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there’s something stupid about being at a grocery store cashier and having them ask you if you want them to hand you the receipt or alternatively put the receipt in the bag.

cribs

after watching a couple of episodes of cribs for the first time, i think i now better understand the elements of luxury that one should have in one’s house and the kinds of things that are sensible and practical to do with lots of money.  apparently if you’re rich you need a big, big house.  that much is obvious.  you also need a viewing room with a projector, screen, and a row of couches resembling a movie theater.  you also need a great big bed with dozens of pillows.  i think that part is key; even if the bed is a regular-sized bed, not a rich person bed, it is essential to have many pillows.  you need a suprisingly normal kitchen and make odd choices regarding what you fill your refridgerator with.  for example, you could fill half the fridge with red bull.  or, your entire freezer with ice cream sandwiches.  or have lots of danimals brand fruit yogurt.  or have a fridge full of bags and bags of carrots.  i think the desired effect is just that when someone opens your fridge, they will be confused and think that you are an idiot.  that is how you know you are looking into a rich man’s fridge.  also, you obviously need a number of luxury items that are there just for show.  a hallmark of a rich person’s house is a grand piano that is never played.  or a fancy chess set made of diamonds and gold. maybe a nuclear reactor.  perhaps a series of expensive paintings.  rich people also like to have objects that were gifted/lifted from other rich people.  such as a guitar from a famous guitarist or sinatra’s necktie.  for some reason, having something that belonged to frank sinatra makes you cool.  so most rich people have something relating to frank sinatra in their houses.  the backyard is also something that rich people take great pride in spending lots of money on. most rich people have some variation of a pond and waterfall in their backyard.  the waterfall can be part of the swimming pool or separate from the pool.  a hot tub is also a must.  rich people usually have a large area of perfectly cut grass in their backyard.  most male rich people have a deck with a large grill.  they all say that they have cookouts and invite friends to barbeque, but i think in a lot of cases the grill is not used for grilling but rather for storing pot.  rich people also must have lots of expensive cars.  the one thing about rich people is that they don’t park their cars in their garages, they park them on their driveway for everyone to see.  but you never are shown the garage.  a rich person’s garage has a different function from a normal person’s garage, a function that most of us will never know.  a rich person must own at least three cars.  a rich person must own a rolls royce.  other cars can vary. usually one of the other two is either a bmw or an escalade.  the third car is usually an antique, but could be a motorcycle.  these are a few of my notes on the lifestyle of a rich person.  feel free to use them if you ever get rich.

these past few weeks i have been studying hard during my finals period.  and everyday, at around the same time, while i was reading on the sofa, i would hear a faint, foggy twinkle.  and then it would get a little louder.  and a little louder.  it was the ice cream truck.  he’s started driving by my street for the summer.  it seemed like a blast from the past, something that i haven’t encountered since i was little and consequently forgot about.  like other things too.  like when were in school and were cheering something on we would make a fist and move it in a circle close to our ear while saying the word “Woo!” over and over.  or make a statement and then pause for a second and then say “Not!”  or after you finished writing something using a pencil you would get all that graphite crud on the outside of your pinky.  or the time when bob’s discount furniture reigned supreme, or the time before mcdonald’s reached 99 billion served and was still counting.  back when basketball players were fun like barkley and robinson and not complete jerks like kobe and everyone else.  back when the coolest thing to do on Friday night was to go home and watch TGIF and then Saturday morning cartoons.  when you forded the river in oregon trail.  Or those ridiculous hairstyles.  Makes you wonder if the stuff we currently do will be unearthed in the future and ridiculed.  I don’t think so because everything we do now is normal.  But people will find something to make fun of, they always do.  Maybe they will invent a new way to walk and think how we walk is absurd.  Or a new way to communicate.  Maybe in the future someone will come around the neighborhood in a pizza truck at 6PM every night blaring italian music.  i don’t know why that doesn’t happen now.  

