Queens, Kings, Jacks, and Things

Queens - I have been listening to one of my old favorites, Queens of the Stone Age. Back in the day, I was a big fan of their albums "Songs for the Deaf" (which has a real song for actual deaf on it, which is amazing - you need to hear it to believe it) and "Era Vulgaris". Right now though, I am listening to "Lullabies to Paralyze", which is an excellent album. The thing about QOTSA is that Josh Homme is a mad genius, so their stuff is weird by any measure, but also, if you just let it happen, you start to understand it, and the absolute genius of it.

Kings - I have been watching the inimitable "Game of Thrones" for the last couple of months, and yesterday I watched the season 1 conclusion. I have to say that this is one of those shows that, I think, will be timeless. The only comparable show in terms of sheer genius is "Battlestar Galactica" (the reboot, not the 70's show). Ahh me... glad to see a new show that kills it every time.

Jacks - Jack is what I have now that my life is in total chaos. Secondaries are coming in (from 2 schools so far), and I am getting ready to quit my Job (that's pronounced like the Arrested Development character, which actually is another sick show...), and I am trying to find new jobs. But you know what, this is all voluntary. If I wanted to go use my masters degree and make a bunch of money, I would do things totally differently. But that's not the goal. I want to go to med school dammit! So it's worth it :)

Things - Today I am spending my time cutting 3cm x 3cm blocks of agar in to slices. 20 microns at a time. Over and over again. Whilst standing up. Hunching over. All day. Epic Win.

Math for Pre-Meds: Exciting 4th Edition!

[Expand unless you are a peeping tom looking at this through magnifying binoculars}

So my AMCAS and AACOMAS are submitted, and now I wait for them to be certified and sent out to schools. Then, after the schools have received my primary application, they send me a secondary application to fill out. And guess what happens then? That's right kids! I bend over and say, "Please sir, may I have another?" and send them $100. Each. On top of the $1000 I already spent on the primary applications. Let's do the math kids!

$1000 primary app fee + ($100 secondary app fee x 23 MD schools) + ($100 (or more?) x 4 DO schools) = Axl on the streets blowing people for half a pastrami sandwich.

Ugh...anyways, it is what it is I guess. July is going to suuck. Hate secondaries.

We gonna pump - you up!

I am a Conan fan. He's a hilarious dude, and the commencement speech that he just made at Dartmouth has gone viral due to its hilarity. I used to watch his late night show all the time in college, when I never went to sleep before 3am. Good times.

But I don't want to look like him. He looks like a frog that got stretched out and then someone pumped his head full of carrot juice. God bless Conan, but I don't want to look like a ganglesloth (which, by the way was the name of my first band in high school. Actually it was "Hey Ganglesloth, That's My Bike).

I am also a Conan fan. He's a jacked, badass dude who kills everything and is so hardcore and metal that he speaks his own barely-intelligble barbarian language. And he has a big sword. And long hair. He is basically super-metal. (On a side-note, I used to have long-ass metal hair that I cut right before college graduation...which made me sad. I'm growing my hair out again, but I am doing it suuuper-slowly so that my woman doesn't notice. One day, it'll suddenly be down past my man-pecs, and she'll be like "WTF!?", and I'll be like "Yeah, you like that.")

(Then she'll be like "dumped")...

And I want to look like him. Maybe slightly less freaky, but you know, definitely more like Conan the Barbarian than Conan the Comedian. On a scale between O'Conan and Das Conan, I am definitely 5 parts O'Conan and 1 part Das Conan, so if we coud flip that ratio, that would be good. To that end, I've been lifting iron like Ruthenium... and that was a periodic table joke... that I'm not real proud of.

I don't enjoy pumping iron really because it kiiind of sucks, but whatever...I'll just keep that Conan picture on the wall next to the bathroom mirror. Haha- sorry Conan, I do love you though :) Lovely gams!

Another one bites my dust!

AMCAS submitted wooooooo! Going to submit AACOMAS this weekend woooooo!



Everybody party like it's 1999!

Fat Cats and Pants Piles (or, The Woman Behind the Curtain)

Getting in to med school can be a Sisyphean task. Well actually, I suppose it's more Atlasean than Sisyphean since, eventually, people DO get in to med school...it's just really hard.

Either way, unlike Atlas or Sisyphus, one does not go it alone if one can help it. Yes sir, there are many people behind the scenes that make the Axl show run as smoothly as it does. Although I have the ripped physique and bulging-ass muscles to hold the world on my shoulders (see photo, left), there is a cast of little people that ought to be grudgingly acknowledged. Among them are my brother Slash who keeps me honest, my mother Amber who keeps me abreast of the latest health hazards ("Why are you talking to me!? Quit using your cell phone!" [click]), and my father Father who keeps me off the streets when the royal coffers run dry (i.e. med school apps time).

