Sometimes It Can Take You An Entire Weekend To Recover From A Black Friday Retailing Experience. Sometimes You're Just Lazy And Don't Post.

Let's not kid ourselves. It's not called, as the mainstream media will tell you, "Black Friday" because that's the day retailers finally break into profitability for the year. It's called Black Friday because of the foaming at the mouth barbarians who'll gather in a store's parking lot at 3 in the morning whipped into a frenzy for a chance to participate in that ultimate of sacraments in American culture, buying stuff. It's kinda like this country's running of the bulls. Even down to the occasional casualty.

That's not to say retailers don't make money on this day however, and my employer wanted in on the action. They decided to swing the doors to the store open at 7AM so they could catch a few of the blizzard of dollars that were sure to be flying around that day. Thankfully, prescriptions as a rule are not included in the Black Friday madness, so I was spared the crack of dawn opening experience. Store sources reported it went like this:

Store manager shows up.

Homeless dude sees store manager. "Bob! what are you doing here??"

Bob: "Opening up...we're starting things a little early today"

Homeless Dude: "Sweet!!!!!"

Homeless dude then proceeds to buy a 40 ounce Miller Genuine Draft. This was the grand total of the store's first hour of sales. If you were saying to yourself as you were reading that opening paragraph, "Um...I'm not sure how the Brut cologne you buy at the drugstore for the person in Accounts Receivable you barely know but whose name you drew in the office Secret Santa pool fits into the whole Black Friday paradigm," you have a bit more sense than the executives who run the corpro-pharmacy that employs me. Although we did have one very satisfied customer that morning. I dunno. Maybe those executives are crazy like a fox.

My day, however, started with immigration issues. It seems the manager used some of his early morning free time to catch up on paperwork, and something was evidently amiss with my I-9 form, which is used to document an employee's eligibility to work in this country. I have been with my employer for over 3½ years now, but this day I was apparently facing possible deportation. I almost jumped for joy at my good fortune. I wondered if they might send me to Canada, my favorite country in the world, whose Conservative Party includes a major section on environmental protection in its election platform.

No such luck. They just needed a copy of my passport. Which I will someday use to immigrate to Canada.

Within the first 15 minutes I fielded a phone call from someone desperate to get a hold of some Rogaine. I almost forgot they still sold that stuff. From the tone of of his voice, I suspect he may have been the guy who told me over 4 years ago about an alternate Rogaine use, which involves rubbing it on your willie as a Viagra alternative. I have no idea if it works, but please do not start rubbing Rogaine on your penis. Just don't.

The first customer of the day said he didn't have a lot of time to wait for his prescription, so he just wanted 4 tablets. Obviously, he was hip to the real reason your prescription takes so long to fill. The fact we painstakingly hand-inspect every tablet before it goes into your vial. Despite the customers request we cut corners, I refused to compromise my commitment to quality. Out of the 180 tablets in his prescription, two were rejected for an imprint slightly off-center, and one more for a color variation not in keeping with the other tablets. I'm sure an hour later when the jackass picked up his prescription, he appreciated its flawless nature.

"Coffee......coffee.......coffee....." chanted another customer on the way to the bathroom. I wasn't sure if he was interested in making a purchase or a deposit.

Doctor: "ARE YOU THE PHARMACIST???!!!"

Me: "Yes"

Doctor: "I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CHANGED THE LABEL DIRECTIONS ON MY PATIENTS PRESCRIPTION!!!!!"

Me: "You mean the warning not to take more than 6 tablets in 24 hours? The maximum dose of acetaminophen is 4 grams a day. You knew that, right?"

Doctor: Silence.

Me: "There's 650 milligrams of acetaminophen in a Darvocet tablet. Your instructions were 1 to 2 tablets every 3 to 4 hours. Why don't you do the math? Were you calling to thank me? Because I bet your patients liver and your malpractice insurance company sure do."

The doctor hung up on me. I'm not kidding. I suppose I could have been less of a dick about it. But so could he.

A customer walked by chanting "Safeway.com......safeway.com." I do not work at Safeway. The customer was wearing a sweatshirt that said "Canada," prompting me to re-evaluate my immigration plans.

By the way, why does every single prescription drug stock bottle have a "Usual Adult Dose" section on the label, and then say "see full prescribing information?" Why do they even pretend like they're gonna tell you? Pondering the point of this took up most of the rest of the day's free time. The ink, the time of the graphic designer who has to work this into the label. WHEN WE ALL KNOW THEY'RE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU UNLESS YOU READ THE PACKAGE INSERT! I didn't even ask what was going on when I looked over and saw my tech giving what looked like CPR to the credit card signature device. Not mouth to mouth, more like the chest pounding stuff. I couldn't be bothered. I want to know why they pretend like they're gonna tell us the usual adult dose and then never do.

