This is probably more entertaining if you haven't already seen it in your native language.

This might as well be drug-related.

...the Take On Me video by A-Ha in the '80s...

Good ol' fashioned eye candy. And of course nothing says "profound" like cross-episode narrative arc consistency, as seen in sequel video for The Sun Always Shines on TV.

Isn't it interesting to notice that "profound" is simply a mental phenomenon, and one which is especially readily synthesized by chemical influence on the brain? Even the sense of what is important and what isn't, the directing of attention which is the very essence of our perceptual construction of reality, is no more reliable than neurochemistry.

Aside from that, according to Wikipedia, the Take On Me video "mimicked the truck chase from Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil and the climactic scene from the Ken Russell film Altered States." And the lead singer, Morten Harket, seems to have been molded from pure MDA through the same technology used to produce David Bowie and some of those other androgynously angelic '80s boys...

Warren Ellis points us to what he describes as a "bullshit-artist cage match" between Daniel Pinchbeck and Whitley Strieber, who apparently got all aggro on a recent radio program about whether 2012 is going to be all sweetness and light or the complete desolation of the human race. Or something. As Alterati noted:

The interview became quite heated – unusual for paranormal radio – because Daniel objected to Whitley’s negative prognostications about a planetary die off, among other things. The gist of Daniel’s argument is that one can never know for sure what is going to happen in the future, and our thoughts create reality, so that promoting negative future scenarios instead of more healthy and positive ones is irresponsible, especially when one has a platform that reaches as many as Whitley’s. Of course it deteriorated from there, with Daniel speculating that Whitley had come under the negative influence of the Grey aliens and Whitley hurt and claiming that he never would be Daniel’s friend etc.

Or, as Strieber says in his post-argument rebuttal:

They are here because we are at a period of transition in the life of our species, and they are hoping to assist us without destroying us in the process, and that is going to be a very near thing.

Pinchbeck accuses me of bringing on a dark future by predicting it. That’s magical thinking, and just as impotent as its opposite—that you can create a positive future by believing in it.

I say in the program that I believe that mankind is going to experience a dieback, and this makes Pinchbeck furious because he fears that just by saying something like that, it will become true. I don’t want to put words in another man’s mouth, but I had the impression that he sees me as a sort of viral particle of negativism, and that my perspective is designed to bring on the destructions of which I warn—presumably, so that my evil alien masters can inherit the ruined planet, I suppose.

Goodness gracious me! I'm not sure what the bookies in Vegas think about the likelihood of each outcome, but I can definitely say that if my thoughts actually created reality, there'd be a lot more MDMA coming out of my water faucets. At any rate, it's nice to see such serious and weighty topics like "planetary dieback" being given the radio air time it needs. If we here at DoseNation can contribute even slightly to such a deserving notion, it makes it all worthwhile. (Of course, we'll be in our space ark, on our way to our gold-plated mansion on the moon when the dieback happens, thanks to the power of our positive thoughts!)

In this Kids In The Hall sketch, a young boy is initiated into manhood on his 13th birthday by his father, who gets drunk for the boy and offers such gems of life wisdom as, "So if you do acid... wait an hour before you go swimming." Teehee.

Via MilkandCookies.

A pair of interesting stories popped up recently on the opiate / painkiller front. First, news of how one unlucky Canadian town is being ravaged - ravaged! - by dilaudid abuse:

Dilaudid - a powerful, painkilling opiate - continues to ravage the streets of Prince Albert.

Though local health workers are taking some measures to stop users from destroying their lives by abusing the prescription drug, current tactics fall short of getting dilaudid off the streets and out of the addicts' arms.

"We still have a dilaudid problem," said Cheryl Lucas, a methadone case co-ordinator who works with addicts hooked on the drug.

It's just so refreshing to see a city buck the trendiness of Oxycontin, ignore the rock star fashion of heroin, and go for something old school like dilaudid ("two to eight times the painkilling effects of morphine"!). Color me impressed - but not as much as I am with some enterprising British prisoners, who have stumbled onto their own interesting alternative:

The use of a heroin substitute as a recreational drug is spreading across Britain's prison system 'like wildfire', according to new research. In some prisons as many as 70 per cent of inmates regularly take Subutex illegally, the research found, and many former offenders are returning to civilian life with a taste for the drug.

