Work Don’t Want Me

So I got sent home today. Four hours at work and home I am. It turned out that after 11:00 the hospital needed less staff (honestly they had been fudging it even before that), so a whole bunch of techs and nurses got the boot. One of the other techs I was working with lived in Pennsylvania and the other rode the bus, which had stopped, so I volunteered…what a nice guy I am.

Since Buzz is off doing the whole goyim Christmas thing, and my health care responsibilities have been curtailed for the evening I figured I might as well make up for THREE MONTHS of blog neglect.

Deep breath…hold it…hold it…and release:

So the Mitchell Report came out a week and a half ago (here’s the 40 page summary), and it was worse then I, or any other real fan of baseball for that matter, had feared.

For those out of the loop, this report by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, was Congress’s 20 month long official investigation into steroid and human growth hormone abuses in Major League Baseball. And the the official list of those named in the report is:

NEW NAMES

Chad Allen
Mike Bell
Gary Bennett
Larry Bigbie
Kevin Brown
Alex Cabrera
Mark Carreon
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Matt Franco
Eric Gagne
Matt Herges
Phil Hiatt
Glenallen Hill
Todd Hundley
Mike Judd
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul Lo Duca
Nook Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Daniel Naulty
Denny Neagle
Jim Parque
Luis Perez
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Adam Riggs
Armando Rios
Brian Roberts
F.P. Santangelo
Mike Stanton
Ricky Stone
Miguel Tejada
Ismael Valdez
Mo Vaughn
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Todd Williams
Steve Woodard
Kevin Young
Gregg Zaun

PREVIOUSLY LINKED

Manny Alexander
Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Marvin Benard
Barry Bonds
Ricky Bones
Paul Byrd
Ken Caminiti
Jose Canseco
Paxton Crawford
Lenny Dykstra
Bobby Estalella
Ryan Franklin
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Juan Gonzalez
Jason Grimsley
Jose Guillen
Jerry Hairston Jr.
Darren Holmes
Ryan Jorgensen
Wally Joyner
Gary Matthews Jr.
Rafael Palmeiro
John Rocker
Benito Santiago
Scott Schoeneweis
David Segui
Gary Sheffield
Derrick Turnbow
Randy Velarde
Matt Williams

Now of course, not all of the people in this list are directly linked to steroids. Derrick Turnbow [of the Brewers in full disclosure], for example, tested positive for an Olympic but not US banned chemical at one point, and a number of them used HGH before it were banned by MLB. Still this is essentially a list of cheaters, in one form or another.

What most people got from the 1994 MLB strike was that baseball players were greedy as hell, but now what are they? Payed a fortune for being the best at what they do, except they’re not, they’re just juiced up. I gotta say this whole thing really tore me up, way more than I would have guessed. Some of these guys: Lenny Dykstra, David Justice, Wally Joyner, Mo Vaughn, for example, were serious heroes of mine as a kid and later. Every team had at least one player named, and every great organization of the last 20 years now has a cloud hanging over it. Thank god I don’t have to explain this one to my kids…

 

 

…or Brittany Spears’s sister getting knocked up either. Wasn’t she the goody-two-shoes character in that show of hers?

“So you see little Allison…some times sweet girls…even though they’re only 16…even though they have 18 year old boyfriends…even though he may face rape charges…when you really love someone…even though her mother let her older sister get breast implants at her age…even though…um…well…you see…when you get older…and obviously mistakes were made…oh hell she’s just a little hussy, and don’t you ever be like her, got it?”

Kinda like watching the “Don’t Smoke” ads from RJ Reynolds isn’t it?

