This Is Why Grandma Must Die...

Mark Steyn on everything I've ever said about the vampire elderly and their stupid, selfish, about-to-retire-in-record-number children.Only he's Mark Steyn, and people listen to him.

Societies in which people not only expect, but demand, to spend the last three decades of their lives sponging off the productivity of others are societies that are ultimately doomed.

The day may be coming soon when Soylent Green is no longer a Sci-fi cult movie classic. I, for one, will rejoice when that day arrives.

Re-mem-mem-ber When...

This past weekend I was subjected to an ordeal which included two of the things I hate the most in life.

The first was four hours of doo-wop music.

The second was extremely close proximity to somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 Baby Boomers.

What followed was perhaps the most boring and obnoxious four hours of my entire life.

Seven Reasons Why Barack Obama Will Be Remembered As The Worst President Ever....

Pity Barack Obama. No, seriously...you should.

It can't be easy to be the President of the United States, particularly at this point in history: there is economic turmoil; the country is embroiled in three wars; political will in this country is divided and misdirected; you're married to that walking menstrual cycle.

If there's anything that our Commander-in-Chump is probably thankful for, it has to be an electorate that's too stupid to realize either it's true priorities or the depths of it's own stupidity. That is, after all, how he got elected in the first place.

Cheney "Just Fine" After Heart Transplant...

It has been axiomatic amongst the most rabid Left-wingers in America that Dick Cheney, the so-called Prince of Darkness, has no heart.

Now we know he's had at least two.

We here at the Asylum can't help but believe, although we love Dick Cheney with all our (no pun intended) hearts, that the whole Cheney Transplant drama sets a very bad precedent.

Someone Hired Me?

With regards to the lack of content, recently:

I'm busy. I've got a new job (sort of) that I'm working on, and so far as I can tell, the only good point in it's favor is that I'll get to (legally) fleece Senior Citizens -- the second biggest community of mollycoddled crybabies in the United States (Baby Boomers come in first).

Culling The Herd...

A Giant Glass Crater.

A very good friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning remarking on yesterday's puked-up pablum. In that post, I recommended the forced migration and expulsion of Muslims from the Western World if only because it would make the process of boarding a flight to Disneyland that much easier for us all, and represent a giant step towards getting the government out of our lives. He also makes reference to some of my other pet peeves, written about extensively in this Diary of a Madman (the epidemic of stupidity, the complete wasteland full of knuckle-dragging barbarians that is American politics, and my going-to-crap-at-warp-speed hometown). He writes:

A giant glass crater...... is what you want the middle east to become...I'm convinced Staten island should [secede] from the union and implement a few of your policies.Oh, while you're at it, I want you to enforce that you need to take a general intelligence test before you get the right to vote, too. Too many idiots in this world cast their vote because they are promised a free lunch and a brief joyride on a minibus. Thoughts?

And this began to dovetail nicely with one of the recurring themes which runs through my mailbox; the comments and e-mails I get from complete retards who want to know what sort of horrible disease I must suffer from that makes me so "negative" and "hateful" of (fill-in-the-blank) Muslims/Democrats/Women/Minorities/Ivy Leaguers/Irish Setters/ the Elderly/Single Mothers/Europeans/Union Workers, et. al.

The most impassioned nonsense though, comes from self-important Baby Boomers who want to know why I hate them so much. There was one 60+ year old respondent yesterday who especially chapped my ass with is sanctimony about how his generation 'created' so much, and 'contributed' to this-that-and-the-other, and was 'owed' a 'debt' of 'gratitude'. I wanted to puke.

The notions seemingly came together of their own accord -- would life really be more tolerable if we just started knocking off certain categories of disagreeable people? Why is it that I seem to hold certain antipathies towards certain groups of folks? And who the fuck does this jackoff lecturing me in an e-mail think he is? -- and shit just sprang into my head.

So, with this in mind, I wrote my buddy back. I hope my "I'm Baby Boomer God" correspondent reads this, and finally gets it:

Yes, there should be a great culling of the herd, methinks, to be followed by a carefully-planned program of street executions.

