Patrick Says

I have two children. I love them, but it’s time to say goodbye to my vas deferens. I would like to ’shoot blanks’. I want to be done done with this. This is my story…

Word of mouth is a very popular method of finding a doctor. I asked my friend’s husband who he used for his vasectomy. He gave me the name of his doctor. Let’s call him Dr. Hatenbad. I called to make an appointment and two weeks later, I’m in his waiting room. I fell asleep twice waiting for the doctor. Forty-five minutes past my appointment time, I approach the window. I’m told Dr. Hatenbad is in surgery that ran late and is on his way. Neat, but not entirely unexpected.

An hour after my scheduled appointment, I’m led back to the office with Dr. Hatenbad. I’ve met a lot of dull people, but this guy is amazing. He has the personality of a dead fish. He looks at me, maybe, twice. At some point, you’re going to take a big needle and stick it in my balls. You can least make some eye contact.

He informs me that the only hospital he can do the procedure in is in the north county area. I live 20 miles south of the city, so this will be a good long drive with my testicles in a sling. The reason? Catholic hospitals won’t do vasectomies. I fell out of my chair laughing so hard. How pompous! You have to love religion.

He asks if I’ve read the literature I was given in the waiting room. Blank stare from me. He asks again. Same blank stare. He opens the door and walks out into the common area (not the patient area) and verbally berates an employee for not giving me the pamphlet…in front of the other employees.

In my own job, I firmly believe if you have a problem with something I did, tell me privately. Don’t make me look like an idiot in front of my coworkers. He was such a douche I kept waiting for him to pee in a corner or maybe hump a desk to establish his ‘alpha male’ status. Sadly, he did neither.

We finished the appointment and I left to schedule the surgery. The woman taking my surgical appointment was curt and a little rude. Maybe she was angry about the earlier berating too. Who knows. I scheduled surgery and left. Outside in the waiting room, I made a note to cancel that appointment when I got home.

These people are jerks…time to find a new doctor.

Yes, it’s a Turkey Day post!

So, I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and for the life of me, I swear they used to actually have a parade. All I saw was sixty minutes of advertising for Broadway shows and NBC shows intermingled with commercials. Neat.

Also, on the subject of the Thanksgiving Day Parade, what kind of bird is Big Bird? (There’s a segue in there, trust me.) Is he supposed to be a canary? What is he? This just started bugging me today. I’ve been watching Big Bird for over 30 years and I never even thought to question it. Go figure.

Okay, people. Go eat some turkey. And grab me a slice of the cranberry shaped like a can…that’s my favorite.

I haven’t been posting lately.

It’s not for the reason you would probably suspect. It’s not for lack of stuff to talk about. I want to rant about Congressman Rangel’s stupid draft idea, about that rascist Michael Richards and I have a five-part series about the quest for my vasectomy called ‘Goodbye Live Semen Load’ (as hummed to Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’…okay, maybe a new title for that series. But I’ve got the subjects.

No. It’s because I’m afraid I don’t have the skill. In my head, I’m this amazing writer. But then I type this stuff out and I read it and I think…ugh. I read a lot of blogs and I marvel weekly at Boob’s blog. It’s depressing because it seems so natural coming from her pen…keyboard…whatever. And I’m over here struggling to just not sound like an idiot.

The truth is I’m a great editor. I love taking a red pen to my co-workers documents. They bring them to me because I am good at fixing things that are broken or sprucing up a tired letter. But I question my own ability to create a story. And that’s just my problem…

So while searching the Internet for Veggie Tales, I stumbled across an incredible story. In the 1940’s, there was a chicken who survived getting his head cut off. That’s not a misprint…his head was cut off! He lived for 18 months without a head and even went on a road show. At the height of his popularity, he was earning $4,500 a month. That is a lot of cash in the 40’s (heck, even today that’s not bad). Read the full story of Mike the Headless Chicken over at Wikipedia.

So back to the Veggie Tales. My son was watching the story of Esther as played out by the Veggie Tales. I remarked to my wife and friend that Esther was kind of hot for a vegetable. My wife asked if it was because of the hair dangling in her face. I said I wasn’t sure. In closing I muttered, ‘now that’s a vilf.’ My wife and my friend just shook their heads.

You be the judge…

Today was a great day:

• The Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and may well take the Senate (scratch that, took the Senate).
• Amendment 2 passed here in Missouri. The place I work for was pushing for it and I supported it as well.
• Britney Spears is divorcing Kevin Federline (see sidebar for link).

It was a great day.

This video was Britney’s high point. Time to mount that comeback, Britney.
We could use some decent throwaway pop. Save us from Fergie.