Subutex, like methadone, is prescribed to heroin users to help wean them off addiction. Available in pill form, it is less addictive and less likely to trigger fatal overdoses than heroin or methadone because it does not suppress breathing as much. It is more expensive than methadone and not prescribed as extensively.... The pills - known as 'subbies' - are popular with prisoners because they are small and easier to conceal than heroin or crack. The drug, the brand name for the opioid buprenorphine, is also harder to detect in tests

Way to zoom in on the more expensive, more easily concealable heroin alternative, British prisoners! If only you'd applied such creative thinking before getting busted, you might never have gotten caught.

If you're in the Seattle area over the weekend and you're even slightly a fan of electronic music, you might just want to block out some time for the 4th annual Decibal Festival:

The 4th Annual Decibel International Festival of Electronic Music Performance, Visual Art and New Media is happening September 20th through the 23rd in Seattle. This year's program features over 80 artists presented in 14 showcases, representing 9 countries across 9 venues, each being outfitted with custom sound and video. In keeping with festival tradition, expect to experience a broad range of cutting-edge electronic music based performances from international talent of the highest caliber.

The line-up, as usual, is stupidly impressive, including notables such as Diplo, Simian Mobile Disco, Lusine, Caro, Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie, Biosphere, and - holy moly! - Speedy J, as well as a huge number of artists I'm not clever enough to have heard of. All reports from previous Decibal Festivals is that the shows are typically quite tasty, so don't delay in getting your tickets lined up.

You may have heard about "Crank", a drug inspired movie where the main character has been poisoned and must keep his adrenaline levels super-high or he will crash and die. I recently saw this movie and must admit that it is about as exciting as a hit of crank -- lot's of action and running around with very little depth or reason. However, there is one great scene where our hero (Jason Statham) finds himself escaping from a hospital after booting a whole unit of epinephrine, which sends him on a (near) naked tear through the streets of LA. It was my favorite scene in an otherwise uninspired movie, and here it is for you! The big scene starts at about 1:30 into the clip below (and yes, that's Dwight Yoakam as Doc).

(NOTE: This clip has been edited to include the relevant bits, with some scenes deleted).

If you watch TV or read the newspapers or browse the internet, you've probably seen one of the recent ads about meth where people scratch big open sores on their body and look like zombies from that "28 days later" movie. This is due to a recent $10 million dollar ad buy from the government sponsored Meth Resources program. We posted about the Montana Meth Project a few months back, and commented about how disturbing these meth ads are. I didn't even want to post pictures (icky icky) but I couldn't resist re-branding one of the most recent Meth Resources ads with my own slogan (hee hee).

Now I wonder; is this an effective campaign, or is it too much? A friend commented to me that he'd done meth and known people who've used meth for years, and we both agreed that we had never seen people erupt with open sores all over their bodies. I have run into a couple truckers who were missing teeth, which they freely admit is because of using too much speed (just part of the job). However, zombies with flesh hanging off their bodies, that's a whole different thing. Really, US Government, meth zombies? C'mon. I feel a feature film in the works, "Night of the Living Meth Heads". Call my agent for more details. Serious inquiries only.

Being a drug geek I am always on the lookout for new drug delivery devices and drug vectors which allow pharmaceuticals to more efficiently penetrate that pesky cell membrane. And now, thanks to the miracle of nanotech and that most favorite of metals -- gold -- a team of scientists have created a drug-delivery method unlike any ever seen. Read on...

Rice University chemists have discovered a way to load dozens of molecules of the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel onto tiny gold spheres. The result is a tiny ball, many times smaller than a living cell that literally bristles with the drug.

Paclitaxel, which is sold under the brand name Taxol®, prevents cancer cells from dividing by jamming their inner works.

"Paclitaxel is one of the most effective anti-cancer drugs, and many researchers are exploring how to deliver much more of the drug directly to cancer cells," said lead researcher Eugene Zubarev, the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator and assistant professor of chemistry at Rice. "We looked for an approach that would clear the major hurdles people have encountered -- solubility, drug efficacy, bioavailability and uniform dispersion -- and our initial results look very promising."

The ball of gold used to deliver the cancer-fighting molecules is actually thinner than a strand of DNA. Remember hypercarbolation anyone?