Up. Down. Really that's all there is.

Working in my office at the hospital for my two weeks of clinical time, I get to ride the elevator a lot. My office is on the 10th floor (of 12) but most of my patients are on the 3rd. Or on the 4th floor in the next building over. I could take the stairs, and I usually do when heading down, no matter how far, but 10 floors up is a bit much for me.

Despite all the practice I've been getting using an elevator since starting here, I don't think I've improved my elevator skills any. I haven't developed any secret techniques that make my elevator use seem effortless while the general population struggles. This isn't throwing a 50yd touchdown pass people. It's not playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song on a ukelele. I really don't think there is any skill involved whatsoever. But for some reason, the elevator seems to just confuse the hell out of some people.

"But Ren!", you say, "isn't an elevator a fancy machine with lots of computers and moving parts and cutting edge technology?" Ok, sure, behind the scenes. We're not building an elevator. We're not even repairing the elevator. We are just riding the elevator. How difficult is that? Let's see.

What can you do when riding an elevator?

1. Get in
2. Push buttons
3. Get out

That's it. Three freaken things that you can do with an elevator. That's not so hard is it. "But Ren!", you say, "there's lots of other stuff you can do with an elevator". Ok, sure, you can push other buttons. You can use the emergency phone. You can kill your prison guards in a courthouse in Memphis and then peel one of their faces off and wear it as a disguise, and hide his body on top of the elevator car. However, don't. That's all. Just don't. Simply get on. Push the button you need. Wait. Get off. Don't push any other buttons. Don't try to order a fucking pizza with the emergency phone. Don't kill anyone and wear their face as a mask. Easy.

"But Ren!", you say "what if they've pushed the button to call the elevator and nothing's happening?" First off, do you know nothing is happening? When you pushed the button did it light up? Of course it did, that's what the buttons do here. That light tells you that something is, in fact, happening. Was the button already lit when you pressed it? Well for starters, why the hell would you press it again? It's already lit. Do you think that your extra press will make it come faster? Are you stupid. Do you have some kind of OCD? Do you stand at crosswalks and pound on that button 40-50 times to make sure you get a walk light? Did you forget to take your meds this morning? If I had any control over the elevators, I would write in a little program in the computer that would make 1 elevator car skip your floor for every extra button press. This of course has the potential to terrorize the poor people in the elevator who want to go to that floor as their elevator keeps skipping over it, never letting them off as idiots stand on their floor mashing the call-elevator button.

Also on the topic of the call elevator button. If they give you the option of a down button and an up button, just press the direction you need. If you want to go to a lower floor press down. Higher floor press up. It's easy to make this distinction by looking at the numbers and using all of your Sesame Street skills decide which you need. When you press the other button, it's not actually a secret "get the elevator faster" prize. It just makes an extra car, going the wrong direction come to a stop, and open the door, while all the people look around to see who's getting off, and then when no-one does, one of the OCD imbeciles starts pounding the Close door button and off it goes again. You still don't have an elevator ride, and if that was going to be your ride on the flip-side, you just delayed the process. Nice work speedy.

Oh yeah. If the fire alarm is ringing. Take the stairs. Number one rule of not becoming charcoal is: don't ride the elevator in a fire. If you can't take the stairs, wait for help. It's a hospital. Trust me, we're not allowed to just leave without you.


Alright, next topic. The buttons inside the elevator car. You've got a few more options than the up/down buttons on the outside, but really, there's just one that you need. Push your floor. Here at the hospital it's pretty easy. The units are numbered in 10's and the first digit is the floor number. The units 101/112/ are on the 10th and 11th floors respectively. Not too hard. It's a bit trickier when heading back down again. Do you want "M" or "G" or "B"? OMG, how confusing. I bet those letters don't actually stand for anything and were just randomly thrown on the menu. How will I ever know where I'm supposed to go? The easiest way is to just pay attention to what floor you started on. But...that requires planning, and short-term-memory and basic intellegence, so we'll ignore that one.

