(no subject)
I've spent the past week busting my ass doing homework. I really like to learn so it's not so bad. But here's the thing. I think my new obsession is medical anthropology. LIke for realsies. Like, I'm kind of thinking about in a 'maybe I should do that' knd of way.
It totally feeds my neuroses in a good way. You have to be meticulous, you have to get down and dirty in the field, and it actually serves a purpose.
Also, you get the perks of the medical world without having to be a doctor or health care provider.... so you just get to talk to people and investigate diseases and come up with ways to help people (realistically) and make the evil biomedical world slightly less evil.
And I just read about some really cool stuff. Beside the Hmong stuff, I just learned about susto, and about this really strange illness that exists only in Haiti, called move san/ let gate which is Haitian creole for "bad blood/spoiled milk" that was really cool, once anthropologized. It's basically a set of symptoms that occur pregnant and nursing women that serves a vehicle for the voicing of violence and suffering when women can't really say shit. The way it happens is like so: something bad or scary or super stressful happens to a woman who is pregnant or nursing, and the stress causes her blood to become "bad" (symptoms exhibit as usual stress symptoms, like stiffness, headaches, restlessness, lethargy, etc) and if it goes untreated by local cures, the bad blood causes the women's milk to "spoil" (which really means that they have issues breastfeeding, so the babies suffer as well, and it leads to a whole string of related events). But what was so interesting is that the cause of the fear that caused the bad blood was usually interpersonal strife, and usually with the father of their children. Getting sick was a culturally constructed and acceptable way to point out that they had bad people in their lives who broke the cardinal rule of protecting and caring for mothers.
Cool stuff huh?
Ugh. Today is superbowl day, and my boyfriend, Troy Palomalu, will be kicking ass in the superbowl... but I really am tired of people being over at my apartment. Aaron is a social fucking butterfly, but he doesn't ever go to anybody else's house. Instead they come over here, and do the exact same thing. Drink beer and watch tv. It's like he can't hang out without watching TV. Grossssss.
I'm just a grumpykins because the ho's are here.
It totally feeds my neuroses in a good way. You have to be meticulous, you have to get down and dirty in the field, and it actually serves a purpose.
Also, you get the perks of the medical world without having to be a doctor or health care provider.... so you just get to talk to people and investigate diseases and come up with ways to help people (realistically) and make the evil biomedical world slightly less evil.
And I just read about some really cool stuff. Beside the Hmong stuff, I just learned about susto, and about this really strange illness that exists only in Haiti, called move san/ let gate which is Haitian creole for "bad blood/spoiled milk" that was really cool, once anthropologized. It's basically a set of symptoms that occur pregnant and nursing women that serves a vehicle for the voicing of violence and suffering when women can't really say shit. The way it happens is like so: something bad or scary or super stressful happens to a woman who is pregnant or nursing, and the stress causes her blood to become "bad" (symptoms exhibit as usual stress symptoms, like stiffness, headaches, restlessness, lethargy, etc) and if it goes untreated by local cures, the bad blood causes the women's milk to "spoil" (which really means that they have issues breastfeeding, so the babies suffer as well, and it leads to a whole string of related events). But what was so interesting is that the cause of the fear that caused the bad blood was usually interpersonal strife, and usually with the father of their children. Getting sick was a culturally constructed and acceptable way to point out that they had bad people in their lives who broke the cardinal rule of protecting and caring for mothers.
Cool stuff huh?
Ugh. Today is superbowl day, and my boyfriend, Troy Palomalu, will be kicking ass in the superbowl... but I really am tired of people being over at my apartment. Aaron is a social fucking butterfly, but he doesn't ever go to anybody else's house. Instead they come over here, and do the exact same thing. Drink beer and watch tv. It's like he can't hang out without watching TV. Grossssss.
I'm just a grumpykins because the ho's are here.