betty windsor throws out the first pitch

I think Cricket is like the Queen’s Baseball. I have no idea. In fact, on this topic, I am blissfully clueless. I think they have flat bats and seem to run around bases. But teams get their asses handed to them with scores like 284 to 6. I think sometimes they score 100 points at a clip, but if that is true, why waste your time getting 6? I think games go on for days, too. I know they break for tea. It doesn’t seem that strenuous so I am unclear why they take such long breaks.

I watched this film to try to understand more, but I kept it muted because sometimes I get angry. It felt like listening to the narration would not be a good idea. So mute and watch:



Did you learn anything? Yeah, I agree, it was kinda long. But when I saw the credits mention Fleetwood Mac, I was very pleased that I kept it muted. I saw FM 3 or 4 times in the late 1970s into the 1980s. Mick Fleetwood made my skin crawl. Stevie Nicks made my pants tight. But now she looks like Mickey Rooney. Go figure. Next thing she’ll be selling Medigap Insurance.

Did you notice that the credits included a copyright claim of MMXIII? Methinks someone needs to go back to Roman Number School. Someone wrote or told me that the reason Roman numerals failed as a system was because it lacked a zero. It’s a good point, but incomplete. I think it failed because MDCCCLXXXVIII is a lot longer than 1888. Plus you have to do math to figure out the number. It’s more of an equation than a number.

I still don’t understand Cricket. And I care even less to understand it now than I did just 30 minutes ago.

extreme scrapbooking

Limited openings! Reserve your seat now! Don’t wait another minute!

On April 1, 2008, you’ll be boarding a luxurious De Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter float plane bound for the Emerald Island!!. We’ll stop a handful of times to refuel in the North Atlantic on the wondrous transatlantic cargo seaway!! See freighters carrying cargo up close!! In a mere 17 hours, we’ll land on a lake in the Connemara region of Ireland!!

We’ll spend five glorious days and four nights hunting faeries. When we have all of our treasures, we’ll spend an additional three days in EXTREME SCRAPBOOKING!!.

You’ll learn how to:
~~ Snuff out a faery without disturbing her delicate wings;
~~ Remove one or both wings with minimal blood splatter;
~~ Preserve the delicate body for years of enjoyment; and
~~ Attach preserved faeries and their nests to your very own Extreme Scrapbook page!
~~ Other foraged items will be used to create a full-experience scrapbook!!

We'll spend most evenings in the local pubs getting liquored up for a night filled with disturbing faery and other woodland creature nests during this prime mating season!!

You will return to the United States aboard a World-Class Freighter!! Although shipping times and routes vary, you can expect to port sometime in mid-May.

Sign up now!! If we receive your confirmed reservation before February 1, 2008, we’ll include two free vomit bags for the flight to Ireland and one chastity belt for the cruise home (these come in handy for both men and women!). CALL NOW!! DON'T WAIT!!

The Doctor is In

I went through my old e’s and found that I have almost 20 of these case studies. So I have some catch up to do. I sure hope none of my patients died in the interim. That would be bad. I think.

Today we have, “Altered Mental Status in a Homeless Man.” Let’s start, as we always do, with the photographic evidence.

This here thing-a-ma-bob with the squiggly lines is called an “electrocardiogram.” It’s called that because of a little known story. It's a good story. Let me tell it to you.

It seems that a clerk in a Western Union office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in or about 1884, was sending a telegraph message.

. .- - | -- .
.. | .- -- | ... . .-. .. --- ..- ...
. .- - | -- .

(If you're out of pratice with Morse Code - you have to do one line at a time.)

A bandit rushed! He was a particularly cruel bandit with yellow teeth and small feet. He told the clerk to give him all the money – he said, “Give me all the money!” The clerk said he didn’t have any money, except the few bits people paid for telegrams to be sent. “Well then,” said the bandit, “send one of them there electric telegrams and tell somebody to bring money here! Now!” The clerk agreed:

--. --- - | ... --- -- . | .-- .... .- -.-. -.- | .--- --- -... | .... . .-. .
... -- . .-.. .-.. ... | .-.. .. -.- . | .... --- .-. ... . | -.-. ..- --
-.-. --- .-- .--. --- -.- . | .. ... | .- | ...- . .-. -... | - --- | - .... .. ... | --. ..- -.—
... . -. -.. | - .... . | ... .... . .-. .. ..-. ..-. | --..-- | | .--. .-.. . .- ... .
- .... .. ... | --. ..- -.-- | -- .- -.- . ... | -- -.-- | .- ... ... | - .-- .. - -.-. .... | ..--.. | | | .... ..- .-. .-. -.-- | ..--.. |

“You be typing a lot, little man,” said the bandit.

