I’ve suffered from headaches ever since I was a kid. Spent a summer in and out of the hospital when I was seven due to headaches and I’ve had them off and on ever since.

Never could figure out of that were migraines or tension headaches, but they hurt like a motherfucker. I get really bad headaches from caffeine withdrawal, too, which is why I’ve gone without real coffee for over two years. I miss espresso dearly, but I was drinking them all day, just to avoid the headaches.

~~~

So, the other day I’m standing on the sidelines at a football game with another blistering headache. And I turn to the coach standing next to me and ask “You got any aspirin or Tylenol or something.”

He goes, “I’ve got something better.”

This worried me, slightly. This particular coach is one of the few lifelong vegetarians to ever hail from West Virginia. His home remedies for football injuries are often a unique blend of health food store elixir and down home Southern concoction.

He reaches into his first aid kit, rummages around and hands me a piece of folded up wax paper with a powder inside.

Basically, it looked like he handed me some blow.

Reading my mind, he says, “Just dump the powder into your mouth and let it dissolve. Don’t drink any water until it’s just about all gone. Then wash it down.”

I do as he says, expecting both the best and the worst.

~~~

Five minutes later, the skull-buster is gone.

I mean, cured. I feel fine.

I ask him, “What was that shit?’

“Goody’s Headache Powder,” he tells me.

I really don’t know much about this stuff. He told me it’s big in NASCAR — whatever that means — and you can tell by that link their playing the Petty card big time. All I know is, the shit works.

It’s some kind of combination of aspirin, aceti … acetim … acetaminophen and caffeine. The key to the whole thing though (and if this is wrong, blame the coach, not me — I didn’t exactly look it up) is that the whole concoction is absorbed straight into your head through your mouth. Nothing goes down into your stomach to be absorbed into the bloodstream to finally make it’s way to your noggin’ and also the rest of your body. It just goes right to your head.

Again, kinda like blow.

