All the Olympic sprinters and their designer doping kits.
That Hans Ritter UN weapons inspector chap who just got busted trying to seduce what he thought was a kid.
Why do they do it? What makes them think they're going to get away with it?
Ego is obviously one reason. (Because I can.)
That at least accounts for the first skank, the first steroid injection, the first - um - inappropriate internet contact with a minor.
But why keep doing it (whatever it is)? Why not quit the cheating (or whatever) once you've tried it and satisfied the curiosity?
Perhaps the answer lies in Mr Ritter's back history. This is not the first time he's been found trying to arrange sex dates with minors, it seems. In fact, he's been at this crack for years.
He's no moron. He almost-singlehandedly took on the Bush Administration at one point. So what made him think he could possibly get away with continually behaving like he has?
Probably the same reason that made Ben Johnson and the other sprinters keep taking the 'roids, even though they have to undergo regular and unannounced drug tests.
The same reason Tiger kept chasing hoochie-mama skirt even though there was a press pack never far away.
Because they got away with it once, that first ego-driven, curiosity-spiked time. But they don't think 'God, I was lucky to get away with that. Better not risk it in future, since I've so much else to lose.'
These people believe they are so intelligent, so smart, and so powerful that they will NEVER be caught. Having got away with it once, they are almost compelled to repeat, because they genuinely believe they won't be caught.
Which makes them get sloppy, which gets them caught.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how karma functions in its most overt form. What the ego drives us to do, the ego ensures we make amends for.
Hopefully, you realise tomorrow is just another day, and you don't need to make lifechanging decisions while drunk tonight that will transform into mid-January bouts of guilt as you fail.
You could stop smoking, lose weight or try to get a new job starting any particular day. Why do it alongside the rest of the herd? Is there camaraderie in failing en masse? I don't know.
What I do know is that I think New Year's Resolutions are about as pointless as those 'Caution: Hot!' warnings on takeaway coffees - they're really only needed for the truly remedial.
So I've decided to go with some New Year's Revolutions instead. Here are the revolutions I'd like to see in 2010:
1. A Chinese counter-revolution. Seriously, fuck the Chinese Communist Party. I'd love to see them overthrown and subjected to a quick round of real people power, the human-abusing thug junta. This same prescription also applies to the scum ruling Belarus, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe and a host of other thugocracies.
2. A drugs revolution. The war on drugs is lost. Why are our governments still fighting it? Increasingly, world leaders, health experts, religious minorities and influential commentators have come out in favour of a complete reversal of current failed policies. I hope that either the lawmakers start listening, or else a proper grassroots movement comes along and makes ongoing prohibition unworkable for good. If the EU reverted to the Portuguese model, we might finally get a handle on drug crime and on harm reduction for addicts.
3. An economic revolution. The return of the gold standard? The end of fractional banking? Back to barter? Jail for banksters? I'm no economist (and am suspicious of that pseudoscience in any case), so I will refrain from being prescriptive. But since the current system just went pop for the umpteenth time, you'd like to think we might rebuild with some new method that doesn't unerringly result in a bubble and collapse every decade or two.
4. A democratic revolution in Ireland. Take a look at the Dail. Do those people really represent you? Do they look after your interests? Well, why keep voting for them? I'd love to see an end to the cronyism, the parochial parish pump politics, the gombeens, the brown envelopes and the nepotism in Irish politics. But that would require an electorate to grow up and take responsibility for those they elect.
What revolutions would you like to see next year? And are there any that you're prepared to man the barricades to bring about?
Those were the wise words of Chris Rock to all fathers everywhere. The one duty of a father, he said, was to keep their daughter away from a career stripping.
It's probably redundant to add, keep her out of porn too. That's sort of implicit in what he said. Yet increasingly, the San Fernando Valley in California is inundated with girls who think that they might have found a back door to fame by whoring themselves on camera.
I was watching a documentary the other night about Ron Jeremy, the world's best known male porn star, and I found it tragicomic, poignant and ultimately depressing.
Here's a man who is engaging, warm, friendly and self-deprecating. A man from a good New York Jewish family, who works like a navvy even at 50 plus. A man who many other men believe has had the best life in the world.
Yet he's lonely, depressive, and ultimately frustrated in his lifetime ambition to make it in mainstream movies as an actor.
That got me thinking: if that's how life ended up for the industry's success story, how did others fare in porn? Then I found this blog, which tracks porn stars after their career. And the answer to my question was revealed. And it was frightening.
Sure, Stormy Daniels is running for Senate and Jenna Jameson is a millionairess. But what about all the others? Let's start with Chasey Lain, who was once so well known that she had a top 10 hit written about her.