“I am telling them to bring a lot of money. That takes extra words,” said the clerk.

“Oh,” said the bandit.

Soon the sheriff could be seen in the distance with his posse and the bandit knew he had been duped.

“Why, I oughta send YOU as a telegram!” he spit through his cracked lips with breath that smelled like he had sex with his horse in lieu of breakfast.

Then the bad bandit smiled a terrible smile. He tied the clerk to his chair – arms, legs, and neck – and gagged him with a dirty oil rag. He took out his Bowie knife and CUT the clerk’s shirt open with a flourish. He did a pirouette and clasped his hands together as his pants got tight across the middle section. He paused for a moment. His eyes glossed over. He looked at the clerk intently. "You married? Involved?" Drool leaked out of his mouth.

With a snap of his head, his eyes cleared. “You got a needle and thread?” he asked the clerk. The clerk nodded towards the cabinet on the far side of the wall. “Thanks,” said the bandit.

The bandit rummaged through the cabinet and found what he needed. He went to the desk, took the telegram button thingey that you hit to make that tap-tap-tap sound, and then sat in front of the clerk.

“This is gonna hurt. Sorry,” said the bandit. He threaded his needle. The clerk’s eye was wide open (he lost the other in a terrible accident that the family refers to simply as, “The Baking Soda Incident,” then they all lower there heads and they shift uncomfortably in their seats). With the swiftness of a mule on crack chasing the candy delivery cart, the bandit disconnected the wires from the telegram button thingey, tied them a few inches apart on the thread, made an incision with his Bowie knife just below the clerk’s rib cage, and reached up in there with the needle in hand.

He sewed the wires to the clerk’s beating heart in mere seconds, then used a blanket stitch to close the wound.

“Now, I want you stay in this chair for a few days. Drink lots of fluids, and come see me if it isn’t healing properly, OK?” said the bandit.

With his eye as round as a dollar coin and face as pale as a bucket of chalk dust, the clerk, through his gagged mouth said, “Hhm-uh.”

The bandit stood still, tilted his head, and listened intently. “Can you hear it? Can you?” he said.

“Hrmph vtoph,” the clerk seemed to say.

“You. You’re an electrical-heart-telegram! I made a fun—”

Before the bandit could finish his sentence, ”Zing” came a .50 caliber slug into the back of his head. The sheriff had saved the day! Unfortunately, the posse opened fire at the same time, and the clerk took no less than three pounds of lead from his belt up.

A little over 50 miles away in Laramie, Wyoming, a clerk was hunched over his desk. He was transcribing the dots and dashes he was receiving from Cheyenne.

“What the fuck is that?” his boss said over his shoulder.

“Can’t make sense of it, sir. Sometimes I think it says … wait … it just stopped.”

“Must’ve been rats chewing the line. Throw it away.”

“Yes, sir.”

The story spread to the universities on the east coast. Collectively, they thought it was rather amusing, but may also hold scientific value. So they got some government money and perfected the technique on prisoners.

The name of the procedure was changed to reflect the Latin base more illustrative of the seriousness with which they viewed themselves – electro-cardio-gram, or “ECG,” for short.

OK. Where was I? Oh, yeah, this guy’s ECG:


Notice how the lines kinda go up, and then down, with flat spots in between. Might be important. Note, “Lots of flat spots on the telegram thingey.”

See those little rises? Those are called “P waves.” You can calculate the Atrial rate from the distance between them. Them big spikes are called “R waves,” and have something to do with Ventricular rate. I have no skills with which to apply such knowledge, but I am pretty sure it has something to do with his heart.

Note, “Patient has a heart.”

OK, enough with the pictures. Let’s go interview the guy!

