Talk To Me......

It took the better part of two years into the whole experience, but I finally got around to adding a direct e-mail link to my little blog garden. You got something to say to me? Then click on the "Tell Me What You Think" link on the upper right hand part of the page. Love letters and hate mail equally welcome.

One Picture Shows Why I Hate Right To Life Nutjobs, The Vast Majority Of Whom Are Republicans

Look at it.


This was taken in 1994 during a famine in Sudan. It won a Pulitzer Prize for the photographer, Kevin Carter. Three months later Carter committed suicide. Can't say that I blame him.

If you're in the Bible belt of the USA though, chances are you've never seen this picture. Americans don't have a good record of being able to handle ugly truths. Chances are you've never seen what your tax dollars are doing in Iraq either. If you'd like to, just drop me a line.

More importantly though, if you're an American Bible belt right thinking Jesus lover, you know what kind of life counts and what kind doesn't. The naive among us might think you'd be interested in fighting for that child's life, and the millions just like him that didn't have the good fortune to die close to a camera. Your fight for "life" however, applies to the sperm and the egg, and only to the sperm and the egg. Because that is the way to advance your own personal power, and that's what your fight is really all about. Once the kid is out, they're of no further use to you since mommy is trapped for the next 18 years and now has a huge disadvantage if she wants to do anything like compete for your job. You know it's hard to challenge your position of authority when there are mouths to feed, so sorry slut, no abortion for you, and we're working on stopping the whole contraception thing as well.

And if some of those mouths don't get fed, well, those African babies don't really count anyway do they?

Although your kind makes me sick, I do admire your political savvy. There was a time when being a Republican meant you were probably the main-street banker type of person. A practical, thrifty, plain kinda folk who looked over the ledger at the end of the day through his little round steel rimmed spectacles and knew that spending way more than you took in was a sure fire recipe for disaster.

That pillar of main street is gone now. His party is now run by frothing at the mouth lunatics who run up and down that same street shouting insults at 18 year olds trying to get to the Planned Parenthood clinic. You kill doctors. Because you're pro life. You bomb the Olympics. Because you're pro life. You bomb the clinics. Because you're pro life. Then you take over one of our political parties and claim it's the only one that can fight terrorism.

Maybe you just really like vultures.

To the rest of you: Send a message on Tuesday. Vote. Help stop this country's bleeding.

Grassroots Tales Of Life In Bushland. Or, Two Little Reasons I Hate Republicans.

So the little shit didn't seem as bad as most of the feral child-beasts that run around the store. At one point he was sitting in front of the reading glasses trying them on and checking himself out in the mirror. A 4 year old kid with a mullet trying on some spectacles can be kinda funny to watch actually, but man, it seemed like this little dude had been hanging around the store a long time, and, now that I thought about it, I'm pretty sure I saw him yesterday too.

Then V comes down the aisle. I'm not sure what V's job is, she changes the prices for the things that go on sale or something, not really my concern. When the little boy saw her, and yelled out "mommy!" I had my explanation. V either couldn't find or afford day care for little mullet-head, so she brought him in the store to keep an eye on him while she did her price thing. For eight hours. Putting aside the incredible boredom mullet-head must have felt having to kill all day in a drugstore, obviously giant corpo-pharmacy can't have it's employees bringing their kids to work every day to be turned loose amongst the merchandise. If whatever day-care problem V had wasn't worked out by the time the manager got back from vacation, she would probably have to start staying home. Corpo-pharmacy misses her work and she misses a day's pay. So not having a sane daycare system in place that working-class people can access makes sense how exactly?

Then there's J. She's a pharmacy tech that started a few months ago. J and I worked together a few years back at another corpo-pharmacy chain. She was an OK tech, a little annoying, but adequate enough to get the job done. When she applied to work at our store she said that she had to take some time off to take care of her dying father. Federal law requires a company to offer at least an equivalent position to an employee who takes a leave under these kind of circumstances, and they did, 20 miles away. J doesn't have a car. She does have an autistic child, and now that she had a new job, she had a 6 month waiting period to be covered under our health plan.

