I find this absolutely terrifying and am just a bit disgusted. How on earth can such mistakes be made? Read on:

As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose — which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe — be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare.

Sensing death was near, Mr. Jerome-Parks summoned his family for a final Christmas. His friends sent two buckets of sand from the beach where they had played as children so he could touch it, feel it and remember better days.

Mr. Jerome-Parks died several weeks later in 2007. He was 43.

A New York City hospital treating him for tongue cancerhad failed to detect a computer error that directed a linear accelerator to blast his brain stem and neck with errant beams of radiation. Not once, but on three consecutive days.

Soon after the accident, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, state health officials cautioned hospitals to be extra careful with linear accelerators, machines that generate beams of high-energy radiation.

But on the day of the warning, at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, a 32-year-old breast cancer patient named Alexandra Jn-Charles absorbed the first of 27 days of radiation overdoses, each three times the prescribed amount. A linear accelerator with a missing filter would burn a hole in her chest, leaving a gaping wound so painful that this mother of two young children considered suicide.

Investigations like this, conducted by The New York Times, are why we need professional journalists and news organizations. Citizen journalists, for all their effort and good will, just can’t cut it. Read the rest here.

Phillips said the Vikings simply kept coming and coming and coming, even when the game was out of hand.

But did Minnesota, he was asked, do so un-necessarily?

“Un-necessarily, no” he said with a grim shrug.

A few minutes later, inside a Cowboys locker room that emptied quickly, linebacker Keith Brooking was of two minds when discussing whether the Vikings rubbed the defeat in their visitors’ faces.

“Not going there,” Brooking said. “Look, we get paid to stop them. If anything, it’s on us.” But he did have a problem with the game’s final TD, calling it “totally classless and disrespectful.”

I want to know what the hell you’re supposed to do when, say, you’re the Vikings, and you’re playing the Cowboys who have put 3 points on the board in an hour of play. When it’s clear that you’re going to win, does that mean you should stop playing? Just start playing catch? It was an 11-yard pass. It wasn’t 40 yards down the field and a triumphant run in the last minute. It was 11 yards. I think that if you’re competing, you should always be throwing your best out there. Maybe they should have let Favre take a seat so he didn’t get injured, or he didn’t embarrass Dallas too terribly (not like the other 59 minutes didn’t do that, guys). But classless? Disrespectful? I don’t understand how not playing your best is respectful. It’s like being in gym class playing kickball and a girl comes up to the plate and they pull the outfielders in because they expect that the ball will go nowhere worth noting. I think that’s disrespectful.

Meryl Streep won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical. Just call the lady T-Bone. Really. It’s what she wants. And isn’t she lovely? Not in a beautiful sort of way, even though I think she is quite beautiful. In a radiant sort of way. She always looks like she is glowing.

Another thing? Glee won Best Comedy/Musical. I never was on the receiving end of a wedgie in high school, but I’m pleased they won anyway.

Oh, you want one more thing? Vikings beat the Cowboys. Uh huh. And to make it even more sweet, WaPo columnist Michael Wilbon wrote: “And once the Vikings had seized control, even at 7-0, they played smack the piñata . . . the piñata named Romo.” I just love imagining Romo as a piñata. Don’t you?

Speaking of winning, Spider basketball, men’s and women’s, is kicking ass. Boys beat LaSalle on Saturday, girls beat U-Mass. /sigh. A winning season is great. It leads to lots of students in the bleachers singing their hearts out to Journey and Bon Jovi. “Livin’ On A Prayer” must be our theme song, and I must admit, I love belting it out in the bleachers.

P.S. What’s wrong with Domino’s pizza? I, um, like it. We ordered it this weekend, one in the old style and one in the new style, and I, uh, thought they were both good and didn’t see a huge difference aside from the garlic-y, breadstick-y deliciousness that is the crust. I feel insulted when I see those commercials telling me that Domino’s sucks. I don’t think they suck. I keep giving them my money in exchange for their greasy, fattening, incredibly tasty pizza, don’t I?

