Month: March 2018

Why We Definitely Need More Gun Control Alt Delete And Intergalactic Kama Sutra

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , , ,

Remember when we were kids and the government told us all not to do drugs? I remember it fondly because I was naturally a sedated kid and didn’t need drug sedation in order to sit in a chair for 7 hours every day for 13 years straight in order to get educated about stuff. I would supplement my education by scribbling crude scientific diagrams of various alien genitalia and their uses within the context of xenoreproductive habits. I was working on my resume for Star Fleet Academy.

In retrospect, it was rather unwise of me to craft these drawings within the margins of various workbooks, my teachers on occasion flipping through said workbooks to check periodic enrichment assignments. My margins were way too enriched, if you know what I mean. My teachers probably all thought I was on drugs.

Anyway, so we were told not to do drugs in a class called “D.A.R.E. To Keep Kids Off Drugs”. We would all wear these black goth-looking emo shirts to illustrate how D.A.R.I.N.G. we were not to do drugs, and boy did I learn a lot about drugs during that government program! It was so much fun! I specifically remember learning about LSD and how if you took it you could “taste music”, and “hear colors,” and “sing with all the voices of the mountains” and “paint with all the colors of your wind”!

I was quite a gassy kid so I was really excited about this. When I heard about that I actually stopped doodling alien genitalia for a few minutes and when I went home I further supplemented my D.A.R.E. education by learning all I could about how to make LSD. Dial-up AOL internet was really slow and pixelated though in the mid 90’s and it knocked out your phone line so I just gave up.

But then the policeman who taught us all about LSD, someone named Officer Becker, told us not to do those drugs and I went back to my xenobiology diagrams. All drugs were bad, Officer Becker taught us, except for Aderall® (amphetamine), Concerta® (methylphenidate), Desoxyn® (methamphetamine hydrochloride AKA “glass pills”), Dexedrine® (dextroamphetamine), Focalin® (dexmethylphenidate), Ritalin®, Datrana®, Vyvanse® (lisdexamphetamine dimesylate), Intuniv® (guanfacine alpha-2-adrenergic agonist), and Straterra® (atomoxetine). Those were all great drugs despite mandated FDA black box warnings of increased suicidal tendencies in children if we weren’t good at sitting still by occupying ourselves with the fine details of sketching extra-terrestrial sex positions and needed some help calming down.

I didn’t need those drugs, but I do remember they made up some complicated name for the terminal disease all these kids had that did need them. They had this serious problem where all they wanted to do was like, get up and, like, DO things instead of sit all day. They called it ADHD, for Accelerated Decrepit Hyperinsanity Disorder. Oh, and the ADHD kids were all told that the best weapon against a drug habit was a high self-esteem, and also to make sure you took all your drugs if through no fault of your own you were unable to SIT THE $%*& DOWN AND SHUT THE *#@& YOU LITTLE S*$&S!!

It was top notch education.

And while the bad drugs were bad, if, through no fault of our own we were sad all the time, we could also take fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, paroxetine, fluvoxamine, escitalopram, or guanohexadinaflarg cyanide. (OK, I made the last one up. Guanohexadinaflarg is actually a poison. But seriously, the rest, which are all real, were considered good despite additional FDA-mandated black box warnings of increased suicidality. But never mind that. All they really did apparently was prevent your brain from reabsorbing neurotransmitters like serotonin, which floods your brain with serotonin, which makes you really jumpy all the time, which means you have to double up on your dose of prescription meth to SIT STILL! I forgot to close parentheses.)

So in my D.A.R.E. class we had all these kids told that they had hyperinsanity dementia for not sitting still, on brain-chemistry-altering neurotransmitter-flooding drugs because they were sad, on more drugs to keep them sedated from the other drugs, all with black box warnings of increased risk of suicide, being told that in order not to do drugs they had to think very highly of themselves and learn about how amazing drugs like LSD are but you definitely should NOT do them. This is known as “drug control”.

Maybe I live under a jagged rock or I’m just too busy drawing aliens or I’m taking way too many drugs (probably all three), but as far as I know there is absolutely no drug problem in the US because we have drug control. I mean aside from all the drugs that we’re supposed to be on. Drugs are illegal, at least the illegal ones are, and after spending more than $1 trillion on drug control enforcement, drugs are finally a thing. Of the past.

So that’s why we need way more gun control. Because in order to stop crazy people from murdering others with assault weapons, all you need to do is make them illegal. So if the government just sits down and does something responsible for once and makes it illegal for anyone to purchase assault weapons, all the kids now on brain-altering antidepressants and ADHD drugs to make sure their antidepressants don’t make them so jumpy that they no longer have the ability to concentrate on their D.A.R.E. courses about how they shouldn’t do drugs which they can’t get anyway because of drug control, won’t go out and somehow find an assault rifle somewhere on the black market and murder people.

It really has absolutely nothing to do with all the drugs the government says these kids should be on because they need to sit and listen for 13 years straight 7 hours a day and they have hyperinsanity dysphagia, but shouldn’t be sad about it because it’s really not their fault, and won’t be as long as they’re taking all their antidepressants.

I mean think about it. When the government says you can’t buy something, like an assault rifle, how in the world are you going to find one?

I would suggest, humbly, as someone successfully educated by the government never to taste any colors with LSD, that maybe the solution to mass shootings could perhaps involve something like stop giving kids so much drugs that come with warnings of increased risk of suicide and making them sit and be lectured at for 13 years straight by law and instead let those who can’t handle such sedentary habits go to work and DO something but I’m just too busy illustrating the Star Fleet First Contact Guide to the Intergalactic Kama Sutra.

Enjoy this very serious and not sarcastic piece? Then you’ll be totally titillated by this fantastic nonsense about Libertarianism and Silicone Brain Implants.

