Month: February 2005

  • They Call the Wind Mariah

    One of our attendings cracks me up. We had a patient called Mariah, and he asked, “Do you know where the name Mariah comes from?” I immediately responded with a squealy singer’s name. He said, “No, it’s older than that.”

    They Call the Wind Mariah

    Way out west, they got a name
    For rain and wind and fire.
    The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe and
    They call the wind Mariah.

    O no, Mariah blows the stars around,
    And sends the clouds a-flying.
    Mariah makes the mountain sounds,
    Like folks were up there dying.
    Mariah, They call the wind Mariah.

    Now before I knew Mariah’s name
    And heard her wail and whining,
    I had a girl and she had me
    And the sun was always shining.
    O, but then one day I left my girl;
    I left her far behind me.
    And now I’m lost, I’m oh so lost;
    Not even God can find me.

    Mariah, O, Mariah, They call the wind Mariah.
    I hear they got a name for rain
    and wind and fire only.
    But when you’re lost and all alone
    there ain’t no words but lonely.
    And I’m a lost and lonely man,
    Without a star to guide me.
    Mariah, blow your love to me.
    I need my girl beside me.
    He, Mariah, O, Mariah
    I’m lonely can’t you see.
    Mariah, O, Mariah
    Please blow my love to me.
    Mariah, blow my love to me.

    I suppose my attending felt the same way as I did when I heard a teenage girl say that Celine Dion wrote “All the Way.”

    Or the same way I felt when my cousin credited “I’m a Believer” to Smashmouth.

  • Riding the Dragon

    People with schizophrenia have trouble interpreting parables or proverbs. One of the diagnostic tests for schizophrenia is to give someone a phrase like, “A stitch in time saves nine,” and see if they can apply it to a real life situation.

    Most schizophrenics can’t.

    There are some people in my old life who were very unreflective, and I still wonder if they do not have some kind of psychiatric disorder. I am just very thankful not to be around them anymore. People who cannot learn from their past experiences are scary people indeed.

    There once was a dragon that was lost at birth by its parents and raised among farm animals. It grew up to eat grass and walk the fields like other tame beasts. One day an older dragon flew over the fields, breathing fire and scattering all the animals in the barnyard. The young dragon on the ground was fascinated and frozen in its tracks. The older dragon, spying its younger cousin, swooped down, grabbed the younger one in its huge jaws, and flew far up into the sky.

    When they were so far up the houses looked like toys, the older dragon dropped the younger one from his mouth, causing him to fall screaming toward the ground. Then, just before the younger dragon would have been killed, the older dragon swooped down, caught him in his mouth, and returned him to the sky, where he promptly dropped him again.

    This horrible fall happened several times before the young dragon, frightened and angry, finally spread his own wings and with a roar of fire, sailed high into the sky — becoming — for the first time in his life — his real self. . . .

  • Riding the Dragon

    “. . . in white-water rafting, a beginner will often focus on the rocks, attempting to get around them but not knowing how, often ending up swimming, wet, and scared. An experienced rafter, by contrast, will ignore the rocks, looking instead for the flow line of the water moving far ahead. By following that flow, focusing on it, as the water moves in an endless stream around the rocks, the experienced rafter successfully navigates the dangers.”

  • Amateur Boat Building

    Oh! This guy cracks me up so bad!

    December 15, 2000
    A Few Small Boat Opinions
    Advice For Amateur Boat Builders
    By Robb White

    excerpts from http://www.messingaboutinboats.com/archives/mbissuedecember00.html

    “. . . there ain’t no money in it. The nearest thing I can think of like building small boats for a living is writing poetry for a living. . . .

    . . . Second, anybody who thinks that any person can build a boat as cheap as people in a factory can is a fool. . . .

    . . . What I am getting at is that a boat that you build yourself is going to become very dear to you no matter what kind of a piece of junk it is and when it self-destructs, it will break your heart. Since you can’t build a boat as cheap as a bunch of desperados with chopper guns sucking the juice from a pallet load of fifty five gallon drums, you might as well do what no factory can… build a boat that is far better than any manufactured boat ever was. . ..