Never mind taking a test to vote; there should be a list of minimum requirements necessary for continued breathing. And, of course, I'd just kill anyone born before 1960, if only because I don't feel like supporting them in their old age, which thanks to medical science seems to last far longer than it actually needs to, and keeps people alive long past the point where they're of any use to anyone.

To wit: our world is run by the Baby Boomers. They are the CEO's, Politicians, Professors, Money managers, Media figures, Generals, Bishops, and Bureaucrats, all infused with the rubbishy, romantically-retarded mindsets of their youth -- the Kennedy worshipers, the Flower Power generation, the Hippies, the Draft Dodgers, the Acid Droppers, the Communism-was-a-great-idea-only-poorly-executed mindset, and the No-Fault Divorce Generation. Do you think they've done a good job running this world? Have they done the right things? Are they leaving anything of value in their wake? If you judged an entire generation of human beings on just what it was they collectively left to a civilization, what would their (the Baby Boomer's) record be?

The Beatles, The Nehru Jacket, Situational Ethics, AIDS, Hedonism, The Pet Rock, Jimmy Carter, Mood Rings, Earth Shoes, Financial Collapse, interminable warfare with incomplete or nebulous 'Victories', and the mass marketing and consumption of Viagra and Cheetos?

Yes, re-open Auschwitz under new management, I say!

Baby Boomers are some of my biggest detractors, and my second-deadliest enemy (I didn't forget about you fly-swatting-eat-with-the-same-hand-I-wipe-my-ass-with-sheep-shaggers-in-the-sand!). This generation seems to think they're smarter and better than I am, that they're entitled to live forever on my dime all hopped up on government-financed Viagra, plastic surgery, and medical miracles that claim to 'cure' all the inconveniences of Old Age -- from a toe fungus to malfunctioning prostate -- at $300 a bottle, and which always comes with a list of side effects that predictably begins with crippling diarrhea and always includes with 'risk of sudden heart failure', and a warning not to drive or operate heavy machinery under it's influence. That's when they're not busy lecturing me on how I wouldn't live "in the world we have today" if it hadn't had been for them and their Noble Enterprise in every field of endeavor from modern communications to medicine.

Guess again, people. If you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd see just exactly what pieces of excrement the majority of you truly are. You have merely stood upon the shoulders of giants, and self-proclaimed yourselves Titans, and presuming the right to lord it over much better people than you.

Does this world look like an Earthly Paradise to you? Does it even look like a moderately-tolerable world? It's the World you Baby Boomers have created, you know. You run it. You crafted it in your mold and gave it the special ingredient that only you could provide in abundance; bullshit. In my mind, the resulting product of such infantile minds was entirely predictable.

Because, for the most part, Baby Boomers were the most mollycoddled, selfish, spoiled, over-indulged, and least-disciplined generation of human beings to ever come down the pike. Spare me the defensive e-mails, please, about how you, personally, are the exception to the rule; how grew up poor, how your parents were strict disciplinarians, and how you did 'all the right things', ate your peas, and never followed that pot-smoking-orgy-lovin' Hippie crowd. If you actually do exist, in the form you've presented yourself, then you, Sir or Madam, are a distinct minority. You are a dinosaur. You are the unexpected shard of pottery that turns up in the stratigraphy of human history, and throws the archaeologist for a loop. A flaw in the pattern. The majority of the people of your generation have caused the people of my generation to wonder whether or not you were all just a colossal waste of DNA, some Great Cosmic Mistake.

On that Chart that shows the "Evolution of Man", I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to count 'Baby Boomer' as a separate species, and then stick it someplace between the primordial primates and the first upright-walkers? We could call it Homo Erectus Erectus, the two 'Erectus' designation nicely describing both what absolute pricks most of you are, and your complete fascination with the hard-on. Viva Viagra! and all that.

Where does this visceral dislike come from, you ask? This desire to write off an entire mass of human beings, this lack of empathy, sympathy, the denial, even, of your basic humanity?

