Eleven incredible facts that will change the way you blah blah blah.

1. Pizza Hut was founded closer to Cleopatra's lifetime than to the era of the construction of the pyramids.

I mean, this stands to reason.  We've all seen pictures of Cleopatra lounging around on some boat on the Nile, floating past the pyramids, so clearly they already existed by the time she came on the scene.  Mind you, it was in a movie.  Probably fucking Kubrick, faking Egyptian history just like he faked the moon landings.

2. More pictures are taken today of Justin Beiber than were taken of Justin Beiber in the whole of the 18th century.

Again, pretty obvious.  Justin Beiber was only born in 2008 so not many photographs of him COULD be taken in the 18th century. Especially since photography wasn't invented until the 19th century. Duh. Sub-prime crisis notwithstanding.

3. The gap between the invention of the written word and the very first tweet was a mere 5200 years.

Around 3200 BC, the Sumerians discovered that by scratching their names into wet concrete they could eternally preserve their ill-fated teenage romances in the sidewalk outside their houses.  Then in 1976 Tim Berners-Lee invented Al Gore and tweeted "Watson, come in here, I need you. LOL!!!" using his fax machine. This EXPONENTIAL development in communication was mostly funded by the military - loose lips sink ships?!

4. The average smart phone of today contains more explosive power than the Saturn V rocket than lifted Stanley Kubrick into space.

Point that browser to AddisonMashley.com - the website that lets you hook up with hot chefs suffering from endocrine disorders.  Conversely, I pointed my Saturn V there and it just crashed.

5. George Washington, first president of the United States, despite being "Father Of The Nation", had no offspring.

That is, none I could track down with a cursory reading of Wikipedia.  Next time I should look at the page about George Washington I guess.

6. Egypt's Sphinx was largely built with the aid of woolly mammoths.

Really, it's true.  At least it should be.  It would explain the nose. Or not, I suppose.

7. France was using the guillotine when Star Wars was released.

Although it was called "La Guerre Des Etoiles", which literally translated means something like, "I Played The Guitar On The Toilet", perhaps explaining the lingering popularity of the guillotine. Nevertheless, for a few months in 1977, it became fashionable among those about to be decapitated to say, "If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

8. My daughter is literally older than sliced bread.

The Hatchling is five.  My bread was baked just last weekend.  No comparison.  But incredible to think about, really, when you consider that before sliced bread was invented, a sandwich could only be made by layering two whole loaves on top of each other, which was almost impossible to eat, moreso if you were only five.

9. If you were born in 1800, the world population has septunkled since your birth.

The population of Earth has increased from 1 billion to 7 billion in that time. This figure, however, doesn't take into account the precipitous crash in the world population of Tyrannosaurus Rex over the same time.  Tragically, by the dawn of the 21st century, less than 1000 T-Rexes were alive in the wild.  

10. There are whales alive today that have never read Moby Dick.

Despite some bowhead whales living off the coast of Alaska being up to 200 years old, and thus having had plenty of time to read Moby Dick, especially when you consider that almost none of them work full-time and in fact receive substantial government hand-outs so don't exactly have many demands on their time, researchers estimate that the majority of whales derive their at-best cursory knowledge of Moby Dick from the 1980's animated children's TV show, Star Blazers, in which the sunken WW2 battleship Yamato is converted to a starship and sent off on a desperate mission to save the earth - a fact which probably tells you more about whales than the aforementioned TV show does about Moby Dick.  Let's see how they do with Yann Martel.

11. If all of this year was represented by the Mesozoic Era, Easter would have been at the end of the Triassic.

200 million years is a long time between chocolate eggs, mass-extinction or not.

Once again, German has an unexpectedly apt word for what you have just experienced

Blutschlauchüberraschung (n.) - A feeling of wonder, as that elicited when emptying your pockets upon arriving home after an evening at work only to unexpectedly find a tube of blood, unlabelled, whose origin you do not recall.

German is an incredibly versatile language

Manfraurektumverwirrung (n.) - The disorientation felt by the medical examiner during a rectal exam when they realize that the man's rectum feels much more like a woman's rectum because the man has had a total prostatectomy so there is no anterior firmness, so for a brief moment the doctor is concerned that they have made a terrible mistake and is fact examining the wrong patient.

