Mel Gibson is stalking me

...and he's not doing it very effectively.

Cases in point:

1) In 2002, M. Night Shyamalan's rather disappointing Mel-Gibson-vs.-aliens flick Signs was filmed in and around my charming old historical hometown. But I'd moved from my parents' house to Cleveland a little more than a year prior. Sorry you missed me, Mel.

2) Last week, scenes from the new movie Edge of Darkness were filmed at the book depository of my alma mater, a location also known as the Bunker because it is, well, an old military bunker. I've never actually been to the Bunker, but it's about five miles from our house and I drive past it several times a week. Sorry you missed me again, Mel.

3) Tomorrow, more scenes from Edge of Darkness will be filmed at the old county courthouse, in downtown Northampton. I go to Northampton frequently. In fact, Tovah and I drove through Northampton yesterday and today, and we saw all sorts of cinematic equipment being hung on the courthouse. We also saw throngs of people standing around and watching said equipment-hanging, and police standing around and watching said throngs of people. Partly on account of the filming (and the concomitant traffic delays and even more pronounced lack of parking), and partly on account of lack of need to go to Northampton, I won't be going by the courthouse tomorrow. Mel! Your timing sucks.

It's what's inside that counts

As part of my policy of getting out of the house at least once a day, Tovah and I make regular trips to Big Y. By "regular," I mean "at least six times a week." Sometimes we go more than once a day, but this is because we live across the street (translation: no wasting of gas) and Tovah goes in the stroller (translation: I can't fit that much in a basket).

The parking lot is not very pedestrian-friendly. The crosswalks are in weird places, drivers don't look where they're going, and there aren't a lot of curb cuts. (Side note: the more we've gone out with the stroller, the more aware I've become of accessibility issues. Like wheelchairs, strollers aren't designed to hop curbs.) We try to use the sidewalk in front of some of the stores, but we can't always get around the bags of Quik-Krete in front of the hardware store or the cigarette-smoking men in fatigues in front of the military recruitment office. Thus, we frequently end up walking amongst the parked cars.

Every weekday afternoon, the parking lot is chock-full of junior high students. Most kids around here walk or ride their bikes to school, and on their way home they all converge at Friendly's for ice cream and french fries. Let me tell you, I feel really old when I'm pushing a stroller through a pubescent crowd.

The other day we walked by a young fellow on a bike. "Casey, my little African-American friend!" he called to a friend of his who was several yards away.

Both Casey and his buddy were decidedly Nordic in appearance.

I will never understand the early adolescent male.

Attention to detail not required

Rule #1 of classified advertising:

Do not misspell the name of your company.

Guilty as charged

Yesterday I saw an interesting car. It wasn't a hybrid, bio-diesel, natural gas, or electric vehicle. In fact, it was a rather ordinary late-model wagon, festooned all over with various bumper stickers proclaiming its owner's position on various social issues. For a car parked in Northampton, Mass., this is not so unusual.

What made this otherwise unremarkable car so interesting was that one of its stickers read as follows:

DRIVE & POLLUTE.

I'm always intrigued by this sort of thing. I only hope the irony wasn't lost on the driver.

Go with the flow

Asthma medications and nasal sprays, many types of which I've had the (mis)fortune of sampling over the years, seem to be named by the Chinese-menu method--one from column A, one from column B. With the limited variety of prefixes and suffixes, I tend to get confused when I'm asked to identify which medications I've tried over the past quarter of a century. Was it Rhinocort that made my nose bleed, or was it Nasocort? Have I tried Nasonex, or am I thinking of Nasocort again? Was it Azmacort that made my cough worse, or was it Pulmicort? Have I ever tried Maxair, or am I thinking of Advair? I've taken cromolyn, but what about Nasalcrom? And have I ever actually tried Flonase?

These questions really only come up when I have to get a new pre-authorization for my current prescription regimen. This is one of the many reasons I do not like managed care. Why should my doctor have to remind my insurer every year that nothing cheaper than the maximum US dose of Allegra will touch my allergies, and yes, that expensive Singulair really is necessary to keep me from coughing, and no, maintenance corticosteroids (while cheap and easy, like a bad date) are not appropriate because I can't tolerate the side effects, which include feeling like I could make the Guinness Book of World Records for Worst PMS All Day, Every Day?

