Smoking the Toad (and the Turd!)

So let me get this straight, just the intent to get high is a crime even if the substance you are using is not illegal?

"Toad smoking," which is a substitute for "toad licking," is done by extracting venom from the Sonoran Desert toad of the Colorado River. The toad's venom -- which is secreted when the toad gets angry or scared -- contains a hallucinogen called bufotenine that can be dried and smoked to produce a buzz.

In October, a Kansas City man was charged with possessing a controlled substance after Clay County authorities determined he possessed a toad with the intent to use its venom to get high.

Clay County Prosecutor Daniel White said possessing the toad is not illegal, but using it to get high off its venom is.

I’ve long suspected that the problem many people have with “drugs” isn’t so much that the drugs do harm, but that some people don’t like the idea of other people enjoying themselves using drugs. Obviously some drugs are very dangerous, but others aren’t. And the objections to the relatively harmless drugs (marijuana for example) is based, I think, on this notion that getting high in itself is wrong and people should be prevented from doing so (unless it’s alcohol or nicotine of caffeine, which are culturally exempt).

Keep this in mind: people like to get high and will do almost anything to get there. Take this for example:

While smoking toad venom might sound extreme, an even more disturbing method to get high possibly includes sniffing fermented human waste. Vicky Ward, manager of prevention services at Tri-County Mental Health Services in Kansas City, said she has read e-mail warnings about a drug called jenkem.

The drug is made from fermented feces and urine.

"We work with a lot of youths and we ask them whether anyone has tried it and they said no," Ward said. "They (the youths) have heard about it because of the nternet."

OK, I’m not really believing that one. It’s got urban legend written all over it. Banana peals anyone? Still, if you could cop a buzz that way, you can be sure someone would be doing it.

Oooo, That Smell

When did ADM move to Springfield? Outside at lunch today I noticed the city smelled like Decatur. Well, the wind is coming from the east.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas “live” (on network TV as it was being aired) for the first time in what I suppose has been decades now. A Charlie Brown Christmas was a Christmas season stable when I was a kid. It first aired in 1965 when I was just five and no one under 12 missed it when it was shown each year. Of course the was back when you had to see it “live” or you missed it until the next year -no reruns, no video recordings- catch it or miss it for the year. A few comments and observations:

The show seems a lot shorter than I remember it. But then everything at my age seems to go by frighteningly fast.

The animation is so dated that an animated Pampers ad during a commercial break seemed like it was placed there to steal the show.

I’m surprised at how the show still evokes the emotion of winter as a child in me. I suspect I could watch this in July and still feel that.

I’ve always wondered what kids in warmer places like, say, Florida or Southern California think of the winter theme that they don’t get to experience. Or are they outside playing and couldn’t care less?

In what I see as a plot flaw, I don’t believe Lucy or any of the Peanuts characters would ever have put Charlie Brown in charge of the Christmas play.

At one point, one of them calls Charlie Brown “stupid”. I’m betting no kids show today ever uses that kind of language toward a child character. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

OK, Snoopy is still kind of funny.

IMB has trivia about the show here. Apparently, there was some product placement (Coca-Cola) in the original show that has long since been edited out. Also there is an entire scene removed form the original to make more time for commercials (which may partially account for why the show seems shorter to me today).

50/50 Hindsight

I hate it when the theoretical meets reality. Last week, I was reading this Richard Roeper column on the trend of people giving back their winnings in charity 50/50 drawings, and once again wondered what I would do. That was Thursday. Friday night we won a 50/50 drawing at a high school basketball game. Well, I gave my four year-old son a dollar so he could buy three chances from his sister who was selling 50/50 tickets to raise money for new cheerleading uniforms. One of those tickets was the winner.

Fortunately, I had to take that same four year-old home for bad behavior (running onto the court, spilling a drink) before we could collect the winnings, leaving Mrs. TEH there to make the decision on what to do. Well, she decided to keep the money. And that’s fine. It was only $140 and it wasn’t like we were taking from starving third world orphans with AIDS or something. Besides, (and here’s my best of several available rationalizations) if it becomes expected that you donate the other half of the money, it will lessen the incentive to buy chances in the first place. It would make more sense to just solicit donations if there was no winning involved. Right? Anyway, even Roeper says it’s OK to keep the dough.

Supplemental Beer Blogging: Guinness Heist Edition

Someone is set for life:

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Irish police were hunting for a beer bandit who stole 450 full kegs from the Guinness brewery — the largest heist ever at Ireland’s largest brewer.

