Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: July 2007
Not for the faint of heart
SxKitten’s post on grigs turned me on to What’s That Bug?, a website dedicated to the identification of creepy crawlies of all kinds. All evening, Jake and I have been oohing and aaahing over all the beautiful spiders, moths, wind scorpions, sow bugs, you name it. What a hoot.
Jake directed me to The Worst Bug Story Ever. Scroll down past the head lice and the termite-riddled tampon to THE WORST BUG STORY EVER!!! It’s a long letter. Stop right now if these things disturb you . . . Anyway, as I read the letter, I began getting the shivers — not from the bugs, but from the dawning realization that this woman was quite likely delusional.
Delusional parasitosis, to be precise. Consider:
“I also began to feel something crawling, a ticklish sensation all over my body. I couldn’t see anything on me though.”
“They usually begin by crawling up my calves, then proceed to my scalp, they go in my ears and sting me, and even in my nose. I have some bite marks that look kind of like mosquito bites, others look like pin pricks. They are vicious little creatures. I’ve been to the doctor four times, first my primary doctor, then one dermatologist twice, and another once. None of them believe it is scabies. The dermatologist took a stool specimen, some of my blood, and a biopsy of one of the bites. Then he, like the primary doctor, gave me permethrin 5% although he, like the primary dr. couldn’t find anything.”
“I have never been more depressed. This is worse than when I had walking pneumonia about 3 or 4 years ago, especially since you can’t see them.”
The website’s author thinks this might have been a bird mite infestation, but I have my doubts. The letter-writer thinks her cat and boyfriend are afflicted (her boyfriend is “starting to get the same symptoms”). She goes to remarkable lengths to rid herself of her bugs, coating herself with vaseline, flushing her ears with peroxide, cutting her hair, and pouring hot sauce on her legs. Significantly, when she stays in her boyfriend’s sister’s place for a few days, her symptoms disappear. Since when do mites (or chiggers, or lice) abandon you, when you move to a different apartment?
Quoting from another article,
Patients with DP [delusional parasitosis] can resist suggestions that their condition is psychiatric rather than physical and refuse referrals for psychiatric care. In fact, in 35% of patients, the belief of infestation is unshakable. In approximately 12% of patients, the delusion of infestation is shared by a significant other. This phenomenon is known as folie à deux (eg, craziness for 2) or folie partagé (ie, shared delusions). Variations in this are the conviction that a child, a spouse, or a pet is infested.
I don’t know . . . perhaps I’m wrong. In a follow-up letter, our afflicted correspondent notes,
we still don’t know for sure what the heck they were and which of the many things we tried finally did the trick in getting rid of the little beasts. And for the first few months afterward, I actually had nightmares that they were back! The good thing is that it did end, eventually.
Does delusional parasitosis just take care of itself after a while?
That eMedicine article (linked above) distinguishes DP from formication, the sense that ants are crawling on your skin. Some of my newer readers may not remember my favorite formication story, so here’s the link.
Good night already!
D.
Eight random things
. . . on my desk right now.
I’m bored. Nothing to do but wait until the patients start streaming in again, and if I’m not careful, I’ll spend the rest of my lunch hour on Daily Kos because — WOOT! — Mike Stark just plastered posters all over Bill O’Reilly’s neighborhood, and it keeps getting funnier every time I read it.
Thought it might be fun to do Erin’s Eight Meme. Eight random things, right here on my desk . . .
1. REPTILES Magazine, September 2007 issue, opened to Robert “Dragon Bob” Mailloux’s article on the Rankin’s Dragon. What a cutie (the dragon, not Dragon Bob).
2. “Bowl Noodle Soup, Vegetal, Kimchi flavor.” Mostly eaten.
3. NYT Book Review, July 29, 2007, opened to Maria Flook’s review of Aoibheann Sweeney’s book, Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking. Ms. Flook? Leave book reviewing to someone who knows how to do it, like, say, a bright high school student. You’ve revealed everything in your review and shed light on nothing. Strong work.
4. Derek Raymond’s He Died with His Eyes Open. Raymond’s unnamed detective sergeant unravels the brutal murder of a penniless drunk. Did the ice queen lover do it? I’m betting on the beloved daughter. No one can hate you as much as family 🙂
5. Easy Cheese. That Voyager NASA launched decades ago, the one with all the nifty pictures on the Golden Record? I hope they included a picture of cheese in a can, humanity’s single most spectacular innovation.