Now a crackpipe ho. Pretty tragic. But she's still alive. Which is more than can be said for:
Billy London: murdered, his head and feet found in a dumpster Marilyn Chambers: heart attack after taking prescription meds Bryan Kocis: murdered by two other gay porn actors Buck Adams: repeated heart attacks caused by drug and alcohol abuse led to his death at 52 David Wasserman: suicide Missy: dead of a drug overdose at 41 Anastasia Blue: dead, apparently from drug use Megan Lee: suicide by gunshot wound at 26 Melba Bruce: dead in her thirties in mysterious circumstances Miyouki Asou: suicide at 22, believing porn had ruined her life Paige Summers: drug overdose at 27 Star Stowe: murdered by a serial killer at 41 Elisa Bridges: drug overdose at 28 Dorothy Stratten: murdered Lea de Mae: died of brain cancer at 27 Kathy Harcourt: found shot in the head, possibly self-inflicted Vanessa Freeman: murdered at 30 by her boyfriend Angela Devi: suicide by hanging at 30 Naughtia Childs: found dead at bottom of a stairwell, either suicide, murder or accidental death while tripping on LSD Trinity Loren: overdosed at 34 Rene Bond: dead at 44 from liver cirrhosis Rebecca Steele: died penniless in a motel room from a drug overdose at 42, while suffering from full-blown AIDS Taylor Summers: murdered by photographer in possible snuff movie shoot Terri Diver: dead at 29 from a drug overdose Sheridan: wiped out in car crash at 20 Lolo Ferrari: died from 'mechanical suffocation' at 4o, husband spent time in prison for it. Lisa de Leeuw: dead from AIDS at 34 Eva Lux: heroin overdose at 32 Britney Madison: died in car crash at 21 Chanel Price: overdosed at 35 Zoe Zane: murdered aged 18 Cal Jammer: shot himself aged 34 Haley Paige: dead of an overdose, boyfriend committed suicide before he could be questioned as to whether he had murdered her Nancee Kellee: hanged herself Alex Jordan: found hanging in her own closet, suicide or auto-erotic asphyxiation suspected Savannah: shot herself aged 23 Julie Robbins: died in a car crash possibly caused by her being impaired at the wheel aged 26 Linda Wong: drug overdose at 36 Kristi Lynn: died in a car crash, suspected to be drunk at the time of driving Shauna Grant: shot herself aged 20 Chloe Jones: died penniless of liver failure caused by alcohol and Vicodin abuse aged 29 Jon Dough: Suicide by deliberate overdose aged 43
And others are alive, but clearly damaged:
Kay Parker: believes she's been alive for 6,000 years. Lori Michaels: faked her own death to avoid porn fan stalkers Houston: former drug addict, cancer sufferer, now a Christian, sacked from her job because of her porn past Alisandra: arrested for employing underage girls as strippers Janine Lindemulder: jailed for tax evasion and lost custody of her kid Tommy Saxx: jailed for credit card fraud Fleur Brown: crack addict, jailed for trying to sell the virginity of a 13 year old Hyapatia Lee: suffering from multiple personality disorder following the trauma of her porno experience Jack Venice: jailed for raping a college girl Max Hardcore: jailed for over three years for abusing women in his videos Tony Eveready: jailed for possession of cocaine and guns Danielle Rush: crippled in a car crash Barbara Dare: broke and living with her parents in her late 40s JR Carrington: a prostitute in a Nevada brothel Marilyn Starr: convicted and jailed for insider trading Melissa Walker: jailed for attempted murder
I probably didn't need to reproduce so many names. But I wanted to counter any charge that I was cherrypicking horror stories here.
Sure, some porno stars get out alive and relatively well. Though who knows what's going on inside their heads?
But this lengthy list of casualties has some common threads running through it: drug abuse, suicide, criminality, suspect car accidents, murder.
Given the small number of porn stars, and the incredibly young ages some of these people died at, it seems to me that one of the best ways to preserve your life to a respectable age would be to avoid porno as a career choice.
Let's go back to Chasey Lain before I finish. She was the subject of the Bloodhound Gang's 1990 hit 'Ballad of Chasey Lain' in 1990. But nearly two decades on, she's still apparently doing porn, when her crackpipe addiction permits her to perform.
She has a son. She's still not even 40. But like others on this list, she'll be dead or jailed soon enough, judging by the video above.
I'm no prude and I'm not judgemental. I'm not a big fan of porno generally. It's monotonous and sort of gross sometimes. But it's not a $10 billion industry for nothing. People like it and buy it and use it all the time.
Someone's making that $10 billion, but it's clearly not the performers. Not those who died through murder or suicide or overdose. Not those in jail, or ill, or mad. Not even relatively successful and affluent people like Ron Jeremy or Jenna Jameson.
