Random Thinking

Surgeon Spasoje Radulovic was removing the appendix from a patient in a Belgrade hospital when his colleague Dragan Vukanic came into the operating theater. Dr. Vukanic said something to Dr. Radulovic, slapped him in the face, and walked out. What could any surgeon do in this case? His manhood had been attacked in front of his staff! The patient can’t possibly come first in a situation like that, can he? So Dr. Radulovic ran out after Dr. Vukanic and started throwing punches. The end result included bruises, a split lip, loose teeth and a fractured finger, although it wasn’t clear which doctor received which injuries.

Thankfully for the patient, the attending assistant doctor was able to finish the operation. No report on what Dr. Vukanic said that started the fight but it must have been good!

Technorati Tags: stupid things people do, fighting surgeons, Spasoje Radulovic, Dragan Vukanic

I was over at Amazon and I happened to check my review of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to see how it was doing as far as votes go. So the word from Amazon was:

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

The first thing this made me think of was the Trident commercial. You know the one, “4 out 5 dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” What exactly did the fifth dentist recommend? Gargling with Coca-Cola? Chewing on Brillo pads? Brushing once a month with a lollipop? There was a comedy routine about that fifth dentist but I can’t remember who did it and Google wasn’t much help.

But I did find some interesting trivia during my search that had nothing to do with dentists. Did you ever look at your favorite frozen flavored ice treat? It might say on it, quiescently frozen. Do you know what that means? I had no idea until tonight. Quiescent, of course, means “in a restful state”. And that is what makes a Popsicle. The liquid product is poured into a mold and frozen. Unlike ice cream which is stirred during the freezing process to inject air into the product, it is allowed to sit quietly until frozen. Thus quiescently frozen.

By the way, in reality, the fifth dentist recommended no gum chewing for his patients. Reality sometimes isn’t as funny as comedy.

Technorati Tags: dentist, Trident, Popsicles

Senator Bernie Sanders had the people in his office actually look at the president’s proposed budget. As you have probably heard, GWB wants to do away with the estate tax. So who does this help and who does it hurt in Bush’s budget?

If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, would be about $32.7 billion over the next ten years. The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion. The savings to the heirs to the Mars candy corporation (infamous for child labor abuses) fortune would be $11.7 billion. Bush plans to cut $3.4 billion from the Veteran’s Administration. The family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond would receive about $164 million in tax breaks which Bush will fund by eliminating the Commodity Supplemental Food Program which sends a bag of groceries each month to poor seniors. Taking money from the poor, the disabled, our soldiers, and our seniors in order to give billions of dollars to his wealthy friends is the way George W. Bush runs the country.

None of this is in the news for the simple reason that Britney Spears shaved her head.

Technorati Tags: George W. Bush, Stupid Conservatives, Britney Spears, estate tax

One of my fellow Long Islanders died, apparently of natural causes, a year ago while watching TV and no one noticed. Vincenzo Ricardo, a 70-year old resident of Hampton Bays, was found dead in front of his TV set this past Thursday. Mr. Ricardo’s mummified body was discovered after police came to investigate a water main break caused by the cold in the unheated house. The last time anyone had heard from Mr. Ricardo was December of 2005 which would fit in with the expiration dates on milk and eggs found in the refrigerator.

Neighbors said they thought Mr. Ricardo went to a long term care facility. There was no explanation as to why his electricity was not turned off or why the mail man didn’t notice that the mail was piling up. Most importantly, there was no word as to what station the TV was tuned to.

I have to admit that passing away while watching TV is not the worst way to go but I would hope that if I died it would take less than a year for someone to miss me.

Technorati Tags: television, death, lousy neighbors

“We are the government and we are here to help”. Although the message may be hard to understand sometimes. SafeNow.org wants to help the government help you so they have provided explanations for the many safety pictures the government produces. Here’s one:

If you hear the Backstreet Boys, Michael Bolton or Yanni on the radio, cower in the corner or run like hell.

