meat in a petri dish

Call it: meatri, maybe. I'm listening to a radio program on the BBC about meat. They're interviewing a woman from PETA who is explaining that PETA is offering a one-million dollar prize to the first scientific team who can come up with a way to grow edible meat from animal stem cells. Gag. Sorry.

I didn't intend to write about that, but as my little lappy booted up and spent ten minutes "thinking" about opening up the blogger dashboard, I kept listening to that absurd show and had to mention it.

I wanted to write about something equally absurd: I am the on-call administrator at my work this week. This is one of those strange hallmarks of upward career movement. I have to keep my cell phone on high volume, twenty-four hours a day from 8am this morning until 8am next Monday just in case anyone at any of four residential sites has any questions, problems or meltdowns. Fabulous. And maybe, when they call me, I'll know what to tell them...

In other news, I went to a meeting at a mental hospital today to talk to several very angry people about why we aren't accepting one of their patients into our program. Wow. I can't give many details, but it certainly appears that working for long stretches in a mental hospital makes you just about as "mental" as your patients. I know, I'm one to talk considering where I work, but really. Those folks were just plain loony. More than loony. They also appeared to lack integrity. It would be generous to say they were out of touch with reality and probably more accurate to say they were lying. I think they would've said about anything to get us to accept this particularly inappropriate referral.

I mean... ok, I'll give a few details... I mean, come on. The dude threw something heavy out of a window awhile back trying to hit someone he was mad at. He narrowly missed. Not only did we have to pull this information bit by bit from a very reluctant nurse, she actually had the audacity to say, once the facts were on the table, "yeah, but that person moved out of the way, they were never in any danger." Um... bullshit.

It's moments like those when I'm glad I'm a lawyer in disguise. Because I've been trained to track details, to parse arguments and to focus on the things that are important when the opposition is throwing up dramatic smokescreens. Above all, I was trained to keep a clear head and think on my feet. These guys were so transparent today, it made my work easy. My work was easy anyway because, no matter how sharp my mind was today, I was the representative from my company with the least authority in that meeting, so I had to hold my tongue most of the time. But when I talked I said good stuff, I promise. And it felt good to leave knowing that not only were we right, but that we were behaving with integrity. Because -- I'm gonna drop a moral on you -- it doesn't matter if it turns out you were wrong or right, what really matters is that you did your best and you did it with integrity. Because everybody makes mistakes or bad judgment calls here and there, it's when you start lying and doing shit you *know* you shouldn't do that you get yourself into trouble. And that's the end of my little tale.