909s and good times

I have a very common last name.  My gmail.com email address (z smith at gmail dot com) is a very easy-to-remember, generic one.  (I was an early adopter.)  As a result of this, I get email every day from people who either think I’m their friend “Zahir” or “Zelda” or even another “Zack”, mistakenly give out my email address (when theirs is something like zsmith10@gmail.com) and have all their friends/colleagues reply to it, sign up for a site/service using my email address by mistake, have purchase receipts — even full tax returns, with social security numbers and everything on it — sent to me by mistake, or simply try to email things to themselves, failing horribly, and sometimes sending me naked photos of their girlfriends by mistake. (Not joking.)  I do the responsible thing and let them know that they’ve contacted the wrong person.

Usually by replying in some sort of horrible, sarcastic fashion.

About six weeks ago, a “Dr. Zachary A. Smith” completed some sort of neuroscience residency in California, accepted a new position elsewhere, and let all his new colleagues know about it.  He also gave them all “his” new email address, which was actually mine.  So, I started getting spammed by all his buds.  I was several drinks deep, hanging out at the legendary Cliff Nuttman’s house, so my replies (from my BlackBerry) were a little off-color (my replies are in bold).  Take for instance this exchange with Parham:

Hey Zach, Congrats on graduating! Are you doing fellowship or going straight to work? Yeah, I wasn’t happy at Cedars. Very weak program overall. Since my goal was neurointerventional, I spoke to Nestor and the opening at UCSF radiology seemed the best option at the time. Hopefully, I can do a fellowship with Nestor and Vinuela…..I think Jay and/or Garni may come up for CNS this year in SF. I told them they could stay with me and of course you’re welcome to stay with me if you decide to come up. Or if you’re ever in the area and need a place to crash, you’re always welcome here. Congrats again! -Parham

Cool man, would love to crash

Man where you live dogg

I’m moved near the main UCSF hospital at Parnassus.

Parnassus?? That’s some straight up grecian shit!! Home of pegasus, dogg!! Winged horses ALL UP IN THIs

Best though, and more pertinent to the story of the Brain Paper for Dr. Khoo, was this bewildering conversation with Greg:

Khoo told me you were joining the team. That is awesome. See you soon.

Wooooooooooooord up

I mean we totally be operatin all up in dem brains and shit???? Let’s fuckin do it!!!! Cut em up! Maybe we can totally make some superhuman mutant motherfucker?

Dude I’m down.

Now HOLD UP. Imma let this finish, but that is one of the greatest responses of all time.  This is one of the bright surgical minds of our generation replying to “Dr. Zachary” and he is “down” with cutting open brains to make “superhuman mutant motherfuckers.”  Yes.  You read that right.  At this point, I asked if he wanted to see a photo of a “totally rad bassett hound.”  He did, so I sent him one.  My following comments seem to have driven him off, or at least enlightened him that I was not the Dr. Zachary he was looking for:

Actually wait… Here’s an idea: next time I have someone’s head open, I touch his brain with my dick!! What do you think?

I mean if I were to touch his cerebellum with my dong, that basically would give him super dong brain powers, right?

Wow, those are some deep thoughts!

At this point, we stopped speaking, except that a few days later, I felt like I wanted to be crystal-clear with Greg that he was emailing the wrong person, so I told him so.  Hands washed clean, conscience clear.

Or so I thought.

Fast forward to two weeks later:

Zach, Have you been working on the latest Trans1 paper that Dr. Khoo is going to be submitting? If yes, how’s it going? If no, I guess I’ll drive over to your new office for the next year :)

I was out drinking with friends (hmm, is there a pattern here?) and my replies took a familiar tack:

Yeah dogg. Working all up on that motherfuckin paper. Workin on that whole touchin-dongs-to-brains angle. Whatchoo got?

No real reply of consequence, except that he wrote back to ask if anyone ever asked if I was crazy.  I am not sure if he was addressing me or the other Dr. Zachary.  So, I let this one drop again.  Well, for a week or so.  I finally decided that what might bring closure to this issue is if I actually wrote that paper for Dr. Khoo!  So I emailed Greg this time (the first time I’ve ever initiated conversation with him, mind you):

Greg, I finished that paper for Dr. Khoo. It’s attached. Please take a look! I decided that haiku is the best way to present these difficult questions we’re researching.

Also, I am doing research to determine how many brains do we got

(Do you think it’s more or less than what cats got)

In this endeavor, I had a huge assist from the incomparable Sprads.  Let me present to you, in its entirety, the Brain Paper for Dr. Khoo, with fonts and layout intact:

I really hope Dr. Khoo likes it.  I never heard back from Greg.