ANYWAY.

Every time I see a commercial for Flomax, I think it's an asthma medication. I mean, can you blame me? Not only are its commercials full of people doing various high-impact activities like whitewater rafting, but its name sure does sound like it would help you move a lot of air through your lungs. But then I realize that the whitewater rafters are all middle-aged men. Because Flomax helps you move a lot of pee through your benignly enlarged prostate.

The Spam Files 6: Paris Hilton

According to my spam folder, Paris Hilton has been very busy. Not only has she been getting it on with SpongeBob, but she's entertained various other luminaries:

from: First Gerendasne
subject: Corzine visits Paris Hilton

from: Corbin adfasfwe
subject: Scooter Libby heads for Twin Towers' Paris Hilton Suite

from: Garrison Lucaj
subject: Epidemic Breaks Out in Prisons After Paris Hilton's Release

from: Mason Pietrzak
subject: Paris Hilton Sold Her Soul to the Devil, admits it on Larry King

from: Mae aviles
subject: Paris Hilton Loses Vagina, Blames Dr Phil

and my personal favorite:

from: Mehrdad vulgamore
subject: Paris Hilton sells her special taco!

Satan and Dr. Phil can have their spoils. I want tacos, dammit.

The Spam Files 5: The simple life

from: wlock Skeie
subject: SpongeBob named in Paris Hilton paternity lawsuit

And here James Dobson et al. had me convinced that SpongeBob is gay.

Poor aim

Periodically I have anxiety dreams about being in high school. In these dreams, I'm my current age, but for some reason I have to retake one of my high school classes (usually calculus) and attempt to blend in with kids at least a decade my junior. What makes these anxiety dreams is that invariably I've forgotten something important--such as an assignment, a test, or the location of the classroom. And then my dream-self feels really stupid because I graduated high school in 1997 and yet I can't get my act together to do the same stuff all over again as an adult.

(I must be growing up, though, because I had a dream the other night about having to go back to my doctoral program in order to retake statistics. In my dream, the class was taught by a computer science professor I had as an undergrad, and she'd assigned some gigantic research paper that I'd completely forgotten to do. Most of the rest of the dream was me dropping the F-bomb left and right about having neglected to write this paper.)

In my parents' mail yesterday was a piece for me. Every so often I get mail at their address, where I haven't lived since 2001, and it's usually a Mathcounts alumni newsletter. This piece of mail, however, left me speechless. I have no idea how I became targeted for this mailing, let alone why it went to my parents' address; but anyway, here it is for your amusement:



To the direct-mail genius who thought I might be interested in attending an alternative high school: That's Dr. G to you.

Dutch treat

The English language has the reputation of being notoriously hard to learn, as it's chock full of words whose pronunciation doesn't match their spelling, bizarrely irregular verbs and plurals, and a subjunctive tense that not even native speakers understand.

Dutch, however, is just plain funny. At least, the English-speaking Mrs. Gerbil and I think so.

For example: did you know that "Monsterhouder" is Dutch for "specimen container"?

Support single-payer healthcare!

A cute video from my aunt's colleague's family:

Growing up

Although I'm only 17 months and two days away from turning 30 (ZOMGWTF!), I occasionally still have difficulty remembering, and accepting, that I am an adult. Perhaps it is my baby face. Perhaps it's a lingering effect of having been at least a year younger than my classmates in school. Or perhaps it's a function of just how long adolescence lasts in US culture--some theories of development hold that adolescence lasts until age 26!

But there are some things in my daily life that remind me that yes, indeed, I have achieved adult status. I'm not talking about things like approaching my third wedding anniversary, having a baby, having bought a car, or even having moved out of my parents' house seven years ago.

No, I'm talking about much more quotidian things. Things like...


boiling water for tea...


having a fully stocked medicine cabinet...


and knowing how to make (and ice) cupcakes completely from scratch.

Tea, baked goods, and healthcare--these, I think, are the really important things in adult life.

Fight the future

1998:
"ZOMG, the X-Files movie comes out tomorrow! We've got to go see it--tomorrow!"

