Jonathan Kieran

It’s not a funny matter in any way whatsoever, but I had to laugh (a little) at this quote from a particular doctor describing the specific pain one feels after a serious black widow spider bite/envenomation and the difficulty patients have in terms of describing that pain accurately and elaborately:

“People can’t describe it very well, but they’re writhing in agony on their bed in the emergency department,” says Richard Dart, a poison expert who runs Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety, part of the Denver Health system. “And I mean writhing in agony.”

Gee, I dunno, Dr. Dart, but do you possibly think that their inability to communicate the pain of this spider’s toxic bite in a descriptive manner might be due to the fact that THEY ARE WRITHING IN AGONY ON THEIR BEDS TO BEGIN WITH?

I mean, whenever I am writhing in agony, I have a tendency to get very loquacious and hold forth on all sorts of speeches related to philosophy, theology, quantum physics, and those everyday minute details crucial for the study of medical science, but hey, that’s just me. I am in the upper two percentile of the global human population, after all—at least in regard to grey matter. 🙄

The main notes for this entry come from a new article by Bloomberg detailing the general shortage of antivenin for black widow spider bites currently plaguing the American pharmaceutical supply system. The reasons behind the dearth are multifold: living black widow spiders must be “milked” by toxicologists and then the venom must be processed painstakingly by these experts for injection into horses, which proceed to develop antibodies to this poison that can then be later extracted and transformed into medicine for humans.

There has been a slow-down in this crucial process. “Spider-milkers” are either not getting paid enough to do their jobs or else the turnaround time is not meeting the actual supply-and-demand for black widow spider bites.

Economics or … basically, just another day at the Declining USA Generalized Infrastructural Landscape?

READ THE BLOOMBERG ARTICLE HERE, if you are fascinated by venomous spiders and the methods used to heal those bitten.

But also keep in mind that the need for black widow antivenin may reach staggering proportions if we continue to be populated by children THIS QUESTIONABLY RAISED BY ADULTS AND SO OBVIOUSLY COMIC-BOOK MOVIE OBSESSED THAT THEY ARE DEVOID OF SOME OF THE MOST BASIC ASPECTS OF HUMAN INSTINCT.

Yeah. Warn your kids or else watch them writhe in agony while being unable to tell you “where it hurts,” exactly.

[Look for Jonathan Kieran’s fabulous new—as yet untitled—book of hundreds of witty, cynical, zeitgeist-rocking, and knee-slappingly clever cartoons of Pure Smartassery in 2024! Stay tuned for developing news and previews.]

BY THE WAY: Below is a photo of “Gladys.” She lived in an upper corner beneath the eave connecting my main house and the attached garage until she finally crossed the Rainbow Web and went to that Great Venomous Spider Paradise in … some other extraterrestrial hidey hole … about two weeks ago. She survived two brutal years of severe California weather, but the last grasshopper she caught and the last of four egg sacs she produced apparently taxed her spiderly reserves beyond recuperation. Sayonara, Gladys. It was fun lookin’ at ya—from a distance—kiddo.

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