 

 

So poor South Africa is doomed. No Ifs, Ands, or Buts about it. The ruling ANC just elected Jacob Zuma (former Deputy President) as its new head, and the head of the ANC is a guaranteed winner in any national elections. Jacob Zuma is another of those apartheid guerrilla veterans that make up most of the South African government. Unlike the current president Thabo Mbeki, who was educated abroad, Zuma never graduated high school. Last year he was charged with the rape of one of his deceased friends daughters, who he knew to be HIV positive. The court eventually dismissed the charges, mostly because the Public Prosecution Office dragged their feet. Zuma said the sex was consensual and that he took a shower afterwards to ward off HIV infection. At the moment he is being investigated for arms deals in 2005 which is why he was removed from his office in the first place. These charges were originally dismissed last year even though his right hand man was sentenced to 15 years in jail for fraud and corruption for the exact same incidences as Zuma. Supposedly, the Public Prosecutor is nearing another attempt at the corruption charges, but of course now it will just seem like a political stunt. Poor poor SA.

***

 

Care for a band that will knock you freaking socks off? The Thermals, The Body, the Blood, the Machine, has been playing nonstop on our CD player/iPod/Zune for about a month now. Go. Get. It.

Or if you prefer a free song that drills it’s way into your cerebellum, but you know, in a good way, I suggest The Mae Shi’s Run to your Grave. Have I ever mentioned my love of any song with a “clappy part”.

The first of the baby boomers has applied for Social Security, may god have sweet sweet mercy on us all. I vote we raise the retirement age to 150, that’ll show ‘em.

Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze are making the movie version of Where The Wild Things Are. Seriously, is there any possible way this movie will not simply be the greatest thing since sliced bread. “Transforming the 338-word story of Where the Wild Things Are into a 111-page screenplay”. Holy moley, Being John Malkovich meets Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I think I need to sit down.

On the awesome podcast front, try out The Meth Minute, a collection of cartoon shorts, very nice, very funny.

Two comics for ya’ll:

xkcd – Post office showdown. I totally do this…like all the time…ever prepared am I.

Mac Hall – Yeah That’s Me. Money is such a fluid thing.

In a completely undefinable category, a video that was described as the “worst punishment you could inflict on a hungover person”. The louder you turn the volume the more horrible it is, so there’s that.

And we’ll wrap up this little opus on an “I’m feeling old school” note. These are all classic internet Meme’s and sort of shook themselves out of me in the last week:

Christmas Lights – the original

Evolution of Dance – I guess this also would be an original. This guy is a motivational speaker or something now. Important math lesson, YouTube fame ≠ real fame.

Star Trek the Next Generation Episode Song – Man my inner geek is cool. I’m not saying I could have done the song on my own, but I didn’t have to strain my brain to list the plots of all of them.

Enjoy all your silly holidays people, and some day you’ll see the light and celebrate his grand Pastafarian Holiness the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and only then can you be allowed into heaven with its beer volcanoes and stripper factories. Peace.

So the funniest thing happened at work…

It occurs to me that I have a preponderance of whiny negative stories about work, so it seems only natural that I should highlight some of the funny things that happen at my hospital. Funny, you say? At a hospital, you say? But of course, there’s nothing funnier than sick people sometimes, after all they are a bit prone to exaggeration.

• I walked in on a patient and one of his visitors screaming at each other. The basis of the argument was that they had both had surgery at one point and both had died (briefly) on the table. My patient swore he saw a bright light and felt no fear, while his friend swore that there was nothing when he died. The debate (can you even call it that) eventually degenerated into,

“There is!”

“There isn’t!”

“I saw it!”

“You didn’t!”

and I was forced to escort the agitated non-believer out of the room.

• One of the nurses told me that two elderly gentlemen, roommates, weren’t getting along, and we were going to move them to separate rooms. So both of us entered the room to find the two old (and I mean old) men slowly (and I mean slowly) working their way across the room towards each other. The guy in the second bed was hobbling along with his cane, while the gent in bed one was surfing from one piece of furniture to the next in an attempt to cross the room. So the two of us are watching this scene VERY slowly unfold before of us, as these two very old “broken hips waiting to happen” cruise towards each other yelling racial epitaphs at each other. Basically our solution was to place a couple of chairs in between the two of them, this proving to be too much of an obstacle for either of them to maneuver around, and once the guys wore themselves out yelling at each other and had to sit down, we just slid a wheelchair in behind the first guy and rolled him out of the room. He was asleep before we made down the hall.