• M stands for Main. This is the "main" floor of the hospital. Nothing too confusing about that. Being the "main" floor, it contains the main entrance and exit to the hospital. Honestly, you probably started out here.
• G stands for Ground. In some buildings G stands for garage. I suppose that could be confusing to you. But since you didn't get out of your car in a garage and immediately take the elevator from the garage itself, you can be pretty safe thinking that this isn't the meaning of the G. the ground floor is 1/2 in and 1/2 out of the ground. It's like a walk-out basement, but without the 50 inch plasma TV. Instead, there's a cafeteria. With cafeteria food. If you were wanting to go back to your car, you should have hit M. If you were wanting food, you probably still should have hit M, gotten in your car and driven somewhere with better food.
• B stands for Basement. You probably don't want to go there. It's a clammy, dark, cold hallway. The only things down here are the morgue, and the hospital's pharmacy. That is why the only people on the elevator pressing B are kind of pale and anti-social. Do not join them.

Also, when you get on the elevator, don't assume that the other people on there are going to the same place as you. Your aunt mabel is one hell of a lady, but not everyone is going to unit 32 to go visit her. See that pasty, pale guy with the ipod? He's heading to the morgue. In the basement. You want to go home? Make sure M is pressed, or you're heading down to the basement with him.

Also inside the car we have the open/close door buttons. These are indicated with symbols that look kinda like this.

• Open Door <>
• Close door ><

If someone is rushing to catch the elevator and you don't know which is which, don't just stab one, cause you're probably hitting the close door one, and making yourself look like an asshole. If you really want to help the guy, just stick your arm into the door opening. It won't crush you, it probably won't even touch you. There's a sensor in there so it doesn't shut if something is in the way. If you're in a big hurry and too busy to wait for the guy, just look at the buttons kinda confused and hover your hand above them like you're figuring it out, just not quick enough, while the door slams in their face. Then you don't actually look like an asshole, even though you are one.

Also, here at the hospital, the close door button actually works. Unlike 95% of elevators that include that button just to give the OCD people something to do, the ones here start to close when you press it. That means, don't hit the fucking button until people are all the way through the door. You know those sensors, they seem to get partially over-ridden when you hit the button. It won't let you crush anyone to death, but it usually will keep going till it makes pretty solid contact before opening again.

Ok, so that's the buttons. Not too hard. To summarize the buttons.

• call elevator to go up or down by pressing appropriate button.
• ONCE!!!
• press the button for the floor of your destination
• you should probably just leave the Close Door button alone
• If you really must press it, make sure there is nobody going through the door
• Don't touch anything else

That's it. That's all.

Ok, now for the next part. Getting in/out. "But Ren!", you say, "why even bother talking about this, how could anyone screw this up?" Oh, people screw this up. Big-time. The first mistake people make is trying to get into the elevator before the people exiting have gotten out. There is a relatively limited space in the elevator. As well the door often creates a bit of a bottle-neck. Have you ever had a completely full glass of water but decided you want beer in it instead? Do you just pour the beer in and let it push the water out of the way? Of course not you drunkard! Same thing, just wait slightly off to the side and let the damn people off, then get on. If I'm getting off the elevator and you're standing right in the middle of the doorway starting to head in, I will not walk around you. I will hit you right in the chest with my shoulder. I'm not a muscle-head. But I am 6'2" and about 190lbs. I play hockey. I know how to put a shoulder into someones chest. Would you like to try?

Also on the topic of getting in. Go through the door, press the button for your floor and move to the back. Ok, if you're getting out in 3-4 floors maybe just pick a place along the side wall, about 1/2-way to the back. Do not stand right in the middle. And do not hit your floor and then stand right beside the bank of buttons. If you do this, three things can happen. Firstly, people may just shout out their floors to you, and you will be expected to hit the buttons for them. Or, since most people would rather not talk to anyone on an elevator, they will probably elbow past you and hit the buttons themselves. Or third, if you're a moderately hot chick, they might try to hit the buttons themselves, but "accidentally" give you a little grope on the way. Whoops! Heh heh. Boobies. It's not always possible to organize the people in the elevator by floor, but if you're riding to the top, maybe try to get near the back, and if you're getting off soon, try to stay near the front. Also, if the elevator is already full, don't get in. I know you're really important. Can't take the time to wait for the next one. But you can't defy the laws of physics and just squeeze in. If there's no room, there's no room.