There's a word in German for that too

Stauchenhefeextrakttraummüdigkeit (n.) - The overwhelming exhaustion experienced after you see a TV news bulletin saying your sister-in-law died from eating expired Vegemite only hours after winning a Commonwealth Games gold medal in freestyle swimming, and you call your brother in great distress only to be informed that it is all an elaborate hoax masterminded by Roy Slaven and HG Nelson, and you can barely cope with the roller-coaster ride of emotion when you suddenly wake up and it was all a dream and you're already late for work.

Alternative pain scales

Fahrenheit Pain Scale:
If your pain was a number between 32 and 212, where 32 is no pain at all and 212 is the worst pain you've ever had, what would it be right now?

Complex Pain Scale:
If your pain was a number with a magnitude less than or equal to 1, where 1 is the worst pain you've ever had, and i is defined as the square root of an immense sense of well-being and fulfillment, what would its magnitude and phase be right now?

Vintner's Pain Scale:
If your pain was a volume of wine, such as a gallon, rundlet, barrel, tierce, hogshead, puncheon, tertian, pipe, butt, or a tun, where a tun would be the worst pain you've ever felt, how much wine would it be right now?

Sagan's Pain Scale:
If your pain was a number between 1 and billions and billions, where billions and billions was the worst pain you've ever had, what would it be right now?

Hertzsprung-Russell Pain Scale:
If your pain was a letter from the sequence M, K, G, F, A, B, O where O would be hot, luminous pain radiating in the ultraviolet, what would your pain be right now?

There's a word for it in German

Zehennagelschnurrbartangst (n.) - The experience of, having hours earlier extracted an infected ingrown toenail from a patient, smelling the pus again, and worrying that perhaps some of it has squirted up onto your moustache without your knowledge.

No Known Drug Allergies

One day, when I have a bit more spare time, I'm going invent a medication which could be plausibly abbreviated NKDA, such as norketodopamine. (Does that name even make sense? Don't ask me, I'm a idiot blogger not a biochemist. But if you can have owlbears, I can have this.)

Then I will discover that it is not only therapeutically vital for the treatment of depression, acne, obesity, ischaemic heart disease, or some other such common condition, but also lethal if treatment is abruptly ceased.

And all over the world, pharmacists will have conniptions because patients will be bringing in prescriptions for norketodopamine re-supply, but the script will also have written, in the little box for Allergies/Adverse Reactions:

(Wait for it)

(You can see it coming, can't you?)

NKDA

That will be briefly amusing for me as I lounge on my Throne Of Spleens, contemplating my empire and watching the dancing girls.

Dice man

Necessity is the mother of invention.  And boredom is the father.

Having to do solo ward rounds on the weekend is pretty easy.  Most patients don't need radical changes of plan over the weekend, and in any case the services often just aren't there anyway.  So most of the time you can make sure that nothing disastrous has happened and write, "Continue current management" as the plan.  All well and good.

But last year I was having to lead lots of ward rounds with me, the intern, and a med student.  My registrar had been off sick a fair bit and two mornings a week she was in theatre so I was "in charge" those days too. There's only so many days in a row that you can stall and do nothing before even the med student starts to look at you funny and (presumably) wonder if they couldn't do a better job themselves.  (I know this because I was a med student two years ago and frankly, the residents then were two-bit dumbo nothings. Not like now.)

So I needed some means of coming up clinical management plans despite not actually knowing anything.  (Necessity).  And one afternoon I found myself with 10 spare minutes while waiting for a phone call.  (Boredom).  Invention!

Presenting PTR's Patented Platonic Prismatic Planning Pthing:

I took one of the blue rubber cubes that come with ABG syringes.  On each of the six sides I wrote a clinical plan.  When you find yourself needing a quick change of direction in management, simply roll the dice and do as it says.  Here's a quick guide and accompanying commentary:

1. ICU.  You should call ICU and ask them to review the patient.  All patients benefit from an ICU review.  Even if they are completely clinically stable, ICU loves to be called so they get the chance to review patients before they get really sick.  It gives them something to aim for.
2. Discharge.  Everyone hates to be in hospital.  Everyone has to go home sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint?
3. Psych.  "You don't have to be crazy to be a patient here, but it helps!"  People who are sick in hospital often feel sad or withdrawn.  It's a reasonable reaction to a significant stressor.  But who is to say where the dividing line is between hidden relief at missing a day of work and crippling depression with suicidal ideation? Who is to say where the line is between an intermittently irreverent blog and complete psychotic breakdown?  A psychiatry registrar would love to get involved.
4. Nursing home placement.  Everyone hates to be in hospital.  Everyone has to get old sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint?
5. CTPA.  A honking great CT scan of the chest with plenty of radiation and some intravenous contrast to boot.  All to rule out some speculative nonsense diagnosis which was never going to be true anyway.  CTPAs are a great way to buy yourself extra time.  The radiology registrars need the practise, and for added fun you can remove the patient's IV line before the test so the radiologists can keep up their clinical skills by reinserting it themselves.
6. Palliative care.  Everyone hates to be in hospital. Everyone has to die sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint? 

