I’m so honored that one of my recent blog entries has been chosen for Grand Rounds, hosted this week by Circadiana.

So many links and new blogs to investigate, thanks to Grand Rounds. I must be off to do just that!

Tidbits o’ crap:

• I’ve decided that I’m going to automatically delete each and every email I get where the subject line begins with “Fwd”. People, I outgrew forwarding everything ever to cross my inbox about, oh, four years ago.
  • there is NO computer virus that I don’t know about from a legitimate virus alert site
  • there ARE WEBSITES that you can go to so you can see the ridiculous story about the guy waking up without a kidney is an urban legend BEFORE you forward it to 20 people
  • I’m not interested in some made-up statistic from the NRA about how the right to owning semiautomatic weapons and cop killer bullets will end world hunger
  • there is NO WAY someone’s going to give me a trip to Disneyworld if I forward your email to 30 people, and they can’t track how many people you send email to anyway, let alone find out where to mail the check
  • NO CHARITY donates money TO ITSELF (like one nickel for every forwarded email) — THINK ABOUT IT
  • There is no dying kid that needs postcards (any more)
  • there is no school project that tracks how far around the world an email gets (the schools that tried it found it crashed their server)
  • there is no African leader that needs your help laundering money
  • There is no cookie recipe, there is no Outback coupon, and I don’t give a flying shit if a dancing baby will cha-cha across my screen if I forward the email, I’m not doing it
  • It’s lovely that you send me forwarded stuff that you didn’t write to profess your friendship to me, but threats of “I’d better get this back!” in the subject line will fall on deaf ears. I’m not sending that drivel back to you, or inflicting it on anyone else. If I want to wax poetic and get all sentimental about how much a friend means to me, I’ll write the words myself, and not take 0.05 seconds to hit a “forward” button. What, do you think I print that out and put it in my scrapbook?
  • I’m not worried about someone slashing my Achille’s tendon in the shopping mall parking lot, and deodorant does NOT cause breast cancer.
  • I have 15 years experience in health care. I do NOT NEED TO BE FORWARDED THE WARNING SIGNS OF A HEART ATTACK. That was covered in my first aid course. Since then I’ve had EMT, Paramedic, nursing school, and yearly CPR and ACLS classes to drive that point home, not counting the hundreds (maybe thousands) of patients I’ve cared for with the warning signs of a heart attack. What the hell are you thinking sending me that?
• I’ve decided to ignore those that give me dirty looks for not immediately picking up my dog’s poop in the grassy area in front of my house. I pick it all up at the end of the day when I take out the trash. What, you think the magical poo fairy comes overnight and picks it up? I’ll pick it up as soon as the gag-inducing stench has wafted away, K? Bite me.
• I’ve decided that how tall or how short men are doesn’t bother me. I don’t understand society’s fixation on it. I went to homecoming in high school with a man who was shorter than me and I didn’t think about it for a nanosecond because he was HOT. My ex-husband was a full foot taller than me, which was OK, but frankly sex-wise, there are advantages to being close to the same height. WINK! So any short men reading this: get over it. Don’t go all Napoleon Syndrome on us, OK? Ignore the superficial dorks who care about that crap, and come find us GOOD women.
• I’ve decided that people who get judgmental of me just because of my FILTHY FUCKING MOUTH need to just get the hell OVER THEMSELVES. “You don’t have to use profanity to express yourself.” Oh yeah, WHY NOT? Cuss words to me are like exclamation points, only stronger. I don’t like words that express hate for hate’s sake (like the n-word, or cunt, or faggot), so you won’t see me using those words. Otherwise it’s all fair game baby. If a cussword would be useful in making my point, it’s in there! You’re offended? Bite me. You have a TV, you’ve seen movies. You do NOT have virgin ears, no matter how much your sanctimonious ass wishes to believe you do. Quit getting offended at the drop of a hat. I don’t care how much you enjoy being self-righteous, it’s a sucky hobby so give it up. The human language allows us to express ourselves to each other. Sometimes I need to express an emotion beyond “oh, darn!” Plus, I’m sorry, but cuss words are funny. Drew Carey gave an example: he told the same joke twice. Once he used the word “fuck” and the second time he didn’t. The “fuck” version was much funnier.