And if you're only going 1 floor. Don't get on at all. Unless you have a handicap sticker on your car do not violate the elevator with your lazy ass. Especially if you are only going 1 floor down. If you need to go only 1 floor down, you can fall that without getting hurt. Come to the stairs and I will show you. There should be a rule that you aren't allowed to go less than 2 floors up or 4 floors down without showing some evidence of physical handicap.

If there's someone trying to get on in a wheelchair, or with a walker, or IV pole, try to organize yourself close to the other people and let them in. It's a hospital god-damn it. Maybe even let them in first and then organize around them instead of making them plow into the crowd of you. Wouldn't that be sweet of you.

Getting out, seems to be less difficult, but people still seem to have trouble. Pay attention to the display in the elevator, when it says your floor, get out. If you're stuck near the back wait to see who else is moving, and then say "excuse me" if you need people to get out of the way, and get out. Don't start saying "excuse me" before the elevator stops. If the person directly in front of you is also getting out you seem like a bit of a douche. It's like honking at the guy in front of you as soon as the light changes. Give the person a second. Also, do not just start shoving your way out. If there are people between you and the door not moving, ask them nicely to get out of your way. Basic human decency. Not too difficult.

That's it. How to use an elevator in a couple simple steps. Why is it so difficult for you people? To summarize....

HOW TO USE AN ELEVATOR

1. Press button to call elevator
2. Get on
3. Press button for floor
4. Wait
5. Get off

That's it. Not that fucking hard, now is it. The problems seem to arise from a basic lack of common sense, good manners and simple patience. Well, get over it.

Today's sign of the apocalypse

Today I was out shopping and decided to browse the HMV a bit. I suppose that was my first mistake, but let's ignore that for now. I was wanting to buy a Replacements album or two.... but of course they didn't have any.

But that's not the worst part.... I took a peek in the jazz section to see if there was anything that jumped out at me and what did I see but an entire row of Harry Connick Jr albums and only 3 by Miles Davis.

"But Ren!" you exclaim.... "Harry Connick has had a very successful career, from his first album at the age of 10 and a total of about 25 albums between then and now".

At this point I kick you in your head for making a worthless argument defending a mediocre "artist" who makes the kind of Jazz music that makes people say they hate jazz because it is boring as hell.

This is Miles Davis people!!! .... the man so cool he got name-checked in Billy Madison as part of a peeing-your-pants joke and came away all the cooler for it. Allmusic.com lists about 95 studio/live albums for him, not counting compilations. There are at least 5 of his albums that every music store on the planet should keep in stock at all times just as a service to humanity.

And if your music store has room for 20ish Harry Connick Jr cd's (including duplicate copies) it should sure as hell should have room for at least a dozen Miles Davis albums.




And don't even get me started about their lack of Bob Dylan.


(This rant courtesy of a guy who was there looking for Let It Be by the Replacements....so you know it's not just some jazz snob either!)




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Now playing: The Replacements - Answering Machine
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The Missing Review - Cookingforyou.ca

For whatever reason, all the reviews seem to be working except this one. To not deprive our fans (both of you....hi Mom!!!) of our critical voices, I've decided to post this one here until we can sort out the glitches at dodgycurry.ca.



Cookingforyou.ca - July 16, 2008

A friend of mine once told me that she couldn’t wait to be admitted to a nursing home because they have people who do everything for you: Tell you when to get up. Tell you when to go to bed. Tell you when to take your pills. Feed you. Bathe you. Wipe your ass. Entertain you. Having myself worked in a nursing home, I fully disagree. I would argue that such lack of independence is detrimental to one’s dignity. However, when Ren found a website called Cookingforyou.ca, I was more than willing to relinquish independence and let someone else do the work for me. (matt)

It's a well known fact that Matty lived at home during university. As everyone is aware, these are the key years for learning how to live independently and to teach yourself how and when to get up, go to bed, take your pills, eat, bathe, etc. Unfortunately, due to Matty's living situation during college, he did not even start to explore these skill-sets until he was 22. This has left him at times very confused and his development very stunted. You know how uncomfortable you feel when you're in a public washroom and some random 4-year old kid comes out of a cubicle and asks you to wipe his ass for him because he doesn't really know how, yet his parents have sent him into the world (of public restrooms) alone? Now imagine if that kid is 30 years old, and has been eating vindaloo. (ren)

