menometrorrhagia

1. Pandora — The best internet radio source for finding new music. Props to Summer for introducing me to this. It’s hard to imagine I could have gone my whole life without hearing “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” by the Mountain Goats.

2. The Three Junes by Julia Glass — Probably the best novel I’ve read since Atonement by Ian McEwan. Mad props to Mo-chan for her taste in literature.
3. Boycotting the NBA after that farce of a championship series. Dwayne Wade shot as many or more free throws than the entire Mavericks team in three of the last four games. That’s bullshit. Hook Devin Harris up with the free throws he earned by getting leveled repeatedly by Shaq and the Mavs close out the series in Miami. It didn’t help that Avery Johnson had no clue how to get the most out of Marquis Daniels and seemed to think that Adrian Griffin could play the part of Bruce Bowen.
4. The Opera browser — I got tired of trying to manage all the extensions I wanted with Firefox. A lot of them aren’t compatible with each other, more don’t get updated at the same pace as the browser does, and most of the really good functions provided by extensions in Firefox are built in to Opera’s base browser. Opera is marginally faster and never crashes. And now it runs widgets (an idea stolen from Apple). My favorite is the BBC news feed widget.
5. This dude.
6. Table of Malcontents from Wired.com — if you ever think you’ve exhausted the internet’s amusement quotient, check this blog out. It’s where I found #5 and these crazy covers of the Pixies.
7. 28 acts in 28 minutes — A BBC radio show that’s funny and quick and that you’d already know if you read Neil Gaiman’s blog.
8. Neurology — It beats a sharp stick in the eye. It also beats sewing up choads. (No I’m not going to Stanford. I have no idea why I picked that link.)
9. Studying for the psychiatry shelf exam on Friday.

For those of you who don’t read the comments from months old posts, I have an important announcement to make.
D-minus, the Loa Constrictor himself, has informed me that Funkafeltafish has emerged like a crop of Frontier Russet potatoes from their long dormancy. Unlike taters, however, Funkafeltafish is not good for Freedom-frying or baking. The strength of Funkafeltafish lies instead in the delivery of CEN-TEX NERD-CORE SUB-URBAN HIP-HOP. Check them out if you’re in the Austin area.

Here are the ideas I’ve got for possible senior film scripts to work on. I don’t have time to work up all of them, so I’m turning to the host of menometrorrhagiacs to help me focus my energy on the ones they deem to have the most potential. You can vote for one of these or suggest your own medical school/coming of age movie.

1. Top Gun spoof with a short Jewish guy playing Maverick and a six and a half foot Indian guy playing Goose. “I feel the need, the need for speed” takes on a whole new meaning in the setting of med school gunners.
2. Mish-mash of all Tom Cruise’s greatest scenes morphed onto a medical student framework. The patient responds “You had me at hello.” Performing surgery while suspended from the ceiling a la Mission Impossible. Jumping over couches at residency interviews like a crazy man proclaiming how much he loves this new specialty choice he knocked up. Hating on psychiatry.
3. Roger Corman style horror film entitled “It Came From the Outside Hospital”.
4. Porn. I mean when’s the next time someone’s going to hand me $30k and a camera crew and say make the magic happen?
5. Melrose Place style soap opera entitled “Med Park”. [Note: Med Park is the name of the apartments owned by UTSW where lots of students live.]
6. Spoof of Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park entitled Med Park.
7. I know that last one was lame. They can’t all be winners.
8. “Raising Arizona…in medical school!” starring Phenie.
9. “Spinal Tap, behind the LP” mockumentary.

Okay folks, let her rip.

I’m feeling overdue for a recommendations post so here are the things menometrorrhagia, inc. is currently recommending:

1. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson: a pretty good book by the guy that brought Cyberpunk into the mainstream by writing Neuromancer (or so the critics say). Pattern Recognition is worth reading just for this gem:
   “There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes…”
2. Anything by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese author who seems to be what Gibson would be if he lived up to his reputation. Gibson’s good, but Murakami is the Platonic ideal of Gibson. (Kind of like how menometrorrhagia could be secret comics if it ever lived up to the hype. Or, not like that.) One chapter title from Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: “The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island”
3. Speaking of secret comics, it’s about damn time I recommended it, Jandek notwithstanding.
4. Still pushing Elliott Smith, especially now that he seems capable of calming  hurricane Josephine at 3am.
5. Babies.
6. AJAX helping make decentralized computing a reality.
7. College football, kicking off just as my real rotations begin and leisure time becomes one of the Seven Cities of Cibola, the most exciting sport in America. (March Madness is a close second.)
8. This American Life from WBEZ in Chicago, possibly the best program on NPR. Recent personal favorites are A Little Bit of Knowledge, Godless America, Apology, and My Experimental Phase.

I’m about halfway through Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, and I have to admit there’s a strong possibility that it will become one of the few books I’ve started and not finished reading. The reason is two-fold: one, it is a very long book and I’m about to have very little time (what with a baby and school and all); two, the Bible is not as preachy as this book. Every ten pages is a retread of the single doctrine Ms. Rand is pushing. It’s like listening to a Rush Limbaugh on repeat:

It’s time for an update of the recommendations.

