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?