Comedian Brian Regan riffing on a trip to the emergency room, and how high do you have to rate your pain to get morphine?

Despite being one of the most messed-up celebs on the planet, Amy Winehouse managed to rock the Grammys via satellite this weekend without stumbling, slurring, or making a fool of herself (though some say her performances were a bit lackluster...). I believe the songs she sang are "I'm No Good" and "Rehab". Fitting, eh?

I stumbled across this DVD this weekend and was very impressed with the visual achievement of this film. Mixing hand-painted CGI with traditional cell animation, the studio behind Tekkonkinkreet have produced one of the most visually immersive animations ever (they also produced Animatrix, which was awesome). This film tackles classic anime themes of dark vs. light, yakuza gangs, orphaned children, brutal violence, and a psychic showdown in some crazy psychedelic dreamworld. When it ended I immediately wanted to watch it again, which almost never happens with me. I'm not saying it makes total sense (How do those kung-fu kids sail through the air? Who is the Minotaur?), but it is light-years more coherent than most anime I have seen.

Savvy drug traffickers are taking advantage of the impoverished West-African nation of Guinea-Bissau to set up shop in the Eastern hemisphere.

Guinea-Bissau is an ideal African springboard for Latin American mafias to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the wealthy European Union market.

Conditions in this small former Portuguese colony in West Africa are optimal. There is minimal surveillance, not a single prison worthy of the name, a weak state and officials susceptible to bribery and corruption.

...

UNODC experts calculate that one-quarter of the cocaine consumed in Europe is trafficked through West Africa, especially Guinea-Bissau. The trade in cocaine is estimated at $2 billion, that is to say, nearly twice the country’s GDP of just over $1 billion a year.

However, in the streets of the richest capital cities in Europe its value could be as high as $20 billion, or 10 times as much.

...

“Today, Guinea-Bissau is literally fenced in. We must entertain no illusions: the state could collapse,” said Antonio María Costa, the head of UNODC.

Costa maintains that South American traffickers chose Guinea-Bissau partly because of its convenient location in West Africa, but mainly because its authorities are incapable of combating organised crime.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Guinea-Bissau is one of the five poorest nations in the world. Seeing that Guinea-Bissau doesn't even have a single prison, and that all the officials can be easily bribed, sounds like a good place to build a worldwide criminal empire. Can we all say "Narco-state?" I knew you could...

JamesK mentioned trepanation in this posting last summer ("Brain Hacking", ha ha). Just recently I had it on my mind again and tracked down a trailer on YouTube for the infamous hour-long documentary A Hole In The Head, which contains some very graphic footage, I warn you.

I first heard of trepanation in a goth zine I stumbled across years ago; there it was probably being discussed entirely for shock value, and so I am continuing in a similar vein. The most prominent modern Western advocate of trepanation is Bart Huges, but in the 70s Peter Halvorson and Amanda Fielding gained notoriety when he filmed her performing a trepanation on herself with a power drill, and made a short film about it, which they showed to private, invited audiences. According to Wikipedia, the film is now lost, but the documentary has a few clips, so who knows. According to the article I read way back, the original film was bizarre and surreal, featuring a peaceful soundtrack, with scenes of Amanda drilling in her head, blood pouring down her face, interspersed with clips of birds fluttering in the trees and other peaceful imagery.

This newer documentary is much more tame; it aired on Discover and The Learning Channel, but even the trailer is a bit shocking in some places:

Details are coming out about the prescription medications found at the scene of Heath Ledger's overdose. The DEA may be going as far as Europe and Australia to hunt down where Heath scored his meds and potentially prosecute the MDs:

The DEA has subpoenaed Ledger's autopsy results from the New York Medical Examiner's Office and will try to find out why he had five different powerful prescription drugs. New York police, assisting the DEA, said some of the drugs were prescribed in Europe.

...

Prescription drugs in Ledger's body were oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam and alprazolam.... A sixth drug, doxylamine, commonly in over-the-counter cough medicines, was in Ledger's blood.

Drug experts say no "reasonable doctor" would prescribe such a combination of drugs.

Well, it looks like he was on enough downers to kill a horse. Elvis, Anna Nicole, Heath Ledger... Big Pharma takes down another icon.

So you may have heard that Barak Obama has admitted to using drugs when he was younger, but was he a party animal? The New York Times set out to interview people from Obama's past to see if they could dig up any dirt on the candidate's drug history:

In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed only to dabble with marijuana.

“It didn’t stand out to me,” said Michael Ramos, who was one of Mr. Obama’s closest friends at the Punahou School in Honolulu. “It was not the focal point of our lives. It wasn’t like we all thought we’ve got to do something to help Barack because it’s getting out of control.” About Mr. Obama’s using cocaine, he said, “I didn’t know him to do that.”

Vinai Thummalapally, a former California State University student who became friendly with Mr. Obama in college, remembered him as a model of moderation — jogging in the morning, playing pickup basketball at the gym, hitting the books and socializing.

“If someone passed him a joint, he would take a drag. We’d smoke or have one extra beer, but he would not even do as much as other people on campus.” Mr. Thummalapally recounted. “He was not even close to being a party animal.”

Having gone to the same private high school in Hawaii as Obama (though a few years later), I can say that it caters to Honolulu's wealthiest brats and fine green and coke were fairly easy to find. That said, even I -- the notorious drug journalist -- did not smoke weed or do drugs in high school. Punahou had a zero tolerance policy even on caffeine (yes, all Coke and Pepsi served on campus was caffeine free), and while I was in school the dean's own son got expelled for smoking weed on campus -- flat busted.

Following the "Drugs as Candy" trend, we get a news item out of Florida that has officials on the lookout:

The candy-flavored drugs, particularly methamphetamines, heroin and marijuana are circulating around the United States, often enticing younger children, officials said.

...

Flavors can include strawberry, chocolate, cola and others.

Cola flavored drugs? How delightful!

Also, reports of gumballs filled with marijuana and narcotics packaged or disguised as candy or other more enticing objects have raised concern from Florida law enforcement.

Drug laced gumballs? Now there's an idea that has legs...

Talk about having a bad day! There you are, minding your own business with a million tabs of E, when the police bust in. Damn:

Officers were called to the property in Olive Lane, Wavertree, on Wednesday following a 999 call from a neighbour reporting a break-in.

But when they entered a second-floor flat, they found a drug factory and two bin-liners containing the tablets.

Neighbourhood inspector Ian Black said: "This is a once in a career find. It is being celebrated and rightly so. I am delighted we have taken these drugs off the streets.

"Of course, we can't count each one but the seizure has been weighed and we estimate there are just over a million tablets."

A million tablets!? How do you even dispose of that much E? You can't dump it, it will contaminate the water supply (maybe for the better?). Can you burn it? Oh, the thought makes my sick to my stomach...