So, I'm A Ham Now.

As in a ham radio operator, not a piece of meat. Although I suppose you could argue I'm both.

“WHAT THE HELL DRUGMONKEY!!!! YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST LEAVE US FOR OVER SIX AND A HALF YEARS, COME WALTZING BACK IN HERE AND PRETEND EVERYTHING IS FINE?” says my imaginary fan. Fair enough. I suppose I owe you an explanation, or at least an update.

When we last left off Drugmonkey was a happy independent pharmacy owner, a pharmacy Jesus of sorts, crucified by the chains, resurrected, and sent to pharmacy heaven. A small town where people thanked him for coming there, where occasionally people apologized to ME when their insurance cards didn't work, and where I can set my own staffing levels.

One thing I learned. It is possible to have a sufficiently staffed store and still make money. I have been doing it for almost 10 years now. Chain store peeps, your bosses are fucking you over, which is something I suspect you are well aware of.

At any rate, I've always said happy people make crappy art, and being happy for the most part, I lost the writing bug that used to be a fire in my belly. I've spent my days in pharmacy heaven, running a store the way it should be run, treating my employees the way I would want to be treated, never working later than 6 PM, getting two days off most weeks, and picking up hobbies like putting radio waves in countries thousands of miles away.

Yet here I am, with a bit of a writing bug again. Uh-Oh.

Thing is, even pharmacy heaven can be tiring. I'm tired of Mr. Early Norco. Tired of Ms. Ask You For Something And Not Listen To The Answer. Tired of you not bothering to look at your label and not making an effort to understand it when you do.

Seriously, when you see “0 refills” Why do you act like you don't know what that means? Take a wild guess. What do you think it means Einstein?

Hold on. Just made a contact with Japan. Long story short, it's possible to hook up a radio to your computer and have it make contacts with other radios. Gotta put this in my logbook.

OK I'm back, and I can't take this much longer. I've been behind a pharmacy counter over 30 years now, and it's becoming increasingly obvious it's time for something else. I've been in therapy for chrissakes, and that's not normal. I don't want to be in therapy. I don't want to take meds to try to wring some extra norepinephrine out of my brain so I can face the workday. Even when it's as good as it gets, pharmacy sucks. A statement that will surprise no one who has ever tried it.

And so I'm thinking about selling out. To Rite Aid. Go ahead and laugh. If this deal goes through it'll turn out I've been working for them all along. But the money's good. I remember seeing an interview once with boxing promoter Don King, whose guts were supposedly hated by Mike Tyson, where he was asked if he could ever work with Tyson again. King said something to the effect of “I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MIKE TYSON, MIKE TYSON AND ME CAN HATE EACH OTHER ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK!!!”

It's kinda like that. Rite Aid and me can hate each other all the way to the bank.

So here I am, 53 years old and about to be bought out of pharmacy. It's like I'm out in a boat in the middle of the ocean and can sense the weather is changing. Changing to what I have no idea. But I can't go on like this.

Stay tuned. If you get nothing but silence you'll know it ended well.

But I have a feeling I'll be back.

This One's For The Kids.

Because you need to know what's waiting for you on the other side of a pharmacy degree, and no one else is gonna tell you.

Your professors aren't gonna tell you.

The corporate hacks you interview with aren't gonna tell you.

The American Pharmacists Association isn't gonna tell you. They're there to let you know provider status will create a world where every child gets a puppy and unicorns frolic in the pastures shitting rainbows all day long.

But you need to know. So when I saw this out on the internets I figured I'd put it here where some of you kids would see it. There's not one word in here that surprised me. As a matter of fact, I'd be surprised if you weren't treated to some variation of this if you make the mistake of slinging pills for the corporation. Read it and weep. Then figure out what you're gonna do about it.

This was around the point where back in the bad old days I would have put in some sort of joke about how it was too late for me, but you can still save yourselves.

But it wasn't too late for me. Which I guess means this post isn't just for the kids. I sure as shit didn't have any special entrepreneurial skills  when I set out on my own. I didn't even know what happened to the money after I dropped it off to the community college hack on my way out the door.

Yet here I am am. Three years now and counting. If it's too late for you to find another major I have every reason to believe you could do it too.

