Rundles wrap up: PEDs for business

Jeff Rundles //March 1, 2013//

Rundles wrap up: PEDs for business

Jeff Rundles //March 1, 2013//

For most of my adult life I have been 5’8” and 150-170 lbs. Just recently, however, I have pushed both those thing up – to about 6’ and 195 lbs. I can honestly say I’m pretty cut, as well. 
How did I do it?

Deer antler.

I thought about going with the Deer Antler Extract Spray so popular these days, but it’s so expensive only professional football players and golfers can afford it. Me, I just took one of my many assault rifles up into the hills and shot some deer and began gnawing on their head ornaments. Antlers are particularly good with the velvet still intact and I’ve noticed, too, that it has improved my dental health.

I figured the deer antler would completely buff me out, but who knew that deer antler would also make you taller? Simon Cowell might indeed use extra pillows, but I suspect he’s packing them, or himself, with deer antler.

Initially I was worried that the Journalism Compliance Board (JCB) would pull my card after testing positive for a Performance Enhancing Drug (PED), but I have it on good authority that deer antler is undetectable. But the JCB has been getting pretty strict since the banning of both caffeine and beer in the early 1990s – coincidentally (I think) just about the time journalism began its steep decline.

The whole incident got me thinking about PEDs, and it occurred to me that since they apparently work so well in enhancing athletic performance among elite professional athletes, wouldn’t they also work for other professionals? I mean, c’mon, something must be up with two-bit staff attorneys, CPAs, stock analysts, bank loan officers, real estate brokers, investment bankers and the like who suddenly become highly paid superstars. Aren’t their bodies, and heads, noticeably larger than when they first signed on in their respective businesses?

It’s been rumored for years, of course, that the PED of choice on Wall Street, for instance, was cocaine, but I hear that it has gone out of favor since someone discovered that the “P” in PED as it related to the cocaine  was in reality “Perception” – they only thought they were enhanced.  The new PED choice on Wall Street, so my contacts in the supplement business tell me, is called Predator-Plus, an extract from coyote urine that boosts the immune system (it blocks shame) while it enhances the instinct to stalk deals. The only known side-effect is uncontrollable howling if stiffed on a bonus, particularly in conjunction with recession. Also, people who take this supplement are warned to avoid contact with small business and regional accounting firms.

One of the favorite business PEDs I have come across is AntEsse (essentially essence of ant), fabled as the go-to supplement for retirement and estate planning professionals. It is said to greatly enhance the ability of the brain to innately understand the finer points of saving for “winter.” Financial planners taking it are cautioned to avoid dancing and singing, and idleness. Counteracts with Grasshopper Pie.

Another of my favorites is called Flytrapsis, which is derived from the DNA of the Venus Flytrap plant, and touted for its ability to help advertising and marketing executives to snare unsuspecting consumers in a highly decorative but deadly lure of buying what they don’t need. This supplement works well and in low doses for those who specialize in television, but ad purveyors in print and the Internet may require more time and double doses to achieve measureable results.

Everyone needs an edge in today’s competitive environment, even business people, but one worries about the long-term effects. Can you get elected to the Business Hall of Fame if you are suspected of using PEDs? And even if you deny – for years – that you’ve been doping, and even sued people for slander for suggesting that your success is actually the result of banned substances, can you come clean with Oprah, resurrect your reputation and remain a superstar? More importantly, can you keep the money?

What if everyone had to play fair?

Oh deer.