The Nobel continues its boogie to banality
So! My old neighbor Al Gore joins Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, Kofi Annan, Mohammed El Baradei and Rigoberta Menchú as a peace prizolier — which is more than Mahatma Gandhi can say. Did you know it comes with a million and a half bucks? Here’s hoping Gore has to share it with the entire cast of thousands on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has his snout deep enough in that trough as it is.
Like all things controlled by committee, the Nobels have always inclined toward suck.
Take my favorite Nobel recipient — this dude with the funny ears, António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz (1874-1955). He pioneered cerebral angiowhotsit — injecting stuff into the veins of the head so that tumors and aneurysms show up on x-ray — which was a very good thing. But he won the Nobel for medicine in 1949 for a very bad thing. Says Wikipedia:
The procedure was the lobotomy. Back in Lisbon he ordered that a human brain be brought to him from a morgue, and thrusted a pen through the cortex several times until he was satisfied he knew the approximate angle and depth that would best detach the frontal lobes. He performed the operation on a former prostitute, who afterwards was unable to give her age or say where she was. She was returned to an asylum, never to be seen by him again. Moniz nonetheless considered this a “clinical cure” and continued operating.
The operation was popularized in the US by clinical neurologist Walter Freeman, whose rough-and-ready version involved poking an ice pick through the eye socket and wiggling it around a bit. No lie. If you get a nice, clean version of the famous photo of him performing this neat parlor trick, you can read the name of the Chicago ice company on the handle of his surgical instrument.
Had the procedure been used as a last resort for the hopelessly, violently insane…it would still be wicked, but it would be forgiveable. As it was, lobotomies were famously given the annoying and inconvenient. Rosemary Kennedy got hers (from Freeman himself) to treat “mood swings”. She lived the next fifty-some years in a convent school as a babbling idiot.
If there’s such a thing as a human soul, I’m as sure as sure can be its proper name is “the brain.” Hence, Dr Egas Moniz won his Nobel for inventing a method of granting thousands of troubled human beings a living death. Murder, if you ask me.
In conclusion: fuck you Al Gore.
Posted: October 12th, 2007 under international, medicine, personal.
Comments: 16
Comments
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 9:17 am
According to Wikipedia, though, Frances Farmer didn’t have a lobotomy, after all. That’s what I get for believing what I read in Hollywood Babylon.
My mother described meeting a lobotomized person as “nobody there.”
Comment from Lokki
Time: October 12, 2007, 10:46 am
Oh boy – I get to respond with another favorite quote, and I don’t mean “Fuck You, Al Gore) although I DO like that one.
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
And the best part is – I got to say it before McGoo!
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 10:53 am
I’m still in shock: I can’t believe the Nobel committee – no matter how warped and left-leaning they are – could do this.
I guess the difference between Gore and the other idiots who’ve been awarded this so-called Peace medal is that I disliked the others dispassionately – kinda long-distance – whereas I actively despise Al Gore heart and soul for the lying piece-o-shit he is.
In any case, I’m going to drink tonight. I wish I had some old discarded tires or used motor oil I could burn, or sumpin. Y’know – kind of a funeral pyre for rationality.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 10:54 am
Darnit, Lokki. I wanted to say that!
Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 12, 2007, 10:56 am
They gave a Nobel to AlGore? When these folks didn’t even get an freaking honorable mention? Sweet Jesus, is there no justice??!!
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 11:03 am
I am actually startled at the intensity of my own feelings about this.
I knew it was a possibility months ago when the rumours (note that cool brit spelling Weas!) were circulating. I guess it’s just my mildly optimistic nature: I just didn’t quite believe…
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 11:19 am
The one they gave Jimmah Carter got up my nose just as badly. They more or less admitted at the time they did it to jam a thumb in George Bush’s eye.
Two more sanctimonious jackasses than Carter and Gore I cannot imagine.
Comment from Gnus
Time: October 12, 2007, 11:39 am
If you google “uff da,” you get to the Norwegian Joke Page which has a link to another page which explains. It doesn’t mean what I wanted it to, or it doesn’t seem to, but neither does the peace prize any more.
I would’ve offered complete links but there’s no sense aggravating Akismet again.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 12:06 pm
Gnus,
That was well worth the link chase. And it introduced me to a couple good web sites. Thanks a lot! I needed cheering up.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 1:16 pm
I just followed jw’s link. I’m not saying they don’t deserve the Nobel more than Al does, but that is one distinctly strange marketing concept.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 1:17 pm
Ugh. Okay. I’m going in to work now, at the new place. Gots to unpack my crap :/
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 4:41 pm
Look on the bright side, Weasel. Tonight you have many legitimate reasons to kill brain cells.
In a little while I’m headed down to B. Halls to drink 2-3-4 Boulevard Wheat beers really fast – just to see what happens. I might even feed my face.
Comment from porknbean
Time: October 12, 2007, 9:45 pm
As in Rosemary Kennedy’s case, the surgery was botched, and Rose was disabled for life
I’m thinking anytime someone takes a chunk out of someone else’s brain, that would not be far off from ‘botched’.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 13, 2007, 5:28 pm
Do you guys read the Daily Gut? Man, this item totally belongs in this thread. Reprinted more or less in full:
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this morning, and I’d like to congratulate Irena Sendler. Sendler was a former history teacher who rescued 2,500 children during the Holocaust and was a top contender for the wondrous prize. Back during the early 1940’s, Sendler was a Catholic social worker who had gone into the Warsaw ghetto to rescue Jewish kids who were destined either to starve there, or die in death camps. She would sneak the kids past Nazi guards, sometimes hiding them in body bags, or would provide them with false documents – inevitably getting them to Polish families for adoption, or hiding them in convents or orphanages. She also made a list of the children’s real names, put them in a jar and buried them, so that some day she could dig them up and find the kids to tell them their true names. The Nazis captured her and beat the crap out of her, but she later escaped, and she went into hiding. She’s now in her late 90’s , living in a nursing home in Poland.
I want to congratulate her, because she didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead it went to Al Gore, the guy who invented the Internet. Go figure.
But go visit anyway so I won’t feel bad about stealing his stuff.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 13, 2007, 6:58 pm
Doesn’t that just scorch your mucus membranes? We’re talkin’ a whole-body itching, burning sensation.
This whole Nobel/Gore thing really wee’s me off. Way worse than Peanut or Arafetid ever did.
Gore is such a lying sack of shit. The stench of his passing must linger for hours.
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