Malingering’s World

I went to 37 home games, 6 away games and had 1 rain out (in Colorado). I ate dozens of Dodger Dogs, 3 plates of nachos and a few tubs of garlic fries, 2 ice cream cookies, and 5 root beer floats. I got smacked by a line drive and ended up in the emergency room. Andre Ethier and Mariano Duncan threw me balls from the dugout. I met most of the Dodgers and re-proposed to Russell Martin. I took solo road trips to see the Dodgers play the Giants and the DBacks. I befriended Ethier’s mom. Gonzo sent me an autographed photo apologizing for my hand injury. I took thousands of photos (for the first time) with an SLR. I sat through 4 extra inning games, of which they won 3. I got to sit in the dugout club in FRONT of Alyssa Milano. I yelled and screamed my lungs out at all 43 games.

All in all, not a bad season. Even if it’s over and it’s still September.

No, it really is.

There are a lot of things that baffle my mind: ass implants, dog strollers, oversized SUVs, stuff that no matter how hard I think about them I still can’t rationalize their existence. Today’s mind boggling situation revolves around shorts. As in “why the fuck would you put those on?”

My guess is that if I asked this woman, she would say it’s her “beach cover-up.” While I understand the “up” it certainly isn’t covering anything and she would probably be able to conceal more with some pastel colored saran wrap (you know, the kind that only comes out in the spring so you can make cute little easter baskets out of it). These shorts are just plain awful. She’s like a walking advertisement for ING Direct.

At least now we know what happened to the Hamburglar after 20 years of eating Big Macs.

Mom wasn’t lying about that whole horizontal stripes thing. It’s true.

Then we move on to the most mind boggling thing of all, the super constrictor gut squeezing denim which is guaranteed to leave an imprint of your drivers license on your ass should you put your wallet in your pocket.

For those of you with penises between you legs, you may not be able to comprehend the amount of chaffing going on right here. Tight denim seams and a few folds of skin do not create a smooth rubbing sensation while walking. It tightens even more when sitting down. They may as well rename that brand “Yeast Jeans” or something.

Camel toe is uncomfortable enough but denim camel toe is downright painful. Where is the motivation here? I can think of 3 reasons to dress this way:

1) To try to look sexy
2) To try to look smaller
3) To piss me off

Unfortunately only #3 is working, and trying to shove gut into a tight pair of shorts is like trying to make the Pillsbury doughboy squeeze through a funnel. The shit’s gotta go somewhere, and that somewhere is up and out.

I will gladly accept comments of people who wear these shorts so that they can not only explain why they torture themselves this way but also to make sure their girl parts haven’t been sanded down to Barbie-smooth. Please write in.

Yes the Dodgers are toast for the season. Yes, the dissention in the clubhouse is turning into Days of Our Lives. Yes, they lost last night making their record for the last 9 games 1-8.

But I got some good pictures.

Here we have Russell Martin trying to break up a double play. It didn’t work.

And here we have Jeff Kent running home after tagging up on a potential sac fly. As you can see, he never made it to the plate.

This is Martin practically killing himself to avoid the pick off.

And here we have LaRoche trying to catch a foul ball. He didn’t.

And for the best play attempt of the night, Russell Martin, who climbed the backstop net trying to catch a pop-up. He didn’t get it, but he really did look like Curious George.

We all need to blame someone or something for what we find to be out of our control. You can choose Bin Laden or gluten or Republicans or vaccines or Victoria’s Secret or terrorists or Ugg boots or steroids or George W. Bush, but regardless of the issue, we seek explanations for the ways of the world and we always look for someone or something to blame.

I choose Roberto Hernandez.

I am beginning to think that the only reason he’s still pitching is because he has the same family name as El Duque and Livan and someone thought the opposing team may be fooled by his jersey and actually expect him to demonstrate some skill on the mound.

The guy is like 98 years old and was drafted by the Angels when they were still the California Angels back in 1986. He’s pitched 1009 miserable games and I don’t want him on my team anymore. He’s already played for 10 teams and I really think he should talk with Rickey Henderson and the two of them can accept that their playing days are over and go sit in the booth with Joe Morgan or (God help us) Eric Karros and make comments about the good ol’ days.

The man has pitched 45 innings this season and given up 56 hits. His ERA is over 6 for the year (and a fabulous 7.71 at Dodger Stadium). As soon as the words “bring in Hernandez” cross the wires of the bullpen phone, the white flag goes up and the game is over. This is a good time for Dodger fans to leave.

Maybe back in the day when every player was hurt and we were considering bringing back Robin Ventura as a relief pitcher, fine. But now it’s September. This means 1) the games are were important and 2) we have a bullpen full of September call ups who couldn’t possibly suck more than he does.