But I must acknowledge two particular shots of anabolic steroids that keep my muscles bulgey and my heart mooshy:

1)Bobbins Chookums Magellan Mouse Destroyer 3000-

Bobbins, well, what can I say about him that hasn't already been said? He is an epic cat, a prince among paupers, a giant amongst midgets, and he eats constantly. He scratches up all the furniture, tries to eat all our food, costs $20/month in "pet rent", pukes on the carpet, chews all our papers, breaks all our blinds, bites people when he doesn't feel like doing shit, and eats all our food. He's pretty much the i can haz cheezburger cat.

AND he always sleeps on our bed right in my face. And if I roll over and try to roll back, he's taken my space. But then I wake up every morning and see this:

and what more can you ask for really?

Oh, remember how if I roll over in bed and then roll back, my space has been taken by Bobbins? Well, guess what happens when I try to roll back back?


2) Heavy Metal Vixen

She has been variously described as a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a desert bloom, the light of my life, a diamond in the rough, Speedy Gonzalez-Chang (she's half mexican half chinese - it's not racist cause I'm dating her. Why did you think I was dating her? Duh!) and a tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it. She is Heavy Metal Vixen, the person who has taken my bed space when I want to roll back back away from Bobbins, but then I can't and I am left trapped like a sardine between a grumpy ball of fur and claws on one side and Bobbins on the other.

Hehe, I keed! No babe put away the baseball bat! I mean...

The truth is, she's a sweetheart, and she keeps me on the straight and narrow, and she makes my stone-cold heavy-metal heart all sorta fuzzy and warm. When I didn't want to wake up at 7am on a Saturday to drive to the library and take my practice MCATs, Fraulein Vixen was there to kick my ass out of bed. And that shit worked- I got a 36 and I owe a lot of that to her. But then when I come home and kick my pants off and leave them on the floor, she's totally cool with it! (as long as I keep all of my kicked-off pants in a single, designated "Pants Pile") Killer!

Sometimes I start a secret second pants pile next to the bed where she can't see it, and then she finds it, and then..."it puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!" But you know what, she feeds me, does my laundry, loves me, puts up with the cracked-out roller-coaster ride that is my life, literally follows me from sunny Cali to the deserts of the American Southwest, and makes sure I don't drive the whole show in to the ground.

And what more can you ask for really?

Weinergate

OK so normally I create all my own awesome stuff for this blog, but the flowchart on the left is courtesy of good.is. It's a flowchart to help you decide if you should tweeter your peeter pic. Very useful! Don't try to expand it...(insert weiner joke here)...that is literally the whole flowchart lol.

War is the Answer (Military Medicine)

So there is a great band called "5 Finger Death Punch" who released a cool album called War is the Answer. I'm not sure why, but this band is somehow associated with the US Army in my mind. I think they are a super pro-troops, play a lot of USO shows, and are a popular band with the troops themselves, which is badass. It's a sweet album, but mostly I'm mentioning them because I want to use this sweet album cover as a perfect segue in to my post about...

What if I HAD gone to Uniformed Services University Health Sciences School? For those who might not know, the US military has their own school where they train their own doctors (for free), and then they own your ass for like 7 years after residency. All together, you end up in the military for about 15-18 years. It's also the school I got accepted in to in 2009, and couldn't attend.

Was it for the best that I didn't go? Well, now that I didn't end up going there, of course it was for the best! But if I had gone there, I suspect I would be saying that THAT was for the best too.

Here is my take on military medicine:

Pros:
-You are a total badass.
-You get to wear a sweet uniform (I was accepted to Air Force)
-School is free. Like, completely free. Free like you get to keep your money, and they pay you.
-If you want to travel, well, you'll travel to many sandy places...
-You get to be a doctor. Which is sweet.

Cons:
-They own your ass for like 16 years. If they say jump, you say how high. If they say dance, you say I'm your private dancer baby, two dollar for a lap dance, four dollar for smoochy, ten dollar for back room bung bung. (Those prices are low, I know - I have some self-esteem issues).

-They pay you worse once you are an attending than you would be paid in the private sector. But they pay you better while you are a student/resident. It basically works out that a non-military doctor overtakes the military doctor in total money (pay minus debt) after about 2-4 years as an attending. Which means that if you stay in military medicine your whole career, your opportunity cost is in the hundreds of thousands.

-You could get shot. Which kind of applies to being a doctor in Balitmore as much/more than it does to military medicine, so this con is in brackets.


So yeah, those are the big ones. All in all, I don't think there's a wrong decision, but I will add this: the retention rate of doctors in the military is very very bad, like 10% or something. The vast majority of military doctors leave the military as soon as they are eligible. Take that for what it's worth. Axl out!

So metal...so, so metal.

So a lot is going on in my life right now, but first and foremost is the release of Iconoclast by Symphony X. I have waited, what, 3 years for this? 4? I dont even know.

Here is a complete list of things that rock harder than this album:













And here is a complete list of things that rock hard, but less hard than this album:

1) Steven Tyler circa 1985 at the top of his game boning 11 groupies having just rocked a sold out show at Madison Square Garden.