In med school, I nauseated a gastrointestinal fellow by eating Cheese Whiz on pork rinds. I’ve cleaned up my diet since then; now, I put my instant cheese on Wheat Thins.
6. Gogol Bordellow’s SUPER TARANTA! One of the reasons I rarely write about music is that I lack the necessary vocabulary. What can I tell you about SUPER TARANTA!? It’s less punk than GB’s other work, which might make it more approachable to some, less to others. For my money, their best CD is Voi-La Intruder. On this CD, my favorite song is American Wedding:
Have you ever been to American wedding?
Where is the vodka, where’s marinated herring?
Where is supply that’s gonna last three days?
Where is musicians that got the taste?
Where is the band that like Fanfare,
Gonna keep it goin’ 24 hours?!
It goes on like that. Last stanza:
I understand the cultures
Of a different kind
But here word celebration
Just doesn’t come to mind
Dammit, I want a gypsy wedding! Karen, time to renew those vows . . .
7. Various and sundry bits of origami. Karen and Jake are into it.
8. Catalyst, Berkeley College of Chemistry’s quarterly magazine. Cover story concerns Louis Pasteur, with the quote: “I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.”
There, that was easy.
D.
Aubergines
Yesterday’s discussion made me realize how little I know about eggplant. No, I hadn’t ever heard of Imam Bayildi. (This looks like a good recipe. And with pictures, too!) My whole eggplant world consisted of eggplant parmesan, baba ghanouj, grilled eggplant for grilled vegetable salad, eggplant and shitake mushrooms (a Chinese dish), and stuffed pickled eggplant.
Mmmm. Stuffed pickled eggplant.
I love eggplant. I should be less eggplant-ignorant. Did you know they’re in the nightshade family, related to potatoes and tomatoes? Here, let’s learn more history:
- Eggplant were first cultivated 4000 years ago in India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia
- Eggplant cuisine spread to China by 500 BCE
- By the 4th Century, the Moors had introduced eggplant to Spain
- But even in the 16th Century, Northern Europeans thought they caused insanity
- The Spanish introduced aubergines to Brazil in 1650 . . .
- And Thomas Jefferson introduced them to the US in 1806.
In tonight’s quest to find new and interesting eggplant recipes, I found this old post from The Domestic Goddess:
On with The Paper Chef! Whose cuisine will reign supreme this month? We’ll have to wait to find that out, but not to find out who is competing in this round. Who has the guts? Who has the glory? Who has the gall to combine eggplant, chocolate, stale bread and pomegranate into one dish?!? Read on…if you dare.
Um . . . okay. I dare.
Samer’s bread pudding with eggplant and a chocolate-pomegranate sauce gets my prize for a recipe which looks good and, I imagine, tastes good, too. But Lyn at Lex Culinaria has to win the Biggest Balls prize for her
… Chocolate Eggplant “Parmigiana” topped with warm buttered crab and a bitter chocolate-pomegranate syrup….
Crab. Crab. Take an outlandish ingredients list and add a crustacean to it — go, Lyn!
I checked Domestic Goddess’s blog and, sadly, it looks like the Goddess hasn’t hosted a Paper Chef competition since March, 2005. Damn shame — I could really get into a contest like that. (If I hosted something like that, would any of you take me up on it? How much of a bribe would you need?) But let’s eat more eggplant.
Naw, on second thought, I’m kicking this one back to you. What are your favorite eggplant recipes? And if you say “Imam Bayildi,” give me a link to a recipe which looks like the real deal.
You see, blogs are like a memory stick. Everything I want to remember, everything I might want or need access to later on, I put up here. If I develop total amnesia, I want to be able to read this thing and fake it well enough so no one will realize I’m not me anymore.
Good. I’m glad that’s clear. Now, make with the recipes.
D.
Eggplant Parmesan
Yesterday, Tammy asked me for an eggplant recipe. This is one of the best, especially if you’re cooking for people who are “mmm I don’t think so” about eggplant. They’ll be so overwhelmed by the deliciousness of this stuff, they won’t even realize they’re fressin aubergines.
