On Gays, Religion, Helmet Laws, Demon Rum and Linky Love…


…alternatively titled: Short Attention Span Theatre.

I’m cruising some of my favorite blogs today instead of shaping little EMT minds, because I am currently stapled to the toilet with Montezuma’s Revenge.

Yep, I’m writing this on the crapper.

I’ll now pause for a word from our sponsors, who will help you scrub that mental image from your mind.

Anyhoo, Babs RN laments the rise of the nanny state that endeavors to protect us from ourselves. To wit, mandatory seatbelt laws. She writes:

Of course, I’m only sitting here and typing this today because I didn’t wear a seatbelt one morning. Had I been wearing it, I’d be in a wheelchair and/or have massive brain damage or be six feet under since the driver’s side roof crushed in on rollover impact.

Now, I’m torn on this issue. Normally I’d obsequiously agree with anything she says, cuz I lust after Babs like a fat kid eyes a pork chop. She’s smart, funny and gorgeous. You know, a lot like Tamara, only without so many weapons handy.

But her experience amounts to anecdote. Granted, an important anecdote, since it was her life spared, but still it flies in the face of the statistics. She’s an experienced ER nurse, I’m a medic. For every story like Babs’, I can recount a hundred others that support the use of seat belts. I’m sure she can as well. I won’t trot out the tired cliché that I’ve never cut the seat belt off a dead person, because I have. Plenty of times.

But the bottom line is, your chances of surviving an accident, be it a frontal impact, side impact or rollover, are exponentially greater if you stay in the vehicle. Get ejected, and likely as not, you’ll wind up an interesting maroon Rorschach blot on the pavement for others to contemplate on their daily commute.

And that is what seat belts do, folks. They keep you in the vehicle.

[Trivia tidbit: seat belts are not the primary restraint system in your vehicle. The windshields are. They do more than keep the bugs out of your teeth. If you have had yours replaced, make sure it was done correctly by a reputable auto glass shop, using a properly fitting gasket. Do not re-use the old one.]

As to the larger question of whether seat belts, and by extension motorcycle helmets, should be required by law, I’d say yes.

Put down your pitchforks, Libertarians and scooter enthusiasts. I personally subscribe to Matt G’s viewpoint, which he stated in his latest post: (emphasis mine)

First, because my libertarian thinking basically demands that I not give a damn about what you like to do in your bedroom, so long as it doesn’t interfere with my life. (Or the life of an unwilling party.)

Here’s my problem with the “personal choice” argument against mandatory seatbelt and helmet laws: Your choice does affect more than you. It affects your family and loved ones, but most importantly it affects me, the unwilling party.

Those fatality statistics and seat belt usage statistics have a bearing on my insurance rates. My premiums suck badly enough because of my driving habits. I’d rather not pay the price for yours.

And yes, I recognize the blatant hypocrisy in that statement. I also recognize that helmets restrict your vision and muffle your hearing and thus make you a less aware (and arguably less safe) motorcyclist, but they’re still a good thing. They’re not even that effective at protecting your noggin at highway speeds. But in support of the utility of helmets at lower speeds, I’ll offer two words: Gary Busey.

Name a decent Gary Busey movie since he whacked his head on the curb. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

[crickets chirping]

Okay, how about just naming anything coherent Gary has said since then?

The main reason I’m for seat belt laws and helmet laws is because of what happens if you don’t die in the accident.

Long term care runs in the millions of dollars over the life of the patient with a traumatic brain injury. Your automobile insurance policy won’t last through your ER visit and the first night of your ICU stay. Most health insurance policies will capitate after a couple of years.

After that, it’s tapping your savings, and when those are depleted, Medicaid. So the taxpayers and your family are picking up the tab for your personal choice.

And no, I won’t argue that such a system is even remotely fair. Marko does it better than I ever could. But that’s the system we have.

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In other news, we find out from Jay G what happens when you drink too much rotgut vodka and Sunny Delite. There is a Class I Beverage Alert in effect.

Apparently, if you get the azimuth and elevation just right, you can lay on your stomach and shit into a martin box. Who knew?