2) Winning a life-time supply of awesomeness and blowing it all in Vegas.

3) A nun punching out a shark underwater while being chased by a killer robot.

4) Rocks

5) A totally metal Flying V guitar that shoots lasers and beer.

6) Metallica armwrestling Megadeth, and then both of them winning and playing a free 9-day-long show together, with Jesus H. Christ opening for them, but he's not righteous enough so god comes down and pees diamonds on everybody, but then the devil comes up from hell with Dimebag Darrell, and Dime grabs a guitar and plays dueling solos with Kirk Hammett with Satan on drums. Yeah...

So anyways, I can't sufficiently describe how close to tears of joy I am over Symphony X's new album. At the same time, I am trying to get my med school applications out, but I am waiting on a bunch of chodes to send me stuff without which I can't submit, so that's lame.

Other than that, I have decided to move across the country again, back to the east coast, which is awesome. If there are people in the MA/NY/CT/NH/VT/ME area who want to start a totally ass-blasting metal band with me, hit me up!!




p.s. props to Rye-Bread on DeviantArt for the amazing nun-and-shark painting!

Awkwardness

So I accidentally let slip to my co-worker today that I am planning to quit my job before the end of the year...It was awkward because the first thing she said is that I should tell our boss so that she can hire someone else to replace me. Which is true, and I was/am going to give her plenty of warning (its the right thing to do), but now there is some tension between me and my coworker I think. She's super nice, and she's been at this job a lot longer than I have, so I think she has a tank full of loyalty that I really don't. And once someone knows that you're not in it for the long haul, they pull away right? I'm afraid that's going to happen, which is a shame since we have a good rapport.

I hate quitting jobs. When I quit my job in NYC (when I decided to try to get in to med school), the boss was pissed. "You said you were going to stay for x length of time! You can't just quit now! Blah blah blah!" But you know what? I hated that job, so it wasn't so hard to quit. I like my current job, but for a multitude of damn good reasons, I'm not going to do it forever, or even past the end of the year.

Ugh. Unpleasant business.

I have some language and violence for my advisor. No sex.

Bit of insomnia brought about by my pre-med advisor. I cannot reach this lady. It's crazy. So now I'm trying to go over/around her head. Literally if I lived within 3000 miles of this lady, I'd drive down to her office and camp out till she showed up...which she never does. Ridiculous.

Anyways, I'm up pretty late, got work tomorrow, and spending a lot of time re-evaluating things in terms of where I will be living in the near future. Considering a move to the east coast with the Heavy Metal Vixen. We'll see...

I spent my teenage years in the UK. While I was there, my dirty little love affair with music began. While I was listening to Jimi on my CD player (yeah I'm oldish), the radio was actually playing some damn good stuff. Fat Boy Slim, The Hives, The Vines, and these guys, The Stereophonics. I think they made it over to the States right? Anyways, I'm revisiting some of the brillian Brit Rock (in this case, Wales Rock). Great great album - "Language. Sex. Violence. Other?". Check it out. I've listened to it twice tonight. Aight, Ima try to get some zzz.

Music Piracy Arrrr!

Music piracy is very very bad. Don't do it. Ever. I'm serious.

Having said that, I am very frustrated at my failed attempts to pirate a new album by a band called Awolnation - album is called Megalithic Symphony. I love finding awesome new music, it gives me a buzz. But the way it usually works is that if you are a nobody band, then you put your first album out there for free. Then I listen to it, and if I become a fan, I buy your subsequent albums. Such is the case for Symphony X - grabbing their next album off the internets will be as easy as pie. Will I do it? Heeelll no. Because I want to give them money so that they make the next one, and so that Nielsen counts my vote for their overwhelming awesomeness.

So I ran in to "Sail" by Awolnation on the radio the other day, and it's awesome. But I haven't heard the whole album, so I can't write a sick review about how sick it is and then have all my thousands of blog readers buy it.

So send me that $hit Awolnation, or else you're ruined!!

In other news, I'm sumbitting my AMCAS very soon -woot!

The Latest Goings-On

Ugh where to begin...

1) My scientific paper on a craniofacial syndrome needs to be submitted by Friday. Which means that it has to be written today. Not from scratch, but still.

2) My personal statement for AMCAS/AACOMAS is nearing a final state, but it still needs work before I can submit said AMCAS/AACOMAS. But before THAT, I need my goddamn effin...

3) Committee Letter!!!! This is the source of all my frustration right now. The premed advisor at my undergrad school has gone totally AWOL. Like, I have been trying to reach her for weeks, and she's nowhere to be found. And until she writes me a committee letter, I'm stuck sittin' around with my genoa salami in my hands. Like a frikkin sad little kid with his kite lying on the ground in the middle of a field. Just waitin for a little breeze. I'm not asking for the pre-med advisor to give me a reacharound while she recites Hamlet, just a frikkin letter - ugh!!

Anyways, that is the state of affairs. This weekend, I'm partyin' like it's friday, friday, gittin down on friday...I hate that song so deeply. Axl out.