Well, I would think it starts with my parents, who for lack of a better term, were/are absolutely horrible human beings. They weren't cruel, nor were they neglecting --up to a certain point -- but they were selfish, thoughtless bastards, the pair. Mostly this is because the culture in which they 'came of age' was a selfish, thoughtless age of bastards. They were still living on the cusp of the previous era, where some Old-Fashioned virtues were still respected, or at least still followed because society had not made it's Next Great Leap of Stupidity (that would require a new range of technology which on the one had, promised to make communication ever faster, cheaper, easier and achievable, to break down frontiers and open new vistas of human achievement, and on the other, isolates and stratifies us all in ways that we can barely begin to recognize),which explains why they got married so young (father: 23, mother: 20) . That was, according to the mores of the day, what you were 'supposed' to do when you were that age, and when the routine of double-feature-and-hamburger-at-the-Malt-shop became stale, when you couldn't think of anything better to do on Saturday Night, and you didn't have the guts to wear tie-dye and get blasted as 'mind-expanding' experience.

My parents weren't exactly what you would call 'involved', unless you applied that word to them solely as individuals. They were certainly very involved with themselves. Which is probably why they got divorced. As I've 'grown up' and 'matured' I've come to recognize that my parents never gave me a single piece of advice, not one decent example, not a shred of guidance in any form that you would expect to get from a parent, which didn't, ultimately, revolve around three basic premises:

1. Don't embarrass me in public.
2. What would people say about ME if they saw you behaving that way?
3.I'm your Mother/Father....you owe me.

In fact, it was my grandparents who taught me my lessons growing up, and unfortunately for me, they died (young) just at the point where I probably was just beginning to understand what sort of people they were, what they were telling me, and just what it was they still had to offer. My (maternal) grandparents were teaching me maxims that if one person in ten still followed, would make Planet Earth a much better place;

1. People have obligations to one another, and responsibilities towards one another
2. Hard work eventually pays off
3. A man's word is his bond, and honesty is always the best policy
4. Nothing EVER comes before family
5. Do 'the right things' all the time and all will be well.

Unfortunately, they were teaching me these things just at that point in history where my parent's generation was busy tearing that foundation of common sense, that Universal Code of Conduct, down.

In fact, in retrospect, the only things my parents ever taught me was that everything in life could be dealt with by the application of a very simple formula;

1. Denial
2. Run away from your problems when they could no longer be ignored
3. Bitch and whine about your problems when running away no longer works is the only way to go,
,4. When denial, running, bitching, whining don't serve, do everything you can to make your problems someone else's,
5. When all of the above fails, complain that you are the victim of an invisible, all-encompassing conspiracy, and then stew in your own juices about how 'unfair' it all is.

My Father, an absolute cretin that someone thought it would be a good idea to give a badge and gun to, thankfully died at age 37, and so spared me having to put up with his special brand of insanity for many years after. My mother simply made her misery everyone else's by making bad decisions in serial fashion and then calling upon her children to pick up the pieces of her shattered life (and, naturally, suffer the consequences that came with those pieces). If that meant your eldest (19 year-old) son had to co-sign second mortgages as part of your (second) divorce settlement, or take out extended lines of credit in his name for your use, or work 12-hours a day, seven-days a week to feed everyone, while you declared personal bankruptcy in the dark of night without his knowledge -- so you could be 'free' while sticking him with the bills and legal responsibilities -- then so much the better. The part where he had to financially and morally support you for the next 20 years, and become all but a surrogate husband because you were a depressed bag of skin for whom work was a dirty word, was the part that went unspoken. But then again, I was younger and dumber, and still thought that sons were supposed to do things like this for their mothers. It was a rather romantic notion, no?

There was never even as much as a "Thank you", or an "I'm sorry". No need for any of that. You gave birth, after all.

When I went to work for a living (at age 18), skipping college because my overriding goal since the age of 14 was to get the fuck out of my mother's house just as quickly as possible (she remarried, when I was 13, to a complete asshole who's Ozzie-and-Harriet vision of what a married couple should be didn't seem to include a wife with three teenagers that he couldn't stand in tow) I encountered a shitload of people just like my parents; authority figures who were self-interested, selfish, stupid, short-sighted, crass, conceited, and convinced of their own superiority (after all, they had been at Woodstock, and burned their Draft Cards, and finished college, although they hardly ever seemed to display anything approaching 'smarts', you see), and they had a certain power -- they could sign a paycheck, or they could pass on the secrets of the trade -- and they used these, often wantonly, to bludgeon people into line.