J had issues. Those issues, however, were being taken care of with a dose of Effexor, a little lithium, topped off with some Depakote and an occasional sprinkle or two of clonazepam. You never would have known about the issues if she had been able to afford to keep buying her meds. She thought she could make it 6 months without the medicines she couldn't buy. She was wrong. I watched her slowly deteriorate until one night she became so unhinged I sent her to the back to pretend to work on some computer training crap. Couldn't send her home, no car. I kept going back to check on her and begged her to just let me lend her the money to buy her damn medicine for the month, but by this point she was so out of it she couldn't see anything was wrong. They let her go the next day, turned loose on society with all the demons in her head now out of the bottle and raging in full force. The good news is that now that she is unemployed and unemployable, she'll be able to qualify for public assistance, which means that surely she'll soon get that car she needs. Probably a Lexus. Just ask any white-boy pharmacist son of privilege and he'll never hesitate to tell you all about the welfare people he's seen driving to his store in a Lexus. Then ask him to name one of the people. He'll probably get quiet at that point. Anyway, now that J will be on welfare, feel free to hate her. I know how you upper middle class people love to feel better about yourself by hating the people on welfare.

So because of this dog-eat-dog, kick down/kiss up society that Reagan and his spawn have built for us corpo-pharmacy can't find people to do needed work and people who want to work have to stay home to take care of their children and fight the battles raging in their skulls. Thing is, these are just two little reflections of what we've become. There are other, bigger ones. You probably don't need me to tell you about a place called Iraq.

The election is Tuesday. Do something to help stop this country's bleeding.

Tonight's Immaturity Moment.......

Headline from space.com:


Uranus Has a Dark Spot


Huh huh..huh huh....huh huh.....your anus....huh huh.....dark spot.

Doctor's Mistakes Can Kill You, Except When They're Trying To Kill You.

Loyal readers of my little blog garden already know why lethal injection, as currently practiced, is an incredibly fucked up way to kill someone. The state of Missouri evidently thought that it wasn't quite fucked up enough. From News of the Weird:

In June, federal judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. ordered Missouri to suspend executions until substantial changes are made in its procedures, including specifying exactly which lethal drugs are to be used and in what quantity. Gaitan also pointed out that the doctor overseeing the state's executions is dyslexic and may inadvertently be transposing the dosage numbers.

Nothing to add here. This one stands on it's own.

Real Words Spoken By A Real Customer.

UMMM......YEAH.......I TAKE ADDERALL........AND.......UH.......KLONOPIN.......AND......VICODIN..... TAKE THE VICODIN BECAUSE IT HELPS ME CONCENTRATE.......AND THIS HERE'S A PRESCRIPTION FOR PROZAC. MY DOCTOR SAID IT WOULD HELP GROW BRAIN CELLS. IS THAT RIGHT?????

Oh severely misguided customer, you have no idea how sincerely... how deeply....how with every last bit of a bit of my very soul I wish that Prozac grew brain cells. I would give it away for free. I would put it in the water. I would bake it in bread. I would saturate the atmosphere with nebulized Prozac if only it were so. My dear sir, you and I, we're not so different, we both long for something........anything, that will allow your brain grow out of it's current sorry state. What a wonderful dream to have.....

Until that day comes my good man, might I suggest you at least stop killing the brain cells you do have. I swear I could pick out the particular brand of gin that was lending it's aroma to your breath. I'm not sure if that says more about your love of alcohol or mine.

Quick Hit Of Customer Wisdom To End The Day

Me: Do you have any allergies to medicines you know of?

Moron: Oh, pretty much all of them. I don't really like drugs.

Pretty much all of them. I'll make a note of that in your chart.

Sweet sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet scotch.............

CVS Is Buying Caremark. Which Is Important For Some Reason.

Big news in the high finance/big business drug world these last few days, and I know you're all excited about it. I'm talking, of course, about the upcoming merger of CVS, the nation's second largest drug chain by sales, and Caremark, one of the "Big 3" in the prescription claim denial business. Knowing that this is a story that you, my loyal readers, simply cannot get enough of, I managed to score an exclusive interview with Edwin M. Crawford, current chairman, chief and president of Caremark, who is set to become chairman of the new company, to be known as CVS/Caremark Corporation. How did I manage to land an interview with a titan of American business you may ask? Because I'm the Drugnazi, and people fear me, that's how.

