Mister Crunchy

2008-05-08T08:39:00.004-04:00

Negative Returns

I don't think the key question regarding Hillary Clinton's persistence in the Democratic nomination process is whether she's hurting Obama's chances against John McCain in the general election. I think the key question is what the hell she's smoking. Imagine for a minute that she somehow succeeds in becoming the Democratic nominee. In order to do so, she'll have to wrest the nomination from a candidate who will have won the popular vote, won the elected delegate count, and probably done more to energize Democratic voter turnout than any candidate since George W. Bush. She'll alienate millions of young voters, millions of African American voters, and frankly anyone who gives a shit about fairness. If she really thinks that's good for the party or the country, she's high as a kite.

2008-05-05T14:40:00.005-04:00

More Clot Items

Nothing coherent or organized or anything. Just some stuff that's relevant to the whole medical rigmarole. I want to preface this by saying that I thought I got great care in the hospital in general, so anything not-great mentioned here is an exception rather than the rule.

I think it's really important to either be conscious while you're in the hospital, or have someone conscious and lucid there who can act on your behalf. I was admitted on a Thursday, and was moved out of the ICU Saturday. I woke up Sunday morning to a very frazzled-looking nurse telling me that I couldn't order breakfast because my stress test was today. Excuse me? I'm the clot guy, not the other guy. Unless you're actively trying to kill me because you're tired of my shenanigans, I'm pretty sure I'm not the stress-test guy. "Oh, I'm quite sure you're starting a two-day stress test today, sir! I work in the stress lab!" Uh, could you take a little peeky at my chart, please? She pulled out this thrice-folded wad of papers like you'd see in Schuyler's book bag if you asked to see the permission slip for tomorrow's field trip. "Huh. Hrrrrmmm. Uh. Well, I *thought* you were having a stress test." OK, are you a real nurse? Could you please ask the attending? And, most importantly, can I have breakfast?
The nurse who identified herself as the queen or maven or something of IV nurses gave me the worst IV by far. On the side of my wrist, of all places. It hurt a lot going in, hurt while it was in, and swelled up. Fail. The IVs done by all the other non-maven nurses were fine.
Hospital food is horrible, and is made worse by confusing and unnecessary bureaucracy. I tried to order Chicken Marsala. "You can't have Chicken Marsala, sir. You're a heart patient." There's nothing wrong with my heart. It just chewed up and spit out a clot that was big enough to kill ten Brownies. "But you're on the cardiac wing, sir. We cannot deliver Chicken Marsala to the cardiac wing." THEN WHY IS IT ON THE MENU?!?! (explodes, after having a huge stress-induced heart attack)
One of the benefits of this episode, and I really do consider it a benefit, is that my life-long fear of needles is gone. I used to get clammy if I got a flu shot. After semi-daily blood draws, a few IVs, and who knows how many Lovenox¹ shots (including some administered by She, who started rough but got better at it over time) I don't give a rats ass any more. I guess a spinal tap or having to watch amnio would still get me, but for the most part, stick me wherever. Just don't hit my eyeball.
The bedpan is one of the worst things ever. There's got to be a better way.
The air-freshening spritzy product they use after a giant clotted lummox has lost some weight into a bedpan is called "Corral-Off." The Corral-Off company might want to consider rebranding for non-cowboy use. Good Chris thinks they should call it "Meadow Fresh" or "Spring Breeze," while Bad Chris thinks they should call it "No Shit, Sherlock," or "The De-Stankilator."
I kind of liked having an adjustable bed. Not enough to buy one or ever want to be in a hospital again, but they're kind of cool.
If rest and/or nutrition have anything to do with healing, hospitals need some work. (See Food, horrible, and blood draws, 3 a.m.)
Next time, I'm shaving my chest before the ambulance comes. Just FYI, Goo Gone is pretty good at getting the stickers off you, and has a nice citrussy scent.

¹ Get it? Lovenox? Love an ox! I think I know where the guy who named Anusol went after they fired him.

2008-05-02T09:47:00.001-04:00

He's Going By Boat

(Seen at Andrew. Again.)

2008-04-28T20:18:00.002-04:00

Well, It's Not ONLY That...

Sophie and I were doing our suburban consumer duty, waiting in the checkout line at Costco to spend the package we haven't been stimulated by yet, talking about the meds I'm taking and getting my blood tested all the time, and the meds She Who Must has to take, and how much they cost, blah, blah, blah. We're not obsessed or anything...we'd just hit the Costco pharmacy, so it was topical. OK, maybe we're obsessed. I'd just pointed out that the Coumadin that I'm on isn't *like* rat poison, it actually *is* rat poison, as in, it was invented to kill rats.

Sophie: That totally SUCKS, Dad. How can you take that every day? It would freak me out.

Me: Yeah, as you get older, there's more and more stuff that you have to just deal with and try not to think about...

Sophie: Like what?

Me: Like sausage.

Sophie: What do you mean? It's made of pork.

Me: Right, but which *part* of the pork?

Sophie, eyes wide in a horrified whisper: YOU MEAN THE WIENER?????

2008-04-18T13:29:00.001-04:00

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

2008-04-14T20:20:00.003-04:00

Kinda Fun

Find the #1 song for any day since 1891.

My birthday: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," by The Righteous Brothers.
She Who Must Be Obeyed's birthday: "At The Hop," by Danny & the Juniors.
Sophie's: "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down," by Puff Daddy featuring Ma$e.
Sky's: "Genie in a Bottle," by Christina Aguilera.
Our wedding day: "Dreamlover," by Mariah Carey.
My highschool graduation: "Ebony and Ivory," by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.
Day I had a great big blood clot: "Bleeding Love," by Leona Lewis.

2008-04-09T10:52:00.006-04:00

Getting Medical

Read Part One of this craziness here.

The EMT guy wants to know where we're going. Hell, I don't know. I figure Winchester Hospital is probably the closest, so I suggest that. "I'm not taking you there," says the EMT. OK then, where would YOU like to go? I tell him that my primary care doc is at Mt. Auburn Hospital and he likes that idea better. Turns out Winchester isn't a cardiac center. My only choices were Mt. Auburn and Lahey. Coulda told me that...I do better on multiple choice tests. As we're rocketing down Route 2 towards Cambridge, I notice several things. First, the soundproofing in ambulances must be really good, because the siren is going but I can barely hear it. Second, you have no idea how fast you're going. It turns out that Jennifer was drafting the ambulance the whole way and she reported we were doing 80. Didn't feel like that to me, at least until we whipped around Fresh Pond Circle. Ambulances are cool.

In an effort to avoid freaking out too much I'm trying to make chitty-chat with the EMT dude. "Yeah, we picked up a lady with a clot last week at the Dunkies on Marrett Road," he says. Oh, yeah? "Yeah, she was blue. We took her to Lahey." So what happened? "Do you really want to know?" Obviously my deep love of narrative is obscured by my freaking out, but if this is the last story I ever hear, I want to know how it ends. "She died in the truck." Super.

They roll me into the emergency room at Mt. Auburn and the place is jammed. People and gurneys all over the place. All I can think is that I'm going to have to wait three hours, because that's always been my experience in emergency rooms with the various trivial sprains, cuts, etc. that I've come in with. Not this time. Helpful tip: if you ever need to get immediate attention in the emergency room, be a big fat guy and tell them you can't breathe. They never even paused...straight into an exam room. Jennifer arrives 2 minutes after me. They put in an IV and ask lots of questions. I think I answered the same questions about four times, between the various doctors and nurses who come through. I come clean about being off my hypertension meds and get the Death Stare from Jennifer. "WHY didn't you TELL me you were OFF YOUR MEDS (you dumbass)???" That's rhetorical, right? This is probably the first of seventeen times that someone asks me about what medicines I'm on (or supposed to be on). At one point a doctor asks and I tell him that, yeah, I'm an idiot and am off my BP pills, and he says "Oh, we're not here to judge," and Jennifer announces, "I am."

Anyway, they roll me into the CT scan lab and I lie down on the super comfortable bed/tray so they can move me through the center of the All Seeing Donut. Right before he shoots the contrast agent into my IV, the tech says that it's not anything to worry about, but that I'll get really hot for about 20 seconds, and then feel like I have to pee. This is accurate in that I did, in fact, get very warm for about 20 seconds, but I only felt like I needed to pee if by "feel like you need to pee" you really mean "feel like your balls are on fire." Good times.