No one at CVS probably even read this letter. More people will see it here than at their corporate headquarters. Nothing will change there, but that doesn't mean it has to be this way.

It doesn't. You don't have to accept this.

The letter's long and maybe not of much interest to people outside the profession, but if you're thinking about your major, or if god forbid you're close to accepting a job with one of the chains, you need to read every word.

Then figure out how to keep this from happening to you.

__________________________________________________________________


To Whom It May Concern,

Please accept this letter as notice of my resignation from the position of pharmacist at CVS Health.

As per the terms of my employment contract, I will continue to work for the company for the next 2 weeks, completing my employment on February 26, 2016. If there are any areas in particular you would like me to focus on during my notice period, please let me know. As always, I will continue to give my best effort – I want to leave my team in the best possible situation, and I hope that the new pharmacy manager gets off to a good start.

Although this should be difficult decision to make, I have recently come to recognize that it is really the only decision left, largely due to what I feel is a serious deficit in my immediate supervisor's management abilities. I recognize that she is a strong pharmacist, and I have a lot of respect for her as such, but I have spent the last 3 years under her supervision becoming increasingly frustrated with the state of our district and the way it has been handled. I can no longer keep these feelings of frustration and hopelessness to myself, and will detail some of them below. I hope you will understand my reasons for moving on.


I will start with the broader issues, involving the company as a whole. Let me lead off by saying that I have worked for CVS for 10 years, from intern to pharmacy manager. I have worked in 3 different states, under different management teams, and weathered many storms with and for CVS. I had a colleague, who has about the same tenure, say to me the other day, “I used to recommend that all of my friends try to get jobs here. It was such a good company to work for. Now I tell them to stay far, far away.” I hear this sentiment echoed over and over again throughout the world of retail pharmacy, from those who were previously employed by CVS and from those of us who’ve stuck around, faithfully holding up our ends of the bargain and hoping CVS would see the error in their ways and do the same. The downfall of CVS as a desirable employer began when Tom Ryan retired. His philosophy was always people-driven. He wanted to run a healthcare company, one that took care of and did right by its patients. He wanted us to be able to provide the best possible patient care, and valued our customers as people, not as dollars. He valued his employees as individuals – raises were merit-based and people were recognized for their accomplishments, encouraged, and rewarded.


When Tom Ryan’s reign ended and Larry Merlo took over, it did not take long for their corporate philosophy differences to become apparent at the ground level. Technician hours were slashed; business metrics became the focus over patient satisfaction metrics; employee satisfaction declined and turnover went through the roof; employee benefits were cut, including the extension of the tenure required to achieve an extra week of vacation, stock options, and hiring everyone in at part-time employment to ensure that they didn’t have to be paid health insurance benefits; CVS acquired Caremark (not sure how the FTC allowed this) so that they could force their insurance recipients to use their own pharmacies and as such could lower their service standards to abominable levels, because patients had no choice but to use CVS. They no longer represent what ANYONE went to pharmacy school for, except maybe the paycheck. We are no longer healthcare providers – we have been relegated to being dispensing machines without regard to our own safety or that of our patients.


Now, these corporate changes began several years back. They are not my primary reason for leaving, despite the fact that they are significant. I came to terms with working for one of the corporate giants that was selfishly destroying our society by hurting employees and customers so that the upper echelons of management could bring in money hand over fist. I told myself that it was just the unfortunate way that capitalism in the US has gone, and that it was out of my control. My true reasons for leaving, now, after all this time, are more personal and immediate. Since my prior pharmacy supervisor, Sarah Freytag (the best manager I have ever had the pleasure of working for) moved into a corporate position a few years ago, my district has steadily declined under the management of [pharmacy supervisor name]. I have been underwhelmed with the quality of the management team we’ve had since her departure, and have become increasingly frustrated with the lack of response to the district’s decline.


