Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: January 2011
Boom Boom Butt-dialing
I really like my iPod. I don’t have all that many albums on it, maybe a dozen, and I’ve only downloaded a few games, but I’m still quite pleased with this very cute toy. And I can surf the net with it, too — for free, apparently. And I could use it as an eBook reader! Amazing.
But yesterday at the gym, I noticed three albums on my list that I had not put there, all by the Boom Boom Satellites. Curious, I listened, and my response evolved from, “Interesting,” to “Didn’t I just hear that one?” to “Oh PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP.” I began to wonder if this is what a rave is like: hopelessly repetitious dance beat-electronica made tolerable only by drugs, and no drugs were in sight.
So I clicked on over to Claire Voyant’s “Love is Blind,” something I found through Pandora and is currently my favorite thing to listen to whilst working my legs into a lather. And I began to wonder where all this Boom Boom had come from. Can an iPod accidentally download music the way my cell phone likes to butt dial my parents? Or are the Boom Boom Satellites randomly spraying the iPodiverse with their albums as a clever marketing ploy? Most importantly, have I paid anything for this shit?
It occurs to me: I should be able to stream Pandora on my iPod. Project for another day.
D.
Sundry, various
Was listening to public radio a short time after noon, and they were talking about a “Nun Study,” wherein a number of nuns aged 75 and up received cognitive tests annually until their deaths. At death, they each donated a portion of their brain to the study. The most interesting facet of this work arrived fortuitously, in that the researchers happened upon the entrance essays these nuns had written as teenagers. When they analyzed the essays for “idea density” and other aspects of linguistic complexity, they found a striking correlation between the simpler essays and later development of dementia. It’s almost as if brains, like livers, lungs, or just about any other organ, have reserve. “Reserve” refers to the excess function of an organ, more than is needed for survival. Redundancy. With regard to brains, perhaps that excess reserve varies directly with intelligence, such that folks with lower reserve have a shorter ways to drop before they’re driving around the block six times looking for their garage.
This was part of a larger story, one that dealt also with Agatha Christie, who was never diagnosed with dementia, but whose biographers had suspected as much. Apparently, one of her last novels (Elephants Can Remember) has been shown to have a significantly restricted vocabulary relative to her earlier novels, as well as more repeated phrases and the use of more indefinite pronouns. The authors of this particular study used this data to suggest that Christie was suffering from Alzheimer’s in her later years.
What worries me is that I fear my blog posts have become similarly restricted. My edge just isn’t there. How I long for the days when my muse provided me with great ideas like camel toe show-downs! When I could actually write a Thursday Thirteen and not have to strain for the last seven or eight items! More to the point, in my first paragraph above, I used the word “fortuitously” out of desperation. “Serendipitously” was the word I wanted, yet it took me 14 minutes to remember it.
The crud is leaving. The crud is not gone, but the crud is lingering on the porch, not quite getting the hint that he has overstayed his welcome. Ooh, bad metaphor: rather, the crud is like the door-to-door missionary who’s got his foot wedged in the jamb. The headache is gone, thankfully, and my coughs are few, far between, and less chesty. I can breathe through my nose, and it’s a nose and not a nobe. All in all, a fast virus, for which I’m grateful. And since Karen’s got it now too, hopefully hers will exit just as speedily.
I dreamed we were moving back to LA, and the only two places I would live were Pasadena or Monterey Park. In the waking world, you can restrict that to Pasadena (although certain areas of LA and Hollywood are cool enough to pass muster). Not sure why the subconscious had to include Monterey Park — the suppressed desire to be walking distance from midnight dim sum, perhaps? But in the dream, I walked the hilly streets of Monterey Park. It was a Sunday and every last family was out on their front lawn, barbecuing, yakking it up with their neighbors. Like a great big Hong Kong flea market, it was, and I have to say that if it were like that in real life, Monterey Park would be the place to live.
But no one does front yard barbecue/block parties anymore, at least not in any neighborhood I’ve occupied. I wonder if there are such areas, or if there ever were.
Am reading China Mieville’s Kraken and thoroughly enjoying it. Refreshing that the worshipers of the Old Ones are apparently the good guys — but then, you should expect that from me. I’m the guy with the “Cthulhu is My Co-Pilot” bumper sticker.
D.