Only the last question of the day snapped me out of it. "Drugmonkey, am I allowed to take my lab coat home and wash it?" asked the new clerk. The new clerk has been working here for about 6 months now. I thought about fucking with him and saying no, but I figured the coat might start to smell before much longer. Like the early morning homeless dude that I would be willing to bet was getting ready to take advantage of our store's late night seasonal closing time to get another 40 or two.

Fortunately for me, I still had some leftover turkey to add a nice tryptophan buzz to that provided by my usual tumbler of scotch. Unfortunately the tryptophan buzz is not permanent.

Goodnight.

Tomorrow I'm Supposed To Be Thankful Because Some Indians Who Later All Got Killed Didn't Let Some Pilgrims Starve. OK, I'm Down With That.

I'm thankful that I'm free to give my body a break from the river of scotch I pour down my throat every night by lighting up a joint every once in awhile.

Oh, whoops. I forgot for a second there I'm not.

But I am thankful I can leave my stress behind and am free to take a little vacation to a tropical wonderland such as Cuba.

Except I'm not. And not because the Cubans won't let me in.

Wow. Look how cynical I am. Alright. Lemmie try again.

I guess I'm thankful that kid really wasn't in the balloon.

And I'm thankful I'm not a turkey.

Go eat now.

Damn You Cincinnati Bengals.

It started with a headline text-messaged to my phone from The Onion, America's Finest News Source:

Bengals' Uniforms No Longer Look Stupid Now That Team Is Good

I was stunned. Could it be? Not the uniforms not looking stupid. The Bengals' uniforms are totally the gayest in a sports league whose whole premise is not being able to admit you're gay.

Tight end? Wide receiver? I rest my case.

But....the Bengals....could they be.......good? I didn't want to check. I had to check. My world may have been completely upended without my knowledge in the years since I grew up and stopped following sports.

Watching the Bengals every week was one of the last sporting rituals I held onto. For no other reason than they were so goddamn entertaining. It was so cute how they would go out on the field with the real teams and get pummeled, just pummeled, and then pretend like everything was really just fine.

"Well I know we had a rough year, but we do have the first round draft pick, and we're confident Ki-Jana Carter will provide just the spark we need to get back on the winning path"

The Bengals I knew sucked. Totally, completely, thoroughly sucked. They had to be the worst sports franchise of the 90's, and you could make an argument that the Clinton-era Bengals were the worst sports team ever. And everyone knew it, except for the man who owned the Bengals, Mike Brown. He seriously seemed to believe his own bullshit and I seriously think he thought himself a great football man. It was awesome. At the time I was working for a grocery store chain that was slowly going bankrupt. And everyone knew it except for the CEO of the company:

"Well I know we had a rough year, but we're confident that our new 200% produce freshness guarantee will provide just the spark we need to return to profitability"

Ki-Jana Carter tore his anterior cruciate ligament the third time he ever touched a football as a professional, and people soon realized they could turn a profit at our grocery chain by buying produce and then claiming it was not fresh. I grew to feel as if I were actually a Bengal myself, that somehow it was part of the rhythm of nature that if the Bengals ever happened to enter the fourth quarter of a game having scored more points than their opponent, you could rest assured that something like a deflected forward pass off the intended receivers hands and into those of a member of the other team, a fumbled snap from center to quarterback, or a string of penalties would ensure they would not have the lead when the game ended.

They always kept trying though, kinda like the way I kept trying to do the things at work that they told me I would be doing in pharmacy school. The Bengals would mount an impressive drive for awhile and then miss a field goal. I would catch a drug interaction and then the alternative would require a prior authorization. Once or twice a year though, bless their little hearts, the Bengals would manage to score more points than their opponents, just like how once or twice a year I would actually have a chance to provide pharmaceutical-based help to one of my customers. Every once in awhile me and the Cincinnati Bengals would win one. I almost sewed tiger stripes onto my lab coat.

But now.....that metaphor of my life, the Cincinnati Bengals, are in first place in their division. I had to check. They have moved on.

Or maybe things are just looking up for me.....

The Ugly Sting Of Homophobia Enters My Life. Unjustly.