They roll me back to my exam room and I'm still cracking wise and I notice that nobody else is, so something must be up. The CT tech says to Jennifer in a grave tone "It's good you brought him in," or something to that effect, and everything starts moving pretty quickly. An earnest young ER doc comes in and says, "Mr. Crunchy, you have a very large clot in your chest that was potentially life threatening." He just walks in and says that, without any "Hey, guess what?" or anything. Ker-boing. April Fools? No? And as much as I'm blown away by the use of the adjective "life-threatening" in ridiculous proximity to my name, I'm also just flabbergasted that I was actually right. So I say something to Jennifer like "Holy shit, I was right," and she responds in kind with the traditional "Holy shit, you were right."

After I make certain that the earnest young MD isn't yanking my chain, I want to know when surgery is. From my perspective, having anything "potentially life-threatening" in my chest is basically equivalent to being John Hurt on the Nostromo after the first visit to LV426 with the little two-jawed alien larva dealie just waiting to chew its way out and spoil the party. So let's go get the fucker.

Turns out that's not how it works. In days of yore, the practice of medicine revolved around bloodletting. Now, after many centuries of scientific inquiry and whatnot, we use both bloodletting AND the application of many stickers. They put 19 stickers on me, connected them to various machines, took my blood every 12 hours, and squirted something derived from pig intestines nonstop into my IV. After four days of that, they let me go. After having the living bejeezus scared out of me, I basically just sat there for a few days. It's good to be medically uninteresting.

2008-04-08T09:08:00.005-04:00

Here's the Story, Morning Glory

Before I forget, I want to get as much as I can remember about the events of the last few weeks down in one place. No promises about the entertainment value of the following. I'll try to throw in some curse words or something to keep it spicy. Maybe other lummoxes will read this and call their doctors instead of farting around and being stupid.

On Tuesday, March 24, I woke up with sharp pain in my left calf. It was almost definitely a big ol' blood clot, but at the time, I didn't make the connection. I'd played tennis the night before, so I figured that I'd just torn something or pulled something, as fatassed middle-aged guys are prone to do when they insist on playing sports with their 14-year-old brains sending instructions to their 43-year-old bodies. In retrospect, the pain wasn't entirely consistent with a pull, so I might have deduced something was up: there was no swelling or bruising, and the skin itself was very sensitive to touch. And it hurt like a mother. At the time, I wondered if maybe it was a partial achilles tear or something, because it was significantly more uncomfortable than tears and pulls I've had in the past, and it didn't feel exactly muscular. Having played tennis the night before confused things, because although I didn't remember hurting myself, it seemed plausible and even likely that I had just pulled it and not noticed. When you hear hoof beats, you don't look for zebras. So I was limping around and generally being a grump and assuming that I was going to be out of sports action for a few weeks while my calf healed.

The first weird part came when the calf miraculously healed itself overnight. I don't remember exactly which night that was, but by maybe Friday or Saturday, it was as if it had never happened. Nurses and other smart people are now probably screaming "GO TO THE DOCTOR YOU DUMBASS!" but I was just happy that my calf didn't hurt anymore, life is busy, I'm a guy, etc. etc. Pain: bad. No pain: good.

Sunday morning, I woke up with the most evil gastrointestinal bug I can remember. Violent stereo food expulsion, no energy (none), unable and uninterested in food, water, or anything else. I stayed in bed all day. This most certainly did not help things in the leg circulation department.

On Monday the 31st I felt better. Leg pain gone, GI tract functional. Second weird part occurs. I get the Lifehacker RSS feed, and this WebMD post, "7 Pains You Shouldn't Ignore," finds its way into my feed reader. Pain Number Five? Calf pain. I actually read this post, even page two, with the part about the calf. Huh. Calf pain. Lucky I don't have that anymore.