    . . . Here is what I would do if I were starting out right now. I would build one of those little strip planked Wee Lassies from a kit. You can worry about your dignity so much that you never do anything in your spare time but wash the car, cut the grass and participate in political discussions. Until you have wedged your ass tight into something like a Wee Lassie and paddled off up a little creek somewhere, you ain’t really got the goody out of life. You can drag one of those little things through the bushes with a string and put it into a piece of water that has never floated a boat before. . . .

    . . . After you get that done and learn all about little pieces of wood and epoxy and fiberglass, then you can hunt around for the plans for a little more boat. I’ll tell you something for a fact though. The joy of boats is inversely proportional to their size. The dwindling starts when you get to where you can’t carry it in one hand and the fishing pole in the other and keeps on getting worse from there until you get to the bottom-job and joker-valve stage.

    There ain’t no joy left when they get big enough to grow oysters on the bottom and have a plumbed in toilet and deck leaks and electrolysis and lightning struck electrical system and rusted out exhaust elbow and fuel in the bilge and osmosis blisters all over the bottom and mold on the mattress and mushrooms on the stem and leaks in the deck and frazzles in the running rigging and cracks in the swage and leaks in the deck and galled shaft in the stuffing box and penetration in the core and deterioration of the hoses and cormorant doo-doo on the teak and leaks in the deck and stoppages in the fuel system and worry in the the thru-the-hulls and leaks in the deck.

    You know, having a big boat is kind of like what happened to… well…. it is a little attractive at first thought I guess, and there is probably a little thrill to it while it is still in the oval office stage, but you know what is going to happen… serious trouble. Best thing to do when you get thinking about something that will get you in a bad fix is to buy one of those big shiny magazines and just look at the pictures. . . .”

  • Pride and Prejudice

    I‘m so proud of my old sailing club. Somehow it got picked up by another group of nuts who believe sailing in a prairie is not a fruitless endeavor. I wish them so much luck, it isn’t funny. ‘Most everything I learned about sailing, I learned from that little ragtag bunch. In spite of all the fights we had, and the crappy handmedowns we made work for us, I honestly believe our group had the best sailors in the entire region. Me, biased? Never!

    To the believers, I say, Carpe Ventum!

    I would have gone sailing this weekend, but puking while sailing is not very fun.

    It’s funny how many people ask if you’re pregnant, when you’re busy puking your guts out. I tell them I’m not pregnant, and they ask, “Are you sure?” Like, why are they asking? Do they know something I do not?

    On the upside, Matt and I are taking a sailing vacation in July after we both finish our major exams.

  • The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men

    Yesterday I planned to finish reading a section of hematology and nephrology, but instead spent the night hacking up bloody pieces of lung in between vomiting up copious amounts of a mixture of food, juice, and all the snot I swallowed throughout the day.

    Tip for the day: Babies are covered in viruses. Handle with care.

    It’s not that I don’t like taking care of babies. It’s only that during the course of the day, I may be sneezed on, peed on, pooped on, vomited on, drooled on, and coughed on by at least 15 babies in succession, who may have RSV, rotavirus, adenovirus, parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, coxsackievirus and every other virus that we may or may not have a rapid test for.

    Today, dammit, I’m going sailing.

  • The Bull and the Turkey

    Wherever I’ve been, I’ve seen people who brown-nose to make it to the top. I believe that high-ranking brown-nosers are truly happy doing what they do, and they have no regrets for the things they did to become what they are. Many of them are even very good at their job.

    I am not the brown-nosing type, and I’ve no doubt that’s why it always takes me so long to get where I want to be. But one thing’s for sure, even with all I’ve been through, I can still say I did it with my own blood, sweat, and tears. And I don’t need mouthwash at the end of the day before I kiss Matt g’nite.

    Matt is taking the Texas State Bar exam at the end of the month. This is a very big thing for him, and it means more than I’m sure he can express.


    The Bull and the Turkey

    A turkey was chatting with a bull
    “I would love to be able to get to
    the top of that tree,” sighed the turkey.
    “But I just haven’t got the energy.”
    “Well why don’t you nibble on some of
    my droppings?” replied the bull.
    “They’re full of nutrients.”