  I’ll demonstrate with my own favorite joke:

  Two racehorses were walking back to the track stables after coming in dead last in yet another race.

  First horse says to second horse: “I don’t know why we always lose. We have the best bloodlines, the best trainers, eat the best oats, and have the best jockeys. Yet we lose constantly.”

  Second horse says, “I know! I don’t understand it!”

  A dog trots up to the horses and says, “Hey, couldn’t help but overhear. This is what you’re doing wrong. You’re spending all you have right out of the gate. You need to pace yourselves so you’ll have energy for one last sprint at the end of the race. So… what do you think?”

  First horse looks at the second horse and says:

  “Well, fuck me! A talking dog!”

  See?! FUCK IS FUNNY!

• I’ve decided that someone needs to tell teens the secret that everyone has been keeping: HAVING KIDS IS OVERRATED! It’s ok if you have kids, don’t run and hit the “comment” button because someone dares to have a lifestyle choice different than yours. I’m just saying NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO HAVE THEM! In fact, I think probably 25% of the parents out there should have never had kids! All you good parents out there cringe along with us childfree people when you see a bad parent in action, so you know it’s true.

  I lost my desire to have kids when I was 22. In Paramedic school, we had to do 2 weeks in labor and delivery. I was all, “I love kids! Can’t wait to have em! Can’t wait to see the magic of birth!”

  The first live birth I saw was a 16 year old (her first baby) who had arrived at the ER on the back of her boyfriend’s Harley cycle just 10 minutes prior to delivering the head (fine place to have end stage labor if you ask me). The boyfriend (age 42, his fifth kid) was enchanted, smiling at the wonder of the birth process. She was screaming and couldn’t fathom the fact that she couldn’t have an epidural because it was too late. She screamed like a banshee when she found out she was going to have to get an IV and have blood drawn. Hello! Did you not think needles and discomfort were involved in birthing a child?

  It wasn’t beautiful, or magical. It was disgusting. Nine-month pregnant bodies are just gross in (ahem) that area down there. Blood, crap, meconium, placenta, pain, hemorrhoids, tearing from vagina to asshole… all to pop out a kid who only thinks about his OWN needs. Waah, I need fed. Waah, I can’t sleep more than five minutes at a time for the first eight months of my life. Waah, my crap smells worse than nuclear waste. Oh and by the way, hope you have $100,000 to put me through college. (HOLD IT angry commenters who love to have no sense of humor so they can get offended by things: the baby being self-centered part was a joke.)

  NO THANK YOU!

  Plus, I had a miscarriage once. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It likely rivaled the pain of kidneystones. And I was only like 9 weeks along. I can’t imagine what labor pain would be like, and I hope to never find out.

Aunt Polly and uncle Paul.

My extended family is an intelligent and funny one. Out of all of them, no one has a better sense of humor than my uncle Paul.

He was 17 when my father (an “oops” baby) was born. Uncle Paul went off to Germany to fight in WWII soon after my dad arrived upon the scene. So he didn’t have a lot of experience with babies.

Once while home on leave, he changed my dad’s diaper but my dad was still crying. Come to find out, he had safetypinned the diaper TO THE BABY. My dad must have forgiven him, because that story was told every year at the family reunion, my dad laughing along with everyone else.

During his time serving in Germany, he must have seen a lot of things because he was right there in it, fighting on the front lines. During a visit to his home when I was a teenager, he showed me a german solider’s helmet he brought back from the war, along with other Nazi artifacts he obtained from dead german soliders. Always looking for the joke even at that young age, he told of being on patrol and coming across a dead german. He put the soliders coat and helmet on, then went back to his camp and jumped out of the bushes: “Look at me! I’m a GEEERRRRMMAAANN!”

He said that wasn’t so smart, and probably the closest he came in the whole war to being shot.