On Thursday, April 3, I could barely get out of bed. Just completely beat. The kids dragged me out and I helped them get ready for school and realized that my left hamstring hurt like hell. Similar to the calf pain. Things started clicking. There was no reason for my hammy to hurt. I took two aspirin because, oh, I don't know, maybe I threw a clot or something like that article was talking about. But I've got stuff to do. Around noon, when I picked up the kids and their Metco Family Friends at school after the half day, I was extremely beat, and beginning to worry that something was up. Maybe it was just residual fatigue from the GI bug. It occurs to me that my hamstring doesn't hurt anymore, and that that's weird. We went to Friendly's for lunch, then I sacked out while the kids played at home.

Around three, Sophie, Schuyler, and I took Faith and Alliyah back to school to meet their bus. We parked about 50 yards from the school. Walking from the car to the playground completely gassed me. Gasping, like there is not enough air in the world. OK, something is clearly up. I briefly wonder if I'm having a heart attack, but I sit down and everything normalizes. The bus picks up the Metco kids and we walk back to our car. (Yeah, I shifted tenses. Whatever.) I'm out of air again. Get in the car, sit for a minute, everything's fine. OK, here's where I clearly should have called 911, not driven my kids while definitely not healthy, and basically not been a stupid ass. We get home and I try to nap for a couple hours until dinner, but my head is just spinning. I'm going through all the leg stuff, the Lifehacker article, the fatigue, the shortness of breath, and how much I love my wife and kids, and I'm just freaking out. I'm not sure, but I don't think I was thinking completely straight. I should probably mention that I'm generally really (really) hesitant to do anything that will cause contact with doctors or hospitals, but the evidence seems overwhelming to me. At this point walking 10 steps causes me to lose my air.

About six (yeah, I know) I come to the conclusion that something serious is going on, that I probably didn't have a heart attack, but that I may very well have thrown a clot (Who throws a clot? How fricking random is that?), and I need to do something about it. I call Jennifer, who's on her way home, and blurt some version of all of that at her, and her initial reaction is something like, "Wait a minute. Are you serious? You're scaring me." And I say something like "Yeah, I'm serious. I'm thinking about going to the doctor when you get home or maybe tomorrow or maybe calling 911, but I can probably drive to the hospital, I mean, I drove the kids home so..." and she says something like "CALL 911 RIGHT NOW YOU DUMBASS! HANG UP AND CALL 911 RIGHT NOW!" Something like that. God, I love her. I suspect that hearing me say the words "I'm thinking about going to the doctor," was quite a shock for her.

So I call the kids into my room for a quick family conference ("Are we in trouble?"), and explain that I think I need to go to the hospital right now and I'm about to call 911 and an ambulance is going to come and things will get exciting, but that they will take good care of me and I'm going to be OK. Sophie, who's kind of intuitive like her grandmother was and who now knows that we completely bullshitted her about how serious it was when her mom had cancer, immediately starts crying and wants to know if I'm going to die. I'm not 100% sure that I'm not going to die, so I start lying my ass off about of course not, but pretty soon I'm getting weepy too, which does squat for my credibility. Schuyler's like "Yeah, OK, thanks for the update, Dad."

By the time the EMTs show up (and the cops, and the fire guys....), which probably isn't even five minutes (911 is clearly *not* a joke in Lex Vegas, at least), I'm basically relaxed again, breathing fine, and feeling like an idiot for calling 911. When the head EMT initially comes in and sees me sitting up, looking like my normal lummoxy self, he declares "You're not sick!", but I tell my tale and he concedes that it's not inconsistent with throwing a clot, so they strap me to a chair and prepare to carry me out of the house. I tell them they need more guys. They get more guys and it still seems like they're going to drop me, so I tell them that if they untie me, I'll walk down the stairs under my own power and I promise not to sue them if I die. They make one more attempt and then look at each other and untie me and let me walk out of the house. (It's possible that I might want to pay a smidge more attention to diet and exercise.) I tell them I can most certainly walk the whole way out to the ambulance, but the head EMT dude is not having it. They strap me onto a gurney and off we go.

(to be continued...)

2008-04-02T18:13:00.003-04:00

Kid Beyond

If you think you don't like beatboxing, prepare to reevaluate.

He's got a four-song EP called 'Amplivate,' which is just great. (I don't think you need to bother with the remixes...the original versions are better.) He's also done a ton of voice-over work, and provided vocals for several tracks on Guitar Hero and the Karaoke Revolution games. Yeah, I want to be this guy.