I am currently angry with every person who ever had a role on him ending up on the mound tonight. His mother, for giving birth. The person who planted the tree from which he took his first branch for stick ball. His high school gym coach who once told him he had potential. The Angels scouts who thought it was okay he play baseball. The GM for ever letting him wear a Dodger uniform. The person who made his car and made it possible for him to get to the ball park tonight. Grady for ever asking him to set foot on the mound.

Roberto Hernandez is worse than gluten at a DAN meeting. He’s the Dodger Killer and he’s on our team. The Dodgers’ season has been extremely disappointing but congratulations Roberto, you’re the one I’ve chosen to blame. For tonight anyway.

However this is entirely unnecessary.

Or at least socially detached enough that this stuff wouldn’t bother me.

Unfortunately I’m not.

The gluten free/ casein free people are over on my friend’s blog wreaking havoc. There are accusations flying left and right. People come soaring in with some insane agenda and then force feed the rest of the world their earth shattering anecdotes and insinuate that everyone else is just too narrow minded or too neglectful a parent to try anything and everything on their child in an effort to make them normal neurotypical. No amount of time, money or risk is going to stop them from a CURE. I’ve seen other online beatings on the blogs of other parents of autistic children and it makes me ill. Clearly these parents are well aware that these things are out there. Clearly they want the best for their children. Yet they’re being attacked like criminals for making a decision as rational as the decisions their opponents have made. Because there’s no scientific backing either way.

I did some of my own searching on the GFCF thing. I have come to no conclusions other than the fact that being a parent of an autistic child doesn’t decrease your risk of being an arrogant asshole and in fact can turn you into a defensive pseudoscientist name calling jerk.

Do you know what pisses me off more than the angry militants of the GFCF cult? Those people who villainize doctors and accuse them of withholding treatments or saying they “don’t know everything” because they apparently can’t Google like the GFCF/mercury people since it wasn’t a course in medical school. People like Jenny McCarthy who blames her doctor for the autism because her child was vaccinated. Or people like this person who turns one inattentive doctor into the voice of the entire corrupt medical community.

A lot of doctors are salaried. it doesn’t matter if they see 2 patients a day or 20, so really they’d rather see 2 and actually have the time to be thorough and spend some time with their patients. If they knew of a “cure” that would keep autistic kids and their moms out of the office, and make everyone feel better they sure as hell would do it. They aren’t making extra money off of watching people suffer.

Doctors who work in HMOs are often told what they can or cannot recommend as a treatment, and those are usually determined by national standard practice guidelines, not the MD. If doctors recommend some treatment that goes horribly wrong and that treatment varies from the standard guidelines, disciplinary action can be taken, the can be sued for malpractice, they can lose their licenses as happened with a number of DAN practioners. Most doctors didn’t spend decades of school and training and $200K of gov’t loans to lose their practice because they decided that a bunch of anecdotes they found online or heard about from a playboy model constitute data.

Most doctors are legally and/or ethically bound to practice evidence-based medicine (as in evidence as found in peer reviewed medical journals and have study arms of more than 10 subjects in each). Some do not feel it is ethical or within the Hippocratic Oath to recommend something which has no scientific backing. Does this mean they don’t know it’s out there? No. Does this mean they can’t Google like Titte McCarthy? No. Does this mean they responsible for the frustrations of having an autistic child? No. It means they have a set of ethical standards that they are constrained to because people trust them to do no harm. They have to think about public health issues like the potential consequences of NOT vaccinating a child, which can be devastating.

It is also very hard to recommend treatments to people when they are not FDA regulated. Sure pretty much everyone, autistic or not, will benefit from taking fish oil or omega 3s. But there is no FDA approved formula out there and there are no standards to hold the OTC supplements to. You send people to Rite Aid to pick some up and for all you know its made from fish from a toxic waste dump. There’s no one keeping an eye on the safety.

There is a shortage of family practitioners in the US. They are exhausted and overworked. They don’t have time to work against autistic parents. They’d prefer everyone prevented illness and stayed home and healthy. There’s no money to be made from autism or withholding treatment… What has proven to be incredible lucrative is fad therapy for desperate patients and their parents and the practice of treatments like chelation or medical marijuana or ass implants which are not covered by insurance. Then you can make a shitload and walk away filthy rich. And as seen with many DAN practitioners, they still practice medicine without a license and they still make a shitload of money. So where are the ethical guidelines there?

The more shit I read from the mercury militia and the Jenny McCarthys of the world, the more I realize that people would rather blame their medical practitioner than accept their kid has a developmental disorder and move forward from there. This is depressing to me. Everyone needs a villain. Some call it Mercury. Some call it Gluten. Some call it Doctor. I think I’m naming mine Arrogant Oblivion.

