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Friday, August 28, 2009

Arbitrary and only slightly painful Friday

Well, the MRI was approved, though nobody called me on Monday or Tuesday to let me know.  So I simply showed up at the MRI door Wednesday at 8 and asked if I could come on in and have one.  After a little paper shuffling and a phone call, I got the thumbs-up, whereupon I put my keys and glasses in a locker and got ready to drink a tall glass of MRI juice.  Silly me!  I didn’t have an MRI before my appendectomy, I had a CT scan, and had to drink contrast dye.  You don’t drink contrast dye for an MRI.

Janet warned me that the MRI would be totally weird—loud and long and creepily claustrophobic.  But I thought it was cool.  It sounded a little bit like the opening of that NEU!* song “Negativland” followed by Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Autobahn.” So that’s today’s Arbitrary exercise!  What medical procedure have you undergone that reminded you of (a) German protopunk art/machine music (b) raga (c) reggae (d) kwassa kwassa (e) show tunes?

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* Even though I hung out in the mid-80s with people who considered Einstürzende Neubauten good bedtime music, and even though I always did all my Kraftwerk, somehow I never heard of NEU! until the spring of 2008, one evening when I got into a cab at O’Hare Airport.  The driver was listening to some socialist “public option” station that happened to be playing a tribute to NEU! drummer and co-founder Klaus Dinger, who had recently died; the song they were playing as I got in was “Hallogallo,” the first song from the first album, and after a few seconds I asked the driver, “um, could you turn that up, like, loud?” (If you click on ye link you’ll find out why!) He was most pleased to do so.  Apparently, Dinger and Michael Rother were trying to compose a song that sounded like speeding along the autobahn, with the white lines and signposts flying by.  Suffice it to say that it was the best. cab. ride. ever, and I promptly bought two NEU! albums from the Internets when I got to my hotel.

I am, however, still waiting to find out what the MRI! says.  I was teaching two classes yesterday and then attacking a dissertation (thereby compelling the candidate to “defend” it), and didn’t have a chance to call.  This morning, I spent twenty minutes on hold before being told that someone would call me back.  So I’m just sitting here waiting for the phone to ring, listening to “Hallogallo.” Well, there are many worse ways to spend one’s Friday.  Have a NEU! weekend, everyone.

Posted by Michael on 08/28 at 09:29 AM
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