Let Us Weigh In On Performance Enhancements

Yesterday a document was leaked (or more likely outright released) that included the names of 103 - 104 baseball players who allegedly tested positive for steroid use in 2003. Rotoinfo.com is, in my opinion, hungry for amping up their Sitemeter stats because I am quite sure after this “oops” occurred yesterday more people visited their site than mlb.com. I mean their website tag line is: “All fantasy news all the time”; there are definitely two ways to interpret that one.

Now as pretty much all of you know I am a Red Sox fan. No, I am not a fan of baseball per se, just the Red Sox. (For the remainder of this paragraph the words “us” and “we” will refer to the collective known in these parts as Red Sox Nation) I do not follow stats and frankly could care less about what any other team is doing, short of us kicking the proverbial asses of the Evil Empire. If you know anything about us then you know exactly who that is. Since we won the World Series in 2004, and a whole bunch of the players on this list were members of that team, well, you can imagine what was being yelled out in the Cask’n Flagon last night.

This really got me thinking a lot about so called performance enhancements and I suddenly became extremely defensive of any athlete who uses anything (especially Michael Phelps). Why the hell should athletes be deprived of any and all advantages to do the best they can possibly do? No other profession stops its workers from using.

Don’t believe me?

OK then here is what I suggest you do. Hop in your vehicle of choice and head on down to your local purveyor of Adult Entertainment, purchase (or rent if you don’t feel like having it in your collection past my requested research period) a film of your choice, just make sure it has at least one guy in it. Next, hit the local convenience store and pick up a stop watch. Come home and toss in the flick. Pay no mind to the plot, because, you know, that is not the important part here. What I want you to do is keep that watch running for as long as the guy is.

Impressive huh?

Now try to tell me there are no little blue pills hanging around. No one seems to give a crap that all those guys are possibly using some kind of performance enhancer. Nothing kills an adult film faster than a sorry case of ED. If I was the director of one of those films it would probably be something I encouraged since it might even boost sales.

My landscaper puts on sun screen. That’s a chemical and enhances his performance because he can stay out in the sun longer to really pull those weeds like the pro he is.

Stay at home moms might imbibe a cocktail or two in the evening although their job is technically never done. A drink certainly lowers the level of stress and reduces their feelings of inadequacy or pressure to perform.

I can not honestly say that I have never partaken in a mind freeing substance now and again when the words were just not flowing. Then again most of the time I simply fall back on the all time favorite performance enhancing crutches of every writer -- the dictionary and thesaurus.

Someone should fine me 3,000 words and make me sit and watch all my fellow writers type away their own lunacy for the next ten articles, but totally ban me from participating. I will just call it a vacation; I mean at least my carpel tunnel can take a rest while I sit these next few out.

If doctors can use them to help treat their patients who suffer certain ailments then why should we begrudge an athlete from learning all the facts about them and saying yea or nay on their own to using them?

I say make them legal in sports, let them all use them and finally just level the playing field back to zero. After all, if everyone is on them it will provide no real advantage over another player.

Just like when mom said nothing about the guy you were dating simply to spite her and so it came back to bite you in your own ass, if one random hitter will be just as awesome as the next there is no fun in doing it anymore. All the players can then just quit and go back to the good old days of only winning or losing when a bookie says to.

Photo credit, click picture to be taken directly to Photobucket site.

A New Adventure for this Hapless Writer

Or is it hopeless? Since I can not be sure of which I am -- just unfortunate or completely lost -- I have decided to throw caution to the wind and begin my journey of writing to make some money for the stuff I type all day. I say hooray! Hopefully everyone out there in the fun land of reading says the same. This is not an entirely new concept for me because I have been working on it behind the scenes for quite a while but now feels like the right time to share it with everyone.

Over the course of the past year or so I have been tracking down, and keeping track of, a bunch of sites where they hire freelance writers and/or allow us wordy types to post our stuff simply because we want to. How nice of them. While doing research, joining or attempting to land a paid gig (or fifty), I found there is a whole lot of conflicting information, scams and (thankfully) still some downright honest websites out there in cyberville.

Some of the sites I joined only allow the user a certain level of points or credits, to be applied towards bids for jobs, and require payment to fully join. I completely understand that sometimes the old adage “membership has its privileges” is in fact true but then that other saying comes out singing from the back of my mind. The one that goes “I ain’t got no dough”.

From what I have seen, there are definitely happy campers making money by bidding on and writing lots of stuff but it seems that those people are the only ones who ever get hired and if the proverbial “you” does not have a track record of being a good writer with payment history no one wants to hire you. Well, gee, that makes a whole bunch of sense. Can someone please explain how all those other people were given their first assignments then? I spent about six months reviewing and bidding on countless jobs but I refused to pay so I would be hired. Though they tell you it is unnecessary to do so. Right.

