I am not making this up...

German farmer doing well after world's first complete double arm transplant

AP Photo/Uwe Lein

MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- A German farmer who received the world's first complete double arm transplant said Wednesday that incredulity gave way to joy when he woke from surgery to discover he had arms again.

Karl Merk, who lost his arms in a farming accident six years ago, said he at first could not believe that the transplant appeared to have been succesful.

"It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again," said the 54-year-old, who wore a sleeveless black shirt showing clearly where his new arms had been grafted.

"These are my arms, and I'm not giving them away again," he told reporters at the Munich University Clinic where he remains nearly three months after the 15-hour operation.

Merk is recovering well and can perform simple tasks such as opening doors and turning lights on and off. His ultimate goals are to eat and dress himself - and ride a motorcycle.

"All in all, our wildest expectations have pretty much been fulfilled," said Christoph Hoehnke, one of the lead doctors.

A total of 40 surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other support staff carried out the 15-hour operation on July 25-26 to graft the donor's arms on to the body of Merk, who lost his own just below the shoulder in a combine harvester accident.

Doctors said there were good indications of nerve growth in the arms but it could take up to two years before he relearns how to use his hands.

Merk appeared at the news conference Wednesday with lower arms bandaged and supported with a series of straps attached to shoulder pads.

Merk said he was looking forward to going home after four to six more weeks of an intensive program of physiotherapy, electric stimulation and psychological counseling.

There is also still a risk that Merk's immune system will react, though doctors said so far there was no sign of them being rejected.

Word of the Day - Limerance

While randomly surfing around Wikipedia (I'm strange, I know) I came across this term...

Limerance:  An involuntary state of mind which seems to result from a romantic attraction for another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated.

The term was invented by Prof. Dorothy Tennant in the 1970's.  She theorized there are 3 types of love: "loving attachment" (long-lasting love between a couple), "loving affection" (love between parent and child), and limerance. 

Limerance is "foremost a condition of cognitive obsession."  All events the limerant perceives return his or her thoughts to the object of desire (the "limerant object") consistently. 

When a limerant fantasizes about his/her limerant object the fantasy must be strongly rooted in reality because the end goal (reciprocation) must feel achievable.  Often the fantasies focus on a tragic moment.  This tells me I haven't experienced limerance very much in my life--my fantasies about women I'm attracted to almost inexorably lead to a scenario involving the Princess Leia Metal Bikini outfit.  Tragedy is not involved.

However, I remember back in elementary school (I started young) and going into middle school, there was a girl I was absolutely crazy about.  I sat next to her in math class and devoted most of my time to making her laugh (which may explain why I suck at math to this day).  I had this recurring fantasy where on a class trip to the Milwaukee Zoo, a baby falls into the Grizzly Bear area.  (Alright, so it's not completely realistic, but work with me here.)  I then bravely climb into the thick of things and rescue the baby, but a Grizzly claws me to shreds.  My beloved limerant object leans close as I gasp out "I have always loved you."  As the world goes dark and my end draws near, I barely hear her confess: "I love you too!" 

Cheesy?  Yes.  But for an 11-year-old, it was compelling stuff.

Also according to Wikipedia, relationships where both persons feel limerant toward each other are unstable and are not prone to lasting long.  This makes no sense to me--if both people are so 'in love' that they obsess about the other to the point of distraction, and that obsession is reciprocated, wouldn't that basically stabilize things?  It seems to me the least stable relationship would also be the kind that Wiki says is the most prevalent: a "mixed" relationship where one person is limerant toward the other, but the other is not.  The non-limerant person would eventually get tired of the limerant's obsessive-ness, which often leads to possessive-ness.  (Which leads to fear, which then leads to anger, which leads to... well, you know.)

Relationship gurus also theorize that mixed relationships where the man is limerant but the woman is not are more prone to failure, and point to the fact that more divorces are initiated by the woman as supporting evidence.

So what do y'all think?  Have you ever experienced limerance toward someone?  Or had someone feel limerant toward you?

I just lost an entry I had been working on during breaks for about TWO HOURS.  And the 'restore saved entry' didn't fricking work.

As a newb, this is the first time I've experienced this.  Not fun.  DO NOT WANT.

I'm not making this up.  It hasn't even been mentioned on the Journal/Sentinal website yet, but Brewers Manager Ned Yost is history.

My question: why do this NOW?  WTF????

So here I am, seated in a spacious, 3-unit log cabin surrounded on 3 sides by a beautiful blue lake.  I've eaten myself silly after having won in golf and I'm wondering whether I'm having a good time.  Am I *stupid?*

Here's the deal.  I'm here with my Dad, Uncle, and "Pseudo Uncle"-slash-friend of the family on an extended weekend golf outing.  They can't stop talking politics.  Why, why!!??  I keep trying to get them to talk about something more interesting yet less inflammatory--like, oh I dunno, HOW TO BEST WATCH PAINT DRY--but to no avail.  

My Dad, Uncle and Pseudo Uncle are liberals.  The people I work with are conservatives.  What's really funny is that a conversation about politics with either group sounds exactly the same.  Neither group talks about why they like *their* preferred candidate; instead they focus all their energy making convoluted arguments about why the *other* candidate sucks and how anyone would vote for the other candidate must be a complete and utter moron.

