Love Handles Save my Life – ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY – Have you ever heard about those gentile ladies and gentlemen people who through prayer and divine intervention end up avoiding lifes split-second misfortunes? Or, if you’re not the holy rolling type, do you know lucky sonsabitch who got lucked out for once in their miserable lifes and missed certain death or disfigurement? Like that weird guy upstairs who got loaded and fell 7 floors from the fire escape and landed safely on an awning, instead of getting splattered all over the concrete. Or that psycho mafia hit man from your anger management class who had a guy shoot him point blank while on a collection visit, but the brass knuckles in his Cerucci suit deflected 3 bullets and instead of dying got a small fine and probration for racketeering. Not too impressed? What about this fat broad who used love handles to save her life?
A Florida woman said her love handles saved her life when she was shot 4 times outside of an Atlantic City strip club and she didn’t even flinch. Apparently all was good in the hood until she heard several loud snaps and saw people running like mad out of Big Herm’s Place early this morning. Once the commotion died down she felt a sudden apain in her side and saw blood dripping on the ground. Witnesses at the scene say two men were shooting at each other inside of the club when two of the bullets ricocheted off the ground and struck the women in her side. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100223/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_love_handles_shooting)
During an interview outside of the emergency, the woman proudly told reporters, ‘I could have been killed by some fool who started a gun fight up in Herm’s over some goddamn shrimp.” After giving a few shout outs she added, “My love handles saved my life and I didn’t even have to shoot back. And to think I wanted to get on Jenny Craig and lose weight. Now want to be as big as hell, if it’s going to stop a stray bullet.” The suspect is still at large but the woman said she knows who is is and that she’ll be pulling out her hammer if she sees him on the block any time soon.
I was sitting on my deck, looking out over the lake, listening to Ol’ Dirty Bastard on headphones because my co-residents were listening to some shit I didn’t enjoy. I decided to snort some ecstasy cut with ketamine ’cause it was free. Snorting extasy sucks; it was so uncomfortable I’d regretted not shelving it in my urethra. I mention this fact for atmosphere; I don’t want to give the impression I couldn’t figure these things out without chemical assistance. I like to think my practical retardation and occasional loneliness are the corollaries of some kind of brilliance – such as finding answers to questions people mostly don’t care about. (This is, of course, an exception.)
Over time I’d learned some things about what constitutes the meaningful life; partially through observing those whose lives were flourishing, partially through watching those whose lives weren’t, and partially through listening to wise people. What I new at this point went something like this (mostly familiar to you, probably):
1. We need to belong to something grander than ourselves.
3. We need autonomy.
[1] and [2] can easily clash, and I believe this accounts for much of why our race and the individual encounter so much sickness. We either strive for belonging at the expense of the individual, or we strive for individuality at the expense of belonging. How to strut this tightrope instead of plunging through the rainbow towards the deepest stalagmitic tragedy of humanity?
The answer is loving interpersonal relationships, especially of the romantic variety. Sorry to let you down. Perhaps it’d be better put this way: THIS is why love is the answer, since you already knew it was.
Love allows us to belong to something greater whilst respecting our autonomy; we are the lord as much as the lackey. Or another way to put it might be that you exchange your weakness for power over the person who holds your heart hostage.
Misery bites when the balance slips. Talking primarily about romance here, the deepest pain eviscerates us when we want to belong where we no longer can, and the most hopeless emptiness is where we want to belong nowhere. (The latter fact is often obscured by ego.)
Today, I received a Mat Sheet (‘Material Sheet’, instructions on what a client needs on air, ie. a piece of copy that needs to be recorded, or a location of where to get an ad.) for the Federal Government.
The ad is a nationally produced one, and you can hear it here -> DHA0263-2-30
This is the latest commercial in a series for the National Drugs Campaign, a tax payer funded farce of a program.
This ad is typical of western government’s marketing towards their anti-drug position. Note that their actual policies seem to differ from the way they market their position on drugs.
The Australian Government’s official position on illicit drugs is one more toward harm minimisation, “The National Drug Strategy (NDS) aims to prevent and reduce the uptake of harmful drug use and minimise the harmful effects of licit and illicit drug use in Australian society.” Department of Health and Ageing, rather than one that seems to be of outright negative propaganda (listen to the ad above.).
Before I get into the ad though, there is something particularly confusing about policy and marketing in general, and it is important to keep in mind that things which are written, and their marketing are two quite different entities. I believe this is one of the effects of mass-marketing and capitalism over an extended period of time. People expect to be told what is good for them and what they need and want, after a generational shift has occured, then those people are the ones creating the marketing and products and hence the cycle continues, spiralling towards further apathy, essentially. The comprehension of shared reality has changed.
