David takes a step back to reflect...

Do you ever stop to contemplate the little things that change the ultimate paths of our lives, those almost indefinable moments in time that can alter who we become or the impact we have on the world? I know I’m normally so caught up in the hustle and bustle of school and life that I don’t take the time to stop and smell the roses. Everything becomes such a whirlwind of tests, stress, drama, and hate crimes…I get so turned around I don’t know what’s important anymore…

A while back in this space I mentioned going out to lunch with a friend and how a bird pooped on him on the way back. I sort of made light of it at the time, but it’s been eating away at me ever since. If only we had stopped a moment longer to wait for the light to turn on the previous street, the bird and my friend would never have crossed paths. If I had noticed my shoe was untied, how would things have turned out differently? My friend wouldn’t have ruined his new coat. He wouldn’t have missed class to cry it out. Or maybe, just maybe, that bird impeded our path just long enough that we avoided something far worse...like being pooped on by a larger bird, or by two smaller birds whose cumulative poop volume exceeded that of the one average-sized bird.

So maybe that bird was meant to poop on him…if it hadn’t, we might’ve walked in front of a bus a couple blocks down. I might never have realized my ultimate dreams: saving African babies, walking on the moon, making it rain hundys at Club Isis. When I stop and consider the interconnectedness of our universe, I am overwhelmed. It’s beautiful, but, at the same time, it’s scary....................

I guess what I’m saying is, live while you can. Laugh out loud and don’t pay attention to who’s watching. Stumble once in a while, it’s OK. I know I’m going to try and follow this advice too. Maybe I’ll look back on this post when I start feeling blue and it will remind me to stop holding my breath so I can get oxygen again. I know there are still important things I need to learn about myself, but hopefully, this is a start…

The shadows surround me
Gripping
At
My soul.
No, Darkness, please
I have so much more to
Give.
Light. Peace. A second chance.
Thank you.

David is outraged by senseless krill murder

I am shocked and appalled that Kevin has condoned senseless krill-killing in his investigative report on the Little Mermaid. He quickly excludes the possibility of a Flounder feast or Sebastian sauté – on the basis of their demonstrated sentience – yet throws krill to the sea-wolves without a second thought. Why? Because they’re small and don’t crack the starting lineup for “Under the Sea.” That is unacceptable. I am taking a stand.

First, watch this video of arguably the finest impromptu-underwater-point-making-ensemble-musical-number ever:



Now, two things are painfully obvious. First, Sebastian is a frickin’ rhetorical genius. “The seaweed is always greener” is persuasive gold. That effeminate crab just knows how to sell it. Second, and far more importantly, there is established video evidence that shrimp are sentient. At 3:03 in the video, right after we learn that “each little snail here know how to wail here, that’s why it’s hotter under the water,” we see a bevy of shrimp, smiling, dancing, and jumping in a glorious air bubble cascade that would make anyone want to drown in a tide pool. The shrimp display obvious, visible emotions in their heartfelt attempt to keep Ariel from going above water, all the while maintaining admirable balance atop slippery bubbles in an impassioned jig.

Clearly, the shrimp have a lot going on upstairs. And krill, as everyone knows, are basically just mini-shrimp. Even Wikipedia – which will have been responsible for at least 29% of my medical education by the time I’m done – describes them as “shrimp-like.”
   
                                         
                                                     Can you tell the difference? I can't...

Adding two and two together, we realize that Triton and his Mer-peers are basically eating 1000s of conscious beings every day. Murdering countless krill families and destroying countless krill dreams. Stopping krill doctors from seeing krill patients and devastating krill adolescents worldwide by preventing krill Jessica Alba from reaching the level of irrelevance that would inevitably force her to do a nude scene to get back into the public eye. And all based on the shaky premise that, somewhere along the continuum between krill and shrimp, there is an arbitrary Eat Me line that makes it OK. Outrageous!

Triton, is that any way to lead your people? Shrimp, how could you pander to the princess whose father murders your cousins day after day after day? And you, Kevin, I am most disappointed in you. You’re just like Harry Potter, standing idly by, ignoring the problems of another world while you keep the platypus down…

Kevin Contemplates the Diet of the Little Mermaid

Following David's intrepid exposé of Harry Potter, one can't help but wonder what questions remain unanswered from the movies our beloved childhood. Should Aladdin go to jail for stealing bread? Is Winnie the Pooh's honey addiction merely a stepping stone to black tar heroin? All the signs point to yes. But one question has dogged me until this day.

What did the Mermen eat in the Little Mermaid?



