Yearly Archives: 2012

Is it too late for me to be a doctor?

I wonder if I could, if I put my mind to it, decide to drop out of waiting tables, study really hard, reenroll at a college somewhere, take all of the physics and biology and stats classes that the school offers, go to every single class and spend all of my free time studying, get an A on every test and quiz and homework assignment, start studying for the MCAT (MKAT?), spend all of my time studying for that test, going so far as to take prep classes and to hire an expensive MCKAT tutor, ace the test, apply to medical schools, ace medical school, ace my internship, ace my interviews, ace my residency, ace not only every single test that I take but also tests that I give out to patients, get awarded these ridiculously high level doctor awards, set unbelievable records, like, doctor who sees the most patients a day, everyday, in the world, and another record like, only known doctor in human history who has never made a mistake, never lost a patient, never sees anything less than a one hundred percent recovery on every single person who even so much as steps foot in the hospital where he works, work every single day to the point that, towards the middle of my career, the American Medical Association decides to change the Hippocratic Oath with a new Oath of my own writing.

I’m sure there is a path for me to whatever I want to do in life. I’m still in my twenties, I theoretically should be able to fulfill any dream. Like becoming a doctor. You just have to put in the hours right? You just have to set a schedule and not stop for anything, right? You just have to sacrifice everything else in your life and devote every single breath and heartbeat to working towards that dream, to making sure you’re completing that goal, right?

I just spend way too much time f’ing around. And while it would be amazing to get up in the morning, look myself in the mirror and think, goddamn it Rob, you did it, you’re a doctor, a real doctor, I don’t think I’d be really into it. It’s like, if somebody came into my house, with a gun, and sat me down at my kitchen table, and, with the gun to my head, pulled out some textbooks, opened them to page one, and told me to start studying, and then he kept doing that, every single day, every page he’d turn and make me read, out loud, and he’d make me run all of these memorizing drills and force me to use flashcards, and he’d have to hold a pen in my hand and force me to apply to all of the best medical schools, to really concentrate on writing the very best application essays, and if he kept doing that, just threatening to kill me if I even so much as stopped studying and working for one second, well then I think I wouldn’t have a choice but to become a world famous doctor. I mean, I don’t want to get shot. That’s what happens when somebody comes up to you with a gun, right? You do whatever they tell you to. “Do as I say or it’s curtains!” I never got the curtains phrase, like I know it means “I’ll kill you,” but what do curtains have to do with getting killed? I’m sure the answer is out there, somewhere, in some history of the English language textbook, but I bet you it’s probably really straightforward and boring.

I wish I had that in my life, somebody with a gun to make me stop wasting so much time, somebody to really make me commit myself to doing something all out, professionally. I wonder if I can hire a hit man to do it. That would probably be pretty expensive. From what I’ve read about hit men and have seen about them in the movies, they’re pretty expensive, and that’s just for killing somebody. How long does it take to kill somebody? From a professional point of view, if I were the hit man, I would want it to be as fast as possible. Like, kill this guy. OK, give me the money. OK, BAM! Dead. That took like two seconds. The longer you take, the less money you’re making per hour. And so for me to hire a hit man to follow me around, twenty-four seven, making sure that I’m working hard, sticking to my goals, that’s probably going to cost a lot, like way more than I can afford.

And what if after a couple of weeks we start to grow attached to each other? Like we develop a friendship. And we start cracking jokes. Like he’ll start using the gun to scratch my head when I’m studying something especially hard, and we’ll both laugh, but a really controlled laugh, only for a second, because he’ll realize that the laughter means a bond is developing between us, so he’ll straighten up quick and say something like, “All right, back to work, knock it off.” And I’ll get quiet and serious and he’ll be quiet and serious but then maybe ten seconds later we’ll both start cracking up at the same time, like we couldn’t hold it in at all, and this time the laughter is really intense.

So yeah, once that happened, I’d start to doubt that he’d actually kill me if I stopped studying, even if only for a second, and I’d test it out, and maybe he wouldn’t shoot me. After all, I’d be paying him a lot of money, and if he actually shoots me, then I can’t pay him any more money, and so he’d have to go back to being just another contract killer, which, after not killing anybody for a couple of weeks, he’d realize he like the non-killer life a little better. And so yeah I’d stop studying for a second and he’d let it slide. And then it would be a full minute. And then just one episode of Community, come on, just one movie, let’s go out for pizza. And then we’d both be sitting around my living room watching online videos and eating snacks, and I won’t be a doctor, and eventually my money will dry up, and he’ll have to leave, not because he wants to, but because, hey, a guy’s gotta eat, right? And so yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever be a doctor. An MD. Who knows, maybe I’ll get some bullshit PhD someday. But probably not that either. Dissertations sound awful.

