Because I'm not chasing a toad with a tube of Preparation H
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There's a lot of really weighty, important stuff going on in the world right now. From the clash of civilizations to the loss of freedoms to the collapse of economies burdened by impossible entitlements to the regulation of the internet, not to mention wars, rumors of wars, impending pandemics or other nastiness (including Man's general inhumanity towards his fellow man): if you are a news junkie with tendencies toward depression, you're probably in hog heaven about now. I, of course, am susceptible to those tendencies, so I'm pulling an ostrich. But seriously, if you are jonesing for a hard news fix and you wound up here, e-mail me. I'll walk you through the process of using Google.

Instead, let's talk about one of my favorite "soft news" topics: Bashing Cane Toads.

(from the Register) Residents in Australia's Northern Territory have begun staging mass exterminations of invading cane toads, the BBC reports. Local government last week backed a series of events under the banner: "Not In My Backyard". Basically this amounts to a government-sponsored Cane Toad Bashing Festival. Cool.

But, even in Australia, the public call to join together and kill cane toads raises the odd eyebrow. The Australian RSPCA appealed for more humane methods. They recommended daubing the blighters with haemorrhoid cream. Apparently it put the toads in a coma so they can be stuck in the freezer to kill them painlessly.

My hero in all this is Federal MP Dave Tollner. In the past, he has recommended using golf clubs or cricket bats. When told about the RSPCA recommendation he said, You know, to me it seems far easier just to flog them over the head with a lump of wood.

My kind of guy.

And, in what is either:

A) proof positive of the divine inter-connectedness of all things or,

B) just a really weird coincidence given meaning by a human mind unable to deal with the entirely random nature of the universe,

Rat Jr. found my Toad the Wet Sprocket CD this evening.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, March 20 2006 10:40:38 PM

It's not my fault...
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I hear that Wynnona Judd was on Larry King the other night. I mention this because I caught Skippy's comments about it at Enjoy Every Sandwich (Local Standards Warning: this guy is crude and talks repeatedly about sexually explicit material. Don't say I didn't warn you. He also has some really interesting social and political commentary. Still, if you are easily offended, don't follow the link.) Apparently a good portion of the interview was about Wynnona's "food addiction". Some of Skippy's thoughts:

As someone who spends as much of his life as pickled in alcohol as humanly possible, you'd think it would be odd for me to giggle at other people's addictions. That would mean that you don't know me very well. I think addiction is incredibly funny. It makes people do stupid, and therefore wonderful, things. I like it when people who aren't me do dumb shit. It makes me smile and few things do that these days.

Back in the days before Oprah Winfrey controlled the universe, addiction was seen as a source of some shame. Everybody loved Otis the Drunk on the Andy Griffith show, but no one ever asked him to babysit the kids. Sure, his nickname was "the drunk", but no one ever talked about his "disease." People knew that Otis liked to drink and it was pretty much left at that. It was a simplier time and people didn't have the advanced sense of humour about other people's pain that I'm famous for.

Once every college dropout on the planet got their own daytime talk show, celebrating one's personal weaknesses became the thing to do. You were seen as less than fully human if you weren't fucked up in some really profound way. Usually this was accomplished by having been molested as a child. But there are people like me who weren't attractive enough to be felt up by a priest or a relative. That left either mental illness or addiction as ways to be functioning adults and taken to Oprah's bossom. Or you could just make it up like James Frey did.

For the most part, folks don't like to admit to being nuts until they're indicted for something. And being addicted to cool things like heroin is difficult when you're afraid of needles like some kind of pussy. Other people are neat freaks and don't like being surrounded by empty Chivas Regal bottles and sleeping in your own urine like Ted Kennedy and me. Thankfully, everything is addictive now.

For most of the past four thousand years of human civilization, virtually nothing was addictive. As a matter of fact, alcoholism didn't even exist until just before the Second World War. In just seventy years, everything is potentially addictive, even shopping. Personally, I blame cocaine.

For those of you who haven't dedicated yourselves to being John Belushi like me, I should tell you something, cocaine does not meet the classical requirements of an addictive substance. Traditionally, "addiction" was defined by a physical dependence that is marked by definable withdrawal symptoms. No withdrawal, no addiction.