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Libertarianism and Silicone Brain Implants

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I have an announcement to make. But before I do, I want to talk about silicone brain implants.

I just learned, in what may seem surprising but in retrospect makes perfect sense considering how little people think about stuff, that you can actually cut half of a person’s brain out of his skull and aside from the opposite side of his body being numb and  the loss of side vision, the person will be fine. Maybe a bit forgetful (as in, “Hey, where did I just put my hemisphere?”) but pretty much fine.

The procedure is called a functional hemispherectomy, and it’s a real thing. The doctor basically comes at you with a really precise chainsaw and after flipping a coin for dramatic effect and making a doctorish quip or two like “Don’t worry, I know it’s the left one, right? Don’t get ahead of yourself! Just kidding! Relax!” carefully removes half of your brain. In preparation for surgery, it is recommended that you store all critical information in the remaining hemisphere, such as where you put your car keys, and remembering why the chicken crossed the corpus callosum. (Answer: to get to the other hemisphere.)

Some questions you may be asking yourself at this point:

  • Why would someone have half of his brain removed?
  • Are silicone brain implants available for these patients?
  • Where can I get a really precise chainsaw?
  • Where are my car keys?

The answer to question 1) is life-threatening childhood seizures. This is a serious non humor thing. Apparently, functional hemispherectomies have a 75% success rate in stopping these seizures which is great for 3 out of 4 people. The other 1 out of 4 apparently just feel a bit lightheaded.

Now, while it is generally known that cannabis oil can sometimes be helpful in treating seizures in children, that is only the case in jurisdictions where cannabis is not a schedule I drug that has no generally accepted medical use and has high potential for abuse. In said jurisdictions, doctors first resort to chemically engineered lab-created schedule II drugs that thankfully do have a generally accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. If those don’t work, you can always just calmly and gently remove half your brain.

At this point (.) I’d like to share a passage from a post on the interwebs that I found by googling “Cannabis hemispherectomy” because surprisingly, it didn’t lead me to a porn site. (At least not yet.) The post opens thusly thus:

Just a a (sic) quick post today. MCANZ has heard second hand anecdotal stories from an (sic) NZ Refugee to Colorado, that CBD rich Cannabis oil has worked on children for seizures where this much more drastic (and rare) [functional hemispherectomy] procedure has failed.

You hear that boys and girls and other assorted genders? After having half their child’s brains excised and the procedure failing, only then did these responsible parents try cannabis oil for their child.

Now call me old fashioned, but I’m the type of parent who, before resorting to having a doctor slice half of my child’s brain out and having to go through the trouble of finding a suitable tailor-made silicone brain implant – quite expensive from what I hear – I would first maybe try to get my hands on some cannabis oil somehow on the off chance that perhaps, possibly, it might help a bit even though it is a schedule I drug with no generally accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. That just seems more reasonable to me than cutting out half of your kid’s brain first before even trying it.

But the author has another critical point I didn’t mention, one based on the Hippocratic Oath of Do No Harm. There’s an ethical dilemma here:

So we have an ethical dilemma, the use of an experimental medicine [cannabis oil] with scant but positive scientific research and attached legal baggage, versus a rare, but extreme, and on average effective treatment for those children with life threatening seizures.

It’s a question of morality, people! If you have your child take a schedule 1 substance before first removing half his brain, he may get stoned for a few hours for nothing! After all, in three out of four cases a hemispherectomy will work just fine, so why risk it? Aside from the matter of the opposite side of the body losing feeling, at least until a suitable brain donor can be found. And on the off 25% chance it doesn’t work, just think of it this way. You won’t even have to fit him with a silicone brain implant. You can just have the doctor stuff the old hemisphere right back in there with a shovel maybe and save some money.

Don’t worry. It’s a very small precise shovel. It comes in the same do-it-yourself hemispherectomy kit as the chainsaw.

But then thinking about this again with both my hemispheres, (sorry for triggering those with only half a brain) I don’t quite get the ethical dilemma here. Maybe it’s because I’m on the “spectrum”. Perhaps I need a functional hemispherectomy in order to see things more clearly. I just don’t have the money for an implant and I’m a DD.

Anyway, here’s my announcement. After thinking long and hard and after several seizures, I’m rebranding this blog. I used to be a humor writer, even before I was a libertarian. And I used to be really good at it. It made me happy. Google “Rafi Farber hoot” and you’ll find some good stuff. (Google “Rafi Farber hemispherectomy” and you’ll end up right back here, probably at this very parenthetical sentence. (Not as in a sentence that is very parenthetical, but as in this very sentence that also happens to be metaparenthetical.))

I’m still The Jewish Libertarian, but instead of blasting righteous anger at politicians and governments like some abused half-brained chipmunk, I’m going to return to my roots and instead employ humor. Because I know politicians would never try Schedule I drugs with no generally accepted medical use.

I don’t want to be angry anymore. Anger leads to hate leads to suffering leads to Yoda leads to Hayden Christensen mumbling super creepy Attack of the Clones dialogue about sand being coarse and irritating (It gets everywhere!) and none of us want to see that movie ever again. I’m sure we’d all rather have double hemispherectomies, whether functional or not.

And a shout out to Dave Barry, who probably gets shouted out at a lot. He is the closest thing to a professional writing role model guy that I have. And I’m pretty sure he’s libertarianish, too. He runs for president every election cycle. Vote for him. I will. (I’m seriously not joking.)

And President Dave, might I add that The Silicone Brain Hemisphere Implants would be a great name for a band. Trump could probably use one. Or two.

Bonus for alert readers: Describe, in 100 detailed illustrations or less, what a cannabis-hemispherectomy-themed porn site would feature.