• This one actually happened just a couple of days ago. The rehab unit gets a pretty steady stream of student nurses. So a new batch showed up for their second day interacting with patients, EVER . Now when the instructor is dividing up patients they try to figure out which students, if any, have nursing assistant backgrounds, figuring they can handle a couple of patients. This particular group didn’t have any, so this huddle of students came trailing along behind me and the other tech as we tried to finish up our work, peppering us with questions. Here are some of the highlights:

1. “So I knock on the door and then enter, right?”
2. “Can I touch him?”
3. The follow up to question 2 was the student standing three feet away from the bed and bowing at the waist to get close enough to see an incision.
4. “MAY I turn on the lights?”
5. “Do your lights have switches?”
6. “Is your patient nice? (with lower lip quiver)”
7. Standing in the hall, watching the patient watching TV, “I’d hate to bother them.”
8. “Have you seen my stethoscope?”
9. “Do you smell that? What is that?” Actually, I heard this one thrice.
10. A student standing in the hall with both palms extended away from him, mouthing “left”, “right”, and nodding.

So there you go. It ain’t all gloom and doom at hospitals. Frankly those nursing student made my day. They were quite possibly the cutest damn thing I’d seen in a while.

Later.

SamCast Episode 2

I may end up having to reduce the quality of these things a bit if they keep getting longer, otherwise the files are gonna get huge.

Episode 2 of the SamCast

 

 

Bored bored bored bored…

I tell ya what, if it weren’t for sports I’d be in a lot of trouble. As it is, I’ve got football and baseball playoffs (go Rockies) to hold my attention, and I’m still kinda zoned out. Duuuuuuh…

Oh yeah, way to go Springboks! The SA rugby team has made it to the semifinals in the Rugby World Cup and are beating Argentina 24-6 in the 39th minute, so it looks like they’ll be facing England in the finals. Lekker!

A couple of links for ya’ll:

A Google maps app that shows the antipodes of any point on earth. It’s amazing, the entire continental US is smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean on the other side of the world, not a speck of land. Weird.

Here’s “One more Cup of Coffee” by Bob Dylan, one of my favorites, performed in Nashville. He was joined on stage by Jack White. Great version of this song but here’s the catch, the video quality is terrible, so don’t even watch it, just open it and then do something else while you listen.

A cappella horses in flash. Hey I said I was bored.

And of course my obligatory link to a Mac Hall comic, “Strike Three”, from their archive. I’ve only got four more of my favorites left.

So mom’s well into her criss crossing transcontinental road trip, and has requested some driving music. I try to give her relatively new music for these mixed tapes, anyone have suggestions? What would your 60 something year old mother like? Gangsta rap? Death metal? Yanni?

Episode 1 and Stuff

“Who are you?”

“I’m God.”

“Your name is God or you’re God?”

“I am God.”

“Well we have a special guest today…I guess…it’s God. Um, you have a Nike shirt on.”

“Yeah.”

“…why do you have a wireless mike on if you’re God?”

“It just happened that way.”

“Do you, uh, watch the show? Uh, why are you here?”

“Yeah I watch your ‘cast…podcast.

“Huh…cool.”

“We’re on now, right?”

“Yeah, yeah…we’re on…did you come here for a reason, do you have a message, or did you just stop by? What do you want, did I do something, am I dead?”

“You’re ok, I’m just killing time”

[Awkward silence]

-Lynchland, Episode 12

Oh my, how amateur internet has sucked up all my free time.

 

 

So I managed to put together the official “Episode 1″ audiocast from scratch to post in about an hour and a half, and it sounds twice as good, so that’s gotta be improvement.

Go get it here – Episode 1

So on a more professional level we have Smodcast. This is the podcast produced by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, the Director/Producer combo for Clerks, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Dogma, etc…

While the entire thing is HI-larious I feel the need to draw particular attention to Episode 14 which covers Canadian politic, and may very well be the FUNNIEST thing I’ve ever heard! If you ignore all other advice I spew, listen to this one episode!