I’m kind of pressed for time here

Every once in a while I’ll be really out of ideas for stuff to write about. Like right now. But at the same time, I know that I have to write something, otherwise I won’t be able to put something up everyday. People always say “quality over quantity,” but I disagree, I think quantity is clearly superior to quality. How else can our most popular TV shows make it all the way to seasons nine and ten without eventually just forgetting about quality and focusing strictly on the quantity?

But right now, unfortunately, I don’t think I have the luxury of neither quantity nor quality. I’m working a morning shift and for some reason I can never get out of bed early enough to get my writing done during the day. Today was supposed to be different. And it was, but only marginally different, because I only got up slightly earlier and gained like fifteen minutes of time. What am I supposed to do with fifteen minutes? Usually these things take me much longer to write. I’m not at all suggesting that I put a ton of thought into them, but generally I like to at least read the sentences back to myself to make sure everything’s legible.

But not today. I only have fifteen, well I guess now it’s more like ten minutes, to write about something. But I can’t think of anything. It doesn’t really matter, because I’m already three paragraphs deep and I think I’ve sufficiently wasted enough of everyone’s time already. The only thing I have here is me trying to beat the clock, to get a full blog post on the page before I really have to get out the door.

Getting out the door in the morning is the worst. I just switched jobs like two months ago. It’s the same gig, I’m still waiting tables at a restaurant, but whereas at my old job I could show up to work basically any time right down to the second before we opened, here I have to be responsible and show up forty-five minutes before service starts, making a good impression, looking people in the eye and saying stuff like, “You got it boss,” when the manager points to a stack of plates and makes me move it across the restaurant.

And so my morning routine just feels a lot more forced. Like I have to really be out the door at the same minute, which is probably the hardest part of the day, that conscious decision where you say to yourself, OK, my time is over, I’m now willingly giving myself up, walking out the door, to work for somebody else, at your service, you got it boss, how about another Diet Coke sir?

It’s not that bad. I read that back, OK, I didn’t read it back, but only because I don’t have any time, like I said, but I’m imagining reading it back, and it may or may not have sounded a little bitter. I’m not bitter. I don’t mind working in a restaurant. I like moving around. I like grabbing handfuls of food when I think that nobody’s looking and shoving them into my mouth. I’m sure the bosses have caught me, because it started out as just a piece of food here or there, but nobody ever said anything to me, and so I just upped the frequency, to the point where there are hardly any spaces in between bites. My whole shift is just one giant snack.

And then the chefs put out a staff meal before every shift. And I used to approach it with caution. Being the new guy, I didn’t want to just dive in, out of my way, here’s my elbow, I’m getting food. But that only lasted like a week, because I was being so timid with my regular snacking, I’d be famished by the time staff meal dropped at four in the afternoon. Can you imagine, like six hours without a bite to eat? If you’re reading this from a developing country, I’m sorry, that must have sounded completely insensitive. But if you’re reading this from America, am I right or what? Six hours without food? Please.

So now it’s like I’m constantly in and out of the kitchen, I always go in pretending that I’m looking for a stack of plates to move, but what I’m really doing is checking out the chef’s progress with the staff meal. As soon as it hits the window, I want to be the first person to throw an elbow to that other person who thinks he or she is going to be first. The first time I went for it, some other employee was all like, “Hey Rob, you’re supposed to let the night crew eat first.” And so I put down my utensils and waited for the night crew to eat. And then there was nothing left. You think I’m ever going to make that mistake again? Listen, there’s one thing I want in life. Snacks. That’s it.

Well, are you happy with what you just read? I did it. I wrote the whole thing in about twenty minutes. I’m not exactly proud of what I’ve produced, well, scratch that, I am proud, you know why? Quantity. Quantitatively speaking, it’s all there. And really, centuries from now, English will have evolved as a language to the point where anything written today is all meaningless gibberish. You ever try to read Shakespeare? No way that’s English. And so I would argue that quality is all relative. Or something like that. I really have to get to work.

