Tim Belshe Columnist

I really don't know why people are always complaining about hospital food. It's really not that bad. The biscuit was a little bland, but other than that, they do a pretty good breakfast.

I'm at the hospital because a member of my family is having an operation to remove a part of the lung infected with cancer. Accordingly, I really haven't put much thought into what I wanted to write about for my column this week. Just to give you an idea how much effort I've put into this, I sat up in bed at about 11 o'clock last night and though, "Oh shit, I have to write a column for tomorrow."

So, for this week's Load of Belshe, I'm going to do something that I've wanted to do for a while, but just never got around to. There was always something just a little more pressing, no pun intended, that I though deserved the attention.

But there's something about being in a surgical waiting room while your loved one undergoes life-or-death surgery that makes you say to hell with affirmative action, gun control, immigration policy, religious issues and an editor's potential objections.

"What's this idea of mine?" you might be asking if I were interesting enough for you to care. There's a columnist that writes for another Arizona newspaper. His column runs just about every day in a quaint little spot next to the weather. All he writes about are the little things that occur to him throughout the day, and questions that his readers send in to him. Since most of the questions I get are along the lines of "How could you be such a f*cking idiot?" I'll just stick to the little, meaningless things that never get brought up, but for some reason I spend way too much time thinking about - kind of like a Larry David show, but not nearly as funny.

You might be thinking, "Wow, those editors at the Wildcat must be real slave drivers if they're making you write a column while all that stuff is going on with your family."

Well, it's not their fault. In my haste to get everything coordinated at my day job, I forgot to mention it to them. The editors at the Wildcat really aren't that bad. Despite my earlier cracks about them, I doubt they'd object to this column, and they probably wouldn't care if I told you that the columnist I was referring to is Clay Thompson at the Arizona Republic.

So now that I've already gotten through half of the column, here are some of the things that have gone through my head in the last few weeks. After reading this, you'll see why I usually put much more effort into my writing.

I saw that movie "Finding Nemo" a few weeks ago. You know you need to get out more when you find yourself getting worried about a little computer animated fish getting trapped in a dentist's office. And you know you need to spend less time studying engineering when you say to yourself, and everyone else in the room, "A fish can't make a plastic bag roll like that!" I hope I didn't spoil the movie for anyone. All in all, it wasn't a great experience for me.

The one thing hospitals could do a better job with is music. That song "Downtown" was on the intercom while I was writing this. I don't know who sang it, but it's an older song. That'll be stuck in my head for a while. At least it's better than those damn George Foreman commercials on the History Channel.

They've got him singing this annoying little ditty on these commercials that literally run about a dozen times an hour. Seriously, they'll run the exact same commercial several times in the same block. Foreman may know how to grill a great tasting, low-fat chicken breast, but he sure as hell doesn't know how to sing.

Speaking of chicken, it's just about time for lunch. I really don't know why people complain about hospital food. It's really not that bad.

Tim Belshe would like to thank the three people that made it this far for putting up with his half-assed effort this week. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.