Away With the Ashtrays By Mike Coughlin

This past weekend I rented "Thank You for Smoking," a satirical comedy about fictional tobacco spokesman Nick Naylor and how he spins the truth to make cigarettes look good. Yeah, the movie makes a mockery of Big Tobacco, but if the real players are as persuasive as this guy, I'll be investing in Tarceva.

But unfortunately for you tobacco backers, society is catching on. Smoking bans are popping up faster than stupid Jessica Simpson quotes. Many states now have some sort of a statewide smoking ban.

Monday, during a rerun of "Yes, Dear," I watched the character Jimmy Hughes, a blue collar quasi-dope, find his wife Christine smoking a cigarette in the backyard. Although Jimmy's lack of education sometimes limits him to basic arithmetic and a limited vocabulary, he's still very aware that cigarettes are harmful.

Other quasi-dopes seem to be learning, too. Take my dad, for example. He stopped smoking after decades of loyalty to Vantage cigarettes -- one of Camel's cousin brands. Cool Joe Camel never sent him a thank you note or Christmas card. My mom followed suit a few years later, cutting her ties with Phillip Morris. No fruit basket ever arrived from old Phil in gratitude for her years of patronage.

Back when I was in high school, the notion that smoking was cool and rebellious was still very much alive. We knew people would smoke at the bars, even though we couldn't get in. People would smoke at parties. Parents told their kids not to smoke; so naturally they would buy cigarettes. It was like the decision was already made for them.

Luckily, the image of smoking has changed and these new laws will help further its change from something rebellious to something stupid. Think about it, no longer is it wrong only for teens to smoke at a bowling alley; it's wrong for everyone. Gee, maybe there's actually something to what everyone's been saying. People really don't like smoking and don't want it around. Not in restaurants, not in bars.

Regardless of whether you believe the government has the right to impose smoking bans, we can pat ourselves on the back for taking action that sets a positive example for our youth instead of continuing that "do as we say, not as we do" mentality. Maybe in a decade lung cancer will have stopped claiming its 160,000 lives each year -- 87 percent of which are a direct result of smoking.

Eighty-seven percent, that's nearly 140,000 lives lost to smoking just through lung cancer. Stop killing yourselves. Go get the gum, get the patch, pull your hair, bite your nails, go for a jog, eat a big dinner, drink a beer and go to bed. Oh yeah, and send all your suits to the dry cleaner; they stink.

We're a much more aware society than we were 10 years ago. It's one thing if you don't have the will power to quit, but if you're dumb enough to take up smoking with all the positive support we have today, you probably deserve to.

[Photo credit: http://www.bravecreatures.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/thankyouforsmoking.jpg - Playbill for the movie "Thank You for Smoking"]

Read more >>

<< Hide story

The Hypocritical Oath By Mike Coughlin

An article published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a Cleveland Clinic doctor owned stock in a company that produces the materials he would sometimes use in spine surgery. Dr. Isador Lieberman would use them if his patients opted for a more expensive, intensive and dangerous operation.

What's odd is that they usually picked the riskier surgery. Wondering why?

Maybe if your doctor recommended a more expensive treatment, you'd listen. He knows what's best for you and, after all, he took the Hippocratic Oath (you know, the one all doctors take saying their patient's care is their top priority).

Lieberman apparently took the Hypocritical Oath. He's on the Cleveland Clinic's conflict-of-interest committee where he is supposed to be judicious about the relationship between Clinic employees and private industry. Instead, he's got himself tangled in it.

This worries me almost beyond being able to joke about it. There were people who died because they agreed to this operation -- trusting this doctor who wouldn't tell them of his financial interest in the company unless they specifically asked. Just be happy he didn't have stock in a catheter supply company. (I said almost unable to joke about it.)

To be completely fair, the entire Cleveland Clinic seems to be endorsing this surgery, although no obvious evidence suggests why they would prefer it over the other option.

Can you imagine if your parents (to whom you entrusted so many years of your well being) had succumbed to these same conflicts of interest? Maybe they'd have told you to play in traffic because they had stock in an auto body shop. Maybe they would have given you aspirin instead of children's Tylenol because they had stock in Bayer.