BACKGROUND. A 38-year-old man is brought by ambulance to the emergency department. The patient was found lying near the stoop of an apartment building (he was asleep? Why are you bothering the dude? Let him relax?). The paramedics were unable to obtain any history from the patient en route because the patient has an altered mental status (maybe because his “altered mental status” was REM sleep?!?).

On arrival, the patient’s vital signs are an oral temperature of 95.72°F (35.4°C) (a little cool), a blood pressure of 88/40 mm Hg (relaxed), a heart rate of 38 bpm (very relaxed), and a respiratory rate of 24 breaths/min (deep sleep, ok?). His oxygen saturation could not be obtained. The patient appears to be a homeless, disheveled man and looks older than his chronologic age, with a faint smell of alcohol on his breath (so he had a beers, found a nice doorway, and went to sleep. You people running low on patients or high on residents? Can’t you just let the poor man sleep?). He can be aroused but does not follow simple commands (neither do you, numbnuts, until your first cup of coffee. Did you give him a cup of coffee?). He has intact gag and corneal reflexes (“gag reflexes” WTF did you people do? You crammed something down his throat, he gags, you write “normal” on the chart? WTF?). His pupils are equal and reactive to light. No obvious signs of head trauma are noted, and the examination of his oropharynx is unremarkable (so … nothing wrong with the guy? I reiterate – why did you drag his ass in here? He was sleeping!!). The results of his cardiac examination are significant for marked bradycardia (smoker, lived outside – got a problem with that?). A lung examination reveals rhonchi in the right lower lung field. The patient’s skin is cold, and his blood glucose level is 104 mg/dL.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) was performed before the physical examination (see Image).

What is the diagnosis and treatment? (Drunk, asleep, no coffee.)

HINT. The patient’s rectal temperature is 87.7°F (31°C). (Here we go with the rectal again. You drag this guy out of bed, cram something down his throat to make him gag, and now you stick something up his ass to check his temperature?!? What is wrong with you people?!? But, hey, we have something here. Several degrees lower. Think, Dr. Clyde, think. Seems familiar. Think. New Hampshire. Snow bank. 1981. Drunk. I GOT IT! He has “Cold Ass.” Used to get it all the time when I got drunk and slept in doorways. What’s the problem here? Just give him a cup of coffee and maybe a hot shower.)

ANSWER. Hypothermia secondary to alcohol use and environmental exposure: The patient’s ECG demonstrates the classic abnormalities associated with hypothermia, the most evident being profound sinus bradycardia. … (We’re done here. Cold Ass. Drunk and asleep. Move on.)

(Only because I like you people, I’ll leave the rest of the text intact. Remember – Cold Ass.). In addition, all leads show classic Osborn waves (J waves seen at the junction of the QRS complex and the ST segment). As always, the ECG must be interpreted within the clinical context; in this case, the apparent elevations of the ST segment should not be misinterpreted as evidence of myocardial injury. Other common ECG findings associated with hypothermia that are not seen on this tracing include atrial and ventricular dysrhythmias, as well as prolongation of the PR, QRS, and QT intervals.

This case features the most common etiology of hypothermia (ie, environmental exposure or accidental hypothermia). Other conditions often coexist, such as infection, metabolic abnormalities (eg, hypoglycemia), drug or alcohol overdose, and endocrine problems (eg, hypothyroidism); on occasion, any one or a combination of these conditions may also be the etiology.

In general, the life-threatening cardiovascular complications of hypothermia are cardiogenic shock and malignant dysrhythmias. Typically, rewarming the patient is sufficient to restore normal myocardial contractility and cardiac rhythm. For patients in shock who do not respond to resuscitation with warmed intravenous fluid and other passive and active rewarming techniques, low-dose dopamine is the recommended agent because of its inotropic and peripheral vasoconstrictive effects. Atrial dysrhythmias are generally associated with a slow ventricular response; therefore, treatment with digoxin or calcium channel blockers is not warranted. Bretylium has long been recommended for the treatment and prevention of ventricular dysrhythmias, though little evidence supports this practice. The use of amiodarone has increased in recent years as a result of shortages in the world supply of bretylium. For refractory bradydysrhythmia, external noninvasive pacing is recommended in favor of transvenous pacing because insertion of pacing wires into a hypothermic ventricle can potentially cause a fatal dysrhythmia.