Being around uncle Paul was being around laughter. Like my uncle Harve (his brother), uncle Paul was an expert storyteller and he loved history. There truly never was a dull moment with uncle Paul around.

When my aunt Polly (his wife) died back in the late ’90’s, uncle Paul was depressed and never did seem to come out of it. As his years alone passed, he developed heart problems. Then the most heartbreaking diagnosis of all: Alzheimers.

About three weeks ago, my cousins (with his agreement) finally came to the conclusion that they couldn’t let him live by himself any more. They arranged for a nice apartment for him in an assisted living facility. A week after moving in, one of my cousins arrived to visit him and couldn’t find him in his room. They found him unconscious, lying in the garden under a hot Louisiana sun.

After the stroke, his children kept constant vigil at his bedside. Struggling to swallow and stand, he had good days and bad. Then he had a pulmonary emblolism, then his kidneys started to fail.

This dear man passed away this morning.

Uncle Paul, you’ve been lonely and lost since your wife died several years ago, and I know you’re with her now. I can see your spirit going anywhere in the world it wants to go now, no longer held back by a body that is tired and worn out, and a mind encumbered by the fog of Alzheimers.

I don’t know for sure about God, heaven, or the afterlife, but I do believe that energy doesn’t die, and you my dear were all energy.

Thank you for being such a good dad to my four cousins, who are just amazing people. Thank you for your years of teaching college students geography. I sat in on one of your classes once, so I know first-hand that you were a brilliant and engaging teacher. Thank you for everything you’ve brought to my life. I love you and I’ll miss you very much.

But when I told Clinton jokes, they were about semen, cigars, and dresses.

There was no fodder for jokes like this one (again, I steal from my favorite internet guy over at Polka Boy).

RIDDLE:

Q: How many five-week vacations did FDR and Winston Churchill take during WWII?

A: Fuck Bush!

Then one of the commenters at his blog shared this joke:

How many members of the Bush Administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be
   changed.
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.
4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either responsible for changing the light bulb or for darkness.
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new light bulb.
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a stepladder under the banner: Lightbulb Change Accomplished.
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.
8. One to viciously smear #7.
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light bulb changing policy all along.
10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

But the biggest laugh of all was B2’s presidential mailbag! “Thanks for writing, ‘mom’!”

And to prove that I laugh at people from any political party, and that I can take it as well as I can dish it out…

(more…)

Kids these days know way too much about the world, at an inappropriately young age.

Not that it’s better to be blindly naiive, the way I was until my 20’s.

Here’s an example: I didn’t know what a “boner” was until I was 14. I had just moved to Wichita, Kansas from a very small baptist town in Oklahoma. Sex was never, ever talked about. No one had it. (Except cousins; it WAS Oklahoma, after all! Hee!)

I knew it took a man and a woman to have a baby. I didn’t know the engineering behind how that happened. I had some idea that something had to be inserted somewhere. But I didn’t know that something else became hard and grew in size, like it was a Saturday morning cartoon super hero with amazing abilities so it could fight crime! (”Wonder Twin powers — ACTIVATE!”)

I finally learned about boners from a friend during the first week of Catholic high school. A group of us girls were gathered around Terry, fixated and repulsed as she explained what a “boner” was. We almost didn’t believe her. But she spoke with such authority, it had to be true.

I remained naiive (read: stupid) for many many years. In 1989, I was 21 and in an EMT class at college. There were 50 students, 42 of them male. (YESSS! THANK YOU, JESUS!)

But one day during a class lecture, I totally humiliated myself. We were in a big lecture hall, the kind you can joke around in and the teacher wouldn’t hear you. My instructor Craig was in the front of the classroom teaching about emergency response to hemorrhagic shock.

Now Craig had “been there, done that”. He came from the “Mother, Juggs and Speed” days of EMS. He had a story for everything, so of course he had a story for non-traumatic hemorrhagic shock.