2008-04-02T00:01:00.003-04:00

Veritable Typhoon of Entertainment Grooviness

Has anyone else noticed the staggeringly flavorific wall of probably-excellent entertainment options that's bearing down on us this spring? In movies, we've got Iron Man, Speed Racer by the Matrix brothers, Narnia 2: Electric Boogaloo, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of His Lost Youth, Harold and Kumar Get Waterboarded, The More Incredible Than Eric Bana Hulk, Hellboy 2 (yeah, I realize I may be alone in my anticipation there), The Dark Knight, and then that cool Tom Cruise Nazi movie later in the year. Iron Man was my fave as a kid and Robert Downey Jr. has never given a bad performance in anything, so I'd be pretty bobdarned jazzed if that was all that was coming, but jesu-freaking-christe my Big Gulp runneth over.

Then there's the concert schedule. Let me start by saying that I'm not making this up. It's like I've died and gone to the 80s. In the next 4 months, we've got local shows by the B-52's, DEVO, The Cure, Joe Jackson, Blondie, and REM, concluding, on July 31st, with GET THIS, Elvis Costello opening for the Police. That accounts for like half the songs my band covered in college and a fraction larger than 3/22nds of my iTunes playlist. It's ridiculous. F vacations. I'm buying concert tickets. If Joe Strummer and Ben Orr weren't dead, and/or there was any chance of a T-Heads reunion it's conceivable that I might just suffer bliss implosion.

2008-04-01T08:58:00.009-04:00

Changes

You've probably noticed that updates have gotten pretty sparse here, and I think it's about time I shed a little light on some of the changes in my life that have made the creation of high-value-add infotainment ingots difficult. First off, I've had a bit of a spiritual epiphany (is there really any other kind?) The whole "atheism" thing wasn't really working for me. It's not that I believe in God...I most assuredly don't...but disbelief wasn't serving me well. It provided no comfort in difficult times, no frame of reference for tough decisions, and frankly a very bleak outlook for my likely situation following my own death. So I've decided to behave *as-if* I'm a believer, with the hope that I'll either organically lose my atheism, or just forget about it altogether. The UU church we've been attending is a nice group of people, but I have no idea what they're really trying to accomplish. A few months ago I set out to find a new spiritual home for myself and my family, and while the jury's still out, I can tell you that we're likely to end up either LDS, reformed Jewish, or nondenominational evangelical. They're the only faiths in town that seem to have their acts together. I'll be sure to keep you updated as this area becomes clearer. In the meantime, we're attending all three churches and taking a lot of notes.

It should probably come as no surprise that my political views are undergoing the same sort of scrutiny that my spiritual life has undergone. It seems pretty obvious that this experiment we call liberalism has failed. Minority groups are still disadvantaged, our position in the world is lousy, our economy's in the crapper, and our kids are the stupidest on the planet. Clearly, government intervention is not the answer to any of these things, or, frankly, anything else, as government isn't actually good at anything. To paraphrase They Might Be Giants, you should only do what you know how to do well, and in the case of the federal government, that's collect taxes and wage wars. Everything else should either be privatized or pushed down to the states and cities. Needless to say, there isn't really a place in the Democrat party for me anymore. I'm not even sure there's one among the Republicans, but I'm going to give it a try.

Finally, and this is The Big One (if you can believe that!): I must finally accept my true gender identity. I've long wondered if my love of scones, fastidious care for my hair and nails, and penchant for smart accessories was somehow linked to a deeper dissatisfaction with who I was, or at least was pretending to be. Luckily, months of past life regression therapy have uncovered the simple truth that I'm a woman. In fact, I'm the 25th reincarnation of a line of bold and powerful women beginning with Eve, continuing through the pharaoh Hatshepsut, and most recently concluding with biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson who died just a few weeks before I was conceived. There are lots of blanks to fill in, and important historical women to identify, so this is a pretty exciting time for me. I'm still diggin' Jennifer, though, so I guess I must be a lesbian.

Obviously, in light of all this, "Mister Crunchy" probably isn't going to work as a website name anymore, considering my new devout conservative female orientation. I haven't got this totally nailed down, but I'm thinking about going with "Mrs. Goldwater" dot com. Let me know what you think.

