It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Glowing: Tuesday Open Thread

Kids, it’s all gone.  Tucker Carlson is telling men to irradiate their testicles to be more manly.

I’ve got nothing.

I’ve quoted it before, but the classic Penny Arcade line keeps popping to the surface: “It’s like trying to make fun of a clown. What, are you going to make fun of his tiny car? His floppy shoes? It just doesn’t work. Bravo…we salute you.”

I mean, yes- we had a sitting president suggest we direct our research efforts in combating a deadly pandemic toward INJECTING BLEACH INTO OURSELVES.  Yes, we had a nationwide horse-dewormer paste shortage. Yes, an actual licensed pediatrician who believes that demon sperm causes ovarian cysts was called “my hero” by Madonna and invited to the White House to amplify her views.

But we all kind of were expecting America to get more rational after January 20, 2021, right? For a significant portion of society to basically wake up, shake their head and go “wow, what was I drinking the last four years?” We had Won.  We had Vanquished the Evil Cheeto and his Minions, resisted insane legal attacks and the invasion of the Capitol. Now we were going back to the flawed-but-mostly-sane-on-the-surface comfortable existence that allows us to gloss over the shittiness of the world and live our daily lives.

But now we’re supposed to tan our scrotums.  So if you’ve missed any of the other giant signs that our hope for normalcy was Well and Truly Donkey-Dicked, well- welcome back to it.

Scrota? Scrotii? I’ve never had occasion to ponder the pluralization of scrotum.  Every day is a new adventure.

America has always been the Land of Opportunity for medical snake oil for a number of reasons.  First, there’s the embedded Puritan ethic that God will protect His Chosen from disease and that sickness (particularly certain kinds of sickness) are the result of Immoral Choices.

You may have noticed a certain sub-strain of this during the Delta Wave of COVID among previously-rational friends.

However, there is also the anti-intellectual streak that we’ve discussed previously.  Who does that doctor think she is? If you simply do what the doctor tells you (or worse, if the doctor tells you there’s no easy solution) then you are at their mercy.  But if you find out from a friend about One Weird Trick That Doctors HATE to cure baldness/fatness/oldness/diphtheria, well then you discovered your own solution. You have Agency. You are no one’s Fool.

Of course, what takes this from Old Wives Tales to a truly American institution is Money.  Orrin Hatch, (with the sniveling connivance of Tom Harkin) is almost single-handedly responsible for the Supplement Industry’s as we know it, exempting a wide range of “dietary supplements” from the normal oversight required as long as they use the Magic Words:

“This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease”

Seriously, look up the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. It’s goddawful, to the point that both Health and Education should be in quotation marks.

Tangent for lawyer-friends: now that obesity is classified as a disease, how the hell do weight-loss supplements get around this?  I would love to research this, but I am too busy cramming “liver support” vitamins down my throat instead of improving my diet and cutting out alcohol.

So I say “Kudos!” to Carlson and his band of homoerotic maniacs.  Beam as much infrared light at your genitals as you want.  You know what? Why not kick it up a notch? Much like the Ford 350 Macho Grande Bearkiller Edition truck you bought to commute to the office, More must be Better, right? Let’s skip those infrared and visible-light spectra entirely. LOW FREQUENCIES ARE FOR LOW TESTOSTERONE, BRO! Let’s kick it up to ultraviolet.  Hell, I found this guy on YouTube who says that with the right headers and manifold, you can mod your TaintPainter 3000 to get up into x-ray range!

Go for it, you fucking shitbrains. I believe in the sanctity of human life and saving idiots from themselves, but after a certain point You Do You. I, for one, look forward to being able to spot MAGAchuds by their glowing pelvises.

NFL NEWS:

Not a fuckton going on, really.

-Carolina Panthers linebacker Damien Wilson was arrested in Frisco, Texas, last week after his ex-girlfriend said he smashed her laptop, threatened to kill her with a tire iron, threatened her cat and tried to hit her as he drove off. This sort of thing really should be a scandal, but we’ve gotten so used to it that it kind of rolls off the newsfeed. Frankly, compared with ex-Chiefs teammates like Frank Clark and Tyreek Hill, it’s almost a relief that he confined himself to threats and property damage. And that’s Fucked Up.

-Former Giants head coach and current Carolina coordinator Ben McAdoo emphatically named Sam Darnold the team’s starting QB today. Then he declared “That wasn’t something I should have said” apparently remembering 1. he’s not the head coach, and 2. he has as much business choosing quarterbacks as I do performing neurosurgery while high on mushrooms.

-Speaking of the Carolina Inbreds, looks like a traditional Shotgun Wedding might be in the cards for the team and Baker Mayfield. Less than a month after publicly declaring their “mutual disinterest” in Mayfield playing in Charlotte, it now looks like closing time at the Honkey Tonk Bunker and these two are headed home together as the last couple standing.  It makes some sense: Mayfield needs a place to play for a year between shooting insurance commercials, and Carolina needs to not start Sam Darnold. Both have watched the QB Carousel spin round while each of their preferred options has found a solution elsewhere. Seattle is basically Mayfield’s other last clear option to start, and it’s telling that the Seahawks would rather trot out some combination of Drew Lock and the fourth-best QB in a shitty QB Draft than pony up a conditional fourth-round pick. Carolina literally can’t seem to get anyone to return their calls. I wish them all the happiness in the world.

-You know, I bet at least 35% of NFL owners have tried genital tanning. Bob Kraft, Arthur Blank, Stan Kroenke: obviously. Stephen Ross might. Jerry Jones probably just gets naked and lays out under God’s Peephole  on a sunny day. Gayle Benson is a solid Maybe.