    The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and
    found that it actually gave him enough
    strength to reach the first branch.
    The next day after eating more dung, he
    reached the second branch of the tree.
    Finally after a week, there he was proudly
    perched at the top of the tree.

    Sitting at the top of the tree so proud, he
    was promptly spotted by a farmer, who
    shot him out of the tree.

    Moral of the story:
    Bull crap might get you to the top,
    but it won’t keep you there!!

    from coalminersdaughter’s site,
    where I always find something that makes me
    laugh out loud. . . .

  • R.U. Ready 2 Rock?

    Because NO ONE in the press ever talks about it.

    One of Iraq’s leading democracy and human rights advocates is Safia Taleb al-Suhail. She says of her country, “We were occupied for 35 years by Saddam Hussein. That was the real occupation. Thank you to the American people who paid the cost, but most of all, to the soldiers.” Eleven years ago, Safia’s father was assassinated by Saddam’s intelligence service. Three days ago in Baghdad, Safia was finally able to vote for the leaders of her country — and we are honored that she is with us tonight.” Taleb al-Suhail was obviously moved by the standing ovation from both sides of the aisle.

    from http://www.everythingiknowiswrong.com/2005/02/state_of_the_un.html

    Thank you to Sean for this lovely picture.

    And this just had me howling. . . .

    Doubt Creeps In

    John Stewart asked an incredulous question to Fareed Zakaria, editor for Newsweek International, on today’s Daily Show which exactly echos Mark Brown’s question In the Chicago Sun-Times:

    What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?
    Maybe you’re like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started — not to the point of joining any peace protests, but at least letting people know where you stood.

    [...]

    But after watching Sunday’s election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?

    It’s hard to swallow, isn’t it?

    Personally, I’m not having that big a problem with it. My question at this point in time goes more like this: how can it possibly have taken them this long to see something so obvious? Stewart, on the other hand, insists that his entire world view would have to change and that, though he’s not sure it’s physically possible, he might have to implode. His vaunted intelligence is not serving him very well.

    from http://www.everythingiknowiswrong.com/2005/02/doubt_creeps_in.html

    Yeah, well, a lot of people didn’t think it was worth it to fight the Germans to save Jews either.

    You don’t hear much from those people anymore.

    And it always strikes me as hypocritical that people who opposed the war in Iraq, never make a peep about the war in Bosnia.

  • Baby Showers

    I‘ve been invited to two baby showers so far this year. (And it’s just February!) One of my guy friends asked me, “So what do you do at these baby showers?”

    I say, “It’s a secret. If I tell, I’d have to castrate you.”

    I love the people I work with. They are so supportive of each other. It is nice to see everyone, in different stages of their lives. Some of us with children, some of us without. Some of us married, some of us not. All of us, working towards a common goal.

    My dad once told me, that when you are in a place you’ve always wanted to be, you will meet people whom you’ve always wanted to meet.

    He was most definitely correct.

    A hearty congratulations to all current moms and moms-to-be. The future lies within you.

  • Defining the Wind

    Matt often makes fun of the National Endowment for the Arts. I think it’s a nice idea in theory.

    But, to me, stretching leather to completely cover a Volkswagon Beetle is not art. It’s a waste of good leather.

    Some of the best art I’ve seen is by people who aren’t “artists” by trade (and weren’t supported by grants from the NEA). Not everyone probably agrees with my definition of the word “art.” (Matt and I had an argument the other day over the meaning of the word “literacy.”) I see no need to use my taxes to fund people who have a different definition of the word, especially when people who are making my kind of art don’t need funding.

    Welding farm equipment into a decorative fence. Taking a bunch of words and using them in a particular sequence to create “Prince of Persia,” “Splinter Cell” or “Zelda.” Using a stationary object with strings and an echo chamber to create a tune. Using silver nitrate on plastic strips to make images from electromagnetic waves. Making four plastic kitty litter buckets into a sled because it’s snowing and one doesn’t have a garbage can lid. Making the perfect pizza with all the toppings one wants, some herbed pan bread on the side, and a Brandy Alexander. (Matt, please pick up some brandy on the way home.)

    Defining the Wind : The Beaufort Scale, and How a
    19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry
    by SCOTT HULER