"Into Line" is a euphemism for 'keep me employed without having to really work, Cubicle Slave!'

I can't tell you how many really bad bosses I've had. I've lost count. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been denied promotions, recognition of a job well done, opportunities, or even just the simple respect due a human being because there was something else at stake -- usually money -- by someone who had achieved a certain position in life and had to do everything humanly possible just to stay there. If that meant stepping all over others, then so be it. If that meant making a promise one day and breaking it the next, then that was alright, too. Ethics, you see, are something that you're supposed to demand, but which only other people are supposed to have, and something that's conveniently forgotten by you until it becomes necessary to use them to your advantage.

Yeah, I know: Life isn't fair. Fine, I can deal with that. When it's unfair because someone has a vested interest in making it unfair, then I have issues.

Keeping someone 'in their place' because they kept you in YOUR place was simply what a 'good manager' did, the definition of 'good manager' being 'bigger paycheck for me, more responsibility (and accountability) for everyone else'. I found the worst examples of this mindset in exactly the place you would most reasonably expect to find it; on Wall Street.

If you've ever had any morals or quaint ideas of the Old-fashioned virtues about you, you will quickly become a victim in that sort of environment. You're dead meat the second you walk through the door with that mindset. There's hunters and there's prey, and what comes in between equates to the human equivalent of a Serengeti-plains scavenger, like a hyena. The differences between people on Wall Street are not truly measured in ability, intelligence or potential, but in corner offices, status, bonus checks, perks, and titles, but mostly by what one is willing and prepared to do to his fellow human beings in order to get them. The ability to play at office politics, rather than the ability to do something productive, is far more important in this regard , as is having the 'right' qualifications (pieces of paper that say you faithfully parroted whatever the professor told you to think). 'Connections' (Ivy League vs. State School, working-class background vs. upper-middle class background, school or club ties vs. professional ones) matter even more than smarts or politics.

If you doubt this, take a look at our 401(k) statement this month, or ask your bank just how it is that your home is now basically worthless. The 'Best and the Brightest'? How many of them actually got fired after that debacle? How many billions of dollars did the government pour into financial institutions to cover their losses? Don't make me laugh. These guys are simply bookies in better suits. The Mob is actually fairer, more honest about what it does, and harder-working, but because the Mafia isn't a licensed agent of the State Revenue Collectors, they're the ones who get prosecuted.

When you haven't any of that ammunition (the right sort of qualifications or connections) in your arsenal, you have to do the best you can. I became a master of playing their game -- but by my own rules. Wall Street made me a hyena.

So, you need me (to keep you in your cushy no-responsibility-high-pay job) more than I need you? Good, let's see you discipline me when I'm an hour late late tomorrow...and the next day. I want to see you have to eat my shit for a change when I do it.Thinking of throwing me to the wolves to save your own sorry hide when the time comes? Well, let's just see who else will work every weekend and holiday, or take on the shittiest projects when you need them to, because otherwise you don't get the leather upholstery in the BMW this year. Not going to put an extra zero on the end of that bonus check? What do you think will happen when your wife gets that letter in which I rat you out for all the shit I know you've done in your life?

I made my living by being the 'Indispensable Man'; they guy who knows everything, especially where all the bodies were buried, who does everything, has his hand in everything, but really doesn't give a shit unless there's extra zeros involved, who can stick that in your face, or beat you over the head with it the way you used to beat him.

It worked for a good, long while, too. Until one September morning where the depth of the depravity finally reached new lows; a 757 was forcibly embedded within the North Tower, and every suit in the building was consumed not by the idea or horrors of the incredible human tragedy being played out in Lower Manhattan, but whether or not such a disaster meant the financial markets wouldn't be open for business that day. They did open, incidentally. Trading actually took place. A lot of it. It happened, in small part, because I was one of the people who made sure it could. That was my job; it was the means by which I survived in that particular jungle.

