"Devil's Advocate" is now a regular feature on TAN. I'm using the space to explore ideas for the column I write for Player Magazine. I hope the idea/premise is self-explanatory. The first installment was on Global Warming, this one is on steroids.I love steroids.
I think there should be steroid cereal, steroid soup, steroid burgers.
I don't think it should just be me and Barry Bonds taking them either. Everyone. Little kids, kittens, old people, everyone should be taking steroids. Especially old people. Old people are fucking slow.
Go ahead, throw a plastic syringe at me if you like. People who don't take steroids throw things. People who do take steroids throw people (usually people who don't take steroids).
Do you know what the most well known natural anabolic steroid is? Testosterone. Steroids are about being a real man. So if you want to be a non-steroid girly man, be my guest.
But me, personally, I want to be bigger, better, faster, stronger. I don't want to be a pussy. Pussies don't get pussy. They get wedgies. They get sand in the face. They get defeat. That's not American. Being a pussy is un-American. It’s, like, in violation of the Patriot Act or something.
When we bomb the shit out of some country, we don't try and "play fair." We don't try and make sure "no one is cheating." No, we fucking step on their faces with our big brawny army. We make them say, "Damn, that American military must be on friggin' steroids. They are wiping us out."
Playing just to play is good enough for the next guy, in Canada. I want to dominate. That’s the American dream. Bigger, better, faster, stronger.
I love seeing Barry Bond's big body basically broadside the batter's box. I love seeing him wielding the bat like a toothpick, spitting on anything out of the zone, and launching everything else into the jetstream. This is Frankenstein perfected. The Six Million Dollar Man times six million. I want to see someone hitting the most homeruns ever. You don’t? We can see people playing games just to play in a park. If level of performance didn’t matter, the WNBA would be a hell of a lot more popular. But girls can’t dunk, so girls don't matter. Unless maybe they start taking steroids. And Lebron James? Forget steroids, tell me how surprised you’ll be when we find out he was created in a laboratory. We pay these guys to do things we’ve never seen before, we don’t pay them to be human.
This is the American way. This is our primal instinct. This is how we evolve. Take greatness, and enhance the performance. By any means necessary.
If you’re gonna do 500 pushups and be good. But you can also take a pill that makes the same 500 pushups yield a greater return. It’s a no-brainer. It's not cheating, it's maximizing your performance. Some kids pay a lot of money to learn theory like that in business school. Businesses like steroids. They all want to get bigger, better, faster, stronger.
Ok, sure, like everything in the world, there’s a downside. The cons in this case are the side effects. You might get nipples, you might lose nipples. You might get a deeper voice, you might get a higher voice. Your genitals could shrivel like David Blaine's hands and feet when he was Drowned Alive. It's horrible. But all that means is that steroids are a choice. And with any choice there is a risk/reward ratio to be evaluated. Fake tits are a choice. Botox is a choice. Eating a whole pizza pie is a choice. They all have their pros and cons. Steroids are no different. It shouldn't make us rethink history. Everyone has the same opportunity to cheat. We can’t look to take away choice/freedom. It's unconstitutional. It’s anti-human. Girls have a right to get peed on if they like it. You can drink bleach. Eat shit. Wear a blanket of genuine porcupine needles. Have a blast. Life is what you make it baby. And everyone makes different things.
*sound of birds chirping*
Alex Rodriguez signed a contract for a QUARTER of a BILLION dollars because he's good at hitting baseballs. If we empowered teachers in the same way, I bet we'd have people injecting super intelligence juice into their butts so they can get an edge on how to properly educate our future. But alas, ain’t no money in education.
But there is in baseball, and let's say you could make a QUARTER of a BILLION dollars, and the cost would be your nipples get big and your voice deepens, you're probably willing to live with that. Nipples and a deep voice aren't too bad for 250 MILLION. But if taking the steroids made you grow a second penis -- say, on your chin -- well you might decide to get “off the junk” and play au naturel. It's all about risk/reward ratio.
What’s really the big stink over steroids anyway? Is the problem that it’s a drug?
For a country that spent 235 BILLION dollars on prescription drugs in 2004, you'd think we'd be a little more understanding of someone taking a little something-something to get by/over. Drugs, performance-enhancing, debilitating, or otherwise are as American as theft and apple pie. It’s about the end result. We don't ask how – we Just Do It. We can’t start getting picky about our drugs. The drugs/pharmaceutical industry is currently the biggest scam running.
Maybe the problem is athletics are our sacred territory?
Or perhaps it's because of the children? The poor poor children....
These questions and others will be posed and speculated on as I flesh out the idea for 1500 words. But for now ... I'm Audi 5000.
Damn. We could trade all the prescription drug spending for a mere 1,000 A-Rods? He makes a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteI gave my now-dead cat Bucky (NOT Dent) steriods once a month for his asthma. He had hops.
ReplyDeleteI like your Barry Bonds B'alliteration :-)
ReplyDelete--YY
Can we get an update on the bartending muse!?
ReplyDeletePlease?
I definitely wouldn't want a penis to grow on my chin. i would need a lot of money for that
ReplyDeleteso you've got global warming. now setroids. what could be next? pro-murder? pro-bush? pro salt water taffy???
ReplyDeleteThis one was more sucessful than the global warming. I think the trick or device is to write these on subjects you care about. If you are aiming for satire it will be funnier and more biting if you really believe the opposite of what you're saying.
ReplyDeleteHowever satire of the Jonathan Swift flavour may not be your goal...
"There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequently amoung us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhumane breast.
The number of souls in Ireland being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couples whose wives are breeders, from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom, but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand of poor parents annually born: the question therefore is, how this number shall be reared, and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs is utterly impossible by all methods hitherto proposed, for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses(I mean in the country), nor cultivate land; they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing until they arrive at six years old, except where they are of a towardly parts although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the County of Cavan,who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.
I am assured by our merchants that a boy or girl before twelve years old, is no saleable commodoty, and even when they come to this age, they will not yeild above three pounds, or three pounds and a half-a-crown at most on the Exchange, which cannot turn to account either to the parents or the kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope wil not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasse, or a ragout." A Modest Proposal
TAN,
ReplyDeleteI am new to your blog. Here is my thought on steroids and baseball: it smacks of cheating. Somehow, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, to mention just a few, did a fine job without the juice. Are we to have 2 Halls of Fame? One for before the drugs and the other for after? Just a thought.
Amen brother... nice about everyone should take them, kittens included... but on a serious note certainly agree and good argument
ReplyDeletei dont have time to read this shit, i kno this article prbly a joke, and a lame one at that, take steroids at an early age and stay at the height of my fukcin thigh
ReplyDelete