In the midst of these rejections, better known as the day to day life of every writer, I began posting articles up on a couple sites where there was no fee to join, but also no monetary potential. I did this mainly to garner experience writing in a less personal tone (non conversational, or as I like to call it the professional voice) so I would have a decent number of clippings to submit to who knows who when I miraculously went out and found the perfect job (read: someone recognized my verbal flexibility and decided to pay me to write this blog all day long so I did not have to worry about what tone of voice I had). That was going great until I started my second blog back in the fall of last year.

Those who know me understand that I refer to myself as the eco-police so it was only natural that any other blog I wrote was going to be about the environment. Wait, let me back up. First you should probably understand that last June I made my first pennies from writing. And when I say pennies, oh that is most definitely what they were. All 153 of them. Do not misunderstand however, I enjoyed every minute I wrote for The Organic Mechanic and I made amazing contacts of artists that I still keep in touch with to this day but it became clear at a point that it was time to branch out on my own. Thus, Green Leaf Reviewer was born.

Since I am a rather ambitious gal I envisioned myself writing GLR as a potential income stream as I fully intended to post daily. For the most part that has held true too and I have rather enjoyed doing the research to craft the 176 posts already up over there, the part where I live in my world of fantasy was that by placing one little miniscule Google Ads box on the page I would suddenly be paying my rent. OK, maybe my fantasy was not quite that extreme but I at least thought I could pay myself via groceries or dinner or whatnot here or there. Not so much. Yet.

We writers are resilient beasts who will stop at nothing until we get what we want so of course I am exploring alternative advertising options. In the meantime however I am going to enjoy making the connections to all those fabulous tree huggers. Just as soon as I stop smoking. Damn hypocrite. Ok maybe that is too harsh; perhaps I am just a walking contradiction. That sounds so much fluffier.

So for the last three to six months I have been enjoying the interactions between all the people I have come to chat with online be it here, at GLR or on various forums because it has allowed me to network something fierce. And as we all know, its all about who you know. Well it started occurring to me that who I know are an array of amazing people -- teachers, humorists, artists -- but the one thing they all have in common is they are writers (even the jewelry designers, who’s blogs I peruse to drool, had to write up their descriptions so if nothing else they are sure fluent in adjectives).

With refreshed inspiration, stemming mostly from this little exercise I have taken on here of posting once a day through the entire month of May, I set out to locate more writers’ forums. I was itching to discover spots where I could discuss this passion as well because to date I found plenty of places to yak about everything else that struck my fancy. I happened upon this cool place where not only can I join in discussion forums, but I can post my own articles and each will include links to my Google AdSense account, Amazon Associate account and just about any other click through advertising affiliation I have.

So far I have made zilch but I am not exactly discouraged, I mean I only joined two days ago and I do not post about sex, drugs or rock and roll so it will likely take some time. What I have found awesome however is I am actually a fairly decent article re-writer because I have taken a few of my GLR posts and gave them the professional, third person voice, and I am already getting great feedback on them! I will share in the near future a little widget to my profile but for now I am keeping the site a slight mystery as I truly want to feel out if it is going to be something that gets the job done for me. If not I guess I will just fall back on the blogging as a fun hobby and start pursuing that novel I keep meaning to write.

Leave the Money on the Nightstand Saint Mary

I have never truly felt comfortable in hotel rooms; I have seen those Dateline undercover features about fluids on the bed or hidden cameras just one too many times. It does not really help that I am a huge fan of CSI and if it was financially practical I would walk around everywhere with that awesome kit they get. You know, the one with the tiny spray bottle filled with a mystery liquid that they use to spritz the Q-tip they just dragged through some gooey looking gross spot on the floor to test to see if it is blood? Yeah, well if I had one of those suckers there is no way I would ever stay in a hotel again. So instead I search for the items that I have found in hotel rooms in the past.

One time a whole bunch of years ago I stayed in a moderately upscale hotel but in my usual fashion I essentially ransacked the place before settling in. I pulled out the picture that always hangs above the bed just to make sure there was no camera behind it. I placed my thumbnail on all the mirrors looking for the space between the nail and reflection to make sure it was not a two way. Drawers were pulled out and if there was an under the bed it too was checked. When I got to the night table there was the usual Bible in the drawer so I moved it aside and just behind it there was a half smoked joint.

This made me chuckle. The irony of a joint hanging out next to a Bible was classic; I wish I had taken a picture of it. I am not a hugely religious person but regardless there seemed to be something inherently wrong with the situation. Looking back now I feel as if I had committed some kind of drug abuse by tossing it in the toilet but at the time I was not yet imbibing that particular substance. Of course even if I had been a smoker there was no way I would have since I had no idea of its origin and taking that kind of chance is too scary. After the rummage and flush, I put the Bible back in the drawer without reading it and thought nothing more about it.

