Steaming Turd

The Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner was tonight, and there are clips of the festivities on YouTube.

First up, we have President Obama giving some remarks: [Part 1] [Part 2]

And following that is Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman: [Part 1] [Part 2]

Yes, they are both very, very funny, and I highly recommend you watch the whole shebang.

These clips were originally televised on C-SPAN and then posted on teh Intarweb by some random person. C-SPAN has, in the past, had clips of non-Congressional functions removed from YouTube, so get it while it’s hot.

Obamas head to NYC for a night on the town; GOP objects

Okay, so the short of it is that Barack and Michelle Obama headed up to New York City on Saturday (whether that’s today or not, I can’t tell from the article) to have some fun. The RNC complained, essentially saying that Obama shouldn’t be out on the town while the automakers face bankruptcy.

I say, what’s the big deal? Assuming that they’re not frivolously spending taxpayer money on their trip, and instead are picking up the tab themselves*, this should actually be considered a good thing. Increased consumption is what will eventually bring the economy back out of the depths, and every little bit helps. Besides, even the President should be allowed to have some fun every once in a while.

There are a lot of things one might choose to give Obama a hard time about. This probably isn’t one of them.

* There are a lot of hairs to split in the matter of whether or not this was on the taxpayers’ dime, and whether these costs would have been incurred anyway even if they’d stayed in DC. For example, I would expect them to pay for their own show tickets, but does dinner in NYC cost more than the government would pay for the White House staff to fix dinner for them? I don’t know. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt as long as they don’t make a habit of it.

See the scare of the millennium. Coming to a loltheater near you.

Good news - my kidney stone is now safely outside my body and resting comfortably in an appropriate container!

I felt a few sharp stabbing pains earlier today, several seconds apart, and on a hunch, I went to take a whiz a couple minutes thereafter. And there it was, in all its two-millimeter glory. That doesn’t sound all that big, but really, you typically don’t expect anything solid and non-microscopic to come out of that part of you

Went to the local emergency medical center (like a 24-hour urgent care) early this morning. I had gone home early on Thursday and stayed home Friday with some pain that was more on the level of “annoying” rather than “painful”. I woke up at about 5am this morning at “holy crap” levels of pain, but not enough to prevent me from driving myself to the medical center. Turns out it was a kidney stone, two millimeters across, which they verified from finding traces of blood in my urine and checking a subsequent CT scan.

I was a bit surprised at the time with the diagnosis, because most of the pain was in the groin area, and it wasn’t that severe until this morning. While I was lying there waiting for the CT results, though, the pain got worse and moved into the lower back area, and it’s stayed there since then, so I’m convinced.

Still, from the way Dad described his kidney stones, they’ll lay you out flat and have you crying for Mommy. Speaking of Mom, though, she had one as well, and she said hers was a lot less painful. The doctors/nurses told me that it mainly depends on the size of the stone and what part of the kidney it’s located in.

Anyway, they’ve got me on Vicodin for the pain and Flomax to open up all the pee tubes (which is a medical term, I’m sure) and help it pass. The label on the Vicodin says one to two tablets every 6 hours, and I started with one about an hour ago, but that wasn’t really enough. I took a second one about 20 minutes ago, and it’s taking care of most of the pain at the moment. As it turns out, a lot of the pain (mine, anyway) actually comes from muscle spasms as my body tries to force the stone out.

I’m also supposed to drink a lot of fluids, and that’s really probably the big take-home life lesson from this episode. I’m sure I don’t drink nearly enough water. I used to drink a lot of tea - Arizona green tea (with ginseng!) - but I cut that out about a month ago to help reduce my caloric intake. I still get a Dr. Pepper at work every day with lunch, so I’m going to cut that out as well. They say cranberry juice is good for reducing the risk of kidney stones, so maybe I’ll start drinking that instead, if they have any in the cafeteria at work - otherwise, it’ll be good old-fashioned agua.

Here’s hoping it all comes out okay!

On a side note, the title of this post is clearly a Monty Python ik den Holie Grailen reference, but it actually does relate to the post! Those were all answers given to the question, “What also floats in water?” to which the correct answer was a duck. However, those wrong answers are actually the correct answer to “OMG WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE I HAVE IN MY KIDNEY RIGHT NOW??!!!”

Step 1: Read this article.

Step 2: Look at this map.

(For the zero of my readers who don’t know, out of my zero readers total, I work at the USPTO.)

I normally don’t do the blog memes, mainly because they ask a bunch of personal questions and I don’t feel like sharing. But this one was too good to pass up.

An album cover meme!*

Instructions:

Step 1. Visit this Flickr page. Click on the third (randomly generated) image on the page. This is the photo for your album cover. Note: When I did this, I wasn’t able to right-click to save the image. Instead, in Firefox, I went to Tools->Page Info->Media, and scrolled down the list to find the entry for the image, and then clicked “save as” from there.

Step 2. Visit this Wikipedia link. The title of the (randomly generated) article is the name of your band. You may wind up with a title that doesn’t really work well as a band name, like “List of school districts in the Northwest Territories” or something. When this happened to me, I modified the name slightly, while still staying within the spirit of having a randomly-determined band name.

Step 3. Visit this Quotations Page link. Scroll down to the bottom and find the last (randomly generated) quote on the page. The last several words of the quote (enough to make a good album title) is the title of your album.

Step 4. Fire up Photoshop, The GIMP, or your other favorite photo editing program, and make an album cover!

Here’s mine:

Via Bill Corbett over at the Rifftrax Blog.

* I’ll take Anal Bum Cover for $600!

The Hunt for Gollum. Make sure you check out the trailer.

(And that’s an order!)

Yes, I’ve broken the silence after nearly two months to bring you a YouTube link.