It starts with respect. My current pharmacy supervisor treats her pharmacists and technicians with zero respect. As pharmacists, we are not even acknowledged as individuals with varying backgrounds and skill sets. Really, I think that it comes down to the fact that she does not spend enough time out in her district or talking to her pharmacists to know us as people, and doesn’t have the slightest inclination as to what we are individually capable of within our roles as retail pharmacists. As an example, a few months back I had text her to let her know that the website was down for our supplier, and I wasn’t able to place an order for the store I was filling in at. Her response was to call the store manager at home (after the order cutoff time had long passed) and ask her to call the store and talk me through how to place an order. I have worked for CVS for nearly 11 years – I have very successfully managed multiple pharmacies, and trained dozens of new technicians in the process. We have been ordering essentially the same way the entire time I’ve worked for the company. I thought to myself, “Does my immediate supervisor really think that I am that ignorant of the functions of my job? Would she really not know that sending an order is something that is well within my comfort zone, and not something that I need someone to talk me through? I can talk someone through just about any procedure in the CVS computer system with my eyes closed.” It really opened my eyes to the true lack of leadership that I was dealing with.


I’ve always felt like [pharmacy supervisor name] didn’t like me. I’ve never understood why, or what I was doing wrong. I’ve never had much feedback, positive or negative. In the 3 years I’ve worked under [pharmacy supervisor name], I’ve never even had the courtesy of having a review (which should be done annually, according to company policy). Last year, I received a very small percentage raise, much below the standard I had seen across my 10 years. I hadn’t had a review, so I checked my online personnel file where the written reviews are stored. I pulled up all of the reviews in there, 1 from Sarah and 2 from [pharmacy supervisor name]. The two from [pharmacy supervisor name] were both blank – all I could find was a rating of “Meets Expectations”. I emailed her to inquire about my raise amount since I had received an average rating, and asked if there was something I should be doing differently to improve my chances of getting a better raise next year. I never got a response.

Finally I called her, and she told me that she didn’t have anything for me to work on, but that my raise was low because my pay was high compared to other pharmacists in the company with the same title and tenure (PT Floater, 10 years of service). So now, my supervisor was telling me that it really didn’t matter what my performance level was or how hard I worked, that I was going to get a menial, ridiculous raise each year regardless, because I had worked very hard to move up earlier in my career and was now situated above some other people who hadn’t worked as hard. This year when I went to fill out my side of my review, my goals that [pharmacy supervisor name] had set for me revolved around “Manager Controlled Profits”, which involves script budgets and payroll management. Last year’s review was in March, and I had been floating since the previous September – the goals she had set for me weren’t even relevant to the job I was in. [pharmacy supervisor name] has so little respect for her pharmacists that she doesn’t even know who they are with respect to what positions they hold under her, and can’t even bother herself with writing out relevant reviews and goals for them.


But the lack of respect goes beyond that. Interns and technicians are essentially abused, and pharmacists are treated as pawns that should have no say or even opinion on their own career paths. I have seen technicians asked to take their day off to drive across town, pick up a cookie for a new pharmacist that was just licensed (and only one or two of the many, mind you) as congratulations, deliver said cookie to the pharmacist, and drive back home, all without pay.

I have seen countless interns on management rotations forced to work in stores as free labor, not to be shown a single thing about how to be an effective manager. I was even told by one intern that she was forced to personally deliver a narcotic prescription to an angry patient’s home – the patient’s regular pharmacy did not have her medication in stock, so the intern had to pick up her prescription hardcopy at the regular store, take it to another store to be filled, then drive it to the customer’s home. The patient was irate and somewhat unstable (I had spent over an hour on the phone with her myself a couple of days prior), and the intern was put in a very uncomfortable position where her personal safety was compromised so that the [pharmacy supervisor name] didn’t have to deal with the situation. Needless to say when [pharmacy supervisor name] asked her if she was interested in working for CVS, the answer was no.


As far as my personal situation goes, I have always been extremely flexible with CVS. I worked full-time until the birth of my daughter 4 years ago, and have since gone back and forth between full- and part- time, floater and pharmacy manager to meet the needs of my district. I have experienced swings from being told there are no hours for me to being asked to go back to full-time a couple of months later, and always taken it in stride and done whatever was asked of me. I have managed “challenged” pharmacies and turned them into “excellent” pharmacies,

I have been told by multiple pharmacy managers that I am the only floater they have ever had that will go above and beyond my daily duties of filling prescriptions to actually help them run their stores, and I have been told by technicians that I am the best boss they’ve ever had. I have a very strong urge to work my hardest and do my best regardless of whose store I’m in, whether the final outcome of how the store is doing is my responsibility or not, and I find my biggest frustration with floating was knowing that if I had more time at a store, I could make a bigger difference. This lead me to recently volunteer to manage a pharmacy that was really struggling, despite the fact that I have opened a small business and have a 4 year-old at home, and really want to be working part-time. I decided that for a while, I could sacrifice my personal needs to help my district succeed.