(You actually can snort it, he said.)

~~~

Back in the day, he told me, you could only find it down south. I don’t know where he got his.

But, he says, you can now get it locally. I’m gonna find out where and get me some.

Good news! From the Hollywood Reporter:

A second-season renewal for “Mad Men” is imminent and could be official by end of day Wednesday.

The AMC series, which was created by ex-”Sopranos” writer Matthew Weiner and is produced by Lionsgate, follows a group of advertising executives in 1960 New York. Reviews have been stellar and the skein has helped the network improve on its male demo.

“Mad Men,” exec produced by Weiner, stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery and airs Thursdays at 10.

Autopsy: Head-Butt Didn’t Cause Death

Hey, our guy is innocent!

SNELLVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A man died of a heart attack after being head-butted by an armless man during a fight over a woman, and no felony charges will be filed, authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators said they made the determination after learning that Charles Keith Teer, 49, had heart problems long before the confrontation with William Russell Redfern, an artist who has won recognition for drawings he does with his feet.

I just knew something wasn’t right when I blogged about that yesterday.

Lon Chaney as the armless knifethrower in “The Unknown.”

Tard.

CANBERRA, Australia - An Australian woman who gave birth to twins instead of a single baby after receiving in-vitro fertilization has sued her doctor for the cost of bringing up the second child.

The woman, who cannot be identified because of a court order, is seeking more than 400,000 Australian dollars (US $332,000) to cover the expense of raising one child until age 21.

So is she going to hate both of them equally, or just one?

The woman told the court that she and her partner were devastated when they learned she was carrying twins, and had even considered putting one of the babies up for adoption.

She said that while she enjoyed some aspects of her pregnancy, such as decorating the girls’ nursery, other parts were distressing, including purchasing a stroller, or pram.

“It was like the last frontier of acceptance to spend hundreds of dollars on a pram,” she said.

David Bowie is still cool.

NEW ORLEANS - David Bowie has donated $10,000 to a legal defense fund for six black teens charged in an alleged attack on a white classmate in the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena.

The British rocker’s donation to the Jena Six Legal Defense Fund was announced by the NAACP as thousands of protesters were expected to march through Jena on Thursday in defense of Mychal Bell and five other teens. The group has become known as the Jena Six.

“There is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena,” Bowie said Tuesday in an e-mail statement. “A donation to the Jena Six Legal Defense Fund is my small gesture indicating my belief that a wrongful charge and sentence should be prevented.”

Seriously, twice so far - and it’s only Wednesday:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Staff at a German butcher’s shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said Wednesday.

“It was two latex dildos with a natural look,” said a spokesman for police in the southwestern city of Mannheim.

Natural? Latex dildos?

“He could have used a loaf of bread,” the spokesman said.

As in, to make a sandwich? Or is this some new fetish I’m not aware of yet?

Source

Jonah Goldberg leaves this spoor in today’s LA Times:

As several other politicians and officials noted over the weekend, no White House briefer ever told Congress that this was a war for oil. The debates in Congress didn’t say this was a war for oil. Bush never gave a single speech saying this was a war for oil. (If oil was all Bush wanted, he hardly needed to go to war to get it.) So why is it so “obvious” to Lantos that it was a war for oil?

Perhaps the answer is that when it comes to bashing Bush about the war, no accusation is inaccurate — even if it contradicts all the accusations that came before.

Of course, the ever-fatuous Goldberg, immune to irony as he is, has never worried about inaccuracies from Bush to promote, start, or pimp the war.

As for the shocking revelation that the Iraq War is about oil — what fucking fool on the planet (besides Goldberg) thinks it isn’t about oil?

And speaking of inaccuracy, what about this whopper from the Pantload: “Bush never gave a single speech saying this was a war for oil.” As the serial rationales for the Iraq invasion have fallen by the wayside, Bush has expressly stated that control of oil supplies are a reason for staying in Iraq:

And there’s no doubt in my mind a failure in Iraq would make it more likely the enemy would strike us. It would certainly make it more likely that moderate people around the Middle East would wonder about the United States’ will. Moderate people — moderate governments in the Middle East would be making irrational decisions about their future. It would be a disaster for governments that have got energy resources to be in the hands of these extremists. They would use energy to extract blackmail from the United States.

Or this speech:

Iraq is a central front in this war on terror. Oh, I know the Democrats say it’s a diversion from the war on terror — some of them say that. But I would ask them to listen to the words of Osama bin Laden or Zawahiri, who is the number two of al Qaeda, who have said clearly their ambitions are to drive us out of Iraq so they can establish a safe haven from which to launch further attacks; to drive us out of Iraq so they can have resources to use to fund their ambitions; to drive us out of Iraq so they can topple moderate governments.

Imagine a world in which there are violent forms of extremists who’ve crushed the hopes of moderate, decent people because they have this ideology that is so foreign to us. Imagine a world in which they could use oil to blackmail the free world.

A couple of weeks ago talking to the American Legion:

