menometrorrhagia

1. College football: Texas got lucky in their win against Nebraska, but they shouldn't have needed to get lucky. Greg Davis sucked a big one on first and goal every single time. A trick play you (and the rest of the country) saw on Sportscenter last week? Seriously? Wow, you suck. Brian Orakpo, you, too, suck and should have your scrotom flayed and dipped in vinegar and lemon juice for attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Then everyone in the chain of dominoes that need to fall for Texas to return to the national championship game (except for Michigan and USC) threatened to lose before pulling it out in the end. Bastards. I feel certain Notre Dame and Cal will lose. Either Louisville or WVU must lose since they play each other, but I'm not sure either will lose twice. Best case for Texas is for Louisville, WVU, and Rutgers to beat each other up. USC might not lose and could end up in the championship game. I maintain Michigan will beat OSU, negating Texas's only hope. Watching some of the Michigan/Iowa game gave me a new appreciation for the Michigan defense. Their defensive line is brutal.

Sic 'em, Bears! Look for Baylor to bring shame upon the house of Aggy this weekend. The Ags secondary is terrible and the Baylor offense is decent (they played well against a Texas defense that is light years ahead of TAMU's).

2. Medical school: I just got back from a recruiting dinner for the internal medicine department here. Had I known that every department tries to woo you when you apply to their specialty I would have applied to every specialty UTSW offers. The dinners tonight and a few weeks ago from the neurology department were worth way more than the $10 application fee. [Note: I'm going into neurology, but some neurology programs do not include a general medicine internship year, which is required by licensing boards, thus I have to apply for single-year internship spots in internal medicine as well as to neurology programs.]

3. More medical school: You know you've been slacking off when the 9:30 to 3:30 M-F nuclear radiology schedule is a step up in intensity from your last rotation. I'm going to miss being a fourth year student next year.

4. More college football: Greg Davis did a great job against Nebraska except in key moments. Failing to take advantage of Quan Cosby's opening kick return was inexcusable. They had a seventh-grader trying to guard 6'5" Limas Sweed -- take a shot. A quick touchdown there could have said "The rout is on!" instead of the field goal saying "Nebraska's got a shot!"

5. More medical school: My first residency interview is at UTSW on Wednesday. I'd prefer not to blow it.

6. Mute would totally kick Roy's ass. And leave him a pair of Snake Eyes sunglasses as a parting gift.

Really, though, given his power it's possible that there would be a phase delay in sounds emanating from within the field of influence outward. Thus sound waves travelling from Mute outward might be heard, but the out-of-phase "anti-waves" produced by his power would give the sounds a quality similar to the guitar solo in Eruption by Van Halen.

To which this nerd says, "Excelsior!"

7. Yet more college football: My current predictions are these:

- National championship: Michigan vs Lousiville

- Fiesta bowl: Texas vs. Rutgers

- Rose bowl: USC vs. OSU

- Orange bowl: Notre Dame vs. Auburn

- Sugar bowl: Tennessee vs. Clemson

- Heisman: Troy Smith, just give it to him already. [Irony: the poor man's VY will get the trophy VY himself did not get.]