The back story on the situation at this store needs to be explained, as it is one of the major faults I see in [pharmacy supervisor name] management outlook. Since turnover has been so high under [pharmacy supervisor name], she has developed a habit of hiring the first person that walks in her door, regardless of their abilities as pharmacists or managers. She has also decided that the best way to get a pharmacy manager in a store that is in need is to force someone who doesn’t want the position and/or can’t handle the position to do it anyway. My biggest issue with this is with newly licensed pharmacists who have just graduated from school. They have no experience as a pharmacist, no experience being the one in charge of everything that’s going on that day, no experience handling being pulled in 8 different directions at the same time, and no experience managing people. They are not only being expected to magically become strong, fast pharmacists overnight, but they are expected to do so in very busy stores, and even as pharmacy managers.


In this particular store, 4 technicians were accepted into pharmacy schools at the same time. They were all scheduled to start their programs in August. The pharmacy manager was working on getting new technicians hired to replace them, and the staff pharmacist gave notice that he was moving away. The first terrible decision of a long series of terrible decisions was to, at the same time that the staff pharmacist and all the technicians were leaving, pull the pharmacy manager out and transfer him to another store. This left my store with no leadership, no permanent pharmacist, no technicians, and no one to follow through with the new hires. She decided to promote a staff pharmacist from another store (45 minutes away) and have him commute to my store to be the pharmacy manager, and put a newly licensed pharmacist in as the staff.

At the same time, the pharmacy manager at his original store gave his notice. [pharmacy supervisor name] decided that the best call was to let the transferring pharmacist remain at his original store as the pharmacy manager, and to force the newly licensed pharmacist to be the pharmacy manager at this store, with no steady partner for support. This was one of the worst decisions she could possibly have made, both for the pharmacist and the store.

Our district has plenty of experienced staff pharmacists who are plenty capable of being pharmacy managers. In this situation, I cannot understand why you would not take an experienced pharmacy manager from a slightly slower store and move them to this busy store, take an experienced staff pharmacist and promote them to a pharmacy manager at the slower store, and then take the newly licensed pharmacist and allow her to “get her feet wet” as a staff pharmacist. Dumping a new pharmacist into a management position is never a good idea. Dumping them into a super busy store is never a good idea. Combining the two is a terrible idea. Needless to say, the new pharmacist quit, leaving the store with no regular pharmacists and severely understaffed with technicians. I had been floating there some, and in an effort to keep the new pharmacist (who I had worked with when she was hired as an intern) I volunteered to take over as manager of that pharmacy, thinking that this would allow her to relieve some of her burden and be able to hang in there. I did eventually get put in as pharmacy manager, but not until a couple of weeks after the new pharmacist had left the company and the store continued to struggle, with no support from management.


About the time I was put in as the pharmacy manager at my store, [pharmacy supervisor name] went on maternity leave. I strongly believe that the only reason I was allowed to take the position was that she wasn’t there to say no – she had decided several months back that she would not staff me permanently in a store because she did not want to accommodate my schedule restrictions.

I was told by the district manager and the interim pharmacy supervisor that, when I expressed concerns with the way things had been managed to this point, that, “We’ve been doing things the [pharmacy supervisor name] way for a while now, and it’s obviously not working. Now we’re going to do things my way.” I was under the impression that meant that I would be staying in this store for several months, allowing them time to hire a staff pharmacist for the store, get the technician staffing under control, hire a pharmacy manager, make sure the pharmacy manager was capable of handling a store of this volume, and then make a transition once the store was stabilized.

Unfortunately, as soon as [pharmacy supervisor name] came back from maternity leave, this plan went out the window. In my first conversation with her after she was back, I asked when she could get me transferred into this store permanently, so I could access all of the tools that are only available to pharmacy managers. Her response was, “Why would I transfer you there? You aren’t the pharmacy manager there. You aren’t going to be the pharmacy manager there. We’ve already got someone to replace you, and I just heard back today that he passed his drug test and background check.” Here we are back to respect, and treating people with some basic human decency.