Hypothermia is often diagnosed before an ECG is performed; however, the ECG can provide important clues to the diagnosis and yields critical information regarding the overall severity of the patient’s condition, from an electrophysiologic standpoint.

safe and unsafe things to do in your home

I was strolling through the Gallery of Regrettable Food and found a gem: a 1959 recipe booklet from Knudsen Dairy Products.

Yummy! How fun to see what they were eating as I was experiencing my first months post-partum. Let’s turn the pages (I’ll put the pics here – but you can read the source’s commentary, too. He’s pretty funny).

The first item is, um, green, like a stagnant-pond green but without the promise of teeming life beneath. Oh my. It’s called, “Fruit Ring Mold with Dressing.” “Dressing”? Looks like ranch salad dressing. You put dressing on jell-o? OK, so the first one isn’t too appetiz---. Wait! What’s that underneath? Tell me isn’t a … oh, barf, it is! A Cottage Cheese Log. Gag reflex! I need some Tums to settle my stomach. brb.

Alright, look. One page. No problem. Can only go up from here.

AH, what do we have here! Looks like a salad. Um, “Chicken Curry Salad”! OK. I don’t eat meat, but that’s remotely digestible if you like dead farm animals. What’s that on the bottom? The orangy square thing .. well, jell-o mold, yes. Sign of the times. Let’s just accept that. What’s in it? Oh no. You must be kidding! Please, no. Please. “Corned Beef Salad Loaf.”


Production Step One: Take a cut of beef (usually brisket, but sometimes round or silverside) and cure or pickle it in a seasoned brine. The "corn" in "corned beef" refers to the "corn" or grains of coarse salts used to cure it.

Production Step Two: Make gelatin. The production of gelatin starts with the boiling of cattle bones or pig skins; contrary to popular perception, horns and hooves are not used. This material is then soaked with acid or alkali in large vats to extract and hydrolyse the protein collagen. The extract is then dried and ground to form a powder.

Cut the corned beef in tiny pieces, then suspend in a water, sugar, and gelatin mixture.

Garnish. Serve cold..

Bowels loosening. Need Kaopectate. brb. Let’s see … dosing, dosing, dosing. Ah, there it is! “Adults and children 12 years of age and older—The usual dose is 1200 to 1500 milligrams (mg) taken after each loose bowel movement. No more than 9000 mg should be taken in twenty-four hours.” What the hell is 1200 milligrams? Here. Two swigs.

Turn page.

“Creamed lobster.” Remove lobster from shell, diced, mix with cream cheese, return to shell, and broil. That’s a stretch. No intestinal reaction, so let’s move on before something kicks in. Page!

What the hell is that thing with the green olives? Chicken and sour cream. Oh, that explains it. But wait. It seems the way this book is unfolding, that they expected the recipes here to mix with and sit on top of … the … cor-- … gurgle … the corned be-- … gloop! … that mold thing! {unmentionable}.

Excuse me. I need to go wipe myself. Where’s the Kao? Two more --- fuck it --- half a bottle! brb.

Lookey what’s on top! Why, it “Tomato Steaks in Sour Cream”! How about – “Lycopene Suspended in Heart Failure”? My word! Did you know that life expectancy for a white male born in 1930 (my dad) – the target audience for booklets like this – was almost 63 years, and that a white male born now is over 80 years? Don’t let them kid you – it has nothing to do with advances in medical diagnosis and treatment. It is 100% due to recipes like this one going the route of the USSR. In fact, this whole booklet feels like a communist plot. “Ve hav vays uf dealink vef ze Amerikans. Zay shal die by zer uwn hahns. Glutinouz fuls! Zest hav patienz, Comrade. Ze Knudsen Prozet zall suczede!”

Well, the good news is my anger at our Cold War foes has seemed to firm up my stool. That’s a good thing!

OK, I can’t risk anymore “recipes” (boy, is that term used loosely … ut oh! Bad word … brb. Kao! gulp, gulp, gulp!). I need something, um, firming, if you know what I mean.