2008:
"ZOMG, the X-Files movie comes out tomorrow! Oy, we'd need a babysitter... but Tovah's not taking a bottle regularly, and what if she doesn't behave herself, and what if we can't concentrate on the movie because we're worried about her, and... Oh well, guess we'll just wait till it comes out on DVD."

Wait... what?

I enjoyed a lovely grape Popsicle this evening, and I was rewarded for my brain-freezing efforts with the following oxymoron-masquerading-as-a-joke:



Uh...

The Spam Files, Episode 4: Wrong spouse

I got this great spam the other day:

from: Christ
subject: Memo to all employees

If you know Mrs. Gerbil, 'nuff said.

Post #200: Beep beep

Hey! This is my 200th post! Rock on.

During the last few months of my pregnancy, I enjoyed a brief hiatus from being honked at by dudes in cars. Though Mrs. Gerbil would beg to differ, I've never thought of myself as particularly attractive. The extra forty pounds made me feel even less attractive (again, Mrs. Gerbil would beg to differ), so I was glad for the lack of honking.

A staple of my post-partum summer wardrobe is the nursing tank top. I highly recommend these things. It's been beastly hot, humid, or both over the past few weeks, so I'm even more thankful that these tops exist. They provide excellent coverage. But I'm finding that when I go out on my bike, I'm getting honked at again. One time an SUV full of male 20-somethings honked, wolf-whistled, and hey-sexied at me over the course of about 3/4 of a mile. I was sorely tempted to flip them a very ladylike bird, but I decided that ignoring them was probably the best policy.

But when I slather myself up with sunscreen and take Tovah out in the stroller for various errands, the last thing I expect on our walks is to be honked at.

And yet it happens. Like, every time.

I would think that, from an evolutionary-biology perspective, men in their reproductive prime would not be interested in women with babies. After all, the baby's presence should suggest that there's a father somewhere--i.e., competition. (For the sake of argument, we shall not consider the possibility that the baby has two moms. As far as I know, humans are the only creatures with the capacity for family-building by artificial insemination.) Men with babies, however, should be a big huge draw for women in their reproductive prime, for these guys basically advertise their sensitive, protective nature.

Here, too, Mrs. Gerbil begs to differ. She thinks that men in their reproductive prime should be very attracted to women with babies, as the baby is proof of fertility.

Then again, perhaps the baby has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's just all about my awesome tank tops--and my (baby-nourishing) honkers.

Grand Rounds at Shrink Rap

My blog-pals Roy, Dinah, and ClinkShrink are hosting this week's Grand Rounds over at Shrink Rap.

Even if you are not excited about the prospect of lots of health- and mental-health-related blog posts, it's worth it just for their awesome interactive iPhone graphic. (Which has a little purple gerbil in it!)

On peer review and cell phones

My cell phone and I have a love-hate relationship. I do not care for bells and whistles like call waiting, text messaging, or camera functions; and I always have a devil of a time explaining myself to the guys at the Verizon store. I also do not care for cell phones' collective implication of round-the-clock availability of their owners. But I like being able to talk to certain people for free, as well as to call Mrs. Gerbil to check on the little gerb while I'm off on my errands.

But alas, my cell phone's battery is dying a slow, horrible death. It demands to be charged at least once a day, regardless of whether I have been using the phone; and the phone now starts beeping its "feed me!" beep 30 minutes into a conversation. Yet if I hang up but don't plug it in, it will miraculously find a partial charge after only a few minutes' rest.

(Perhaps my trusty rusty phone is jealous of the baby--I like to talk on the phone while nursing.)

I don't really want to get a new battery. I have no idea whether I can even get a replacement battery for my no-frills phone; and besides, Verizon will give me a new phone, or at least a credit toward a new phone, in September. So I'm content to put up with its constant demands for attention for a few more months. I just wish that I'd known ahead of time that the battery would begin sucking this much less than 18 months into my relationship with this phone. Isn't that what all this R&D money is for?

There has been a lot of kerfuffle in the media and the blogosphere lately about a certain Harvard researcher's failure to disclose some of the money he's received from industry sources. This researcher, whose name begins with a "B" and ends with an "iederman," has been churning out scientifically solid work on pediatric bipolar disorder for a long, long time. (His CV probably requires at least a ream by now.)

