The name of this blog

I always wanted to write about politics, although medicine and education are also topics I love.  I named this blog after the title of a very obscure song by a band named Bourbon Princess, or rather, a woman named the Bourbon Princess: Monique Ortiz.

I love the band, Morphine.  Their opiated lyrics, penned by the late, great, and aptly-named Mark Sandman, bring to mind an old-fashioned, dark and gritty pub, with sand on the floor, where rough men go to cheat on their wives.  It sounds like so much Billy Burroughs (one of my favourite writers), and perhaps also Jack Kerouac.  Still, it's music you could give your mother, and she wouldn't complain.  Here's a couple extracts so you can see what I'm talking about:

(from Shame)
I felt bad, and there was nothing I could do about it
Nothing I could do to make it go away
I felt bad, and there was nothing I could do to change it
Nothing I could do to make things change.

I know you're mad at me,
I know you want to slit my throat,
I know you think I think it's all a joke,
But I don't; I don't.

(from You Speak My Language)
All around the world, everywhere I go,
No-one understands me.
No-one knows what I'm trying to say.

Even in my home-town,
My friends make me write it down,
They look at me as I talk to them,
And they shrug their shoulders.
They go "What's he talking about?"
But you—you speak my language!

(from I Had A Chance)
I had a chance and I let it go,
I had a chance and I let it go,
And if I ever have myself another chance like that,
I'll grab it and I won't look back.

Sometimes, I'm too careful,
I walk just like I'm carrying a hand-grenade.
It's going tick-tick-tick-tick-ticking in my hand.

The few Morphine songs that contain sexual overtones discuss the act in very general terms; there is only one time Mark Sandman uses a four-letter word, and it relates to personality, not sex (I'm really just a f--k-up, and such a waste).  Those songs are Whisper (So whisper me your number, I'll call you up at home), Come Over (So come over, come over, come over, come over to-night!), and Thursday (extract follows):

One day, she says,
Come on up to my house.
She says her husband's out of town,
You know, he's gone 'till the end of the month.

Monique Ortiz is an entirely different animal, although her musical style is identical to Morphine's; Bourbon Princess, and a host of other bands, came into being after Mark Sandman's untimely death at the age of 46 in 1999.  It is generally accepted that the great majority of Morphine's songs depict true stories (possibly even Mark's affair with a married woman at the Wagon Wheel, a real motel in Massachusetts); this is probably also true of Bourbon Princess.  Monique sings from the point of view of a femme fatale and a heroin addict, and her lyrics are often laced with a staunchly feminist portrayal of sex, as well as plenty of references to the use and abuse of heroin.  Consider this:

(from I'll Take A Cab)

You seedy, tired piece of trash,

trying to get my sympathies.

Yeah, maybe if I feel bad enough

I'll drop down and give you some~.

Yeah, right, not now, not later, never,

ten years older and [unintelligible].

Soon the world is gonna blow,

so we better spend the night together~.

I'll take a cab, it'll get me there.

Avoiding you is worth the highest fare.

(from Spanish Fly)

Emptied out my mind

On some porno back in '89.

I wake to masturbate,

I hold my breath and hesitate.

Map the stars, count the sheep,

Anything so long as I might sleep.

So scratch my palm again,

Make me rich and be my friend.

I'm the Cuban at the door,

Called a Commie and a whore.

If he wasn't hit with anger,

I'm sure he would have given more.

(from Master Manipulator)

If it makes you feel better

To put the blame on me,

Go ahead, go ahead and do it.

You learned from the best,

The master manipulator.

You're smooth, but obvious,

I'll let you believe it,

But I won't fall for it.

(from Three Chairs)

Your apartment's a little bit cluttered,

But still the nicest place I've ever seen.

Your bedroom's so big and foreboding,

I can't imagine making love to anyone here,

To anyone here.

In the woods I tried to find you,

But you left no mark, no popcorn trail,

Just a door-handle and a blueprint,

Needles and a broken scale.

This junkie wrote some of the most powerful songs extant, and one of these songs is the name-sake of this blog.  Dark of Days could apply equally to the Bilderberg Conference, the Trilateral, Freemasonry, the Skull and Bones, or even the basement of the American executive mansion, the White House—wherever powerful men meet and discuss the future of our world, who lives and who dies.  Here is the complete text of the song:

Some kind of lagoon,

Where pharaohs and modern-day dictators meet in a room,

Discussing their final parts,

And all their future sins.

Let the new day begin, they say,

As they raise their glasses to the Dark of Days,

All their guns were stacked in a pile

By the coat-check,

The girl hasn't made enough tips yet.

She never seems to smile.

Their wives are all home,

Gossiping and chit-chatting on their telephones.

Painting up their toe-nails,

Though they can not show their feet.

You can kiss her,

But you better be discreet.

For all the alarms,

There sure is a great deal of calm.

Where'd everyone go,

In shelters and basements a hundred sixty feet below!

The wind took the sails,

Waltzing on the ocean,

The captain's on a bed of nails,

As all those evil thinkers and foul-mouthed drinkers

Made plans for us.

This doom is very scenic and bright,

For a moment I forgot that we were still in the night.

The moon had killed the stars,

We haven't travelled far,

We've miles and miles to go and it's beginning to snow!

So we wage wars,

Though neither side settles the score.

Calling around, blind on the ground,

Sniffing out the blood of those bitter hounds.

Taking borders, only to dissipate,

They don't deserve to settle here anyway.

Cry all you want, we were here first,

Get those filthy hands off of our holy turf!

Times don't change.

We ignore all the progress we've made.

No good-luck charms,

Just this grenade around my neck,

And a bloody spool of yarn.

Why I haven't written in a while

Recently I got interested in a fellow named L. Ron Hubbard.  He was a sci-fi writer who had invented a method of psychotherapy and a lot of other things; later on, he bundled all these things up into a "religion" named Scientology.  The funny thing is you don't really worship a God in Scientology; what you worship is up to you, as long as you throw in thousands of dollars to your neighbourhood Church of Scientology.  Really, what they are is a self-help business; and this is where L. Ron Hubbard had a lot of his great ideas.

Hubbard wrote a bunch of research papers, in addition to his sci-fi novels; in these research papers, I found that he had written a perfectly workable method to improve anyone's study skills easily.  It takes a little co-operation from teachers, but the majority of the "Student Hat Course", as Hubbard called it, is dependent upon nothing but the student.  At first glance, I fell in love with the methods Hubbard employed and quickly applied them to my own study, which improved one hundred per cent. as a result.  Oh, and by the way, I didn't spend a penny.

My infatuation with the subject put a bit of a worm into my head: what if I wrote a book on it?  So I did.  I wrote whenever I felt bored, which was essentially all the time, and I had the book done in about three months.  There was already a set of books on the subject, but these were by the "Church" of Scientology and therefore subject to criticism; there were also two free, online treatments of the subject, which I took into account when I wrote the book.

So now I have a 120-page treatment of Hubbard's study papers—I plan to get it published.  Don't know when, if, or how that will happen, but at least I can present you here and now with the basic ideas of this book.

The first thing the student has to have, Hubbard argues, is the willingness to know about something.  If he is arrogant enough to think he has nothing to learn, his closed mind probably won't absorb anything.  Even a willing student has problems studying, though, and these come from the three barriers to learning: a) an absence of whatever is being studied, or at least a model of it; b) the subject isn't being learned step-by-step; c) a poor vocabulary.  Hubbard calls these problems a lack of mass, out-gradientness, and misunderstoods respectively.

Of course, there's more to it—critical thinking has to develop, because not everything you read is true.  A student needs to learn to find gaping holes in a book if there are any, so there's a whole chapter devoted to that.  There's a chapter devoted to the building blocks of understanding (affinity, shared belief/reality, and communication), and there's even a chapter on breaking through double-speak.

There are two big assumptions inherent in the traditional study system that Hubbard challenges.  I take his side on this, because really it's true.  First of all, fifty per cent. is not a passing grade.  If your mechanic fixed your car only half the time, would you consider him acceptable?  I sure wouldn't.  The only passing grade is 100%, but you can only achieve this if you stop asking stupid questions.  A physics student needs to know what Newton's Laws are.  He does NOT need to know who Newton was, where he lived, or when he lived—so WHY is this on the quiz?!  Second, students in a course study at VERY different speeds.  Why does the teacher teach at the same speed for everyone?  This approach doesn't work.  So Hubbard introduced a checksheet system—you study certain pages of the materials and do the exercises in the order they appear on the checklist, and your study partner checks them off as you go along.  Then your study partner studies, and you check him off.

