ATOMIC DOG
Don't Piss Off the Gods
by TC

President Bush, Karl Rove, a Priest, and a college student are on a small plane when both engines fail. A crash is imminent. Trouble is, there are only 3 parachutes on board.

W. grabs one and says, "Guys, I'm the leader of the free world. Besides, Laura's got a ham loaf in the oven. Heh-heh-heh."

The President jumps out of the plane, leaving the other 3 men to conduct their grim lottery.

Karl Rove explains, "Gentlemen, I'm 'Bush's brain'; the 'architect'; quite likely the smartest man in the country. Fate and destiny demand that I grab a chute."

Rove jumps out of the plane, leaving the other two men to decide who gets the last parachute.

The somber Priest turns to the college student and says, "Young man, I've lived a long, full life and I am quite ready to meet the Lord. You take the last parachute."

The college student replies, "Don't sweat it, Father, the smartest man in the country just jumped out of the plane with my backpack."

Last week, former Testosterone contributor Bruce Kneller, a.k.a. Brock Strasser, was charged with being part of a nationwide steroid manufacturing and distribution ring.

Federal and local authorities raided his home and seized 100,000 suspected steroid tablets. Typically, customers would e-mail Kneller for a price list — typically $75 for a bottle — and then be put in touch with an accomplice in California for payment instructions.

Kneller in court last week.

Customers were then instructed to send the cash wrapped in aluminum foil, whereupon Kneller would then ship the goods from a post office near his home in Massachusetts.

Kneller typically procured Anadrol, Polysteron, Masteron, and Growth Hormone from a variety of sources, some from as far away as China, and repackaged them in "Red Star Laboratories" labels.

To build their case, all the authorities had to do was pretty much place a freakin' order.

Thus was a criminal mastermind thwarted! Thus did authorities unwrap the high-tech aluminum foil caper! Thus was a genius taken down!

Oh brother.

Add another to the list of people I personally know that have been busted for manufacturing or distributing steroids or other illegal drugs. Let's see, there was the original guru, Dan Duchaine; former EAS marketing mastermind James Bradshaw; founder and president of Next Nutrition, David Jenkins; murder suspect Craig Titus; Balco founder Victor Conte; Conte co-conspirator Patrick Arnold; and now Kneller.

There have been others, believe me, but I just can't remember the names of the rest of them.

Aside from Bradshaw and Duchaine, I don't, or since Duchaine is dead, didn't, know any of the men very well, but there's at least one thread common to nearly all of them.

Duchaine considered himself to be beyond doctors, a medical expert. He took a girlfriend to Mexico for calf implants and she lost both legs after infection set it. He apparently died alone in his apartment from an illness because he didn't seek out medical care. Bradshaw, who made most of his money writing outrageous ad copy designed to pierce the consumer resistance of canny 14-year-olds, told me that anyone who wasn't rich was just a "loser."

Patrick Arnold was always lauding his supposed intellectual superiority to anyone that would listen, but he recently used Internet forums to taunt Federal prosecutors, bragging that they had no case against him.

Kneller was continually telling me how brilliant he was and that "guys like you" (referring to me) couldn't possibly understand the evolved architecture of his brain.

Despite the alleged superior mental capabilities they held in common, all of these men jumped out of the plane wearing a backpack instead of a parachute. I've only got one thing to say to all of you:

Heckuva job, Brownie!

The ancient Greeks had a name for this kind of behavior. It was called hubris. I've written about this subject before, but it deserves renewed attention. Hubris was characterized by wanton insolence or arrogance that arose from excessive pride. Certain men became so successful in some endeavor that they imagined themselves bulletproof. They imagined themselves the equal of the gods.

Trouble is, the gods don't like it when you imagine yourself their equal. They tend to figure out some way — usually brutal — to smite your ass.

Mythology is full of examples. Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted. Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest and was turned into a spider, making her the original arachnid. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and Zeus chained him forever to a rock, where each day a vulture comes down to dine on his foie gras, only to have his liver grow back each night.

D'oh!

History has plenty of examples, too. Cambyses I of Persia invaded Ethiopia in the 6^th century, B.C., without ever asking what his troops needed for the trip. They ran out of supplies and ate each other, which was bad enough, but they didn't have any salt either, let alone Worcestshire sauce.

Same thing in 1941 when Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into Russia wearing the Nazi spring/summer collection instead of the fall/winter collection only to freeze to death, in addition to being derided by fashion savvy Russian peasants for being out of season.

You can see plenty of examples in everyday life, too. Remember the people who refused to vacate Mount St. Helens?  They thought their knowledge of the mountain was superior to those of geologists. Now they're lava-rock paperweights that you can buy at the Mount St. Helens gift shop for $19.99.

Look at the White House, Congress, or the Senate. The legal levee that's designed to suppress that daily shitstorm is woefully inadequate to keep their tide of hubris from spilling forth. There's so much hubris in Washington that the gods are working overtime, not even taking a break to sip on their divine nectar.