National police said a lone man drove into the brewery — a Dublin landmark and top tourist attraction — on Wednesday and hitched his truck to a fully loaded trailer awaiting delivery to city pubs.

Diageo PLC, the beverage company that owns Guinness, said the brewery had never suffered such a large-scale theft before in its 248-year history.

Police said the raider took 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of U.S. lager Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish beer Carlsberg. Guinness brews both of those foreign brands under license for sale in Ireland.

Shocking! Not the theft but that people in Ireland, despite having Guinness brewed right there, apparently will also drink Budweiser. I bet the thief dumped those Bud kegs along the side of the road.

Waving Back from a Flyover Town

Check this out. Or at least the tenth picture. Of course, almost any of those pics could have been taken here or near here. Winter sucks but it does have a beauty and feel that I'm sure I would miss to some degree if I left for warmer climes.

Friday Beer Blogging: Beer Maid Edition

Time for another look at the women who bring us our beers. Lots of beers.

I know I've done this before, but really, this sort of skill can't be praised often enough.

How can they be so happy when they aren't the ones getting to drink the beer?

So as not to be sexist about this, let's recognize that guys can do it too. Guy power! (Although this guy looks a lot less graceful than the women and the beers clash with his hairy arms.)

And let us not forget one of the greatest beer servers ever...

Have a great weekend! And be sure to so the proper appreciation to those who bring you arm loads of beer.

If Only We Could Torture Poor People

This one of many reasons why I could never be a modern Republican. And it's why I don't understand most of them. The almost complete lack of humanity is disgusting. Their hatred is vile. Very sad.

The Great Planes

Meanwhile, Peoria somehow seems to be able to put on a respectable air show.

PEORIA - The rumble of the jet's afterburner was enough to shake a metal picture frame hanging on the wall inside an airport office for several seconds.

To aircraft fans, a quick glance as the jet shot vertical was enough to identify it as an F-18 fighter, but even the novice could recognize the signature blue and gold markings.

The Blue Angels, arguably the world's most awe-inspiring pilots with the most recognizable fleet of jets, appear to be the headliner for Prairie Air Show 2008.

Air Show Director Brett Krause confirmed the sighting at the Greater Peoria Regional Airport on Wednesday, saying the No. 7 plane and its pilot were in Peoria most of the day to plan a visit here next summer.

"We're pretty jacked up about this," Krause said, hedging on announcing details, including a date for the air show so as to work around the Blue Angels' availability. Krause added the Blue Angels' 2008 schedule, including the Prairie Air Show's request, is on the desk of the commander of the Navy awaiting final approval.

Davy Downer

Reply email I sent today to former college roommate SG:

Thanksgiving was OK. It beats working (you know, the same reason we went to college, etc.) but it was the same old thing. We went to [Mrs. TEH’s] parent's house and had dinner. We stuffed ourselves silly, bitched about it, and then passed out in chairs and couches and on the floor in front of the TV. I'm actually getting, well, not burned out, but bored I guess with the holidays anymore. Same shit, different year. If it weren’t for [my four year-old son], I think Christmas would just drive me crazy. I don't want anything that anyone can afford and I never know what to get anyone else. My in-laws asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told them either an annuity that I can retire on today or a $75,000 gift certificate from SIU so I can pay for [my daughter’s] college. I don't think I'm getting either one. Even setting up our Christmas decorations is routine. This year we got it over with quickly and didn't set out all the stuff we usually do. The amount of Christmas decorating junk we have has finally reached critical mass and became untenable. I hauled half of it back to the basement utterly overwhelmed by its volume. So how are things in your house?

Is This Really Witty?

In a somewhat tasteless, but definitely lame, comment in last night’s GOP debate:

CNN) — Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee outlined one special plan he'd consider for NASA's exploration of space.

"Maybe Hillary can be on the first rocket to Mars," he said, referring to the Democratic presidential frontrunner.

The Republican presidential candidate responded to a question asking if more money would be put into space exploration. His witty response about Clinton generated cheers from the St. Petersburg audience and followed his description of the earthly benefits of NASA's programs.

I’m quite certain if Joe Biden or Chris Dodd had sad the same thing about Rudy Giuliani, I would not have thought it “witty” either. Better political humor, please.

Unintended Consequences

I’m still stunned that Springfield’s Air Rendezvous just folded with barely a whimper. I also don’t remember seeing, before this Illinois Times article, that the impending departure of the 183rd played a big role in the decision to permanently cancel the event:

The coming departure of 183rd Fighter Wing aircraft and personnel from the airport was a factor in what many enthusiasts consider the air show’s premature demise.