I was shocked. I asked her about my pay, as the pharmacy manager position awards you a $1 per hour increase – she informed me that she would NOT be backdating my pay for the time I had been manager at the pharmacy, because despite the fact that I had power of attorney and was managing the pharmacy, I was not actually the manager there. All of this was completely sprung on me, in a completely tactless and inappropriate way, while I was in the middle of my shift. I felt the entire situation was extremely inappropriate, and I called the district manager. I was told that this was always the plan, despite the fact that one week earlier when she had been in my store, I had mentioned that I heard they had a partner for me, and she had acknowledged that and said she was excited that we were moving in the right direction. She and the interim supervisor had asked me to apply to the internal job posting for the manager position, and even had me spend my personal time writing a resume for the job. There are two options here – they were leading me on, lying to me about their intentions for me, or they lied more recently, informing me that this was always the plan.

Either way, I’m not satisfied with being treated that way. It’s not the decent way to treat anyone, and especially someone who has dedicated their professional life to CVS and volunteered to make personal sacrifices for the betterment of the district.


Now, my career is up in the air, my job in turmoil. No one has bothered to discuss with me what the plan is for my future, where I want to go and what I want to do. My store is in a state of unknown – under my guidance, turnover has stopped and my technicians are once again happy to come to work. We went from running consistently 500-700 scripts past due, to consistently running on time, and even occasionally getting some cleaning and organizing done, despite the fact that we are still understaffed by 60 technician hours a week.

Now, a pharmacist that is new to CVS is being sent in to manage the store. As has been described, throwing unknowns into this store hasn’t been very successful. It’s a tough store. It’s old, small, poorly laid out, and very fast-paced. We have recently grown by about 20% (just in the last few weeks) and have been able to maintain, but the technicians who have been through all of this just a few short months ago are terrified that a new pharmacist will not be able to handle the store and that it will return to how it was. I hope that’s not the case, but to be honest, no one knows.

One interview with someone isn’t going to show you that, and once again we are back to our old management tactics of putting all of our stock in one person to hold it all together. I even volunteered to stay on as the staff pharmacist, feeling that this would bring some stability to the store and that I could be an excellent supporting pharmacist to a new pharmacy manager that is not familiar with CVS’ system and the exact expectations and requirements of the job. This suggestion never even received a response beyond “We’ll talk…” which we never did.


I am not happy to be writing this letter. I had high hopes that a new district manager would bring real change, and that the district would no longer be subjected to the irresponsible and destructive management style that [pharmacy supervisor name] has brought with her.

Despite all of my frustrations, I still struggled with this – my professional career has only ever known CVS. I have made countless friends through this job, in technicians, pharmacists, front store staff, and patients. It’s difficult to walk away. But my hope is lost, my faith is gone. I hope for everyone else’s sake – all of those wonderful people who are still hanging in there, hoping for improvement – that I am wrong and change does come.


Thank you,
Lindsey Hoehn
PharmD

Basking In The Sunshine Of Some Mailbag Love

You are the problem fucktard! I'm a retired and very disabled nurse with MS and can't get the meds that allow me to have any quality of life because of fucking terrorists like you that presume anyone with a CII Rx is a worthless junkie. Fuck you, you snot-nosed brat!

That came in at 8:26 this morning anonymously as a comment to this post about how CVS employees seem to love their job. At 8:28 it was resent under the name "Nurse Ratchet"

Then at 8:30 we had this:

Fuck you, you have no business behind that counter treating ppl who ACTUALLY NEED THEIR MEDS TO HAVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE like criminals...shame on you!!

I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say there might be some other reason the good nurse's pharmacist isn't enthused about getting her business.

Ask your doctor if a tranquilizer dart may be right for you.

From The Mailbag. The Buckeye Board Of Pharmacy Figures It All Out. Way To Go Ohio.

Straight from the inbox. Complete and unedited:

Ever since CVS started their scorched earth policy regarding massive tech cuts the state board has received an increased percentage of complaints regarding prescription mis-fills. As the guardians of public safety(according to their mast head) they had no choice but to tackle this problem head on and come up with the appropriate solution; which of course they did.  From now on every pharmacist licensed in Ohio must now take  at least four(4) hours of continuing education consisting of "patient safety concerns when filling a prescription". 

