A few months ago, arthritis drug Vioxx was taken off the market due to a new study linking it to heart disease. More recently, one of it’s chief competitors, Celebrex, suffered the same fate. Now it looks like our old friend Aleve is next in line for the firing squad! Arthritis sufferers everywhere are understandably concerned about the situation, and wondering whether other new drugs might pose similar risks! Perhaps now would be a good time to remind them of a natural remedy, which has proven time and time again to deliver maximum relief with a minimum of side effects.
Archive for December, 2004
(So the story continues…) When we last spoke, our hero America was up Shits Creek with a turd for a paddle. The “Jazz Age” of the 1920’s had given way to the “Great Depression” of the 1930’s, and things were not so hot in other parts of the world either. Which reminds me, I do apologize if my treatment of Nazism in the previous entry came off as a bit flip or anything. As will hopefully become more evident in today’s post, I’m just trying to demonstrate some of the truly asinine ways in which politicians have tried to cope with really serious problems. Anyway, on with the show…
Continue reading ‘Hey Young World’
Hard drinks for men who want to get drunk fast
Published December 26th, 2004 in Uncategorized. ClosedIt’s the day after Christmas (and what have you done?) but I just came across the funniest Christmas story I’ve read this year! Originally published in 2001, this against-the-grain reading of “It’s a Wonderful Life” points out something that may have been bothering modern viewers of Frank Capra’s timeless classic, namely that the alternate universe created by George Bailey’s having never been born seems to be a lot more fun than the one he leaves behind. “Pottersville” is full of hot jazz and dancing girls, while “Bedford Falls” is populated by meddlesome neighbors with their noses in everyone’s business. For a man who has spent the entire movie trying to “shake the dust of that two-bit town off his feet,” George’s desire to retreat from the excitement of this new reality is truly kind of puzzling!
Still working on Part II of last night’s post, but in the meantime I’m worried there may be a big pool of black ink hiding somewhere in my house, or maybe in my pants? I grabbed my uni-ball GEL IMPACT pen today and was drawing for about 30 seconds when it ran out of ink. It’s got a window in the side, I can see all the way through. It’s dry. Problem is, I’ve only used this pen about 5 times before, for a grand total of maybe 10 minutes. No way should it be out of ink! Unless… Yeah, it always did have a kind of heavy flow (so to speak =) when I tried it before. So yeah, now I’m thinking, which drawer did I store it in, what pants was I wearing when I used it last? Where will I be when I find that big, black stain???
I’ve been looking at this phone for the last few days, and I’m thinking of picking it up if I can get some straight answers out of Amazon regarding the whole AT&T to Cingular deal, and whether or not it will affect my ability to get the $200 rebate. (I’d just buy it direct from Cingular, but they are not offering it, even though they are the same company as AT&T Wireless now, and it will work on their network. I guess they are just trying to keep with American cell-phone providers’ policy of staying at least 2.5 years behind developments Europe and Japan.) Anyway, it looks pretty rad, no? It comes with a VGA camera, Bluetooth, fullscreen video, mini-SD memory card (upgradable to 1GB!), internet browser, email, silver spoon, the moon… All that =)
Well here’s something that won’t fly on Metafilter or any of those other places that I’ve been posting to of late, disjointed political rambling! So brace yourself, or ignore it if you like. It is a bunch of loose ends that I’ve been thinking about for awhile, and I’m in the right kind of mood for getting them down before I lose the thread.
First of all, you might be all, “But Eric, I could give a flying fuck about politics!” Or better yet, “That kind of stuff just disgusts me!” Not that this will make any difference, but that attitude is mainly what this post is about. I know a lot of people my age (and slightly older and younger) that feel that way, and while I understand where they’re coming from, I gotta admit it’s a bit troubling. Not on a personal level like, “What’s wrong with you guys?!” But from from the perspective of, “Hm… That can’t be incredibly healthy for our country.” Anyway, I’ve given it some thought, and come up with a grand, unified theory on how things got this way. So now, you can read it and tell me where I’ve made incorrect assumptions or errors in logic.