Almost no classroom that I have ever been in would pass Hubbard's check.  Hubbard emphasises the  need for dictionaries; there have been some classes that don't even have a single one.  He also emphasises the "clay table": a table a student can make a model of whatever he's studying in clay, and by studying this clay mock-up, understand the actual thing being taught.

The worst thing, though, in my opinion, is what Hubbard calls the glib student.  I have often envied "glib" students because they always seemed to have higher marks than I did; now I see that I have no real reason to envy them.  A glib student is one that has set up a tape recorder in his mind and is expert at only one thing: parroting back whatever the book or the teacher told him.  Such students always seem to do well on exams—thus the source of my envy.  However, a student like this never seems to properly apply what he studies, and this is the real goal of school, not some arbitrary construct for marks.

There's Hubbard in a nutshell, and this is why I haven't been writing too much otherwise lately.

Republicrats and Demicans, it's all a one-party system...

I've read a few political posts on here again, and this put me back in my usual politics-minded zone.  So, I'll try to explain what is wrong with America and why Obama is ruining the country even more; keep in mind, this is from the point of view of an outsider, and thus, in my non-humble opinion, a neutral observer.  

The otherwise repulsive character, Dolores Umbridge, said a few lines in "Order of the Phoenix" that fit politics perfectly.  "Without progress there will be stagnation and decay. Then again, progress for progress’s sake must be discouraged, for our tried and tested traditions often require no tinkering. A balance, then, between old and new, between permanence and change, between tradition and innovation, because some changes will be for the better, while others come, in the fullness of time, to be recognized as errors of judgment. Meanwhile, some old habits will be retained, and rightly so, whereas others, outmoded and outworn, must be abandoned. Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness, effectiveness, and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited."

Some of these practices that ought to be pruned are... well... the primary bones of contention between Democrats and Republicans, especially in the cultural/social arena.  First off, gay marriage.  I am against any and all discrimination.  However, marriage is an ancient institution, and before this century, each marriage consisted of precisely one man and one or more women.  I feel that the benefits available to married couples should also be available to homosexual couples.  However, the means of bringing about such benefits in the context of a long-term committed relationship should be recognisably different for married and homosexual couples.  The term "marriage" and the centuries-old traditions existing within this ceremony should not be used.  How about the term "conjugal union", or something else?  Just not the M-word.  That's a special word, and a special ceremony.  Let's keep it that way.

Contraception.  How could this even be a bone of contention?  Insurance plans should cover family planning (abortion is NOT family planning, it's Plan C).  No exceptions—the Democrats have this one right.   "Contraception is ... not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.  [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage... for purposes that are ... procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special."  So now Rick the Dick is telling Americans what they should THINK about sex... Wittle Wicky, do you bewieve that wife begins at ewection, too?  Abortion.  No electives.  For situations likely to cause medical or psychiatric harm to mother, father, or child; also for conception arising as a result of sexual assault.  Republicans have it right.  Abstinence-only sex ed.  How could this even be a problem?  People have a right to know about their bodies.  Comprehensive sexual education must be mandatory.  Democrats get this one.

The worst problem Democrats have is this damn idea of handouts.  Many wealthy people are wealthy because they have worked hard and attained success.  If this motivator is removed by the Powers that Be in the form of taxes, this will mean that America will lose the one thing guaranteed to put smart, potentially successful people on the right track—money.  Would be terrible to see modern-day Newtons and Hawkings and Torvalds and Murdochs wasting their life away in back alleys drinking wine coolers and smoking dagga.  My biggest problem, aside from the individual mandate of Obamacare, which is a PENALTY and not a TAX, (nothing against Obamacare, just hate the Individual mandate) is unemployment insurance.  Get this: a drug-dependent individual, unemployABLE, is paid insurance for the unemployED.  Even worse: underage female of low income status and low education is impregnated, disowned, and ends up single, possibly also dependent on drugs, and living alone.  Every additional rugape she brings into the world is worth money to her, so she ends up nothing but a brat-bearing machine, while the intelligent yuppie couple on the other side of town have one intelligent child.  The one smart kid will bear another smart kid, while each of the stupid brats will hook up with an equally stupid partner and bear five or six stupid children.  I mean, the basic concept of unemployment assistance is sound—but drug tests should be introduced and subsidies for children eliminated.

Will Paul Ryan be able to beat Joe Biden in the presidential and vice-presidential debates?

The Associated Press newswire recently announced that Paul Ryan would be the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States of America.  I followed the discussion on Google Plus, the usual online hang-out for the intelligentsia of the Internet.  Tempers flared; although Republican voters kept their head on straight, there was no shortage of vulgar name-calling and disinformation on the Democrat side.  The discussion was a bit convoluted, and sometimes answers came before the questions.  Here is where I document the discussion; names are not included for privacy, and some of the worse spelling errors have been corrected by an impartial panel of proofreaders broken down by age and sex, i.e., yours truly, since there is nobody on God's green Earth that hasn't been more broken down by age and sex.

"Now I know Mitt can't win. Ryan is like a third rail." Do you mean Mr Ryan is absolutely essential, or that he can be dispensed with?  If you mean the latter, I think you wanted to say "fifth wheel", as a car doesn't need a fifth wheel, but any train that isn't a steam engine needs a third rail, which supplies electromotive power to the engine. -- Ed.


"Here's a real dyed-in-the-wool brown shirt brown-noser!  He can sniff up a storm, plays every opportunity to the extreme, stalls, withholds aid ... [from] people in need & will sacrifice his country to a cult member with big shoulders that gets its operatives from Salt Lake City & the
Mormon brotherhood—heaven isn't heaven in the Book of Mormon. Thank God for all those young Mormon girls to fill their harems...on earth, not in Paradise, American Taliban."  "Actually, I was going to vote for Mitt because he has excellent Mormon values and can bring jobs to the masses in countries that obviously need the income. Some people will become so much richer than they already are when he takes office in 2013. Even if it were actually true that Obama had anything to do with the death of Osama bin Laden, he wasn't the one to actually PULL the trigger. Mitt would've done it, though. ... My vote: Romney!"

"Ahahahahahah.  Congratulations on your reelection, Mr. Obama."  "It's a risky move. It could reinvigorate Romney's campaign or have it fall flat on its face." "Paul Ryan is a far-right whackadoodle who will ruin the country."  "This is a very good choice ... Paul Ryan is a very solid [candidate]. He is all business and this is just what this country needs. I am sure the Obama administration does not like this [...] I know for a fact Ryan is not liked very much in the White House." "Good choice. If he upsets the left this much, then he is the guy to go with."

"Awesome! Paul Ryan is a guy who actually has the courage to deal with the nearly insurmountable fiscal problems this country has." "Absolutely true.  This guy has more knowledge of the budget in 1 finger than the entire Oministration.  I like the call." "Ryan is a perfect choice. He will keep people talking about what Obama does not want to talk about: the economy."

"Are you Americans even thinking about electing [anyone] other than Obama... come on! [...] After years that led you exactly where you are and finally making the curve, [you're] now thinking about going back there again?" "I simply cannot comprehend how anyone can truly believe that Obama has been anything but a disaster.  Makes me pessimistic of our future as a country, honestly."

"Are the Republicans trying to lose? I think if they tried harder they could have found bigger losers to run. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit though." "This is a great pick. Ryan will wipe the floor with Biden during the debates, just as Romney will to Obama. The problem is that most Americans are too ignorant and caught up in who's the latest Idol winner to care."

---"It is hard to imagine what economy would be worse than this. I mean there is Greece, Spain, Italy, and our own Great Depression. It looks to me that President Obama has us well on our way to all of those. He can still blame everyone else for that and most will believe him." 

Could two girls change the lives of Canadian junkies?