And while I’m ranting, let me just say that I hate those who justify a lack of clinical evidence by stating ( taken from here for example)“Although, in an effort to ameliorate the symptoms of autism in their children, parents have been investigating the usefulness of diets devoid of gluten and casein, for many years these methods have not been accepted by many orthodox medical practitioners. This is largely because there has been no hypothesis that has been sufficiently able to combine all the relevant evidence into a single, comprehensible series of events.” If it really works and the data is there to prove it, any decent scientist/MD/biochemist could come up with a hypothesis. It isn’t hard to pull one out of your ass if you have some good data to back it. If the results are that astounding, journals would not reject a study showing vast improvement because of a weak-ish hypothesis. If you look at other mental illnesses: bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder – all purported mechanisms of the illness are simply theory and hypothesis, and after years of research the etiology of the illness is still unknown. Yet thousands of studies have been done on treatment efficacy and there are loads of clinical data. Look at research on depression. You can’t tell me that’s never been done. Enough with the excuses. Let’s start getting legit.

Sorry my blog isn’t funny right now. As soon as I work out this frustration we will get back to regularly scheduled programming.

I am still working on the autism research. To me, research means looking through peer reviewed articles on PubMed. It does not mean Googling a few words and believing everything I read because it showed up when I clicked “I’m feeling lucky” though apparently that’s what Jenny McCarthy does and it’s good enough to help her write a book, but since I am not a Playboy skank I probably need to focus on sources with a bit more credibility. Then again it appears you don’t even have to Google things to start a fucked up cult belief system, so maybe I’m just working too hard.

Contrary to the beliefs of comments left behind on my last autism post, I am not “forming an opinion” on anything, because none of this research is my own. I am reviewing articles. That’s it. I am not saying this is bad or that is good or he is wrong or she is right, though I am saying Jenny McCarthy is a skank and I don’t ever want to read a “book” with her name on it even if it’s Playboy.

I must admit I am somewhat biased as I tried the gluten-free thing for about a month my digestive issues and I felt worse. Much worse. Went back to the gluten, felt much better. No, I’m not autistic, but since the what one puts in the gut is directly related to its function, I figured it would have an effect. I’ve been looking all night to understand how “leaky gut” and “inflammation” affects the BRAIN to support this GFCF hypothesis, but I’ve found nothing. Maybe Jenny can explain it to me.

Anyway, a night of searching, and this is what I’ve found:

1) Pediatr Nurs. 2007 Mar-Apr;33(2):138-43
To date, there is little empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of dietary restrictions in treating child psychiatric disorders, in particular, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

2) J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2006 Apr;27(2 Suppl):S162-71.
Seven trials of these diets in ASD are critically reviewed; 6 of these were uncontrolled trials and 1 used a single-blind design. All reported efficacy in reducing some autism symptoms, and 2 groups of investigators also reported improvement in nonverbal cognition. Design flaws in all of the studies weaken the confidence that can be placed in their findings.

3) J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Apr;36(3):413-20
This study tested the efficacy of a gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diet in treating autism using a randomized, double blind repeated measures crossover design. The sample included 15 children aged 2-16 years with autism spectrum disorder. Group data indicated no statistically significant findings.

4) Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(2):CD003498
The one trial included reported results on four outcomes. Unsurprisingly in such a small-scale study, the results for three of these outcomes (cognitive skills, linguistic ability and motor ability) had wide confidence intervals that spanned the line of nil effect. However, the fourth outcome, reduction in autistic traits, reported a significant beneficial treatment effect for the combined gluten- and casein- free diet.

5) Nutr Neurosci. 2002 Sep;5(4):251-61.
A randomly selected diet and control group with 10 children in each group participated. Observations and tests were done before and after a period of 1 year. The development for the group of children on diet was significantly better than for the controls.

Since most of the “research” these parents cite are mere anecdotes, I also found this little story written by a physician. I found it interesting.

Here’s a woman who helped her son’s autism by removing soy.

And here’s a woman who “cured” autism by substituting milk for soy.

Here’s someone who found no regression after quitting the diet.

A forum where different parents discuss their results on the diet

A parent who found their child was worse on the GFCF diet.

The GFCF story on About.com with a summary of the theories and references.

Success stories on GFCFdiet.com. There is no place to post failure stories, so this is rather biased.

I even went topless this time.

I really would like to be the top fundraiser at my gym, so I can be number 1 at something. Right now there are people gaining on me. I do not like this at all. Even $5 will help me get there.

I set a goal of $2500 and I’m about 50% there. If you can help, prostates will thank you.

Click here to donate.