However, cocaine is different. There are no clearly defined withdrawal symptoms. As a chemically destructive substance, it will make you feel like shit after it wears off, but this is also true of slamming your face into a wall. Feeling like shit does not indicate that you've taken an addictive substance, just one that is bad for you. But when one is actually doing cocaine, they generally feel pretty good. For that reason they keep taking it so that they feel good and avoid feeling like shit.

This became clincally problematic as cocaine use did not meet the strict definition of addiction, but lots of people were doing lots of coke and this was seen as problematic by people who can't mind their own business. So the concept of "psychological addiction" was developed. If you do something that feels good as a means to avoid feeling bad, you meet the definition of psychological addiction. This was a boon to people like Oprah because everyone does things that feel good to avoid feeling bad. Therefore everyone is potentially addicted to something. Daytime television would go back to being all game shows and soap operas without it. And I guess that would suck. So the abandonment of personal responsibility is a small price to pay for the endless hours of entertainment that that these damaged, pathetic idiots bring.

And his take on Wynnona's revelation that she is addicted to food:

No kidding, she's dependent on food. That came as something as a shock to me, because here I was all convinced that everybody has a food addiction. Food actually meets the clinical definition of addiction, too. If you withdraw from it, your tummy hurts. Keep withdrawing from it and you're fucking dead. There is no greater negative consequence from that.

And:

Don't get me wrong, I feel her pain and stuff. I can imagine how horrible it must be to not sleep at night because you're consumed with finding new and creative ways to deep-fry ice cream, but I wouldn't classify it as a disease. On the other hand, I don't consider bulimia a disease either. Bulimia is just an excuse Lindsay Lohan came up with to stay nice and hot for me. Besides, I'm inherently distrustful of any disease that didn't exist before 1987. If it wasn't around when I was in high school, I automatically assume that Montel Williams and Sally Jessie Raphael made it up.

Crude, yes, but he is saying things I've been thinking for quite a while now. Especially the bit about if it wasn't around when he was in High School he assumes Montel Williams and Sally Jessie Raphael made it up. For my part, I always assume it is something the members of the Psychiatric Industry made up in order to have more possible psychiatric diagnoses to choose from when billing their clients's insurance companies.

For instance, take ODD. (from NetDoctor.co.uk):

What is oppositional defiant disorder? Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a disorder where children have disruptive and oppositional behaviour that is particularly directed towards authority figures, such as parents or teachers.

(...)

The key behavioural symptoms of ODD are negative, hostile and defiant behaviour. For ODD to be diagnosed, symptoms have to have been present for at least six months and involve four or more of the following:

* often loses temper

* often argues with adults

* often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules

* often deliberately annoys people

* often blames others for his mistakes or misbehaviour

* often touchy or easily annoyed by others

* often angry and resentful

* often spiteful or vindictive.

To be classified as ODD, the behaviour also has to have caused a significant degree of disturbance to home, social or school life.

Actually, if I remember correctly, the new DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) says that the behaviors have to be more severe than the kid's peers to qualify. And aside from the fact that I make it a habit to try not to blame others for my mistakes, I meet all the criteria for this "diease".

Forget for a moment the ten dollar psycho-babble words and let's try a ten cent, layman's definition of ODD: your kid's a bigger jerk than his friends. Why don't you medicate him heavily? It probably won't fix his inability to control his anti-social impulses, but you'll feel much better about being a concerned parent, right?

(OK, that was probably really insensitive and uncalled for. And your point is?)

One of my Social Worker friends told me the other day that the DSM-IV now includes "Caffeine Disorder". She was wrong. It includes "caffeine intoxication, caffeine-induced anxiety disorder, caffeine-induced sleep disorder, and caffeine-related disorder not otherwise specified (NOS)".

Caffeine intoxication?

* DSM-IV criteria for caffeine intoxication

o Recent consumption of caffeine, usually in excess of 250 mg (more than 2-3 cups of brewed coffee) (yeah, that would probably help)

o Demonstration of 5 or more of the following signs during or shortly after caffeine use:

+ Restlessness

+ Nervousness

+ Excitement

+ Insomnia

+ Flushed face

+ Diuresis (you mean if I drink a lot of coffee I'll have to pee?)

+ Gastrointestinal disturbance

+ Muscle twitching

+ Rambling flow of thought and speech

+ Tachycardia or cardiac arrhythmia

+ Periods of inexhaustibility

+ Psychomotor agitation

Give me a bloody break. It's caffeine. It's supposed to make you restless, nervous and keep you from going to sleep. That's why we ingest it. But hey, it's a disease, right? So I should get counseling. And someone should probably regulate caffeine's availability to protect me from its harmful effects. I mean, it's not like I could just quit drinking 3 pots of coffee a day. It's not like it is my choice or anything.

