to improve her image in the eyes of others in order to obtain their compliance and agreement with her needs and wishes.
...Bullshit!
Your Stress Sources
Wants to overcome a feeling of emptiness and to bridge the gap which she feels separates herself from others.
...Bullshit!
Anxious to experience life in all its aspects, to explore all its possibilities, and to live it to the fullest.
...Too vague for judgment!
She therefore resents any restriction or limitation being imposed on her and insists on being free and unhampered.
...True.
Your Restrained Characteristics
Very exacting in the standards she applies to her choice of a partner and seeking a rather unrealistic perfection in her sex life.
...Bullshit!
Willing to become emotionally involved and able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity, but tries to avoid conflict.
...Mostly true.
Your Desired Objective
Seeks affectionate, satisfying and harmonious relationships.
...True.
Desires an intimate union, in which there is a love, self-sacrifice and mutual trust.
...True.
Your Actual Problem
Does not wish to be involved in differences of opinion, contention or argument, preferring to be left in peace.
...BullllllllllSHIT!
Your Actual Problem #2
Needs to achieve a stable and peaceful condition, enabling her to free herself of the worry that she may be prevented from achieving all the things she wants.
...I don't understand what this means, so... Bullshit!
Score: Bullshit 5, True Enough 4, WTF 1.
I have a feeling all this conflict avoidance stuff is because I picked the black square last. Black is supposedly all about aggression. But the quiz asked me to pick the colors that make me feel good. I don't like black because I look jaundiced in too much of it. Ditto for green, orange, yellow, and brown. It has nothing to do with conflict avoidance--and everything to do with, well, vanity.
So this guy at the lab told me that my purple fleece jacket symbolized passion, and my green corduroys symbolized abundance.
"So I'm all about abundant passion?" I asked. My wife snickered.
"Yes," he said. "Come to think of it, I had a pair of green and purple swim trunks once."
Right.
Guess who else is all about abundant passion, then?
I love you, you love me, I rest my case.
Once upon a time there was a little gerbil. This little gerbil tried to do everything right all the time. It kept its cage neat, didn't snack upon its own poop, and never peed up in the Habitrail tunnels. Sometimes people picked up the gerbil and held it upside-down by its tail. It didn't squirm or try to bite the people. It was truly a very well-behaved gerbil.
The gerbil liked to chew on cardboard tubes. It was really into the cardboard tubes. Paper towel tubes, toilet paper tubes, what-have-you. It would only share its cardboard tubes with one of its cagemates. The two gerbils spent a lot of time destroying cardboard tubes together. They were very well-behaved, although sometimes they stayed up very late, chewing on tubes and chattering.
One day, the people got a huge new cage with some more gerbils. They hooked up the new cage to the old cage, and the gerbil and its cagemate got to know the new bunch of gerbils. They chewed some tubes together in the new cage, but soon the gerbil's cagemate got tired of the new cage and went back to the old cage. The gerbil really missed its cagemate.
The new gerbils told the gerbil that it was chewing tubes all wrong. They said that real gerbils all chewed tubes in a very particular way. The gerbil wanted to do everything right and make the new gerbils happy, so it started chewing tubes like a real gerbil.
The gerbil had always thought it was a real gerbil, but it started to have its doubts. Maybe it was a hamster, or a mouse, or a very small guinea pig. It spent a lot of time looking at its tail. Hamsters and guinea pigs don't have tails, so maybe it was a mouse. Maybe it should start calling itself a mouse, or at the very least, a gerbil imposter. It wasn't chewing tubes like a real gerbil, but its cagemate kept saying they were both real gerbils. The gerbil was very, very confused.
After a while, the gerbil grew tired of trying to do things the right way. It wanted to do things its way, because it realized that sometimes other gerbils' right ways were not the right way for it. So it did most of the same gerbilly things, like keeping the cage neat, not eating its own poop, and not peeing in the Habitrail tunnels. It still didn't squirm when people held it upside-down by its tail. But it did go back to chewing tubes its own way.
The other gerbils were very mad. They told the gerbil it would never be taken for a real gerbil unless it chewed tubes like a real gerbil. They told the gerbil it couldn't have any sunflower seeds unless it chewed tubes like a real gerbil. They started pooping in the gerbil's favorite corner of the cage. Once they put some poop in a sunflower seed shell and gave it to the gerbil. The gerbil was so happy to see a sunflower seed shell that it didn't notice the poop inside until it was too late.
Finally the gerbil couldn't take it any more. It went back to its old cage and its favorite cagemate. It chewed tubes the way it wanted to. It tried not to pay attention to the other cage. Every so often it saw the gerbils in the other cage giving it nasty, disapproving looks over their half-chewed tubes. Sometimes the other gerbils tried to throw poop at the gerbil, but they threw like gerbils and the poop landed in their own cage. The gerbil focused on keeping its own cage neat, chewing on tubes with its cagemate, and trying really hard not to care about the other gerbils.
Then one day the gerbil looked over at the other cage and saw that the other gerbils were practically swimming in gerbil poop. They called over to the gerbil and asked for help. The people had been trying to bring home new gerbils, they said, and the new gerbils wouldn't move in on account of the filth. A couple of gerbils had stayed over for a night or two, but none of them would stay longer. The prospective gerbils all complained of the poop and the rules about tube-chewing. No one knew what to do, because the poop-throwing and the chewing rules had always worked just fine.
The gerbil was indignant. How dare they ask for help fixing the very things that prompted it to leave? The gerbil stayed up many nights, chewing on tubes, wondering what to do. It finally knew, in its gerbilly heart, that it was a real gerbil. The other gerbils--maybe they didn't even have gerbilly hearts. Maybe they were all rats. They certainly behaved like vermin.
After a lot of searching of its gerbilly soul, the gerbil said to the other gerbils that it would, indeed, help. It would never benefit directly, it said, because it would never, ever, ever go back to that other cage, never. But it wanted to make life better for future batches of prospective gerbils. The other gerbils were very eager to hear what the gerbil had to say.
The gerbil said it had a single piece of advice.
What is it? What is it? clamored the other gerbils.
The gerbil said it was a really radical idea that the other gerbils might not like.
What is it? What is it? Please tell us! clamored the other gerbils.
The gerbil took a bite of a cardboard tube, stood up on its little haunches, and said through a very full mouth:
"There's no wrong way to eat these pieces."
THE END
" 'You don't mind being treated like a... like a gerbil?' "
- Nick Hornby, About a Boy
" 'Under your prim exterior, I'm sure there beats the heart of a lusty animal. ... Perhaps a gerbil.' "
- Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