BASIC INFORMATION

Name: Brittany
Birthday: November 19
Shoe Size: 5 1/2
Hair Colour: Brown
Eye Colour: Blue
Relationship Status: Single
Zodiac: Scorpio
School: U Richmond
__________________________________________________
FAVOURITES

Colour: Yellow, because it’s awfully hard to wake up sad in a yellow room
Male Celebrity: I’m always up for some classic Clooney.  I hate ‘celebrities’. How about actors? Musicians? If they haven’t done anything, what the heck are they famous for?
Female Celebrity: Hm. I’m loving Sara Bareilles right now.
Shoes: Um, The Flexx. Duh. And my BCBG heels.
Brand: I am a BCBG whore with a Betsey Johnson flirtation and a thing for Lucky Jeans. I think I might own a piece of each, at the moment though…
Book: Ella Enchanted. Never fails.
Sport: To watch? Football. To participate in? Tennis or Badminton or Horseback Riding
TV Show: BONES
School Colours: Red and blue, baby!
Drink: Shirley Temple
Food: Chocolate.
Gum: Double Bubble!
__________________________________________________
NAME SOMETHING THAT STARTS WITH

A: ash
B: blanket
C: calligraphy
D: dalmation
E: ether
F: feather
G: grumpy the dwarf
H: humidifier
I:  igloo
J: jam (not jelly)
K: kaleidescope
L: lion!
M: manchester united (What! Where did that come from?)
N: Nantucket
O: Orion (or, Oh, Ryan!)
P: peacock
Q: (Dr.) Quinn (Medicine Woman)
R: Rain
S: Summer
T: talisman
U: uranus. haha.
V: vespa
W: woodrow wilson
X: xanadu
Y: yes!
Z: zoo! YES!
__________________________________________________
FIRST PERSON YOU THINK OF

Food: Justin
Fashionista: Emily
Locker: Matt – oh, locker crushes!
Tall: Paul
Short: Me.
Gorgeous: Aisha
Best Friend: Patricia
Silly: Emile
Retarded: Boys.
Blonde: Laura
Fun: Ryan
Cute: /sigh Boys…
Hot: I don’t have a hot guy right now. And I don’t think of girls in terms of hotness. Hmph.
__________________________________________________
LOVE

Have a Crush: No. Idiot.
Do they like you back: ^^
Or are you in a Relationship Now: No!
If Someone Likes You: Yes they do. /giggle
Prefer Tall or Short: Taller than me is the order of the day
__________________________________________________
5..

5 FAVOURITE MOVIES
1. Life as a House
2. Little Women
3. Center Stage
4. Ever After
5. The Philadelphia Story

5 FAVOURITE CELEBRITIES
1. Drew Barrymore
2. Julia Roberts
3. Tina Fey
4. Robin Williams
5. Zooey Deschanel

5 REASONS TO LIKE SOMEONE
1. Looks
2. Sense of Humor
3. Sensitivity
4. Lifestyle
5. Hobbies

5 THINGS YOU FIND IN YOUR ROOM
1. Bed (v. important)
2. Pens (RSVP)
3. Pile of clothes (on my desk chair)
4. Desk (piled with papers)
5. CD player

5 THINGS YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT
1. Snugs
2. Comfy bed
3. 1 pair of comfy pants
4. Bottle of water
5. Great pair of shoes

5 BEST SONGS (um, of right now. I added that.)
1. Love & Memory (OAR)
2. Galway Girl
3. Morningside (Sara Bareilles)
4. Between the Lines (ditto)
5. The Way You Make Me Feel (MJ!)