And whoever's making the money clearly doesn't give a shit for the performers, who to them are as dispensible as the tissues they wipe down their sets with when their done filming.
I recently came across a campaign against cocaine which berated coke users for being 'selfish' because something like 3 square metres of rainforest is cleared to produce every gram or so of the drug.
What a species of people we are, who care more for trees than we do for people.
Porno can be bad for people who consume it, since it can become addictive and replace genuine affection and sexuality in people's lives.
But it is far more destructive to those who perform in it. When will we see an anti-porn campaign that is based, not on Christian disgust or feminist outrage, but on genuine concern for the people being damaged by the industry?
Do we really care more for Brazilian trees than we do for flesh and blood people?
"When brown sugar first came in from Peshawar, about fifteen years ago now, it cost fifty rupees per gram," says the bhang-wallah. "I selling, making ten rupee per gram profit, thinking I am rich man!" His hands thrust up into the air. "Now, I have this shop, two hotels. I am one kilometre from Mama Ganga. Everyone know me. Baksheesh is high for me. When I lending to friends and sister, they not giving back." He rummages in a drawer under the table and unwraps what looks like a shiny, semi-solid molasses, with a sharp, pungent, soil-like scent. "Opium was only for the foreigners. India men not like. India men sell to foreigners, then drinking!" He grins a gappy grin, waving an imaginary glass between us. "Then people start taking, enjoy the happy dreams. Now everything is possible, and for India men also. MDMA, heroin for snorting, ecstacy..." The bhang-wallah is permitted by the government to sell a mild form of cannabis, known as bhang, to devout Hindus. Some Sanskrit on my back suffices as qualification in this regard. Bhang comes in a smoking form, for use in pipes, and is also served in a lassi, a sort of curd milkshake. However, the bhang-wallah appears to have expanded his product range beyond the entirely legal. He picks up a brown tola, like a thick crayon a child might use, and hands it to me. I sniff it momentarily, run my thumbnail along its surface and then bang it, hard, off the side of the table. He laughs. "This is last year's crop," he chuckles. "Already stale. But good enough. I keep for the Japanese. They come to see Sarnath, where holy Buddha made his first prayers." He hands me another tola, but this is flat and malleable. "This year, this year," he trills. "Have whatever you want, sir. You name it." "Cocaine?" I asked. "No, sir," he shook his head sadly. "No cocaine. Too far from the source here. But I have opium from Lao, good Chandu, India man loving this Chandu, not normally for foreigners. And heroin, very good, from Taliban man." I cut to the chase and ask for what I came for. "Ah sir, this also is not possible," he sighs. "Today is festival day. Nothing is open. All shut. No curd delivery this morning. So I cannot make you a lassi."
Apparently Asian babes aren't good enough for the marketing morons at chav outfitters, the incorrectly named Top Shop.
When they decided to foist their tacky, ill-fitting clothing on the people of China, the advertising wonks didn't think to hire some local models to try to make their clobber look wearable.
According to one fashion victim, the reason why people keep giving this human car crash so much money for effectively just standing about looking bored while wearing clothes is because of her 'look.'
Now, I'm no fashion expert. So I rely on those morons who are to inform me as to what this magical 'look' is (since to my untutored eye she looks exactly like what she is, which is a skinny, coked-up chav from Croydon.)
And here's what they say:
"Kate Moss was so different when she first arrived on the fashion scene," says Jen Stevens, editor of U Magazine. "At the time the catwalks were filled with six-foot goddesses and then suddenly along came this short, pretty ordinary girl from Croydon. It was this 'difference' that drew everybody's attention and upon which she managed to build a career."
So it isn't her look, because she looks short and ordinary. My eyes weren't actually lying after all. Even the fashionistas think she looks like a chav.
Okay, let's try again. Maybe it's her winning personality? Nope again. In fact, she almost never speaks in public and barely ever in ads. One assumes her paymasters in the fashion industry are aware that the sound of her grating estuary tones would shatter the glamorous image they've spent a fortune on creating.
Is it perhaps her life story that inspires people? That's definitely what one fashion victim believes:
"Maybe it's because she's fallen so low and fought her way back up again," says model agency boss Celia Holman Lee. "She's shown a vulnerable side that people can relate to."
Yes, you heard that correctly. Cocaine Kate's tabloid fall from grace, not to mention her house-trashing antics and association with hard drugs and hard druggies, is something that we can all relate to. What a load of shit.
Which brings me back to the news item I began with. What the fuck are Top Shop paying this cokehead chav tens of millions for?
And if they really must pay people preposterous amounts of money to stand around looking bored while wearing clothes, what's wrong with paying some stunning looking Chinese babe who doesn't do tons of hard drugs and isn't closer to forty than twenty?