And a week later, you see yourself within a promotional video in which your company's line-up of Financial Superstars brags that while the tallest buildings in New York may now be smoldering ruins, 3,000 people are dead, a trillion dollars of mostly-paper assets were wiped off the boards, and the country was now going to war, by God, Smith-Barney -- a Division of Citigroup -- turned a goddamned profit on 9/11! In fact,they were the only brokerage house to do so on that day. Why, that's a fabulous selling point; the world may be going to shit, people may be getting murdered in the streets, but dammit, we'll still make you hard, cold cash.

It made me physically ill to watch that. I guess not all of the decency in me had completely evaporated.

I don't know you would feel, but I couldn't live with myself after that. I felt absolutely filthy. And that's where it all started. There's much, much more to tell, but you get the general idea; when you've been surrounded by complete assholes all of your life, it's only a matter of time before your head explodes. At every point in Life, it seems, there was always someone born between 1945 and 1960 who stole, cheated, lied, oppressed, frustrated and disppointed, at the focal point of every personal crisis.

Who were my rotten parents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who shit on the values of my grandparents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who disappointed, lied, cheated, stole? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who turned me into a heartless, mercenary prick? Baby Boomers. Who planted the flag of financial victory on a pile of corpses? Why, they were Baby Boomers, too. Imagine that?

And now in 21st century America, it's the same people who have presided over the figuratively-smoldering ruins of a once-great nation. They run everything, you know, and they've run everything right into the ground, too. It's the generation of "if it feels good, do it", or "tune in, turn on, drop out', of "Greed is Good", of "I didn't inhale" or "Compassionate Conservatism" and "I voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it". The generation where every problem is the result of someone being a "victim" of someone else. Where conspiracy theory and petty partisan politics informs the public discourse, where the battlecries of a Stoned Generation -- equality, fairness, justice --still echo, but never take any concrete form or appear to be one fucking inch closer toreality. It was all lip service and posturing. It's a generation which has created a world where everyone is entitled to everything, but no one is ever expected to actually earn anything, and if you do earn it, someone else has the right to take it from you. A world where the rule is "do as I say, not as I do", and where getting away with the absolute worst of abuses is often either a badge of distinction, or a sign of how much smarter you are than everyone else.

It's a world run by people who fight wars to "bring freedom" to others who have no idea what that means, no matter how many lives or how much of (other-people's) blood and treasure it takes. It's a place where color still matters, regardless of how much legislation you pass, because it's a wound that can never be allowed to heal (otherwise, you couldn't troll votes and campaign donations, Dummy!). It's a place where people become gazillionaires by running three-decade-long Ponzi schemes with no legal oversight, and by creating bright, shiny, visually-exciting virtual worlds wherein nothing of consequence is ever achieved. Here, in our current state of affairs, the way to the top is by manipulating people; rich vs. poor, black vs. white, manual laborer vs. office worker, tax generator vs. tax consumer, man vs. woman. None of this, incidentally, is new; the history of mankind is replete with examples of all of this stupidity, it's just that the Baby Boomers who have it developed it into a fine art, gotten stupendously wealthy off it, caused so much grief and heartache along the way, and then expect to be rewarded for the absolute desolation they have created in perpetuity by a shrinking tax base (another consequence of their actions? a lower birthrate!), which is harried, worked, propagandized, categorized, dictated to, and indebted to inhuman levels by a system of government absolutely crammed to the rafters with the very people who will soon benefit the most -- i.e. Baby Boomers. Or so they think.

I don't like you people. I don't want to be like you. You're evil. For the majority of you, a natural death is more than you deserve. And guess what? There's literally millions more of me out here, and we're determined to ensure that you get exactly what you deserve, and not a penny more. Not even as much as an extra aspirin, roll of toilet paper, or five minutes of our time. Why? Because you've left us with nothing; no anchors, morally or spiritually, no ethics -- just ask five people at random to define that word for you, and you'll be surprised that no one can anymore -- no code of conduct that hasn't been torn to tatters by your hypocrisy, no system of justice or government that hasn't been tainted by your foul stench. Remember when your parents used to say to you "I hope one day you have children who do to you what you do to me?" -- and you laughed at them?