Try it out yourself and let me know how it works out.  I'm thinking of developing a similar one for use in the Emergency Department so I'd love to get your ideas.

Potato Varieties for Fun and Profit

The Désirée is a red-skinned main crop potato originally bred in the Netherlands in 1962. It has yellow flesh with a distinctive flavour and is a favourite with allotment-holders because of its resistance to drought, and is fairly resistant to disease. It is a versatile, fairly waxy variety which is firm and holds its shape and useful for all methods of cooking; from roasting to mashing and salads.

The Russet Burbank potato is a large potato with dark brown skin and few eyes. Its flesh is white, dry, and mealy, and it is good for baking, mashing, and french fries. It is a common and popular potato. Russet potato came to headlines in 2014 when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented a pair of russet potatoes to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kerry stated that the gift was in reference to a previous conversation and was not motivated by any hidden meaning or metaphor.

The Robertson Emperor is a grandiose, elaborate potato.  It has a floury, mealy flesh which is not well suited to boiling or steaming.  However, when triple roasted in duck fat and rubbed on the inside of a silver tureen, it is capable of raising even the most tarnished tableware to a brilliant shine.

The Blackroot Honeycrown is a traditional Iberian throwing potato.  Its rough and pitted skin affords an excellent grip to the thrower but sacrifices the control thus gained for raw speed of delivery due to the aerodynamic drag.  Legend has it that the champion Honeycrown tosser Anante Tescolenes will one day return to earth on a golden blimp to revive the lost art of "Acuraverio", or flinging the potato with such violence that it spontaneously self-exfoliates and arrives at the target entirely devoid of skin.

The Cheerful Florence was bred in 1930's New Jersey in an attempt to lighten the lives of the poor slum-folk of Newark.  When immersed in water to cook, the steam escaping from its eyes forms bubbles which, to a sufficiently imaginative or desperate listener, seem to tap out of the rhythm of some of Cole Porter's lesser known Broadway show tunes.  It was not a popular success and is believed to be extinct.

Doctor Starlight's Opal Fritter is a disappointing potato.  Blandly flavoured, mushy fleshed, smelling faintly of used cat litter, and drab grey in colour, it is nevertheless a common entrant in the North American Tuber Fancy shows since 1992 due to the commercial clout of Monsanto which continues to heavily subsidize the Opal Fritter, whose patent rights they acquired in mysterious circumstances during an Egyptian river cruise with representatives of the Vatican.  Approximately 1 in every 2 million Opal Fritters will contain a skin lesion resembling Gene Wilder.  These rare specimens are highly prized among members of Gene Wilder's family.

The Dragonclaw Dragontalon Dragonlady Katana Griffonclaw Axekiller is a good mashing potato but is surprisingly vulnerable to frosty weather.  It grows well in drier, well-drained soils and will flourish with regular top ups of potash and a little TLC to keep it free from pests.

Suburban dictionary

Matticus Finch recently left a wonderful list of words for me to use in future requests for radiography. Unfortunately I didn't know what most of the words meant. And if I, the Elderly Boy Genius, am flummoxed and bamboozled, what hope is there for you Readers, the mere dross of humanity?

To assist you, to educate you, to lift you up from the gutter, I have prepared some definitions of those words. I urge you, nay - instruct you - to use them every day until they enter common parlance in your everyday milieu, or somebody punches you in the face. Either way, mankind will be better off.

Avaunt - A jaunty cry given when vaulting over a privet hedge, garden setting, or pile of croquet mallets. "With a lusty avaunt, he disappeared over the gunwhales and was not seen again."

Anon - A infeasibly small quantity of an exotic ingredient required to make a particular recipe, which is only obtainable in amounts large enough to make several thousand serves. "Then, add 2 anons of strawberry seeds."