This should definitely fix the problem of mis-fills.  We never practiced safety!  Who knew?

To be fair, this is only half of their safety solution. The other being the jailing of anyone guilty of making an error. Now that the second part of the plan is finally in place, you can breathe easily consumers of Ohio.

And by "consumers of Ohio" I of course mean "corporate bean counting assholes who are actually responsible for the problem." I doubt you had much worry they were going to inconvenience you in any way in order to keep people from experiencing preventable illness and death, but now you can rest assured you were right.

And to my friends left behind toiling for the chains, I'll say this is just the latest reason you need to get out. You know it as well as I do. I promise you you're not stuck there the way you feel you are. I made it out of that world and deep down.....you know you can too.

It won't get any better.

I Hope Some Doctor Somewhere Who's Written A Prescription For Cambia Reads This Post

Because I have a question for you I seriously would like to have answered.

Why?

Now don't get defensive, I'm sure you have your reasons, and I would honestly like to know what they are. I won't judge you. Think of this as like when a mistake happens in a hospital and the people investigating are more interested in finding out what went wrong than in assigning blame.

Because you made a stupid decision. And I mean that of course in a totally non-judgmental way.

It's diclofenac. I'm going to assume you know this, you're an educated professional and you fully understand diclofenac is one of maybe a dozen NSAIDS out there. Cambia is marketed to treat migraine headache, so the first thing you did when you wrote that prescription was decide that diclofenac was the most suitable option for treating your patient's migraines.

You'll see a bigger push to avoid ORAL diclofenac.  

   Think of it as a "three-strikes" NSAID.  

   Strike one...it increases the risk of cardiac events as much as rofecoxib (Vioxx) or high-dose celecoxib (Celebrex).  

   Strike two...it causes more liver toxicity than most NSAIDs.  

   Strike three...it causes more GI toxicity than celecoxib, etodolac, nabumetone, or meloxicam.  

   Recommend naproxen or ibuprofen if an oral NSAID is needed. 

That came from the Pharmacists Letter. A totally non obscure newsletter mailed to pretty much everyone who knows anything about drugs in this country. There's references in the article if you're interested.

Remember what they said there about ibuprofen also. It'll come up again later.

But it's OK to go with the NSAID that competes for both the highest liver and GI toxicity in its class. There are exceptions to every rule, and there can and will be perfectly good reasons to prescribe diclofenac to certain patients.

Assuming you knew Cambia is simply a form of diclofenac. Nothing more, nothing less. And at 50 milligrams, it's a strength less than that of the strongest tablet.

Hit that migraine hard, doctor.

Here's the thing I really want to know though. The thing that separates Cambia from the diclofenac we all know and love is the dosage form. Cambia is a powder. It's powdered diclofenac. Like diclofenac tablets after you crush them with the back of a spoon. That's what the Cambia is. Pre-crushed diclofenac.

So pulling together what we know so far, when you prescribe Cambia, you have decided to use the NSAID with the highest toxicity profile and that it would be a clinical advantage to have the drug pre-crushed at the factory.

"Yes" I hear you saying, good doctor. "Because of a superior pharmacokinetic profile"

That's a fancy way of saying that a powder should get absorbed faster than a tablet, and while that is certainly intuitive, I'll point out that the makers of Cambia offer no actual proof of that when they would have every incentive to do exactly that should any proof exist.

I'll also point out the existence of liquid ibuprofen, a dosage form that should be the most rapidly absorbed of all, in a drug with fewer cardiac and hepatic side effects.

But you are nothing but a creature of science, right doctor? And your decision to use Cambia would have nothing to do with the fact that at $450 to $500 for nine doses, it just must be better 'cause it costs more than the diclofenac tablets you can find for less than $20. I won't insult you by suggesting that, or that a smokin' hot sales rep is playing you for a tool.

But it's just that, if I don't go with any of those ridiculous explanations, I'm not left with a whole lot, which is why I'm hoping you can help me.

Why did you write that prescription that made you look so stupid? Not that there's anything wrong with being stupid. Unless you're a doctor maybe. Doctors probably should be smart.

