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BY BILL SCHMALFELDT
the handicapped person to sit there. I generally get on the train early enough and can therefore sit wherever I choose. But every few days or so, this one guy shows up about 10 minutes before the train departs and will walk up to someone sitting in the handicapped seat, point to the sign, and say he wants to sit there. And I have no problem with that. But then, this same guy—this same, I can’t tell WHAT his handicap is guy—will save the seat with a box or a briefcase, and then STEP OUT ONTO THE TRAIN PLATFORM, STAND THERE IN THE MUGGY August HEAT, WITH THE HUMIDITY MAKING IT FEEL LIKE 105-degrees, with the SWEAT DRIPPING DOWN HIS FACE... this HANDICAPPED GUY will STAND there and SMOKE until they tell him to get onto the train so they can leave! And maybe this is just me, but if this guy is able to STAND on the PLATFORM and CHAIN SMOKE in the hot, muggy, miserable DC summer afternoon, he can bloody well take whatever other available seats there are on the train and not bother other people to move so he can park his not-all-thathandicapped ass there. Stuff like that makes me mad. And I think it leads to bad karma. Add to the mix the fact that I am bored out of my skull at work. It’s summer, this is the government, and nobody seems to be in the mood to do anything. The run of press releases has been slow, so there’s not a whole lot to write about for the radio news service or podcasts. We did shoot an interesting video podcast the other day with Dr. Joe Pancrazio at the NINDS... it was on the subject of DBS, focusing on my surgery. It was interesting to see – to actually HOLD – an example of the electrode leads that currently reside as a pair in my dented, scarred noggin. It was also interesting to get a look at some of the prototypes of the new technology currently being tested for future DBS... although that is some time away. I imagine at some point, decades from now, we will look at DBS the way it is currently performed and marvel at how barbaric and clumsy it was. But for now, it’s state of the art. Not that it makes my itchy scalp feel any better knowing that...