Well, Naomi and Salome aren't really girls; they are groundbreaking Canadian studies that can help change the world.  Of course, many studies may, rightfully or otherwise, claim that they are significant; NAOMI and SALOME, however,  are different in that they portray the harsh reality, one which politicians are unwilling to even acknowledge, in what must be the ugliest branch of medicine: addictions.  Traditional news media keep mentions of the studies under wraps, as the sensational 'articles' about the crimes of this community bring far too much resources for the cure to be revealed.  Even Big Pharma resists, as I'll reveal below, for the simple reason that (as a study staff member, whose name will remain anonymous, revealed) addiction medicine was not on their priorities.

The Conservatives, who are usually less wrong than the other parties in Canada, certainly make up for it this time.  In an ideal world, drugs, just like every other thing, would be traded on the free market like everything else; this was the case for nineteen centuries, in which chaos (contrary to common belief) did not rule the Earth. This isn't an ideal world, of course, so one has to live with such hare-brained ideas as Prohibition.

Prohibition, in fact, has three populations of people that it maims or kills.  The fulcrum is the addict himself, who risks amputation as a result of impure drug, loss of income when a company drug-tests (which, in Canada, are illicit unless solely for alcohol), and incarceration as a result of law enforcement activity.  The family 'only' suffers emotional complications, but these can be hell on wheels.  Those who choose to assume responsibility and either a) the satisfaction of a moderate amount supplied for free or at cost, or b) abstinence, are also in jeopardy of harm if neither the two usual treatments in Canada are effective.

The standard Canadian treatments for addiction are buprenorphine and l/r methadon (Metadol), although their use is far more common for pain (this is how I have had the opportunity to try both).  Methadon can be used in any dose; however, it is damaging to the nerves, causes tiredness and lethargy in some, and it is more difficult to cease use of.  Furthermore, because it is a mixture of two active drugs, to wit: a) l-methadon, an opiate, and b) r-methadon, a cough suppressant, taking methadon provides the effect of (for example) morphine and dextromethorphan (DM) simultaneously.  Although this is great in nerve pain, where r-methadon and its relatives work better than opiates, it is of no use in organic pain or in addiction.   Buprenorphine is harmless, but is a newer, less trusted drug, and only works up to 32 mg daily; above this, methadon becomes the sole option.

NOTE: For consistency, the drug diamorphine, also called diacetylmorphine, morphine acetate, and heroin, will be hereafter referred to as heroin.  The diluted form of this product sold as a drug of abuse will be referred to as crude heroin.

In other countries, such as Great Britain, all drugs can be, and are, prescribed for all conditions, although a licence is required to prescribe heroin, dipipanone (a drug available only in the UK), and cocaine for addiction treatment only.  Concurrent pain and addiction can be treated (in the bureaucratic sense) as simple pain.  There are a few opiates considered semi-standard for drug addiction treatment, however.   Morphine and heroin, in both oral and injectable form, continue to be used.  Dilaudid is also an option, as are methadon and buprenorphine.

Whew!  That was a damn long introduction.  Time for the story.  So, although the UK had originally floated the idea of quitting crude heroin by using pure heroin, this was also taken up by other countries: Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, and Germany all allow this treatment.  Canadians needed to also have this option; today, there are only two available treatments, neither of which is entirely the answer to the question.  Therefore, in 2005, a study known as NAOMI (the North American Opiate Medication Initiative) was launched in the cities of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Montréal, Québec.  Its goal was to independently test the efficacy of treatment with heroin.

The Vancouver arm of the study needs special mention.  It was held in the Downtown East Side, the poorest postcode in the country.  The problem with crude heroin in the DTES is so godawful that this area has the most heroin abusers per square mile in Canada.

This was a scientific trial; therefore, a control group was also established.  Study participants in the control group received methadon.  The rest of the participants received injections; one-fifth of these got dilaudid, while the rest got heroin. Neither the staff nor the participant knew which injection he was getting.  Each participant was in the study for a year; the trial ended entirely in 2008. Participants, who actually formed an advocacy group for themselves, were royally pissed off about the aftermath.  Some had successfully held down a job thanks to the heroin they received; then, even in its obvious success, the heroin was yanked from within their reach.  Nowhere else did this situation occur.  Either the study results were so good that the situation was made permanent, or the participants were given heroin on compassionate grounds.  In its infinite wisdom, Health Canada so magnanimously refused to do so.

The trial had one unexpected result.  The ten per cent. of people who unknowingly received dilaudid rated it as equal to heroin; there was no perceivable difference.  Although this was a breakthrough, it was nothing shocking.  In fact, a study in India, where buprenorphine is such a common hospital painkiller that it rivals or surpasses morphine in its usage, holds that drug addicts given it ranked buprenorphine (there known as Bupregesic or Morgesic) equal to morphine.

The results just had to be further tested, as if they weren't apparent already.  A new study was figured out, again with no exit plan, called SALOME (the Study to Assess Long-term Opiate Medication Effectiveness), to do so.  This experiment has only one location: Vancouver, again in the Downtown East Side.  The control group, this time, are receiving heroin by injection; the other half are receiving dilaudid.  After six months, half of each group will continue with injections, while the other half will receive oral treatment with the same drug.  The breakdown, then, is as follows: one-quarter of the subjects will be on heroin by injection; one-quarter, on heroin (morphine) by mouth; one-quarter, on dilaudid by injection; and one-quarter, on dilaudid by mouth.

The study started this year—2012.  Just as NAOMI was fraught with difficulties, so is SALOME; however, this time, the problems came from Big Pharma.

There is only one company in Canada which makes ampoules of the proper dosage for use in this setting: this company is Sandoz, the "generic products" (i.e., those that don't make any money) division of Swiss giant Novartis.  Sandoz is well aware that many of its products are habit-forming; it makes almost every known opiate in use around the world, with the exception of national specialties like dipipanone, piritramide, and dextromoramide.  It would stand to make a king's ransom on remedies for addictions, since those remedies are the products themselves.  Therefore, promoting these trials is in the best interest of Sandoz and Novartis.

Let it be said here that dilaudid is a naturally-derived product; it is essentially a chemically-transformed version of morphine, which is prohibitively expensive to manufacture synthetically.  The cheap and traditional way (five thousand years, in my opinion, constitutes tradition) to get morphine is from poppies that grow in the earth.  Therefore, it is possible to have a shortage in morphine, and thus a shortage in dilaudid.

In the true spirit of Murphy's Law, of course, this is what happened; Sandoz announced that there was a shortage of ampoules of the strength required for the SALOME project.  From March to June, SALOME had only enough hydromorphone for 12 or 13 patients (out of 25; the others were on heroin); the targeted number was 60 (out of 100).  It's understandable that there is a limited capacity for hydromorphone; the problem is that Sandoz obviously doesn't have its priorities straight.  Apparently, drug addictions patients are low on the list of priorities, because Sandoz doesn't get the idea of spend money now, make more money later.  Instead, it focuses on pharmacy and hospital distribution, because it makes more money at the present time.

What the people at Sandoz don't understand is that even though dilaudid is an off-patent drug (which means anyone can make and sell it), Sandoz effectively has a monopoly on its distribution within Canuckistan, which means they have zero competition and would receive all profits from the new patients prescribed it for their addictions.  Well, there is Knoll, the original inventors of dilaudid, and then there's Janssen Cilag, and Teva, and Sorres, and Pharmascience, and Purdue, but none of these make the injections.  Knoll makes quick release dilaudid pills; Purdue makes eight-hour delayed release pills; Janssen Cilag makes full-day extended release pills; and Pharmascience makes dilaudid cough syrup, but only Sandoz makes the injections.  Assuming that the situation would stay as it is, that the study would have a positive result, and that hard-core addicts would like the injections, Sandoz would stand to make a killing once doctors realise that the current programme of oral methadone and buprenorphine maintenance needs alternatives.

Thank God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that the people at SALOME didn't fuck around.  The researchers were quick-minded enough to know that the manufacturing process for dilaudid is rather simple.  Somehow, they managed to obtain a manufacturing licence from Her Majesty's Government and are making the stuff onsite.

Seriously, this research is going to change the world, if politicians don't somehow find a way to bugger it up with moralistic, paternalistic, preachy laws.  Natural opiates like morphine and dilaudid are harmless enough; there is no organ they can harm.  Methadon, though, harms one's nerves and is harder to get off than either morphine or dilaudid.  It should be a valid choice for someone to prefer one of the natural opiates (even buprenorphine, though that isn't really an option at high doses) to the synthetic methadon, and I hope to God that the research which proves it so makes its way into current medical thinking and practice.  Morphine has been around for five thousand years.  Why the hell is it criminal to own it just now, for the last hundred years, when humanity got along just fine without this law before?  And if it must be criminal, give the people that become slaves to it a way out without making them slaves to something worse!

