Category: Rants

“I have a six month old child. I’m gonna be one of those weird old guys who brings my son down to the park where everybody is like, ‘hmph is he the dad, is he the grandad, is he the grandad’s grandad? And oh my god why is he pushing a traffic cone on the swing while his five year old little boy is in the mud crying? Is is he taunting the little boy? No! He can’t even see the little boy. And now look he’s actualy taking the traffic cone, putting it in the minivan, and driving away while the little boy cries and the traffic cone sits quietly and watches finding nemo on dvd.”

I…hate…Robert Kelso. I hate his family, I hate his friends, I hate the guy that cleans his vaguely racist little lawn jockey; in fact, I hate anybody who ever even associates with him. Is that clear?

After twenty-five minutes, the only way I could know what you mean more is if you wrote My boyfriend doesn’t open up to me” on a big wooden mallet and repeatedly smashed me over the head with it. “

Back when I was an intern, I remember the pressure being so insane that the only way I could get by was to race home and, even though my wife was already asleep, I’d gently wake her, look her in the eyes, and then I’d passive-aggressively torture her until she packed a bag and went to her mom’s place for the week.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

All right, bring it in here, you knuckle-heads. Come on, take a knee if you need to, you confound-its. I have been on since midnight — so I stand here with my usual level of contempt for all of you, but with the added wrinkle of having thirteen cups of Nurse Roberts’ piss-poor excuse for coffee passing pretty much straight through me. The not-so-hidden message being, of course, that if you screw up today, I’m gonna hit ya hard! I’m gonna hit ya fast! Now then, I think some of you may have noticed that all twenty-seven of the patients that were here in the I.C.U. when I started last night are still alive; and I damn-sure intend for them to still be breathing when I get the hell out of here at midnight. I think you understand what kind of opportunity we have in front of us.

We are short staffed today because Kelso has volunteered all of you scut-monkeys for some psychologist’s research project — give me a break — which means, of course, you won’t be helping patients. Instead…oh, you’ll be blabbering about your feelings and what it’s like working in the hospital, and how that affects your personal lives…and: Wah. Wah. Wah.

Well gosh, I guess I became a doctor because, ever since I was a little boy, I just wanted to help people. I don’t…tell this story very often, but, I remember when I was seven years old, one time I found a bird that had fallen out of its nest. And so, I picked him up, and I brought him home, and I made him a house out of an empty shoebox, and — Oh my God! —- I became a doctor for the same four reasons everybody does: Chicks, money, power, and chicks. But, since HMOs have made it virtually impossible to make any real money, which directly affects the number of chicks who come sniffing around — and don’t ask me what tree they’re barkin’ up, ’cause they’re sure as hell not pissin’ on mine. And as far as power goes, well, here I am during my free time letting some thirteen-year-old psychology fellow who couldn’t cut it in real medicine ask me questions about my personal life. So, here’s the inside scoop, there, pumpkin: Why don’t you go ahead and tell me all about power.

And bam! The shine’s off the apple. And that’s when you find out that that pretty little girl you married isn’t a pretty little girl at all. No, she’s a man-eater. And I’m not talking about the whoa-whoa, here she comes” kind of man-eater. I’m talking about the kind that uses your dignity as a dishtowel to wipe up any shreds of manhood that might be stuck inside the sink. Of course, I may have tormented her from time to time; but, honest to God, that’s what I thought marriage was all about. So much so that, by the end of that relationship, I honestly don’t know who I hated more — her or me? I used to sit around and wonder…why our friends weren’t trying to destroy each other, like we were. And here, it turns out, the answer’s pretty simple: They weren’t unhappy. We were. “

Relationships don’t work the way they do on television and in the movies: Will they, won’t they, and then they finally do and they’re happy forever — gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren’t right for each other to begin with, and half the ones that get married get divorced, anyway. And I’m telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic, I haven’t. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don’t care, ’cause I do…believe in it. Bottom line…is the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but, the big difference is, they don’t let it take ‘em down.