Yep, this is pretty much how it is lately.

From Worth1000.com’s Fun With Propaganda contest

In Soviet Canuckistan, Fun has YOU! I don’t know what it means, but I’m a little fried lately so I’ll take what I can get, inspiration-wise. This could ramble; you’ve been warned.

Is this the time to mention (will there ever be another time?) that my mother was on Ritalin for years; or rather, she was prescribed Ritalin for years (and remember the episode of Star Trek, the original series I’m talking here, none of this Under the Planet of the Son of Deep Sixing the Next Generation crap, puh-leez, in which Ritalin had a supporting role? And didn’t even die in the climax, although it did get eaten I think? That was pretty edgy for Star Trek, back in the day) for her narcolepsy, although she preferred not to take it because half-asleep was better than entirely-stoned as far as she was concerned.

See, narcolepsy means never having to say you’re actually boring me to sleep. Narcoleptics fall asleep basically any time their focus wanders, particularly during repetitive activities such as oh, say, driving, which is why it’s illegal for a narcoleptic to have a driver’s license and why Mother always dragged me or my sister around when she had to drive somewhere. And narcoleptics lose muscle control when they laugh; they don’t pee themselves, but they are entirely capable of collapsing to the floor like fainting goats during a George Carlin concert, which is why they prefer to watch him on DVD when they are already sitting down.

Ritalin. It’s a blog post about Ritalin.

So, basically, for a narcoleptic the effect of Ritalin is the opposite of what it is on a normal person or (and you may make of this what you will) its effect on someone suffering from ADD or AHDHDHD or whatever it is they are calling it today. So, basically narcoleptics’ baseline of alertness goes up when they’re on the stuff, while everyone else’s goes down. And I guess my mother woke up, took a look around, and preferred to go back to sleep again, and who among us can say we never felt the same, eh? I ask you.

And this is definitely the point at which to bring up Tom Wolfe‘s (the lad’s still got it, you know; and he’s still using it to provoke vicious belly laughs) wonderful article Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died.

Anyone with a child in school knows the signs all too well. I have children in school, and I am intrigued by the faith parents now invest–the craze began about 1990–in psychologists who diagnose their children as suffering from a defect known as attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this “disorder” is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. The symptoms of this supposed malady are always the same. The child, or, rather, the boy–forty-nine out of fifty cases are boys–fidgets around in school, slides off his chair, doesn’t pay attention, distracts his classmates during class, and performs poorly. In an earlier era he would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self-discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy’s problem is… he’s wired wrong! The poor little tyke –the fix has been in since birth! Invariably the parents complain, “All he wants to do is sit in front of the television set and watch cartoons and play Sega Genesis.” For how long? “How long? For hours at a time.” Hours at a time; as even any young neuroscientist will tell you, that boy may have a problem, but it is not an attention deficit.

Quite so.

: : : : : : : : : : :