Bottom line: the Psychiatric Industry has a vested interest providing us reasons why our bad choices aren't our fault. And all we have to do to take advantage of this instant opportunity to avoid feeling bad about ourselves and avoid the consequences of our choices is abdicate all personal responsibility and trust the good doctors to tell us what is best for us.

Besides, it might get us on Larry King Live.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 15 2006 11:42:03 PM

Assorted Stuff
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Sometimes I just don't have the wherewithal to even try to think up a catchy title for a post. Like tonight. Of course, a catchy title is easier if you have a theme to work with.

Apparently, I have more than 4 readers. Rat, Jr. links to my posts fairly regularly on her blog. Being much more sociable than her father, she has her blog on one of those services where they give you templates and comments and instant message capabilities. She told me tonight that some of her readers comment to her about the posts "from that site you keep plugging". I just find it a little strange that my kid is plugging my blog. On the other hand, how many kids do you know who think enough of anything their parents do to mention it favorably?

I've just about given up on TV news. I just don't have the stomach for it. I do occasionally watch local news shows, when I have time to waste and need a laugh. The Head Rat had the Wichita ABC affiliate (KAKE TV) on this evening. They were doing a story about a fire in a grain elevator in a little town quite a ways southwest of Wichita. Unfortunately, the area firefighters had the bad manners to put the fire out before KAKE could get a live news crew out to the scene. Still, they are stuck with air time to fill and having promised a live report from the scene, are pretty much obligated to provide one (after interrupting the evening's TV shows with the "breaking news" bulletins). So, they've got this young female reporter who looks just about old enough to be six months past earning her BA from a "reputable journalism school" and who also looks like she's got just the faintest of notions that the burnt stuff in the grain elevator she is covering is in some peripheral way related to how they make bread at the bread factory. She's standing there in the glare of the portable lighting trying to explain about the fire (which is now out) while gesturing toward a grain elevator that you can't see in the dark that doesn't have flames leaping out of it (because the fire is out). And if that wasn't enough non-news, the damned anchor thanked her for her report and then promised and/or threatened us (and her) with a live update to the story (of the grain elevator that we can't see that isn't burning anymore) later in the show.

(I wish I had a pithy conclusion for that, but I'm still just sitting here shaking my head.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 15 2006 10:22:58 PM

Because I can...
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OK. It looks like the beginning of another crap week at work. I think someone set off a Weird Bomb over the weekend, because it just keeps getting "curiouser and curiouser" (2 points if you can name the reference. without Googleing). So, I've been indulging in a self-absorbed round of political incorrectness. I feel so much better I've decided to share...

The Crazy Frog Kill Counter is over 16 million registered kills. (OK, it is kind of lame at the moment, because he still has on his Santa Hat.)

From the Dissident Frogman: A link to Acid Islam. (Read DF's intro first, then go look at the video, but don't do any of it if you are easily offended. You've been warned.)

And finally, from Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry: A friendly, helpful e-mail sent to an American businessman.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, March 14 2006 12:03:49 AM

It's Alive...
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Well, sort of. I'm not sure why I'm even taking the time to write this. I've got personnel issues up to my neck at work. I'm getting ready to go back to working on them in a few minutes. The essays on prescription drugs and government entitlements continue to languish in their FreeMind* form. It has been so long since I worked on them that I can't even remember what it was that caused me to start working on them in the first place. Other than allowing myself a couple of soccer matches, it has been a working weekend.

It looks like it will continue like this for a while. I guess I'm just posting this to let my 4 loyal readers know I'm still alive.

*There is a new version of FreeMind available. It now allows maps to be exported in PDF format, among a number of other nice features. If you haven't looked at it for a while, it might be worth a peek.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, March 12 2006 03:20:15 PM

I live in a Dali painting
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Some days are just weird. Some days are so weird I feel like the world must be melting around me. That is the only rational explanation, because the words that people are saying to me are so far out of the usual context of my life that everything normal must have melted, leaving the surreal residue as a framework for the day.

Today was weirder than the time the transvestite asked me for fashion advice.

(This may not be safe for work, or even for tasteful company, depending on your local standards... so I'm moving the rest here.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 08 2006 10:18:50 PM