- Texas Bowl: Baylor vs. Tulsa

I've watched the last couple episodes of that Heroes show. The last episode was better than any of the previous, because it wasn't horrible in every single aspect like the pilot was, but it still sucks. I guess I'll give up on it. One thing I am grateful to this show for is that it has triggered some good memories for me. The fact that a show this terrible can be made makes me want to revisit some aborted superhero novels from my pre-med past.
When I was in 8th to 11th grade I must have created around 50 superheroes and villains. Most of them were banal rip-offs of Marvel or Image comics characters (the latter being worse since those were all rip-offs of Marvel archetypes). There were a couple, however, that I was pretty proud of. One was a guy named Manslaughter, which I liked because the name implied this tension between violent acts and the intent behind the acts. I've always wondered why this name hasn't been exploited in comics yet. The concept certainly has in the better Wolverine stories and early Spawn issues.  Anyway, my guy was this cheesy geneticallyengineered mercenary. His parents were scientists 
who collaborated and donated their own genetic material in the experiments that gave rise to him.  The rub is that his mom was somewhat in awe of his father, who was older and more renowned in the scientific community, and pretty much went along with the experiments just to impress him.  Then she died giving birth to Manslaughter.  So this guy grows up alternating between hating himself for killing his mother by his very birth and hating his father for killing his mother.  In both scenarios the death was unintended -- manslaughter.  I've always wished I was disciplined enough to write more than ten or so pages of this story.
The other character I created that I still think of as worth remembering was a guy named Mute.  From the time he was born his body instantaneously produced interference waves that completely negated any soundwaves in a given radius.  So he never learned how to talk because soundwaves couldn't reach his ears. He was a ninja/monk type character who moved in absolute silence.  I never developed the story for Mute as much as for Manslaughter, but his power was much more inventive.  The story, as much as I can remember it, was that Mute wanted simply to read and study and contemplate in some Laotian monastery but he was constantly being drawn into affairs that required him to steal information or kill an ambassador or something to save the life of his sensei (which I'm pretty sure is not what monks call their mentors, unless their Asian, because all Asians use the term sensei at every opportunity).
A common thread to both these stories, if I remember correctly, was a secret society that controlled world affairs from the shadows.  I've always been fascinated by that notion, a sort of global conspiracy theory fetish.  There were differences between the secret societies involved with Manslaughter and Mute, but I'm a bit fuzzy on the details.  Manslaughter's shadowy antagonists where more along the lines of the technorati.  Their mantra was something like "Only science can save Man from himself."  This provided another source of tension that I liked about that story which never made it out of my head: Manslaughter would be struggling against the people responsible for his creation and
with whom he might actually agree in principle.  Mute's antagonists were more along the lines of religious fanatics and in 10th grade I actually tried to read some of the Gnostic gospels as research for this group.

Anyway, maybe I'll get off my ass and write these damn things one of these days.  But not bloody likely.  Rest assured, though, if I made them into a TV show starring Corey Haswell and Melissa Alstrom using a handheld Sony video camera from 1987 and editing on a Commodore 64, it could not be worse than Heroes.

So Gigantor had her 15 month check up with the pediatrician today. I realized two things from this visit. One, Phenie's pretty freaking huge, 98%ile for height for 15 month olds. Looked at another way, she could not grow at all in the next 8 months and still be in the 50%ile. Or yet another way, at 1.25 years of age she looks like the average two year old. Or we could just stick with the notion that she's friggin' 'uge.
The second thing I learned is the nurse at our pediatrician's office is badass. She gave Phenie four shots in her legs in less than five seconds. It was like watching Forrest Gump play ping-pong. Incredible.

In keeping with the schizoid nature this blog has acquired I'll now jump to something completely different, namely, this blog itself. The fine folks at blog.com have finally wised up and switched from categorizing posts to tagging posts. 'Bout time, a-holes. Now I won't look back at a post and say, "Hmm, I guess this has to go under miscellaneous," every single time I talk about both Phenie and Fournier's gangrene in the same post (which I should never, ever do). I'm considering going back through the venerable menometrorrhagia.blog.com archives and tagging every post.
But I probably won't. Cuz I'm, you know, lazy.

Will Kimbrough is my new favorite Pandora discovery.

I thought Ojo would like this because he likes this and this a whole lot.

Back to Phenie. My parents visited last week and my mom predictably brought several new outfits for Phenie. Here she is modeling her hippie costume. And here she is modeling another outfit, which at a quick glance may seem less outlandish than the hippie garb, but look closer. See, it's like a powder blue mariachi costume. Which is kind of, umm, flamboyant? So take a little closer look. WTF? My mom bought my little girl a gay mariachi costume? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but what is she trying to say?

 

1. Baylor started the game kicking Texas's ass. Then the stupid upside down horns thing came back to bite them in the ass and the college football universe remained appropriately intact. I didn't get to see the game, but I did see the highlight of Jermichael Finley's TD catch. That dude is a monster. He shows flashes of greatness.

2. Now that Florida has lost and USC has struggled for three weeks in a row, it makes some sense to ponder what needs to happen for Texas to make it to the national championship game.

Here are the most relevant USA Today rankings after this weekend: 1. Ohio State, 2. USC, 3. Michigan, 4. West Virginia, 5. Texas, 6. Louisville, 7. Auburn, 8. Notre Dame, 9. Tennessee, 10. Florida, 11. California, and 19. Rutgers. I suspect the AP poll will be identical through the top six at least. I included Rutgers because they are still undefeated and if they run the table could end up getting some consideration.

