YouTube Tuesday: Got you under my Synn

What a fascinating, entertaining and slightly disturbing take on an old classic. Well done, Anastasia Synn.

Get Glue

It is said that over time, married couples begin to resemble one another.

Fortunately for my Supermodel Wife, this isn't the case in our situation. I mean, it would be a tragedy for her to begin to look like an old, fat, bald guy just because she had the bad judgment to marry a wildebeest like myself.

But that's not to say that over the course of years, shared experiences haven't given us a few physical similarities. Such an experience happened over the weekend.

It was the first Saturday in forever that we didn't have some kind of social or familial engagement. So I had the day open to focus attention on some much needed yard work. I spent the morning trimming trees and bagging up the debris in the back yard, spraying weeds, putting out cancer-causing crabgrass preemergent and cleaning some spilled plutonium off the back patio.

Pretty typical suburban stuff.

By about noon I'd worked my way to the front yard where I was shearing back some shrubbery that had become overgrown due to the sudden spring and our many busy and out-of-town weekends as of late. I was making pretty quick progress on the overgrowth thanks to the Black&Decker cordless electric hedge trimmer that I received as a Father's Day gift a few years ago.

(Ever notice how all Father’s Day gifts are either clothing or tools to "help” you work more?)

Anyway, I was happily buzzing along removing twig after twig of overgrown Japanese Snowball and ornamental apple tree in front of our house. I was trying to avoid disturbing a robin’s nest (with three bright blue eggs in it) when I reached up to remove a severed tree branch with my left hand. Stupidly, I simultaneously brought the electric hedge trimmers down with my right hand, getting the business end close to my left ring finger… a bit too close, as it turns out.

The pain of the cutting blade biting into the fatty tip of my finger was still radiating up my arm as I ran cursing into the kitchen, a trail of blood droplets left on the grass, sidewalk, driveway and garage floor (not to mention my t-shirt and shorts). Instinctively, I put my injured finger under a stream of cold water in the kitchen sink. It took about a second to see that quick medical attention was in order.

The pad of my ring finger, from about the middle of my finger nail to about 60 percent around my finger, was neatly sliced and dangling by the remaining 40 percent of the fingertip, which was still attached and in pretty good condition, all things considered.

I wrapped a piece of ice to my finger with a paper towel while my wife and hero, who was making lunch, recruited our next door neighbor to watch the kids. We headed to the emergency room at St. Luke’s South. After a quick three and a half hour wait, a tetanus shot and me explaining the accident three or four times to various nurses and doctors, I returned home with my finger tip superglued back in place underneath a Band-Aid with instructions not to get it dirty or wet.

Now, for those of you who have been reading this blog for a few years, some of this might sound vaguely familiar. But I can assure you that I’m not making up new stories due to a lack of anything else to write about. I mean, I do have a lack of anything interesting to write about, but I’m not repeating stories because of it.

It so happens that a similar accident befell my Supermodel Wife a couple of years, only in her case the cutting instrument was a cheese slicer, and she lost part of her thumb. You can read more about that at the link, but here’s a reminder of what it looked like after a week or so of healing.
For comparison, looking at this picture of my ring finger after a day or two of healing, you can see that it’s not near as bad.
But still it’s one of those shared experiences that helps make us old married folks begin to look like each other.

UPDATE:
There's still a lot of healing to do. The glue used on my finger turned out not to be so super so I went to the walk-in clinic this morning to get it redressed and re-glued. According to the Nurse Practitioner I saw, the glue used costs about $200 per .5ml vial. Thank you Obamacare!

tagged: injury, finger, medicine, home improvement, accident, hedge trimmer

Evil incarnate

Yesterday, KCMeesha wished us all a Happy International Day of the Cat, to which I say "Hsssssss"

It's long been my considered opinion that cats are the Minions of Evil on this planet. Opinion? Let me correct myself. I'm certain that it is a quantifiable fact.

You see, I have a built in biological evil detector. Whenever I'm around evil I have a physical reaction that includes watery eyes, sneezing, tightness in my chest and difficulty breathing. You might call it an allergic reaction to Evil.

I go through a mild form of this whenever I see Oprah on TV. Also, I had this reaction when I toured the Dachau concentration camp during my first European trip (there were cats there at the time... no surprise). It also happens whenever I read this guy's blog.

So it's pretty clear that my Evil detector has a pretty good track record. And what happens whenever I'm around cats? You guessed it, Evil detector goes off the charts.

But really, you don't need an organic Evil detector to know that cats are evil. Just look at them. I mean, they creep around all creepy like with their weird slitted eyes and sneaky paws and nasty flicking tales. Gives me a case of the screaming heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

And speaking of the heebie jeebies, check out this sterling example of the species:

He might be the ugliest cat in the world. And in Exeter, N.H., he’s become quite the spectacle. “People come in and take pictures of him on their cell phones,” veterinary employee Christie Hartnett told WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., which reported on Ugly and his newfound fan base.