My own drinking and bodily fluids story stems from my misspent youth. I spent a lot of time in high school traveling on school trips. Now, being a state officer of the organization sponsoring those trips, I was naturally afforded a greater degree of trust and responsibility by my teacher and the trip chaperones.

Silly teachers and chaperones. What were they thinking?

Not to say those trips didn’t have some educational value. Suffice it to say that I not only know every possible way to smuggle liquor into a hotel room, but I also became a local legend for my ability to bounce quarters into a shot glass. I roll ’em off my nose, and my personal best is 174 shots without a miss.

Now, I’m nowhere near the virtuoso this guy is, but back in the day, my rakish charm and my prowess in bouncing quarters made me one swah-vay mofo.

But one dark night in Birmingham, before I developed that prowess, I succumbed to the better part of a half gallon of Bacardi 151 and a few shots of Jaegermeister during one of those late night hotel room parties.

My roomies stripped me naked, dumped my drunk self in the tub and positioned me strategically for drainage, and I awoke the next morning stiff, sore and bathed in my own fluids.

I showered, put on some Ray Bans and shuffled my hungover ass out to the bus, and boarded for our final destination, Atlanta. I found a comfy seat, stretched out and promptly passed out again.


Rocking Greyhound buses and hangovers do not mix, folks.

In fact, it ranks right on up there with collapsing drunk onto a full-motion water bed and staring up at a lazily spinning ceiling fan.

When I ran to the lavatory to spew, that’s when I discovered the olfactory delight of a bus bathroom. Think Porta Potty, only smaller, with built-in motion. I knelt over the toilet and spewed up my shoelaces in one of those total body spasm retches that ends with you hovering over the bowl,
trembling in full tetany with a ropy string of drool extending from your lower lip to the toilet seat.

And it’s a bus toilet seat, so you don’t even feel safe resting your head on it and soaking up the porcelain coolness.

After the spell had passed, I flushed the john and took one of those deep, gasping breaths, only to discover that they used banana-scented deodorant in the toilet tank. If there is anything on my Personal Pantheon of Putridity that ranks higher than the odor of urine and feces, it’s the smell of bananas.

And lucky me, I had both.

Begin Round Two of the Vomiting Tournament, with me in the loser’s bracket. It went on that way for quite some time, chain reaction-style – uuuuurp, flush, gasp…uuuuurp, flush, gasp – until my bowels started feeling left out, forcing me to sit on the toilet as my bowels emptied, and vomit in the sink.

This worked out rather well, actually, because by that point there were no chunks left in my upper GI tract to get stuck in the sink drain.

That episode is one of the reasons why I no longer play quarters, boys and girls. Upon reaching semi-respectable adulthood, I resolved to use my powers only for doing good – like teaching my technique to my friends’ kids.

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God pressed the Smite Button on one of His self-proclaimed chosen children the other day, and now Jerry Falwell is no longer around to spew his hate-filled brand of sanctimony. Matt G. blogged about one of Jerry’s favorite targets, a gay friend and co-worker who remained semi-closeted for fear of discrimination from their employer at the time.

My sentiments on the subject echo Matt’s:

…quite honestly, if I was going to have a bias about gay folk based upon my personal interactions with them, it would be positive. (Making sweeping judgements on groups based on anecdotal interactions with members of that group is stupid, as a rule. But people still do it, all the dadgummed time.

Yup. I’d try waxing eloquent about my misgivings with organized religion’s penchant for demonizing anyone who doesn’t share their views, but a new reader does it so much better.

You need to read the whole post, but he had some very telling criticisms of The Biddy Brigade:

One of the many things that aided me in my choice to leave the ministry and organized religion – I still think the church is the worst thing to happen to Christianity – is the arbitrary use of the name of Jesus wielded like a club to subdue those who do not agree with your point of view, thus transforming the message of a holy prophet into the slogans of some dude I don’t recognize that I call instead “Jeebus.”

Who here hasn’t been subjected to Sister Bertha Betterthanyou, who sits down front in the Amen Pew? (apologies to Ray Stevens) You don’t even have to be gay, or Jewish, or Muslim, or atheist. According to the Biddy Brigade, all that is required for a trip straight to Hell is to be not like them.

That observation alone merits a little linky love, so y’all welcome the addition of Vox Clamatoris to the blogroll. He’s a good read.

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