Continue reading ‘Crackhouse Blues’
All he ever talks about is monkeys and robots
Published December 20th, 2004 in Uncategorized. 1 CommentYou might call me an ephemerologist; I’m a big fan of stuff that gets lost in translation, misheard, overheard, taken out of context and all that stuff. Previously (a loooong time ago, so check it out if you’ve not been there lately), I posted a link to The Disturbing Search Requests weblog. Culled from the “referrer logs” of various webservers, these requests reveal what visitors to these sites were really after (though, we can only imagine why they clicked through to the sites that they did). Anyway, today’s post is about a site called, “Overheard in New York” The whole thing is pretty fantastic, but so far I think this one from October 2003 is my favorite. It was spoken by a cabbie, stuck in a traffic jam caused by President Bush’s visit to the city: “Incredible, one man can make such fuck!”
I’m a big fan of lyrics that deal with extended musical metaphors, so like “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen is (kind of) an example:
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Or another favorite is “Shot in the Arm” by Wilco:
We fell in love
In the key of C
We walked along
Down by the sea
You followed me down
The neck to D
And fell again
Into the sea
Which gets extra points for making a pun (intentionally or not) on “Schenectady” Anyway, today I was listening to Beulah’s “Yoko” album and heard this one:
I run my hands down your neck
Across your back to another fret
I know you’re fragile
You’re bound to self-destruct
Also, there is a line later on in that song that goes: “You never mean it when you come to me/With your arms outstretched/Defenseless and alone” in which some online transcriptionist has seen fit to extend the metaphor even further by printing it as “With your arms outstretched/Defenseless and oblong…”
Are you as amused as I am? =) Also, I have the feeling there is a Bright Eyes song that I really like that has a metaphorical bent like this, but I can’t seem to remember it right now! Any ideas?
The preceding entry appeared first at Metafilter.com (of which I am now a member) and it raises an interesting question. What is the purpose of this site (antinomian.com, I mean)? For awhile, I’ve wondered whether it might make sense to change the format of my site a bit, since I was going through a period of political ranting (but, then again, weren’t we all?) and I didn’t really want that to be the focus of my writing here. After all, I’m sure not too many of you are surprised that I think drug and copyright policy needs reform (and so on…), so I’m kind of just preaching to the choir. Now that I have a Metafilter account, would that be a better forum for my “weird links on the internet” posts, or should I continue mirroring them here as well? Of course, many of the links that end up here come from Metafilter and the like, so I’ll continue to put those here, I guess. But anyway, I’m still feeling a bit unresolved on how to go forward. Any suggestions on what you’d like to see/not see more of on antinomian.com? Let me know…
Contact, is the answer, is the reason, that everything happens
Published December 7th, 2004 in Uncategorized. ClosedLook around you… The world is an hilarious place, and there’s no better way to confirm that fact than by watching low-budget educational films. If your middle school experience was anything like mine, then you’ll remember the intense rush of joy that you felt when you arrived at class to find a TV cart set up at the front of the room. Maybe some of you were excited about the chance to catch up on sleep or pass notes or whatever, but I watched those damn things with a passion, noting every flubbed line, analog-synth-driven soundtrack, and polyester-filled wardrobe like they were keys to a parallel universe.
Thanks to the Internet Archive’s AV Geeks collection of films, I’ve recently rekindled my love affair with the genre and with last week’s premiere of Look Around You on BBC America, I’ve been catapulted directly into geek/kitsch heaven! The series parodies 70s/80s science films and nails the look and tone of these series with such astonishing accuracy that it made my big, comfy couch feel like a cramped uncomfortable desk (with the chair attached). With this show, Coupling, and Trailer Park Boys, BBCA is fast on its way to becoming my favorite network! (Sorry Cartoon Network, it’s nothing personal… =)