Somebody in London's been taking and dealing some seriously bad drugs.
I don't know about you, but I for one would not be buying illegal intoxicants off anyone who subsequently went about England raping sheep after getting high on their own supply.
Though maybe there's a market in New Zealand.
Judging by what they're calling their kids these days (see below), they're all on bad drugs already.
It's scary because it bleeds truth. Probably it's more useful for parents to read than kids. Kids already know what a feral jungle of self-immolation teenagedom is these days. But it's still frightening to see it put down, in print, so authentically, so viscerally.
It's available for download or from Lulu, but I understand it will be in shops throughout Ireland too some time soon.
Just as soon as Eason's can source some lead-lined bags to store it in.
Incendiary reading. Exemplary writing. I read it in one sitting and couldn't move for an hour afterwards. In fact, I'm still having nightmares about it.
If there ever was a war on drugs, I can only assume that it was fought in order to secure cheap and easy access to illegal drugs for all.
If they fought against the proliferation of 'recreational' drugs, then they have badly lost, a long time ago.
It doesn't matter how many 'Just Say No' campaigns you run, or how many Colombian fields you napalm when illegal drugs are now freely available in rural primary school classrooms, as I became aware of last week.
At that point, if not many years before, you've lost the war.
Anyhow, if there still is some sort of a war on drugs, then the battlefield is about to shift, at least in Britain, where leading medics and scientists have sat down and examined the potential negative effects of twenty different recreational drugs and ranked them for how much damage they cause.
The results aren't surprising to me, but no doubt they won't make a lot of anti-drugs campaigners very happy.
Top of the list? Why, heroin and cocaine of course. Now heroin you can understand. Nasty smelly junkies with their lives in a mess. Of course heroin is poison. But cocaine? Trendy, upmarket, middle class cocaine?
Surely some mistake. Let's look at how they conducted this 'survey':
* They asked a group of 29 consultant psychiatrists who specialise in addiction to rate the drugs in nine categories. * Three of these related to physical harm, three to the likelihood of addiction and three to social harms such as healthcare costs. * The team also extended the analysis to another group of 16 experts spanning several fields including chemistry, pharmacology, psychiatry, forensics, police and legal services.
So basically, it's about as comprehensive and scientific an examination as you can get. And yup, cocaine is one of the worst there is. Bad news for marketing executives, catwalk models and Ulster paramilitaries there.
But there's even worse news for the alcohol and tobacco industries. Alcohol was ranked as the fifth most dangerous commonly used recreational drug in Britain, and tobacco the ninth.
Let's just pause and ponder that for a moment. When you abuse alcohol, it is more dangerous than smoking. It is more dangerous than addiction to amphetamines. Think about that one next time you go binge-drinking on St Patrick's Day. It's not a pleasant realisation.
But what about that dangerous gateway drug cannabis and all its scarily potent skunk variations? What about ecstasy, the pill that kills?
They clocked in at 11th and 18th place respectively.
In other words, smoking fags is worse than smoking pot, and a good ecstasy pill is better for you than either.
So to summarise, two of the most dangerous drugs of abuse are currently legal, while much more benign substances are banned.
If the war on drugs had ever been really about saving lives and people's futures from drug dependency, then surely we lost it back in the early 20th century, when alcohol prohibition was lifted in America and cannabis and most other more benign substances were banned.
Then we lost it again when we permitted big tobacco to keep selling their cancersticks, despite discovering the health risks they cause and the fact that they are extremely addictive.
The experts in Britain are to be applauded for applying the rigours of the scientific approach to a subject that for too long has been placed beyond debate by those who sought to demonise drugs as a cause of all society's ills.
But they aren't telling the kids anything they didn't already know.
For every kid like Leah Betts who died on ecstasy, there are literally millions who didn't. Who danced their asses off and went home sweaty and happy.
For every time some pompous suit or judge has lectured about how cannabis is a gateway drug, the highway to dopefiend hell, there are literally millions of people who puffed a joint, munched a spacecake and listened to some music, rather than reaching for a heroin needle and a gun to mug someone with.
And everytime someone watched an older relative wheezing in the pulmonary ward of a hospital, their lungs rotted by carcinogenic tobacco, or fell victim to a raging drunk incapable of reason who beat them, raped them, robbed them or mowed them down in a car, those people realised what the really dangerous drugs are.
It's time to reclassify our opinions on drugs. Then reclassify the drugs themselves.
Tobacco should be banned. Being drunk should in itself carry a legal penalty. And cannabis, LSD and ecstasy ought to be legalised with the sort of caveats about heavy machinery and driving that currently apply to alcohol.
And that's not just my opinion. That's got the latest scientific research backing it up, which is more than the 'Just Say No' brigade have.