Yours in Christ/Shalom,
Christine (or Kristin...haven't got that finalized either.)
Your New Religious Republican Girlfriend

2008-03-29T09:22:00.001-04:00

Vicious Attack Ad

By Reverend Dan.

2008-03-27T20:06:00.003-04:00

Things That Are Fun to Yell

One is general-purpose, the other is probably more specific:

Any time you're starting, restarting, initiating, entering, exiting, or just need to get some momentum, try bellowing "GO, E-Z PASS!"
Any time you see anything that looks even vaguely like a scientific or algebraic formula or lab equipment, scream "Science!" like Thomas Dolby. I invented this one on the Tower of Terror Ride at Disney's Not MGM Anymore Studios. There's this whole Twilight Zone film clippy thing and E=mc² shows up. Everyone in our intentionally malfunctioning elevator cracked up, and I only need a little encouragement to pound something into the ground. Needless to say, I started using it for (ahem) other things, so Jennifer made me stop yelling it.

Science! Science! Science!

2008-03-25T20:41:00.001-04:00

Ethan is a Giggler

Seen at Andrew's. Again.

2008-03-21T22:43:00.002-04:00

How to Crush Buzz Lightyear

...or at least how to max out your score on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin at Disneyworld. There are several benefits to crushing this game:

You won't have to worry about your kids outscoring you (anymore),
The universe will be safe from the evil Zurg, and
Kids in the little spaceships behind you will point at your score panel and beg their fathers to tell them the secret, which they don't know. Advantage: you.

OK, here's the technique, which was working as of one week prior to the date of this post:

Just like Benjamin Martin killing all those evil limey bastards who dragged off his son Gabriel, aim small, shoot small. Despite the fact that you'll score *some* points if you hit anywhere on the Z targets, you want to score *all* the points and make the other kids cry, so you need to shoot the exact center of the targets, where you can see a black dot about the size of a quarter, which is actually the light receptor that registers your laser hits. If you pay attention, you can see exactly where you're hitting, because your laser makes a red dot just like that pointer you use to annoy the guy from HR when he makes presentations. If you hit the targets dead center, you get more points.
Now that you're shooting dead center on the targets, you need to be shooting at the right targets. Most of the targets aren't worth crap. Shoot the following:
- In the first room with the big orange robot, wait until you're past him and then turn around and repeatedly shoot the target on the outside of his left arm. 25,000 per dead center hit.
- In the big mayhem room with the volcano in back, shoot the target at the top of the volcano. 25,000 per hit, maybe more.
- Shoot whatever you want in the battery room, but as you're coming out of it, get ready because the target at the bottom of the big Zurg in the next room (below the meter that says "PATHETIC") is worth 100,000 per dead center hit. You can't shoot it when you're right in front of it, so you have to get it at an angle as you enter and exit the room. You can max out your score (999,999) just on this target if you get good shots at it. Then you just lean back so all the kiddies behind you can see your score panel and are optimally demoralized for the rest of the ride.
- If you don't max out on the Zurg room, you've got one more chance to run up your score. Immediately after the pitch black tunnel, you'll come into a room where Zurg's spaceship is projected onto the wall. Try to ignore the projection. About three feet to the left of the door you're headed for at the end of the room, approximately at the same height as the top of the door, is a laser receptor. If you concentrate, you can spot it almost immediately upon emerging from the tunnel. 25,000 per hit, but it's tiny...smaller than the Z targets in the other rooms...maybe the size of a dime.
Just hold down the firing button. Your gun will shoot as fast as it can, and you won't screw up your aim with a lot of unneeded movement.
Don't let your kid drive.

OK, now go to Disney and make some kids cry.

