A Shameless Plug For My Favorite Newspaper Column.

News Of The Weird. It's All True. It's All Weird. Click here and read it regularly. Just in case you need more than the word of someone who calls himself the Drugnazi, I'll cut and paste a couple teasers.

First the frustrating:

Wheelchair-confined Richard Paey committed almost exactly the same violations of Florida prescription drug laws that radio personality Rush Limbaugh did, with a different result: Limbaugh's sentence, in May, was addiction treatment, and Paey's, in 2004, was 25 years in prison. Both illegally possessed large quantities of painkillers for personal use, which Paey defiantly argued was (and will be) necessary to relieve nearly constant pain from unsuccessful spinal surgeries after an auto accident, but which Limbaugh admitted was simply the result of addiction. (In fact, if Limbaugh complies with his plea bargain, his conviction will be erased.) Paey's sentence now rests with a state Court of Appeal. [Tampa Tribune, 2-8-06]

This next part isn't from the News Of The Weird. It's from the public domain:

"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
-- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995 show transcript.

I'll bet Rush talks a lot about how he's grown as a person since he uttered those words. Evidently just not when I'm listening.

News Of The Weird usually isn't frustrating though. It's usually just entertaining. Like this:

In a May dispatch from Atlanta on Southerners’ notoriously unnutritious, fat-laden cuisine, a Chicago Tribune reporter watered readers’ mouths with descriptions of the “hamdog” and the “Luther” (prized dishes of Mulligan’s restaurant in Decatur, Ga.), which are, respectively, “a half-pound of hamburger meat wrapped around a hot dog, which is deep-fried and served on a hoagie topped with chili, bacon and a fried egg,” and “a half-pound burger served with bacon and cheese on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.” The 11 states from Washington, D.C., to Florida, west to Texas, have the nation’s highest mortality rate from strokes, but, said a University of Mississippi professor, “Food is a strong emblem of identity for Southerners,” uniquely shared across racial lines."

There's nothing I can add here. This one stands on it's own.