Monday, August 8, 2011

BONERS! OMG! BONERS! AND TOURO WITCHCRAFT! OOOHHHHHHH!

Well.........

and well oh well,  boys and girls, and my oh my oh my my my, my my! . I think it is time that we all had a long and serious talk about the birds and the bees.

And the Boners.

But first.......tickle all your little piggys...especially all youse greedy law School Professor BONERS

And give an especial tickle to the little piggy that Went to the Student Loan Market.

Because one little greedy professor piggy had roast beef, and one littlepoor STUDENT piggy had none :(

Another tiny little piggy called itself............a Lawschool Government Handout dean,

and then told all the naive little students:

"Welcome to the Machine!"

And Touro Witchcraft ruled, and cast a CURSE OF DEBT! and a funeral pall,

over all.

OOOOOH!'

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!

000000000000000000H!







__________________________________

The following is an excerpt from "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat:



There was a time, a personal time for Lockhart, which he knew as the time of the Burnt Man.

Ordinarily, he did not concern himself a great deal with looking after survivors: Crowther, the sick-berth attendant, had proved himself sensible and competent, and unless there were more cases than one man could cope with, Lockhart left him to get on with his work alone. But now and again, as the bad year progressed, there was an overflow of injured or exhausted men who needed immediate attention; and it was on one of these occasions, when the night had yielded nearly forty survivors from two ships, that Lockhart found himself back again at his old job of ship's doctor.

The small, two-berth sick-bay was already filled the work to be done was, as in the old days, waiting for him in the fo'c's'le. As he stepped into the crowded, badly lit space, he no longer felt the primitive revulsion of two years ago, when all this was new and harassing; but there was nothing changed in the dismal picture, nothing was any less crude or moving or repellant. There were the same rows of survivors-wet through, dirt-streaked, shivering: the same reek of oil and sea water: the same relief on one face, the same remembered terror on another. There were the same people drinking tea or retching their stomachs up or telling their story to anyone who would listen. Crowther had marshalled the men needing attention in one corner, and here again the picture was the same: wounded men, exhausted men, men in pain afraid to die, men in a worse agony hoping not to live.

Crowther was bending over one of these last, a seaman whose filthy overalls had been cut away to reveal a splintered knee-cap: as soon as he looked the rest of the casualties over, Lockhart knew at once which one of them had the first priority.

He picked his way across the fo'c's'le and stood over the man, who was being gently held by two of his shipmates. It seemed incredible that he was still conscious, still able to advertise his agony: by rights he should have been dead--not moaning, not trying to pluck something from his breast. . . . .
He had sustained deep and cruel first-degree burns, from his throat to his waist: the whole raw surface had been flayed and roasted, as if he had been caught too long in a spit that had stopped turning: he now gave out, appropriately, a kitchen smell indescribably horrible. What the first touch of salt water on his body must have felt like passed imagination.

"He got copped by a flash-back from the boiler," said one of the men holding him. "Burning oil. Can you fix him?"

"Fix him," thought Lockhart: "I wish I could fix him n his coffin right now. . . ." He forced himself to bend down and draw close to this sickening object: above the scored and shrivelled flesh of the man's face, bereft of eyelashes, eyebrows, and the front portion of his scalp, looked expressionless and foolish. But there was no lack of expression in the eyes, which were liquid with pain and surprise. If the man could have bent his head and looked at his own chest, thought Lockhart, he would give up worrying and ask for a revolver straight away. . . He turned and called across to Crowther:

"What have you got for burns?"

Crowther rummaged in his first aid satchel. "This, sir," he said, and passed something across. A dozen willing hands relayed it to Lockhart, as if it were the elixier of life itself. It was in fact a small tube of ointment, about the size of a toothpaste tube. On the label was a picture of a smiling child, and the inscription: "For the Relief of Burns. Use Sparingly."

"Use sparingly," thought Lockhart, "if I used it as if it were platinum dust, I'd still need about two tons of it." He held the small tube in his hand and looked down again at the survivor. One of the men holding him said: "Here's the doctor. He'll fix you up right away," and the fringeless eyes came slowly round and settled on Lockhart's face as if he were the ministering Christ himself.
Lockhart took a swab of cotton wool, put some of the ointment on it, swallowed deep revulsion, and started to stroke, very gently, the area of the burnt chest. Just before he began he said: "It's a soothing ointment."

"I suppose it's natural that he should scream." thought Lockhart presently, shutting his ears: all the old fashioned pictures showed a man screaming as soon as the barber-surgeon started to operate, while his friends plied the patient with rum or knocked him out with a mallet. . . . The trouble was that the man was still so horrifyingly alive: he pulled and wrenched at the two men holding him, while Lockhart, stroking and swabbing with a mother's tenderness, removed layer after layer of his flesh. For the other trouble was that however gently he was touched, the raw tissue went on and on coming away with the cotton wool.

Lockhart was aware that the ring of men who were watching had fallen silent: he felt rather than saw their faces contract with pity and disgust as he swabbed the ointment deeper and deeper, and the flesh still flaked off like blistered paintwork. "I wonder how long this can go on," he thought, as he saw, without surprise, that at one point he had laid bare a rib that gleamed with an astonishng cleanness and astringency. "I don't think this is any good, : he thought again, as the man fainted at last, and the two sailors holding him turned their eyes toward Lockhart in question and disbelief. The ointment was almost finished: the raw chest now gaped at him like the foundation of some rotton building.

"Die!" he thought, almost aloud, as he sponged once more, near the throat, and a new layer of sinew came into view, laid bare like a lecturer's diagram. "Please give up, and die. I can't go on doing this, and I can't stop while you're still alive."

He heard a dozen men behind him draw in their breath sharply as a fresh area of skin suddenly crumbled under his most gentle hand and adhered to the cotton wool. Crowther, atracted by the focus of interest and now kneeling by his side, said: "Any good, sir?" and he shook his head. 'I'm doing wonders," he thought: "They'll give me a job in a canning factory. . ." Some blood flowed over the rib he had laid bare, and he swabbed it off almost apolegetically.

"Sorry," he thought: "that was probably my fault"--and then again: "Die! Please die! I am making a fool of myself, and certainly of you. You'll never be any use now. And we'll give you a lovely funeral, well out of sight. . . . "

Suddenly and momentarily, the man opened his eyes, and looked up a Lockhart with a deeper, more fundamentsl surprise, as if he had intercepted the thought and was now aware that a traitor and not a friend was touching him. He twisted his body, and a rippling spasm came across the scorched flesh. "Steady Jock!" said one of his friends, and "Die!" thought Lockhart yet again, squeezing the last smear of ointment from the tube and touching with it a shoulder muscle that immediately gave way and parted from its ligament. "Die. Do us all a favor. Die!"

Aloud, he repeated, with the utmost foolishness: "It's a soothing ointment." But: "Die now!" his lips formed.

"Don't be obstinate. No one wants you. You wouldn't want yourself if you could take a look. Please Die!"

Presently, obediently, but far too late, the man died.


(Had a little time tonight after all, so I did this post. Otherwise, sees youse alls next week.)

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