2008-03-20T12:39:00.004-04:00

People-watching at DisneyWorld

We snuck in a little Disney trip last week. I like the people-watching almost as much as I like the rides and the scrumptious South African hard cider at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Well, maybe not quite that much. Anyway, here are some new insights I've unearthed:

I'm still not against tattoos, per se, but I have to report that after looking at a whole lot of them, many drilled into pasty American hogflesh, I have absolutely no interest in ever getting one. First, I'm still in the camp that says, I don't want the same ornament on my body, every day, forever. It's kind of like my old camp buddy Dave's leather choker necklace that he never took off, which then went bad, causing him to think for a few days that maybe his nose had gone insane because the whole world smelled like rancid leather. Okay, maybe it's not so much like that, but I still think it's a good story. Second, unless you *really* have something original, you don't have something original. It looks to me like most people are inadvertently signing up for a new tribe when they get their tats. The Barbwire Arm tribe. Their hated nemeses, the Native American Feather Arm tribe. The Celtic Cross Calf tribe. The Tramp Stamp tribe. The Chinese Neck Symbol tribe. (Unfortunately, it doesn't matter to the rest of the world if your Chinese neck symbol means "Peace," or "Serenity," or "Toaster Oven." It's just a Chinese symbol.) Third: needles with electricity attached.
Footwear seems to unify groups. We saw several families where every single member wore Crocs®. I imagine that these families have entire rooms in their homes devoted to their Croc® armories, and that as they head out to the airport to embark on Diznification, they stream through the Croc rooms yelling "Hut! Hut! Hut!" as they pick out the perfect Crocs® for various rides and attractions.
It's not just footwear. I haven't done rigorous statistical work on this, but it sure looks to me like if any one teenage girl in a group of three or more teenage girls is wearing flipflops, cotton short shorts, and a camisole top, the likelihood that every girl in the group is wearing flipflops, cotton short shorts, and a camisole top is damn close to 100%. I pointed this out to Jennifer and she called me a pedophile.
If you're going to pierce part of your face, fergahdsake, don't do that ridiculous-looking nasal septum thing. I'm sure this makes me extremely uncool, but that ring in your nose makes me want to tie a rope to you and lead you back to the barn.

2008-03-11T10:17:00.000-04:00

High Grade Enhanced Something or Other

2008-03-06T22:36:00.002-05:00

It's a Threshold She's Crossed, Alright...

...but I'm not sure it's the one she thinks it is. Apparently Hillary Clinton's new strategy for resurrecting her mathematically-challenged nomination prospects is to give John McCain a new anti-Obama talking point every day. Which leaves me re-evaluating where I find myself on the Clinton Derangement Spectrum. I started out thinking that I supported Obama, but would probably vote for Clinton if she won the nomination. Now I've moved to Phase Two, which entails staying home from the polls if Clinton gets the nomination. There's an element of spite to that, certainly, but I've also become convinced that Mr. McCain is simply a better person than Mrs. Clinton is. More honorable, less craven. Which, of course, rhymes with Wes Craven. But I digress. If she keeps this up, it's entirely possible that I'll move to Phase Three, voting for McCain if Clinton gets nominated, or even Phase Four, giving McCain money to help him keep Hillary, Billary, and their whole circus as far from the White House as possible. Which would put me on a lot of GOP mailing lists for the rest of my life. Which would suck big weiners. Stay tuned.

2008-03-05T13:46:00.002-05:00

Let's Vote on It

Totally Hypothetical Female: "Chris!"

Totally Hypothetical Male: "Yo."

THF: "What part or parts of your body, exactly, did you use my washcloth on?"

THM: "Honey, before I answer that, are you aware that the shamans of the Sussudio tribe from Papua-New Guinea prize hairs from the buttocks of middle-aged men for their many therapeutic properties?"

THF: "I know you think you're hilarious, but you're not."

THM: "Are you sure?"

THF: "Get your own goddamned washcloth."

2008-03-05T10:22:00.002-05:00

Splain, please

Can someone please explain to me why Hillary Clinton is the "experienced" candidate? OK, she's been in the Senate longer than Barack, but he's been an elected official longer than she has. She was First Lady. I'm married to an architect. Want me to design your hospital? And on what will be the key issue in the general election, the Iraq war, her "experience" is that she voted to authorize the damn thing.

I really don't get it.

2008-02-29T12:40:00.002-05:00

All We Did Was Trade Lunchables

(Seen at Andrew Sullivan.)

2008-02-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

Rock for Thursday

2008-02-27T08:49:00.009-05:00

NOLA

I spent last week with my church youth group and eight other adults working in New Orleans. We stayed in a Catholic community center right outside the French Quarter and did projects all over the city.