 

 

A couple of quotes for the gang:

Some relatively unknown JFK quotes

A sweet Carl Sagan diatribe on “The Dragon in his Garage”

 

On a musical note:

Anyone want some free Smashing Pumpkins? This is the Smashing Pumpkins bootleg page, like 15 years of bootlegs.

Smashing Bootlegs

 

And on a very disturbing note. Pavement. Kings of the 90′s indie/alt scene (which was pretty much the golden age of indie/alt)…sung by children…what has the world come to.

 

Wrapping up on a humourous note, web comics!

 

xkcd – Engineering Hubris

Mac Hall (a two part strip) – FF Tic-Tacs & FF Tic-Tacs Advanced

 

Two and half weeks on my own. Poor, poor, living things in our apartment.

 

Holy Hell! You can Hear Me!

Ha! Take that world! My voice will now soar above the interwebs spreading joy (and maybe a little sadness) wherever my melodious words land. That’s right folks, I have my very first something-cast. Will there be more? Who knows, this first one took me about four hours to make.

Is it of inferior sound quality? It is.

Do I have trouble pronouncing “inaugural”? I do.

Just click the link and then hit “Download file” once it appears. Enjoy.

Sam’s first audio podcast!

I’m not codependent…I just can’t find my checkbook

Three more days till Buzz comes back. From what I hear, northeastern Ghana is at the moment experiencing the worst flooding in fifty years. Thank goodness my girl can swim, non? (Baltimore? Not so much flooding.)

Word is…Facebook is the place to be. You can tell it’s hot because, Time, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, and the “daily print media” (they still print things do they?) , have finally published articles about it, which of course means it’s been all over the internet for a year…at least. I saw Buzz’s Facebook page, and the complete lack of privacy and general transparency of the thing scared the hell out of me. Buzz…not so much. Still, all our SA friends (“i” before “e” right?) are on the Fbook so I’m kinda tempted…

 

 

It’s 6:45 am EST and so…Brain Dead…

That was Liam Lynch, musician/producer/director/podcaster who cracked the UK and Australian top 10 charts several years ago with the song “United States of Whatever“.

Check out his video podcast featuring an assortment of music and skits featuring computer generated whatnots at LynchLand. Funny! Serious and worthwhile? Not so much.

We’ll toss in the Fake White Stripes Song too. Sounds just like them.

 

 

 

Beware of mountain lions…I’ve got a t-shirt coming my way with this sign on it.

One of my co-oworkers mentioned that there was an Oyster and Guiness festival in Fell’s Point this weekend! I have been unable to find it. This is not cool man. There should be a law about getting a guy’s hopes up. I even had sushi with a side of a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on Friday night (god bless, open till 12:00, XS) in an attempt to really subject my gastrointestinal system to some challenges. But alas.

Brewers are now a game back in the NL Central (stupid Cubs). If I was a callus and non karma observing fella I would direct a certain “nyah nyah nyah” in the direction of Peter for having sent a text message to Elizabeth bragging about his Cardinal’s victory while THE GAME WAS STILL GOING ON! Seventh inning lead don’t mean a thing, chum. Honestly, who brings that kind of karma down on their team’s head? Shame, man. Shame.

 

Are you familiar with the old saying, “A bull in a china shop”? Wanna see one? Hi-freaking-larious!

So what does a bull in a china shop really do?

Anyone know anyone with sickle cell disease? Terrible disease, but still it’s hard not to be irritated by most of them. The treatment for many of them is just morphine. So after a few years of treatment, what happens? You guessed it, J U N K I E. I’d be more sympathetic if there weren’t a number of sickle cell patients who specifically try to avoid opiods and really give it the old “stiff upper lip”. THOSE guys get my respect (and anything else they want, frankly). The others, not so much.

Interesting post about chilling out in the ER:

Ten ironies and truisms of the ER

 

Hey looky here, this is the George Bush remix video of the “United States of Whatever”.

How about a couple of Mr. Jesus cracks?

Spoiler!

Deeesturbing!

Holy hell, the sun is coming up! Where has the night gone? Gotta love the whole night shift thing though, everyday is a new day…so to speak.