Bloody Evil worshipers if you ask me.

I rest my case people.

tagged: Evil, cat, Oprah, pets, ugly

Bag o'snake

It’s funny the kinds of things kids bring home from school.

Sure, you get the standard stuff like the day’s take of drawings and paintings. Sometimes you’ll find another child’s pen or brush or stuffed animal. And believe me, your typical five-year-old comes home daily with all manner of new and interesting germs to infect your upper respiratory system.

But on this particular day in early June, I was a bit surprised to see this particular five-year-old bring home a small plastic ziplock baggie from school. It was smaller than sandwich size, about the size some of you would use to carry your "herb" on your way to one of your hippie drum circles.

But there wasn't any Aunt Mary in the baggie (dammit!). Rather, the sole contents consisted of about the first four inches of a snake.

No, not that kind of snake. I'm talking about the kind that crawl around on their bellies scaring the crap out of people.

Still not right. Think of the same level of creepiness but more natural. You know, the kind of snake that eats rodents and air travelers.

That's right. Except luckily, the snake we're talking about wasn't that big or poisonous.

It was a small grass snake, the head and about three and a half inches of snake jerky apparently chopped off of the rest of the reptile by a lawn mower blade.

I didn't get a photograph (I know you're bummed), but here's an artist's rendering:
Those of you who have been parents for a while know that now is the time when you have to put up a calm front to avoid freaking out the kid while you wonder if you have a budding Ozzy Osbourne on your hands.

"Hey, whatcha got in the bag?" I asked.

"I found it at school! I'm the only one who got one," came the excited reply. "I found it in the grass in the play area and my teachers said I could bring it home."

Ah, gotta love those teachers.

"So, what are you going to do with it," I asked, totally not concerned in the least.

"I'm going to cut it open to see what's on the inside. Can you help me?"

"I, uh, well, er..."

"I'll need some of those plastic gloves. You know? Those gloves? Do we have any of those gloves? We'll need them before we cut it open. And we should probably wear mask over our mouths, too."

She was very mater of fact and clinical about the whole idea. She was eager and curious to see the actual interior workings of your every day, garden variety grass snake.

Unfortunately, the baggie with snake therein found it's way to the trash can before we could acquire the instruments necessary for the postmortem.

She was, of course, disappointed. She really wanted to see the inside of the snake. But the disappointment was soon overcome by the next episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, and anyway we were having quesadillas for dinner which is one of her favorite meals.

Still, my Supermodel Wife and I had debated whether our daughter was too young to see the Bodies Revealed exhibition at Union Station and decided that she probably was. Now, maybe it's time to revisit that debate.

tagged: snake, Aunt Mary, postmortem, science, nature, curiosity, Bodies Revealed, Ozzy Osbourne

YouTube Tuesday: Cane Toad

No special message in today's YouTube feature, just a pretty funny (and slightly disgusting) bit of Aussie animation I came across...



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, animation, cane toad, humor, Baz

Working with pigs

I can only conclude that the men who work on my floor are pigs.

Or at least one of them is. He's probably from some hicktight suburb on the Missouri side. You know, one of those guys who has those cartoons on his pickem' up truck of Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo, or a Ford logo, or Hillary Clinton or whatever.

You know, the kind of guy who, at 35 years old still thinks its cool to stick a pinch of chaw between your cheek and gum.

It just floors me that here I am working in a professional environment with ostensibly educated people but there are still some of those evolutionarily challenged proto-apes who have managed to squeal, wiggle and squeeze their way up through the cracks in the HR screening processes.

What led me to this realization? Well as with most great epiphanies, it happened in the bathroom. I stepped up to the stall to "pay the water bill," and as I looked down to "point Percy at the porcelain" I saw that someone had tried to spit a huge loogie into the urinal.

Unfortunately he missed, and the sick stack of sputum stuck to the top of the urinal. Cringing, I immediately looked up to assume the eyes forward position so I wouldn't have to see the funky wad of phlegm.

That's when I saw, staring back at me, several petrified snot rockets that some uncouth cretin decided the rest of us evolved human beings just had to see. Evidently this guy had nothing better to do than "mine for gold" and "pick a winner" while he was "shaking hands with the vicar." Makes me retch.

I think the I-70 rest stop outside of Topeka is a more pleasant experience.

tagged: work, gross, bathroom, pig, loogie, snot rocket

Rule of Thumb

Since we returned home from our Christmas trips, life at the emawkc household has revolved around my Supermodel Wife's injured thumb.

A few days after the previous post on the topic, the general practitioner referred us to a plastic surgeon specializing in skin grafts due to a mild infection that had developed in what used to be the tip of my SMW's thumb.