This was my first time in New Orleans, so I don't have much basis for comparison, but it's pretty amazing to me that the city is in as bad shape as it's in two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina. There's still lots of visible physical damage, but that was only part of it. It doesn't feel like there's a working economic engine behind it all. I guess that's not too surprising given that some huge percentage of the population left and didn't come back. I was struck by the number of people we met who said something like "don't forget us when you go home."
Although it felt good to be contributing and it was great to work with our group, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the whole premise of New Orleans was flawed to begin with. You stand on a levee, looking out over the Mississippi (or presumably Lake Ponchartrain, if you're on the north side of the city), and then you turn around and you're looking DOWN into New Orleans. It doesn't feel sustainable. That probably sounds cold, and I realize that people's lives are there and mine isn't, so I have the luxury of taking a longer view. If anything, the feeling of wrongness was borne out in some of the work we did. We spent one day prepping and painting the exterior of a house which wasn't in very good shape. All of the adults who knew anything about home maintenance kept saying that the place really needed to be rebuilt first and then painted. Lots of damage and wear all over, and the sills were rotted. When the sills go bad, your house is hosed. But the agency we were working with told us to paint it, so that's what we did.
Gloom and doom notwithstanding, New Orleans culture is wonderful. Someone should immediately franchise Café du Monde (beignets and cafe au lait), Rock & Bowl (a big 10-pin bowling alley with live zydeco music), and Shaggy's Restaurant (great big crawfish boil) and blow them out to the rest of America.
Except when we splurged on beignets, poboys, crawfish and the like, we ate donated food at the community center most of the week. Baloney for breakfast. If you can avoid it, don't be poor.
It's really weird being in other people's houses, which was required by much of the work we did. When the stuff was out it was no big deal...we could just attack with the crowbars and sledgehammers, but a couple times we were in houses that hadn't been entirely cleaned out. Old checkbooks, prescription bottles, family pictures, keepsakes. It was the toys that really got me, though.

More later.

2008-02-15T09:18:00.001-05:00

Hey! You Got Your Rammstein in My Lego!

No, you got your Lego in my Rammstein. Two great tastes that taste great together:

2008-02-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

Arabian Night

A few years ago, my friend Harry^* was on a business trip to Kuwait doing A/V work in support of an initiative to introduce the Dewey Decimal System to the Arab world. Harry's family is from Lebanon and he naturally has kind a of Mediterranean look about him, plus at the time he had a full beard, so Harry claims that he "could pass" for Kuwaiti. Harry's also a very friendly dude. He seems to meet interesting and famous people without really trying too hard. I guess in the course of doing his work over there he befriended some Kuwaiti muckety muck at the conference, and the guy invited him to a big dinner party with lots of local celebrities. One of them was the local emir, whom he chatted with, and before you know it, the emir asked Harry to come to his palace to fix his stereo.

Of course hearing this, I yelled booyah, but Harry said that he immediately begged off on account of having too much library science to project or amplify. His real reason being that Harry is a Jew, and he imagined that the emir would decapitate him or something, especially if he couldn't get the sub woofers tuned properly. I was appalled at this lack of adventurousness.

"You told me yourself that you could pass!" I exclaimed. "What was he going to do? Check your johnson before you could work on his stereo? Just think about it...you get to check out his palace, maybe he loves how his Warrant and Whitesnake sound and invites you back to the VIP wing of the casbah with the giant neon hookahs and the harem girls! HAREM GIRLS, HARRY! HAREM GIRLS!"

Harry looked at me like you would look at the special needs kid who just smacked a soul train of shopping carts into your quarter panel at the Stop & Shop and asked gently, "and what exactly would I do with the harem girls?" Then the whole scene unfolded in my mind's eye...the ruckus, the screaming, the flurry of pastel scarves...all of those exotically beautiful Jasmine clones grabbing frantically for their LifeAlert necklaces...then cut to the palace security room with the klaxon shrieking and the "Circumcision Detected" indicator flashing, and the squad of scimitar-wielding enforcers rushing down the spiral staircase to snuff my friend.

You've got to think these things through.

^* "Harry's" real name spelled with different letters.