The idea behind Cookingforyou.ca is that you can have pre-made meals delivered to your house, which can be thrown in the microwave and served as if they were prepared by yourself. It’s ideal if you are bedridden or lazy like us. That being said, if you are bedridden, be warned to stock up appropriately as they only deliver to certain areas of the city depending on what day of the week it is. In other words, if it’s Monday and you are a cancer patient living in Spruce Cliff (wherever that is), don’t count on your delivery for another 3 days. Hope you have lots of Lean Cuisine, Mr. Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. (Offside.) (matt)

While cancer is never funny, the idea of actually relying on cookingforyou.ca to properly nourish a human being is down-right hilarious. I think the guy with the “Monkey Chow Diary” http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html had a much better idea. (ren)

When we looked at the menu, we counted at least 4 curries. While we both agreed to preface this review with the caveat that Cookingforyou.ca is not an Indian restaurant nor is it an Indian focused business, we thought our readers might enjoy a different type of review. In the future, we will likely review curry-centric items you can buy at your local Safeway. We won’t even discuss the dress code. (matt)

I might still discuss the dress code. This is all from memory of course, but back when I worked there, it was to my immense amusement that I discovered some discrepancies to “the code” On the store-wide dress code you were allowed to wear black, brown or navy pants, however the pharmacy-specific one did not allow navy, but did allow green. No matter how I twisted it around in my head I could not figure out what made green appropriate for pharmacy staff, but not the rest of the store. Did they keep getting mistaken for produce? It would be quite annoying to be a Safeway manager and find your produce guy having a nap, upside down in the lettuce with only his green pants-ed legs sticking out; the perfect disguise. And what was wrong with pharmacists wearing blue? I just don't get it. When I was there I mostly dressed in drag, since they made no mention of gender-specific requirements and I thought a nice flowery skirt would look better than boring old black pants anyway. (ren)

I live in Palliser, meaning I needed to order for Wednesday. I didn’t really need to ask Ren what he wanted. I knew he would go with Butter Chicken. I chose the Kashmiri Lamb dish. I felt ridiculous ordering 2 servings of Rice for $6.75 but did anyways just for kicks. I could have made rice at home but thought that if I was gonna relinquish independence, I might as well have the same experience as my nursing home patients. Day 5 of bowel protocol: Fleet enema. (matt)

It is not a given that I will go with butter chicken, but given the choices that was definitely the safe bet. When there are other dishes on the menu that intrigue me, or if I have a feeling that the butter chicken will disappoint I tend to steer clear. However, the only thing that caught my eye on the menu more than the butter chicken was the “Whole savoury roasted turkey”for $150. However this not being a very traditional indian dish, and me not having 18 other friends to share it with, I decided to go with the old stand-by. (ren)

One day before my date with Ren, I placed a phone call to Cookingforyou.ca to order. I was told that they would have to phone me back after the owner/manager had okay’d the order for delivery. What was this about? I wondered if they were scoping out my address to see if it actually existed. I thought about the time my friend secretly ordered a pizza to be delivered to Andreas Garvic’s house and then watched from behind some bushes as hilarity & confusion occurred between Garvic & the pizza delivery boy.
They phoned me back a few hours later. I was told that they are not able to deliver for orders under $50. While I later confirmed on their website that this is the policy, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I would have to order 2 other curries. In this case, Potato and Spinach Dhal and Chicken & Yoghurt curry which is Very High in Fiber according to the website. I applaud them for including the nutritional information. A nice touch. (matt)

They also mention that the potato and spinach dhal is low in cholesterol, which is always nice considering my awesome lipid panel. Of course this was balanced out by the butter chicken which is notoriously high in cholesterol. We sold an awful lot of lipitor up in castleridge. They've actually included nutritional info for nearly every dish, which would be nice if I cared about that sort of thing. My bag of Doritos also has nutritional info on the back. (ren)

At this point I was informed that delivery would be between 1-3PM, when I was at work but that they could charge me a deposit of 5 dollars for a refrigeration container, to be left on my porch. If I didn’t want to drive to the Foothills Industrial Park to return the container, the staff member suggested, I “could recycle it”. Hmm… Environmentally friendly AND business savy?!? Think again. Recycling Styrofoam can be difficult, cost prohibitive (http://www.ci.concord.ca.us/living/recycle/env-styrofoam-peanuts.htm) and is not listed on the City of Calgary’s website of recyclable material.(matt)