Introduction to Seduction: Losing Your V-Card

(NOTE: This is meant as satire.  If you don't understand what satire is, don't read this.  If you take this seriously, get a life.)

Purpose: To introduce sexual activity into the lives of those people who have heretofore lacked this important skill, as well as to increase the level of proficiency at this vital endeavour for those who have previously been acquainted with it.

Hypothesis: Sexual activity increases the overall level of happiness in an individual's life on an exponential curve.  It also increases brain performance in some individuals.  Sexual activity involves two or more people, reacting, in the presence of EtOH (ethanol, or alcohol), to produce sexual energy.  EtOH is not a reactant, but a consumable catalyst: sexual activity may occur without its presence, but it will occur with less likelihood and at a slower rate.  However, EtOH, when consumed, is metabolised into MeCHO (acetaldehyde), a toxic product, rendering it ineffective once its duration of action ends.

Apparatus:

• One horizontal surface; a bed (an apparatus consisting of mattress, box spring, bed frame, and bed skirt) or the rear bench seat of an automobile will do.
• Excess EtOH (an excess is defined as more than can be used by all of the reactants in the equation together).  If available, morphine or rohypnol may be substituted, as long as reactants are familiar with these catalysts and their mode of action.
• Scissors, in the case of a wardrobe malfunction.
• Instrument sheaths (Trojan® brand preferred, as Durex® brand is known for inferior build quality)
• Lubricant (a light lubricant such as Astroglide® is vital, so as not to compromise integrity of instrument sheath)
• Kama Sutra (optional; not recommended for novices)
• Body paint or whipped cream (see above)
• Handcuffs, rope, cable ties, duct tape, riding crop, paddles (optional; avoid unless highly experienced!)

Note: The pH (probable Hotness) scale is a vital component of the chemical reaction that induces sexual activity.  This scale ranges from 1 to 14, with the optimum score for the purpose of sexual activity being 7.  First, a specimen of the desired gender must be chosen; this can be accomplished visually, after which the pH scale may be employed.  To rate a specimen on the pH scale, it is necessary to verbally interact with them.  A pH of less than 7 indicates that the specimen is bitchy (if they are of the female gender) or an arsehole (if they are of the male gender), with the degree of this fault increasing as pH decreases.  Low pH can be an indicator of low EtOH plasma levels, which can be remedied by adding EtOH; however, this is not always the case.  A pH of more than 7 indicates, regardless of gender, a crier.  High pH can be an indicator of high EtOH plasma levels; this can not be remedied, and a new reactant must be located and chosen either way.

Procedure:

1. Locate one or more specimens; those that are both living and human are preferred for maximum educational value.
2. Once one or more capable and willing specimens have been visually identified, rate each on the pH scale.  Use adequate amount of EtOH for most favourable reaction.  NOTE: Excess EtOH will result in unfavourable results, such as pH increases above the optimum level or buildup of MeCHO, a known toxin.
3. Transfer specimen(s) to a secure location, such as permanent or temporary living quarters, or the rear bench seat of an automobile.  If performing reaction in an automobile, ensure parking brake is engaged.  Avoid performing reaction in toilet stalls or in alley ways.  
4. Remove all outer cladding.  Scissors may at this point be used if the manual method fails.
5. Calibrate instrument.  This may be done either manually or by suction.  WARNING!  Excessive addition of EtOH or morphine (an advanced alternative to EtOH) will result in inability to calibrate instrument effectively!
6. Cover instrument in protective sheathing and lubricate if necessary; lubrication is required if rear receptacle is being used.
7. Insert sheathed instrument into front or rear receptacle, using pulsating motion until sample is obtained.
8. Discard used protective sheathing.
9. If at least two reactants are in acceptable condition, repeat steps five to eight as many times as desired or necessary.  If out of protective sheathing, do not begin reaction; cease experiment immediately.
10. Return outer cladding to reactants.  Ensure that each reactant is sheathed in the outer cladding assigned to them.  Return each reactant to its designated location.
11. Wait at least twenty-four hours before repeating experiment.  Ensure reactants are fresh; do not re-use reactants if freshness can not be determined.  Freshness is determined by lack of MeCHO buildup in reactant.
12. Compare and write up results.

The Big Bang Drinking Game

I love to drink.  I love to drink. I. Love. To. Drink.  I LOVE TO DRINK!  I also like to watch the popular nerd comedy, Big Bang Theory, and hate that damn mentally retarded character Sheldon.  Except I only drink alone, in the morning, and small amounts every day.  I know that other drinkers may not agree with my style of drinking, so I have devised a game which puts together both my hobbies of drinking and watching Big Bang Theory.  So here goes:

Any time Penny says "sweetie", take one drink*.
Any time Sheldon knocks on Penny's door, take two drinks.
Any time Raj whispers, take two drinks.
Any time Sheldon misinterprets sarcasm, take one drink.
Any time the gang buys food, give** two drinks.
Any time Wolowitz says a pick up line, give one drink.
Any time you hear the words, "We built the pyramids", take one drink.
Any time Amy makes Penny uncomfortable, take one drink.
Any time you hear the word, "BAZINGA!", take three drinks.
Any time Wolowitz's mother yells, take two drinks.
Any time the Roommate Agreement is quoted, give two drinks.
Any time Sheldon laughs, take three drinks.
Any time anybody goes upstairs, take one drink and give one drink.
Any time Penny doesn't "get it", give two drinks.
Any time Bernadette says "Howie", give one drink.
Any time Leonard says "Here we go", take two drinks.

*A drink is here defined as one quarter gill or half of a decilitre (50 ml) of whisky, gin, cognac, or absinthe, since that's what real men drink.
** To give a drink is here defined as designating one or more people, up to the number of drinks given, who must each take the number of drinks given divided by the number of people they are given to.

Congratulations!  You will be too intoxicated to walk within fifteen minutes of the show.

College Really Isn't Necessary — Oh, Really?

So I'm looking at some random pictures on the Internet, and by random fortune I click on an article that nearly made me cry.  Lynzee [sic] Stauss, an ostensibly mature high-school student, wrote an article that channelled the worst of Rick Santorum's thoughts on university education and crossed them with a Valley Girl spirit so audacious that I wondered about her natural hair colour.  It had to be blonde.

Miss Stauss apparently believes that "girls need to be girls" in the most stereotypical manner possible: nothing but going out to eat, manicures and pedicures, and shopping, all at their husbands' expense.  Even the bills, Miss Stauss writes, should be paid out of the poor husband's pocket.  To put the final nail in the coffin of gender equality, a status that women the world over toiled to attain for over a hundred years, Miss Stauss writes that Plan B, i.e., female employment, should not be full-time or require post-secondary training to achieve.

I first thought this was a parody.  Her worldview, which some would call unconventional and I would call fucked, certainly could not be the logical, well thought-out ideas of a sharp mind.  The article was also riddled with spelling errors, and when I say article, I mean article.  This piece was clearly part of a published newspaper, and no paper I've ever seen contains a mistake for every column-inch.

As I am wont to do, however, I looked the girl up on a popular social-networking site, of which I am a member.  This is my general ritual when introduced to people—I find that their profiles often offer insight into the deepest aspects of their personality.  As soon as I saw Miss Stauss' profile, I changed my mind instantly.  The social-networking site I was using allows members to publish a short autobiographical entry, and it was to this entry I gravitated.

It was a mirror image to the newspaper article, from the tone down to the spelling and grammar errors, which I have fixed here as I present to you Miss Stauss' auto-bio line.

My name is Lynzee.  I'm 18.  I love life.  I absolutely love my boyfriend; he treats me like a princess.  He is my Prince Charming, and there is nobody out there for me better than him.  I have two of the most amazing friends, Amber and Charisma.  I don't know what I would do without them.


Here's the article in full, again with all the mistakes corrected.  As they say in university literature classes, compare and contrast.  Well, there isn't anything to contrast really: the article uses the same tone, and even the same vocabulary, as the social network bio.

