I Love Texas Judge Bob Perkins
My God, on Friday, Perkins is ordering Tom DeLay to be to arrested, booked and arraigned, mug shots, fingerprinting, bail, the whole works. The Republican leadership was so arrogant in their belief that they were above the law, but they miscalculated. Fitzgerald is likely to issue indictments tomorrow and Frist is under investigation by the SEC. Hey, maybe democracy isn’t dead.
Contest Reminder
Today is the last day for the Good Bad Sex Challenge. Caress the steamy pink lips on the right sidebar to review the rules, read the entries, or post your own hot item. Go on. You know you want it.
Tonight, I’ll copy stuff over to my word processing program to check word counts. The limit is 200 words. I’ll post a separate top o’ the blog thread with all the entries (listed anonymously), and you can vote in response to that thread. Remember: you have to play to vote.
D.
October is the Cruelest Month
Some of my random thoughts.
Washington and Iraq are heating up the rumor mill. Fitzgerald is on the verge of indicting Rove and Libby over Plamegate (possibly on Wednesday) and Dick Cheney is in the crosshairs. Cheney must be one of the unindicted co-conspirators but there are rumors of another unindicted co-conspirator. Could it possibly be Bush? Even if Bush isn’t impeached, the indictment of high-level aides will weaken his presidency tremendously.
Iraq’s constitution is certain to be ratified which is rather interesting since the votes haven’t been counted yet and statistical analysis shows inconsistencies in voting patterns. Does any rational human being believe that the vote wasn’t fixed? The Sunnis have no reason to support the constitution and will turn toward the insurgents as their only legitimate voice; the U.S. keeps bombing innocent Sunni civilians and reducing their towns to rubble while the Shiites and Kurds are looking for payback on the Sunnis. The new Iraqi flag should have been blood-red.
The massive earthquake hit Pakistan very hard and news reports indicate dissatisfaction with Pakistani Pres. Musharraf’s handling of the crisis. Even before the disaster, Musharraf was hardly in complete control of his country. That’s why he doesn’t want to capture Bin Laden and turn him over to the U.S.; Musharraf would be facing open revolt in the streets of Islamabad.
We’re also looking at Tropical Storm Wilma which is predicted to turn into a cat 3 hurricane. It’s going to be a record-breaking year and I keep wondering how many hurricanes will hit U.S. oil-drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The possible destruction of oil-rigs and processing plants is dangerous to our debt-ridden economy. In general, October is a dangerous month for possible economic collapse; mutual funds sell some of their holdings in October in order to lock in their profits for their yearly reports. Historically, in a weak and unstable economy, that sell-off has led to severe drops in the stock market.
We live in exciting times.
Say hello to my little friend
So Candy has a thing for Harry and the Danglers, eh? Candy, I dedicate this one to you.
For the first year or two after we got married, Karen and I lived on campus. I focused on my preclinical course work while Karen built lasers and TA’d undergrad chemistry.
One night, I noticed something new about my nuts.
“Karen. Look at this.”
“What?”
“It’s never done this before.”
“Oh, Christ, Doug. You could have warned me.”
“Now, come on. Look at it. Does this look familiar?”
Teeth clenched, lips not moving: “I don’t know.”
“You’ve looked at it. Doesn’t this look weird? . . . I mean, you have looked at it before, right?”
She made a careful study of my scrotum. Next to my right nad, I had a balloon-like swelling. It didn’t hurt, but it certainly didn’t belong there.
“I think there’s something called a hydrocele,” I said. “Or maybe a spermatocele. Or maybe it’s a hernia. Or a tumor.”
“You’re the medical student. Why are you asking me?”
“I was hoping maybe it had always been there, and I just hadn’t noticed.”
“Doug, your hands are down there a hell of a lot more often than mine are. If anyone would know, you would.”
Good point.
I decided to go to the student health center on campus. There had to be a night nurse there, right? Maybe even a more advanced medical student, someone who had seen a few testes. Maybe even a doctor.
By the time I got there, I was anxious as a tom cat in heat. I charged in, found the nurse, pulled her aside into the hallway. We were all alone, she and I, but I didn’t exactly want to do this in the waiting room.
“Look at this, would you? This just isn’t right.”
I dropped my pants and framed it with my hands, just like this:
Only instead of a smiley hacky sack, I had my hairy nut sack well in hand.
“I was getting ready for bed when I noticed it,” I said. I moved it this way and that, gave it a good going over like I already had a dozen times that night. “It’s never been like this before, I’m sure of it. My wife doesn’t even recognize it. I was getting ready for bed, and, like, I don’t know, maybe I was scratching myself, I mean it’s not like I’m scratching myself all the time, but this time when I did I felt this big swollen thing that had no business being there. I mean, look at it. I’m a medical student, but I don’t know what this is. I dunno, maybe a hydrocele, or a spermatocele, or a hernia, or, oh God, please don’t tell me you think it’s a tumor. You don’t, do you?”