it's time to grow up

i recently turned 25.  it was pretty sad.  i think being 24 i was still able to tell myself that i was pretty young but 25 seems like a milestone of sorts.  it’s too bad, i enjoyed being a little kid, and then a teenager, and then a young adult.  i guess now when i go to the video store i’ll have to shop in the adult section.  and start reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee in the morning.  and wearing a suit and tie when i leave in the morning, with an overcoat slung over my forearm which is holding a briefcase.  i think i’ll have to use my full name when introducing myself and stop wearing hats with sports team logos and stop eating fruit snacks and start looking unhappy always.  maybe start being unhappy always.  maybe i should stop watching reruns of the simpsons and start watching the evening news, stop chewing gum and start chewing tobacco, stop playing basketball for fun and start playing nothing ever.  i guess it’s time to stop dressing up for halloween and start celebrating arbor day, time to stop carrying around vitamin water and start carrying around a flask.  i think i’ll have to start honking and screaming at the driver in front of me when everyone’s sitting in a traffic jam and no one can move, time to stop letting people in ahead of me in my lane, time to stop using turn signals ever.  maybe it’s time to stop going to taco bell.  maybe it’s time to start pretending to always get annoyed by other people’s children, to start talking about politics (besides obama’s captivating campaign), start being interested in history, start watching golf.  maybe it’s time i learned the significance of interest rates, social security, trans fat, and stopped worrying about summer blockbusters and game 7 in new orleans.  maybe i should trade in my pumas for something boring.  and my zest for life for zest. 

garbage

i bet if you took all the garbage that people produce in a year and piled it up, it would make a great big mountain of garbage.

cows

cows are cool.

i think one thing cows have going for them is that they are enormous.  it’s not something that, on it’s own, will render a specie cool, but when a specie has several things about them that make them cool, being incredibly large does enhance the fact.

they have big veins, which is nice when you are trying to get a blood sample, but also impressive when you just sit their and stare at a cow.  not only do they have heads bigger than most dogs, not only do they have udders bigger than big watermelons, not only are they taller than a ladder, but they have gigantic, bulging veins that you can see from far away. 

cows don’t like their head messed with.  always start a physical exam of a cow with a urine sample.  as my professor put it, “take a gloved hand and stimulate the perineum and wait for niagra falls.”

cows get hardware disease because they eat nails and other metal objects.  one treatment uses a magnet inserted into the reticulum.  go easy on the metal, guys!

cows lay down a lot because they have a lot of rumination to do.  they usually have many prominent ribs and bones, but this is usually the sign of a strong, lean cow.  cows are metabolic athletes.

one common practice is to perform a rectal exam.  put on a plastic sleeve.  check for holes, this is important.  put a squirt of lube on your hand.  put your fingers together in a cone shape.  are you ready?  insert into the rectum.  keep going.  apply pressure.  keep inserting past your elbow and pretty much cram as much of your arm as you can in there.  very disturbing the first time you see it done.  but you know what?  the cow hardly cares.  hardly moves.  they just keep on eating.  they may look back like, what the hell is going on back there?  but really, it doesn’t seem to bother them at all that your entire arm is up their butt.  be sure to palpate the left kidney, aorta, and the doughy dorsal sac of the rumen on your left.  if you’re a star, try the cervix, uterus, and ovary.  their anal sphincter will clench down on your arm so when you come out, your arm, in addition to being covered in fecal matter, may be asleep.  

you can get a blood sample from the tail vein.  the hard part is lifting the tail, which is suprisingly heavy.  don’t try the jugular if you’re a novice!  you’ll get your butt kicked.

cows are neat.  they are ridiculously large, not too ill-tempered, and basically don’t care what you do as long as you are slow and respectful.  and it is important to be respectful.  an awe-inspiring specie.  maybe you can’t ride a cow like you can a horse.  but cows are much bigger, and would definitely eat horses if push came to shove.

horses

-twins used to be cool. it used to be cool to meet a twin, ask them if they have a weird connection, if they read each other minds, stuff like that. but now i think the hoopla has subsided. it’s no longer anything special to be a twin, i think they should go out and get a real job.