This attitude is what is taken advantage of in our Australian democracy these days. People aren’t interested in the intricacies of real democracy. In fact, how many people do you know that, “Don’t care about politics” and think it’s cool to not care, and vote for which ever name they find prettiest on the sheet, which, by the way, ends up being their only contribution to supposed democratic society.
People DO however, care about their money and the products that they purchase with that money. So, essentially the democratic process has turned into one of dollars, which means that the real movers and shakers are businesses that actually bother, and are capable of lobbying and addressing the government.
This business orientated approach to democracy, coupled with the generational shift in reality-comprehension opens the door for a system of government that is based more on marketing for votes, rather than intelligent debate and discussion on policy which will effect us all.
The ad posted above preys on exactly this attitude, by putting forward a typical myth-based and base level argument on marijuana usage, the idea that the catalyst for laziness and lack of motivation towards goals that were originally sought after, is the drug itself, rather than any other issue.
There are absolutely no facts in this piece of propaganda what so ever, this argument (amotivation propagated by marijuana usage) is one similar to, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”. In a day and age when we have so many facts about marijuana, both toward the positive and toward the negative, it is appalling to see a tax-payer funded campaign preying on emotional ideas, rather than rational concepts about the drug.
This year, 2010, is an election year for Australia. Drugs are still a big issue for our country in many ways. In the problems that they can and do cause, through addiction, through the black market which supplies it and through the criminal underworld which runs this. Many people have probably been directly effected by someone who has used or uses drugs, but the reasons why people use drugs are a totally different, large issue which I won’t get into here. The fact is, drugs, as a whole in our society are one of the key social issues for many people, and many people aren’t willing to look any further than some emotional pain they attribute to drug use, or any further than a propaganda campaign such as this one, or the many urban myths floating around about drugs.
My biggest qualm here is with the Australian Government using social money (taxes) to fund a propaganda campaign, one which has been shown to NOT be effective (There are many reports out there on the ineffectiveness on the “War on Drugs” in the west, specifically in the U.S., where this “war” was started by Nixon in 1969, but one of the most revealing juxtapositions is in looking at drug use statistics of a city like… Amsterdam, and then comparing it to a city like Melbourne, where our drug laws differ drastically. What is seen in the above linked report, is a DROP off in the usage of drugs like marijuana, rather than an increase, even though gettin’ high is legal in Amsterdam. While in our country, drug use is much more prevalent and has actually risen since the billion-dollar “War on Drugs”. Again, this is another, large issue that I won’t get into right now).
What to do about this?
Well, it is an election year, and apparently we’re still a democracy, so I suppose the most rational way forward is to start a lobby group, work out key points, work out key MP’s and lobby them with this view point. I would love to do this, but my motivation of late is lacking (see the blog about Street Art, up the top.).
I rang one of the numbers from the australia.gov.au/drugs website to complain about the misuse of social money, but instead got a drug counsellor. I told him of my qualm anyway, and he told me, on the downlow, that he completely agrees (an attitude I come across in EVERY health professional, counsellor and person working with drug users and abusers that I meet and chat with) and he reminded me that this year is an election year.
I would love to be involved with changing the attitudes towards drugs, changing policy and furthering research into such a vast and interesting field of…. maybe something to think of for the week after Maitreya….. hrrrmmmm….
My pizza has a heart! It is love pizza!
Other than alcohol fuelled violence and stagnate culture, this is Ballarat's other problem. Fairy grass from "Lake" Wendouree blowing into the rich resident's surrounding Lake Wendouree's front yards.
The archaeological dig that took place on Turbo Island in Stokes Croft last December has now been shown on BBC TV Inside Out West. Professor Mark Horton of Bristol declared this project to be “One of the most important archaeological projects going on currently in the UK.” Archaeologists, the homeless and the local Police Force worked together to sift through the dirt of Turbo Island, to reveal aspects of Stokes Croft’s Past.
To see the Inside Out West Documentary, click here to visit the BBC Website.
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GlaxoSmithKline’s (NYSE: GSK) Avandia is back in the spotlight and Steven Nissen isn’t even to blame. Instead it’s a 342-page report by the Senate Finance Committee that’s painting the diabetes drug in a not-so-great light.
According to The New York Times, some Food and Drug Administration officials want the drug removed from the market. Even though a 2007 FDA advisory committee voted 22-1 that the drug should be on the market, the FDA plans to revisit the topic with another advisory committee, which is expected to meet this summer.
While it may be weighing on the stock today, whether the FDA pulls Avandia from the market seems like a minor concern. Sure the drug is still a worldwide blockbuster, but sales are down considerably from its highs.
Metric
2007
2008
2009
Sales of Avandia containing products (in millions)
$2.4
$1.5
$1.2
Fraction of overall revenue
5.4%
3.3%
2.7%
Source: Company press releases.