College really isn't necessary


Marriage is something that every girl looks forward to during her childhood.  I believe that every girl should marry every guy that is rich so [girls would] never have to work.  Girls can just go and get their nails done and take the kids shopping.  I don't think that college is necessary, because you go to school twelve years out of your life, and, after that, you should be done.


I can understand if men want to go to school longer to get a better education to work on stuff they like to do.  Every man should have money so he can support his family.  Even if he doesn't want to get married, I think all boys should go to college.  I don't think girls should have to go to college.  They are too busy with their life and family.  I can understand if girls want to go to beauty school, because every girl should have options.  Personally, however, I don't think college is necessary, because girls need to be girls and get their nails done or go shopping.  Have a great time.  I'm not saying boys should have the life of work and distress because they are humans, but they need to work if they want to have a good life, because obviously their wives won't be bringing in the money.  I guarantee that no girl will marry a poor guy, because every girl wants the life of a princess.  When your husband gets home from work, you can go out to eat with all the money he makes, and also pay all the bills.  Girls should all have back-up plans, but nothing that is full-time, and nothing that needs college to succeed.  Maybe like a day-care out of your home.  So, girls, have fun.  Boys, start working!

On Rick Vaive

Reading the newspapers today, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Rick Vaive, the former team captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was found innocent of driving under the influence of alcohol.  In court, Mr Vaive related the touching story of his life---a story that many, including myself, would not relay to our best friends, let alone in open court.  The police arrested a man who, allegedly, had been walking erratically and needed help with his papers upon being pulled over, and to top it off had urinated on himself.  A police station video showed none of this behaviour.

Mr Vaive has had bladder-control issues since he was six; he also suffers from sleep apnea, a disease wherein the brain suffers from oxygen deprivation during the hours of sleep, leading to next-day drowsiness.  The arresting officer said that Mr Vaive was slow to react, needed help in walking, had bloodshot eyes, had a wet stain at the crotch, and smelled of alcohol.  The first five are easy to account for, given Mr Vaive's sleep apnea and urinary leakage; the last, however, is quite a mystery.

Personally, I think that the arresting constable did the same as many witnesses do in court: when faced with an incomplete picture, one tends to "fill in" the ostensibly missing information.  For instance, when presented with the scene before and after a car crash, without the actual crash being shown, many people will attempt to piece together the missing information.  This is what I feel happened, unwittingly, to the constable.

It is completely possible that Mr Vaive, as he claimed, was tired and not drunk.  Tiredness, in fact, can cause identical, although far more severe, impairment in drivers to alcohol.

Yet the Toronto Sun, an otherwise respectable right-of-centre tabloid newspaper, saw fit to run a sensationalist screed that insinuated that Mr Vaive was lying, acquitted solely because of his top-notch counsel.  Michele Mandel, the authoress of this so-called article (I could wipe my arse with it after taking my usual toilet-plugging dump, for all the good it does) ought to check what her species is, because Homo sapiens wouldn't write this kind of thing... although Canis lupus would.  That's right, Mrs Mandel, I'm calling you a bitch.  Mrs Mandel even writes that, by winning, Mr Vaive lost out on his public image, and that "a different scenario... would have done wonders for his image: where the former hockey hero faces the cameras and says he shouldn't drink and drive".  How is that even possible?   If people who won cases like this lost out on their public image, and those that pled guilty (despite their obvious innocence) gained it, stars would be lining up to plead guilty.

Maybe Mrs Mandel is just jealous; she writes yellow journalism for a second-rate rag, and likely doesn't have the money to eat, let alone hire a lawyer.  Maybe she's just plain old pre-menstrual.  Whatever it is, these are not the writings of a sane woman.  Read them yourself: http://tinyurl.com/vaive.

(UNIX) Keyboarding as God Intended - Ubuntu

For most users, Caps Lock is a redundant, rarely-used feature; for the rest, it should be.  It occupies, however, a piece of prime real estate on the keyboard: right next to the letter 'A'.  Meanwhile, the far more important Ctrl key, used every few minutes to accomplish tasks in less time, is in a decidedly more awkward position.  There are ways to fix it, though; this short stub will explain how to set up the keyboard in my favourite layout, which puts Ctrl where Caps Lock is, Alt where Ctrl is, and Caps Lock where Alt is.  This article supports most UNIXes and Linuxes, but for the last part which is Ubuntu-specific.

We will be creating what is known as a .xmodmaprc file.  To do this, open the terminal.  If you don't know how to do this, look it up on a search engine.  At the prompt, type vim ~/.xmodmaprc and press Enter.  The screen should change; if you don't have Vim installed, find out which editors are installed and use one of them.  Type i to activate insert mode; then type the following exactly as seen here. 

! UNIX-style keyboard
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
remove Control = Control_L
remove Mod1 = Alt_L
keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
keysym Control_L = Alt_L
keysym Alt_L = Caps_Lock
add Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Control_L
add Mod1 = Alt_L

When finished, type [Esc]:wq (that is, the Escape key, followed by a colon, followed by w for write and q for quit).

What we now need to do is to make this run at start-up.  If you are running anything other than Ubuntu, you need to find this on an Internet search engine.  If you are running Ubuntu, type [Alt]+F2 (simultaneously) and enter gnome-session-properties into the box, typing [Enter] afterwards.  In the dialogue box that appears, click the Add button and then the box captioned Name.  Enter something memorable, such as UNIX-style key swap and type [Tab].  In the following box, type /usr/bin/xmodmap /home/[user]/.xmodmaprc, where [user] is your user name.  Exit both dialogue boxes and restart your machine for the settings to take effect.

Why Marilyn Hagerty's Review is Ridiculous

Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that I hate the country.  I would never live anywhere that has any less than half a million inhabitants, unless that place is an internationally-recognised tax shelter (like the British Virgin Islands), or has lots of character (like most small towns in Europe).  My favourite locations include places like Toronto, New York, London, Tortola, and Barcelona; this is in contrast to the Canadian prairies, or Didcot in England, where the air stinks of horse shit and tractors on the road are a common sight.  There are a few reasons why I hate the rural parts of the world, all of them related.

I consider news to include things such as murders, multi-car pile-ups, political campaigns, protests, and celebrity deaths.  A cat stuck in a tree is not news; neither is a traffic accident that incurs no injury or death.  If you think non-news events like this belong in the newspaper or on the telly at six o'clock, you are deluded.  Furthermore, university education is supposed to be the rule, not the exception.  If the whole community honours (or worse, mocks) a handful of residents because they have an education beyond high school, what does this say about the intelligence of everybody else?

Shopping at Carrefour, TESCO, or Sainsbury's (Wal-Mart, Target, or Costco for the Yanks and Canadians reading this) is supposed to be routine, not some sort of special occasion.  I think of it as a weekly thing—if I'm out of sugar, I go to TESCO to buy it.  How can you possibly survive going shopping once every three months?  If there are no national or international chain hypermarkets within ten minutes of your place of residence, why the hell are you still living there?

The reason I love huge chain hypermarkets is the same reason I hate huge chain restaurants: character, or lack thereof.  I can go to a Carrefour in Exeter and expect it to carry the same selection of items as found in a Carrefour in Paris, not to mention London.  With goods that are superior when mass-manufactured, such as automobile tyres and household goods, I expect them to be completely identical.  However, I refuse to eat (and pay a premium for) so-called meals microwaved from frozen and served to me.  This is why I eat at places with actual character.  If I want doughnuts in Toronto, I buy them at Dimpflmeier's, a German bakery with an attached café.  If I want bagels, I'll go to Kiva's or What-A-Bagel, two authentic kike bakeries.  Now, I wouldn't give kikes business, except for the fact that bagels are a kike food.

If you're going to go against what I say and eat at a chain place, here's this piece of incredibly secret knowledge accessible to only an elite cabal of foodies: all of what you eat in one location will be accessible at and be cooked to the same recipe as at a location on the other side of the world.  By the way, if you couldn't detect it from my tone (or are an aspie, retard, moron, or eejit), there is no secret cabal—I was being (gasp!) sarcastic.  There is no elite cabal—everybody who isn't an aspie or a retard knows this.