I looked away from my right nut and looked her in the eye for the first time. She kinda looked like this.
“I — I — I’ll get the nurse.”
She was an undergrad, eighteen years old tops. Probably a volunteer.
“Um, sorry,” I said as I stuffed my goods back in my pants. “Busy clinic like this, I’ll bet you see that all the time.”
She backed away, stricken. I never saw her again. She didn’t call, didn’t write. As for me, my little visitor disappeared by the next morning. He never showed up again, either.
***
This is my entry for Demented Michelle‘s Halloween Trick or Treat Prank Contest. It’s not much of a prank, but it’s all I got. And, gee whiz — if I’d been putting her on, it would have been one hell of a trick, eh?
D.
A lack of perspective
While Jake and I waited in the restaurant foyer for the tow truck to arrive, a young woman bitched to the hostess about the lack of a fire.
“We came all this way for the fireplace. A nice fire on a Saturday night, that’s why we’re here. And you’re telling me you can’t light a match?”
The hostess smiled at her like she was six — an accurate assessment. “Like I told you, Ma’am, there’s a problem. The restaurant fills up with smoke. I can’t help you.”
“But that’s the only reason we came here. This is our special evening, we have all our friends together, and we want a fire.”
Our hostess shrugged and smiled, which seemed to tweak the young woman even more.
“You could call the owners. They could give you permission. Why can’t you call the owners?”
I don’t know how many times the hostess had gone over this, but it was obvious she’d decided not to waste any more breath on this nitwit. No matter how many times this woman rearranged “owner,” “special evening,” and “just a match,” all she got for her troubles was a smiling, head-shaking hostess. Finally, she stalked off in a huff.
“That woman lacks perspective,” I told the hostess.
Maybe I found this especially silly because Mother Nature had nearly smeared me and my son a half an hour earlier. Or, perhaps it’s because I’m a doctor and it takes more than a faulty fireplace to upset me.
I’ve been known to tell my patients, “Yes, it’s cancer, but it’s a good cancer. I was afraid of much worse.” And I often tell them, “It’s my job to worry about the really horrible things so you don’t have to.” It only occurs to me now that some folks might go home and worry, “What the HELL is he worrying about? Now I’m really worried.”
Sitting there listening to that dingbat whining about the lack of a fire, I found myself wishing for superpowers. Remember the end of The Crow, when Eric Draven inflicts all of his dead wife’s suffering on the bad guy, compressing weeks of horror into a few excruciating seconds? Yeah, something like that. I wanted to give that woman a brief taste of horror.
Nothing damaging, mind you, just eye-opening. As in: Look, you. This is what’s really important.
Right now, I don’t have bupkes for Beth’s Smart Bitches Day or Michelle’s Trick or Treat Halloween Contest. My muse is holding out on me, the wench. What do you want? Tell me. Tell me!
By the way, I really really want to spend some serious kitchen time with Beth. Tonight, she’s making pie crust. Check it out. I suspect she’s filling that crust with something, but you never do know with Beth.
On a more positive note, I made a sizable dent into my next Tangent assignment, Issue #7 of City Slab. Delighted to report that the lead story, David Niall Wilson’s “The Milk of Paradise”, is a hit. Editor Dave Lindschmidt sets up some pretty darned high expectations in his opening comments, but Wilson’s story delivers.
Just a teaser: the story is based on Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan. Yee-haw, what a tale.
D.
It’s Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby
You’ll find the full text for Rich’s op-ed piece “It’s Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby” at Grass Roots News and Truthout. No commentary yet (as of this writing) from Daily Kos or Huffington Post. Arianna has a good deal of commentary about Judith Miller‘s mea no culpa, and you can read that here.
Oh, my droogs, the pot’s about to boil over. I can feel it in my Berkeley liberal bones.
This should surprise no one.
My Drag Queen Name is Monica Chan.
Take The Drag Queen Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Name Generator Generator.
If you’re really cool about it, and if you get me drunk first, I’ll even show you the pictures.
D.
A joyous blog meme; Jake & Doug’s near death experience
Gabriele has tagged me. Now we’re even.
This one looks kinda fun . . .
IIPM is listening
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) story, detailed in full at expressindia.com, has dominated Technorati’s “top searches” board for over a week.
It’s pissing me off. How do you create humorous riffs on an acronym?
Alzheimer’s victim Judith Miller, best known as John Tierney‘s love slave, well, she’s a walking joke. The latest: Judith Miller will be leading the planned Nazi march in Toledo.
I’m kidding. As for Judy Miller‘s memory loss, I wish I were kidding. If that were a joke, it would be in extremely poor taste. Here in the New York Times, she has the nerve to claim she forgot her source. The woman has the credibility of Fletcher Reede.
Awright, awright, that’s enough whoring for the weekend. If I do any more of this, I’ll end up with testalgia. Ask Beth, she knows what it means.
D.