Can you repeat that? Plus, Spies Like Them

As I cram facts into my head for Boards, I am reminded of the fact that I hate repetition. Few things irritate me more than someone telling me something that I already know. Unfortunately my memory is very selective, so there are snippets of unimportant conversation that I can repeat verbatim, but as I look through all the various microorganisms that I’ve learned so many times before, I’m hardly recognizing them. This is even more annoying than hearing things I know multiple times. Hearing things multiple times and not knowing them.

Hearing things multiple times is annoying, as is being forced to repeat myself. Yet I find myself repeating my own words by my own volition. Blasphemy! But I do it.

I lived a superb anecdote this weekend. IE (I realize that’s not the correct way to use id est, but I like it, so get off my case) something happened to me that I believe I’ll repeat many times in the future as an amusing story. And though it will hopefully be new and amusing to each person as I tell it, it will be repetition to me. And that will annoy me. Just a little, but it’s there. I feel like a hypocrite repeating myself when I so hate hearing others vain repetitions.

Another example, I recently performed in our med school fundraiser. I’m a busy person, so didn’t have the time or inclination to come up with a new comedy act. So I did one that I’d done before, and this annoyed me. It was new to 99% of the audience, but not to 100%. And not to me. But this is the nature of comedy acts. I saw Mike Birbiglia twice last year, and got almost the same act twice. I saw Demitri Martin last year and again a couple months ago, and again, his material didn’t change that much. Is it too much to expect comedians to do a new performance every night? Of course. Though as a separate rant, if it’s your job to be funny, you should be able to switch it up more than they do. It’s my job to study medicine and I make a little bit of comedy in my spare time, so I feel a bit more justified in rehashing material.

In any case, if I’m ever telling you a story and you’ve heard it before, feel free to stop me. I’d prefer it in fact. We can then move onto new material, which will be preferable for us both.


Today you get two additions to My Island: Special Agent Dana Scully and Super Agent Sydney Bristow.

I had a Dessert Exchange/X-Files Viewing session yesterday (I do realize that my social interactions are unlike those of anyone else on the planet) and was once again reminded of the beauty and spunk of Gillian Anderson.




And as for Jennifer Garner, she got onto My Island through this scene alone:


"What was wrong with the red one!?"