As C. J. Cregg would say, “Ya think??”
Ancients rang in New Year with Dance, Beer
Yes indeed. But there’s more to it than that. A little ways down the article…
While drinking and dancing are part of many modern New Year’s celebrations, the early Egyptians probably would have disapproved of the partying because they viewed such activities in a very different light….
“The Festival of Drunkenness was not a social occasion for them,” said Betsy Bryan, who led the dig. “People did not come to enjoy themselves. They drank to enter an altered state so that they might witness the epiphany of a deity.”
Partypooper.
According to Bryan, the Festival of Drunkenness began with attendees appeasing a lion goddess deity, such as Mut, with red beer that received its color from red ochre.
Oho…now I know where we are. We’re celebrating the time when the Great God Ra got pissed off at mankind about something, and told Hathor to go kill them a little to get his point across. So she did, taking the shape of the lion-goddess Sekhmet for greater effectiveness in the job (since Hathor’s normal shape was that of a divine cow or cow-headed woman, and even under optimum conditions a divine cow can’t kill as many people as fast as a divine lion).
After a while Ra said, “Okay, that’s enough now,” and Hathor said, “No, I’m liking this — !” and killed a whole lot more of mankind, so that the earth ran red with their blood, as if it was the Nile overflowing its banks.
And Ra said, “Wait a minute, if this goes on, we’re not going to have much mankind left at the end of the day!” — and he told some of the gods to get him mandrakes, and told the rest of them to Make Beer, Fast. Which they did. And they then made beer, and put the mandrakes in it, and then went to Hathor, and said, “Hey, after a long day killing mankind, we know you work up one heckofa thirst. And so…it’s Beer Time!”
And Hathor drank the beer, and got plastered, and stopped killing mankind. Everyone said “Whew!” And the next morning, when Hathor got up and walked off rubbing her head and wondering what they’d put in that beer, Ra said to the rest of the gods, “From now on we do this every year at this time — at the New Year, when the Nile overflows its banks — in case she gets the same idea around then. Oh, and mankind can have some of the beer too. It’ll keep them off our case, and remind them that if they get out of hand again, there’s always Hathor.”
And so it came to pass.
Now somebody get me a kriek (which is a pretty color of red without anybody putting red ochre in it)…
I’m very annoyed this morning. I hate being annoyed before I’ve even had my tea. But I have reason.
Take a look at this posting over on Making Light / Electrolite, which belongs to Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. It’ll give you the basic facts.
For those who don’t have time to read the above: Take a moment to imagine that you have a condition that makes you fall asleep abruptly and without warning….while you’re carrying your baby around the house, say, or doing 70 mph down an expressway. Or just sitting still and trying to do your work.
That’s narcolepsy (or a very brief description of what it can be like.) Now imagine that there’s a particular drug that, for you, helps keep the condition at bay — and you have to take that drug because no other has the same effect, or because you’re allergic to the others usually prescribed for the condition.
Now imagine that Ralph Nader and a group called “Public Citizen” get concerned that the drug can cause liver problems, and pressure the FDA to ban it.
And the FDA does.
I sat there for a while this morning imagining what this would be like for me. Well, there goes my personal and professional life. Gee, thanks, Ralph, for coercing someone into deciding what was best for me without even asking! Doesn’t matter that my doctor tests my liver function more often than some people change their underwear, and this drug has worked fine for me for decades (in Patricia’s case, 24 years and change). No, I’m sure it’s for my own good that I can’t get hold of the stuff any more! Guess I’ll just watch the level in that bottle of medication go down, and down…and calculate how much time I have left before I finish the last novel I’ll ever write.
GRR.
(Myself, I find it hard to believe that operations like this one don’t contribute somewhat to the atmosphere surrounding such bannings. (Just look at that banner graphic. “Stand up! Be brave! Do the patriotic American thing, call our toll-free number now, and SUE!”)