"Handing out a 30 days supply of Norco every 20 days time after time is a good way for me to lose my license. I'm sorry, I can't fill it sir"

That's the most effective line in my arsenal most days. Lets the drug seeker know it's not personal. It doesn't work all the time though, and it wasn't working this time. Dude wanted his Norco.

Ho-hum. Just another day in the happy pill room for me. Until I got the look a few seconds later. I've been at this long enough that I've learned a lot about what people are saying to me with their eyes.

The customer wasn't Freddy Mercury spectacularly gay, or Rock Hudson chiseled jaw handsome kinda gay, but he definitely would be a big time bogey on your gaydar. More David Sedaris sissy-boy kinda gay I would say. I'm sure he has taken a lot of crap in his life for being a sissy boy, and what his eyes were saying to me was that this was more of the same. "Redneck straight boy gets off making life hard for the faggot, huh?" That's what shot out of his optic nerves. Clear as a bell.

I've always said give most people enough time and they will give you a perfectly legitimate reason to hate them, making prejudice unnecessary, and he was taking crap from me for a perfectly legitimate reason, but since he was communicating with his eyes and not his mouth, I would never have a chance to set the record straight.

Wait. I don't want to set anything straight. Because I'm not a bigot. Honest. He can be as non straight as he wants and it's none of my business. How to make that clear though? That was my problem.

"Look...this isn't because you're gay, OK?" I'm sure that would have gone over well.

But I'm not a redneck....seriously.... I have all sorts of gay friends. I listen to NPR. I read the New York Times and have an appreciation for Ricard Wagner and John Coltrane. Um... wait. Maybe Wagner wasn't the best example there, and I don't really have any gay friends. I actually never even met anyone out of the closet until I moved to California, but I'm not a redneck. Anymore.

It's just so unfair. I would totally rather the guy put some penis in his mouth instead of all that extra Norco, but it doesn't matter. In his eyes I am now an accused, tried, and convicted homophobe. I might have to end up marrying him if it ever becomes legal. Just to clear my name.

I hope he's off the narcotics by then.

A Solution To The Health Care Crisis For One Lucky Lady.

"So I might have to get married" the customer concluded. Fortunately she was only talking to me, and not about me. She's a nice enough lady, but not really my type. Not to mention she's newly pregnant, and newly without insurance she was unable to afford despite being the owner of a small business that provided her with too much income for state assistance. All she knew was that in 9 months there were gonna be some monster hospital bills coming her way and she would have no way to pay them. Marrying the sperm donor seemed to be the only viable solution.

Nothing like building a lifetime commitment on a strong foundation of love.

The conversation got me to thinking though. I mean, I have a great health insurance plan. It's through a union by the way, and those two facts are not a coincidence. So what if she had been my type? I totally could have been the solution to her problems. Might there be other, possibly hot, women in similar circumstances? If so, and you're one of them, I figure I could be your health insurance sugar daddy. Hell, if you've got kids, I could even lift them out of the ranks of the uninsured as well, although we'd have to negotiate some sort of arrangement to keep the little yard apes away from me.

There would be other things to negotiate as well. A rock solid prenup that ensures you get nothing besides my insurance card. But don't get any ideas this marriage won't be consummated. I assure you, you will definitely be consummating your way to good health.

On the other hand though, if someone is desperate for health insurance, what are the chances they'll be hot? If they're looking for healthcare and not carrying the seed of another man, they're probably all diabetic and stuff, and I have yet to see a hot diabetic. Maybe there's someone out there looking for coverage before a breast-enhancement operation or something. I'm pretty sure my plan covers that. Like I said, the union takes care of me.

And I, just might, take care of you. If you want it bad enough. And are hot. I figure by providing insurance to a hot person I will not only be helping to solve one of the great social problems of our time, I will be helping to beautify the planet as well. Kind of a Darwinian thing.

So if you're interested, come up with a stimulus package and forward your application to the e-mail address on the right of this page. You just might qualify for a bailout. Your odds are definitely better than scoring any kind of help under the proposal Republicans have put forth.

Good luck.

Big Pharma Pud Sucking Doesn't Always Involve Drugs. It Does, However, Almost Always Involve Money And Screwing People.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave my friends, you can be forced to sell your property to the government at any time. You may be surprised to hear this, but it's right in the constitution to which every elected official and member of the armed services of this country swears allegiance. Don't worry though, the Bill of Rights protects you by limiting this power to the confiscation of property "for public use." You know, like an airport, a highway right of way, or research facility for Pfizer, the multinational drug company.

