Stupid Worm.

Sorting through the week's junk mail at the store I came across this actual ad for an actual drug:

Albenza is a med used in the treatment of tapeworms. It's like poison for worms. Which leads me to just one question:

What kind of worm agrees to be in an ad for something that's designed to kill it? And why does he look so happy? If I were that worm I'd be all like "OH MOTHER OF MERCY PLEASE DON'T!! I ONLY WANTED WHAT EVERY WORM WANTS... A DECENT LIFE, A LITTLE INTESTINAL BLOOD AND AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MY CHILDREN!! I'M BEGGING YOU.....oh god......."

Or at the very least I'd be a little pissed off. I think this worm has serious issues.

You don't suppose they tricked the worm do you? Made the Albenza taste like some sort of yummy worm food  and then killed the worm the way Bill Clinton executed someone so brain damaged he saved part of his last meal for later? 

The worm being retarded would make some sense.

Or maybe they're saying Albenza is a piece of crap that claims to kill worms but just leaves them contented and happy.

Something really isn't right here.

A Special Message For All My Conservative Friends.

So...we all know what happened today, and we all know that no matter where you stood on the healthcare issue, this Supreme Court ruling will be one of the most significant in our lifetime.

Which is why you cared so much. Which is why you fought so hard. I get it. I know exactly what it feels like to care so much about an issue that is literally life and death and to come up on the losing side. I have felt the pain and frustration that you feel today. Which is why I'd like to take this opportunity, on this historic day, when the wounds of such a decisive policy battle are still fresh, to reach out and........

KICK YOU WHEN YOU'RE DOWN!!!!!!!!! KICK KICK KICK KICK!!!!!! HOW'S IT FEEL????? TELL ME WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSE MOTHA FUCKAS!!!!!

In addittion.....

BWWWWWWAAAAAAAHAHHHAAAAHAHHAAAHHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE PLAN THAT ORIGINATED WITH YOUR PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE WAS CONFIRMED AS CONSTITUTIONAL!!! DON'T LIKE IT? YOUR GUY STARTED IT!!!!!! BBBBBBWWWWWAAAAAHHHHAAAHHHHAAHHHHAAAAHHHAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Let's see.... where was I? Oh yes.....some crap about us both caring about our country and good people with good intentions on both sides of the issue.....blah blah blah.....

Except, when I hear you cheer for the death of the uninsured, I don't think your intentions are good.

Which makes this day just a little more special.

You lose.

Ha ha.

This One Goes Out To Pexeva, To Paxil CR, And Vusion Ointment As Well.

To Intermezzo, Oracea, Xerese, and of course the granddaddy of them all, Doryx. The list is endless really, and not getting any shorter.

Saw it on TV/
Asked my doc if it's for me/
Now my wallet's emp-tee/
I've got a..... 

From The "You Can't Make This Up" File

We go to the website of Democracy Now!, which I've told you before you should be checking every day:

The House Judiciary Committee has voted to reauthorize sweeping warrantless spying powers that are due to expire at year’s end. The FISA Amendments Act would allow the government to continue the Bush-era practice of monitoring U.S. residents’ phone calls and emails without a warrant, so long as one of the parties in the communication is outside the United States. The Senate Intelligence Committee passed a similar measure last month....

...The National Security Agency has refused to disclose how many Americans have been monitored under the surveillance program on the grounds that doing so would violate their privacy. The NSA made the assertion in a response to a request from Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. In a letter, the NSA’s inspector general told the senators that to answer how many Americans have been spied on "would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons."

I think I'm good here in trusting you'll be able to figure out the irony for yourselves. Goodnight and god help us all.

Has It Come To This?

Really, has it come to the point where...

......we have to warn people that OxyContin tablets are not the size of your head or else someone might get sued? 

"You know Bob, I like the message here, the people over at Purdue Pharma like it, but....."

"Yes?"

"It's just that BillyJo Radley vs. CVS did set a precedent that exaggerating the size of an OxyContin tablet can leave a corporation liable for damages"  

Christ on a cracker the more I think about this the more annoyed I get. I'm going to bed. 

So, They Probably Won't Change Their Name.

But they are getting their bullshit called. There's a petition on change.org calling on The American Pharmacists Association to take the word "Pharmacists" out of their name, and in my dream world, every person in the pharmacy universe would sign it.

Because then APhA would have a lot of explaining to do. As to why so many of the people whose interests they claim to represent are telling them to get lost. They've ignored us and what we care about for at least 20 years now, and to see them do this explaining would be golden. Absolutely golden.

You know it and I know it. Whatever The American Pharmacists Association is, they are not an organization that represents the interests of actual pharmacists.

Let them know. Make them listen. 

I Think If I Had It To Do Over Again.....

.....I'd be a weatherman. Not the goofy guy on TV who seems to get more and more minutes of the local newscast every year, I mean the dude who runs the numbers or looks at the charts or sticks his finger in the air or whatever it is they do to come up with the chance of rain tomorrow. A meteorologist. That's what I'm talking about.

