Outfielder, heal thyself.
Jose Guillen could have performed other medical procedures by himself that would have been much worse - need Mr. Flip mention a syringe? - but the Kansas City Royals still aren't happy with his venture in self-treatment.
Rather than let a doctor perform the procedure, Guillen decided to yank out an ingrown toenail himself.
"The doctor saw me" Wednesday, Guillen told The Kansas City Star, "and he said we'll see how it feels in the morning. If it wasn't any better, he wanted me to have surgery. I thought, 'Whoaaa.'
"So I went on my own to the pharmacy, got some tweezers, came home and pulled it out myself. Let me tell you, I cried. I had one tough hour. But I got it out."
Dr. Guillen continued: "I reached in there [with the tweezers] and poked around until I got the end of it. Then I counted one, two, three and just pulled. ... Oh, my God. It came out, but tears were running down my cheeks."
To avoid infection, Guillen was taking antibiotics. He also owes himself a $20 co-pay for the procedure.
Tattoo you
Because Mrs. Flip intercepts the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and quickly dispatches it to the trash - usually with some spent kitty litter on top - Mr. Flip's knowledge of the edition tends to be limited. However, there was extra buzz about Danica Patrick's photos in SI this month, and not just for the way she was posed seductively across the hood of a car. (Mr. Flip found the picture online. Don't let Mrs. Flip know.)
It seems SI removed - airbrushed, in the old phrase - a tattoo on Patrick's lower back for the driver's photo spread. The change apparently was first noted by the Web site gunaxin.com.
Though this might be a big deal to tattoo lovers everywhere, it doesn't seem to have bugged Patrick.
"Danica is aware of the edits and is comfortable with the final photos," a spokesman for Patrick, Lewis Kay, told CNBC.com.
And that's to be expected, we would suppose, because she was comfortable being splayed over the car while wearing a little bikini and high heels.
Let's write that down
At a recent news conference, a reporter was questioning Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun about being the highest-paid public employee at a time when the state is struggling with its budget. Calhoun was less than thrilled with this line of questioning but quickly informed the reporter that his basketball program brought in $12 million to UConn and advised him to line up his facts before asking about such things.
Calhoun also offered this: "My best advice to you is to shut up."
Mr. Flip has often heard that same advice, usually from Mrs. Flip.
Compiled from news services and Web reports by Mr. Flip, who follows that advice or risks ending up in the same spot as the swimsuit editon.