Blog Niblets

1. A Tip o' the Hat

A couple of visits ago, I left my Team Ortho baseball cap behind at the M. Giant household. I got it a little less than two years ago, when I shadowed an ortho surgeon friend of mine. Before the scrubbing-in part of the day was the setting-down-my-stuff part of the day, so we started in the doctors' tiny offices. One of my friend's office-mates is the guy who is in charge of recruiting for the "team," which is a combination fundraising and public outreach entity. Every Ironman event and triathlon within a few hundred miles usually has a Team Ortho contingent, in snazzy blue and white bullseye jerseys. The recruiter guy introduced himself, and pretty much right after "hello" was "you look like a Medium." This confused me, until I was thrown a free shirt and the aforementioned ball cap -- all I had to in return do was promise to check my calendar for good times for me to swim, run, or bike a great distance longer than I otherwise would, or realistically could. I checked. I checked twice, in fact. There were none.

Last time I was down at the Giant homestead, I inquired about the hat, and MG said, "oh... that was yours?" It seems M. Small has adopted it into his compendium of random cool stuff. This is a kid who can derive hours of enjoyment from the plastic spindle-thingy that outdoor Xmas lights are strung on, and so it's a pretty good compliment. Besides, maybe he'll be a triathlete someday, and at the very least he can spread the public awareness. People notice stuff on adorable moppets in a way they don't, on surly Nordic ER techs. So, seeing as how my hat is in a better place now, I switched to the ball cap I had stashed in the closet: the NASA one.

This one I got at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, when Teslagrl and I went down there later that same year. I am something of a space freak. The rocket garden, with its recreated shells of Atlases and Saturns, command modules, and a LEM you can crawl around in was like holy ground to me. I got a little choked up at the recreation of the Apollo 11 launch. Ron Howard can make crappy movies the rest of his life and Apollo 13 will still be on my top 10 all-time list.

And today, at work, I discovered the NASA hat has ironic hipster cache now, too. A co-worker asked me, "where's your diaper?" Heh heh. Thanks, love-crazy astronaut! You've made space cool again... kind of.

2. Guitar Anti-Hero

I hate this kid. Eight years old, and he pwns a song on Expert I can barely handle on 'Hard.' I got to see the original Star Wars in the theater 13 times, though, so nyaaah. I'd love to say the video is somehow faked, but that would be sour grapes on my part.

3. This is why they invented the Internet

Speaking of YouTube, I guess last year's most fun video is this year's most kickass meme. I guess I really am growing up, if high school kids actually look somewhat cool for even a minute.

4. This week's medical mystery

So, the kid with the five-week case of hiccups finally got relief? Awesome. And although there was no story as such, Friday's Strib had a little blurb that said the 15-year-old was crediting a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, and a hypnotist (more about that, in the link above). Sure, fine, cool. No love for the medical establishment. We're used to it; we don't need outpourings of gratitude. Besides, it's not like the establishment has weird ideas about curing intractable hiccups... like, say... digital rectal massage.

Yessir, nothing balances the q'ui, aligns the shakras, or increases the flow of your positive energymeridians like the old fashioned gloved digit up the ol' pooper. It's peer-reviewed Western medical journals, baby. Read it and weep. Some days, the Q-ray bracelet has nothing on our side. Those are fun days.

And if I ever have hiccups lasting that long, and it turns out the "intern year salute" is what brings them to an end, I'll probably credit something else, my own damn self. That, or just smirk mischeviously at Katie Couric when she asks me about it...

Missing in Action (as well as Inaction)

Biochemistry class has begun to eat my life. And then break down and absorb the constituent pieces of my life, eventually reducing them to a few key classes of chemicals, which are then put through various complicated processes and converted into... knowledge about biochemistry, I guess.

Guitar Hero II has occupied enough of my time and attention that I've seen the little dots of the game screen coming at me when I close my eyes. On the other hand, Teslagrl has bought the first game and her own controller, so soon there will be tales of wild parties involving tiny plastic guitars and copious alcohol. Which will be broken down into a few key classes of chemicals, and put through various complicated processes. Most happily, I've started playing my real guitar more often. Together with my insanely fun effects pedal, it frickin' rules.

I bought some cool new shoes, for incredibly cheap. As much as I am a total dude, I have my moments of being a clothes-horse too. Hopefully, I'm as interesting, astute, and agreeably cranky a clothes horse as Dack from dack.com.

I've been out to see a lil' bit of the rock show scene, and I've chilled with my peeps. A bunch of interesting stuff has happened at work, but as always I can't really get into it, because the stuff that interests me most is frequently the stuff it would get me fired to talk about.

I got to meet Amber for beers. That was awesome. Hopefully there will be more such meetings of the minds; it seems like we could totally get some kind of blog Justice Society thing going. or at least a cheesy, Superfriends version. Long as I'm not Aquaman, that is.

Silvergirl-Crazy

Clearly, a particular Minneapolis inner-ring suburb is the new epicenter of cool. I'm putting out the call to my crew back home: someone else needs to make a movie, or a computer game, or design a personal jetpack or something. Because right now, the Busey-Hunt household is walking away with the 1000-meter freestyle "create bitchin' pop culture" event.

I am presently in the computer lab, listening to the new Silvergirl album on headphones. I have no fewer than two Jon Hunts plus a roomful of Jon-powered instruments going. It's a Jon-a-copia over here.

The talent-to-technology ratio on this record is exactly the inverse of what you'd find in an Ashley-- no, a Jessica Simpson project. It's just that good, and that genuine. And just to name one strong point, there are more graceful, lovely bridges on this album than in California itself.

Go. Listen. Become smitten with the sound.

I listened to it last night. This was me, at a key point: "Is that... I think he... oh my god! BACKWARD GUITAR! BACKWARD GUITAR! Sa-weeeet." Even if I only sorta liked the rest of it, Jon would earn a Big Gulp of good karma just from that.

NKOTB

http://hatesexy.blogspot.com/

Go. Read. Enjoy. This is the blog of my Friday night homie and sometime Everly Brother, Jon Hunt.

Jon talks more than I do, which is fine because he's smarter and has more to say. Me, I'm just killin' time here, between Genetics and Microbiology. I have very few stories that would earn strong response from anyone, and most of the time I need to keep those to myself anyhow.

Jon's one of those guys that makes guys like me feel better, because one, it must be possible after all to make it all hang together; two, the crap we go through can eventually lead to very good places; and C, I guess maybe we're not so unalike as we've sometimes been lead to believe.

This place is about what it's like to chuck your cubicle job and go back to school; it's about what it's like to gradually become a medical person, while hoping to retain a shred of coolness and personality. Jon, by my reckoning anyhow, is largely about not having to do that. His cool side stays cool and his hot side stays hot, without a lot of outwardly visible effort. I guess his blog might be about that too; time will tell.