Look at the sports world. The receiver who marches towards the end zone, taunting his opponent, only to have it swiped out of his hand. The players who fail drug test after drug test, stupidly believing that they won't get caught, despite having a horrible track record in covering up their past malfeasance.

Oh, and more recently, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, who shall forever be the poster child of hubris, having lost her Olympic Gold Medal by hot-dogging it in front of the five people who weren't watching Kelly Pickler on American Idol.

Maybe hubris has a lot to do with brain chemistry. Dr. Frederick Goodwin, director of the Psychopharmacology Research Center at George Washington University, believes that high-risk situations trigger the release of dopamine. Normal people take the dopamine release in stride and become more cautious from having survived their risky situation.

This isn't true of people prone to hubris. The dopamine release they experience acts like a shot of speed or cocaine. Not only do they become addicted to the dopamine, they need higher and higher doses. Those with this trait — but with the innate intelligence to tame and control the beast — become great leaders. Those who can't, get burned by the sun...or thrown in the slammer, while perversely still believing that they're great intellects. And that brings us back to the bodybuilding industry.

I've long believed that anyone who lifts weights because they like it has something seriously, seriously, wrong with him or her. That includes me, you, the other people who read Testosterone, and every poor bugger you see toting a training log and straps to the gym. We're all eccentric bastards.

That's okay, though. In most cases, our condition is benign. In fact, in a weird, circular, cause-and-effect way, our weightlifting keeps whatever mental problem it is that prompts us to lift weights in the first place, in check.  As such, we're able to blend into society. Without weightlifting, we'd probably spend our time wallpapering our house with women's underwear, which really isn't a bad look, especially if you splash some paisley around.

However, if you combine that condition — whatever it is — with supreme hubris, you often get most of the guys I named earlier who were busted on drug charges.

Why should we care?

You might not be aware of it, but Kneller was also selling an illegal, designer steroid that's clearly a violation of Federal law and presenting it as an over-the-counter supplement. When questioned by the Washington Post, Kneller said the product was "no longer made or sold...and, in fact, was only available for less than three weeks."

Kneller made that claim on October 18^th, 2005, yet just last month — just before Kneller was popped — a major US distributor of supplements bragged that it had just received 7,000 bottles and expected to get another 30,000.

Uh, don't count on it.

Like it or not, the FDA is Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and all the rest of the Greek gods put together, and they don't like to be taunted.

Selling illegal products and then lying about it not only makes the FDA gods want to chain the one who challenged them to a rock, it's also likely to make them rain pestilence on the rest of us who keep our hubris in check, namely the responsible supplement companies who play by the rules.

Kneller is just the most recent case of a supplement designer or manufacturer spitting in the face of the FDA. A few years ago, Derek Cornelius' Triax product provoked the FDA into banning all thyroid supplements.

An entire class of supplements brought down by one man!

More recently, at least one manufacturer was selling a type of "herbal Viagra" that actually contained sildenafil citrate(the chemical in prescription Viagra) obtained from China. In other words, they were secretly and illegally selling a prescription drug over-the-counter. It wasn't on the label, of course, but the FDA found out about it.

Another group of punks actually sprayed real amphetamine salts onto the capsule of their fat burner/energy product to escape analysis. You see, when the guys in the lab test something, they empty the contents of the capsule into a test tube and throw the capsule away....

This product's clean, boss!

But they eventually figured it out.

By the way, don't run out looking for any of these products, they've all been taken off the market.

Biotest wants to keep making revolutionary, effective supplements, but these honchos of hubris keep making it more difficult. The last thing you and I need is to flick the FDA's scabs, and Kneller and others continue to do just that. The rules are the rules, whether we like them or not.

Mutts like Kneller deserve to be locked away...maybe not so much for selling steroids through the mail, but for doing his part to screw up the supplement world for the rest of us. Thyroid products are now off limits; pro-hormones are gone; ephedra is kaput. Entire classes of supplements wiped out from greed and hubris!

Sigh.

In the meantime, I'll be on the lookout for examples of honest-to-goodness humility in and outside the supplement world, like the case of Jason McElwain, who, coincidentally, comes from Greece — Greece, New York, that is.

McElwain, a senior at Greece Athena High School, was considered by his coach to be too short to play varsity basketball. Despite suffering from autism and finding it difficult to make friends, Jason made his way through classes and fulfilled his love for basketball by keeping stats, running the clock, and handing out water bottles for the team, never missing a single game or practice session.

Then, during the last quarter of the last game of the regular season, with 4 minutes left to play, McElwain's coach told him to suit up and get into the game. Much to the crowd's disappointment, Jason's first shot was an air ball. The next time he got the ball, he failed to make an easy lay up.

That's when the Empire State Greek gods intervened.

McElwain shot a 3-pointer, followed by another, and yet another. He ended up shooting six 3-pointers in a row, failing to get credit for a seventh because his foot was on the line. He finished with 20 points and was carried off the court by his ecstatic teammates.

Since then, McElwain's been besieged by calls from well-wishers and over 25 production companies, including Disney, who want to turn his story into a feel-good movie. Thank God, or the gods, that humility occasionally gets rewarded.

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