Evidently, there are a ton of Jane Galt readers out there, and they’ve Galt-alanched my archives for the Budapest anecdotes about Statue Park!
Welcome! Take off your shoes and stay a while!
10 Years
Today’s the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Depending on how you define life, either 168 or 169 people were killed in the attack.
Rave On
The DEA’s annual magazine, “Drugs of Abuse,” has been released. According to the agency:
This DEA magazine delivers clear, scientific information about drugs in a factual, straightforward way, combined with scores of precise photographs shot to scale. We believe that Drugs of Abuse fulfills an important educational need in our society.
But according to Mr. Sun!, it looks like the DEA is just trying to tempt us all into using (more) drugs.
Good thing it wasn’t Final Four weekend . . .
On Sunday, Tiger Woods hit one of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen, on the 16th hole to help him win his 4th Masters jacket at Augusta.
On Tuesday, Stephen Stanko got picked up by the cops. He was on the run from rape and double-murder charges in South Carolina. Where’d the cops find him? In a mall in Augusta.
Coincidence? Nope! Evidently, after allegedly raping a 15-year-old girl, killing his old lady (the girl’s mom), and killing a 74-year-old guy for his truck, Stanko decided, “I’d really like to see Tiger play.”
Let that sink in. No, no: Not that this guy, following rape-and-murder Friday, decided he wanted to watch some golf.
Instead, think about this: Stephen Stanko probably killed an old guy for a set of wheels, but even he couldn’t score tickets to the Masters.
That’s a mighty fine — Oh, nevermind
In April 2003, I was flown down to Puerto Rico for a press junket tour of its pharmaceutical manufacturing infrastructure (secret identity, etc.). I called it the “PR for PR Tour”, which wasn’t very imaginative, but hey.
During the flight down, I read the press materials they’d sent, to get an idea of what business advantages the island had to offer. Reading about its relationship to the U.S., I thought, “They’ve got a pretty good deal, all things considered. Lots of benefits without as much of the hassle.” Still, I wondered if there was popular interest in formally joining the U.S. as the 51st state.
As my cab drove out of the airport, I noticed a building that made me think, “There’s no way Puerto Rico’s ever becoming a state.” That building had a billboard-sized sign in front that read, “COCKFIGHTING”.
At dinner with the other press people and our liaisons that night, I mentioned the sign. The liaisons blanched, while the press corps, mainly Europeans, were enthralled, and began peppering the locals with all sorts of cockfighting questions. This was exacerbated when it turned out that the main liaison’s boyfriend came from a family that was the #2 breeder of fighting cocks in PR.
I kicked back and discovered rum, which made the night that much more entertaining.
Why do I bring this up almost two years later? Because of an item I read last week on Page 6 in the New York Post. It seems that over-the-hill, one-time-best-pound-for-pound boxer Roy Jones, Jr. is a cockfighting aficionado, and the Humane Society of the U.S. just got over-the-hill wrestler Hulk Hogan to write to Jones and implore him to give up the sport.
Oh, but that’s not the part that amazed me. No, dear reader, what your Virtual Memoirist finds astonishing is the last line of the HSUS item’s lede:
Louisiana is one of only two states where fighting roosters is still legal.
I had blithely assumed that cockfighting was illegal in the U.S., and that its tradition in Puerto Rico was a major obstacle to ever considering bringing PR in as a new state. Now I realize that, pound for pound, PR matches up pretty well with Louisiana.
Of course, the fact that it’s still legal in Louisiana is only half of the equation. As the HSUS statement reads, it’s legal in two states. This led me and the official VM girlfriend to ponder what the other state was. We were in the car when I mentioned the item, so we couldn’t look up the answer.
“I bet it’s somewhere in the west,” she said. She was already embarrassed, but not surprised, by the fact that it’s legal in her home state.
“I’m going with Florida,” I told her. “They’re lawless, plus they have a big latino population.”
