menometrorrhagia

After convincing my parents to let us take the car, Roy and I headed off with high spirits despite our recent loss. Somehow we had procured vague directions regarding the number of cattle guards and gates we would have to cross to get to the pasture where the party would be. Had I been driving we would still be circling around Refugio trying to find the damn place, but fortunately Roy was the only one with a license and he found the right dirt road into the relative wilderness of South Texas cattle land.
Things were going smoothly. Roy and I were shooting the shit, probably listening to Tupac on the tape player with the bass pumping, cracking jokes about getting lost out in this dark deserted field. Because we were afraid of getting lost, missing a turn, or hitting a cow, Roy was driving pretty slowly. I mean, Oldsmobile Delta 88s weren't exactly designed for romping through untamed grazing areas. As we rounded a corner the dirt path we were on began a steep decline for about 100 feet before bottoming out and heading back up at a slightly less acute angle. Roy was justifiably leary of bottoming out the Olds, cracking the oil plate, and having to answer to King. Because of this he slowed even further, creeping down the incline unaware that the pit at the bottom was 100% fine sand that could bury the wheels of a slow- moving heavy vehicle without the horsepower needed to escape. Unluckily for us, the Oldsmobile Delta 88 has often been described as a slow-moving heavy vehicle without the horsepower needed to escape.
After spinning the tires for about five minutes we realized we were only succeeding in burying the car further. We saw a house about half a mile in the distance and decided to head for it. We reasoned that even if no one was at that house to help us we could break in and use the phone to call for help. We walked about a third of the way when Roy spotted some headlights on the dirt road we had been driving on. They were headed for my dad's car. We started running toward the headlights in an absolute panic. Roy absolutely smoked me, and by the time he reached the truck that belonged to the headlights I was about 100 yards behind.
Our savior behind the wheel of that Ford Ranger turned out to be the father of the kid who was throwing the party -- Steven Tinsley. Mr. Tinsley was headed out to check on things. We jumped in the truck, went around the Olds, and quickly found the campfire with the high school ne'er do wells around it. The adult rounded up about six Stroman-looking bohunks and we went back to the Olds. With the help of all those guys we managed to get the car on more solid ground and went back to the party spot. Mr. Tinsley left shortly after that.
I bought a bottle of orange MadDog 20/20 from one of the bohunks who was playing with a shotgun. I claimed I
needed to drink to calm my nerves after freaking out about getting the car stuck. In reality I just wanted people to think I was cool.  Roy, who actually was cool, set about nursing a couple of long necks and talking to friends, probably making out with a hot chick somewhere along the way. I really don't know because the rest of this story is basically second-hand information. I quickly downed the MadDog and proceeded to experience the first of what would prove to be far too many alcoholic blackouts -- pretty much my signature move for about six years.
Here's a list of a few of the things I am told I did at this party:
1. Played mock-football tackling drills on the shore of the creek with Clay Wiatrek. I'm pretty sure this was mostly him just pushing me gently to the ground to show how drunk I was.
2. Jumped back and forth over the campfire saying "Matt be nimble, Matt be quick, Matt jump over the campfire."

Repeatedly.
3. Played mock-football tackling drills near a dilapidated picnic table with Clay Wiatrek. I'm told I blindsided him, sending him into this table that collapsed. A rusty nail went into his elbow and it immediately swelled up to the size of a softball. He would later go to the emergency room where he and Jack Hatley would instruct the medical staff not to do anything that cost money because they didn't want his parents to find out.
4. Vomited all over myself, necessitating changing into someone else's clothes.
5. Passed out in the backseat of the Olds, mindless of the business suit back there that I used for sheets.

For most people this would be enough for one night of adolescent stupidity. I mean, I sent a guy to the hospital for fuck's sake. Alas, I am not most people. This odyssey of foolishness was far from over.

To be continued...

When applying to residency programs one must supply a "personal statement", a term which is only vaguely defined by the programs demanding them. In the throes of panic one often will turn to the almighty Google for some hints as to the direction, format, and flavor these personal statements are supposed to take. For instance, after only 15 minutes of scouring the internet I realized that simply stating "To the window, to the walls, to the sweat drop down my balls" would not be a sufficient statement no matter how succinctly it encapsulates my personal philosophy.
Most websites that try to be helpful prior to selling their book, How to Write Your Way Into Residency: the 6 writing secrets that made DeBakey a success!, say to simply do three things in the essay: say what makes you great, say why you chose a particular field, and say what your ultimate career goals are. A few will go out of their way to suggest that you use personal anecdotes to give resonance to your personal statement. The following is an example of an anecdote I won't be using, although if my dad were writing a personal statement I might suggest he use this story.
In November of my sophomore year at STJ I was on the JV basketball team and not playing that well after having to 
recover from an appendectomy at the beginning of the season. My coach routinely mentioned that 
someone who made grades as good as mine should have the mental capacity to avoid the types of mistakes I was prone to make on the court. His approach did nothing to alleviate the problem and only served to drive me into a shell from which I would not emerge until the summer I spent playing ball with Eugene the Machine at the park. At any rate, I was on the JV squad and shortly after my friend, I'll call him Roy, got his driver's license we had a Friday night game, the valiant foe's identity escapes me now. Following this game there was to be one of the infamous Victoria "land parties", which consist of a bunch of adolescents surreptitiously drinking a keg or whatever hooch they could lay hands on underneath the stars in the middle of some pasture spotted with cow patties while someone's oversized stereo pumped Brooks and Dunn from their dually.
Whoever our opponent was that Friday night proved tougher than the mighty JV Flyers and handed us a tough defeat, though I didn't play terribly. After the game Roy and I somehow convinced my parents that they should let Roy and I take my dad's car out to this land party. I'm sure we lied like a couple of rugs, but seriously, who thinks it's a good idea to let a kid who's had his license all of three weeks take their car out to a pasture where adolescent hooliganism is bound to take place? My parents, alas, were dumbasses, and this night would prove me to be an even larger dumbass.