Ordure - An instruction that is especially burdensome to fulfill. "He ordured me to clean every toilet on the ward."

Eftsoons - The easterly tropical storms seldom seen these days in Adelaide. "We re-planted the garden in anticipation of a good eftsoon drenching, but everything just dried up and died."

Marmoreal - Of, or pertaining to, the marmot, which may or may not be a type of groundhog. "Your new haircut is somewhat marmoreal."

Thole - (derogatory) the anus. "Get back to work or I'll kick you in your thole."

Betimes - Indicative of an indeterminate length of time that has expired since one began playing the one-armed bandits. "I've wet my pants and there's a new Prime Minister betimes."

Somatic - Partially automated. "My car won't go into fourth gear so it's somatic at best."

Betwixt - The loneliness felt when eating an entire chocolate bar whose key advertising feature is the ability to be easily broken and shared between friends. "I hurriedly gobbled the whole thing up then sat there in front of the vending machine feeling betwixt for the next half hour."

Evisceration - The act of forcibly removing someone from their place of residence. "If full restitution for unpaid rent is not made by the first of next month, evisceration proceedings will commence."

Forsooth - A dental abscess. "I han't hum in do work doday coth I hab a forsooth."

Howbeit - Grammatical term for the long compound words in languages such as German. "Did you hear about Jeff? He dislocated his jaw on a particularly nasty howbeit!"

I did it for you

youTube.com is an amazing site.  Not only does it contain hilarious videos of cats, it also enables you to see children falling off bicycles.  Before youTube I used to have to fling cats at children on bicycles, but no longer.  It's win/Win/WIN!  Part of its genius is the name - it starts with "you" so it makes everyone feels like it's relevant.  The principle could be used to start up a bunch of other websites which I think could end up being just as big.  Here's a partial list - feel free to register and develop them yourself - I just don't have the time to give them all that they deserve.

youThyroid.com - This site would be handy for people to upload pictures of their goitres or of their Mel Brooks googly eyes.  They could trade stories about their pretibial mixoedema, and swap tips on how to use the internet effectively despite a severe tremor and a heart rate of 160.

youVolaemia.com - This site would be dedicated to enabling people to share hints, tips and tricks to do with their fluid balance.  How to best assess your jugular venous pressure.  The controversy over mucus membranes.  Skin turgor and the elderly.  The osmolality conspiracy.

youRopeanUnion.com - A fan site for European communalists of all stripes!

youClideanGeometry.com - Do your external angles sum to 360 degrees?  This could be the site for you!  Or perhaps that's just hyperbole.

youKaryote.com - Too long have plants and fungi been excluded from the internet.  This site would serve as a portal for all organisms with nuclei.

youPhemism.com - This site would have a lot of the you-know-what, eh!  Eh!  Especially for you-know-who!

youLersNameIsPronouncedOilerNotYoulerSoThisJokeDoesntWork.com - A site for looking up the names of dead mathematicians and the mispronunciations thereof.

Infographic

Medical magic

If medicine was a role-playing game, it would need some sweet magic items for us players to hunt.  Here are some suggestions:

• Gloves Of Probing - these mighty gauntlets, when donned, will magically extend from the finger-tips to the shoulders of any basically human-sized doctor.  They automatically exude a slippery lubricant which allow the user to probe into any orifice to palpate within, up to a depth of twice the user's height.  The lubricant makes it impossible for the wearer to manipulate hand-held items.
• Pager Of Silence - this small black box from the dawn of time bears a powerful enchantment which enables it to be perpetually silent and never emit the slightest noise, no many how desperately someone is trying to contact the user.  Legend has it that only registrars can use the Pager Of Silence without suffering the effects of a deadly curse.
• PTR's Everfull Cracker Box - no matter how many times crackers are taken from this box, somehow it is always full the next time someone looks within.  This item only works when you are not rostered on to take advantage of it.  More specifically, it will never work between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m.
• Stethoscope +5 - this mystical stethoscope imbues the wearer with the ability to distinguish between crackles (fine and coarse), crepitations, rhonchi, rales, wheeze, sneeze, cough, choke, stridor, and blitzen.  This item is totally ineffective if the patient is armoured with Blubber Of Concealment.
• Roster of Homecoming - this patient roster with attached list of your jobs is enchanted to fly back to its home in your pocket when a magic word is spoken.  The enchantment is effective against being left beside the ward computer, on the patient's bed, in the doctors' common room, in the cafeteria, in your car, in the operating theatre, or any other location where rosters may be mislaid.  If the magic word is spoken whilst the roster is already in the user's pocket, the roster will attempt to move to the other pocket, causing the user's pants to twist around back to front, causing a -4 penalty to hit in combat and automatic failure of any seduction attempts.