Here’s the rest - http://homeland.gov.safenow.org/

Technorati Tags: humor, homeland security

How did I miss this? A year ago one of my favorite sites, Google Sightseeing, posted a thank you to me and I didn’t even notice! I had sent in the location of the Shoreham Nuclear power plant on Long Island and they published it in a nuclear power megapost. I only recently noticed it when I did a search for Long Island on the site.

Technorati Tags: Google Sightseeing, Shoreham, narcissism

A friend of mine (Officer Joe of the NYPD) sent this to me. It’s a takeoff on the movie Goodfellas written as if working for IT was the same as being in the mob. Hysterical! (Caution: strong language)

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an I.T. guy.”

With thanks to 19W for making this little movie.

Technorati Tags: TechFellas, humor

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers

Maybe I’m just too old. Maybe I’m just not cool or hip enough. It has to be me, right? After all, this book was a book of the year according to the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today among others. But I found it unreadable. Really. Sixty pages into this book and I wanted to just give up on it. Both of Eggers’ parents died of cancer within a few months of each other and this is his memoir of their death and his raising of his younger brother. It actually starts off OK but fairly early in the book Eggers runs out of things to say. This probably could have been a good short story but at over 400 pages it just drags on and on endlessly.

Even the writing style is annoying as he writes these long, boring run on sentences that go on to discuss how he and his brother are the coolest people on the planet and how he can throw a Frisbee higher and farther than anyone which the San Francisco Chronicle thinks is the Zen of Frisbee but that I think it is just attempting to write stream of consciousness sort of like you are James Joyce but Joyce took years to write Ulysses and the paragraphs here read like they were written in an afternoon after a couple of beers while Oprah’s playing in the background and you really wish that you were back in the car driving to the nude beach because hanging out with your brother is a lot more fun than writing a book even if you know that people are going to spend their money to read it but you did warn them in the preface so if they are bored beyond tears then too bad because they were warned and so they really have no right to complain about the dreary and pointless paragraphs about imagining that your brother is killed in some insanely tragic way like being run over by a van in slow motion or the uninspired complaints about neighbors or women at the little league games or any of the other dull, lackluster, pedestrian, spiritless, and unimaginative paragraphs that grace this tedious book.

Anyway, I am sure you are much cooler than I am so you will love this book so don’t pay any attention to this review and go out and buy the book and be fascinated by stories of warehouses and starting magazines and excrement coming out of backed up toilets and meeting Bill Clinton and wanting to kill people because they don’t treat you and your brother like the horrible tragic victims of the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone because God knows that no one has ever lost their parents before and that no one has suffered as much tragedy as you and your family so writing a memoir and whining for 400 pages makes perfect sense and this reviewer is just a big jerk who doesn’t get it.

Technorati Tags: book reviewing, books, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers

I haven’t been online as much as usual because my laptop had an accident. We have a home computer but Michel is on that one most of the time so I usually use my work computer at home. It has a built-in wireless card so I can sit in bed and surf the web.

I was working from home on Wednesday. I ran downstairs for a minute and when I came back up the cat had knocked down my glass of water on to my PC. That was the end of that. I brought it into work and the PC support guy was able to get it started but last night it failed again. Today he looked at it and decided it needed a new motherboard. Lucky enough they were able to give me a loaner until they could get the parts to fix my PC.

Meanwhile Beth came home from school complaining about feeling nauseous. She is lying in bed and told me she doesn’t want to go to her guitar lesson. For Beth to miss a guitar lesson she must really not be feeling well.

Technorati Tags: cats, ThinkPad

I meant to discuss this earlier but one thing gets pushed ahead of other things and it ended up in the back of my mind. Well I have finally dug it out so let’s talk.

If you recall, GM had a Super Bowl ad showing a robot committing suicide because it lost its job. The The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention complained about the ad because it makes light of suicide. Coming from GM this is even worse than just bad taste. One of the leading causes of suicide is having lost your job and GM has laid off tens of thousands of American workers over the last couple of years. So perhaps making fun of suicide wasn’t a real clever idea for GM.

GM did have a response: “We have no plans to change the spot.”

Technorati Tags: GM, bad taste, commercials, layoffs, super bowl