If you're scratching your head and wondering why the bloody fuck I'm writing this, that's okay.  While I was watching the Chicken Noodle Network today in the throes of a bupey high, I heard something about some sort of viral restaurant review.  I Googled it, and was shocked to read that some old biddy in the backwoods of North Dakota had, in absolute honesty, reviewed the local Olive Garden, of all places, for her town newspaper.  If you haven't eaten at Olive Garden for fifteen years or so and remember it only for its mediocre food, please note that this so-called restaurant has transitioned to serving microwaved frozen food—glorified T.V. dinners, in other words.  Also, Olive Garden is about as authentic as silicone implants, and as Italian as any of the characters on Jersey Shore, especially Jennifer "J-Wow" Farley.  I had to triple-check whether this hadn't somehow been reprinted from The Onion.  It hadn't been.

Please, rural America, I know you're stupid... but don't be that stupid.  Don't vote for Rick Santorum, go to university, and, above all, don't review fast food places and big T.V. dinner chains.

On Buprenorphine

Since the age of 13, I have been taking opiates in moderation for chronic pain. I started with morphine (and the occasional hydromorphone), and since an MVA approximately three years ago (I am now 19), this was briefly supplemented with oxycodone.

As someone who has been on every opiate available, I have formed preferences as to which is best, and I flatly refuse to take others. The classic opiates are the best; these include (dia)morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone, and fentanyl, although I will not take fentanyl patches due to the O/D risk. I will not take pethidine (Demerol®) or anileridine (Leritine®) for their neurotoxicity (they can cause seizures in high doses, and aren't strong enough, forcing me to take high doses) or tramadol or tapentadol for their thymoleptic (SSRI) activity (they are one step away from the so-called anti-depressants and have a far worse withdrawal). 

I have taken methadone for cough that would not go away and later suffered my first and last episode of drug withdrawal; I liked methadone but hated the very long withdrawal period. I have experience with ketobemidone (Ketogan®), dextromoramide (Palfium®), and dipipanone (Diconal®), but none beats the classic opiates.  I even wrote up an opiate rating chart way back when; buprenorphine isn't included, as I had regrettably not tried this amazing substance before in adequate dose.

I was referred to a doctor who treats primarily addiction cases, but this fellow (who I shall call Dr Smith, because that's his name) agreed to treat my pain even though no addiction existed, then or now. His favourite opioids, in order of preference, are buprenorphine and hydromorphone. Score! I originally insisted on hydromorphone, my favourite opioid. However, Dr Smith refused to supply it unless buprenorphine was first trialled, and I was quickly started on 16 mg of Suboxone®.

Suboxone® is a form of the typical opiate buprenorphine; I use 'typical' here to mean that its effects mirror that of morphine and hydromorphone, with no NMDA hallucinogenic effects such as those that Physeptone® suffers from.  There are three forms of buprenorphine: patch, pill (to be taken under the tongue), and injection.  No swallowable pill exists, as swallowing buprenorphine makes it 1/5 as strong as when taken under the tongue, so making such a version would just plain be wasteful, not to mention liable to abuse; if there were a swallowable version, the doses would be 10, 20, and 40 mgms, like oxycodone.  The patch is for a week, which (in my case) makes it unwieldy and impractical, not to mention not strong enough (doses delivered are in microgrammes per hour—that's right, microgrammes).  Suboxone® is one brand of the oral version of buprenorphine: there are two others, Subutex® and Temgesic®.

Buprenorphine has some disadvantages, though; some are not immediately obvious.  It is unique in its mode of action in that, past a certain point, the duration of the dose will be longer, but diminishing returns in strength will be apparent.  In addition, buprenorphine kicks all other opiates off of their receptors (in effect, it pulls the key out of the lock), and it binds very strongly to opiate receptors once it finds or makes itself a free spot.  This is a mixed advantage and disadvantage; it is tough to overdose, but once a toxic state is reached, good luck fixing it.  The biggest disadvantage is that not every country's medication licencing board has seen fit to approve Suboxone® treatment for pain; it is seen by the FDA, for instance, as purely an addiction treatment—many American doctors disagree though.  The patch, though, is always treated as a pain treatment.

Now, let it here be said that, in the UK, Suboxone® (or a version thereof) is used to treat pain, not just the patches. For marketing reasons, the pain version is called Temgesic® and is priced lower than Suboxone®. Temgesic® is available in 200 µg, 400 µg, and 2 mg versions; Suboxone® is available in 400 µg, 2 mg, and 8 mg versions. Both contain the same ingredients in the same ratios: 4:1 buprenorphine/naloxone.  In Subutex®, no naloxone is included.  Naloxone, also known as Narcan®, is the antidote for morphine poisoning if taken by injection; it will completely reverse the effects of morphine, whether beneficial or harmful.  Narcan® will relieve some effects of morphine and related drugs if taken by mouth—the primary effect it will relieve is that of bowel upset.  

The naloxone is included, not as common myth has us believe, so as to discourage abuse by the intravenous route, but to discourage the primary side-effect of opioids (included in morphine and in oxycodone for the same reasons), namely, difficulties in the lower digestive tract. This is due to buprenorphine binding almost irreversibly to receptors; naloxone will not dislodge it in any way approaching reliable. For pain, Temgesic® is taken four times a day; it is favoured especially in cases of laryngeal malignancy. Canadian doctors have not yet learned of this excellent use of buprenorphine and provide it for that most insidious killer, addiction, only. 

Except Dr Smith, apparently. He put me on buprenorphine for my pain, and I have quickly grown to love it. Sure, it might not offer instant relief, but I'd much rather relief that lasts. Dr Smith, however, was ignorant of the appropriate manner to dose Suboxone in chronic pain; he prescribed it to be used in the time-honoured protocol for addiction management: once per day, supervised. I had issue with this and was permitted to dose it in the British fashion, four times per day, self-supervised. This allows for dose variation, which Dr Smith dislikes intensely, but I favour (narcotics are addictive, after all, and it is nice to take a holiday once in a while). My prescribed dose is 16 mg per day, but I don't take this much as a rule. The most I have ever taken is 8 mg per diem; two halves or four quarters.  My usual dose varies between 4 and 8 mg per diem.

The reason I have grown to love buprenorphine is that it has all the psychological effects of morphine and its sisters; it has qualities of an excellent anti-depressant and anxiolytic, and certainly beats all the synthetics.  No synthetic opiate possesses the excellent quality of morphine, in my opinion.  Some may love methadone, but the green syrup may just drink you up instead of the other way round.  In some situations, buprenorphine is less controlled; this just adds to its appeal, as it's easier to convince a doctor to prescribe it.  Thank God for buprenorphine—I now take no other medication and I am happy this way.  It seems that one's skills are infinitely improved on opiates, for a particularly narrow definition of 'skills': writing, drawing, driving, flying, computer operation, and other sit-down arts of all forms are vastly improved by the added drop of creativity.  Nor is there any sluggishness or motor impairment, as with other drugs.  Opiates are genius in their subtlety—it is sometimes hard to know they're there.

If you ever have the chance of trying buprenorphine or hydromorphone, do it.  You will be very pleasantly surprised.

And the Award for Idiot of the Month Goes To...

Rick Santorum.  From way up here in not-so-snowy Toronto, Ontario, I heard this disgusting sloppy, sucking sound, like a plug being pulled out of a bathtub drain.  "Oh, fuddle-duddle.  Santorum's got his head up his arse again," I thought.  I switched on my telly, changed the channel to the Chicken Noodle Network, and changed my opinion---Santorum's diagnosis was worse.  Much worse.  Not only was Santorum's head up his arse, but so were both his legs... because he had his feet in his mouth again, too.  Now, I know Santorum appeals mainly to those foetus-worshippers and holier-than-thou Jesus freaks who believe that life begins at erection, but what he said this time around was nothing, if not purified, triple-distilled, steam-separated essence of stupidity.

"President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college [university].  What a snob.  There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.  Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college.  He wants to remake you in his image."  This is what Rick Santorum shat out at a campaign rally in Detroit, before this Super Tuesday.  Santorum is a hypocrite and a liar, since what Obama really said was that each and every American needed to have the opportunity to go to university; all of Santorum's vile offspring certainly study or have studied at accredited institutes of education.  However, suppose we take this at face value.  What's wrong with every youth in America going to university or college?  Does Santorum want to lower the collective intelligence and in other ways ruin one of the greatest countries in the world?  University has always been, and will always be, the benchmark of intelligence and success in this society.  Not that having a skilled trade certification is bad; I look upon it as being equivalent to any other post-secondary specialisation.  It certainly isn't better than being a doctor or lawyer, the way Santorum would have the American people believe.