Keep in mind, I’m not a proponent of this sport. It seems pretty cruel to me, and I don’t like to see animals get hurt, even if they are heavily armed. I think it’s pretty funny that HBO Sports employs Roy Jones, Jr. as a commentator, but if another of its employees–like Bob Costas, or an associate producer, or something–owned a cockfighting arena, he’d probably get ridiculed and/or bounced out of his job.
I’m not sure it’s that much crueler than the practices at an industrial chicken farm, and I’m sure as heck not bailing on Chik-Fil-A anytime soon.
Anyway, I was wrong. It turns out that New Mexico was the other state that hasn’t banned it. And the most recent ban, near as I can tell, was in Missouri in 1998. The ban also covered “bear wrestling.”
In 1998.
Yeahyeah
Last night I wanted to write something pithy about the death of Andrea Dworkin, but got frustrated, gave up and watched some porno instead.
Blood, Tar and Coffee Grounds
In my secret identity, I’m the mild-mannered (okay, angry and abrasive) editor of a pharmaceutical business magazine. The big news in the biz this week was that the FDA “recommended” that Pfizer stop selling Bextra, a Cox-2 inhibiting anti-inflammatory in the same class of drugs as Vioxx and Celebrex. The move sucks for Pfizer, which bought Pharmacia for $60 billion a few years ago with the plan to use Celebrex and Bextra to build a Cox-2 powerhouse. Now it’s stuck with a bloated infrastructure, tons of redundant employees, and a business model that’s still predicated on the crapshoot of Pharma R&D.
But why is the FDA calling for Bextra’s withdrawal? Well, it’s not for the cardiac events that led to the Vioxx disaster. The FDA just wants more data on that from Pfizer. Nope, the FDA withdrawal notice cites, “Reports of serious and potentially life-threatening skin reactions, including deaths, in patients using Bextra.”
That’s right: “life-threatening skin reactions”.
Well, I couldn’t leave that alone, so I had to find out exactly what sorta skin reactions can kill a dude. And then I found Stevens-Johnson syndrome.
Sure, at the sound of it, Stevens-Johnson syndrome oughtta just cause you to break out in slacks or drive a Volvo, but it turns out the be one monstrously messed-up medical condition. When the skin’s reaction is “sloughing off,” I understand where the “life-threatening” part comes in.
Still, that wasn’t the weirdest thing that I came across in my little research. No, it was the FDA’s drug info page for Bextra that wins that award. Because the FDA wants us to know the following:
Stop taking Bextra and call your doctor right away if you get:
• a burning stomach pain
• black bowel movements that look like tar
• vomit that looks like blood or coffee grounds
Now keep in mind, that’s before the serious issues with the drug arose.
And you guys wonder why I don’t quit this day job.
The Dean of my grad school was named Eva Brann . . .
Terry Eagleton reviews Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters. I laughed like a retard over the following:
A great many ordinary men and women in Latin America know who Pablo Neruda is, in contrast to the participant in the BBC Radio phone-in quiz who thought Evelyn Waugh was Hitler’s mistress.
Pontificating?
Fill out your Pope Brackets!
VM contributor Sirk sez, “I’m taking Duke.” C’mon, Sirk! There’s no way Poland will win back-to-back papacies!
Where’s Larry Hagman?
Made it to Dallas last night, dear reader. The flight had some bumps, so I popped a little Vicodin on the way up, which helped me turn into a piece of rubber. I really do need to get to a doctor sometime so I can get a prescription for a little anti-anxiety med for flights.
Fortunately, this conference is for clinical research personnel, so I didn’t feel I was in much danger when I tossed down five gin-and-tonics during the NCAA hoops finals last night. At the very least, they’d be able to determine the exact drug-drug interaction that would lead to my state of inebriation.
Tonight, I’ll likely hit the Mavericks home game. I’ve only been to 4 or 5 different arenas, as far as I can recall, which means I’m lagging behind the number of baseball stadia I’ve attended games in (7).
Like, as ever, you needed to know.