 I'd sit back in my office, with no people around, clack on the computer for a little bit until lunch, look at some maps, think it over some, pick up the phone and ask my buddy 500 miles to the west if its raining there, then issue my pronouncements. In case you missed the advantages of this over my current job, I'll go over them again:

1) sit

2) no people around

3) lunch

4) the ability to think it over before being required to give an answer.

I would also finally learn the difference between partly cloudy and mostly sunny. This has bothered me for years.

Not to mention I would have a much larger margin of error than I have now. I'd be all like, "Hey, I said 60% chance of rain. That means there was a 40% percent chance it wasn't gonna rain, so really, you can't prove if I was wrong or not."

I see no downside to this, other than having to come up with enough ways to say "60% chance of rain" to fill up 15 minutes of a half hour newscast.

I wonder if it's too late to go to weather school.

A Thought About The Budget Deficit I Bet Hasn't Crossed Your Mind.

I don't mean the claim by my Republican friends that federal spending under President Obama is out of control and increasing wildly. That is an outright lie that is easily enough debunked elsewhere. Almost anywhere really.

What I'm talking about are interest rates. Specifically, the rates the federal government pays to borrow money. As of the close of markets Friday, the going rate on a 10-year treasury bond was 1.47% 

Now throw this into your fact blender and shake it up. The inflation rate last year was 3.16%. Over the last 10 years it's averaged 2.43% You see where I'm going with this? Probably not. I'll spell it out for you.

Give just a quick glance to those numbers, and you'll see that the Federal Government can borrow a chunk of change, and be obligated to pay it back over 10 years in dollars that will be worth less than those it borrowed, even after interest payments. 

Which means the Feds are currently making a profit by borrowing money for 10 years. Wish I could pull off a trick like that. If it weren't for the fact they would just blow most of the cash on stupid army shit, I'd say the government isn't borrowing nearly enough.

Something Of Interest To Every Walgreen's Pharmacist Wading Through CVS Voice Mail Hell Right Now Trying To Get To A Person

Because you may think it's over, after you've pressed 3 for pharmacy, then 1 for pharmacy, then listened to that weird noise that sounds like someone drowning and a few minutes of sleepy-time classical music before finally getting through to a human. Nope. You know a pharmacist is never the first human you get. So you go back on hold and wait some more. But when you hear that second voice you probably think for sure it's almost over. Nope. You now are only at the beginning of a procedure, according to this CVS email the tooth fairy happened to leave under my pillow this morning:

Just Walgreen's though. Evidently they couldn't care less if they're losing a prescription to anyone else.

If I worked for Walgreen's I'd be really pissed right about now.

Jenny McCarthy Announces Wedding Plans.

ATLANTA, GA- In a joint appearance broadcast this afternoon on the E! network, former Playboy model and actress Jenny McCarthy announced her engagement to SMPX0001:CDCGA, one of two remaining smallpox viruses left on the planet, confirming what celebrity watchers, paparazzi, and almost every doctor and medical researcher on earth had long suspected, that Ms. McCarthy is wedded to the idea of deadly communicable diseases.

"I've been love with Jennifer ever since I first saw her rail against the medical-industrial complex responsible for the scourge that is vaccination" said the virus, believed to be responsible for as many as 300,000,000 deaths in the 20th century. "It's all true. For the love of God, please believe her and keep your children away from these shots of death"

Ms. McCarthy, famous for taking her clothes off and then posing for pictures as well as various parts on television shows, somehow became an expert on vaccine safety. No one's quite sure how. She is the mother of a son with autism that she asserts was caused by childhood immunizations, but an exhaustive search of scientific research papers and medical journals revealed not a single article written by her on the subject.

Not even in The Lancet. And The Lancet sucks.

Commenting on the upcoming exchange of vows, E! entertainment editor Elania Coswell speculated the move would be a boon to the career of the once madly ubiquitous virus. "Like a lot of once popular over the hill performers, SMPX0001:CDCGA is now desperate for any exposure he can get. Kind of like Chevy Chase. How fortunate for him that he found someone whose interests and life goals so closely match his own."

It is widely speculated that McCarthy's influence over vast numbers of people's parenting decisions has something to do with her appearance on WWF's WrestleMania XI and the size of the American education budget.

Looking on fawningly as the smallpox virus addressed the crowd of reporters, Ms. McCarthy later said the couple had plans for a new project.

"Every year since I first spoke up on this issue an average of 178 people have died from vaccine preventable illnesses in this country" she said. "I hope SMPX0001:CDCGA and I can spend some time addressing this problem."

"Oh yeah" Added the happy soon to be groom."Trust me, if I get my way, those numbers will change. Now how about seeing who you can blow to get me out of this lab baby?"

Ms. McCarthy then psychobabbled something about thimerosal, a preservative removed from almost all vaccines in 1999 with no resulting decrease in autism cases.

Most reporters wrote down every word she said.