White Castle

There used to be a White Castle right across the street from my house. I love White Caste so much. When I was in college, I used to go to White Castle maybe three or four times a week, always ordering the same thing: five jalapeno cheeseburgers, five hamburgers, a bag of chicken rings, a box of clam strips, and a milkshake. Sometimes I got a chocolate milkshake, sometimes vanilla. So I guess technically it wasn’t the same exact thing, but if you looked at my order without taking the top off of the milkshake cup, you’d think it was the same thing every time. And it basically was.

I can’t get over the fact that White Castle isn’t an American phenomenon, that it’s only an East Coast thing. It makes me feel really bad for everyone living outside of the White Castle bubble, people whose experience with White Castle is limited to the Harold & Kumar movie franchise. They make it out to be pretty good fast-food in those films, but the reality is so much more delicious than even those two stoners are able to describe.

Whenever you talk about White Castle, nine out of ten people are going to say something like, “White Castle? Ew, gross!” These people are lying through their teeth. Everybody loves White Castle. These perfectly miniature burgers, steam cooked, topped with a whole pile of sautéed onion squares, pickles. It’s like, ask any of your friends, “Do you like McDonald’s?” I guarantee that a majority of respondents will say something like, “No way! I never go to McDonald’s!” Again, lies. Everybody goes to McDonald’s. They’re like the richest company on the planet. And everybody likes fast food. Sure, it’s not great for you, but it’s delicious. And everybody loves delicious.

It’s so easy to hate on White Castle because it’s kind of invisible. They don’t do a lot of TV ads. They’re the underdog of fast food chains. But it’s so good. I really don’t even have much to say except, over and over again, White Castle is delicious. Except for their fries, which are just OK. That’s why if you were paying attention when I wrote out my regular order, I didn’t mention any fries. Somebody who doesn’t go there that much, aside from seriously missing out on some great food, might have assumed that fries come with the burgers. And I think if you get some sort of a combo they do, but the combos suck. It’s always like two burgers and fries. That’s it? The burgers are tiny. I need ten. And the fries, well, they’re like the zig-zag kind that you buy in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Again, I know so many people are like, “I never go to the frozen food section of the grocery store!” Of course you do, stop lying. Everyone eats crap food now and then, so stop trying to be so cool, all healthy and all “I never eat White Castle,” because, every once in a while, you’re going to go out with some friends, and there’s always going to be at least one guy in the group towards the end of the night that starts talking about how hungry he is, how badly he wants some White Castle, and although most of the group will protest, this guy will be so into it that he’ll eventually convince all of his friends to go, even if just because at this point they’re feeling kind of bad for him, like maybe he really needs this. So they’ll go, he’ll order his ten burgers, and everybody else is like, “I’m not getting anything. Except. Well, maybe just one …” and then everybody’s sitting around eating burgers and loving it and it’s just this great moment of great food and everybody’s having a blast.

And then the next day that guy’ll be like, “See? Everybody loved it! White Castle is the best!” but all of his friends will start lying again, realizing that it’s not cool to say that White Castle is awesome, and so they’ll start making up phony stories about coming home that night and getting sick, which is also a lie, because I didn’t get sick, I mean, that friend didn’t get sick. Why does everybody else get sick eating White Castle? It doesn’t add up. People should just embrace White Castle instead of having this weird fake hate/actual love relationship.

Anyway, like I said, I used to live right across the street from a White Castle. It was great. I could smell the sliders throughout different points in the day. One day they boarded the doors up and covered up the windows. “Sorry!” the sign read on the door, “We’re moving to Queens Blvd!” and I couldn’t believe it. Construction crews got to work on renovating the place. I thought to myself, man, whatever takes White Castle’s place had better be good, it better be great, even better than White Castle. And day after day there would be more work done on the building until finally, one day they installed a sign above the store. And it said, “Radio Shack.” And it’s terrible. Who the hell goes to Radio Shack? What do they even sell there? It’s so lame. I’m still so pissed. I barely ever get to go to White Castle anymore, because I have no idea where on Queens Blvd they moved to. It’s such a long road and, you know, how often do you go into different neighborhoods? Once in a while maybe, but not all the time.

An open letter to people who write open letters

Dear writers of open letters:

I don’t get it. I don’t get the open letter. I mean, I get the technique, you write out a letter to somebody but it’s not really meant for that person. Well it might be, but it’s really for everyone else to read, more like an op-ed about the person that you’re writing to. But why not just write out an op-ed? What does the whole letter format do for the writing? I’m thinking that, maybe the first time someone wrote an open letter, everyone read it and was like, “Ha. That’s clever.” But then the next time it was like, “Wait a second, again?”