5 BEST ARTISTS/BANDS
1. Sara Bareilles
2. OAR
3. Billy Joel
4. Bruce Springsteen
5. Feist

5 BEST BRANDS/STORES
1. Lucky Jeans
2. Anthropologie
3. BCBG
4. Gap
5. Polo
__________________________________________________
QUESTIONS

1. Have an obsession? I’m into college football at the moment
2. Where do you plan to go this summer? No plans!
3. What Month is it? January
4. Anything big coming up? Graduation
5. Why are you doing this? I really shouldn’t be doing this.
6. Like your parents? And love them, yeah
7. Do you sleep with a teddy bear? No.
8. Do you eat when your nervous? My nails, yes.
9. Own a dress? Many
10. Are you a fast typer? Heck yeah
11. Do you wanna have kids? Yes.
12. Who do you usually have Christmas dinner with? Just the family
13. Who do you celebrate New Years with? Usually family and friends
14. Where do you live? NJ.
15. Have you made a cootie catcher in your younger years? Um. What’s a cootie catcher? Help?
16. Plans this weekend? Movie with mama on Sat., heading back to school Sunday.
17. To your left is: Kleenex
18. To your right is: pillow pile
19. In your pocket is: I don’t have any pockets
20. Nervous about anything? Not right now
21. Scared of the Dark? Yep
22. Have any phobias? I hate snakes. And things that materialize out of the shadows when my light is off and everyone else is asleep.
__________________________________________________
THE END

Happy your done? Eh.
What are you gonna do now? Go to sleep before Dad yells at me again.

Anyway.

Went out with Zach last night in the big city. Australian place in SoHo for dinner that was quite tasty (best duck I have ever had) and then Pegu Club for drinks. Are you laughing yet? Really nice…can I call him a bartender? I don’t know what else to call him. Anyway, two guys mixed me some drinks, one much more successfully than the other. I had a Pisco Punch, for those who care, first, which was probably the best of the night, then some unknown concoction that was grapefruit-colored and tasted like cough syrup then a take on a mojito called a Gin-Gin Mule which was acceptable, then a teensy bit of a daquiri. Meh. Give the 22-year-old a Shirley Temple and call it a day. It would taste better. Maybe I’m just not the drinking kind. I would much rather linger (and ingest calories) over a gooey, fudgey, close-your-eyes-in-bliss chocolate cake than sip a cocktail.

Cocktail. That’s an awkward word.

It was a good night, though, out on the town. I sort of felt like a little kid sampling grown-up beverages though, especially when I let my feet swing off the bar stool. I am, as Paul told me earlier this week, rather tiny, after all. Well, I added the ‘rather’. I can’t really see Paul saying that I’m ‘rather tiny’. He’d have to don some sort of stodgy British professor garb to pull that off. And a really bad accent.

I also really don’t understand the point of drinking. It doesn’t make me feel more comfortable. It might have dampened my emotions actually, now that I look back on the night. I felt sort of sleeping but awake, and then, after a bit too much of the daquiri, slightly light-headed. But…eh. It’s much more fun to be in a giddy, faux-tipsy mood than to be actually tipsy, me thinks. Paul says that drinking is fun. Well. He can drink while I eat cake. Doesn’t that sound like a party?

Happy new year! My Eve was rather quiet. A friend–Patricia, as I said earlier–came up for a few days from her abode down South, and we celebrated in the family way with good food and lots of trashy TV before rockin’ it in with Dick Clark and a jump-suited J-Lo (bad choice, incidentally).

I have a resolution, and since my parents didn’t take the hint last night at dinner, I shall tell you and leave them in the dark. (For future reference, when I want you to ask me a question, I generally pose it to the group, wait for everyone to have their turn, and then wait for someone to ask me. I very rarely ask questions that I myself don’t want to answer.)

My resolution for this year is to do something every week that is memorable. Last semester flew by, and most of it I can barely recall. I want this semester at school–my last, unless something goes terribly wrong–to be something I look back on fondly, I hope, but most of all, I want it to be a time worth remembering. And to make sure I can, in fact, remember, I intend to write about my exploits here.

Last year’s resolution–just a few posts down from this year’s–went off well. The idea was to force myself to do things outside of my comfort zone, and I did. I took a News Writing class that terrified me, confidently sent off resumes and cover letters for an internship in NY over the summer (which I got!), pursued a crush (well, two, and neither ended particularly well, but hey, their loss!), tackled the subway solo. What can I say? I am a champion!