So to the people I'm with right now, people who intend to vote for McCain are: (1) racists; (2) totally uncaring about the plight of the nation's poor; (3) bible-thumping moral absolutists; (4) uneducated simpletons who believe everything they hear on (corporate-controlled) TV; and (5) hell-bent on taking away all womens' rights, starting with the right to choose.

To the people I work with, people who intend to vote for Obama are: (1) reverse racists; (2) totally uncaring about the nation's economy; (3) IPCC Report-thumping environmental absolutists; (4) *educated* simpletons who believe everything they hear on (liberal-leaning) TV; and (5) hell-bent on ruining the country by making it easier for our enemies to destroy it (or at least our way of life), starting with making us look weak by pulling out of Iraq.

I am soooooo f*cking tired of it all.  I'm so tired of it, I'd rather listen to a Bears fan talk about why the Bears are the greatest football team on earth--I'll even help him/her with some potential talking points to get the conversation started!!  Anything but fricking politics!!!!!!!

To da great white north to play golf with my Dad for the next 4 days!  Woo! 

(Well, alright, it's not *actually* the Great White North; northern Wisconsin is pretty close though.  It's gonna take me 6 hours to get there and I won't be able to get on the road until 7:30 p.m., ouchie.)

I'm going to bring my laptop (natch) and hope to update on a semi-regular basis.  You can find out how crappily I golfed!  Excellent!!  

More excitingly, you can tune in to find out if I manage to deal with my Dad's rantings about governnment conspiracies.  Now *that's* entertainment!

So my internet connection at home is down for the second day in a row.  If I wasn't such a megageek, I wouldn't be able to update this thing.  But I am a megageek, and I've fooled my laptop into thinking my 3G cellphone is a wired router. 

I know it's been said many times, many ways, but it bears repeating: netheads like myself just don't know how much they rely on the internet for communication, news and entertainment until it's gone.  After two days, I started getting delerium tremens, so I MacGyvered my cellphone just so I could surf a bit.

Problem?  I don't have a problem.  What makes you say that?  Maybe *you* have the problem....

(With apologies to Martin Short.)

So I'm recuperating from my Thursday raid into the bowels of Veeshan's Peak in EQ2 by surfing the web when I encounter the worst name EVAR for a dating website:

plentyoffish.com

At first I thought the name meant "Plenty Offish."  What the...?  What kind of dating website gears itself towards standoffish people?  "I'm Steve J., and I'm 'Plenty Offish.'  So stay the hell away from me.  You can call me at 555-1212, but you better not."

The rest of the banner ad said "We Delete Members unfit to date!" which, aside from its random approach to capitalization, underscored the site's standoffish-ness.  What's their criteria for 'unfit?'  Does it include lawyers who play MMORPG's?

Because the site worked so hard at seeming elitist it took me over a minute before I realized it's supposed to read "Plenty of Fish."  Which seems like a misnomer if they delete 'unfit' members willy-nilly.

In other news, I have a court hearing tomorrow.  I spent almost the whole day in court two days ago.  And before that I had a motion hearing.  All of a sudden, I'm Courtroom Boy.  It's annoying, because I have so much other work to get done, which continues to pile up on my desk while I'm walking through the metal detector for the zillionth time and sitting at the bar waiting for my case to be called.  Why is everybody so litigious all of a sudden?

It's days like this that I wish I could buy the World some vanilla soft serve.

So having decided to start a LiveJournal page, I began thinking of a name for it.  This caused me considerable brain crampage.

And then!  A reasonably good idea wrapped itself around my cerebellum.  Being a complete and utter geek, "Strange Matter" seemed perfect--in the physics world it's a type of quark matter that is believed to exist in the core of neutron stars.  It also seems like a great title for a journal that is certain to contain some strange stuff.  I found it brainy in an amusingly self-deprecating way.

Except some guy already used it.  He hasn't updated his blog since January of 2007, but still.  It's bad form to use a title someone else already used, isn't it? 

So after another day of thinking about it, I reached deep into my English Major past and came up with "None Dare Call It Reason," a play on the name of a fairly popular anti-communist treatise from the early 60's called "None Dare Call It Treason."  I'm sure to write something that defies reason at some point, so it seemed appropriate. 

Except some freaking guy already used that one too.  Although it's merely a subtitle in his case.  At least he's still updating it.

Have all good journal names already been used!???

YES that's rhetorical.  I'm sure there's something out there that should work... it'll just take me another year to figure it out.  For now, the most generic name on the planet seems appropriate. 

I'm a guy in my mid-thirties, with a B.A. in English and a Law Degree, who happens to like ballroom dancing, hard science (astrophysics and such), history, bad science fiction movies, good science fiction movies, role playing games, music, golf, walking through trees in the fall, literature (fiction and nonfiction), computer gaming, and making other people laugh until some kind of beverage comes out their nose. 

I was a musician before I became a lawyer (piano, keyboards, guitar, saxophone).  I was married for five years, now divorced.

This is my journal!  Get ready for some strange.  :D