So what has to happen for Texas to earn a shot at defending the title? First, obviously Texas has to win out. With a tough game in Lincoln, Nebraska this week and the conference championship game against (probably) Nebraska or Mizzou, this is not a given, especially with the way the secondary has played this season (granted they've been beset by injuries and dumbasses). Second, Ohio State has to win out or lose convincingly twice. The best thing for Texas is for OSU to win out. This would elminate Michigan and make the early season loss look the best that it can. Next, USC has to lose, but they have to lose to the right team. If USC loses to Notre Dame or Cal that could propel those teams ahead of Texas. Finally, the WVU/Louisville winner has to lose to somebody else, like Pitt or Rutgers. I would also be worried that a one-loss SEC champ (Auburn, Florida, or Tennessee) could jump Texas. Hopefully Georgia and LSU can salvage their seasons by ruining those of others.

Looking at the schedules, it seems this season will be pretty interesting until the final two weeks with a lot potentially riding on ND/USC, OSU/Mich, Louisville/Pitt, and Texas/TAMU. Even then the Big 12 and SEC conference championship games could be huge in determining the national championship game opponents. I'm not a real big fan of parity, but this season is really exciting.

3. My prediction is that Michigan will beat OSU, negating everything I said above. I also expect the Louisville/WVU winner to go undefeated and make the national championship game. I'm pulling for Louisville in that scenario. 

4. Props to Jake for calling Auburn over Florida. Or at least saying that Florida shouldn't be favored in that game, which I guess is the same thing.

5. Please, God, let USC lose. I can't believe they keep pulling out these wins against nobodies. With any luck they lose three of their last four games (Oregon, Cal, ND, UCLA).

6. I passed the USMLE step 2 Clinical Skills exam. Yay! I speak intelligible English! After only 9 years of post-secondary education!

7. But I got shot down by Wash U's neurology department. Fuckers.

8. Deon Beasley better learn a whole lot this week, Tarrell Brown's toe better heal fast, and whoever needs to get healthy to get Matt Melton off the field needs to do it quick, or Nebraska's offense could go upside the collective heads of the Longhorn secondary next weekend. Biting hard on the play action pass could be their undoing.

9.  Morningstar and I saw The Science of Sleep last night. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending, but it still gets a rating of "highly recommend, even to people I like" from me. Fans of Amelie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will enjoy it.

10. My parents came to visit Phenie this weekend. We were trying to think of a restaurant to eat at Friday night, when I remembered this little Mediterranean place called Afrah that Morningstar and I had been to recently. Their baked goods -- bakklava, pita bread, stuff I can't pronounce -- are out of this world. Seemed like a good idea, it was a low key place when we went there last on a Friday night.

But that Friday night wasn't during Ramadan.

My mom was pretty oblivious, but my dad was obviously uncomfortable in a crowded restaurant full of Muslims speaking Arabic. Some memorable moments: "This is the only meal they get, buddy." -- Dad, at full volume in reference to Ramadan. "They have little shops run by people like these full of knock off brands from places like Pakistan *laugh*" paraphrased from Mom, also at full volume. 

I suppose the justification for this blog focusing much more on college football than anything medically related is that I'm a fourth year and don't really have to pay attention to anything anymore, so screw it.

 

I'd like to revisit my post from just before the season kicked off that outlined my predictions for the year. Let's see how I'm doing so far:

1. Heismann: Quinn is pretty much out of the running at this point. Peterson has an outside shot, but it looks like a race between Troy Smith and Steve Slaton from this point on. Had he escaped injury I still believe Brohm could have gotten an invitation to NY, so I'm going to call this one one for three.

2. Baylor resurgence: The Bears lost a game I thought they wouldn't (Army), but won one I didn't think they could (Colorado), so it's a wash at this point. I'm sticking with my 7-5 prediction, but I'm changing the specific game calls. I don't think Baylor can beat OU this year. The Sooners offensive line and QB have played better than expected this year. I do think that Baylor can beat Tech this year because they look terrible.

3. Texas: I'm feeling pretty good about my Longhorn prediction at this point, but given the prospect of playing Boise State in the Fiesta and the better-than-expected play from McCoy I think I'll change it to 13-1 with a win in the Fiesta Bowl.