Which I guess means I really am judging you.

Dumbass.

Wisdom Teeth Are Proof Of Intelligent Design. Because God Had Every Reason To Give You Too Many Teeth To Fit In Your Mouth.

Not to mention tonsils and the appendix.

Psalm 139:14 -I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Except for the fact that the openings of the esophagus and trachea are too close together. Easy to choke and die that way.

  Matthew 5:48  -You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And cholesterol that can build up in coronary arteries is then somehow an instrument of perfection, even though a guy working for General Motors who came up with a system like that would have been fired.

Hangnails. The fact that a little piece of snot can make it hard to breathe. Lenses in your eye that wear out and make it harder to focus on things up close. I'm on a roll now.

I see god in the fact that my testicles are hanging out there for anyone to take a whack at. A turtle has a friggin' shell over his whole body for chrissakes. Putting a little protection over the boys was too much?

Ever see a leopard with a twisted ankle? Then why the hell are ours made like that?

Menstrual cycles? Really? And tartar that builds up on the last set of teeth you're ever gonna get.

Not to mention my favorite. Who the fuck designed the prostate gland? WHO. THE FUCK. DESIGNED THE PROSTATE GLAND???? Let's take a thing that gets bigger with age and wrap it around the pee tube. THE PEE TUBE! What a great fucking idea. How do you get rid of a good chunk of your body's metabolic waste? YOU PEE IT OUT! How do you regulate the body's osmotic balance? BY BEING ABLE TO PEE OUT EXCESS WATER! WHICH MEANS IT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT TO BE ABLE TO PEE! YET YOU BIBLE THUMPING IDIOTS CLAIM PUTTING SOMETHING THAT'S GONNA SWELL AND GET BIGGER AROUND THE PEE TUBE IS A GRAND IDEA!

WWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYY????????????????????

It's an interesting little catch-22 really. Belief that god made you prefect is evidence in itself of your imperfection. If this is what your little imaginary friend came up with when he went for perfect, I'm kinda glad it's us people who design airplanes.

Here's A Reason Why You Have to Be Reminded That Certain Lives Matter.

Kenneth Foster was no saint. He was once young and dumb and stupid and did some dumb and stupid things. Hung out with bad people. Committed crimes. No one disputes that.

Just like no one disputes that he didn't kill Michael LaHood. No one. Not even the man who prosecuted Foster for LaHood's murder. He freely admits that Foster did not pull the trigger. That he was 80 feet away in his car when his friend gunned LaHood down.

He never got out.

He never pulled the trigger.

He had to ask his friend what happened when his friend came running back to the car.

And he was convicted of murder and sent to Death Row. He came within three hours of being executed. I shit you not.

He was convicted under the Texas "law of parties" which holds that anyone who had any part in a crime can be held responsible for murder if they "should have anticipated" that one of their accomplice's actions would lead to someone's death.

Which means Kenneth Foster was basically set to be put to death for failing to be psychic. Had he not managed to attract the attention of the media he most likely would have been. Norman Evans Green was not so lucky. He was executed in 1999 for his part in a botched robbery. When another man was the actual shooter.

I'm not making any of this up.

Now let's go to Cleveland, where Michael Brelo was accused of firing 49 times through the windshield of a car in which, unsurprisingly, both driver and passenger died. For the last 15 shots  he climbed on top of the hood of the vehicle and was firing inside. This man had accomplices too, who also were firing. A total of 137 bullets were sent the victims way, and no one disputes this man was responsible for 49 of them.

Of course he was charged too. With...voluntary manslaughter. And acquitted. No one disputes he shot at two people 49 times, and he was found not guilty. 

Norman Evans Green pulled no triggers, and he's rotting away today in his grave.

Kenneth Foster pulled no triggers, and is rotting away serving life in prison.

Michael Brelo pulled a trigger 49 times and for all we know could be screwing his wife right now and planning to go out to dinner afterwards.

Now take a wild-ass guess as to the respective races of Foster, Green, and Brelo. And maybe a guess as to what Brelo did for a living. I bet you'll get it.

Now ask yourself why these Black Lives Matter people seem to be so angry. Take a good look deep into yourself and ask that question.

I'm not as confident you'll get that one.