Any other suggestions?

A culinary proposal

Do any of you own a cafe or restaurant? Here's a tip: instead of having a cheese platter on the menu, have a “cheese splatter". It sounds much more hedonistic and indulgent.

Functional anatomy of the tongue

The muscles of the tongue can be divided into two groups, extrinsic and intrinsic.

The extrinsic muscles are named for their bony attachments.  Their function is to control the position of the tongue within the oral cavity.  The extrinsic muscles are:

1. Genioglossus, which attaches to the mental prominence of the mandible and acts to protrude the tongue,
2. Hyoglossus, which attaches to the hyoid bone and acts to depress and retract the tongue,
3. Styloglossus, which attaches to the old-school stylus and acts to scratch up some wicked beats,
4. Cranioglossus, which attaches to the head-bone, and acts in amateur local theatre.

The intrinsic muscles of the tongue have no bony attachments and are named for their function, which is to modify the political affiliations of the tongue.  The intrinsic muscles are:

1. Tyrannoglossus, which acts to increase centralized control of government,
2. Populoglossus, which acts to decrease centralized control of government,
3. Socioglossus, which acts to move to the tongue to the Left,
4. Conservatoglossus, which acts to move the tongue to the Right, particularly in New South Wales.

The innervation of the tongue is complex.  Motor control of the tongue is primarily via the 59th cranial nerve, the Diagonal Tongular Nerve (CN LIX).  Sensory afferent fibres from the anterior 2/3 of the tongue, carrying gustatory sensation for salt, sour and umami, course westwards along the state boundary, evading authorities for weeks before holing up in an abandoned farmhouse and dying in a shootout at the end of a protracted siege.  Sensory afferent fibres from the posterior 1/3 of the tongue, carrying gustatory sensation for sweetness, bitterness and elbo cheese, join the lingual nerve, before diverging acrimoniously and writing a tell-all memoir.

Vascular supply to the tongue is via the lingual artery, a branch of the external carotid artery, which is a branch of the carotid artery, being the twelfth exit from the Southern Expressway, but only between the hours of 2pm and 1am.  Venous drainage occurs in the reverse direction between 2am and 1pm.  This schedule is inverted on weekends and public holidays when the tongue is expected to be more active in the evening.

Urban legends

The Candyman
Legend:  If you look at your reflection and say "Candyman" five times, he will appear and brutally murder you.
Status: False.  This is actually the plot of a 1992 slasher film.

The Handyman
Legend: If you look at your reflection and say "Handyman" five times, he will appear and unblock your drains.
Status: False.  There is no way to summon a handyman when you need one.

The Randyman
Legend: If you look at your reflection and say "Randyman" five times, a sexually aroused man will appear.
Status: True.  But only if you're a highly narcissistic adult male.

Clinical audit audit audit

Introduction
Although most medical students are accustomed to producing audits, few are used to audit auditing.  Thus, this audit audit audit audits audit audits to measure their compliance with the protocol suggested by the Trans-Tasman Council of Amateur Humorists (TTCAH) and makes recommendations to improve the audit auditing process.

Method
Ethics Approval
Ethics approval was sought for the audit audit audit because of the high likelihood of two adverse events:

1. That those exposed would find it so unutterably funny that they might bust some kind of internal valve from laughing so hard.
2. That those exposed would find it so unutterably tiresome that they might lapse into a narcoleptic coma and miss their next dental appointment.

The Ethics And Human Research Committee advised that ethics approval would not be granted for such diabolically try-hard self-deprecation as contained in this sentence and thus the final audit audit audit would contain no such sentences. Otherwise they said it would be fine.

Selection of audit audits
The auditor briefly considered a range of semi-humorous methods that may have been employed to find and select audit audits before deciding that it was getting reasonably late and he wanted to get on with the main business of making stupid jokes so he would just present the selected audit audit for audit as a fait accompli with a white wine sauce and simply post a link to it.  (LINK)

Analysis of audit audits
The selected audit audit was briefly reviewed to refresh my memory and some suitable categories were invented in order to produce a few graphs that were relevant to the audit audit.  These, coincidentally, are also identified in the TTCAH protocol for audit audits as being both necessary and sufficient for a late night blog post stretching one simple idea out to several hundred words, to wit:

1. Snappy title
2. Thin veneer of respectability
3. Classical allusions that are actually totally bogus
4. Leaving the door open for a sequel just in case it works this time.