Don’t mistake me here. I adamantly support the concept that people who have been injured due to negligence on a drug company’s part should seek and receive fair compensation. (And without the drug company stonewalling them for decades in the hope that they’ll either run out of money and die, thereby dropping the lawsuit.) But in this case the drug companies involved have been quite responsible in warning people that the drug involved, pemoline, can cause liver damage, and that you need to have frequent testing to make sure that this isn’t happening. And the number of cases involved, frankly, is low: even the injury lawyers’ website above can cite only thirteen cases of liver failure attributable to this drug since 1976. Only one of those has occurred since 1999, when the warnings on the drug packaging were stiffened and (theoretically) both doctors and patients got more aware. (A note to one side: judged the same way, the death rate from acetaminophen is higher.)
Yet now the drug has been banned, and the companies involved have stopped production. (Don’t see them doing that with Tylenol, do you? But that would be because a whole lot more people take it, and a whole lot more money is involved.) One press release regarding the issue contains this horrifically dry advice: “Healthcare providers who prescribe Cylert or any of its generic products are being told to transition their patients to a different therapy.”
And what if there isn’t one??
Then you get to fall asleep suddenly and without warning (a) for the rest of your life, (b) until a better drug/therapy comes along. Whenever that might be. If it ever happens.
This is unacceptable. The quality of life for many, many thousands of people depends on this drug right now.
Time to get up off the butt and start making myself a nuisance to my congressfolk and senators, and to the FDA. I hope that some of you reading this might do so too. Please check the comments on that post at Making Light for some extremely useful and cogent info that can help you draft a response.
And it’s fun to hear about.
We also spent a lot of time looking at one another in flat-out amazement. “I’ve known you for almost 20 years,” I’d say to The Wife on reading some sex scene she’d come up with, “and only now do I learn that you have this kind of thing on your mind? Hussy.” “Dude,” The Wife would say on reading a sex passage I’d written, “where’d that come from? Pervert.” Then we’d crack up.
(A tip of the hat to 2blowhards.com for the posting.)
Since there are no online reviews available as yet, I’d welcome your comments — they’ll make it easier for readers-to-be to decide whether they want to shell out their $5.99 for the book.
You can comment over here.
Thanks!
Sometime over the Christmas holidays, the authorities of Graz, a classically pretty Austrian town, took down the sign that for the past seven years has identified the local 15,000-seat sports arena as the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium… [Schwarzenegger] was educated in Graz and has always readily identified it as his native place.
But when Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, declined to commute the death sentence for Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Los Angeles gang leader who was executed in California two weeks ago, the reaction in Graz, where the death penalty is seen as a medieval atrocity, was swift and angry.
“I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen,” Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party said in an interview in Graz’s stately City Hall, describing the first step in the chain of events that led to the renaming of the stadium. “The petition was accepted by a majority on the Council.”
But before a formal vote was taken on the petition, Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town’s conservative mayor, informing him that he was withdrawing Graz’s right to use his name in association with the stadium.
There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of the City of Graz further concern.
Uh huh.
(chuckle) They’ve just noticed “Dinner for One.”
I blogged about it this time last year — with much affection, as Peter and I first saw it in Switzerland about ten years ago and have loved it dearly ever since, watching it almost as often as many Germans. Maybe if enough people keep bringing the subject up, it’ll get shown in the US eventually….
(Meanwhile, Google Video has it in full (though possibly only for viewing in the US. Try it and see what result you get.)
The leap second. Do we really need it?
In this morning’s email, along with the inevitable spam, arrived something that made me laugh.
As usual, some of the mails were phishing expeditions, trying to get me to give them my eBay info. And one of them said:
“eBay Fraud Meditation Request”
(snicker)
…did you know the boys were doing live movie critique “From the Balcony” for Movies.com?
Just a thought.
Or something like that.
A story issued by financial news agency AFX on Sunday…claimed Narnia had walked out of the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong because it was fed up with being bullied by the US and Europe.
I really want to see a copy of the original press release. (Alas, both SFX and Forbes have withdrawn the original entries. Not surprising, since this happened back on the 18th…)