Apologies to the MTA

Only for the stuff I was saying about them today. That whole part where they jacked up the unlimited pass price by twenty dollars while continuing to cut service? Drastically uncool.

So here's a thing... I was going out to Jersey today to meet some friends to brew beer, because the interview season was so frigging exhausting that I have to start making my own hooch (I'm not adding centipedes to it like the moonshine in Grenada)... We're supposed to catch a train out of Penn Station at 10:11.

900: Home station closed because f- you, that's why.
900 - 915: Walk to next station
920: Board 2 train.
930: Why aren't we moving?
935: No seriously, why the f- aren't we moving?
936: Attention passengers. This train is being held due to a police investigation at Times Square. Atlantic Avenue is the last stop on this train. All passengers leave the train.
936-937: WTF? What police investigation? If this is someone leaving a GD Macy's bag under a GD bench and that sets off a GD bomb scare, I'm ballisticizing on someone. Why is stuff at Times Square sufficient to shut down service in Brooklyn?
938: Let's take the Q train!
939: Q train closes door in face; takes off.
939: *&(*&(*&#)&(*&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
950: Q train arrives. Maybe we can still make it.
952: Q train running local. Profanity ensues.
1010: Let's get off at WTC and take the PATH train.
1015: Due to track work, the PATH train is running on a 20 minute schedule. Please plan extra travel time.

We made it, thanks to the willingness of one of our benevolent Jersey-side drivers to be willing to book it to Newark to pick us up, but naturally the 2 hours it took to make what would have normally been a 45 minute trip led to my attempting to think of any service that regularly ticked me off more than the public transit. Possibly whoever was responsible for clearing the roads after the Boxing Day blizzard.

While we were on the way out to the brewery, we were googling any possible justification for shutting off access to some of the busiest train stations in the world, and came across the early breaking version of this:


Suspect in Brooklyn Stabbing Spree Is Captured

So apparently, we couldn't take the train going uptown because while we were sitting on our train, they were taking down a guy that was, among many many many *many* other things, stabbing train patrons.

Okay, MTA. Good call.

Pause for Fall...

Or in my case, spend 7 hours in Brooklyn Hospital's library OCDing all over your presentation, come home, and hastily tap out a case report on yet another Patient Who Has Everything and Complains About Even More Things.

Oh, and realize that when you spend as much time attached to your computer as I do, even 20 gigs of music isn't enough and your old standbys are starting to wane. Right now, I'm trying to re-stimulate my urge to care by combining Pandora's "Turntabilism and Beat Science" with "Bluegrass Instrumental". Ohhhh yeah. I can be a dorkitron AND sell out at the same time! Take that!

Speaking of music, I finally got out to the Bowery Ballroom on Sunday to see Thursday with Midnight Masses and Some Other Band. Now *that* was an old school show. A mosh pit even I was afraid to venture into, stage diving, crowd surfing, and lead singer sweat spray that got further back into the audience than a show at Sea World. Lest anyone think I'm being irresponsible, doctoring is fully destroying my love of things that are bad for me as I was thinking "I would join in the closer-to-the-stage festivities, but I don't want a fatal brain injury." Plus, I'm pretty certain that at this stage, if I got hit hard enough in the head, USMLE World questions would leak out, and then I'd get busted for violating copyright.

Still freaking awesome though. Thanks Patrick!

ANYway, as I was hitting Stumble around the internet today to give my tired eyes a rest from uh... the computer screen, I found a webcomic near to my dorkly widdle heart, so I figured I'd share its Autumn sentiments with you.

High WTF levels

Okay, I realize that waxing on about getting spam on web-based emails is a sort of late 90s complaint that's getting as dated as comedians referencing crappy airline food, but lately, my spam filters have been failing spectacularly, because I've somehow wound up on someone's "paraphilias for people that have become bored by the internet's normal range of WTF" mailing list.

I'm guessing/hoping that googling "zoonotic microbial infections" is the way that I've ended up on the radar of someone who would send me an email with a subject heading "extreme cat rape" (I swear to Random Chance I'm not making that up), and it is not an actual website depicting such (my faith in humanity requires me to believe that) and instead is a helpful person's one line answer to the question "how in the world would you ever contract *that* disease?" which, when you're studying for the USMLE, is a question that comes up more than you'd think.

Anyway, that's my random topic update since this predominance of disgusting subject headings is sullying the normal joy I receive at checking my email 600 times a day to see if there's any Facebook updates that could delay returning to my books by 17 seconds.

Speaking of studying, I've moved on from zoonotic infections onto the entire physiology, pathology, and pharmacology of the heart. Basically, there's tons and tons of channels, a lot of lines that move around, and if those lines move too much, you die suddenly and violently. The end.