Quest for the Holy Grail

The Wendy's Frosty® is a modern ambrosia. Quite possibly the greatest food, nay item, ever created. To me it tastes the way I imagine blood to taste for a vampire, brains for a zombie, or Vietnamese human livers for John McCain. If the human race had to prove why it should be spared from an hostile alien race, the accomplishments we would show off to prove our worth would be: The Sistine Chapel, the polio vaccine, Appetite for Desruction by Guns N' Roses, the iPhone, and the Frosty®.

Unfortunately, the ingredients to anything that delicious must remain a closely guarded secret. To quote Cecil from Mr Deeds, "I tried to make my own at home, but it wasn't the same." I think the quest for the Frosty® recipe is as old as the quest to turn lead into gold. And because I've never been terribly good at alchemy, my attempts have been unsuccessful. My first try tasted like a bad chocolate milkshake, my second melted the blender, and the third turned my skin inside-out for a week.

But after much research and experimentation, I think I've found it. Like a modern day Nicholas Flamel, I have made a discovery which may change the world. Y'all ready for this?

2 cups Vanilla Iced Cream
1/2 cup Cow Milk (or human, if you're out of cow)
1/4 cup Chocolate Milk Mix
1 egg, just the white (eat the yolk raw, separate from the Frosty®)

Don't get me wrong, it's not an exact replica. It's a little thinner than a Frosty®, so you may want to add some cow hooves. But it's pretty damn close. I think I shall call it the Fauxsty®. Not to be confused with the Faux Sty, which is gross and has a very limited market.

Eat well, my faithful readers. Soon I shall discover the secret of the Taco Bell bean burrito. I just need to find the proper ratio of chihuahua blood to crack cocaine...

Habla usted Klingon?

In the County Hospital Pediatric Emergency Department™, roughly 75% of the patients are spanish speaking only. Which is fine, except for the fact that my spanish is quite limited. And you can probably tell from my writing that my English ain't so hot neither. I can conduct a basic medical interview, and figure out enough to come up with a diagnosis, but beyond that my knowledge is limited to: "No tengo los pantalones," "¿Dónde está el boticario más cercano?," and "Pensaba que ella tenía dieciocho."

As a fallback plan, I have two resources: interpreters and online translation software. Interpreters are great, but using one is a little odd. They'll talk to the patient for a full five minutes, then turn to you and say "She said no." Also, I'm pretty sure I heard the interpreter say "Este estudiante de medicina tiene un grande culo y huele mal" right in the middle of their conversation. I don't know what it means, but I don't like it! And most of the interpreters have been doing this long enough that they do most of history on their own, leaving me to scribe what I hear.

Online translators, on the other hand, are a little sketchy. I use them for discharge information (that's "discharge" as in "leaving the hospital," not "discharge" as in "from my pene"), but I find that things get lost in translation. For example, "Followup with your doctor in 2-3 days" became "el seguimiento de forma adjetivo con su pediatra en 2-3 días." Using my keen deductive reasoning, I decided that didn't look right. Translating in back yielded, "Tracking adjective form with your pediatrician in 2-3 days." Close but no cigarro.

That little experience did remind me of one of my favorite hobbies during my halcyon days of youth (boredom in high school): the double translate. Take a block of text, translate into a different language, then back again. Hilarity doth ensue. I know I'm lame, but at least I wasn't cookin' up meth in the garage! Here's an example - Christopher Walken's memorable speech from Pulp Fiction:

The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

Becomes

The manner in which his father looked at it, this watch was his birth. There were be damned if any clues that will put their hands greasy yellow at its birth of the boy, so he hid in the only place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, carrying the clock until his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, give me the watch to you.

Good times. And that's exactly how I imagine myself sounding to the patients: "Are you to be having problems to eat?"

8/0/2

Mistaken Identity

So there I was, skulking around the bowels of the hospital looking for morning report. As I walk down a particularly ominous looking hallway, what to my wandering eyes should appear but an attending physician staring intently into a file. He looks up at me, makes eye contact, smiles, and says, "Hello, Cara."

Naturally I turn around to see if I was being followed: empty hallway. I turn back in time to see him buried in his file again as he walks past me. This confuses me for several reasons.

1. I've never met this doctor before.
2. My name isn't Cara.
3. I believed, up until this encounter, that I looked nothing like a female

Well now I'm worried. There are several explanations for this encounter, and none of them are good. The first and most likely explanation is that the hospital is haunted, and the doc was talking to a ghost. I know what you're thinking: "But Montgomery, there's no way a ghost would show up in a brightly lit hallway. They prefer the dark." That was my initial though, too. But it is a big hospital, so I'm sure thousands of people have likely met their unfortunate end there. So statistically some of their ghosts should be ballsy enough to show up in the light.

The second option, and I hate to even suggest it, is that the doctor was schizophrenic. Or worse yet, a schizophrenic patient who stole a doctor's white coat and badge. Or worst of all, a psychopath snuck into the hospital, ate the doctor, put on his clothes, and called me Cara to confuse me long enough to make his getaway. And now he's roaming around the city making "house calls" - eating unsuspecting agoraphobics, like some kind of humanized land-shark! God help us...

I've been known to sleep walk from time to time (every night), which brings me to option the third: I've taken on the nocturnal personality of Cara, the Welsh respiratory therapist. I may be dressing up in women's clothing, makeup and wigs and wandering around the hospital in a somnolent daze giving out unlicensed breathing treatments. Of course my gentle features and kind demeanor have made me quite popular among graveyard-shifters. I only hope I haven't let any of the doctors go too far with me.

