Tuesday, March 15, 2005



flys like a butterfly...stings like a raging death machine.

the anti-malarial drug lariam, or mefloquine, is poison... just check the extraordinarily long list of contraindications and adverse effects provided in the manufacturer's instructions. side effects range from "minor" symptoms such as dizziness, vomiting, bad nightmares, hair loss... to "severe" symptoms such as hallucinations, extreme anxiety, depression, suicidal behaviour...

i've just taken my first dose tonight as an experiment. it's not the first time i've taken the drug. i took it in 1995 in africa. back then i had really bad dreams where i repeatedly envisioned brian mulroney's face peeling off his skull. i also lost most of my hair. in 1999, i took lariam again in pakistan. i developed a skin condition, listed in the literature provided, called an edema. the skin on my upper arms would bloat and become corrugated in texture. if i pressed down on the effected area, the impression caused by my finger would last several minutes.

i hope none of these side effects return with this dose. hey, if it's the hair loss symptom again, i'll have no problem. however if it the skin reaction returns, i have no choice but to go to plan B. i'll have to take an antibiotic called doxycycline (the stuff dean took). side effects? thought you'd never ask. an increased susceptibility to getting sunburned and being zit free for the duration. the only negative is i have remember to pop one (i don't mean a zit) every freakin day.

if i sound depressed or suicidal in the next couple of posts, you'll understand why.

hey, darth vadar, my brutha...

what the hell is going on the last while...



four gravel road cops were gunned down by some hillbilly freak...
a little girl is tossed onto the 401 from an overpass by her freak father...
a gas station attendant in vancouver, trying to stop a thief from driving off with a freebie tank of gas, is run over by the crook and dragged to his death...
some freak in an atlanta court grabs a gun from a court deputy and shoots 4 court officials including the judge overseeing his rape case...
michael jackson shows up at court in his pj's? i guess he wanted his testifying victim to feel at home...

more reality than you can stomach...

who's hot:

the contender. i thought this show was going to be quite lame. but it's a pleasant surprise. i was skeptical about having the boxers' families milling about. but, they really illustrate the fact that these boxers are not just fighting for themselves. i'm not sure if i'd want to be crowd if my dad "dropped the gloves"... the fighting sequences are stupendous.

sylvester stallone, the host, is hilarious. he and everyone else thinks he's a real boxer. the guy must be pushing sixty. one scene has him working the punch bag. in comes the boxers. he stops and is quite winded. one of the boxers asks whether he should phone for an ambulance. ha! he just played a imaginary boxer in a movie, bubbas...

the only iffy part of the show is the survivor-type challenge where the east coast "team" is pitted against the west coast "team". i've always thought of boxing as a sport of individuals. anyways, if you haven't seen it yet, catch it soon...

who's not:

american idol. completely off the radar screen.

the hour.

if you haven't watched it yet, catch "the hour" on newsworld. the host is the straight-shootin george stroumboulopoulos. entertaining...hip. george almost snagged a highly prized ralphie klein interview for his up-and-coming show when ralphie mistakenly thought george was fellow greek ex-pat george stephanopoulos (ex-pres. clinton guru turned bigtime ABC sunday talk show host). suffice to say, ralphie, long time uber-cbc detractor, didn't return george stroumboulopoulos' calls thereafter.

george stephanopoulos, ironically, was guest on the hour tonight. recently, he thought he had an prize interview lined up with george w. bush. dubya cancelled when he found out the interviewer was george stephanopoulos and not george stroumboulopoulos...

i think everyone should have a chinese-like-mono-syllabic surname...

i gotta go. think i'm having a bout of depression.

2 comments:

Kyle said...

Caught an episode of The Contender on Sunday. Quite enjoyed it. You're right about the fight sequences; pretty impressive.

Haven't watched The Hour yet, but have been meaning to ... I alwas liked George Strombo...lo... uh, George S. from his days at MuchMusic.

Good luck with the drugs...

bubba said...

hey kyle,

thanx for the comments.

i love the stop and go action sequences where they slow the action for an instance so we can see a big punch. for a laypeople like most of us, we'd miss it if played at regular speed. makes you realize that these guys are really serious and are trying to kill one another.

i agree george strombo was good on much music (especially on that show where people competed in stunts to win tix to concerts. ha!) he brings some of his musical background to his new show.

i'll write an update on the drugs later. so far so good. no funny dreams last nite.