4. National Championship Game: I'm sticking with Michigan for this one. Iowa and Ohio State are really the only teams I think have a shot at knocking them off. I'm changing my pick for their opponent from an SEC team to Louisville. The Cardinals have been impressive despite playing half their games without their two best players. I'm backing off the SEC because I think all those teams will knock each other off. Auburn, Georgia, and even South Carolina have the potential to take Florida down, leaving you with a bunch of one-loss teams.

5. USC: I stand by my USC-Pac10 champ prediction and my loss to Cal prediction. They will still claim to be the best team in the country after losing the Rose Bowl to Ohio State or an SEC team.

6. Oriental rental: My discovery of the (evil) magic of television on the internet rendered this prediction moot.

7. Mentos+diet Coke: Still awaiting the report of one of my readers blowing up like a sea gull on alka-seltzer.

Now for comments on the comments to the original prediction post:

1. Jake clowned my Michigan prediction citing ND, PSU, and OSU. What do you think at midseason?

2. Chris: "The season rises and sets in Colt McCoy's ass." I would think that would be uncomfortable. Looks like it's been rising all year. Also, what's your new pick for the national championship game matchup?

1. I can't force myself to use "sundry" in any context without preceeding it with "various".
Similarly the pair "moral turpitude".  And "OU sucks".
2. A link provided by my beautiful wife: Who knew Tolkein made such affordable, yet upscale, furnishings?
3. Watching television shows on the internet is no longer the future, it is the present, and the present is evil.
Each of the three major networks have a website which hosts full episodes of many of their shows. This is how I know there is a new show called Heroes. This show sucks, which pisses me off. I don't understand why someone can't utilize the superhero genre to tell a meaningful and human story.
(Smallville is a possible exception, but I'm discounting shows that draw upon established icons like Superman.) I also don't understand how someone can produce a million dollar television show, a central tenet of which revolves around the evolution of homo sapiens to a new level, and obviously not have the first fucking clue about the nature of evolution and the selection pressures that drive it.
4. More nursery rhymes from me:
It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring!
In vomit no doubt, he has passed out, his headache soon will be roaring! 
5. I stole this from Table of Malcontents. Who knew Bill Keane's work could so compellingly evoke nihilism?
6. The Texas/OU game was perfect. Colt McCoy is a winner. Still wondering where the Jermichael Finley package is. I would call this year's defense better than last year's if the secondary could pull it together enough to stop giving up the 15 yard pass on third and 10. The defensive line goes at least two deep at each spot with minimal drop off, as evidenced by Aaron Lewis making a one-on-one play on Peterson in the backfield.
7. I dropped off $1122.30 yesterday for plane tickets. I still have at least two and possibly three trips to buy for.
Awesome.
8. Let me clarify something for the world. The abortion debate has nothing to do with when life begins. Life stretches
back in an unbroken line through the eons to that first oil bubble that maintained an internal milieu substantively different from the external milieu and produced other oil bubbles with similar properties. On a less grand scale,the fusion of the sperm and ovum nuclei produces a genetically unique individual with the potential to become a recognizable member of homo sapiens in form and function without further manipulation of the natural course of events. This single cell is biologically an individual life. There can be no argument about this. Moreover, there should be no argument about this. The real debate surrounding abortion should focus on the point at which we as a society are willing to grant this new member of homo sapiens all the rights and values ascribed to humans.
Nobody wants to own up to the fact that the abortion debate is really about making an ethical decision about the point at which a homo sapiens is valued as human. Everyone wants "science" to decide when life begins and make that be what the debate is about. That's a red herring and one I am sick of hearing. It's almost as annoying as the writers of Heroes not knowing a fucking thing about natural selection.
Full disclosure: I'm against abortion, but I'm also against outlawing it. That's another post for another time.
9. If you're not checking out the Comics Curmudgeon, you're missing out on some pretty funny stuff.
10. I think Michigan will beat Ohio State, keeping Texas firmly out of the national championship mix. My new national championship game prediction is Michigan vs. Louisville in a game that's closer than expected but with Michigan prevailing by two scores. I plan to alter my national championship game prediction every week.
11. The Fiesta Bowl could end up being a snoozer Texas against Boise State, or an incredible Texas against a one-loss SEC team. Pray for Boise State to stumble.
12. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.