“It weighed heavily on the organizers’ decision to close the show,” [AR organizer Kim] Curry says.

I made a big deal here about opposing the moving of the 183rd’s planes back in 2005, and I even questioned whether the move would affect AR. I guess I have my answer.

Maybe I'm out of line here and blaming the wrong people, but does it seem to anyone else that the organiser's just gave up a little too easily? It seems to me that there was a base of support for the event in the community that could have been appealed to before throwing in the towel so quickly. I never did anything like volunteer to help at AR in all the years it (and I) were here, but I had no idea it was in trouble either.

iPhones on TV

I’ve been noticing that iPhones are starting to show up in the hands of characters on TV shows. A recent episode of Two and a Half Men featured Charlie Sheen making a call on one, but he was holding it upside down. The black part on the back of the speaking end was up by his ear. Then on this week’s Journeyman, our hero had an iPhone on him in a hospital emergency room…in 1980. When an attendant questioned him about it he said it was a calculator.

Wanted: Talk Show Chicks With Perspective

Aside from the recent surge of gay Republicans getting caught, I suspect most of these bad, bad men are in fact cheating with...women. That is, the women are willing participants, knowing they are allowing the man to cheat on some other woman. In the process, these women may be cheating themselves. Are there any women who have self-respect?

Denial by Ridicule

Kevin Drum chimes in with some useful snark on the tactics of the global warming deniers:

This is just an example of the current craze in global warming denialism: don't literally deny that warming is happening (the actual facts make that too hard), merely mock every possible effort to fight it. International agreements? Obviously ridiculous. Federal regulation? Just an excuse for more anti-business spleen from the Birkenstock crowd. Carbon taxes? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Government spending on amelioration? Forget it. We should spend the money on, um, clean drinking water for Chad instead. Yeah. Private efforts to inspire conservation? Just a bunch of hectoring, self-righteous Hollywood elites. Al Gore? He doesn't live in a cave, so he's a hypocrite.

So that's that. Sure, global warming is real, but we shouldn't fight it with international efforts, federal efforts, local efforts, personal efforts, higher taxes, or additional spending. And if you support any of that stuff but still drive a car or use electricity yourself, then who the hell are you to pretend you're better than the rest of us?

Alternatively, we could all cut the smarmy posturing (mirrors in space!) and actually do something. Unfortunately, merely typing these words and posting them has roduced CO2, so there's no reason to listen to me, is there? I'm just another liberal hypocrite.

Look, we all have to function in the world that exists today, even while we are trying to make it better (or less worse in the case of global warming) for tomorrow. That means we have to drive the cars and take the planes and use the electricity that’s available and affordable at the moment.

No one is suggesting that we need to go back to the Stone Age to curb man’s effect on the planet. There are reasonable measures that can be taken that still allow us to enjoy life, but still use less polluting energy in the process. And the only way this is going to work is if we, globally, work together to achieve that.

I, or Al Gore (one word), as individuals could drive our Hummers to the airport get on a plane and fly continuously around the world for the rest of our lives, refueling in mid-air, and those individual efforts would do nothing to towards making global warming worse. It’s just too insignificant. But the collective use of fossil fuels as it exists today is causing a problem.

Now, obviously the collective effort requires individual effort as well, and there are things that every person can do now, but the ultimate solutions are gong to have to be more systemic. If cleaner alternatives are not available or practical, the individual is not going to use them. And we should all do what we can now, use CFLs, buy more fuel efficient cars, or if you have the option, do as Al Gore (one word) does and purchase more expensive electricity generated from eco-friendly sources.

Having said all that, I can now expect comments from people who will miss the point and want to tell me all about how Al Gore (one word) spends a lot of money on electricity and flew on a private jet therefore global warming doesn’t exist because he’s a hypocrite. Sigh.

Some Say the Earth is Flat

I really hate he said / she said journalism that simply takes statements from “both sides” of an issue and does nothing to set the record straight. Paul Waldman over at Tapped has a great example. It involves stories in the New York Times and Washington Post about an exchange of charges between the Giuliani and Romney campaigns regarding crime rates. The stories chronicle the back and forth but never attempts to get at the truth. So Waldman is left to do it in a blog post:

If I were an editor at one of these fine papers, and my reporters turned in one of these stories, I'd tell them to figure out whether Romney or Giuliani is telling the truth. You won't find it in either story. So which is it?