I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world. Extremists of all strains would be emboldened by the knowledge that they forced America to retreat. Terrorists could have more safe havens to conduct attacks on Americans and our friends and allies. Iran could conclude that we were weak — and could not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons. And once Iran had nuclear weapons, it would set off a nuclear arms race in the region.

Extremists would control a key part of the world’s energy supply, could blackmail and sabotage the global economy. They could use billions of dollars of oil revenues to buy weapons and pursue their deadly ambitions. Our allies in the region would be under greater siege by the enemies of freedom.

Or his State of the Union Address this year:

For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists — who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, and raise the price of oil, and do great harm to our economy.

Or this page from the White House web site:

President Discusses Iraq, Economy, Gas Prices in Cabinet Meeting

Pretending that oil supplies played no part in driving the decision to invade Iraq is banal, even for the Doughy Pantload. The Neoconservative architects of the invasion, the Project for a New American Century, focused sharply on Iraq and its oil in arguing for military action against Saddam’s regime.

The PNAC’s 1998 letter urging military action against Iraq listed as one of the consequences of “capitulating to” (PNAC-speak for “not attacking”) Iraq as:

The administration will have unnecessarily put at risk U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, who will be vulnerable to attack by biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons under Saddam Hussein’s control; — Our friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe will soon be subject to forms of intimidation by an Iraqi government bent on dominating the Middle East and its oil reserves

Robert Kagan wrote “A Way to Oust Saddam” in 1998 urging adoption of the so-called “Wolfowitz Plan,” a limited invasion by US troops:

The Wolfowitz plan calls for the establishment of a “liberated zone” in southern Iraq much like the zone the Bush administration created in the north of the country in 1991. The zone would be a safe haven for opponents of Saddam’s regime. They could rally and organize, establish a provisional government there, gain international recognition, and set up a credible alternative to Saddam’s dictatorship. Control of the southern zone would give Saddam’s opponents a staging area to which discontented Iraqi army units could defect, as well as access to the country’s largest oil field.

In 2001, the PNAC put out “Liberate Iraq” urging an attack by United States troops:

Twice since 1980, Saddam has tried to dominate the Middle East by waging wars against neighbors that could have given him control of the region’s oil wealth and the identity of the Arab world.

In May 2002, Bill Kristol testified to Congress about the need to topple Saddam and integrate its oil into the world economy, as a means to counter Saudi influence:

In particular, removing the regime of Saddam Hussein and helping construct a decent Iraqi society and economy would be a tremendous step toward reducing Saudi leverage. Bringing Iraqi oil fully into world markets would improve energy economics.

Arguing that concern about Iraqi oil did not infuse the NeoCons who planned the war is insipid, even for the Pantload. Pretending that Greenspan’s comments were “misconstrued” is dishonest.

Oil was a major factor in the genesis of the Iraq War. As its proffered rationales have proven false, and knowingly based on weak and flawed intelligence, denying this simple reality is the height of fatuousness.

Be sure to check the page, because there’s video AND a story about a grandma arrested for prostitution. I’m sure the cops ran away in horror when these two offered their “services.” Things are really happening around Snellville!

SNELLVILLE, Ga. — Police questioned an armless man Monday about the death of his neighbor.

Relatives of Charles Keith Teer, 47, claim he died after the armless man, William Russell Redfren, head-butted and kicked Teer during a fight.

The two men lived across the street from each other on Pine Street in the Atlanta suburb.

Teer’s relatives told police the men were arguing over a woman.

“He’s dating my brother’s ex-girlfriend,” said Teer’s sister Lynn Elliot. “My neighbor left my brother for this guy, so it’s a verbal argument between them the whole time.”

Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother.

“They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight* and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could,” said Elliot.

She said Teer collapsed and died a short time after the fight.

*Wait. “A verbal argument the whole time?” A fist fight? “My neighbor left my brother” … huh?

CNN Reports:

Barrett: “Why decide to come back today?”
Craig: “Because I’m a serving United States Senator from Idaho.”

Craig then stepped into the senators’ dining room on the first floor of the Capitol. On the way he passed a visibly surprised Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who gave Craig a big welcome back handshake.

Lindsey, you may want to bring Sally (from yesterday’s post) along with you, and we’ll all have a little chat.

New liver? Check. Paid for? Check. Booze? CHECK!

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) — South African President Thabo Mbeki shrugged off opposition calls to fire his health minister on Monday after a newspaper reported she is an alcoholic and still drinking despite having a liver transplant.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, dubbed “Dr. Beetroot” by opponents for advocating garlic and beetroot to fight AIDS, had a liver transplant in March as a result of a long-running battle with hepatitis, her doctor said at the time.

But the Sunday Times newspaper said the minister had alcoholic liver cirrhosis from years of excessive drinking when she had her transplant, and used her position to secure a new liver while hiding her alcoholism from the public.

As part of a five-month investigation into the health minister’s conduct that has prompted calls for her dismissal, the newspaper quoted witnesses who said Tshabalala-Msimang continued to drink since recovering from the operation. The paper also said she was convicted of stealing a watch from a patient while superintendent of a Botswana hospital in 1976.

Watch? Check!