Not my favorite rhino
Hands down the worst thing about my job is this little bastard:
and the little bas cherubs who spread it: rhinovirus, in other words. I’m sentient enough that if I hear a child coughing, I’ll put a mask on before entering the room. But I have no defense against the kid who coughs after I enter the room.
So now I’m suffering through the first crud of the season. Coughing. Stuffy nose. Headache. This is old before it even has a chance to be young. And it’s not like I can stay home. Oh, I could stay home, but then something like 20 patients would get appointments days from now, maybe a week or two, and our schedule would take a hit, and some of these patients would take a hit, and so unless I’m feeling like death I always tend to come to the same conclusion: that it’s better to drag my ass through the day. I mean, it’s not like staying home accomplishes anything — the cold will run its course no matter what I do.
Meh. It all sucks.
D.
What else I could have said last night
They’ll learn to regret giving me an audience . . .
In response to the “tell something that no one else in the room knows about you,” I might have, from least controversial to most, said
* I live to eat.
* I believe fervently in a higher power. Specifically, the power of a merger of the Academy and AVN Awards to enliven both ceremonies (hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and Rocco Siffredi!)
* I’m only in this Leadership Thingie to get material*.
* I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.
Hopefully I won’t have to do this too many more times, because after “I live to eat,” I’m totally screwed.
D.
* Yeah, and that worked real well for my chiefdom at Mammon Coast Hospital.
Leadership Training Thingie #1
Tonight was the big Meet-n-Greet, an assemblage of bright young and not so young leaders, administrators in their sharp suits, and physician-leaders beaming at us like mother hens. We met in I-shit-you-not The Petroleum Club, which is like J. R. Ewing’s Cattleman’s Club only in Bakersfield — a members-only place we get to use on special occasions. They interviewed me here, for example. Twelve stories up, which makes it the highest point in Bako (I suspect), with a great view of, well, Bako.
The around-the-room tell-us-a-little-bit-about-yourself was the whole point of the evening, I suspect. There were about 20 of us in the room, and we were tasked with revealing something about ourselves that no one else in the room knew. (It occurs to me that I would be hard pressed to do something like that on my blog, or at least I couldn’t do it without getting in Dutch with my wife.) The fellow to my left, nice guy, chief exec of something or another, began by telling a story about how he has realized that he is too trusting. His wife regularly sets out his meds in the evening for him to take. The other night, he was about to take the meds when his wife cried out, “NO!” Turns out they were her meds.
Never one to turn down a straight line, I said, “So THAT’S why your breasts have been so tender lately.” Which proves yet again that either (A) I can really judge a room* or (B) I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut. Perhaps even now my name is being penciled off a List of Future Leaders.
When the talk came round to me, I told them the story of the stupidest thing I had ever done, which was to wash my drapes in college. With the hooks still in. Then I had to talk about the dart frogs and the tarantulas and my three-part SF novel and my sleazy romance. The child psychiatrist sitting across from me no doubt made a mental note to refer me to her adult psych colleagues. The big boss sitting at the end of the table must be thinking, Thank God his chief status is probationary.
But really, how often do I get to do stand-up in front of a room full of (mostly) strangers (who could make or break my career)? Not often enough, I say!
D.
*Because they laughed. Jake and Karen pointed out that my joke might have been met with an exquisite silence, which would have been, you know, awkward.
Olbermann’s last show
Long, long week, with nothing easy or straightforward, culminating in a long day of clinic and OR and pus and blood and yuck. So I poured myself a stiff Hendrick’s and Pernod (which I really ought to name some time) (and yes oh by the way I’m off call) and zoned out watching Olbermann for the night, and here he goes and announces this, tonight, is the last Countdown.
First thought: I had more to drink than I thought. But it’s true.
Countdown to us socialists, well, it’s like Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck to the nation’s psychotics. A daily shot of validation, the knowledge that (A) someone else thinks the same way we do most of the time and (B) can get great ratings yammering those opinions. But now he’s gone, and we’re supposed to believe that Comcast’s purchase of NBC has nothing to do with it. I’ll believe that if Rachel Maddow keeps her job.
Someone on Daily Kos who claims to have the inside track (but freely admits we have no reason to believe him) says
the next time we see Keith Olbermann on TV, he’ll be back alongside Dan Patrick talking about sports.
Well, good for him. It’s what he loves. And too bad for those of us who have no interest in sports.
We still have Rachel. For how long, I have no idea.
