A return

Back in Austin manana evening (I wish I knew how to get a tilde on that manana over there.) Get excited.

Black Cab Sessions

The Black Cab Sessions are all kinds of cool.

This is a website started by some UK indie film producers as a contribution to a pre-existing cause that has to do with the cabs used in London. Unbeknown to I and likely you there is a struggle going on in the UK to phase out the classic black cab which is a type of hackney carriage common to the UK. The idea likely being a logical one about the lack of mpgs earned by these old classic buggies roaming the streets of London. This movement comes out on the side of the classic emblems of the town.

What this particular group has done about it is get indie musical artists, mostly of the folks with guitars variety (but not all) to come to London and put on a "one song, one cab, one take" mini concerts in the back of these cabs. Its funny bc they have the cabbies introduce them likely not having any idea who they are. Some of my faves are the Bon Iver (above linked), Martha Wainwright, Lykke Li, Calexico, Fleet Foxes and Ryan Adams shows. Check it out, the biggest name they went for is probably Death Cab, but check it out and you might find a new interest.

It would be like if they tried to throw out all the yellow cabs in NY and replace em with Honda Fits.

Google Reader

There is a new and improved subscribe link over there on the upper right. Just hit it up and then pick the google reader (if you have a google account sign in) and boom easier spot to read all blogs/feeds or other nonsense.

This new one should work better than the previous one built into the bottom of the page, so change it if you are one of the few already subscribed. Then I recommend this if you know Melita and this is you are pals with either of my sisters. Cool.

I'm not into action movies

. . . Buuuuut . . . much like I had to admit after Star Trek came out, District 9 (a Peter Jackson joint (he's the Lord of the Rings guy)) was pretty good. The aliens looked like shrimp (but they were supposed to), the bigotry parallels were a tad heavy handed and obvious, and there are a million things that don't make a lick of sense logistically about some of the plot elements. . . . buuuuut. . . .

I liked it, very original sort of story with a very original way of laying it out. It was an odd sort of hybrid between the two extremes that usually exist in action/thriller films. Most choose the big epic beautiful panning shots filled with mystifying graphics and cinematography or they leave that to Lucas and go "raw" and shoot 3/4 of the thing handheld poorly lit and with the camera up some actors heavily breathing nose the whole time. District 9 went to some effort obviously to meld these techniques and I think it all came out seeming very new and, dare I use the cliche, fresh.

I told Mark at the beginning of the flick that I didn't know much about it but I was pretty sure it was "like Lord of the Rings 4, or something." I told him after I couldn't wait for LOTR 5.

Non-accidental

This month I am on my pediatric intensive care unit rotation. This is big time hospital work, this is where the sickest kids in the hospital are sent and where some of the brightest docs in the joint work insane hours to keep them all on a path to recovery. All the while I fumble along behind them trying to act as if I understand maybe a quarter of what they are doing. It has been awesome.

I have said to those that ask that one of the reasons I am attracted to peds (when I type that it is pronounced [pEEds], I will say otherwise if I am talking feet) is that 99% of the time the pediatric patient played no role in acquiring their affliction. This could be read two ways: I am either a compassionate soul striving to help the innocent fight something that is more often than not much larger than us all, or I am a judgmental cynical ass who just cannot seem to muster an ounce of sympathy for the slobs in adult medicine who are fighting every effort made on their behalf by health care every step of the way. I say it is a mix, you say what you want but keep it to yourself.

Anyways, you can't do this rotation and not come away with a sad story you want to tell everyone. A few days ago a girl came into the ER, went to surgery, and was sent to our unit. The report to us began as follows, "4 year old female with non-accidental trauma . . . . . . . . . ." I didn't hear anything after that because that was the first time I had heard the term and I had to decipher it for more than a few moments. Sounds innocent I suppose when spit out by the ER resident in amongst a rapid list of medical jargon. Then you think about it and realize this young girl was seriously injured and it was NOT an accident, it was on purpose. I won't go into the gruesome details but basically a sad sack of a mother left her daughter in the care of her "partner" who is in fact scum of the Earth and as my mother used to occasionally say, "A complete and utter waste of skin."

The girl was admitted with multiple abdominal bruises in various stages of healing and a large subdural hematoma, which is a bleed in the brain (think the mom in Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany). She is downstairs now, with half of her cerebral tissue dead and necrosed the other half spotted with ischemia, with a large piece of her skull removed to prevent the swelling from increasing intracranial pressures and cutting off the circulation to the remaining dabs of living brain tissue she has. She is hooked up to a brain monitor that has been flat lined since the OR.

Her mother's partner has been arrested and trial awaits the likely cessation of this young girl's life, as the prognosis is abysmal at best. The astounding part is that the mother is still in the room, I see her walking up and down the hall ways and laughing with friends in the waiting room. She put up a sign on the room's door labeled "My angel!" with a photo of herself and her beautiful daughter.

I am sitting now in call room a few floors up awaiting the start of our night rounds. I don't have anything amazing figured out by witnessing all this. I know I spend a lot of time just staring in from outside that particular room, I know that this sort of thing is not as rare as we wish it was.

()

I love parentheses. I like them especially when used in excess. You are all going to have to get used to that (unless of course you don't want to). While on the subject I would like to acknowledge the fact that I write like a tangential schizo with no respect for proper clause structure and I use commas, like they're, going out of stlye,. It's not that I don't see the error, its just that it seems more the way I speak (and thats what I'm going for).



(you should all do this, its fun)

Just as I thought . . .

Remember a little over a year ago when I thought it would be fun to have a blog? Do you also recall (or see below) references made to the fact that I predicted having little to offer and not really knowing why I felt the need to "blog"? Well I was correct, and was just remembering that this thing existed and couldn't resist making another lame attempt.

I thought, "Hey! I could try this again, but with a twist that might actually be interesting, or at least less embarrassing."

Then I questioned, "Do I have any 'twist' ideas?"

I was then forced to admit, "Nope."

C'est la vie.