What a hottie

Looking at Ariel’s heroin-chic physique one might guess a subsistence of cigarettes and self-loathing but of course we all know you can’t smoke under the sea. The next thing that comes to mind is the wide assortment of aquatic plants at their disposal. So are the Mermen a bunch of kelp-hugging vegetarians? You might think so but looking at King Triton that simply can’t be true. Without the necessary high protein diet, a person simply cannot maintain such a physique without the help of BALCO.



Ladies, got your tickets to the gun show?


Thus, Triton must eat meat. While the film features a wide array of oceanic fauna, most of them appear sentient. Can you sink your knife into Flounder or toss Sebastian into the steamer? I didn’t think so. Finally we come to krill. While technically an animal, this tiny Sebastian is far too small to be capable of sentient thought much less performing spontaneous yet surprisingly well-coordinated musical numbers. Looks like we have a winner (or loser if you’re the krill.)



Common fare at any seafood restaurant


To find out how much of these tiny critters Triton must wolf down on a daily basis, I did a little digging into the daily diet of Blue Whales. According to one article, a single Blue Whale eats roughly 40 million krill per day (about 7715 lbs) to satiate a recommended 1.5 million calorie a day diet. With these figures, I surmise there’s about 0.00357 Cal/krill and each krill weight approximately 0.000192 lbs. Then assuming Triton maintains a 2000 Cal/day diet (pretty low given his body size), he would need to eat 10.28lbs of krill per day. A pretty ludicrous amount given that a single human being eats less than half of that (4.7 lbs). But I guess it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Comic: Romance

Kevin Realizes Mistakes Happen All the Time in Surgery

For those who don't know, I'm in a surgery preceptorship this quarter where I get to watch a surgery once a week. This is quite an amazing experience since I'm literally standing shoulder to shoulder with someone who is wrist deep into someone's heart (not metaphorically either, although im not sure what that metaphor would imply). Of course this intimate glimpse into the OR is not without its surprises...

Just last week, I was observing an ascending aortic composite graft procedure when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the scrub nurse engaged in a muffled conversation with the circulating nurse about something.  Then the  circ nurse suddenly drops to the ground and starts crawling around.  5 minutes of her best illegal immigrant maid impersonation later, she comes up and  seems to wave a "Negative" to her sterile compatriot.  The scrub nurse then turns to and asks:

"Kevin, can you look around for a needle, it should be attached to some blue suture."
"Uh... sure," I said, fumbling around my little section.  By the way, the universal "fumbling and patting the pockets" motion when pretending to look for something makes you look retarded while gowned up in an OR.

After 5 more minutes of my fumbling, I was forced to give a negative as well.  So finally the nurse tells the surgeon: "Doctor, we're going to have to x-ray this guy after you're done, I can't find a needle."  Oops.

Kevin and David Present: The Top 10 Things We've Learned in Med School

To commemorate the completion of our first half-year of med school, we present the top 10 things we've learned so far:

10)  Experts tell us having kids and being married both suck.

9)    Experts consist of random 38 year-old "young" adults.

8)    Eighty percent of future doctors are brunette white women.

7)    Kevin wants to learn, David wants The Truth.

6)    (Kevin doesn't really want to learn, but David really does want the Truth.)

5)    You can teach an entire lecture with inspirational quotes alone.

4)    We have something in common with a football player from Duvall (pronounced "Dooooo-         vuhl").

3)    Kevin is 1/32nd cardiothoracic surgeon but he's pretty sure he's ready now.

2)    David still thinks he's in business school. 

1.5) Your patients won't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

1)    Never donate your body to science.

Comic: Bad sign for the future

Inspired by Linda's adventures with electronics:

I had just gotten the coffee maker, and I made coffee almost everyday. It was exhilerating[sic]. Then one morning, while I stood in the kitchen and Penny sat at the dining table, I was horrified to find that when I pressed the on button, nothing happened. No coffee.

NO COFFEE.

Shit! I said to Penny. Look! The coffee maker's broken.

She told me to check if it was plugged in. Oh, I said. So I picked up the white plug behind the coffee maker and plugged it in. But still, nothing happened, no red light. Now I was really scared; I started to panic.

I frantically pulled and replugged the cord into the wall socket. Oh no! It's broken! It's broken!

Then I looked emphatically back at Penny to see why she was not also panicking.

She said, Linda, that's the rice maker.

Apparently she had been sitting at the table watching me freak out while the light on the rice maker went on and off, on and off.

So I changed plugs, made coffee and we both went back to studying.