Read that quote again: "There are good, decent men... [who] work hard every day... that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them."  *sniff* Do I smell something?  Let's measure just how much bullshit has piled up just in that one sentence.  First of all, Mr Santorum, do you seriously mean to say that a welder or a plumber works harder than a doctor, lawyer, or accountant?  If you do, you seriously have another thing coming... dumbfuck.  Yes, that's right, I said dumbfuck.  Second, liberal college professor?  Seriously?  Now, as far as I can understand, liberal in America doesn't mean the same as it does here; we use the word 'liberal' to mean something like your 'Democrat'; you use the word to mean someone almost obscenely left-leaning, like the opposite of the word 'Fascist'.  Not every college professor is a Democrat, so how can you even say that a majority, or even a significant proportion, is 'liberal'?  Last of all, the role of college is not to indoctrinate you.  The role of college is to teach you how to think on your own, so you don't get indoctrinated.  I guess that's what Santorum wants out of America... sheep.  Poor, stupid, blind sheep.

In Tennessee, he went and spouted his mouth-shaped anus off yet again.  "Why does Obama want everybody to go to college?  So his liberal college professors can be indoctrinating people like he was when he was in college.  People need training; they need skills; but they don't need to go to where Barack Obama thinks they should go.  They need to go where their dreams and their heart wants them to go and where their opportunities fit what's best for them."  What if they want to go--gasp!--to college?  What if the great majority of American youth has dreams and hearts calling them off to academia?  Why should they listen to Rick Santorum and not their hearts and dreams?  College shouldn't be for those who are 'gifted'; college should be for everyone who has two brain cells to rub together.  If you think Santorum can ever lay claim to any form of speech other than the deranged ramblings of a tattered mind, try reading this aloud with a straight face: "More education is not necessarily a good thing."  Now, Santorum never said those words together in one sentence like I've written them right here, but that's what his endless blithering basically boils down to.  College indoctrinates people.  To what, believe in literature and maths and the tensile strengths of aluminium, copper, and silver?  Give me a break.  Give America a break, too.

No wonder Santorum has been satirically re-defined on the Internet as an unprintably obscene concept.  Bearing that in mind, I'll go right ahead and print it for you.  Santorum.  Noun.  The frothy mixture of personal lubricant and semen that is commonly the result of anal sex.  Rick, you're full of it, mate.  Full of santorum.  If Rick Santorum did, through some miracle, get the Presidential nomination, so definitive and resounding would his defeat be at the polls that he, as well as the sheep who had thrown their lot in with him, would never see political daylight again.  The simple fact is that the vast majority of American high-school students wish to go to college; even more (I seem to recall the figure being ninety-four per cent.) parents want this for their offspring. American families understand that the work force and the citizens of that great country must take the wheel in order to survive economically as individuals and as a country.  Anyone who says that there is a shortage of youth choosing a four-year university over a technical or trade programme is similarly out of touch.  The real problem is that there aren't enough graduates going either into university and succeeding there, or into a career college and succeeding there also.  America needs to stand and deliver.

Hey, at least we know to whom Santorum's campaign panders: the redneck, uneducated lowest common denominator that is the real problem with America today.  Why don't all the young folk just go fishin' in the water hole with uncle Bubba all day while he tells us about the facts of life; get a little sip o that fine country moonshine? Who needs all that book lurnin' anyhoo, thats for them fancypants libral city folk.  Rick?  Are you listening?

Zany Book Titles

Here's a change from my usually serious political, technological, and medical fare: humour!  Yes, that's right, I said humour.  With a 'u'.  That's the way it's spelled correctly.

So, I was looking through my library the other day.  Yes, I read ink-and-paper books; in the decadent age before Kindles and iSlabs and other ridiculous nonsense like that, that's all we had.  I noticed some titles that seemed to leap out at me from the bookshelf, just like their equally weird and wonderful authors.  Without further ado, here they are:

- Auto Repair for Dummies, by I. Will Fix
- An Introduction to Law, by Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe
- The Economic Impact of Crime, by Robin Banks
- Advanced Mining Safety, by Dinah Mite
- A Textbook On Urinary Lithotomy, by I. P. Freeley
- Sex: The Ins and Outs of the Ins and Outs, by Heywood Jablome
- Elementary Psychiatry, by Lucinda Heade
- Cooking for Breakfast, by Chris P. Bacon
- Hypogonadism in the Adult Male, by Drew P. Wiener
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Plumbing, by Dwayne Pipe
- Depression: A Medical Overview, by Sarah Tonin
- A Clinical Guide to Neurology, by Sarah Bellum
- Chronic Pain Management, by Moe Fiennes
- An Introduction to Queue Theory, by Yul B. Neckst
- Addiction Therapy, by Hugh Foria
- Gifts for All Occasions, by N. M. T. Bochs
- The Culture of New Orleans, by Marty Graw
- A Guide to Engineered Textiles, by Polly Esther Close

On Government

The United States of America are not a democracy.  They used to be, certainly, but since the middle of the 20th century, everybody seems to rule but the people—the demos in demokratia.  There are a few reasons why, but it all really comes down to the size and power of the American government.

First of all, what the hell is the U.S.A. doing in Syria?  What the hell are they doing in Afghanistan and in Mesopotamia?  Last time I checked, those were independent countries.  There's a civil war going on in Syria;  protestors took up arms against the ancien régime, since it obviously was not treating them right.  The civil war in Syria should remain a civil war; what interests does the U.S.A. have in supporting one side or the other?  America is not the world police.

The problem of Afghanistan would have been resolved in a different way in the 1950s: America would consult the United Nations about the blatant human rights abuses, and it would be up to the United Nations to decide whether action should be taken.  More likely than not, the U.N. would temporarily lend full control of the territory to a particular superpower under a so-called 'mandate' until the problem were resolved.  

In fact, this is precisely what happened after the end of World War I.  The former Ottoman Empire, allied with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, was embroiled in civil war; the British, naturally, found this convenient, and delivered military aid to the Arab rebels.  The Arab rebels won, and the Ottoman Empire was fractioned up.  The Ottoman Empire, though, was not like the British Empire, in which borders existed and everybody knew what they were.  In the Ottoman Empire, boundaries were so blurred as to have disappeared entirely.  When it was split up, the British knew that, unless boundaries were drawn, the Arabic part of the former empire would engage in infighting; Colonel Lawrence, a young military intelligence officer, was sent in to draw up a map for the partitioning of the land.  To keep things fair, Palestine, Jordan, and Mesopotamia was given to the English, while France got Lebanon and Syria; on average, each lasted about fifteen years before gaining its independence.

Second, drug law needs reform.  I liked the old Pure Food and Drug Act; what's wrong with ensuring that all foods and drugs were adequately labelled with their contents?  However, the Controlled Substance Act is a work of pure stupidity, or evil, or both.  For instance, antidepressants, though they cause withdrawal symptoms far worse than any opiate, are non-controlled, simply because they have no "abuse liability".  In other words, they don't make you feel good.  Even on a non-medical basis, however, controlling the use of substances has no basis.  Before 1914, no country in the world had a law controlling the distribution and possession of drugs, and the world did just fine.

I disagree with recreational drug use, especially of hallucinogens and of marijuana.  However, the problem of addiction is a medical one.  It should be up to the medical establishment to cure the disease, not the government to put miscreants in prison where they mingle with true criminals, like murderers and rapists.  There is such a thing as responsible drug use; if there was no way to use a drug of abuse responsibly, why are so many drugs of abuse used medically in hospital?  Pure morphine is one of the least dangerous medicines available; if it is injected with a clean needle, it will cause zero damage.  The danger is not in recreational use, but in abuse: in some individuals, the use of a particular drug may balloon out of control—the definition of addiction.  Therefore, it is essential to treat these people, without subjecting everybody to harsh criminal punishment.

Third, pull a dollar out of your pocket.  What is this dollar?  Quite simply, it's a promise that the government responsible for its printing has gold or silver on hand to pay the value of the dollar upon request.  If money is printed without procuring the appropriate amount of gold, it's essentially worthless.  Before Pres Nixon cancelled it in the 1970s, there was a simple system in place: one troy ounce of gold cost thirty-five dollars.  Gold, not paper, was the unit of account, and almost all gold in America was held by the Federal government.  Since then, the price of the dollar became a fiftieth of what it had been.