-things i learned about horses today while learning about horses

•always approach a horse from the left…his left

•a good vein for venipuncture is the jugular, but if you’re feeling crazy try the transverse facial

•a horse’s optic disc looks red when viewed with an ophthalmoscope

•male horses are very quick in bed, if you know what i mean…it’s true, i watched it with my own eyes. that’s right, i saw it. jealous?

•horses are not just big dogs

•a horse can’t breathe through his mouth

•it’s very difficult to hear normal horses respiratory sounds; a common technique when suspicious of respiratory disease, if safe to do, is to hook up a rebreathing bag so a horse breathes his own CO2 and starts breathing more deeply

•you can ride a horse like you do a dog but you have to use something called a “saddle”, which you sit on

•don’t stand behind a horse. he’ll kick you.

•horses are awesome.

a few things

-i had/have this friend joe who was nice and funny but he got too wired during exams and this one time we were taking this french test and i was sitting next to him and he was clearly flustered; he was holding his forehead in his hand and scribbling frantically and then all of a sudden he turned to me and in a really vicious tone said, “Breathe through your mouth!” Given that I was scribbling furiously to finish my test and also completely flabbergasted by his comment and tone, all I mustered was a sarcastic chuckle. And some people heard and some people didn’t and everyone forget and continued their test. And we never spoke of it again and I kind of forgot about it until now. But it still stings. It stings like a bee sting that you got in french class in tenth grade that won’t stop stinging.

-have you ever walked by a construction worker at work? like not a fenced off construction site but when someone is set up on the sidewalk installing a window or painting something. and then you see his pickup parked on along the sidewalk and on the dashboard is a neatly prepared sandwich carefully wrapped in saran wrap. or the sandwich may be sitting on a toolbox by his ladder. but for someone reason it is of great importance for the sandwich to be in plain sight of the construction worker, and also the sandwich must be wrapped in transparent wrapping. and it can’t be hidden in a lunchpail or brown paper bag. have you noticed this? and i don’t pretend to know the business but i did volunteer with habitat for humanity for a bit and whenever i worked on a house lunch was always a big part of the day. it wasn’t like, let’s get this project done and let’s get this done and somewhere along the way we’ll break for lunch. lunch was always part of the schedule; when i showed up for habitat, one of the first things that would be decided before anyone even picked up a hammer was when we would eat and what we would eat. i do not intend to imply that construction workers are slackers. i think they are very hard-working individuals, but for some reason lunch is integral. i imagine that the construction worker lays the sandwich out on the dashboard of his truck, or sitting somewhere close to where he is working, and every once in a while he will take a break from his measuring or hammering, carefully wipe the sweat from his brow, peer down at this sandwich and think, “I’m going to eat you in a little bit.”

-what annoys me is when you’re sitting in class in the middle of a lecture and someone shows up late and comes in the back and sits down and there are like those same few people who HAVE to turn around and see who it is that has come late. like they’re the tardy police or something. happens everyday, people come late, and the same three people turn around and look to see who it is. this just has to happen. i don’t know why. but they need to do this. and sometimes they like try to turn it into an act, or be nonchalant, and like, incorporate the turn around into like a stretch or a yawn or something. just drop the act you jerks. it’s pitiful.

- i think one of the signs of growing up is having to ask people how they are doing. like when you’re little, everyone grown up you come across asks you “how are you?” at the beginning of every interaction, be it your mother’s friend, your doctor, that guy in the alley who’s giving away free lollipops. and when you’re little you’re supposed to say “good.” and that’s it. but when you’re all grown up you have to be the one asking people how they are. i think it’s pretty empty, i mean unless someone is sick or was sick there’s really no point in asking someone how they are doing because nobody has anything interesting to say and nobody wants to hear it. it’s completely useless dialogue. kids who’re growing up but not fully grown up have developed like a transitional “how are you?”, asking people what’s up or what’s going on or something similar. but it all leads to “how are you?” it’s all pointless. so i think we should start a movement to rebel against this tear in our social fabric. next time someone asks you how you are, I encourage you to wallop them on the head with a salmon. you’ll be making a difference.