In other news, Betelgeuse may be going supernova.
D.
Madonna
Found this one through Cracked.com’s “Letterman’s 9 Most Hilariously Awkward Interviews.”
In residency, I had a fan. I took care of her after a car accident and after that she became my senior year project. She was cute and zaftig and she always dressed to the nines, and she was one of those rare women who (A) seemed to have a crush on me and (B) still had all of her teeth. If ever I could have had an affair, she was it. I remember being so flattered by the whole thing that it never occurred to me that I might be hurting her feelings by NOT coming on to her. But hey, that’s not me. One of my classmates — no, wait, TWO of my classmates — would have jumped her in an instant. But not me.
Anyway. One day, she brought in Madonna’s book so that she could show me the black and white photo of the guy with the airbrushed asshole. Maybe this was her way to share a laugh with me (because it was pretty damn funny, that picture) or maybe it was her awkward way of making one last attempt. So we looked at that photo and the other photos and laughed about it, and that was all. I don’t think she ever came back to my clinic.
That’s my Madonna story.
D.
Searching for my Chicken George
Eh, not really. I’m second generation American, Jewish Nisei, so if I dig deeper than my grandparents in any direction I draw a blank: surnames of uncertain spellings (Gofman or Goffman? Grobovski, Grobosky, or Grobowski?), doubtful cities of origin, no first names and certainly no birth dates.
But I was futzing around on Ancestry.com today and actually made some progress. I found census records on my dad’s side of the family from 1930 and 1920, and I found the record of my grandmother’s reentry into the country in 1924. My paternal grandparents came over in 1914 and promptly sired my aunt and uncle (both deceased). Something happened to their marriage in the early 20s — my grandmother either got homesick, or perhaps fed up with her husband. I’m not sure anyone knows. Actually, I’ll bet my uncle Hank knew, but stupidly I never asked him about it while he was alive.
Anyway, my grandmother took her two kids back to Asia, and I don’t know if they made it as far as the USSR (they were the USSR by then, I think?) but they did have relatives in Harbin, China. Quite a big Jewish community in Harbin, I understand. She came back by way of Yokohama, to Vancouver BC and then to Seattle. They must have taken the train back to Boston, and based on the dates, I suspect my father was conceived soon after their homecoming.
It is kind of neat to see the census records . . . my grandfather was recorded as a grocer in 1920, and in the 1930 record he was again a grocer, and she was a “shop saleslady”. Since censuses were conducted house to house, their neighbors were recorded on the same page. I haven’t called my dad yet, but I figure he will probably remember some of the names.
I learned a few things which might surprise my father. I have my grandparents’ precise birth dates, or at least the ones they gave out to the Feds. I also have my grandfather’s city of origin — Nerchinsk. I’m dubious about it, though, since it’s like 200 miles east of my grandmother’s city of origin. How could they have met? Yes, I realize they had trains back then. Maybe he had relatives in Chita and he met her at the local hoe-down.
I don’t know how to proceed. Surely there were marriage records back in Siberia? Also, my grandfather’s dad was supposedly a rabbi (which would explain my grandfather’s rejection of the faith — the man kept his grocery store open on Saturdays!) You’d think that would be an important enough person to leave some mark on the records. I would love to track down those relatives in Harbin, too.
And I haven’t even touched my mom’s side of the family.
D.
The other shoe drops
Found out today that I will be obliged to attend twelve “Leadership Training” meetings over the next year. Currently, I have Wednesday afternoons off for, ahem, educational leave. The first Wednesday each month is our big interdepartmental administrative meeting, but the other three Wednesday afternoons are useful for working out shoppinggoofing off continuing my medical education. Now, I’m going to lose one of those afternoons each month to “Leadership Training” — I and a few other suckers. Um, leaders.
What might this entail? Will I be taught the special knock, the evil eye, the secret handshake? Will I come to learn that drilling down on the numbers is neither bookie’s argot nor pimpish patois? Will it dawn on me that benchmarks are something more than the dents my ass leaves on the chair, and that a dashboard is something other than the thing I bang my head against when I realize I could have been working out shoppinggoofing off continuing my medical education?
Will I become a leader?
Mind you, I belong to an organization in which most if not all leaders are drawn from the pool of physicians. Someone has to bust their ass keeping it all running smoothly. Several someones. And now I’m one of the someones.
D.