To be continued...

On to other randomly strewn bits of blogging:
1. Fat people should not be allowed to work in health care. And not because the hypocrisy is astounding and the notion of eating one's self to a slow death flies against the principles of modern medicine. Well, not just for that. 
Fat people are slow. Medicine moves fast. When things need to get done you need to be able to move your ass.
And you need to be able to move it quick enough to outpace the progression of global warming. If you're too fat to do that you need to find a different line of work.
2. My music library now boasts the inclusion of Kris Kristofferson, Neil Diamond, The Cars, and Nirvana.
Nirvana makes me feel much younger. And makes Phenie shake her bootie and wear a mohawk in the 
bathtub. (Okay, I made her wear a mohawk in the bathtub. But we were listening to Nirvana at the time.)
3. About two weeks ago a girl in my class whom I don't really know emailed the entire class a link to pictures of her newborn son. Make that pictures of the birth of her newborn son. Okay, pictures of her newborn son with the umbilical cord stretched taut between her stirruped legs and into her womb. Well, really pictures of her newborn son still attached to her womb by the umbilical cord that showed a bit of labia and bush to relative strangers. Actually, they were pictures of her newborn son and her snatch as taken by her father and displayed on the internet to strangers. WTF?

So Phenie had her 12 month check up at the pediatrician's today. They measured her at 31.25" long, or about half the length of one grandma. Ninety-sixth percentile buddyyyy! My baby huge.

How badass is the internet?

This badass.

I used to hate Bill Simmons, but over the last few years he has really grown on me. He is possibly the only self-aware but completely fanatic sports-writer working today. I still think that a corporate international multi-media juggernaut like ESPN ought to be able to spring for an editor who could prevent things like the lack of closing quotes in the plug for Simmons's book. Or even the act of using quotation marks around the title of a long work such as a book, which in the setting of italicized text (as at the bottom of the Simmons article) should be underlined. Whoever is supposed to be editing this stuff should also have realized that hot dogs don't "live up the hype", but rather live up to the hype. If they were really good and feeling ballsy they
 would have pointed out to Bill that you shouldn't state that "Nothing, and I mean nothing, can remotely approach" the greatness of an event only to state two sentences later that "It can be approached, but it can't be topped." I'm very glad I'm not going to have to spend the rest of my life looking for shit like this to pay my bills, but somebody is getting paid, probably pretty well to fix this stuff, and they are blowing it.

I guess I should just be happy he spelled "definitely" right.

I turned 29 today. Not sure there's a stupider age to be than 29. "Yay!! A whole year to ponder turning thirty and to catalog all the things I failed to accomplish with my youth!"

Anyway, here are two of my current favorite vocabulary words:
Bruxism -- the childhood affliction I had instead of trichotillomania, which was probably the first of what would prove to be many character traits that annoyed my dad.
Abulia -- a word to describe a state which renders those who suffer from it too 
apathetic to look it up.

Also, herewith a list of the cool things I've seen on neurology so far: Paraneoplastic Cerebellar Degeneration (w/opsiclonus), Myasthenia gravis, Non-convulsive Status Epilepticus, and a man walk after a left MCA stroke.

After working in the psych ER at Parkland and observing some of the interesting family dynamics involving most of the patients there, it's easy to become cynical. Coming home from that to read children's books to a (nearly) one-year-old little girl can be a little unsettling. In this case, however, it uncovered a blogging goldmine, baby!

Here's what some children's books might sound like if written by a cynical observer of the lives of psych patients.

Title: Mama do you love  me?
Synopsis: Eskimo child repeatedly questions mother's love for her, and mother calmly answers affirmatively using obscure nature imagery (e.g., a puffin howling at the moon).
The Cynic's Version:
pg 1 "Mama do you love me?"
pg 2 "No, but I would if you weren't so fat."

Title: Is your mama a llama?
Synopsis: Clever rhyming riddles about animals ranging from bats to seals.
The Cynic's Version:
pg 1 "Is your mama a llama?"
pg 2 "No, my mama's a lying ass bitch and she come near me again I'll cut her ass real nice."
pg 3 "Oh, I heard that once, no need to say it twice; your mama's that ho that sucked my dick when she couldn't pay for her ice."

Title: Where's the baby?/Donde esta el bebe?
Synopsis: Pictures of baby's toys and places (crib, high chair, etc) with fold back panels that reveal the same pictures but with a baby included.
The Cynic's Version: pg 1 [Picture of baby food in a bowl on high chair tray.] "Where's the baby?" fold back panel [exact same picture but with an arrow pointing to bowl of food] "You're eating it."

Title: Guess how much I love you
Synopsis: Baby rabbit and his dad try to one-up each other with metaphors about the volume of their love for each other.
The Cynic's Version:
pg 1 "Guess how much I love you."
pg 2 [picture of daddy bunny with tourniquet in his teeth getting ready to shoot up] "Fuck off. Daddy's busy."
pg 3 [picture of daddy bunny passed out] 
pg 4 "Fuckin' asshole." [picture of baby bunny pissing on daddy bunny]

That's all the low-hanging fruit from the baby's bookshelf. 
It frightens me how funny I think this post is. What the hell is wrong with me?