Craig told us about a patient who wanted to refuse treatment. He was an alcoholic transient staying in a run-down hotel. Craig said it was lucky he and his partner hung around, because the patient finally agreed to go to the hospital. Little did they know, the patient had a GI bleed just cookin’ away inside him. (That’s where either the esophagus, stomach or the intestines is bleeding. If it’s bleeding a lot, it can be fatal very fast).

So Craig is talking to us (the class) about how he and his partner and the cops got the patient and loaded him into the elevator. And the patient started having “the worst flatulence” on the way down.

I was shocked he was telling us this! He went on and on about how everyone noticed the patient’s flatulence, tried to pretend they didn’t, and how Craig was getting sick because of the flatulence.

I was shocked, but started rolling with laughter. Others thought the story was funny, but I was freaking out! Laughing, saying “oh my God”, everything. Poor Craig, having to be in the elevator with this guy and his blatant flatulence!

Did I mention I thought “flatulence” meant a raging, hard-on BONER? (I think I had “flatulence” confused with “priapism“.)

So 49 students and Craig think they’re partaking in a story about heinous farts. I’m the only one in the room who thinks Craig is bragging about a transient having a hard-on over him.

Some guys around me asked me what my problem was, and when I told them my take on the story, they nicely explained to me what flatulence REALLY meant. When I said, “Oh, I thought it meant boner!” that whole corner of the room started laughing. So, as Craig went on with the story about how the flatulence got worse when the patient was in the ambulance, and about how it was brought about by a condition that caused a loss of blood volume, everyone around me was now picturing the transient dying from hypovolemic shock because all his blood was diverted to his penis. The entire corner of the room was laughing hysterically, and Craig just thought it was because he was a master storyteller, so no harm done.

And that, my friends, is how at the age of 21 I learned the difference between farts and boners.

Epilogue: The story did end with the patient surviving, despite shitting blood and feces all over the back of the ambulance and the paramedics, in case you’re wondering how things turned out. A happy ending.

Found at Dave Does the Blog, a fellow Coloradoian. Coloradoite? You know what I mean. He lives here.

Let’s rewrite the scientific process while we’re at it:

(Via Random Abstract)

And last but not least, Alternet gives a few examples of other “science facts” religious people have wanted us to believe, and how wrong they were. (Via George in Denver.)

I don’t know what Pix-Flix messaging service from Verizon is, but if I get pics like this in my email, I’m all for it!

Meet my friend Jaime’s dog Bear. Awwww!

Moose and I want back to Ickyta to visit last May and got to meet Jaime’s critters.

Like all of my friends, Jaime is the sweetest, coolest person ever.

She now has two pugs, but at the time of my visit she just had one pug Bear, and a new resuce puppy named Badger.

Bear was all spunky to meet us.

Bear and my dog Moose met and fell instantly in love.

Their romance went smoothly…

… except for a few disapproving glances from those who don’t approve of mixed breed relationships

and the typical nagging from the girl, which Moose tolerates.

It’s you and me against the world, baby!

This free online air hockey game is addictive!

Link via Something Awful forums.

The way a commenter twisted the meaning of my last post around really fucking pissed me off (see comments).

I think people of latin descent everywhere would all be offended that my stance against violent jail riots caused by a lack of Telemundo time can be twisted and misconstrued as not being sensitive to “multiculturism”. Most hispanic people I know would not consider property destruction and violence over not getting their way with the TV remote a part of their culture.

But it did remind me of a story I posted in a blog a long time ago, in a land far, far away.

Some of you may have been visitors to my old blog and did not read this entry there. So I thought I’d re-post it here, so you could not read it again.

_______________________________________

Patient walks into an ER. Older white man. Hasn’t been able to pee for over two days (that pesky prostate)!

I walk into the room, smiling and friendly, and introduce myself as his nurse. I ask him how he’s feeling.

He says: “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

Taken aback, I say: “What do you mean? I’m an RN.”

He says accusingly: “No, I mean, what RACE are you? Mexican? Indian? Eskimo?”

