full. metal. jacket.

I accepted a job at Big Scary Teaching Hospital's TICU/SICU.

In a brief psychotic fugue, I had the notion that I am not only in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, but I am, in fact, Vincent D'Onfrio's character, Leonard Lawrence.

I am Gomer Pyle.

And never mind the decidious trees in Kubrick's English countryside Vietnam, I am a stranger in a strange world.

But mostly, I'm Gomer Pyle, sitting in the head with my rifle, loading live bullets. maybe I'm even screaming F-U-C-K-E-D-A-G-A-I-N to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club song.

Well, okay, so I don't actually have a rifle, and I call the bathroom a bathroom, not a head.

But I can envision myself sometime in the next few months, singing a rousing chorous of "Fucked Again" on my Nazi death march to the shuttle parking lot, at the end of a long, grueling shift, alternately screaming at my companions, "Raus! Raus!"

Or maybe, to shift movie metaphors, I'm in Apocalypse Now. I'm Charlie Sheen, dancing half naked across the room, muttering:

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. They brought it up to me like room service...It was a real choice mission - and when it was over, I never want another...

Or Chef:

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way.

What I'm saying is, I don't exactly envision the next few months are going to be full of sunshine and lollipops.