Some time later I was in another hotel for who knows what and the above paranoid delusions that someone might actually want to video tape my boring ass doing absolutely nothing all night kicked in immediately so I performed my usual tossing of the room as if I was the Warden. By this point in my life I was definitely a pot smoker and would have happily allowed Saint Mary to help me see past the unidentifiable stains on the comforter so once again I pulled the Bible out of the drawer, this time with bated breath.

There was no grass in the drawer but the way I had gripped the book by the spine allowed the pages to fall open somewhat and out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something floating toward the sticky carpet. Before turning to see what it was I prayed to that good book in my hand that it was not a joint because the five second rule definitely did not apply in this room. My head came around and right there between the two double beds, almost blending into the matted green carpet was a well worn ten dollar bill. At this point I was not sure which find had shocked me more -- the pot next to a Bible or the tribute inside one.

For years I liked to imagine that it was the same person in both locations, someone I was just a step behind catching up to. That person would most definitely be someone I would want to sit down and talk with. I would ask them if they used that ten as a book mark and what the pictures in their mind looked like after smoking and reading such an interesting book.

Of course, I imagine the Gideons were attempting to prevent these very types of actions when placing their reading material in all those drawers but that did not stop me from spending the ten on some pot.

Mmph huh, hsk hai yit…Make Sure it’s Flat and Soft

Although most of my readers do not frequently talk through a mouth full of cotton balls, I think it should be pretty clear that the first half of the title of this blog is “Mmm hmm, just my lip.” After all, my dentist understood me perfectly fine when this garbled mess is what came out of my throat as he whizzed the drill into overdrive and dug away for my two fillings this morning. I flinched just a bit at one point and his assistant asked if I was alright. I responded with “Mmph huh, hsk hai yit”. My dentist promptly said “Oh I was leaning on her lip when I was drilling.” They send these guys to a translation class I am convinced. It is tough to iterate with a rubber mouth opener, latex dam, drill and scope in your mouth, not to mention the water gun and suction tube. Who knew I had such a big mouth?

OK, admittedly I did know about my big mouth but I always hoped it was just a metaphor and not a realistic prospect that six tools could be jammed in there all at once. Then he asks me to open wider for him. I have no idea if my mouth responded, due to the fat brilliant numbness of Novocain, but my eyes sure did. Was he joking?

Suddenly I feel my entire head being pulled toward his magnifying glasses that make him somewhat resemble Emmett “Doc” Brown from Back to the Future, without the hair of course. I can not help but pray that I regain feeling soon after this procedure is complete as I feel a warm bit of goo roll down my lower jaw line. I immediately know it is drool when he tells his assistant he needs suction under the dam. Oh brother. And people wonder why I did not take part in such joys for so many years.

I walk out with my brand new fillings, a self conscious feeling I slobbered all over the counter like a golden retriever and two new appointments in September. I realize on my way out the door that by the time this dental year is over Matt and I could have put another kid through almost a full year of college. I wonder if we will get an invitation to a ceremony as I head off to my car and call my very pregnant friend, S, who has asked me to pick up B’s birthday cake this afternoon.

I arrive and slur most of “I know just where it is, I can get money from your account to pay for it no problem, should be back in a half hour” and head out the door downing two ibuprofen before I go. Amazingly, none of the water I took them with went down the front of my shirt. That is talent. Or maybe just a really good lean over the sink.

The cake is an ice cream cake from their favorite place in Somerville, just two towns and no more than five miles away. I get there in record time, just under twenty minutes, and get my parking space right out front regardless that it is lunch time in one of the most restaurant rich places near the hospital (I have mentioned my gift of parking spaces before have I not?). The kid asks how far away my place is because it is a mousse cake and rather soft so I tell him only fifteen minutes and he says to get it in the freezer as soon as I get home.

Traffic to Boston is like soap to a shower -- it is difficult to get through one without the other and I hit all the suds on the way back. With the air conditioner blaring in my little Toyota and all the vents pointed at the cake box, I watched the minutes tick up to thirty five as I pulled up to their front door. It was only a little runny as I stuffed it in the freezer and headed home.

By the time I got home I was really hungry and the Novocain was beginning to wear off some so it seemed like the right time to scoff something down. The assistant warned me to only eat soft foods through the evening as I would likely be a bit tender. It was too hot for soup so I grabbed a whole wheat tortilla, hummus, homemade guacamole, cucumber slices, cilantro and baby spinach to make a yummy wrap. It was a really good looking one. I opened my mouth to take a bite and almost dropped the wrap on the floor. Apparently the foods I eat should be flat as well since my jaw felt wired shut. I thought of my own mantra "know your limits".

The wrap was promptly squished flat and I took a bite. Immediately I began laughing at myself as guacamole squeezed out the top all over the side of my face. If I had not seen it out of the corner of my eye it might have stayed there all night since I still could not feel my cheek. Not a drop of that sandwich hit my shirt either. Again, talent or what? Luckily the lack of sensation should not last through the night and I can fully enjoy the experience of that ice cream cake in my entire mouth. Hey, I already know about how much of it I can fit in there.