The latest catch phrase

In the past, I’ve bemoaned the fact that administrators have their own argot, an English made blithering by its narrow vocabulary and restrictive metaphors. Last decade’s catch phrase was drilling down, an Oedipal image that could mean “analyze the data,” “study the problem,” “talk to the relevant parties to find out what the hell happened,” and probably half a dozen other concepts. In a phenomenon well known to anyone familiar with corporate board meetings, The Boss would use “drilling down” in a sentence, and then everyone else in the room would have to drill down on something or another. It got tedious.

Today, I found out this decade’s catch phrase. I was down in Pasadena for our big chief’s meeting and our regional business meeting, quite literally an all-day affair involving lots of talking, some not-very-good food, and a medley of egos. (To be fair, the egos were calm today. The bull elephants saw no need to slam chests.) And in the midst of this, everyone was leveraging.

Leveraging, I gather, can mean “use our collective might to force the powers that be to do our will,” “use our numbers and organizational status to do some pretty awesome research,” or “cajole, wheedle, and bully.” Our regional chief said “leveraging” and suddenly all the chiefs had to “leverage” something. God forbid any chief’s car got a flat and he had to leverage his car to put on the spare. He would have been tossed out of the meeting for the sin of literalism.

Leverage this.

That said, it was a productive meeting. Minimum of bullshit, a good solid working meeting, which is what we surgeons are good at when we’re at our best. I learned a few things, which is always nice. And I got to have dinner with my sis tonight, which is nice, too.

By the way, I am about 3/5 of the way through Mieville’s Kraken, and I have to say that this is the book American Gods wanted to be, and then some. Maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges, but I think not. (More like, I’m comparing British fantasist with British fantasist.) Kraken is consistently funny, innovative, exciting, engaging. So good, in fact, that I’m starting to think that just maybe I should give Mieville’s earlier work a second chance.

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.

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.