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New Look, Same Outlook Surprise! What do you think? I started to write a couple times this new year, and didn't have any gusto. So I figured I'd try a whole new layout and look, something bright and different and new. All the same features are here -- the silliness, the mass media references, the Survivor predictions, the begging for Notify List members, the riffing on Roger Ebert -- just shifted around and made more pretty. Enjoy! Yesterday I finally had my specialist appointment for my chronic throat clearing. I've been waiting since Summer for this, as Dr. Birch is one of those exclusive kind of doctors who want to make sure your disease is well advanced before they'll deign to look at it. Anything less than a festering, gangrenous sore is not worth their time, I guess. On first meeting, I suspected the good Dr. Birch to have as much beside manner as turnip soup, but I later came to believe that he's a rather shy person with not a lot of social skills. A typical interaction: "So, what do you do then?" "Oh, I'm a web designer with the Sporting Goods Company." "Oh." Pause. More pausing. Even more pausing. "Let's look in your nostrils." I guess he knew what he was doing. He read the copious notes Dr. Chu had sent, asked a couple quick questions and got right to work. Check out the ears. Pause to clear out wax blockage from left ear. Check out the ears. Check out mouth. Check out nostrils. Feel for bumps on the throat. Stick nozzle in right nostril and spray cold liquid in while saying, "Let's freeze that up, shall we?" Pardon? Before I can say anything, he's out the door, with the words "I'll be right back." I've had various kinds of anesthesia before -- Injections for dental work, the 'happy nose', general knockout drugs for my hernia operation -- but nothing compares to the weird feeling of having your nose go numb from the inside out. Just so you know. A side effect of having your nostril frozen is that, despite the lack of feeling, you suddenly become very aware of every booger in your nose. I couldn't feel my nostril, but I sure could feel everything else in there. Yick. Ten minutes pass (with the freezing fluid dripping down into my throat) and he's back. He pulls out a long, thin tube and chirpily announces, "Let's stick this up your nose and have a look!" I tell you, that was the happiest I heard him all day. I see there as being two reactions to someone telling you they were going to stick a fiber-optic camera up your nose and down into your throat. I chose the latter. "Can I watch?" That caught him by surprise. I guess most people aren't interested in the inner topography of their nostrils. I was kind of curious, plus there was the benefit of being able to see what was happening. I fully expected that having an endoscopic examination of this kind would involve pokings and proddings of a kind I've never felt before (and I was correct in that prediction). Seeing what he was doing, and where in my body the scope was would keep me from getting freaked out. For the most part it worked. After recovering from his shock at such a request, he grinned and hooked the endoscope up to a television monitor. As he inserted the tube, I was graced with a quick shot of a forest of nose hair, followed by a wet, slimy tube. Under the extreme magnification and bright light, nasal mucus resembles green-glow-in-the-dark silly putty. Poking and twisting ensued, and I felt the tube slipping down towards my throat. On the screen, my larynx appeared, snapping open and shut as I breathed. Kinda neat actually. Here, take a look. (No, that one's not mine.) He examined it, having me say 'Eeeee' over and over, and having me occasionally swallow to clear off the lens. There was a tense moment when I swallowed and the scope must have been in a tender spot, making my choke and cough. He was cool, and slid the tube up far enough for me to relax, before removing it completely. Other than an extremely raw feeling in my sinus (like when you have a cold and have been blowing your nose all day) I had no lingering effects of the scope. The prognosis was good. No funny growths or abnormalities or anything. He adjusted my medication schedule so I'd take my reflux drugs before bedtime, advised me to not eat after dinner (hah!) and to jack the head of my bed up six inches (double hah!). He also gave me some samples of a corticosteroid nasal spray to clear up my Rhinitis, which is probably a contributing factor. Funny thing right at the end. Here's the last couple things he said to me as he wrote on a prescription pad and handed it over. "Take your (acid medication) two hours before bed. Use the spray once a day, with two sprays in each nostril. And I want you to take a look at this website and give me your thoughts." Confused, I took the slip, expecting that it was a site relating to my condition that he wanted me to read up on. Nope. It was the site for his wife's travel agency. He wanted some free web advice.
The Surreal Life: So absurd it's kinda funny. Seven 'celebrities' stuck in one house together, doing groceries, taking brownies to their new neighbors... I can't explain why it works for me. It just does. Oh, and Corey Feldman? Complete tool. High School Reunion: I watch it with a cringe and a giggle, because I recognize each of those people in my old high school peers. The jock, the popular girl, the nerd... It hits real close to home, that's for sure. Oh, and Dan Barbato? Complete tool. Escape From Experiment Island: A combination of Survivor and Junkyard Wars. Without all the politics and fighting of Survivor. Or the neat original designs of Junkyard Wars. So, like without pretty much the stuff that made the original shows good to watch. Oh, and the host? Whose name I totally missed and can't fin anywhere on the TLC website? Complete tool. Celebrity Mole: Just like every other season of this cool show, except without Anderson Cooper, and with Kathy Griffin. Oh, and Stephen Baldwin? Go ahead and guess.
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I've
been watching a lot of reality shows lately. Here are my thoughts: