APhA Starts To Engage Me In Dialogue. Then Abruptly Stops.

I gotta admit I was a little shocked when this showed up in my mailbox out of the blue:

Hi Mr. Drugmonkey,

I wanted to see if you'd be interested in an interview opportunity with Kristen Binaso, Senior Director of the American Pharmacists Association,

Um, yes. Yes I would. I haven't been shy about my opinion of APhA, the professional association so ineffective it can't even get all the letters in its name capitalized, and there are few things I would enjoy more than the chance to tear into one of their egghead, self important, ivory tower useless suit types busy "shaping the future of the profession" while the profession dies.

I thought to myself that maybe if you wish hard enough for something you really will get it. The e-mail then continued:

According to the FDA, over 1.2 million people each year suffer from injuriescaused by medication errors. Choosing your pharmacist carefully is crucialto your overall health; but it's an aspect of the health care process that'soften overlooked.

In this interview opportunity Kristen will discuss:
- Why choosing a pharmacist is just as important as a choosing a doctor

- Why it is important to see the same pharmacists and keep accurate, updated medication records

- Important questions every patient should ask their pharmacists

I see. A lamefest. How unexpected from APhA. I bet this was tied in with some sort of campaign to let people know not to keep their medicine in the bathroom medicine cabinet as well. We all know heart attack rates could be cut in half if only people could be convinced not to keep their medicine in the bathroom. APhA doesn't back away from the important issues.

At least, they wouldn't if I got a hold of them.

I emailed the PR hack back and told him I would be delighted to interview the good Ms. Binaso. I was very polite and grown up about it. I really wanted this interview. PR hack writes me back:

Does 7:30am ET work for you?

Here's what we can do: you can interview Kristen over the phone, but we'll tape her live from our studio as you're conducting the interview. Then we'll edit the audio with the footage and produce a Web video of the interview that you can embed on your blog -- or you can use the content to write a post.

My God I was living in some sort of wet dream. Not only would I get a chance to corner APhA about how they are fiddling as the profession burns, but it would be on tape! I was salivating.....literally salivating.

Not for me so much....but for you. Because everything I do is for you guys.

A few hours later I get this from the PR hack:

I'm really sorry, but we're going to have to cancel the interview. I thought we had a free time slot, but there was another commitment I wasn't aware of. Would you still be interested in emailing some questions that we can have Ms. Binaso answer and using the content for a post? Feel free to send me some questions.

Again, really sorry about this.

"I'm really sorry" of course, means in this case: "someone in the office finally got around to actually reading your blog"

Still, I figured I might as well play out the string here. I sent the good Ms. Binaso the following questions:

1) Ms. Binaso, you seem to be in a unique position in our profession, with both your experience at APhA and "in the trenches" of retail pharmacy. As APhA points out, the FDA says over 1.2 million people each year suffer from injuries caused by medication errors. We both agree that the best way to reduce medication errors is to have patient/pharmacist interaction, yet you surely see every time you call another pharmacy during your workday just how much of a challenge simply talking to a pharmacist can be at times. In an era of corporate pharmacy cutbacks, staff cuts, ever increasing workloads, and the constant promise of new technology that claims to increase time available for counselling but never actually seems to deliver more counselling time, what changes would APhA like to see that would move the profession in the direction of more personal interaction?

2) Do you think staffing levels in most retail pharmacies are adequate to provide mandated OBRA counselling on each new prescription? If so what do you see as the major barrier to OBRA compliance and how do we change it?

3) The name of your organization is The American PHARMACISTS Association. What in your opinion are the major concerns of the average retail pharmacist and how is APhA working to address these concerns and advocate for the rank-and-file members of our profession?

Here's a hint as to what kind of an answer I got back:




"Hello darkness my old friend" What an appropriate song, as APhA is the darkness masquerading as the professions friend. What an appropriate picture. Simon and Garfunkel running away in silence from the mighty Drugmonkey. Remember, I didn't start this, it all began with an unsolicited e-mail from them.

Pussies.

Bush Finishes Third In Nobel War Prize Voting.

OSLO, Norway- (Drugmonkey News Service) In the second extraordinary Nobel development involving an American president in less than a week, The Nobel War Prize was awarded not to former president George W. Bush, but will be shared jointly by his nemesis, Osama Bin Ladin and Afganistan's Taliban.

Bush, who started two wars during his first three years in office, was widely expected to win the prize for his efforts to tie the conflict in Iraq with the events of 9/11. Iraq is almost a thousand miles from the base of operations of the terrorists who attacked the United States on that day, and none of the attackers were from that country. Nevertheless, Bush was able to convince a public with unfettered access to these facts that the war was an appropriate response due to a fictional Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" program.

"While the use of propaganda to scare a gullible population into acquiescing to a senseless, pointless, conflict at the cost of over half a million lives is to be admired" Nobel War Prize committee chairman Charles Taylor said in a statement issued from the United Nations prison in The Hauge, where is is currently standing trial for crimes against humanity, "the fact remains that relatively speaking, Bush's opponents in his 'forgotten war' were far more successful at the art of warfare, given the huge gap in training and resources available to them. In the end, I think I can speak for the whole Nobel committee when I say regarding Mr. Bush, 'an "A" for effort, but close only counts in nuclear war"

Neither Mr. Bin Laden nor Mr. Bush, whose father won the Nobel War Prize in 1991, responded to repeated requests for comment. A spokesman for the Taliban cut off the hand of a reporter who reached him in an undisclosed cave in Pakistan's Frontier Province.

Coming in second in this years voting was Vladimir Putin of Russia, whose conflict with the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in 2008 "showed that in this age of war waged ostensibly for grandiose, vague causes, a good old fashioned land dispute could still start the bullets flying"

Nancy Pelosi Singlehandedly Destroys Any Chance Of Healthcare Reform In Our Lifetime.

From this morning's LA Times:

Surrounded by supporters, Hilda Sarkisyan marched into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office on a chilly fall day. As an almost year-long debate over remaking the nation's health care system heads towards the finish line, Hilda wanted to speak with someone in her Congressional Representative's office about the issue.

"I am completely opposed to any more involvement of government in our healthcare, and I want to make sure Nancy Pelosi knows this." said Ms. Sarkisyan. "For me the issue is more than an academic debate. My daughter is very sick, and may need a liver transplant soon, and I can't imagine fighting with an uncaring government run bureaucracy while my daughter fights for her life. I just want to speak with someone to tell them, please stay out of our healthcare."

What she got was something quite different.

Staff members of Pelosi, looking down into the atrium lobby from a balcony above, began heckling her, she said, with one of them giving her "the finger."

Sarkisyan walked out, stunned and hurt.

"They showed me their true colors," she said. "Shame on them."

About a month after the incident, the Sarkisyans received a letter of apology from Pelosi.

"I was very disappointed to learn of the behavior of one of our staff members when you were at my District Office," wrote Ms. Pelosi. "I sincerely regret this individual's offensive and inappropriate action," she continued. "Please know that he did not represent my views or the views of other members of Congress."

Great. That's just fucking great. Can you imagine what the right-wing fucktards like Glenn Beck are gonna do with this? Crap, maybe they're right. If this is how they're gonna treat a mother worried about the health of her critically ill child, maybe these cold hearted government bureaucrats have no business being involved in health care.

Actually, they're definitely right. If you're going to heckle and flip off mothers of seriously ill children, you have no business in the healthcare system. I think most of us can agree on that. Right?

Right?

I just tricked you. Kind of. Substitute "Cigna" for "Nancy Pelosi" and you'll have the real story about what happened.

Oh. And I changed one detail as well. The mother wasn't worried about her seriously ill daughter. She was grieving for her daughter. Who died after Cigna denied coverage for a liver transplant, then changed their minds after intense public pressure a few hours before she passed away.

Just in case you're not quite following me here I'll repeat myself.

Employees of Cigna heckled and flipped off the mother of a dead child who came to talk to them about why she was jacked around when she supposedly had insurance.

If you're going to heckle and flip off mothers of dead children, you have no business in the healthcare system. I think most of us can agree on that. Right?

Right?

The olive in the martini was the last line in the "apology" letter Sarkisyan received from Cigna after the incident:

We deeply empathize with you and wish you peace and comfort in your loss.

"Because empathy and wishes of peace and comfort don't cost us anything" the letter didn't add, but easily could have.

This Was Going To Be A Post About Michael Moore's New Movie. It Is Not.

The film is called Capitalism: A Love Story. It's awesome and you should go see it. That statement will surprise no one who knows me. If he were 100 pounds lighter and I were gay I would marry Michael Moore.

I saw a late showing of the film in the middle of a soul-sucking work weekend, and ended up socializing afterwards, running up a sleep debt I knew would make Sunday morning no fun. Fuck it. The release of a new Michael Moore film is like a holiday for me, and I could handle a sleep debt. Sunday's customers just better not give me any crap.

So naturally there was someone waiting for me to unlock the pharmacy as I drug my seriously sleep-deprived ass towards the happy pill room Sunday morning. I sighed to myself. Then I saw she was crying.

She told me she had been raped the night before, and asked if I sold the Plan B "so I can go home and just make this go away"

Jesus holy shit. Here's the thing. There are people who are trained to deal with these types of situations. I am not one of them. I went to school for 5 years to learn about drugs. This was taking your local community college quarterback and putting him in a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I pulled her over to the counselling area as I heard the phone start to ring. "Of course I can get you the Plan B, but that will only protect you against pregnancy. There are other things to worry about, I can't do anything for you here to help with STD's. You'd need someone with prescribing authority. It would probably be best to go to the emergency room."

She almost visibly winced at the mention of "emergency room" I decided not to play the "preservation of evidence" card. I don't know why. I'M NOT TRAINED IN THESE THINGS!!!!

Was I supposed to call the police? Am I some sort of required reporter? Fuck fuck fuck.....I DON'T KNOW!!!!! I scrambled around in the pocket as Mean Joe Greene bore down to take my head off.

I got the Plan B. I picked the single-pill version. For those of you not in the profession I'll tell you Plan B originally came in a 2 pill pack, with instructions to take one tablet now and one in 12 hours. It was always an open secret, however, that you could just take both tablets at once and not lose any efficacy. So when Plan B lost its patent it came out with a single pill version and got a new patent on that. I knew it would cost her more, but in her mental state I didn't want her to hear one set of instructions from me and see another set printed on the box. I also didn't want her to take one tablet and then flip out for whatever reason and not take the second dose, so the single pill version is what I sold her. I think I completed a forward pass for a few yards with that one, but I'm not really sure.

"I hope you'll still get some medical attention" I said as three phone lines rang and someone was beating on the gate of the drop off window I had yet to open.

"Well, do you think maybe an urgent care?" She asked softly.

"It would definitely better than nothing" I said, and told her how to get to the good one. "It's a little further away, but the staff there is really good" Which was my way of saying I hoped to hell she would avoid the house of quackery that was nearby. "Let me get you their phone number"

Later, I realized that while I was in the phone book, I easily could have found the number for the rape crisis center as well. Goddamn it. Thrown back for a 20 yard sack.

I rang out the Plan B, gave her the paper with the directions and phone number for the urgent care, looked her in the eye and told her it would be OK. I don't know if I'm supposed to say something like that. She said thanks and walked out the door. I have no idea if she went to the urgent care or jumped off a bridge. I'll probably never see her again. The day before I would have told you I've been at this long enough I could handle anything a customer would ever throw at me. Now I was rattled. Totally rattled. My hands were shaking as I finally opened the gate to face the crowd of foaming at the mouth barbarians that had gathered and was now ready to subject me to all the regular retarded shit that goes on in a retail pharmacy. The barbarians would be in a mood fouler than usual because I was not opening on time.

Later that afternoon my District Manager called demanding to know if the monthly controlled substance inventory was going to be finished by the end of the day.

I drank a half a bottle of scotch that night before I fell asleep. That's not an exaggeration.

An Accidental Artistic Lunch

I wondered why they felt the need to call it an "American" Diner as I walked by, seeing as how I was around 500 miles from the nearest international border at the time. I mean, there was really very little doubt as to what country I was in.

"Dammit!! Did I make a wrong turn and end up in Vancouver again? Wait....this kinda looks like it might be Belgium. Oh, hold on, thank God for that little restaurant there with all the flags." Those flags really come in handy when one is trying to figure out which country they are in.

Of course I was being facetious with myself. All those flags were signals that white people food was being served inside. As Sarah Palin taught us during her run to be second in command of this country, white people like to think of themselves as the only real Americans.

That was OK though. because I was in the mood for some onion rings, and nobody does onion rings like the crackers.

I had to chuckle though, when I was finished, looked down, and saw this:

I think I'm going to call it "Palm Beach County Butterfly Ballot, As Seen From Fallujah, Iraq"

Go ahead and tell me the one trying to make sure the sick don't have to make a choice between care and bankruptcy is worse. Go right on ahead and tell me that motherfucker.

I Fear I May Have Set The Expectations For This Post Too High. After All, It Is Just Another Example Of Big Pharma Sucking Pud.

And honestly, if you're anything more than the most casual visitor to my little blog garden, the extent to which Big Pharma sucks pud really shouldn't surprise you by now. You probably know that when you see things like this taken from corporate websites, in this case that of Wyeth (soon to be part of Pfizer):

We bring to the world pharmaceutical and health care products that improve lives and deliver outstanding value to our customers and shareholders.

What is actually meant by the words "improve lives" is "doing things that increase breast cancer rates, and continuing to do them until our shit gets called by real scientists not on the payroll of Big Pharma"

The words "deliver outstanding value to our shareholders," however, mean exactly what they say.

There is a kid somewhere out there in Fargo, North Dakota though, who while I was delivering on the Bill Monning pill counting parade I promised you earlier this month, wrote me a nice comment hoping he would still get the scoop on the Big Pharma ghost writing story I promised you almost 2 months ago.

My turnaround time on these stories would be much shorter if I had some sort of dedicated blog revenue stream. Just sayin.' Anyway, this one's for you North Dakota kid. To the August 2nd New York Times:

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.

The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

But......but......all those scientificy papers said Premarin helped heart disease and dementia....you mean they were wrong? And not only wrong, but teetotally 180 degrees wrong from what the real facts were? Huh.

So.....quick question here. Why was it so easy to develop a "consensus" that Premarin was good for your heart and brain when the exact opposite turned out to be true, and it is so hard to apply the term "consensus" to something like global warming, something that is as true as Vicodin may be habit forming?

Hint. The words "sales....soared to nearly $2 billion" have something to do with it. Because when your goal is to take your sales sailboat in that kind of direction, you'll do things like this:

In 1997, for example, DesignWrite, a medical communications company in Princeton, N.J., proposed to Wyeth a two-year plan that would include the preparation of about 30 articles for publication in medical journals.

The development of an article on the treatment of menopausal hot flashes and night sweats illustrates DesignWrite’s methodology.

Sometime in 2003, a DesignWrite employee wrote a 14-page outline of the article; the author was listed as “TBD” — to be decided. In July 2003, DesignWrite sent the outline to Dr. Gloria Bachmann, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.

Let me just pause here to say Robert Wood Johnson. Wood. Johnson. Huh huh.....Huh huh....

Dr. Bachmann responded in an e-mail message to DesignWrite: “Outline is excellent as written.” In September 2003, DesignWrite e-mailed Dr. Bachmann the first draft of the article. She also pronounced that “excellent” and added, “I only had one correction which I highlighted in red.”

The article, a nearly verbatim copy of the DesignWrite draft, appeared in 2005 in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, with Dr. Bachmann listed as the primary author. It described hormone drugs as the “gold standard” for treating hot flashes and was less enthusiastic about other therapies.

The acknowledgments thanked several medical writers for their “editorial assistance,” not disclosing that those writers worked for DesignWrite, which charged Wyeth $25,000 to generate the article.

The most surprising thing for me here is that the article only went for 25 grand. Wyeth really does know how to provide great value for their shareholders evidently.

Wyeth did have this to say about how they pay people to plant research in respected scientific journals:

A spokesman for Wyeth said that the articles were scientifically accurate and that pharmaceutical companies routinely hired medical writing companies to assist authors in drafting manuscripts.

Let me repeat a paragraph a I quoted above to demonstrate what the words "scientifically accurate" evidently mean to Wyeth:

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

I'd also like to stop here and send a little message to the person who wrote me awhile back and said the federal government "would fuck up a peanut butter sandwich," and point out to him the words "federal study" in the paragraph above. I also want you to notice how the federal study came out in 2002, and how Wyeth was still pushing its junk science three years later in 2005. It would be so wrong for me to wish breast cancer on anyone's mother Mr. Peanut Butter sandwich, but I really think you should stick to your principles here and tell that Mom of yours how free market science says you should totally keep popping a Premarin a day.

Because the federal government just can't do a damn thing right can they?

Except expose bullshit checkbook science.

And run a healthcare plan with higher satisfaction rates and lower administrative costs than anything done by the private sector.

I have a question for the rest of you as well. Those of you who carried Big Pharma's water year after year, telling your customers not to worry, that this whole ta-do was just a figment in some trial lawyers wet dream. Don't you feel used now? Like a big 'ol piece of toilet paper? I know I do. I have a customer who had a mastectomy after taking Premarin for years whom I can barely look in the eye now, and I didn't ghostwrite anything. All I did was trust them.

Never again. Whenever I see that woman come in the store I am reminded never to trust them ever again.

Updated: Post Vacation Report Number 2. There Seemed To Be A Bit Of A Pattern Developing Last Weekend.

So as it turned out I found myself amongst some athletic supporters on the last couple days of my vacation:

Strength. Honor. And very thinly disguised sado-masochistic homosexual pornography.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not really my scene. I decided to leave, but I soon sensed trouble:

I managed to make it out of the arena, but was then faced with this as my primary mode of transportation home:

I swear I am not making any of this up. It's a real taxi company. Associated Taxi. I am not kidding. I actually think it might be fun to come up with some sort of formal definition of "ass taxi." Like if you say to someone, "My God he acted like such as ass taxi" what exactly would that mean?

I walked back to my condo, and will never believe anyone who ever tries to tell me sports are not gay ever again.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Update 9/24- Here's a better look at how non-gay wrestlers are for the commenter who said they couldn't make out the earlier picture:

I also had songs about the ass taxi going through my head pretty much throughout this workday. Little songs that I would write and then could not get out of my head. The most common was a bluesy-type number, think music similar to "Crossroads" by Cream:

You can ride the ass taxi baby/
you can ride it all night long/
I said you can ride the ass taxi baby/
you can ride it allllll night long/
but when you ride my ass taxi baby/
you know you just can't go wrong....

That's what was going through my head as I was filling people's prescriptions. Exactly where the key change should be in my song about the ass taxi.

I've managed to hold on to this job for almost 20 years now. It really would be a good song I think.

Post Vacation Report: I Am Happy To Be Able To Say The Redwoods Are Still Large And Phallic.

Day 1, My Drive Into The Great Wilderness- I stop by Trader Joe's to pick up the necessary supplies for my adventure. Some food, yes, but mostly beer. I spot a "mystery bag" of 12 bottles for 10 bucks and am all over it. About an hour north of the Golden Gate the rain starts. It never lets up. I pull over to call the cabin place to try to let them know I'll be arriving after check in time and discover there is no signal. I am cut off from the electronic world. Alone. On my own. I start to get the uneasy feeling this trip may be more than I bargained for.

Notice how I said I PULLED OVER before attempting to use my cellphone. A sad reflection on our society that such a simple act can put one into the upper 10th percentile of common sense.

The cabin lady is very nice and understanding when I show up. I theorize this type of thing happens all the time and she's just happy I didn't cause an accident trying to contact her that would have blocked the two lane road into the community that is their lifeline. I settle into my cabin, close my eyes, and reach into the mystery beer bag. Kennebunkport Pumpkin Ale. Crap. I always theorized breweries add flavor to their worst beers to try to disguise the fact they suck, and I taste nothing in the "pumpkin ale" that makes me change my mind. Zero stars out of five.

I had high hopes for mystery beer number 2 because I thought it was all 70's retro, and I am nothing if not a 70's retro freak. Then I realized the label said "Bass" and not "Blatz," making this night a beer bust. I read The Onion and go to bed. I knew there was a reason I still subscribed to the paper version of The Onion.

Day 2, The Breaking Of The Legs- The monsoon was over and the sun was out. Things were looking up, because there is a pattern to these trips, and the improved weather would allow the pattern to hold. On the first outing of a hiking trip I consult a hiking guide and throw myself into the most punishing trail I can find. Perhaps because I want to punish myself. Perhaps because burning up all my excess energy at the beginning of the trip serves as a built in regulator for the remainder, I'm not sure. I do know when I saw this it was exactly what I was looking for:

This is the toughest hike in the park! The reward for gaining 3100’ of elevation will be 100 mile views in all directions – at 3379’ total elevation a stunning vantage point to take in the landscape. Hikers are advised to be in good shape before attempting this hike, to leave early in the day, and to take plenty of water.

They weren't kidding about the reward!! Take a look at the view!!

Do you know how redwood trees are able to get so big? Because they live in places where on days when there is not a monsoon, like yesterday, there are days where massive amounts of fog can roll in in a moment's notice. This lets them capture the massive amounts of water they need and not lose much to evaporation. These type of things should be kept in mind before committing one's self to a 14 mile round trip hike up the side of a mountain.

Mystery Beer #1- HB Henninger Premium Bier. Imported from Germany it says. Light and crisp when I always thought German beer had character. I have a feeling this is considered crap beer in Germany which they export because they want to get rid of. That still makes it head and shoulders above the beer-flavored water Anheuser-Busch tries to peddle. Three stars out of five. An extra half star for coming in a proper pint size.

Mystery Beer #2- Heineken. We all know Heiniken. it really is the Anheuser-Busch of Europe, which still beats the hell out of the Anheuser-Busch of the United States. Two and a half stars for coming in a 12 ounce bottle.

Day 3, Never underestimate the power of testosterone- Tired. Zonked. not just my legs which had been broken the day before, which I expected, but no giddyup at all. None. I took my first break half an hour into the day and realized it just wasn't in me. I also noticed the trail was running parallel to the road, which made me wonder why I was doing this. I went back to the car to let it do the hiking for awhile. At the parking lot there were two college age chicks.

They were hot, scantily clad, and had a flat tire.

I am officially adding "learn to change a tire" to my advice to all single men, as this is the second time I've been able to come to the rescue of damsels in distress, and it really isn't that hard of a thing to do. Although now that I think about it, neither time led to sexual intercourse, so why would I add it to the list really. Never mind

I did put in a good 10 miles of trail time after bidding them goodbye. Possibly out of sexual frustration now that I look back on it.

Mystery Beers- Trader Joe's Bohemian Lager, which I think I liked. Fat Weasel Ale, which I definitely remember was too bitter, and Simpler Times Lager, which I don't know, because I drank all three before I started to think about them.

Day 4, The Beard Grows - I start the day by asking myself once again, "Do I want to shave?" and once again the answer is no. Any vacation where you're getting those type of answers is a good vacation.

I make an attempt to find some news on the television while eating breakfast, but all that is available is Fox. A commercial comes on for a place called "The Scooter Store," which has some sort of guarantee to get you a free scooter using Medicare. "How do we do it?" the spokesman for the scooter store asks as he looks into the camera, then answers by saying "it is our strength, our passion." The next shot is of a mobility-impaired senior citizen proudly flying an American flag from the back of his new scooter. I briefly re-think my position on national health care but realize I need to hit the trails instead.

I always thought it was funny to watch the mosquitoes fly around you after you've applied the Deep Woods Off. They'll hover about half an inch or so above your skin, and just stay there, apparently unable to bring themselves in to land. I always wondered what went through their mind:

"So hungry.....and it looks so tasty....but my God.....what is wrong with me??"

Not this little fucker. Sonuvabitch dove right in not five minutes after dousing myself with the stuff. We made a little trade, me and the mosquito. My blood for his life.

I also came across this guy:

If you don't think that's a good picture, you try and hold a camera still after rounding a corner and seeing a skunk's ass pointing at you.

In addition, at the end of the day I did a foot check and found 60% of my toes now covered with active blisters, with more on other various parts of my feet. There comes a time my friends, when every hiking trip should become an auto tour.

Day 5- I say goodbye to the trees with a final drive down The Avenue of the Giants.

I almost said "my trees" there, but you cannot own these trees, despite what some people think:

Who the hell was/is John Scott Douglas? Hell if I know, but I do know this; the trees in the grove named after John Scott Douglas were here long before anyone of his race could even comprehend there might be a place like California in their wildest dreams, and those tree's children will be here long after the last atom in John Scott Douglas' body has been broken down, rearranged, repackaged and scattered throughout the seven continents and beyond.

That is, if the descendants of John Scott Douglas don't get to the trees first. No one can own the California Redwoods, but 90% of them are gone. 2,000 years of life wiped out in less than 100 years of hard logging. We should be so proud of ourselves.

And don't give me any Republican bullshit about how wood has to come from somewhere. You need some wood? Plant some goddamn White Pines. Those things grow like weeds and in 20 years you'll have all the wood you need. It won't, however, be that red color so many seem to want that allows you to distinguish your house as that of a jackass.

I looked in the cabin complex's giftshop before starting the final drive home, saw the things made of redwood and felt ill. I don't expect you to understand, but my friend Katie the Jewgirl told me before I left that if you can't find God in the California Redwoods, than you can't find God, and I now know what she meant. So for you fundamentalist Christian types, imagine they cut up the body of Jesus after they crucified him and made it into little signs that said "wipe your paws" to be sold by the side of the road. It would be something like that.

I did buy something in that giftshop though:

It's a baby redwood. And while I don't live in prime redwood country, it is possible for the little guy to take root here. If I can find him the right spot, he'll have a fighting chance.

Which means I have one more hike on my next day off. To try and find him the right spot. That would make it the best vacation ever.

Back to the grind tomorrow.

You Guys Did Such A Good Job Of Picking My Last Vacation Spot I'm Doing It Again.

Different park, but the same idea. Big trees, many trails, and very.....very few people.

I know this will break some of your hearts, and I don't blame you. I'll offer you the consolation of the "read a random post" feature on the right hand side of the page however. I just clicked on it a few times and realized I had totally forgotten how good some of the shit I've written over the last few years has been. You should try the "read a random post" button often while I'm gone.

I'll see if I can send you a tweet or two while I'm in the land of the giants. Otherwise I'll be back next week sometime.

If I don't get eaten by an elk.

The Intellectual Quality Of Our Opponents On Display Yet Again.

This is how well versed the propaganda pundits on the right are on this issue. Listen to Maria Bartaromo, who has been a television news anchor for over 16 years.

"How come you don't use it [Medicare]? You don't have it. How come you don't have it?"

She was talking to a 45 year old man.

This is what they give us when we look for informed commentary on the issue. News anchors who ask 45 year olds why they are not on the government health plan for which they will not be eligible for 20 years.

I wrote back in June that if this battle was fought on just the facts, we would win in a landslide.

We are losing, and I was right.