We could have “recycled” it like we did on the Calgary Flames bus trip back in our college days, by tearing it into the littlest pieces that we could and scattering them around the bus. This angered the bus driver so much that we got to ride all the way back to saskatoon without heat. Alternately we could have labeled it up as an “organ in transit” box and left it sitting around in odd places, filming the results in a Candid Camera type manner. This plan would need us to actually purchase a video camera, so it was quickly nixed. (ren)

I was asked to make a cheque payable to Wife Inc. and leave it in the mailbox. If you actually have a wife, it’s important to let your spouse know that Wife Incorporated is not some type of Russian mail- order bride service or dirty latin maid service, but rather, the parent company of Cookingforyou.ca. Otherwise, there could be some awkward personal banking discussions in your household. (matt)

Not unlike “Hire a Husband”, the general contracting company around town here. Of course if your wife is routinely having to hire a surrogate husband for the basic yard-work duties it might be time to pay her a little more attention before she finds a surrogate husband for her other needs. (ren)

The next day I rushed home from work to find a massive Styrofoam “eskie” on my front porch. I couldn’t believe the size of it. I think my neighbours suspected I was importing massive supplies of refrigerated Anthrax and Smallpox Vaccines. It was a serious case of over packaging. On top of the foam crate was the invoice for $65. Ouch. To add insult to injury, part of the invoice had a section labeled Percent Discount. Under this header, someone had handwritten “0%”. It was like they looked at the invoice, saw my name and said, “we’re not even gonna leave this area blank. We want him to know he’s worth ZERO. Let’s write it in so he knows.” Cookingforyou.ca was losing points and we hadn’t even started nuking the curry.(matt)

The cooking for you webpage recommends letting their dishes thaw overnight before cooking, however, being men we had no time to wait for this. We wanted to eat the same day as delivery and nothing was going to stop us. Of course we were then pleased to find that the packaging had defrosting instructions right on them..... game on! (ren)

Ren arrived and we opened beers. Each food package had nutritional information and easy to follow instructions: Defrost x 12-14mins then heat x 2-3 mins. Unfortuanately, the engineering team who designed my microwave decided that if you are going to defrost something it must be either POULTRY, MEAT or FISH and you must know the weight of the substance in pounds. There is no generic DEFROST button. While I was able to figure out the weight of each dish based on the labeling and higher math (read: multiplication), the task of defrosting the lentils dish caused some frustration. Next time I buy a microwave it’s gonna have a “Legumes” button. (matt)

This of course is still better than my microwave which is so insanely overpowered that I generally have to divide cooking times for most products by ½ in order to not completely chernobyl them. One would think that buying a more powerful “Radiation King” is automatically a good thing, however it is very hard to cook a cup-a-noodles when the water completely boils out in the first 30 seconds leaving the noodles simmering in a melting plastic cup of doom. (ren)

Nonetheless, we figured things out and sat down to watch Kenny vs Spenny while we ate. The best part of our meals were (in order): 1) Heineken, 2) 7 dollars worth of Steamed Rice, 3) Kashmiri Lamb 4) nothing else. If we had to recommend something to order, it would be the Lamb dish, which actually had some flavour. On its own it might have scored a 6 or 7. Unfortuanately, the rest of the dishes didn’t really hold up. The Butter chicken, Chicken and yoghurt curry and Dhal, all lacked in spice. Ren remarked that he was uncertain whether we were actually eating curry. I later saw him digging through my kitchen garbage to forensically exam the packaging and labels for evidence of curry. When he brought out the “CSI black light” and mysteriously started inspecting my mattress, I had to put my foot down and throw him out of my house.(matt)

In place of actually writing about the food, I will post an MSN conversation I had with a friend after I returned home:

Curry Ren says (9:15 PM):
yeah....tasted like they froze it a year ago....
you know how potatoes taste if you freeze them then thaw em and eat em

Diana says (9:16 PM):
ick...ur right...no good at all...freezerburn is bunk

Curry Ren says (9:17 PM):
and all 4 dishes tasted like that
and it cost $65
ick
the only thing i would have eaten in a restaurant was the curried lamb....and that would only be in a pub....after 3 newcastles....and before 2 more

Diana says (9:18 PM):
blammo! that is totally balls!

Curry Ren says (9:19 PM):
and it even just had that kinda generic "we threw some safeway curry powder in the pot so now it's lamb curry" vibe.....not particularly great

Diana says (9:20 PM):
that is unfortunate indeed..hopefully you can redeem yourself and your hunger sometime soon

Curry Ren says (9:21 PM):
yeah.....you might not have to read the review for this one.....it seems to be writing itself during this conversation

That's enough of a review for me. Maybe I should have gone with the whole turkey. (ren)


In fairness to Cookingforyou.ca, they do have a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the food. While I considered taking them up on this offer, I didn’t think it would be ethically or journalistically responsible as a food critic to do so. I will concede that the Lamb Kashmiri is a decent dish and that Cookingforyou.ca isn’t a curry restaurant and as such, probably shouldn’t be held to the same standards as say, Punjabi Sweethouse. However, if you’re an avid reader of this website, you know we don’t mince words about curry. We are brutally honest and sometimes painfully harsh. I’m giving Cookingforyou.ca a zero percent discount when it comes to scoring the experience.

Score: 3/10



[Apparently matty is so upset he forgot to list 3 people who were not at his house...... (ren)]

It's big? Really? I hadn't noticed.

I'm just winding down one of my wonderful weekends of work at the hospital tonight, and it's not so bad...but there's one thing that really gets old in a hurry.

Just about every night shift I bring in one of my insulated 7-11 mugs full of diet pepsi. And they're pretty bigs mugs. The Xtreme gulp one is apparently 52oz of awesomeness and the G-Force one appears to be about the same, however with no claimed size on the side.

But really....does everyone at work need to comment every time I come through the door with these? I get it. It's pretty big. It's a lot of pop. I should be drinking water. Yes, I have to pee a lot. Yes, you would probably have to pee a lot.

Enough already. I don't take it upon myself to give my opinion about my coworkers' mousy hair, crooked teeth, questionable body odor, or bewildering fashion choices (argyle sweater with seersucker pants FTL).

I don't comment on your addiction to coffee that has you running to the Good Earth shop for yet another $4 concoction that I have no desire to understand. Maybe I should come along when you go up to order coffee and then make fun of whatever the fuck it is that you order. Good idea except my short-term memory can't handle that many quasi-italian words at once and it would just come out as gibberish.

Ok, so, seriously....let's talk about something else. My dog. My curry addiction. My Vespa. My love of videogames. My incredibly tiny penis (if you need to talk about something that is an abnormal size). Just no more about the gulp.

Thanks



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Now playing: Frank Zappa - Sexual Harassment In The Workplace
via FoxyTunes

.... But the website is down

Well...we may have four new awesome reviews up, but for some reason our web hosting is down. It's been up and down all day....but it's been down for most of the evening. Really hope that's fixed tomorrow so all y'all can read the insanity.

Here's a dancing sheep to keep you entertained in the meantime.

Four new reviews up

Four new reviews are now online.

First off....
Mirchi

then that same night,

Raja Foods

Then

CookingForYou.ca

and finally....up to Red Deer for

Astha

Take a look....I think they're a pretty good read. But I'm biased...

Vacation

Just got back from vacation.....

It was kinda like this.




Just kidding.....except I did go camping. And I did get a summer cold....which really isn't fun. Camping is only fun if you don't actually have to be in/around your tent during the day. Especially if it's 35 degrees out. Having a summer cold is only bearable if you can take some extra time and sleep during the day. As you can tell, these things are exact opposites. I tried doing stuff....but just got too hot and head-achey and felt like crap. Then I tried to sleep....but the tent was waaaaay too hot, and I woke up in a huge puddle of sweat feeling even worse than I did before my nap.

And on top of this I got some kind of insect bite on my face that made 1/2 my lip blow up like a balloon. I was not impressed.

But now I'm back in town and just chillin. Wrote a couple more curry reviews for chelsea to get online when she's back from the arctic, and should be doing some housework and stuff but I think I'll try out that napping stuff in my nice comfy bed.



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Now playing: Bob Dylan - Lay Lady Lay
via FoxyTunes