Crawford started the interview by droning on and on about "synergies" and "redundant operations" of the two companies that could be combined or something to save money. I think he said something like $400 million, but to be honest, he was being kinda boring, and the pen I brought with me to the interview wasn't working, so I couldn't really take any notes. Finally I asked Crawford if he had a pen I could borrow, and I asked him about what we at the store level, both pharmacists and customers, could expect from the new company. Crawford seemed pretty excited about some of the initiatives he had in mind for the new CVS/Caremark:

"Our new company will be lean and efficient" Crawford said. "and we would like our partners, particularly independent pharmacies, to join us in this era where every dollar counts, where every penny must be maximized." Crawford then went on to explain the details of the new "dollar wise, penny smart" program to be unveiled next month. "for every prescription our independent pharmacy partners fill for our cardholders, we will reimburse them the cost of the med plus one shiny new penny, these pennies will be straight from the mint, to show the pharmacies in our network how much we care"

Crawford added that prescriptions that require prior authorization would be reimbursed with a crisp new dollar bill. "The crispest fucking dollar bill you will ever see" he emphasized.

"There will also be some changes in the cards our members will present to you." said Crawford. "Why waste time and money on a card that has such useless information that it is of little if any use to you when you're attempting to file a claim? That's not how the new CVS/Caremark is gonna operate. Our new, improved card will be totally blank, which our market studies have shown actually leads to a higher percentage of paid claims than the current ID cards carried by our members. Plus, since there is no need for ink, they are cheaper to produce"

Another change we're sure to notice is when those cards don't work. "We're gonna quit bullshitting you" said Crawford. "Starting tomorrow, the 'help desk' is the 'hold desk.' Write that down" he said with an increasing air of giddiness. "We also plan on using some of the money we save in streamlining our two companies to hire people whose exclusive job it is to change the voice mail options every five minutes, with bonuses paid every time they can do it in the middle of your call"

"Yeah, this is gonna be a lot of fun" Crawford said at the conclusion of our talk. He then lit a cigar with a hundred dollar bill and made a call to the local Walgreens to ask if they had Sir Walter Raleigh in a can.

Read a real news story about the CVS/Caremark merger here

I'm Tired Of Getting Outsmarted By Republicans.

I can't fucking believe this.

After almost 6 years of the dangerous incompetence of president monkey-boy and his party of little bitch-men, it was looking like the American people were about to get their head out of their collective rectum. The polls were giving every indication that there was going to be a can of whoop-ass opened next Tuesday on those blue suit wearing Republican cavemen. Just when it looked like our side might finally win one, they reach into their bag of dirty tricks and pull this out.

I don't care if there are enough voting machines or not, a split election day is bullshit.

Of course the bastards fixed it so Republicans get to vote on Wednesday. That way they'll know the exact turnout figures for all the Democrats that voted on Tuesday, giving them the advantage of being able to work all day long when it's their turn, on Wednesday, to get out their people until they know they have those numbers beat. Maybe they really are smarter. The only good part is that at least I won't have to look at any Republicans when I'm in line to vote, unless they're being told to come back the next day. Maybe I'll hang outside the polling station for awhile on Tuesday and make fun of Republicans who never got the memo that their day to vote is Wednesday.

We've only got one shot. We have to make sure that when it's the Democrats day to vote, on Tuesday, that so goddamn many of us show up that even if every last one of them shows up on the Republican day to vote, Wednesday, it won't be enough. They think they've outsmarted us. Let's not prove them right.

The Neck Stretching Mystery Solved.

You know, I've only seen one sex bondage video in my life, so I remember it pretty well, and I'm just a whisker short of positive that this picture is from a scene in that film. Who knew that the um...actress...was really just suffering from back pain?

Thanks to the reader who sent it in, & to the others who wrote in to teach the drugnazi something new.