Some of you may have just read that and be saying to yourselves, "Uh, hold on there Drugmonkey, one of those things is not like the other. I don't see how building something for Pfizer would constitute a public purpose"

To which I would say you are obviously not a member of the decision making class of New London Connecticut, a city which in the 1990's decided to bulldoze one of its neighborhoods in order to lure Pfizer to town. They also gave Pfizer a 10 year tax abatement.

"Not to worry" said the residents of the neighborhood. "We have the 5th Amendment to protect us. We'll just get a lawyer and take care of this"

So they got a lawyer. And started a fight with general principles of human decency and the U.S. Constitution on one side, and giant corporate interests and billions of dollars of profit on the other. Do I really need to tell you who won? In one of its most notorious decisions in recent history, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in 2005 that sucking Pfizer's corporate dick did indeed constitute a public purpose. The neighborhood was bulldozed. Let freedom ring.

Before I get to the olive in the martini of this story, let's have a quick word from Pfizer:

Pfizer fully supports the principles in United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the International Labour Organization Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and strives to uphold human rights in all our business activities.

I didn't make that up. I cut and pasted it right from their website.

OK now, where was I? The part where Pfizer came into the bulldozed neighborhood, built their research park, and created thousands of good paying jobs for the people of New London? Let's see how that turned out:

Eight years after opening its state-of-the-art global research-and-development headquarters in New London, Pfizer Inc. announced Monday it will close the nearly $300 million complex within the next two years and consolidate local operations into its Groton campus.

So they'll be padlocking the door right as that tax abatement expires. Funny how that worked out.

"It's very unfortunate what's happened here." said Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler. "Sadly, the economic climate just wasn't conducive to us actually paying property tax to the community that was willing to throw people out of their homes in order to give us some prime waterfront office space. I want to announce today though, that Pfizer will be doing the right thing by those we made homeless. In keeping with our commitment to human rights, we will be spending $5.8 million dollars over the next 5 years to reconstruct new houses for all those we displaced."

"BBBWWWWAAAAHHHHHHAAAAHHHHAAAAHHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!" He then added. "Had you there for a second, didn't I?" Human rights, oh yeah....we totally support human rights, right up to the point where it's gonna cost us something."

You know I made that quote up. What I'm not making up is the fact that Pfizer's stock price jumped 3 percent the day they announced they were fucking the town of New London, or that their 2008 profit worked out to $22 million dollars a day.

Enjoy your freedom.

Send A Coat Hanger To A Democrat Who Sorely Needs One.

I'll warn you up front this is a pure politics post. If you don't like them, just move along......

.....but....if you've ever had sex, you might wanna stick around. Or if you're one of those capitalistic types who doesn't think the government has the right to tell private companies what to do, you might wanna stick around as well. I mean, that's one of the things you teabaggers had your boxers in a bunch over in this healthcare thing. You were convinced Obama was gonna take over the entire healthcare system and be telling Cigna what they could and couldn't do with your policy, right? So you guys should be all over this. 'Cause I know you're all about freedom.

It seems as if some members of the House of Representatives got it in their heads that health reform had to come at a price. Right before final consideration of the healthcare bill this country has been waiting on for over 60 years, Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan offered an amendment that would bar any insurance company taking part in the proposed federal insurance exchange from offering coverage for abortion services. I don't mean just the public option mind you. It applies to any insurance company selling policies through the exchange. So if you're an average schlep, and you buy a policy from Cigna, well, sorry slut, no abortion for you.

Bart Stupak is a Democrat. Twenty other Democrats, all men, voted for the amendment. It passed.

It passed, and I've been fuming ever since. Like Jim Hightower says, I can handle losing when we lose, but I can't stand losing when we win. These Democrats need to be sent a message, and the most awesome phone company in the world, CREDO Mobile, is going to give it to them. They've started a petition to hold these Democrats to account, and for everyone who signs, CREDO will send each of these twenty Congressmen a coat hanger as a reminder of what they've done and an incentive to do the right thing when the final bill comes up to a vote. Awesome. I want these fuckers to wade through coat hangers on their way to the office every day. I want them pelted with coat hangers when they are on the street. I want them to be reminded of what they've done every time they go to hang up their suit.

I almost want to say I want their teenage daughters to get knocked up, but that would be bad karma, so I totally won't say it would be incredibly just if every fertile child of these guys would be forced to pop out an unwanted shortie in 9 months.

I will say I've never been so happy about paying my phone bill.

You don't have to be a CREDO customer to sign the petition, so click here to send a coat hanger to the 20 men in the United States who most deserve one.