The last option is that I misheard the physician. But that's ridiculous. Almost too absurd to even mention.

7/0/3

Madness takes its toll

Cindy McCain is filthy, stinking rich. Montgomery, on the other hand, is only described by two of those adjectives. But despite her money, I still think she's riff raff. No, not "riff raff" as in "the common people." I mean Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show


Seriously, I think of him every time I see her. Prepare the transit beam!

I really need to see that in a theatre...

Burn before eating

I'm currently rotating through the county hospital...like a tornado or washing machine. Despite the images that "county hospital" typically conjures, it's not so bad. The attending physicians are great, the facilities are only moderately dilapidated and the IV medications only rarely cause vampirism. Overall, I like the place.

Unfortunately, it is not known as a bastion of gourmet cuisine. As an example, I got a chicken salad the other day and the "chicken" was a chunky grey paste. Literally. I'm fairly certain you'd have to run a chicken through a jet turbine to get that consistency of poultry. Either that or trick the poor bird into opening the Ark of the Covenant.

On the plus side, the food's free. Yessir, I get up to $18 worth of free grub down in the basement...by the morgue and pathology lab. Hmmm, never made that connection before. Yikes. Why eighteen dollars? Because $19 would bankrupt the hospital and people would starve on $17. At least that's what they told me when I asked.

There is one shining point during my culinary workweek. Thursday - for thursdays are Mexican food day. Their Mexican food is actual honest-to-god, restaurant quality food. So tasty. It's like I'm eating Felipe Calderón's juicy innards. And to top it off, I've been making my own lunchtime margaritas. (here's my secret: lots of tequila)

They also have fresh fruit, so I've been eating multiple apples every day I'm there. I love apples. I love them. I'd marry an apple if I wasn't already married to Legal Counsel. And even still, I'm considering moving to Colorado City so I can marry a whole bushel. It would be the most delicious honeymoon ever.

Ummm...I can't really think of anything else to say about the food.

The Tally: 6/0/4

Family Matters

This weekend I had the pleasure of going to Florence, AZ with Legal Counsel for her/our nephews' birthday party. For those of you not from here, Florence AZ is a lot like Florence Italy, except instead of world famous art it has a prison, and instead of beautiful architecture it has another prison, and instead of being the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance it has a couple more prisons.

The birthday party was fun, we got to play games and go to a water park. And I gave the kids my usual birthday gift: a heavy dose of reality in the form of my educational pamphlet "Why the Government is Trying to Bring You Down, or how I Can Stop Worrying and Learn to Embrace Montgomery's Anarcho-Syndicalist Ideology." The kids love it. Plus, I'm slowly building my unholy army of the night. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

The highlight of the evening for me was a conversation with Legal Counsel's stepdad. To assist your imagination, he's a jewish guy with a greying Tom Selleck 'stache.

Stacheman: (in the middle of a story about his days as a paramedic) It was welfare check day, so all the indians were drunk...
Montgomery: Whoa! Racist much?
Stacheman: What? The mexicans were drunk, too.
Legal Counsel: That doesn't make it any less racist!
Montgomery: I'm pretty sure it makes it more racist.

True story.

That's two conversation-based posts in a row. Probably trying to remember what it's like to talk to people, because in the Peds ED, most of my conversations go like this:

Montgomery: You're a cute kid, what's your name?
Cute Kid: WHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
Montgomery:Okay...well mom, what brings you in?
Cute Kid's Mom: WHAAAA!!!!
Montgomery: WAAASSSSSUUUUUPPP!!!!!

On the plus side, I get to practice my wailing. And on my weekends off, I practice my whaling. To the Pequod!

The score: 3/0/7

Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!

Completely out-of-the-blue conversation with my Peds ED attending, with absolutely no context:

Dr. Attending: Did you know they're coming out with a new kind of Rice Krispies™?
Montgomery: You mean Choconilla? It's pretty good.
Dr. Attending: No, this new one is mixed with prunes.
Montgomery: Really? Sounds gross. Is it for old people?
Dr. Attending: Snap, crackle, poop, Rice Krispies™!

I think spending his days around crying kids is starting to take its toll.

The Tally
Interviews: 2
Rejections: 0
Pending: 8

That guy from Monty Python?

I'm an equal opportunity hater. I think I was hatin' on Obama recently (although I'm too lazy to look back and check), so it's time to turn my ire on the republicans. I'm going to give them a repub-lickin'! Anyone...? Laughter...?

People have lots of criticisms of Sarah Palin - just a pretty face, too young, no experience, picked just because she's from an under-represented group. But I can't use any of those because they're equally valid for Obama! No no no, my criticism is much more valid. More critical. More important to voters: her childrens' names. Let's take a look!!

Track - Not a real name. Also, the high school sport that most often led to me crying in the middle of my peers.

Bristol - Not a real name. Also, my least favorite ceremonial county in southern England. Well, except for Wiltshire. Damn you Wiltshire, and your Great Bustard breeding program!

Willow - A tree. And a witch. And a kickass movie by Ron Howard!!! I'm actually okay with this one.

Piper - The most useless member of the continental army.

Trig - a) not a real name b) everybody's least favorite subject c) the kid has a chromosomal trisomy, and you chose a name that draws attention to that fact. Poor taste.

One for five. That may be good enough for an Arizona sports team, but not for a vice president. Actually, that would probably be pretty good for a politician. Potatoe!

Life Update
I got my first invitation for a residency interview today. w00t!