If the FDA pulls Avandia from the market it would be a minor boon to other oral diabetes drugs like Takeda’s Actos and Merck’s (NYSE: MRK) Januvia and to a lesser extent injectable drugs like Amylin Pharmaceuticals‘ (Nasdaq: AMLN) and Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) Byetta and Novo Nordisk’s (NYSE: NVO) Victoza. But even if Avandia was pulled off the market worldwide, it wouldn’t be a crippling blow for Glaxo because Avandia has become such a minor portion of the drugmaker’s revenue.
The report’s bigger blow for Glaxo is the claim that the company knew for years that there were heart problems with Avandia and tried to figure out how to cover it up. That dripping sound you heard over the weekend was the drool of trial lawyers hitting the floor. Of course plaintiffs would have to prove that in court, and Glaxo claims that there aren’t even any problems with Avandia to cover up in the first place.
Still, investors should now weigh the risk of lawsuits into their valuation. After all, the $4.85 billion Merck used to settle its Vioxx cases is money that it doesn’t have to stock its pipeline with externally developed compounds. Glaxo might be seeing a drain on its own coffers in the not too distant future.
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I have a family to support... somebody listen to me!
Cartoonist “Gritón” summarizes objections to the Calderón administration’s fixation on the “drug war” better than anything I could write.
Basically, the narcos are the only secure employment opportunity for many here in Sinaloa, and other rural communities where — aside from farm subsidies for narcos — not much has been done other than to throw more soldiers at the underemployed people, so I can understand exactly where “Gritón” is coming from.
IN urban areas, as has been noted several times, the “drug war” is really a frontier war. Maggie’s Madness, looking at the growing frustration with narcotics trafficking at the California frontier posts, writes from Tijuana:
…it’s the disaffected population who may or may not be involved in narcotics trafficking that are unemployed who have been forced into a life of crime and more tragically, it is the children who are being swept away by the current conditions which Archbishop Rafael Ramon Munoz of Tijuana describes as a “breakdown in social values.”
Victor Clark Alfaro believes that, “…if there were many jobs in this country and everyone was working this phenomenon [the teens fueling the operational basis of criminal groups in the country] would not exist.” But, he adds, under these conditions, labor is cheap and disposable.
And, on that other besieged outpost of civilization Ganchoblog writes:
According to an UNAM study, 64 percent of Juárez residents between 15 and 24 years old neither study nor work. That leaves around 150,000 with nothing to do occupy themselves, which of course offers a fertile market for gang recruitment.
People mean well when they float the simplistic idea that legalizing drug use would somehow end the problem with violence in OUR society, but not being a particularly major drug using country (even in our frontier towns). More soldiers, even better paid ones, has so far meant just more deaths. Maybe throwing school teachers and good paying jobs into the conflict zones isn’t such a radical idea.
A Governments job is to provide a framework for a workable social structure. One of these tasks is to provide funding to organizations which supply community service projects for all manner of society needs including such things as drugs and alcohol services, Indigenous and multicultural services, mental health , aged care . You name it and there will be some kind of funding for it .
Billions of dollars a year worldwide up for grabs.
What concerns me is that religious organizations seem to receive the greater proportion of this funding and yet if we look back into history it is not hard to find that the roots of most social problems can be related back to religious ideology .
In Australia you have the cultural destruction of the stolen generation and and its long term effect which is now evident within the indigenous community brought about by the collaboration of government and both the catholic and anglican church .
In Africa another colonized country, you have the same religious sponsored destruction of tribal community law and belief systems which has led to years of corruption,war , poverty and sexual disease . Yet it seems that religious bodies have never been called to account for the predicament that society finds itself in .
To the contrary these same institutions are now being funded to supply alcohol and drug services to indigenous cultures, the homeless and teenage services.
Since the mid 1980s there has been important operational and attitudinal shifts in the way governments manage funding for welfare services.
Firstly governments have shifted a growing share of services to non-government organizations . This may be because it is cheaper, and possibly more efficient for delivery of services relative to social programs .
It may also be the case that funding to provide services enables governments to distance themselves from policy failure or poor service delivery .
This raises important questions about if and how the private sector, community organizations and religious organizations differ in their motivation for providing services and the way they approach them. Do they deliver services in different ways to non religious entities?
One would wonder how religious based providers can supply impartial services which are not slanted directly towards there own policies regarding such things as the propagation of faith, the ongoing dismantlement of earth based beliefs and outdated belief structure around sexual practices.
It would seem that not much has changed and that religious affiliations still influence political policy .Have a look at (http://www.catholicchurch.org.uk/catholic_church/legislation_and_public_policy)
I can only wonder what sort of programs are being funded and whether modern inquisitional methods are used to control the outcomes of publicly funded projects.
