p thoughts and notices

Paraphernalia does not like to brag (too much!) and would never dare uttering "See, I’ve Told You So!" (paraphernalia could be sued by Limbaugh for violation of intellectual property, although Rush might have some problems proving the intellectual bit…). Then again, when it comes to drugs, we like to think that we know what we are talking about…

Barry Bonds has officially been declared a cheat because some white guys wrote a book, Game of Shadows describing, in lurid details, Mr. Bonds’ problems with acne, reduced testes, women on the payroll, and jealousy (a word sometimes replaced by "competitiveness", "ambition", "willpower" or "the desire to be the best" when describing more popular athletes; for example, brocked-backed liberals appear to criticize Roger Clemens' head throw to his son as an act of parental abuse, rather than as valuable teaching tool for a son that had the audacity to hit one of Daddy’s gonad out of the ballpark).

In any case, paraphernalia is happy to brag that it creamed that Bonds’ Clear story before Bonds’ Clear story. Of course, ESPN or SI never quoted paraphernalia. While it is hard to accept such rejection, paraphernalia cannot really complain. After all, it is hard to whine when the creator of the internet himself lost a gorish election against a cokehead happy to use an autistic kid just to try to keep its approval ratings higher than, hum, historical low.

Actually, paraphernalia was glad to see Barry Bonds exposed for what he is: a black guy with access to the same weapons as its adversaries. Indeed, Nazi tanks had as much problems slaughtering the Polish’s cavalry as Mark McGwire did blasting Wrigley Field’s walls. All that paraphernalia’s saying is: Give Barry’s bats to the Polish army in 1939, and there goes down the blitzkrieg! While this example might be viewed as disingenuous, blasphemous, racist, and all other similar feelings paraphernalia is striving to repress, paraphernalia’s point remains: technology and power do matter when it’s time to kick ass! (Just look at Nathalie Portman in V).


In an enlightening USA Today’s article published March 15, 2006 and titled "Performance-Enhancing Drugs Won't Be Going Anyway Soon" (a deep statement indeed!), the writer comments: "Because of the frenzy created about Bonds in the upcoming book…… Selig owes fans an investigation of the last decade". While paraphernalia is all for fair play (after all, who is happy to be sold flour in lieu of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine?), it still feels the need to ask a few questions:

- Why limit the investigation to the last decade? After all, it seems that for decades, amphetamines have been used in baseball. Since these have been available since the 1950s, are we allowed to conclude that all records should be erased. Heck, it seems that even the Bambino was not as "clean" as people may remember, apparently trying to inject himself with extract of sheep’s testes (what a curse would that be for the Red Sox Nation?)

- What about performance-reducing drugs? Surely, some people under-performed through the usage of substances negating their natural abilities. Sticking with baseball, players like Bill "Spaceman" Lee bragged about smoking or eating the stuff made famous by Cheech & Chong. In fairness, Lee’s numbers should be adjusted upward, as it seems very unlikely that consuming marijuana would make you throw, or catch, a ball better. (then again, is it possible to think that, when the ball hits your face, you may indeed feel less pain? Paraphernalia does not think so, as we have been told by credible government agencies that there is no such thing as medical marijuana .)

- Why is the Book on Bonds more popular than the Book on Armstrong, called L.A Confidentiel –Les secrets de Lance Armstrong? After all the rubber-wristed, nuts-cancer survivor, once divorced, somewhat timely dropper of breast-cancer’s victim Sheryl Crow and all-American hero otherwise known as Lance Armstrong is also called a drug cheat in a book. Of course, that book was in French, is based on allegations about trainers and comments from disgruntled women. Still, the fact remains that Lance Armstrong, contrary to Barry Bonds, may have tested positive for EPO (but, strangely, it’s OK because these tests were supposed to be anonymous… same for Bonds’ testimony, mind you).

In the meantime, it does seem that unpleasant white guys from Texas are able to get away with murder (figuratively speaking; paraphernalia is not suggesting that the gentlemen mentioned could ever be as bad as OJ, except maybe one of them), while a few homeruns are getting Bonds more fried up by the Senate than a bag of McCain’s in Vietnam.

The morale of the story? Well, paraphernalia would recommend that Barry learns the GWB- Lance Fox News Texas Trot Line(s) Dance, better known as "Deny Everything!"

The audience will eventually get bored, and start focusing on what truly matters, namely the next episode of American Idol.

For the record, and in this order, paraphernalia prefers The Wire to AI; it sorts of like Bonds (depending on the yield it generates; Indonesia's not bad at the moment); it doesn't really trust LiveStrong rubbers (Ramses' appears safer!); and it really ----s GWB (hereby alerting the thesaurus-lacking NSA heroes monitoring this site that there are, at the very least, three 4-letters words that could be inserted here: Love, Hate, Fuck and Cuba).

In the meantime, paraphernalia will go back to curling, the only sport where you don’t want to use performance-enhancing drugs. Winning a game would just be too embarrassing…