This is from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, quite likely the last Italian cookbook you’ll ever need to buy. I’ll give you Marcella’s recipe along with my running commentary (parenthetic letter, A, B, C . . . like that).
My favorite way to eat eggplant is baba ghanouj, but you need to be a serious eggplant craver for that one. Eggplant Parmesan, however, is a crowd-pleaser.
Help! My website disappeared.
That would be doctorhoffman.com, not this one, silly.
I can’t remember whom I paid to host that website. I presume I must have lapsed in my payments. Frequently, we get emails from people trying to steal host service from our present server, so I’ve lost track of whom our REAL server is. Oops. I never said I was good at the technical end of this business.
Short of going back through our checkbook, is there any way online to figure out what happened?
D.
Match game
Live blogging tonight. Usual time, usual place.
The first thing that strikes me about eHarmony.com‘s questionnaire: this mother-effer is LONG. I’ve been at this ten minutes, and I’m only 37% complete? After my age, height, weight, and income, what else do you need to know?
Let me back up a sec. No, I’m not getting divorced or separated. eHarmony advertises they’ll let you view your matches without a fee, so I’m curious to see who THEY think I would like. Besides, I figured this would be an easy post.
Hmm. “Imagine that your friends had to choose the best FOUR descriptions of you from the items listed below.” I can only choose four. Intelligent, articulate, funny, but what about number four?
I know — modest! Next page.
Friday Fourteen: fourteen homes
A revealing measure of my state of mind right now: I’m looking hard at that word, fourteen, wondering whether it’s spelled right.
Fourteen? Forteen? It’s forty, right? Or is it fourty?
Don’t worry. I’m not making too many more critical medical decisions today.
Below the cut, a theme I’ve robbed from Dean: fourteen places I’ve lived. Pix to follow when I get the chance.
Open thread
What the hell. Why not? It works on the Big Boys and Girls’ blogs.
Step on up to the virtual sushi bar and help yourselves.
D.
Eat it.
Between cases this morning, one of my circulating nurses caught me carefully nibbling my tuna salad-on-wheat away from the crust. “You weren’t one of those spoiled children whose mommy trimmed away the crust, were you?” she asked.
No, I was one of those spoiled kids who was forced to eat everything. Now I’m a spoiled adult who gets to eat or not eat whatever the hell I want.
Why’s it funny? ‘Cuz.
An odd bit of comedy lore holds that punchlines containing ‘k’ sounds are funnier than punchlines that lack them. According to Mel Helitzer,
Mel Brooks agrees. There are phonetic values in certain words that almost guarantee a laugh. “Instead of saying salmon, turkey is a funnier sound. It just helps.”
Why is the k sound funny? Research indicates that babies associate the sound with comfort and joy. Think of many of the words we coo to babies, and you’ll notice they have a k sound, even though most of them begin with the letter c. Just a few are cutie, cookie, kitten, cuddle . . .
. . . and so on. Who am I to dispute ‘research,’ but I’m not convinced. And yet the notion persists. Tonight, over at the Indecision 2008 blog, they have a cool post: 95-year-old Shecky Sloan, a Catskills veteran, weighs in on the comic aptitude of the Democratic Presidential candidates:
John Edwards on Hillary’s outfit: “Not sure about that coat.”
Shecky Says: Taking a pot shot at the lady’s outfit? Well, it’s not my style, but I know the kids like that kind of thing. Oh, my wife said to mention that it’s not a “coat,” it’s a “jacket.” Maybe he was going for the funny “k” sound in “coat,” but that’s also in “jacket.” Good looking kid, though.
The rest is worth a look, by the way. Turns out Biden is a comic genius, while Hillary sucks lemons (that’s my opinion — Shecky is silent on the topic).
Certainly, not all punchlines depend on a ‘k’ sound. But what about punchlines whose power hinges on the sound of the words? Surely such a punchline would have to work in a ‘k’ sound, right?
An attractive young woman sees a gynecologist for the first time. He takes a thorough history, listens to her heart and lungs, then moves on to the pelvic exam. In the midst of the exam, she hears him say, “Do you mind if I numb this up?”
“Well, um . . . okay, sure.”
“Mmmm num num num num num num num num.”
See? Not a ‘k’ in that entire line*.
D.
*You have no idea how long it took me to figure out a legitimate way to tell that joke.