Heck Of A Guy

16 Tons & What Do Your Get?
Another Day’s Post, That’s What

As was the case yesterday in Mining The Mail, today’s post consists of gleanings from emails of yesteryear.

Defending Dennis Rodman

… which places me yet again in that uncomfortable situation I’ve come to term Defending Dennis Rodman Syndrome. These are circumstances in which one is forced to point out that some criticisms seem bogus – even though they are directed toward the most deserving targets.

During his years with the Bulls, Rodman was frequently accused of being (1) perverse, disgusting, and idiotic and (2) ineffective (or worse) on the basketball court. I was always willing to stipulate to the first group of charges. Heck, I would chime in with anecdotes of Rodman displaying those behaviors.

On the other hand, accounting him a worthless player on the championship Bulls teams requires invoking imaginary numbers, bookkeeping tactics currently used only in the motion picture industry and organized crime, and moderate amounts of hallucinogens. I once heard a talking head on ESPN characterize Rodman as no more than another warm body, interchangeable with any of fifty other NBA journeymen one would find seated at the end of the bench at any professional game. This blasting took place immediately after the same sports show host had described the preceding night’s game, during which Rodman alone out-rebounded the entire opposing team, scored 16 points, and, as the announcer begrudgingly noted, nullified the other team’s 2nd best offensive player. It takes a special kind of guy to do all that and still be called ineffective.

The experience with Rodman himself was the first of these situations I happened to recognize as a recurring prototype. There were other episodes meeting criteria for the diagnosis of Defending Dennis Rodman Syndrome that preceded that time and I’ve noticed lots of similar circumstances since then.

Two examples of Defending Dennis Rodman Syndrome come immediately to mind.

1. I’ve had to admit that I have occasionally used a Microsoft product that not only worked adequately but worked better than the competing product from Apple. And, for the record, I don’t believe Bill Gates is the Antichrist.
2. I’ve been unable to condemn every program or legislation favored by Bill Clinton or the male half of the Kennedy clan – even if they actually have tried to sleep with everything in or out of a skirt.

I do detest being forced to defending individuals or institutions that I dislike for my own reasons.

Next thing you know I’ll be defending Andy Rooney.

The Name Game

… I’ve been preparing for the next meeting of the “Illinois Metro West Psychiatric Leadership Task Force,” a name which at first seems descriptive until one ponders the possible geography of an area in the “Illnois Metro West,” the nature of the task this task force is undertaking, and, of course, the oxymoronic splendor of “Psychiatric Leadership.”

And that title pales in comparison to the name of the other committee on which I serve. I am a member of (and I am not making this up) the “Resurrection Health System-ProCare Mission/Values Task Force Subcommittee for Customer-centered Care/Physician Collaboration.”

I think the existence of two slash marks in the title just about says it all.

I’m convinced both of these committee names were created by a committee.

Get a Job

Those individuals I interviewed for the job must have all read the same self-help book, “Clichés: The Guaranteed Way to Get a Job.”

I cannot recall interviewing an applicant who didn’t tell me “No one ever accused me of being afraid of hard work.” No, they weren’t afraid of it — they could sit idly in the midst of folks working like mad without showing a trace of fear.

And everyone seems to have memorized the same answer to the old standby job interview query, “What is your greatest negative trait in regard to work?” An interviewer can scarcely get the phrase out of his or her mouth before the instant response is delivered, “I care too much about my work.”

But the most popular (and least explicable) phrase among job candidates must be “I’m a people person.” In many cases, it seems that the interviewee can’t wait for the chance to interject those words into the dialog with the interviewer and is not to be denied by the lack of an appropriate fit for the phrase (“yes, I’ve been a receptionist for the last 4 years because I’m a People Person,” “Good morning, I’m Joe Smith. I’m applying for the job. And, yes, I’m a People Person.”). They seem to believe it is a magical incantation that, once uttered, immediately produce not a rabbit from a hat but at least an offer of employment – despite those 3 years of incarceration for fraud and embezzlement.

I was once hiring for a position that would effectively mean working alone from midnight to 7 AM, punching data into a pre-internet computer. Every one of the applicants thought his or her most important qualification for the job was that he or she was – say it with me – a People Person.

I suppose this means our staff will be peopled by “People People.”

What’s The Word?

I receive, from a couple of sources, email messages containing a Word of the Day. These unpredictably selected words have lately demonstrated, at least to my skewed perception, an sexualized skew. Recently arrived specimens have included

houri (HOOR-ee). A noun defined as (1) One of the beautiful virgins provided for faithful Muslims in the Koranic paradise or (2) A voluptuously attractive young woman.

osculation (“äs-ky&-’lA-sh&n). A noun defined as the act of kissing

ecdysiast. A noun, devised by Mencken no less, in response to Gypsy Rose Lee’s request that he invent a dignified replacement for the word “strip tease.” Mencken replied that he had no brilliant suggestions, and the best he could think of was an analogy with the molting of animals. He considered moltician, he said, but feared it could be confused with mortician. Mencken then turned to the scientific term for molting — ecdysis — derived from a Greek verb meaning to take off or strip off. Following this line of thought, a strip-teaser would become an ecdysist or ecdysiast. Miss Georgia Sothern chose the latter and publicized it, and the word stuck. Gypsy Rose, Empress of Ecdysiasts, was none too impressed, observing of Mencken, “What does he know about stripping? We don’t wear feathers and molt them off.”

There is, however, a flip side.

My nomination for the most disappointing Word of the Day I’ve yet received is – insert fanfare here – bissextile (by-SEKS-til)

Now, doesn’t that seem promising? I was thinking of something that might be found in a sentence such as “Adam was so polymorphously promiscuous that he scored in the 99th bisextile.”

Alas, such prurient hopes are dashed when one reads on to find this term is only an adjective with the definition, “Of or pertaining to the leap year or the extra day in the leap year.”

Sigh

The previous champion of this genre was “prick-song” which denotes “written music.”

No Dice

I agree with Einstein that God doesn’t play dice with the universe.

No, it looks to me as though God’s preferences tend toward something on the order of Screw Your Buddy¹ – and I’m pretty sure He cheats.

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1. Screw Your Buddy, AKA “Anaconda” and several variants  in the spirit of “Fuck Your Friend,” is a card game in which an unwanted card is forced onto other players. I became familiar with this amusement, appropriately enough, during my first year of medical school where it was my lab’s game of choice during lunch. [↩]