Well, duckies, here’s to a great new year! Love to all and best wishes!

I know I began the last post saying it’d been forever, and truly it has–nearly a year! Here we are in 2010, my graduation year. I’m not sure if I’m scared or excited. I’m a bit mellow right now, to be honest. I entered college as a voracious reader of 300-page course offering books. Now I know that most of those courses I starred three and a half years ago will never be offered again. I came in with a plan to double major in theatre and English, minor in journalism. I have since decided that plan is simply ridiculous. I am a proud English major (graduating with honors, thanks very much). No double (or triple) major, no minor. I left a lot of lines empty on my degree audit form. It wasn’t exactly the weighty packet of my peers.

Just today I’ve decided that I might not want to work at a magazine after all. Somebody out there must be laughing. After all, I’ve professed my desire to be a magazine editor since day 1. Never fear, readers, for I do have a plan! I was browsing job openings (and they are out there, people, even for English majors) last night (it takes ages to apply online to a government job) and earlier today (putting off my thesis), and as I was browsing Idealist, I said to myself, Brittany, you could do this (side note: aren’t you amused by the parentheses? I must get them out of my system now.). I’m being completely serious. I love magazines (and newspapers, to some lesser extent), but the idea of working at one and eventually moving up in the magazine world is one that I find intimidating. That’s a lot of pressure, a lot of decisions that you have to make quickly and efficiently and effectively. And people can and will tear you apart for an error you made while working a 12-hour day during a 60-hour week when your eyes were burning and blurring from staring at an enormous Mac screen all day, every day. And I don’t mean a major error, like spelling a name incorrectly. I mean an error like, say, a flawed sequence of tenses.

That might just be a teensy exaggeration, but I know that you know what I mean. And there’s no relief. You close one issue and so what? There’s no respite, no break, no popping of champagne bottles. There’s another issue waiting to be planned, written, edited, pieced together, printed, distributed, bought, recycled, and filed away. And another after that. There doesn’t seem to be much accomplishment in that, and sometimes, when I think about it, I wonder…so what? So, what sort of good would I be doing? I love magazines, love them, I really do. But is it what I want? I have little desire to be editor-in-chief. I don’t want to run my own magazine, don’t want to found one. I’m great at executing the visions of others. I do it well, I do it creatively, but putting forth a vision for a magazine seems like it might be fun for the first few goes, and then what? Five holiday issues down the line, how much does the content change?

I like change, and I like being busy. That’s part of the reason I like magazines: there’s always something going on, and you’re never doing the exact same thing each and every day, or even each and every hour. But, hm. Perhaps I would be happier managing the publications of a private school in NYC for a few years, then moving on to working at a non-profit (both of which positions I’ve all ready discovered, mind you.). There, I could be, you know, a communications specialist or publications editor. A real title I can bandy about at parties and family gatherings, a title that people will comprehend. None of this editorial assistant for two years, the assistant editor, then associate editor, then senior editor…

Well, maybe.

It is nice to know that I have options.

I don’t think too much has been going on, but I’ll tell you about it anyway, ending with the most wonderful day I had yesterday.

I returned to school about a month ago, moved into my room solo, managed to heave my bed up onto cinderblocks (still not sure how I did that), and chilled. Picked up roomie from the airport the next day, missing the end of the Golden Globes but luckily seeing Kate Winslet win her well-deserved two awards. I haven’t exactly seen either movie yet, but I do plan to see them soon. Like, this weekend-ish.

Classes started that Monday, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed my journalism classes more than I expected to. Professor Nash, who I have for my half-unit J-Colloquium course and News Writing and Reporting is a mellow guy who knows his stuff. He’s quite entertaining, too. That’s my Monday. Nice and easy. Tuesday and Thursday are difficult, thus Monday night is a marathon of reading and critical thinking. American Culture and Film (focus on post-war melodrama!), Medieval Italy (cat-obsessed Italian historian as my professor), then lunch, then my Junior/Senior Seminar on Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. I love that last class. It’s the best. Dr. Outka is hysterical and witty and well-spoken. She’s just fabulous, and she leads great discussion.