Here’s the last of my frivolousness, before I wrap this thing up and go play some disc golf. I’ve been saving this video for a little while now. Platoon in the office. God bless America.

So I’m gonna leave you with a couple of songs from Jens Lekman. He’s a Swede who sings in English. First is a video performance of “The Opposite of Hallelujah” and the second is the audio of “Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo“.

I apologize for the general hither and yon-ness of this post; you can really see how Buzz is my mental grounding wire when she’s not around, and this has only been a week, after three, I may well be speaking in tongues.

Over and out space cadets.

Wait, I’ve been here before!

Have you ever walked the halls of their elementary school since you’ve grown? Everything looks very familiar and yet very not. I’m kinda feeling that right now. Two months ago today was my last post! Lordy lordy.

I have not however, been completely oblivious to the state of my once vital blog. My “Blog Fodder” bookmarks folder is just plain bursting at the seams with all those witty (or not) tidbits I’ve been collecting since my last real post, and we’ll see how many of those I can drop on you guys in the next few weeks.

So firstly, Happy Birthday Sam!

Good on you old boy!

Birthday part1: So basically Elizabeth, Leslie and I just went out to dinner on the 5th, and then were joined by Adrien (a friend of mine from work) a bit later at a bar (the nationally recognized Max’s). A very nice night, fun, but not raucous, as I seem to have sort of outgrown “gettin’ tore up”. Sight, I must be getting old. Still I had a good ol’ time.

Birthday part 2: Yesterday Buzz and I went to a Orioles vs Red Sox game at Camden Yards. Now I love Miller Park, and a retractable dome may be the best invention since they raised the pitching mound, but I gotta say, Camden Yards is beautiful! Hands down the prettiest ballpark I’ve ever been to! A funny story; as we were walking through the turnstiles one of the ushers proclaimed, “Welcome to Fenway south!”. Now I assumed he was exaggerating until the BoSox hit a homer and fully HALF, if not more, of the fans jumped to their fans and started screaming. Kinda of an odd experience.

I gotta say, it’s really a nice thing to go to a game where you don’t really care who wins. I never do that, because I always go to National League games and one of the teams is usually either the Brewers or another team in the division, so I am always rooting for or against one of the teams. Not this time though. I got to sit back, eat some awesome pit turkey, drink some beer, and watch the O’s lose their 14th out of the last 16, 7-6 (though it was a pretty exciting game). Actually, for the first few innings I was a bit starstruck watching the Red Sox. Being a Brewers fan generally elicits comments about how promising our young players are, “Prince Fielder/Ryan Braun/JJ Hardy are gonna be a household name someday”. Of course by that time, the Brewers won’t be able to afford them, oh well. But the Red Sox! I mean there were Ortiz and Lowell and Wakefield and Varitek and even that Buchholz kid. Man, those guys are big time stars. Good stuff.

 

 

On to the random internet stuff:

Want to see my take on the famous “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video? Voila!

Create your own version after you watch mine and then post them in the comments.

 

Now this only going to appeal to a very small percentage of you out there. Anyone remember the game “Contra” on the NES? Well I really loved this game as a kid, until I discovered it was really hard. I mean I never made it past the boss on the third level! So here’s a video of a guy not only beating the game, but doing so without dying once. I sat there totally engrossed for the entire 18 minutes.

Contra (NES) – No Death Run

 

So a bit of family news, mom has jetted away to launch her 9 month tour of the mainland. That’s right she will be Hawaii-less for NINE WHOLE MONTHS! I’ll bet she gets agoraphobic. So watch out everyone, its only a matter of time till she shows up on your doorstep.

And finally a couple of web comics. Have a good one folks, see you soon.

xkcd – Commitment (Elizabeth picked this one)

Mac Hall – That One

 

 

 

Ring Pictures by Request

Since Elizabeth is on a blog hiatus, I guess I’ll be the one to post these:

Buzz very nonchalantly showing off her ring.

And the up close.

She keeps looking at the ring, but I keep looking at her. I think we both came out pretty happy.