The specialist cleaned out the wound with a scalpel, removing the cauterized tissue to encourage the new skin to grow more quickly. He took a culture to better diagnose the infection and prescribe an effective antibiotic (and, I presume, to make sure we're not at risk from the dreaded MRSA).

He also directed us to soak the healing thumb in the mornings and evenings in warm, soapy water and then redress. Unfortunately, the first night we did this, there was a lot of pain as the dressing had stuck to the wound. Pulling it off was excruciating.

Last night was much better. Much less pain. We scheduled to go back to the plastic surgeon's on Monday for a check up.

Oh, before I forget, here's the obligatory picture.

Have you had lunch yet?

tagged: thumb, cheese slicer, blood, bloody, cauterize, MRSA, skin

Merry Bloody Christmas

To her credit, not that she needs more credit in my book, my supermodel wife didn't swear. Didn't cuss, didn't really scream like I would have if it were me standing there with my hand under the faucet watching blood spew from my fingers.

If it were me, you can bet that the sonsobitches, F-bombs, and even the nuclear MF-bombs would be going off all over the kitchen in my mom's house where we were visiting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me reset the scene with some background.

We're all settling down for a traditional Christmas Eve lunch of Tuscan Potato Soup. I'm at the kitchen island preparing a plate for our 5-year-old daughter, and my SMW is across from me slicing some fancy cheese to go on some fancy crackers.

And because it was fancy cheese for fancy crackers, my dad gave her a fancy surgical steel cheese knife to cut it with. It was the kind with the blade through the middle that you're supposed to run over the edge of the cheese to cut a slice.

Like this one...

Anyhoo, SMW makes a witty remark about how the device looks like a deadly weapon, then proceeds to assume the cheese-slicing position.

Unfortunately, the cheese is a little hard. I think it had been in the fridge and wasn't quite thawed. So she adjusted her grip on the cheese slicer and put added effort into pulling it toward her. Suddenly, with a quick slip like an assassin's blade, the razor edge of the cheese slicer slid through the cheese... but it didn't stop with the cheese.

In a split second, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack, right down the length of fancy Cheddar and into and through the soft pad of the tip of my supermodel wife's thumb.

As the exclamations rang out, "OH MY GOD! Omigod, Ohmigod! OH MY GOD!" a slice of thumb, just the right size to top a Wheat Thin, landed on the counter top.

Out of some deep evolutionary impulse, she rushed to the sink to put the wound under running water. It was there that I caught my first clear view of the cleanly cut thumb, or rather the cleanly cut crater where the thumb used to be.

We all snapped into action. A paper towel was used at first to try to stop the bleeding while my sister-in-law brought the gauze and bandages from the first aid kit. My mother found the severed chunk of thumb and put it in a small container with some ice.

They call the emergency room as my wife and I head to the car. We turn the 20-minute drive to the ER into a 15-minute one, and soon we're rehashing the incident with physician's assistant, showing her the bite-sized bit of thumb we brought with us.

"I have some bad news," the PA said. "We're going to take off the dressing and bathe your thumb in betadine. It will hurt worse than anything you've felt so far. Then we'll have to redress it. We can't sew on the rest of your thumb, since it's already dead."

With that, the PA made good on her promise. Blood began to gush as the dressing was removed. When the thumb was dipped into the betadine bath (to the stifled cries of SMW) , a river of dark red blood began to mix with the pool of light brown liquid. The amount of blood prompted the PA to revise her prognosis.

"Okay, this is worse than I thought. I'm going to get my doctor in here to look at it, but I think we're going to have to cauterize the wound."

The doctor arrived shortly and concurred.

"It looks like you've cut deep enough to slice the small artery and also part of the nerve that runs through your thumb. That's why there's so much blood and so much pain," he said.

A blood-pressure cuff was used to help stop the bleeding while anesthetic was injected around the base of the thumb. Then the doctor performed the silver-nitrate chemical cauterization, turning the wound black and making it look even worse.

And, just because I know your aching to see it, here's what the thumb looked like after about four days.

Doctors have told her that the thumb will grow back over the next six to eight weeks, but it will remain tender long after that.

So how was your Christmas?

tagged: Christmas Eve, thumb, cheese slicer, blood, bloody, cauterize, silver nitrate

Oh, I almost forgot...

During the course of conversation at last night's meetup, The D suggested I repost a link to the infamous Big Black Hairy Tongue post from earlier this year.

Fair warning: I suggest you not view the link if you have recently eaten or are about to eat or are eating at the moment.

tagged: medical, oral hygiene, black, hairy, tongue, gross

The More You Know: What's that smell?

The next time you're in Houston and you smell something terrible, it might be a dude roasting his ex-girlfriend on his balcony.

