Finding the voice

***

I having a rum old day. Still, there's nothing as guaranteed to make you laugh as having your cat try to groom your hair.

What sort of food might a roach coach/food stall in coastal Maine sell? Here in Arizona, they often sell Mexican food. Do they sell fish on the coast? During a scene where my character is walking along the beach or a wharf (haven't decided yet,) she comes across one and orders a quick meal; preferably something regional. I need to know what that might be.

Any thoughts?

So say you went to the Basilica at the Vatican on an ordinary weekday; there's no event, nothing special is happening, it's just some Tuesday or something. What level of clergyman would be attending the church, being there for pilgrims to go talk to, kinda being the priest-on-duty?

Searched: Wikipedia pages on medical schools (US), "semester schedule medical school", "first year medical school", essay Clinical Experiences in Pre-Clinical Years, SWU's med school curriculum site (actual class material password-protected)

Setting: United States, present-day (well, 2008.)

One of my characters is in his first year of medical school. The story takes place in late spring, as the semester is drawing to a close. Due to some tl;dr circumstances, he has to leave town for a few days. After checking the time one morning, he remarks on what he'd be doing in class at that particular moment, were he still at school.

I've found summaries of first-year classes, and basic course schedules, but no real info on what particular tasks med students face during this time. (e.g., are the classes primarily lectures or do they involve dissection, are there small group projects or is it all individual work, etc.)
If it makes a difference, my character plans to go into cardiothoracic surgery.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Babelfish just gave me the kanji (which is interesting, but not quite what I was looking for) and I'm only coming up with online dictionaries when I try to work my Google-fu.

I'm mapping out a cracked Twilight/Yami no Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness) fic and I decided, in a moment of evil whimsy to entitle it "Red Moon" (per the way the moon seems to turn red whenever Muraki is out and about and doing his thing; yes, the fic features Edwierd -- er, Edward crossing paths with the not-so-good doctor), but part of me decided to have the title in Japanese as well as English. Can anyone help me out here?

This needs a tag of 'post-nuclear symptoms made to order'. :)

I'm working on an SF story in which there was a nuclear detonation in a universe next door. Basically, a few people are able to teleport in this universe by slipping in and out of the blast zone in the other one.

I can get lists of physical effects of radiation exposure, of course. (For instance.) What I need to know is how those symptoms would manifest in the specific scenario I've set up: these people are exposed to severe radiation in extremely short bursts, a few weeks to a few months apart, over an extended period of time. I'm particularly interested in the timescales of visible/obvious symptoms - teeth falling out, skin lesions, etc.

I'm guessing there would be some immediate effects after each teleportation, as well as greater problems established by the repeated trips, but I don't know how the overlap of those exposures would work in practice.

(I remember reading about people who deliberately race around the Chernobyl site but haven't been able to track that down. Any leads welcomed.)

Ideally I want them to be killing themselves slowly - in general, able to keep this up for a few years before they're too physically worn out to continue - but if some people die right away (or others hang on for a longer time) then that's fine as long as it's within normal limits of the effects of this pattern of exposure.

The scenario I've set out is what I'm currently working with, but if necessary, I could manipulate a) the length of time they're exposed, b) the length of time between exposures, and c) the intensity of the exposure (they might be able to shield themselves from the worst of it or be on the edge of the blast zone).

Thanks!

Fiddly little name question here.

I want to do something with the genderswapped version of a male character of Indian descent (present day), which means finding a female name that makes sense as an equivalent for "Aasif."

I've poked around sites like babynamer.com to find names with similar sounds, but they don't give me much of a feel for whether the names have completely different connotations, and I don't want to inadvertently pick a wallbanger. (Like how "Ethel" feels very old-fashioned, so it wouldn't be a good substitute for a modern-day character named Ethan.)

Any suggestions?

• 15:04 Review PDFs of my urban fantasy novel Spellbent are available; reviewers can request one here: las.livejournal.com/284680.html #

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  I have a PDF version of my urban fantasy novel Spellbent that I can send out to prospective reviewers. The book will be in stores on December 29th. People reviewing for blogs and Amazon as well as for magazines are welcome to ask for it.

  If you'd like a copy, please reply with the site/publication you're reviewing for along with your preferred email address. The PDF is about 4MB. I'll filter replies to protect your information.

When is this thrice damned Halloween event over?

A couple from last week. More over on flickr:

There's supposed to be an RAF Hercules fly-past near London Bridge at 11am, if you're in that neck of the woods.

My dad is hosting two TFs Saturday night and asked me to mention them here:

7 PM Eastern: Hess TF - minimum level 25

9 PM Easterm: Dr. Kahn TF - minimum level 45

Let me know if you're in (I may or not be there for the TFs) and meet Little Volt (@AThiker) at the contact!

I have a lot of fun with my original concept character, Itland the nanotechnological wereporcupine. He has actually been around since well before CoH in a forum roleplay, but I created him during beta and again after the wipe as a regen/spines on Pinnacle. With the new metal spine graphics of I16 I decided to reboot him on Virtue with Willpower, which is closer to his original concept than pure regen.

The original character was pretty much a tanker, but spine tankers don't exist yet. So I am going fairly heavy on the secondary and play him as a "scranker", a scrapper that runs in before the rest of the team when there are no tankers. In his 20es he is particularly good at tanking Lost, since their bosses rely way too much on their mind tricks. Now for your sage advice: Important slotting tips? I find WP to be very broad-spectrum so I have not needed any rare sets so far, but this may change later in life. Is it worth slotting Quills for slow or am I better served with just yellow and red?

Pool powers? I have already decided on fitness for further healing and to power the many toggles. Superspeed as a travel power (because this is in character, and I will probably have good use for Hasten). Any pool powers that can boost my survivability? Any main powers I can drop to make room for them? (I am not planning to take Resurgence, as I tend to carry a wakie or two, and if that is not enough, I am not going to scrank more with that team.)

... who'd have thought "Walk" would be the one to do it? :P

(As of 8 pm EST, all servers currently down for emergency rollbacks.)

 I have been playing blueside a lot, but I was wondering, where is a good server for redside play?

I'm watching this Gary Glitter thing. I'm so glad the death penalty was abolished the year I was born, and I'm so glad that mass demonstrations to restore it remain a distasteful fiction.

/edit: dear god, what a pile of wank.

"A scratch! A scratch!"

No, I'd probably be moaning on about "get this fucking piano off me!"

I'm not frightened of dying, but I suspect at the point where it's actually about to happen to you (assuming the piano doesn't hit you square-on and it's therefore not instant), it gets intensely frightening for a bit, and then not at all. So I'll probably kvetch my way through the frightening bit like a giant cowardy coward, and then when everyone else is all upset I'll suddenly come to terms with it, smile beatifically, point at the far side of the room and go "Oh, hallo!" and peg out.

I know my friends and family would be devastated, as I would if I lost any one of them. I don't waste my time imagining it: it's not a thought to be indulged.