A Bit Of Nazi History And An Insight Into My Mind.

Adolf Hitler came to power through a series of free and fair elections.

He worked his and his Nazi party's way through the German parliamentary system, gradually gaining votes and seats until his was the biggest bloc in the Reichstag, or German parliament.

But he wasn't quite where he wanted to be. There were still people who could legally tell Hitler to piss off, and Hitler didn't like that. Then came the Reichstag fire. Right during the runup to the next set of elections someone went and burned down the Reichstag building.

Now imagine the US Congress burned down right before a presidential election. Let's say it would have happened in 2004, right as W was trying for another term. Can you imagine how the feds would have reacted? Actually you don't have to if you just remember what happened after 9/11. I'm looking at you PATRIOT act, warrantless phone tapping, military detention without trial and Guantanamo.

Now imagine it wasn't W in charge during a time of national crisis but Hitler. You don't have to be a genius to see this Reichstag fire thing came at an awful convenient time for a power hungry fiend looking for a reason to consolidate his rule.

And you don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to speculate as to who might have set that fire.

Which is why every time I hear this song, I always imagine a scene in a Mel Brooks-like "History of The World" type movie. It would be  a kind of dance number thing, with uniformed Nazi's holding torches moving in perfect choreography as they set torch to the last speck of German democracy. The flames go up and the lights go out for Europe.

I can see it it my head. The whole dance number. Every time I hear this song. Tell me it isn't perfect.

I Bestow A Roadmap For APhA to Follow

To: Thomas E. Menighan. CEO, American Pharmacists Association.

RE: Your ongoing public relations disaster.

Tom,

Good Lord. I had no idea you would be so stupid about this.

I admit, when I first read the APhA Foundation's press release announcing the "Bowl of Hygeia" award given to Lloyd Duplantis, I thought it would be fun to sit back and chuckle as you scrambled around to do the right thing. But I never thought you would not know what the right thing was. Seriously, this is 2015, and a man who says the birth control pill leads to an increase in "effeminate men" and homosexuality now has a trophy with your name on it on his mantle.

And you're OK with that? Seriously? I haven't even mentioned his bizzaro theory about how gay Haitians contracted the AIDS virus in Africa and brought it to North America.

This is actually getting painful to watch. Have you noticed it's not just me giving you a hard time anymore? You are getting pummeled in the court of public opinion, and rightfully so.

But I'm here to help. I'm not quite sure why it's up to me to get you out of this mess of your own creation, but no one else seems to be lifting a finger. Thing is, putting all this in your rear view mirror really wouldn't be that hard. Here's your complimentary session with the Drugmonkey consulting service:

1) Make a statement. Now. Making it crystal clear that the views of Lloyd Duplantis do not in any way reflect the values of APhA. That your organization is for equality for all, and stands against all forms of discrimination and ignorant hatred.

2) Put in your legalese about not being responsible for making the decision to give him that award. BUT...follow this with an announcement of a change in your policy that will ensure this will never happen again. What those changes are I'll leave up to you. I can't solve all your problems after all.

3) Make a large donation to an organization that works for the advancement of the LGBT community. And I mean large. More money than you gave the Louisiana Pharmacists Association to award a bigot.

There you go buddy, PR disaster dealt with. I solved your damn situation with about five minutes of thought while I was waiting for my wife to finish brushing her teeth. Now why the hell couldn't you, with your access to the best PR professionals in the country right there in your DC neighborhood, come up with something other than cowering in silence?

Unless...the values of Lloyd Duplantis really do in some way align with those of APhA. I guess that would explain it.

Until you open your mouth Tom, the world will never really know.

Do. Something.

____________


Sign a petition calling  on APhA to do something about their boneheaded move here. 

Words APhA Has Honored. YouTube Edition.

You know, I'm just gonna step aside here, put away all the snark, and let this dramatic reading from the book The American Pharmacists Association chose to plug from the author they chose to honor speak for itself. This guy isn't Lloyd, but he's preaching right out of Lloyd's work.

Before you hit play, remember:

The American Pharmacists Association's Foundation gave this author an award. 

Since this book has been brought to their attention they have done nothing and said nothing. 

Here's a petition where you can ask them to do something about this. 

Without further ado, lets roll the tape.