Sporting News

Hockey: OK, I guess they’re for real. Edmonton wins the first game in the Western Conference finals, beating Anaheim 3-1, in Anaheim. I watched a little bit of SportsCenter last evening after getting home from the bar (yeah, I watched the game on the Big Screen), and Barry Melrose is calling it for Edmonton. He doesn’t think they’ll win The Cup, however. He predicts Carolina will win sports' oldest and hardest-to-win trophy. But back to the West...I wouldn’t count the Ducks out just yet, however. Perhaps this just ensures an Edmonton victory given my hockey prognostication skills and track record, but I’m gonna call it for the Ducks in six. This series looks to be pretty damned interesting and quite physical. Whichever team survives the West Finals will go into the Cup Final bruised and bloodied, if last night’s game is any indication.

And, in other sports news…is America ready for this?

If you could take a drug to become aroused -- not just to facilitate the hydraulics of arousal, as Viagra and other vascular sex aids do, but to actually make you horny -- would you?

I ask because MSNBC is reporting (ed: some other interesting unrelated links there!) today that New Jersey-based Palatin Technologies says it is developing an aid that does just that. Bremolanotide, as the wonder potion is currently known, "stimulates the brain, rather than the genitals," or so the company says. The drug, which is a fast-acting inhalant rather than a pill, seems to work on men and women, but it's presented as being primarily for women, as a counterpart to Viagra et al. and as a potential cure for so-called female sexual dysfunction.

…

Since whole news story seems to be based on a Palatin press release, there's no way to know at this point whether the project will pan out as promised. But if it does, the drug could hardly come at a weirder time for women's health and sexuality in America. The country can't agree on such apparent no-brainers as access to emergency contraception and vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases; how will we cope with a female mojo maker? Will women have to be diagnosed as dysfunctional to get it? (Hello, hysteria.) Will it be covered by insurance? Will it be available to teenage girls? What happens when 1 million doofy teenage boys get the brilliant idea to spray girls in the face with it? (Answer: Given how inhalants work, probably nothing, but this seems like just the kind of "Saved by the Bell"-type scenario that the religious right would freak out about.) Or when Tommy swaps Susie's albuterol inhaler with a Bremolanotide inhaler right before volleyball practice?

Given this drug is targeted for women, and given our society’s strange and not-wonderful-at-all attitudes towards sex, I don’t think it’ll fly. On the other hand, it just might wind up hidden in the frilly underwear drawer, right next to that battery-powered small appliance no one talks about. That said, remember my prognostication skills. Interesting thing to think about, though.

Oooo-Eeee! The forecast is for 99 degrees today. It’s already 85, as I type. I told you summer’s here!