Did people actually die just because this guy was protecting his stock? Did some elderly person (and most of the candidates for this operation do tend to be elderly) die because he is, for some insane reason, unsatisfied with his salary as a surgeon at one of the best clinics in the country? Who knows, but something like that shouldn't even be an issue.

Regardless, I'm in favor of poetic justice. After suspending his license, if he wants to push his stock, force him to spend all of his money on stock in Lucky Strike cigarettes, Jose Cuervo tequila and Dunkin Donuts. Then he can spend the rest of his active years doing his part to keep their stock up. Then once his body has deteriorated, weakened to the point of an elderly person, several of his vertebrae will be manually cracked and he will undergo that same operation.

There are reasons most doctors are respected so much and paid so well. Dr. Isador Lieberman is not one those reasons.

[Photo credit: http://www.healthnetfoundation.org/ASSETS/1B1C7860466542C3B6AF09EB62331A4D/cleveland2.jpg - A view of the Cleveland Clinic from afar]

Read more >>

<< Hide story

No Quiero Taco Bell By Mike Coughlin

Since running into E. coli problems, Taco Bell executives have decided to temporarily pull the contamination suspect, green onions, from their menus. It wasn't that I was shocked that people got sick from Taco Bell -- in fact, I thought extra time in the bathroom was an accepted risk when you go "south of the border." Instead, I was shocked that Taco Bell actually uses real onions.

Amidst rumors I had grown up with that the ground taco beef was Grade D meat, rat meat or meat mixed with oatmeal, I guess I just expected everything else to be an imitation product as well.

But is anyone surprised that this E. coli (which comes from human and animal fecal matter) outbreak happened at, of all places, Taco Bell? After all, there were warning signs. Consider the post-Bell bathroom experience. Let me tell you; it stinks. Hell, I've even thrown it up. Aren't these obvious signs that Taco Bell does not belong in our bodies? No wonder my friends call it "Toxic Hell."

The irony about the outbreak lies within the stereotypes surrounding it. Imagine: Our Mexican immigrant friend Juan had a great lunch from his favorite "Big Bell Value Menu." He goes back to his job in the farmer's fields and not long after that realizes he's about to have a post-Bell moment -- but there is no bathroom nearby. He's forced to go in the field. At the end of his long day picking green onions he gets another dinner from Taco Bell and ends up contracting the very E. coli that he put in the fields.

I've heard of food tasting like crap but that's on an entirely different level.

In the end I don't think this will cause people to stop eating at Taco Bell. I even risked it the other day. Sure, most people may shy away for a bit, but inevitably they'll end up drunk one night with a massive craving for two nacho cheese chalupas, a chicken quesadilla and five, wait six, supreme soft tacos. Then they'll see that they don't get sick, unless they were extremely drunk, and life will go back to normal. Until Juan has another Bell moment in the fields.

So far, 70 people have gotten sick from this outbreak, which is a follow up to the spinach E. coli outbreak in California that killed three people a few months ago.

I guess this brings new meaning to the phrase "eat s--t and die."

[Photo credit: http://gutter.curbed.com/archives/Taco%20Bell.jpg - Taco Bell (unknown location)]

Read more >>

<< Hide story

Odds of Air Time Appear Stacked Against Rugby By Mike Coughlin

If you ask anyone who knows me what my favorite sport is, they’ll easily tell you its rugby, which is why I sometimes get so angry at FOX Sports and ESPN for never airing it. I can understand if rugby takes a back seat to football, basketball and baseball. Those are America’s staple sports. I’ll accept the fact that it is seeded behind soccer and hockey. I will even grit my teeth and ignore its status below Texas Hold ‘Em.

But when any sport loses air time to “speed stacking,” there is something seriously wrong.

Stacking is not some cool, up-and-coming sport. Stacking is a bunch of pre-teens literally stacking plastic cups into pyramids and taking them down as fast as they can. Not only does it not belong on a sports channel, it doesn’t belong on any channel, period. And yet earlier this fall one of the ESPN channels chose to air it over all other sports.