What else? I met my ex’s last-semester love interest. Hello, green beast. Skated over tiff between current roomie and former roomie. Saw some not so great dance (Momix) and some great dance/comedy/acrobatics (Cirque Eloize: Nebbia).

And yesterday, I sat about fifteen feet away from Stephen Sondheim.

Yeah.

Stephen Sondheim.

The brilliant lyricist and composer who cowrote Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods and Gypsy and West Side Story and Company and Follies and Assassins and Merrily We Roll Along and Anyone Can Whistle and Pacific Overtures and Passion and Sunday in the Park with George, my favorite. That’s got to be close to all of them, if not all of them. There was the Waltz one, too, I suppose.

Anyway, he came to Richmond for a ‘Discussion with Frank Rich’ at the Landmark, and Kathy Panoff got him to come to Camp Concert for an intimate Q&A with students. Probably fifty people, max, and Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich.

Incredible. He’s a funny guy, and so passionate, especially about getting the next generation of theatregoers into the action.

And now I’m here, now. Ring Dance is this weekend, Pillowman Tech the day after that, then tech week, then show nights, then a week of semi-dress rehearsals with Imagine, then another tech week, then another performance week, then midterms. Joy

Oh, I think I might still be in love with my ex. Can’t decide if that’s true, or if it’s a good or a bad thing.

Insert deep sigh here.

Let life continue!

1. If you aren’t offering compensation, don’t advertise that ‘YOU’RE HIRING!’ I associate ‘hiring’ with getting paid.

2. I like my privacy, but I hate getting HP cover letters addressed to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. Gag. So, I put my name in. It’s Brittany. Right at the bottom of the ad, where it also tells you what I want to see. So, you know, don’t put Sir or Madam when you have my name, okey doke?

3. Don’t attach cover letters. I don’t want to open another page or download something just to read a cover letter. Body of email is fine. Great, actually. Perfection. Attached cover letter is crap.

4. Writing in the first person is fine. I do it all the time. But when I say ‘I’, I like to capitalize it when I know people who might, you know, might be ‘hiring’ me to write are going to be reading and evaluating what I send them to try to convince them to ‘hire’ me to write.

5. If I ask for a writing sample, send me one. Don’t say, ‘send me a topic and I’ll write 250-500 words’. Just send me a sample, dammit.

(this is fun, btw.)

6. In your writing sample, don’t talk about a GF ‘doing’ her BF’s BFF, k? The site’s read by preteens and mamas.

7. If  I give you options, tell me what you want to write. Don’t make me guess. Don’t make me give you something you don’t want to write. Just tell me.

8. It’s not a ‘job’ if I’m not getting paid. It’s an internship or volunteer work. It’s not a job.

9. Give your email a title, please, like ‘hangPROUD internship’.

10. It’s hangPROUD. Not Hangproud. Not HangProud. Not hangproud. Not HANGproud. hangPROUD. If I can do it, you can do it. And thanks to everyone who does it. I appreciate it.

11. Don’t be a ‘prominent candidate’. That’s not a good way to sell yourself. Be the candidate. There can be lots of prominent candidates. Actually, there’s six or seven. You’re one of them, despite your bizarre desire to be merely prominent.

Eleven is a nice awkward number to leave it at, right?

<3 B.

New obsessions? Katherine Hepburn and Old Hollywood

Current Inspiration? Our tour guide for the Vatican Museum in Rome, a woman who was not yet 40 and had done so many things, tackled so many careers, and was so incredibly outspoken. When I think of all the things that I want to do, I remember her and know that the choices I make now aren’t permanent, the life that I make now isn’t for ever, and the things that I’m doing now might not be the things I choose to do ten years down the road. And that’s okay — that’s great.