Dirty Leave, Animal Farm, and Schindler's List

I'm supposed to start the ICU this week but a schedule rift has given me a nice break. One of the other residents, who is currently on an outpatient rotation (meaning normal work hours and weekends off), needed someone to cover a week of HIS ICU month, which begins at the next cycle 4 weeks from now. In exchange, he offered to take this week of ICU from me. So, my ICU shifts are covered for now, his rotation is extraneous, and now I have what essentially amounts to a week off - the so called "Dirty Leave". It's too shady to make full use of it (i.e fly to Alaska or something) because it's not really "leave" in the official military sense of the word, and parting too far and getting caught could get me in trouble. On the upside however, I have no clinical responsibilities this week and need only mosey into work on one or two days this week and check off some administrative tasks. I get up when I want, go to bed when I want, all of that. The downside will come 4 weeks from now when it becomes officially Payback Time. However, since I would have been doing another rotation anyway, I merely switch to ICU and all works out. Overall its a good thing.

Because of my good fortune, I was able to find some pleasure reading time this morning. After I got up and polished off the Sunday Crossword from yesterday (local paper, not NY Times), I set about reading "Animal Farm", the George Orwell classic which I had bought over the weekend. I had never read the book previously, and had only been exposed to pieces of it way back in High School (or earlier) when I probably wasn't paying attention or didn't care. The book is only about 130 pages (and in large print) and I actually ended up reading the whole thing in about 90 minutes. Its obviously a classic and I found it to be a great read. Its simply written but full of great red flag subtext about politics, power, revolution, and the nature of man (and beasts). Incredible stuff. It actually roused a bit of emotion from me; I'm speaking mostly about the mistreatment of some of the good-natured characters. The book was written in the 1940's, and is a clear critical allegory of the Russian Revolution and the eventual Stalin regime. It's astounding how much the message still comes in to play today. Sadly, people never seem to change. A wonderful read - highly recommended. I look forward to "1984" as well.

Lastly, Gwen and I finally got around to sitting down and watching the acclaimed "Schindler's List" tonight. The 2-disc film has been in my possession for at least 6 months now. (1 of my 3 allotted Net Flix rentals). Its the sort of movie I desparately wanted to see but never could get fired up enough to get over the hump and sit down and watch it knowing it would only make me depressed. (If that makes any sense). For anyone who hasn't seen it, Spielberg pulls no punches and its pretty graphic and powerful. Its very well rendered. Though I will say that I think its hard to look critically at holocaust films in general because they are given so much leeway as a result of their subject matter. That's not to say I don't think the film was excellent. I just wonder how the film would hold up if you could somehow peel away the emotional realism attached and see its other aspects. Unfortunately, this is hard to do. And in order to get the most out of the initial viewing, I'm not all that sure it needs to be done. (Though in all seriousness, how many times are you going to actively sit down and power through Schlinder's List? It may be the best one viewing only movie of all time....)