Granted these kids are fast at stacking cups, but it is not a sport and they are far from athletes.

As a fan of a sport that is constantly shafted in air time despite its worldwide popularity (rugby is second only to soccer), I know that there must be lots of angry viewers out there who share my sentiments.

How about the power lifters who spend hours upon hours in the gym bulking up, pushing their bodies to the max or the wrestlers (real wrestlers) who train in 100 degree rooms and stick to super strict diets of ice chips and water? How do they feel when their achievements and glory are seen as less worthy of recognition than an
11-year-old putting cups into a pyramid?

My sister used to baby sit a kindergartener who would practice this sport all the time with building blocks. What an athlete!

Did they think this would help ratings? I personally know lots of people who would and have watched rugby on TV just for the sheer action of it, even if they don’t know what’s going on. I think the same can be said for power lifting – people would watch just to marvel at the lifters’ insane strength. Wrestling might be more of a stretch but I am positive it would find a larger demographic than stacking.

I think that now, more than ever, these channels should be showing more rugby to prepare us for the quadrennial Rugby World Cup that begins next fall. Most people don’t understand rugby very much so it would seem like a good idea to show a game here, a game there, to slowly drip feed it to the masses and generate an interest in something the rest of the world will be involved in.

Or we could just live up to the American stereotypes and sit in our ivory tower looking down at the rest of the world and play with our cups.

[Photo credit: http://vestacrest.abstractdynamics.org/archives/stacking6_sm.jpe - Two children speed stacking]

Read more >>

<< Hide story

The Food Network, A Model For the Perfect Wife By Mike Coughlin

I've found myself watching more and more of the "Food Network" lately. No, this is not a column about how wonderful a wife Giada De Laurentiis, host of "Everyday Italian," would be. Yes, she would be great but I'm sure that's been done before. And although it involves Rachael Ray, it's not about her either.

Instead, it is about how wonderful the wife would be that, not only could cook, but could truly master the 30-Minute Meal. The perfect wife. I've actually tried to do one of these meals in a half-hour and it truly takes skills, ones that I do not have.

Imagine leaving work and calling her with whatever request you have for dinner. You finish your 15-minute drive home, spend another five changing out of your work clothes and relax for 10-minutes before sitting down to the delicious home-cooked meal of your choosing. The hard day's work is made bearable with that light at the end of the tunnel.

How about on a Sunday morning, you can roll over and merely whisper or groan what you want. After snoozing for another 10-minutes, you have time to go to the bathroom and read the paper before your silver platter of steaming chicken sausage, gingerbread waffles with homemade syrup and hot cocoa are placed in front of you. The loss of the warm, soft bed can be overlooked with the prospect of that hot, tasty breakfast.

Why does that make her so perfect? Why not another great skill? First of all, imagine coming home everyday to a woman who cannot cook. That is just another thing to bear through or do yourself every single day of your life after getting home from work. Contrast that to a woman who is eager to please her husband with the meal of his choice and to be able to have it ready in half an hour.

Now, some men might think they would be able to trade off cooking for another skill for their wife to have but, trust me, if you could have one thing you just want her to be able to cook.

For example, let's say you want a wife predisposed towards nymphomania. Not only can the husband not brag about his wife's qualities or skills without sounding like a pervert, but she can't share her skills without causing a divorce. "Try my wife's rack of lamb," is fine while "try my wife's rack," is anything but. Furthermore, you don't want paranoia to set in on if your appetite is big enough to handle all the courses she's serving.

Perhaps you want her to be able to clean and to always have a spotless house. Unfortunately, men are naturally dirty animals and this will only lead to her nitpicking your clothes, hair and any other personal affects. Not to mention she'll probably hit you with a handkerchief-cheek-wipe every now and then. Sure it'd be nice to have a clean bedroom, bathroom and basement, but it'd also be nice not to live with your mother.

I believe I have made a fairly strong case on why my wife will have this one skill. And don't worry, I'll do the dishes.

[Photo credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Giada_De_Laurentiis2_e.jpg/200px-Giada_De_Laurentiis2_e.jpg - Giada de Laurentiis]

Read more >>

<< Hide story