Fourth, what the hell is this affirmative action malarkey?  God, what an exercise in Orwellian double-talk!  If a company refuses to employ, say, those of Polish heritage, it's discrimination.  When the government forces this company to employ so many Polish, it's affirmative action.  Seriously.  It is illegal to discriminate based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other one of those arbitrary divisions we've created to carve up the human race... but when the government does so, it isn't discrimination?  If you're hiring for a job, the only discrimination allowed should be based on skill.  

Not only does the government discriminate in jobs, but it discriminates in industry funding.  For instance, there is a government incentive to create ethanol from maize; no such incentive exists for ethanol from sugar-cane.  The free market is a powerful thing.  It derives its power from collective intelligence: the fact that a group of experts will make better decisions together than each of those experts acting alone.  There are several surprising examples of this.  For instance, if a number of people take guesses at the number of jelly beans in a jar, the average of these guesses will almost certainly be very close to the true number, even if some of those guesses were way off.  Alternatively, consider the fact that the stock market managed to find the cause of the Challenger disaster months before the official verdict: an O-ring manufactured by Morton Thiokol.  Last of all, there is the simple fact that in 1920, there were over one hundred automobile manufacturing companies based in the United States of America.  Today, there are four.  Therefore, wouldn't it make more sense to leave it to the free market to determine which solutions are best as alternative fuels?

The people don't rule the U.S.A.; paperwork and offices do.  America is not a democracy; it is a bureaucracy.

A Break-Up eMail... would you believe this was auto-written?

So, here's a break-up eMail I had written by a website... just tick a few boxes when the time comes, and next thing you'll be singing is, "Breaking up is easy to do!"


Dear Bitch,

I'm writing you this email because I think our relationship has run its course. Your arrogance seems to have no limits; it's as if you think you're actually somebody. I know you'll probably tell everyone that you dumped me, because you're a liar. But everyone knows that already, so they won't believe you. You couldn't even pass your exams without cheating; I should have known you'd cheat on me too, prick. It might be hard for you to believe, but one thing I can tell you for sure: you really need to work on your skills in bed. I mean, you're just plain bad at sex. Maybe part of the problem is that you drink so much. You can't actually call gin-flakes or beerios breakfast. I'm fed up with kissing an ashtray and seeing you waste your money on cancer sticks every day. It's disgusting. Doing drugs so much really got in the way of more important things. You need to clean yourself up.

And as if that wasn't enough, you have to criticize me all the time! Now it's my turn to be the critic. I give you one thumb up: stick it up your ass! All that nagging of yours worked, assuming your intent was to get rid of me. At first I couldn't understand what smelled so bad when I spent time with you, but now it's clear: you're spoiled like a piece of meat left out in the sun. You don't live in a soap opera, so quit causing so much drama. I'm not a puppet, you can't just control me by pulling on a string, so why do you try to control everything I do? I need my freedom, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sorry, but you're not even worth keeping as a friend. It's not you, it's me. Really. You may not have realized, but I saw you with him, you fat-fried hamburger-humper! You may not have realized, but I saw you with her too, you greasy-heeled cunt-sniffer! I never want to see you again, jerkface! Stay away from me or I'll beat you with a frozen salmon. I think you get the idea: this relationship is over.

Enjoy your new freedom, slut!
Dude

If you want to get a taste of the magic yourself, just go to breakupemail.com.  Best thing is, it's simple and free!

Lessons in rugby

Rugby is not something you play just for fun... it's something you feel.  All you have to do is believe in yourself, and just as Webb Ellis did on that day in 1823, take the ball in your arms and run with it.  Half the game, however, happens from the neck up.  Discourage yourself and you will lose within the first ten minutes of play.  However, if you try (and I mean make an honest attempt, not score five points) to win; if you believe in yourself; if you practice; if you dare to become the best—if you show your opponents what you are capable of, in other words, you will win the match from the first kick.

Rugby is an expression of life—a single, glittering thread that reflects the whole.  Like life, rugby is messy and unpredictable, a picture of the instinct of survival.  No matter what you do to control it, it will have its own way with you.  The trick is to experience the moment with a clear mind and an open heart.  If you do that, the game—and life—will take care of itself.

Keep calm... and play rugby.

Republican Candidate Impressions

For the first time in my life, I've been closely following the Republican primary process on television (for any/all Brits reading this, I mean the process by which a candidate is selected to lead an American party).  The reason this is my first time following the primaries, in spite of the fact that I'm a cognoscente of politics, is that it is the political equivalent of watching sausages being made: it's messy.  However, in contrast to the usual 'closed' methods by which candidates are selected in other countries, open primaries almost always produce a party leader who is acceptable to most everyone.  So far for the theories: now for the nitty-gritty.

There are now four candidates in the Republican primaries: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the old, plodding medical doctor, Ron Paul.  Spkr Gingrich, in my opinion, is absolutely the most qualified to run for President; Gov. Romney seems shifty and avoidant—not good qualities in a politician—although he may simply be anxious when talking about some things (for instance, himself).  Sen. Santorum, a candidate who will certainly drop out of the race soon, simply seems like an also-ran: like a first-grader screaming 'Pick me!  Pick me!', Sen. Santorum just oozes desperation, also something not good to have in a leader.  In fact, I recall him saying something almost exactly like the first-grader almost every time he participates in the debates or makes a speech; the most salient example of this is when, during one speech, he called one candidate (Spkr Gingrich, although Sen. Santorum didn't name names) "too hot", another (Gov. Romney) "too cold", and then went on to imply that he himself is the Goldilocks candidate (just right).

Gov. Romney's 'coldness' (anxiety/deer-in-the-headlights) is a major factor when he debates; one must have his finger on the button to be successful, and he doesn't—his hands hang limply at his sides, so to speak.  The gears simply don't turn at the right speed.  For instance, when Gov. Romney was asked to reveal his tax returns, as did Spkr Gingrich (as well as Mitt's father, Sec. George W. Romney), he waffled, first saying he would "maybe" (politics-ese for 'no') release a tax return, then saying he'd release several of them at once, while sweat glistened on his forehead.  If he's got nothing to hide, then why not release his returns?  More importantly, if he gets shaken by such a simple question, how does he expect to become the world's foremost celebrity (with all the autobiographical questions this entails)?  Another reason Gov. Romney is unelectable is due to a lack of qualifications: Spkr Gingrich and Dr Paul both spent a lifetime in government and can safely call themselves 'politicians', whereas Gov. Romney is a management consultant, a job that pays well but does not provide the appropriate skillset to become a true politician.  In fact, Gov. Romney's chosen career makes him even more unelectable, as management consultancy is a seven-figure salary; Republicans, by and large, are middle-class, and Mitt Romney has, so far, been unable to connect with middle-class voters.

This stands in stark contrast to 'Idea Man' Gingrich.  A schooled-and-raised politician, Spkr Gingrich has no problem in debates, radiating an air of supreme confidence even when questioned on a hard topic, such as his past infidelity.  American Republicans, unlike Anglo-Canadian Conservatives, have a significant portion of so-called 'evangelical', 'born-again', or 'Christian fundie' voters, who have always tended to place more emphasis on a candidate's dirty laundry than on his political worth.  However, on a televised debate, this was all turned on its head when the inevitable question came out, and Spkr Gingrich easily blamed the media: he received a standing ovation.  Owing to the fact that he is a 'mere' politician (which is, after all, what being President is about), Spkr Gingrich has considerably less wealth than Gov. Romney: although this hinders his advertising, it places him on a level field with the middle class of America, his target.  Furthermore, Spkr Gingrich seems to have one idea after another; I swear he must be on some King Hell crank.  Not that that's a bad thing.  America needs someone with ideas to pull it out of the recession.

Then, there's Dr Ron Paul, who certainly seems to be second-best, although as a libertarian (in other words, one who believes government and private life are incompatible), he is, sadly, not taken as seriously as he should be.  Refreshing is the fact that, in contrast to Mitt Romney, whose top campaign sponsors are major financial corporations, Dr Paul's top sponsors are the Army, Navy, and Air Force.  This reflects his stance that America should only go to war with a declaration, a stance that I agree with.