Let’s see, hey! Here we go! It seems that adding Viagra to cut flowers makes them last twice as long!.


Each pill is 50 mg; all the flowers need is 1 mg. So very cool. There’s a real economic benefit here. Lots of places, like B&Bs, constantly replenish their cut flowers. New ones needed each week. The researchers found that flowers last two weeks instead of one. At $3.00 a pill – and 1/50th of that – that’s 6 cents to double the life of your cut flowers. Money in the bank.

It reminds me, I had a guy google ”what is safe household product to masturbate with”. I came in 20th. The guy was focused enough to go to the 2d page. Man. Here you go, you sick prick! Shave a corner off that little blue pill, mix in water, feed it to your cut flowers, take the rest yourself – and you have yourself a masturbation party! Get up close and rub some pollen on your face, you societal reject.

So, like, if you put all male flowers in the vase, do they become gay? If you have mixed gender, do they keep your guests awake and propagate overnight? If you get a closed bud and jerk it off, does the pollen shoot onto the wall? Ah, the telltale yellow stains on the B&B breakfast room wall. Be warned! If you see them, don’t ask – just check out. Worse yet, if you walk in and the proprietor has a jaundiced look, don’t even check in!

If we take it, and the Spanker doesn’t go half-mast within four hours, we’re supposed to seek medical attention. Do the male flowers, as they crank into their 2d week, get all, “hey WTF?!? We need a doctor here!” The little signs they made up so jovially and placed in front of the gay vase during the first few days that read, “Parking in Rear,” are now a mess of pollen that seems to read, “Help!”

Alright, colon stabilized. Quit while I am ahead.

corpses

I was thinking about the sun as I sat outside with my dogs. Its surface is about 11 million degrees. We’re about 93 million miles away (mean distance because, duh, we are an elliptical orbit). Absolute zero is about 459 degrees F. Electromagnetic waves toss energy under our tropopause. Gravity holds us through the curvature of space in this pocket. All that stuff – heat loss traveling through space, the troposphere holding what gets here, gravity making sure we maintain a livable distance – all lead to a narrow band of temperatures that means my dogs don’t fry like two really large corndogs. I hoped they enjoyed chasing butterflies and pissing on my yard.

Had Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese tonight. One of those big frozen ones that is dubbed “family size.” I think “impacted colon” and “enough sodium to stroke out three otherwise healthy adults” are more accurate labels. If I wasn’t about to go hypo I would have thrown up the first bite and thrown away both the remaining portion and the bowl that held it. Just the thought of it processing through my intestines is enough to make my hands shake. Good thing I work at home – tomorrow morning’s movement will rival the worst of the Baroque period, something akin to Peter Paul Rubens on bad mushrooms.

Have you ever been to one of those living museums? Where people dress up and make brooms? I often wonder if there is someone there that everyone stays away from because he is “too into it.” Like he’s a Nazi about the people that use Charmin, insisting that only leaves and newspaper (post-Gutenberg) could be used to wipe your ass. If you hung along long enough, I bet you could smell him in a crowd. See how he walked funny from perpetual Pimple Ass.

One thing I enjoy about visiting old settlements is how low the doors are. I am 5’10” (or used to be – 5’9” now?). I would have been a giant. I could have walked around and … well, I would never have walked around. My childhood disease would not have been cured. I would have been a footnote in one of those families – 17 kids, 8 died before maturity, 1 of which died in infancy.

I sat in a restaurant in Chicago this past Wednesday night. My coworker stayed at some dumb hotel that messed up their shuttle so he was late. I waited an hour, but that was fine. For a while, I sat on a bench just inside the door. It was interesting to watch people come and go. This woman walked out of the eating area. A man was several feet behind her. She left the restaurant, and did not hold the door open for him. There was a vestibule, and she blew through those doors as well. They went to the same SUV, and she got behind the wheel. He was whipped; she was just a bitch. All sorts of people ignored old people approaching the doors. Not everyone, of course, but just an incredible amount of people was absorbed in their own worlds. Does not play well with others: Check. Needs to be more aware of those around him: Check. Needs to be less of an asshole: Check.