Results
The audit audit audit revealed that the audit audit had been undertaken with due regard for TTCAH processes.  This is clearly illustrated by the following charts:

 Snappy title - check!

Thin veneer of respectability - check!

Classical allusions - check!

Sequel - check!

Recommendations

1. That I go to bed soon.
2. Bacon and cheese toastie.
3. More charts.
4. Sell! Sell! Sell!
5. Shift down a gear once you hit 2000 rpm.  This is also true of driving.
6. Winning the Victoria Cross twice.
7. Banana (serving suggestion).

Clinical audit audit

Introduction
As part of the final year of the medical degree at this Fine University, students are required to complete a clinical audit.  This audit examines the adherence of the auditors to the auditing protocol and makes recommendations to improve the auditing process.

Method
Ethics approval
Since this audit was conducted only upon the auditors self and was entered into voluntarily, no ethics committee approval was sought or, therefore, granted.

Selection of audits
A retrospective selection of all audits undertaken by the auditor during the 2011 was performed.  The auditor's email account and hard drive were searched for all files containing the words "audit", "overdue", "panic" and "apathy".  This resulted in the retrieval of several thousand files which would be impractical to search by hand, so they were further searched for the tags "piece of shit".  One record was retrieved, a clinical audit recently submitted by the auditor.

Analysis of audits
The audit was examined for the following key items, drawn from the guidelines to auditing published by the International Lazy Students and Bullshit Artists Association (ILSBAA):

1. Excessive verbosity clearly intended to boost word count.
2. References farmed from unreliable online sources such as Wikipedia.
3. Formatting and structure plagiarized from example audits provided to students.
4. Meaningless recommendations.
5. Precision in statistical calculation used to distract from data collection flaws.

Results
For each audit audited, a high degree of adherence to the ILSBAA protocol was found, as shown in the charts 1 through 5 below:

Discussion
Notwithstanding the recent episode where the auditors audit was submitted late for no reason other than his inability to submit the audit on time, the auditor found that the audit was conducted largely in accordance with the ILSBAA protocol, or else in a sleep-deprived stupor, which is also an approved method of production of student audits.  Acute observers may question why confidence intervals were not calculated and quoted above, to which the audit auditor may only quote Demosthenes in the Palladium when he was stabbed in the Ides by the Emperor Octagon: "Auditor, audit thyself".  Whilst the relevance, and indeed the veracity of this quote are lost in the dawn of time, it cannot be denied that they most usefully added some sorely needed bulk to this paragraph and furthermore avoided it being a one-joke section, albeit at the expense of some rather heavy-handed surrealism.

Conclusion
It is recommended:

1. That further audits by this auditor be audited to determine adherence to the ILSBAA protocol.
2. That this audit audit be audited.
3. That the audit audit audit be audited in order to complete the third repetition really needed to hammer the point home.
4. That you send money now.
5. That you read Dune by Frank Herbert.  It's full on shit, man.

Courage

Sometimes an opportunity to make a stupid joke arises and you just have to seize it.  This morning I was standing in the room with a patient, her mother, the consultant, two registrars, an intern, and four other medical students.  We were discussing animal vectors of infectious enteritis.

Consultant

So, PTR, what type of animal is a frequent carrier of salmonella?

PTR

Salmon?

He laughed.  In a strained, God-help-me kind of way.  I was so proud of myself for not wussing out. (For the record, the correct answer is "reptiles".  So not only are Galapagos tortoises immune to ouabain, they are also dangerous to kiss.)

Going with the flow

Each night, as I lift the Hatchling from her bath and place her gently in her mother's arms where she is wrapped in a thick white fluffy towel to soak up the water and keep her from the cold, I am accustomed to shouting out, "No prisoners!  No prisoners!"  It's just the way I roll.

A few days ago I was surprised when my Smaller Half asked me why I did it.  Naturally enough I told her that I was channelling Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.  I'd been assuming for several months now that she knew what I was referring to.  It turns out she had no idea and thought it was just best to go along with it unquestioningly in order to stop me from becoming even more deranged.