Some are taking his disclosure malfunction as an indication that his research is shoddy, and, by extension, that bipolar disorder (and, for that matter, the entirety of DSM-IV-TR) is a load of bunk. This is one big logical fallacy--the straw man, to be precise.

If you have not spent a lot of time in academia, you may not be aware of the process by which research like this gets published. After you've obtained the necessary human subjects approval from your local Institutional Review Board or its equivalent, after you've collected and analyzed and interpreted your data, and after you've written up your manuscript, you must figure out which journal might publish it. Then you send your manuscript to that journal's editor, and the editor sends it as a de-identified document to three people who know your subject matter inside and out.

If you're trying to get psychological research published, one of these people might just be yours truly.

As a peer reviewer, I read your manuscript thoroughly, check your analyses and your interpretations thereof, determine whether it's appropriate for this particular journal, and write up a few paragraphs on my findings. I make a recommendation to the editor as to whether your manuscript should be published as is, with minor revisions, considered as a "revise and resubmit," or rejected outright. The editor then sends you a letter containing all three reviews and his or her decision.

I get about a month to complete my review, and it typically takes me about 20 hours, but I don't get paid. At no point do you know who I am, do I know who you are, or do I know who my two compatriots are. If your manuscript gets published and I recognize it, I sure hope you thank your anonymous reviewers in your acknowledgments footnote.

In my time I've saved the world from a lot of crappy manuscripts.

Although research ability and ethics overlap, they are not one and the same. Yes, conflict of interest is a huge problem. But before dissing a researcher's entire body of work, as well as the work of his or her colleagues, consider the lowly peer reviewer... who along with two other unidentified colleagues decided that each of his or her publications was worthy of ink.

Confidential to Motorola: Revise and resubmit, yo.

Braaaaaaaaaaaains

I am a very, very bad child of the 80s.

Last weekend I finally saw Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in its entirety. All 14 cheese-tastic minutes of it.

(In my defense, I was three when the video was released, and my parents do not have cable. But still, this is kinda embarrassing.)



And it made me wonder--what, exactly, is involved in an audition for a zombie movie? Do they ask aspiring zombies to stumble around the room? Is it possible to be typecast as a zombie? (Relatedly: is it at all desirable to be typecast as a zombie?)

Also: if you have not yet seen A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead, what are you waiting for?

Gerbil Jumble #4: Didja miss me?

I haven't posted one of these in ages--almost two years, to be exact. But that's not to say I haven't been doing them. I just haven't been posting them.

Design flaw

What with the rising price of gas, Mrs. Gerbil and I decided it was high time to get new bicycles. My old beloved purple bike had died a valiant death of rust before our move from Ohio to California, and Mrs. Gerbil's black one was sacrificed for our move from California to Massachusetts. Mrs. Gerbil had promised me a new bike for Hanukkah a few years ago, and we'd gone to a bike shop of good repute in Berkeley to check out the stock; but the very nice employee wasn't able to identify the right bike for my overall size (not very big) and posture needs (weird).

So a few weeks ago, on recommendation from one of Mrs. Gerbil's co-workers, we went to Joe's Bike Garage. Joe's Garage is a tiny little place whose website, as far as I can tell, only has an index page; but Joe had the perfect bike for us. We each got a Redline R510, and dang, am I in love with my bike.



The other day I went on an extended little jaunt in search of a prescription and some ingredients for dinner. As I was unchaining my beautiful bike from the trash can at Big Y (note to local businesses: please provide bike racks!), an older man in a boater hat approached me. "Can I ask you a question about your hat?" he asked.

"My helmet?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Sure," I replied.

"Why is it shaped like that?" he asked.

Assuming he was referring to its fairly typical contour, I said, "It's more aerodynamic this way."

"It doesn't cover the side of your face," he said. "Why isn't it shaped like a football helmet?"

"There are some helmets like that," I said, "but I guess this one is just made to protect your brain. If you fall on the side of your face and break your jaw, they can wire it back, but if you hit the top of your head and get a brain injury, you're pretty much screwed."

Dammit, I thought, I shouldn't use words like "screwed" when conversing with nice 80-year-old men.

"Oh, okay," he replied. "But me, if I fell off a bike, I would probably fall on the side of my face. Bye!"