My curiosity piqued, I did something crazy: I typed "Massachusetts crime statistics" into Google. And you know what I found? This! A page on the state's web site with their crime reports!

So what's the answer? Statistics aren't yet available (at least not there) for 2006, so what we have are data from 2002, the year Romney got elected (which should serve as the baseline), plus 2003 through 2005. And what do we find? In 2003, total crime declined 3.1% from the previous year, and violent crime declined 1.7%. In 2004, total crime declined by 4.5%, and violent crime declined by 3.2%. In 2005, total crime declined by 2.9%, but violent crime increased by 4.75%.

As for the murders Giuliani mentioned, in 2002, before Romney took office, there were 171 murders in Massachusetts. Then there were 139 in 2003, back up to 167 in 2004, and 175 in 2005. Without knowing what happened in 2006, it appears, then, that on the whole we can say that Mitt Romney's tenure saw some decreases in overall crime, but the murder rate was about the same when he left as when he came in.

Was that so hard?

Here's the thing: Politicians lie. The only thing that will keep them from lying is if they know they'll pay a price. And the only ones who can make them pay that price are the reporters whose job it is to tell us what's going on. Unless reporters are willing to step in when candidates are arguing over "facts" and tell you which side is being honest, there is absolutely no incentive for the politicians to tell the truth. Rudy may well now be saying, "Hell, how about next time we just say crime increased on Romney's watch by a thousand percent? Who's going to stop us?"

Right! Do your fucking jobs and quit giving equal credibility to both sides of an argument that has demonstrable facts. I’m happy that blogs are around to take up the slack, but in many cases they shouldn’t have to.

For more on blogs and their influence in Illinois, see Rich Miller’s article in the Illinois Times last week. (Or just regularly read Marie’s blog.)

Good For Bus-ness

I’ve long thought that night bus service would be good for Springfield, so I’m glad to see it’s being given a try. It always seemed to me that those who, for whatever reason, could not drive were severely limited in job opportunities here. Hopefully, this will make things easier. It’s still a problem that there will be no buses on Saturday evening and none all day Sunday. Most retail and service jobs require such hours. I also fear that the routes might be too few and ridership too low to initially justify the program, although the allotted “seven to nine months” ought to be enough time for it to catch on or not. In any event, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Grave Robbing

I’m a little upset that a douchebag like Tucker Carlson has been trying to appropriate the title of bow tie icon from the late, great Paul Simon of Illinois.

Black, As In Outside, Way Before Sunrise

And speaking of silly, I was getting a hair cut at the mall yesterday and the girl cutting my hair told me that they (the hair cutting store) had to open at 6:00 AM on Black Friday just like all of the other shops at White Oaks. The whole opening at insane hours on the day after Thanksgiving is bad enough, but making the hair places open too is just nuts.

During my few brief stints in retail (in the 1970s and 1980s), I don’t remember there being these extremely early opening times for stores the day after Thanksgiving. I’m not sure why they’re needed now. Is it just a publicity thing; see which store can open the earliest? It sucks for the workers, so for their sake I say boycott the early hours and force the retailers to go back to normal, or at least reasonable, schedules. Of course, anything happening at 4:00 AM is pretty easy for me to boycott.

Carding

This is a dumb idea but since I don’t frequent the riverboats, I guess I also don’t care much either.

It does remind me though of how silly the carding policy is for alcohol sales. I’m 47 and get carded almost everywhere I buy booze retail. There is simply no way I could ever pass for being under 21. I wish, but no way. Stores rather than taking a chance on a cahier’s poor age judgment, simply require them to card everyone.

I do like the “We Card Everyone Under 40” signs though. If I’m over 40 can I refuse to be carded? Will they have to start carding to determine if someone needs to be carded? I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought alcohol at any of the establishments that have that sign, so I’ve never had the opportunity to refuse on the basis of my advanced age.

My worst experience was about seven years ago when I tried to buy a six pack at Schnucks (along with other groceries). I was carded, but all I had was a speeding ticket. It had my birthday on it but the store would not accept it. I was 40 years old! Even the bag boy was laughing at the silliness of it all. But ultimately it was my own fault; go too fast, no booze for you!

Update: Some places will simply ask your birth date, not because they think you’re under age but because they need to enter a date into the machine. I guess this is supposed to be a way of forcing the cashiers to card everyone. The result is I have to announce my age in public (not a big deal, but still I don’t need someone behind my in line thinking “damn, he’s fucking old!”). I guess I could lie and shave about 10 years off since they aren’t going to card me anyway.