I shaved for the first time today in almost two weeks. Took my first shower since Thursday. Did I say that out loud? Damn.

Did you ever wonder who was the first person to think about frying an egg and eating it? I suspect one fell on a rock in some god-forsaken furnace of a locale. Sounds logical. But then who thought about using uncooked egg whites and oil to make mayonnaise? And then to take that white slime and put it on bread with decaying animal flesh? And people wonder why they have loose stools – go figure. The colon is just saying, “I’m not even going to bother firming this stuff up, just – get – it – out – of – me – now!”

I’ll be driving to Virginia this week. I hope the weather is a few degrees warmer than it is here. We have frosts just north of us. I wore sweatpants and sweatshirt today. Undershirt for the first time in months. Last time I went, I had two dozen raw oysters for dinner. Will probably do the same this time. I actually dislike eating in restaurants. I am much more comfortable with my pots and pans, my spice rack, and groceries that I bought. I was out once and ordered some soup that would up having dead pig in it – couldn’t believe it. Talk about truth in advertising. It was a personal dinner, not business. I vaguely remember being yelled at for making my point to the waitress that not everyone eats corpses. Even more vague to me was when I was reminded that I ordered the same thing at the same restaurant and made the same complaint. I have learned, I do believe, to just eat what I order and always smile. It is so hard for me to learn manners.

I need to do some things …

words

Just writing. No structure; no purpsoe. Ambience – over on the right column under Beatles is “beatlegs podcasts.” I have Podcast #101 playing. It is labeled as if it is the August 19, 1965, Houston concert, but it is actually a splicing of a bunch of things that eventually leads to the start of the concert. All bootleg. The guy does a nice job. The Help! LP was released just two weeks before. The Beatles were in Atlanta the day before and Chicago the day after: What doofus planned their itinerary?

I was wandering through some blogs I haven’t read for a while. I like Totally Unauthorized for the blogroll on the right side. She’s fun to read, too, but the links can be a treasure trove. Except today.

I selected one (theresa duncan), curious to read another’s words; instead, I was presented with an obit. She was 40, some kind of actress. Seemed to have a whirlwind life. I googled her name and learned that on July 20 of this year she took her life. Then a week later, her boyfriend followed her. I went back to the blog and read several of her entries.

I returned to TU and tried a few more links, but just couldn’t get my wind back.

There was a time when I knew a lot of the daily activities of other people. I could close my eyes and see other places and other faces. I knew moods and expectations. What I perceived as interactions was supplemented later with actual tales. No more.

Be-Bop-A-Lula, she’s my baby / Be-Bop-A-Lula, I don’t mean maybe. Great song.

The other side of the road is a difficult place to be. Watching events from afar, catching partial conversations, and never knowing anything fully but the depth of the jagged cut of exclusion. Lest one forget, however, the “other side of the road” may not be the other side at all; it is all a matter of perspective.

I am now listening to portions of the Garden Fest / St. Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton tape of John Lennon from July 6, 1957 – the earliest recording of him performing. It was the same day he met Paul. It’s funny that such a tape even exists, but it sure is his voice. He would have been 16? Think so. Just switched to Pink Floyd – Animals and Wish You Were Here.

I’m trying to remember the name of bottled water that is common in convenience stores. Not Avian. I’ll come up with it. I read something a while back and then happened to have a bottle recently. Bottled-water companies have to disclose the source of their water. I have a Poland Spring bottle with me now, and it lists five or so springs. This other company listed their source as “Public Water Supply.” WTF? The tap. The bottle spends all this label space on filtering, purifying, filtering, purifying, filtering, and finally purifying one last time. Well, of course! It’s from the tap! I can’t come up with the name. Just be sure to look at the label for the source. Filtered tap water. Unbelievable. OK, was driving me nuts. Had to google it. Pepsi admits Aquafina comes from tap water. They had to admit it? The article states that Aquafina is the best-selling bottled water. What a shame. Great racket though. Gotta hand it to Pepsi. Do they produce any naturally healthy products?

From whence I came
I ventured out
No longer watching
Now participating
I felt alive
I felt brand new

But then I bled
Became a stranger
Struggled to hold on
Failing grasp
I found comfort again
From whence I came