I expect all you teabaggers who were screaming about Hitler this summer to be clicking away. Along with the rest of us who are sane.

It's A Short Night For Me, Which Means A Quickie For You.

A quickie, nonetheless, that I think will make you feel better about your workday:

IOWA CITY - Police arrested a man Friday for allegedly defecating in a pharmacy on Friday.

Robert Lee, 57, went into CVS pharmacy, 2425 Muscatine Ave., at 4:17 p.m. where he walked to the front area of the store, lifted up his shirt, dropped his pants and defecated on the floor and walked out, according to criminal complaints.

I think the guy was probably just speaking for a good part of CVS's customer base, as well as more than a few pharmacists who've had to call one of their sorry-ass stores for a copy. I might have been tempted to pick up his bail if he had done this at the CVS down the street from my happy pill room.

Thanks to the alert reader who tipped me to the story.

Viagra Chimes In.

Yo, Yocon,

I came across your guest post here while looking around the Internet for sites that try to make a buck off my good name, and I gotta tell ya, I feel for you man. You're one of the few chemicals on earth who can understand what it's like to be me. It's hard. Actually in your case it wasn't hard, but don't beat yourself up about it, OK? Without being able to see and learn from what you went through back in the day who knows if I could handle being me.

The fame.

The never ending geyser of cash. Never ending I said.

The women. And not just women mind you, if you swing that way, there's the men, transsexuals that could be either one even. Fuck dolls. Pocket pussies, watermelons, oak trees, plaster of paris sculptures, electronic devices, certain types of deserts and egg products. It never stops. If I hadn't married Ambien a few years back I might never get any rest. She's been really good for me, that Ambien wife of mine.

Anyway, my point is we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and you did some good pioneering work. I owe a lot of my success to you my friend.

Even though we work in totally different ways. As a matter of fact, our mechanism of action isn't even close. Now that I think about it, you really had nothing to do with the research that created me. That was more Imdur. I started off as a heart drug you know. I was about as effective at preventing angina as you were in making a stiffie, but Imdur never let me give up. Yeah. Imdur is actually the giant upon whose shoulders I stand.

Never mind.

Sincerely,

Viagra™

A Guest Post From The First Prescription Impotence Medication.

I never meant for it to go so far. I am so sorry.

When they came to me and asked me to play the role of a chemical that could stimulate a man's penis, I'll admit, I thought it was a big joke. I was young and stupid and just didn't realize there was a demand for that sort of thing. I knew I didn't work, but I assumed everyone else would know that too. And then there was the FDA. Weren't they supposed to keep ineffective drugs like me off the market? Surely they would step in and keep things from getting out of hand. This all must be some sort of prank I said to myself. I'll just have some fun while it lasts.

I'm not sure when exactly I saw the first wrinkly old man face looking to me for hope. I'm sure I didn't notice it. The money started rolling in quick and it all seems like a blur now. The parties at oceanside mansions, the powdered blow in the bathroom, the oral blow in the bedroom. The butler and the maids. The separate Rolls-Royce for each day of the week. I don't remember a lot about the 70's, but at some point the wrinkly old man faces became too numerous to ignore.

"Yocon you can save my marriage." They would say. "Yocon, you can make me a man again. Please help me"

I tried to wash away their pleas with vodka. With gin, rum, scotch....anything.....anything to make it go away. Two stints in The Betty Ford center didn't help, because the problem was I was living a lie. I wanted out. All the money in the world couldn't buy back my soul, but there were contracts. Obligations to which I had committed myself. The day they started running that ad in pharmacy journals with the little male symbol, the circle with the arrow... the way they made the arrow gradually start to point upwards. That day I wanted to die.

The wrinkly old man faces never stopped. No matter how many times I failed them, they always came back with more dollars in their hand and more hope in their hearts. They were looking to me to restore their masculinity, but if i had been any kind of a man myself I would have put a stop to it.

It was a relief the day Viagra came to market. When the vultures and hangers on and groupies finally abandoned me. Things are better now. I live in rural Pennsylvania eking out a living as a seldom used pupil dilator. Every once in awhile I still run into someone who believes the myth, but now I can tell them. I won't make your dick hard. Neither will I burn fat if you apply me to your skin as a patch. I won't. I never did.

I'll never be able to undo the damage I did to the wrinkly old men. The only thing I can do is ask their forgiveness, try to be the best pupil dilator I can be, and hope that you can learn from my mistakes.

Please, if someone claims you can cause an erection, demand scientific proof before you sign any contracts.

Sincerely,

Yocon™