I think that it’s time to retire the open letter. Maybe ten or fifteen years from now we can break it out again, see if there’s any interest in a comeback, but at this point in pop culture, I just don’t see it as relevant anymore. Whenever I’m reading a magazine, and I come across something like, “Madonna: Why are you so weird looking?” or “President Obama: Why are you such a socialist?” I instantly fall asleep, and by the time I’ve woken up, my magazine is stuck together from all of the drool produced by me falling asleep in a reading position. And so the rest of my magazine is ruined. Do you think we could like, just maybe take a break for one issue of one magazine and see how it goes?

Why don’t you try an open telegram? You all could write out telegrams to famous people and then have them delivered to random people. And there’ll be a knock at the door and that random person will be like, “Yes? May I help you?” and the telegram delivery guy will go, “Telegram!” and the recipient will be shocked, “Telegram? Who still sends telegrams? How are you guys making any money?” and the telegram guy’s forced, drawn out grin will crack, just a little, an imperceptible twitch, but he’ll lose it, he’ll start to tremble, “It’s terrible,” he’ll sob, “Things have never been worse. All of our employees are starving. But we have no idea how to move on. None of us know how to use computers. Please, just … just accept the telegram. This has been one my only jobs in months.” And the person will be like, all right, go ahead.

And the telegram delivery guy will start, “Dear Mrs. So and So. Stop. This is an open telegram. Stop.” Is that what telegrams were all about? Because, and now I’m getting a little confused here myself. I always thought that a telegram was just a typed out letter, like I’d go to a telegram company and have them send a letter somewhere. But then how do all of those scenes from old movies play out where the delivery is like, “Urgent news. Stop.” Does the guy have to stand there at the front door and read the telegram out loud? Is that part of his job description? What if it’s kind of a private subject, is this guy just part of the message now? And why does he have to say “stop?” Can’t he just speak in such a way that the period or end of a sentence seems natural? And what if it’s a question, does the guy still say “stop” or does he say “question mark?” And why with open letters are there so many questions? Isn’t it a little stale to read an entire piece entirely built mainly out of questions?

Getting back on track here, no, I don’t think open telegrams would work. Maybe an open singing telegram. Because while the Internet and even just regular telephones have basically eliminated the need for any sort of telegram service, there’s still something special about having somebody knock at your door and sing you a message. It’s even better if the singing telegram service is like four or five guys and they all sing in harmony. But the only thing is, if you send an open singing telegram, you have to send it to a lot of different households, because if it’s only one recipient, then it’s not really open, it’s closed. And it’s even worse, because say you’re sending an open singing telegram to Mr. T. for example, and you send it to some random address, it might even be incorrect. The owner of that house most likely would be like, “Sorry, Mr. T. doesn’t live here.” But theoretically the owner’s last name could be Thompson, or Trotsky, and so he or she might mistakenly believe the singing telegram was written specifically for them, and they’ll get so confused, like, “I’m not pitying any fools. This is all so strange.”

Were telegrams that common? Did you have to give a tip? I never tip the mailman. Scratch that. I used to never tip the mailman. But after every holiday I’d stick my head out of the window every time the mail carrier came past my house, and I’d scream out, “How you doing?” and normally they’d respond, “Just fine thanks!” but after those holidays there would always be a kind of a cold shoulder vibe going on, and I’d repeat myself, “Hello! How are you doing today?” Finally somebody told me that you’re supposed to leave an envelope with a holiday tip. And so I called up the Post Office to see how much I’m supposed to tip. The guy on the other end got really confrontational. “You’re not supposed to tip federal employees. Did your mail carrier ask for a tip? Where are you getting this from?”

I tried to play it cool, but the very next day there was a new mailman. I asked him where the regular mailman was and this guy kind of just held up his hands in a defensive position, like, “Hey buddy, don’t talk to me, all right?” And I chased after him, asking if he could give my regular mailman my holiday card. And he just took off. Weird.

So yeah, open letters. Kind of lame right? Just write a regular letter. Or write an essay or a blog post of whatever. Because the only difference, in my opinion, between an essay and an open letter is that with an open letter, you start off writing, “Dear So and So,” and you finish it off with, “Sincerely,” like a letter. Like it adds those extra lines but that’s it. And I get it, really, I’m always looking for extra content. But maybe we can try something else. It’s old.