(I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath)

Without further ado, please do yourself a favor and check out:

• My Morning Jacket: a band that’s been around the edges of breakout success for a while that doesn’t get the pub they deserve;
• Reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;
• Nerd Elite: a friend of a med school buddy who writes some pretty  funny stuff (this is one of my favorites from him, and by the way, Jacob is my med school friend);
• Mike Wieringo: comic book artist who’s drawing the new Spiderman comic (I guess six different titles for one character wasn’t quite enough), he’s got a blog where he posts character designs and whatnot, currently he’s got a cool theme of updating all the characters he created when he was a kid (if you ever created comic book characters as a kid this should rate very high on the nostalgia scale);
• Mah jongg: when I fail to crack triple digits on the USMLE step 1 exam you can blame this deceptively simple game;
• Wired: a cool techie magazine that also has occasional great character-driven interviews (as evidenced by this interview with George Lucas and the story on teledildonics I mentioned earlier);
• NOT seeing the schlock that is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie;
• Recognizing the tower that is your inner dork.

As an aside, be prepared for a blitz of posts over the next few weeks as I try to establish some discipline with this enterprise (as a means of fooling myself into believing I also have discipline in my study habits). I’ll also be cleaning up and organizing the sidebar, as it’s gotten a little unwieldy.

This will be brief as I should be studying. Just wanted to let everyone know that while The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remains a hilarious and incredible book, the film version serves only to ruin yet another of my childhood memories. I thought since Spiderman 2 was pretty good that it was finally safe for dorks to return to Hollywood. This movie proves that dead wrong. I’m amazed they had the gall to dedicate the film to Douglas Adams, as it does nothing but desecrate his legacy of odd wit and compelling stories. I have to go find my towel now.

You may have noticed that I have updated the Matt Recommends section on the sidebar. Do not take this as a retreat from my endorsement of the previous entries in this section. I still recommend them. In fact they are still listed elsewhere on the sidebar. I have just decided to periodically update the recommendations when I run out of ideas to write about. So without further ado, I present A List of Several Things Matt Thinks Your Life Will be the Richer For Having Read About:

1. Astroblast: A cool band in Austin consisting of old friends of mine. They’re something like Belly, something like Experimental Aircraft, and something like Yo La Tengo. Their website seems to be undergoing a remodel, so check back frequently to see when they start posting song clips and the like.
2. BuffaloWings&Vodka: A law school blog I found through my brother’s site. It’s consistently funny, even if you don’t know anything about law school.
3. Firefox: It’s basically Netscape Navigator gone native. I’m not sure how using Firefox affects Microsoft, but the consensus is that Microsoft doesn’t like it. So stick it to the man! Plus Firefox is actually better — better popup and spyware blocking, tabbed browsing for faster multi-site browsing, and better download managing. If you don’t use Firefox and continue to use Internet Explorer you are officially a mindless corporate whore.
4. New England Journal of Medicine: The best, most readable medical journal available. Also, if you don’t have any interest in science, healthcare, or medicine, you should still check out the letters to the editor section. They let the authors of the articles respond to criticism and occasionally it gets downright snippy. This amuses me.
5. The Drawing Board: A cool site for people who like to draw and/or look at cool drawings. They have a board for requesting help on a drawing that is basically free one-on-one drawing instruction by professional artists. Especially cool for comic book nerds.
6. Blogborygmi: A medical student blog. I don’t really care for the blog so much because it tends to be pretty dry, but he wins for best medical blog name ever. (Borborygmi — n. rumbling sounds caused by gas moving through the intestines)
7. deadman: Another band consisting of people I used to be friends with until I nearly destroyed their romantic relationship by getting shit-housed and making out with Sherilyn in between bouts of her vomiting in front of about 20 people. Anyway, they survived, got married and now have a band that kicks ass. If Neil Young’s album Harvest had been produced by Daniel Lanois and had Emmylou Harris singing backup, it would have sounded something like deadman.

Just a quick addendum to yesterday’s post. A fun fact about Neil Gaiman (or at least about his books) is that the original cover for his children’s book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish became more famous as the cover for the Counting Crows CD This Desert Life. But it was the book cover first (it’s by the same artist who did all the covers for the Sandman comics). Then the CD cover. And then it was the groom’s cake at my cousin’s wedding.

So I figured I should post about something other than genitalia before my blog gets written off as completely vulgar and juvenile. [For the record, we're covering the reproductive system in school right now, which is why I've had naughty bits on my mind.] I thought I’d explain what you see over on the sidebar under “Matt Recommends”.

Cursed with Ambition: this is my older brother’s blog. If you’ve ever wondered when it would be appropriate to put a cigarette out in someone’s eye, then this is the blog for you. Scroll down here to see the story behind the name.

McSweeneys: a hilarious site started by Dave Eggers. My wife introduced me and probably wishes she hadn’t. I usually enjoy the lists section.

Milton Mapes: an Austin band on the cusp of success. I know the singer from my days at Baylor (sic ‘em Lady Bears!). He’s got a decent jump shot from the wing, but watch him cuz he’s quicker than he looks. Give their songs a listen. I think they sound close to a collaboration between Bruce Springsteen and Townes vanZandt after they both listened to Counting Crows for a very long time.

Neil Gaiman: a writer I like. He created the epic Sandman books for DC comics and has written some great novels as well. He writes with that great British wit that all American bloggers secretly imagine they possess. Check out his journal to see that in addition to being a talented and witty author he’s also what’s known as a Pretty Cool Guy.

Sweet Adeline: a great Elliott Smith site. Since, if our baby is of the male persuasion, we’re naming him after Elliott, I thought I should put something on here about the man.

Tegan&Sara: the best Canadian lesbian twin folk punk music around, bar none. Seriously. Check out this fan site to listen to demos and other mp3s. It’s like Ani diFranco but with melody.