But just to be sure, here's a primer from The Slate on what to look smell for

Burning muscle tissue gives off an aroma similar to beef in a frying pan, and body fat smells like a side of fatty pork on the grill. But you probably won't mistake the scent of human remains for a cookout. That's because a whole body includes all sorts of parts that we'd rarely use for a regular barbecue. For example, cattle are bled after slaughter, and the beef and pork we eat contain few blood vessels. When a whole human body burns, all the iron-rich blood still inside can give the smell a coppery, metallic component. Full bodies also include internal organs, which rarely burn completely because of their high fluid content; they smell like burnt liver. Firefighters say that cerebrospinal fluid burns up in a musky, sweet perfume.

tagged: smell, human, flesh, burning

I'm Number 1!

I have no reason to be pissed about scoring a perfect 100% on this quiz about Tom Hanks' movie career.

All those other quizzes I sucked at are just water flowing under a bridge. I admit I was a little daunted at first, but I didn't turn yellow. I just went with the flow, since I didn't want to flush away this opportunity to show what a whiz I can be.

Go and try it yourself (ladies, feel free to sit down). I'm not going to leak any of the answers to you. If you can't get at least a few of these right, urine trouble. But by all means, like Tom Hanks, you should five pees a chance.

tagged: humor, movie quiz, Tom Hanks, pop culture

Falling China Star

Life is full of questions that don't have easy or concrete answers.

Why do bad things happen to good people? What's the square root of -1? Is this coffee regular or decaf? Do these jeans make me look fat?

But there are some questions to which the answer is indisputable, where all of the evidence points to a final undeniable truth. For example, when my Supermodel wife asked me last night if I thought our daughter had food poisoning, it didn't take a Magic 8 Ball to see that all signs pointed to yes.

What were the signs?

There was the large pool of puke that I had just finished cleaning up about 30-minutes before my Supermodel Wife returned from a well-deserved night out with the girls.

There was the three sets of vomit-stained sheets currently going through the laundry, along with Domino, the loyal stuffed lion who is king of the plush toys jungle that is our daughter's room.

Not to mention the shart-stained pants and continuing dry heaves that kept us up until 3:30 this morning.

The evening had started out so well. With mom out for the night, I offered to take the kid to her favorite restaurant, the China Star buffet at 95th and Metcalf. She was excited. She had her favorite foods, green and red jello, peaches, sweet and sour chicken with rice noodles, and of course soft serve ice cream to top it all off.

Who knows which food item held the poisonous bacterium that would cause havoc in her digestive system for the next eight hours. Hell, it could have been the plates or forks or spoons. It really makes no difference.

My Supermodel wife wanted me to call the restaurant (China Star buffet at 95th and Metcalf) to complain. But what's the point? I blame myself actually.

I mean let's face it, when you go to buffet like that you're consuming food that is sitting out in warm pans for who knows how long. Dozens if not scores of people are walking by the very morsels you'll put in your mouth, spreading their germs. Getting sick should pretty much be expected, even though China Star buffet at 95th and Metcalf seems like a fairly clean place by buffet standards.

Anyway, I'm not planning on suing or anything. I figure now that I know the dangers of eating at China Star buffet at 95th and Metcalf, I and my loved ones can avoid that particular establishment. We can choose a cleaner, more hygienic place to dine (like in the tepid water under the Broadway Bridge for example).

Suffice it to say that China Star buffet at 95th and Metcalf is now a former favorite restaurant.

tagged: food poisoning, Chinese food, China Star buffet, puke, vomit, Magic 8 Ball, sick

Kiss my big, black, hairy tongue

Casually reading through my RSS subscriptions this morning I came across something so disgusting, so gross, so OMFG!!! that I just had to share it here.

It comes from the Mayo Clinic (via neatorama).

A black, coated tongue is a temporary, harmless condition typically resulting from an overgrowth of bacteria and sometimes yeast in the mouth. These organisms accumulate on the tiny projections of the tongue — called papillae — and cause discoloration. Certain types of bacteria and yeast make red blood cell pigments (porphyrins), which can give the tongue a black appearance. In some cases, the tongue may also appear "hairy" due to more rapid growth of papillae or an interruption of the normal shedding of cells by the tongue.

Okay, ready for the picture (you knew it was coming)...



tagged: medical, oral hygiene, black, hairy, tongue, gross

Good news/bad news

It's one of those good news/bad news days for me.

The bad news is that I still feel like shit. This is the strangest cold I've ever had. Really dry drainage into my throat. That's gross I know, so I won't go into the details.

But the good news is that I probably don't have Avian Flu. I rule this out because I don't make a habit of sucking the mucus out of fighting cocks.

Sometimes trainers go mouth-to-mouth with wounded birds to suck out blood and mucus. A trainer was one of 12 Thais killed by bird flu last year.

But the bad news is that I think I might have contracted Evian Flu from a tainted bottle of drinking water.