Love Always,

Rob G.

That’s the worst

I’m so cold. It just got out cold this week and I’m not used to it. I can’t get warm. The heat hasn’t kicked in yet. I hate it when you complain to somebody about how cold it is and they just say something like, “Put on a sweater.” That’s the worst. Just listen to me complain. Or join in with me. There’s always more to complain about. It’s like when you’re really hungry and somebody just goes, “Have an apple.” Just shut up dude, maybe I just want something to whine about for a little bit. You eat an apple.

I think there’s going to be a lot of snow this winter. Snow is always fun for the first day or so, but you can only throw snowballs at cars for so long before eventually your gloves get wet and your hands start freezing. And then your socks get wet too. And then you go out to throw snowballs the next day but all the snow is slushy and brown. I hate it when it’s raining or gross out and somebody says, “I just love rainy days.” Bullshit. Nobody loves rainy days. I like to storm around the house on rainy days and try to make everyone feel as miserable as I am. What are you supposed to do all day? Read? Get out of here. I’m going to get in the car and see if I can’t splash any pedestrians with gross puddle water.

The worst is when you forget to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer. And then when you finally remember, it’s too late to rewash everything, but it’s also too late to not do anything, and so you have to run those nasty clothes through the dryer, because you need a shirt and you’re already late for work. And then the rest of the day that smell is just following you around, like feet, like an old wet towel.

That’s another thing I can’t stand, when you’re taking a shower and you go to dry off and you’ve been using the same towel for one day too many, and it’s the same botched laundry smell, and what are you supposed to do, stand there and air dry? It’s freezing out. So you grab the towel and dry off and now you smell disgusting. But it’s over already, the whole shower is ruined, the whole day is ruined. What are my options? Take another shower? My skin’s going to fall off. That’s the worst, when you take too many showers and your skin gets all dry. And maybe I don’t have any clean towels. Or maybe they’re all the way in the dryer, but it’s another load of bad laundry, but I don’t realize it yet because I already smell terrible from the first shower that I took and I think that the smell is just me, but it’s really this second towel, and that’s the worst, like even worse, the absolute worst, because the second shower is too much, my skin’s peeling, and I get out and dry off with what I think is a fresh towel, but it’s just as gross. Why does all of my stuff smell so bad?

Or what’s terrible is when you make a pot of coffee but then you go to the fridge to get the milk but there’s only like half an inch of milk left. I don’t feel like going out to the store. I need coffee just to get out of the house, not the other way around. And so I try to ration. But I always find that whenever there’s just a tiny bit left, it always comes out weird, like some of it doesn’t blend with the coffee, it’s just these little hardened dots of milk, and I try to enjoy the coffee but there’s not enough milk, it’s way too bitter.

Or when I’m trying to watch TV on the Internet and they keep showing me the same commercial over and over again, every commercial break it’s the same lame ad, so lame that they won’t even run it on regular TV, only on the Internet, because they’re thinking, hey, this tool is too cheap to buy cable, so we’re only going to show him ads for cheap garbage that maybe he can afford, and the production value is so cheap, with the worst actors, and they put it on repeat, like they’re thinking this guy is so incredibly cheap, maybe we’ll be lucky if we can trick him into buying just one cheap product, so we’re really going to just inundate this guy with this one ad, until it’s all that he can think about, until he’s not even enjoying his show anymore, every four minutes, commercial time.

Or when your phone vibrates in your pocket and you get excited, maybe it’s an email, maybe it’s of those jobs you applied to, maybe it’s one of your friends with news about some plans this weekend or something fun going on, but you open your phone and it’s a voicemail. Nobody leaves voicemails. And you have to wait for your phone to call the voicemail, and you put the phone to your ear and it’s nothing, but it keeps going, two minutes of nothing. And then you have to listen to the options to delete the message. Why won’t the cell phone company just shut off my voicemail like I asked them to?

And then the wall starts hissing, like way too loud, and you go to check what the noise is but it’s the heat, finally kicking in, but it’s been a whole season since the heat’s been on so you forget, and you touch the pipe and it’s way too hot and you get burned. And then you tell somebody about what happen and they’re all like, “Get some ointment.” Seriously, why don’t you just be quiet and listen for a minute, just let me vent without being such a know-it-all. You get some ointment, you condescending jerk.