Me, smiling: “Well, I don’t know sir. Which race do you hate the most? Because THAT’S the race I am!”

Sure shut that bastard up!

In reality, I’m caucasian. I’ve always WANTED to have some sort of ethnic culture, but I’m just a caucasian girl with brown hair, small brown eyes, who sometimes goes tanning too much.

In reality at that time, I was ALSO the woman who would be faced with the difficult task of 1) finding this guy’s penis to begin with (he had “innerpenis” or something; I’d never before seen anything like it), and 2) shoving a catheter up it so he could pee. It was MY call as to what size catheter to use. It was MY call as to whether to use lidocaine (numbing) or not. Really, if I was hispanic or whatever race he thought I was, was it REALLY a good idea for him to start insulting me at that particular moment in time?

I say, if a person is so racist that they come to an ER and start picking and choosing their caregivers based upon the color of their skin (or in my case, fake tan), then THEY ARE NOT SICK ENOUGH TO BE IN THE ER.

I left the ER back in the late 90’s. One of my favorite doctors to work with was Dr. F. He was of middle eastern descent, and had emigrated to our country. I thought of Dr. F after Sept. 11 happened. That sweet man (well, as sweet as doctors tend to be). I could only imagine the patients in the ER who bitched about the wait one minute, and refused to be seen by Dr. F because of his race the next. I wondered about how people treated him on the street when he wasn’t wearing his stethoscope and scrubs. People who probably would go their whole lives and never come close to giving the amount of help to their fellow man that Dr. F gave in ANY ONE MONTH of his life. These same people would be the people who would look down on him and treat him like crap because of his race. I’m not talking about “getting extra attention in airport security” treatment. I’m talking “throw a brick through the front window of his home” treatment. I hope Dr. F didn’t have to through any of that.

It can be hard not to be prejudiced. For example, I have a prejudice against the “males who seek out female bloggers and troll their blogs because their mother didn’t breastfeed them as a child or some fucking reason like that” race. That’s just wrong! I shouldn’t stereotype like that.

Bottom line: no one has to be racist. It’s totally unnecessary. Do what I do and hate people based upon their INDIVIDUAL MERIT.

Get to know people on an individual basis. They’ll give you plenty of reasons to hate them soon enough. You do not need to go and hate based on race, class, education, gender, or religion. Save your hatred and use it wisely, that’s what I always say. Just some advice from Auntie Mary.

* Events written about in this entry are fictional, and are not at all based upon what I may or may not have seen at work last night. Any resemblance to real-life morons and true cluster-fuck events is purely coincidental.

If you are a Spanish-speaking inmate, we will do everything we can to provide interpreters for you if you have questions of the cell block deputies, or if you need medical assistance, or what have you.

However, for a handfull of you to try and organize a riot (with talk of killing guards!) because you think that the other hundreds of inmates in the jail should have to watch your preference of Spanish-speaking TV channels is a bit too much, don’t you think?

All of the inmates in each cell block have to vote upon which of the 100-plus cable TV channels to watch at any given time during the day or evening. Since this is, um, America, naturally the vote usually goes to select English-speaking TV shows.

And you want to throw a temper tantrum about that?

Let me spell it out for you. I speak English. If I moved to Mexico and got arrested, I wouldn’t expect everyone I came into contact with to speak English. It’s Mexico. They speak Spanish in Mexico. I knew this before I went to Mexico. I wouldn’t expect the hundreds of fellow prisoners in the jail to watch TV shows in English — a language they couldn’t understand — just for my convenience. I’d either learn to speak Spanish, or I’d shut the fuck up and make a mental note to not get arrested in a non-English-speaking country again.

So, to all of the inmates who think they should riot (cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in property destruction and hurt/kill deputies and other inmates) so they can watch Spanish-speaking TV shows which most of their fellow inmates cannot understand:

If you want to sit around a jail with free room and board and watch Spanish-speaking TV programs all day, then get arrested in a Spanish-speaking country.

More tips:

Tips for the Incarcerated, Episode 1
And don’t EVEN whine to me about the food!