Guess who's laughing now? You'll soon be retiring in massive numbers with greatly-depleted assets. Think those Tea Partiers in the street are concerned with 'government spending' as a matter of principle? Take a closer look, and you'll see all the 40-somethings out there, and on some level, I can promise you, there's a great mass of them who recognize the enormous blood-sucking-probiscus the Hippie Generation is about to put on their wallets, and all that talk of 'curbing govenrment spending' is really just a subconcious euphemism for 'starve those selfish pricks to death!'. On some level, all that Tea Party jazz isn't so much about taxes, as much as it is Generational Warfare.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Never have so Many owed so much to so Few...", and quite soon, that will become a kind of reality in America with regards to the huge swarms of retiring Baby Boomers who want nothing but free Healthcare and ever-growing Social Security checks, convinced that they deserve it all. Only in a few years, it will become "Never have so Many Depended Upon So Few".The parallels are these: Churchill's Few were fighting for Survival, and the New Few who are expected to pay for, and then shut up about, being screwed by the most-selfish Generation of Many in human history, are in a similar battle for their own survival. Churchill's Few were men willing to sacrifice on behalf of others; Our Few won't sacrifice for anyone...our Parents, Teachers, Bosses, Politicians, all taught us we that didn't have to, as that was always someone else's job.

You sowed the wind, and I dearly hope you reap the whirlwind, Assholes. If you're really lucky, maybe some 40-something will have enough compassion for you to invent a low-salt cat food that's far more palatable and easier to eat without Medicare-supplied dentures really, really soon.

And you should be fucking thankful for even that much.

The End of Camelot?

The Last Kennedy may lose.

Dare we hope? Dare we dream? I might consider praying it if could make it so.

The "Kennedy mystique" has long outlived it's usefulness, and has done little more than to ensure that successive generations of slimy little retards with big teeth and a predilection for substance abuse and adultery had jobs bought for them that they were eminently unqualified for. If it wasn't for the fact that JFK was an icon to millions of brain-dead, drug-taking, hippies (in much the same way that FDR became an icon to their parents, an apparent savior who's only real talents were for telling people what they wanted to hear) the legend of John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have died in that limo in Dallas with him.

Here's the (very short) list of JFK's "accomplishments":

* Had several books written for him, which he simply signed his name to.
* Getting his PT Boat cut in half by a Japanese destroyer.
* Using his would-be Nazi-collaborator Daddy's Prohibition-fueled fortune to buy himself a career in politics.
* Marrying a smokin' hawt babe.
* Bringing the world the brink of nuclear annihilation.
* Chickening out at the Bay of Pigs.
* Vietnam
* Getting shot in the head.

JFK, all things considered, was a 1960's version of John McCain...only with charm and a ventilated braincase.

Why he is considered one of the best American Presidents is beyond me. Spare me the crap about his "commitment" to Civil Rights: that was all about avoiding a repeat of the 1960 election where he only managed to beat Nixon by the skin of his teeth. Kennedy needed more votes for the next go-around, and there simply weren't enough White people's votes to buy, or dead Chicagoans, to guarantee victory in '64.

What came after JFK and RFK were simply the dregs of the Kennedy DNA line, and they have polluted the halls of power for far too long. Eventually, the aura attached to a dead Uncle wears off, and people grow up. Or at least their priorities change; the Aging Hippies who creamed for Kennedy are no longer interested in lip-service to equality, Civil Rights, and a dreamy rhetoric about a loftily-idealistic-yet-infantile Utopia; they want free goddamned Viagra and someone to bear the cost of their fast-approaching retirement, now that the home they bought as a retirement vehicle is now basically worthless, and their stock portfolios have been wiped out by their own generation's economic stupidity. They no longer have the time or patience for sentimentality.

The Attachment to All Things Kennedy, under these circumstances, must surely fade, and with it, the stranglehold on both power and stupidity that has rested in the hands of a single (probably-inbred) family for far too long must surely loosen.

If only this would become a Nationwide Phenomenon, and we could do away with all the other political dynasties in America; Coumos, Bushes, Clintons, and so forth. How much better, how much fresher, how much more effective our political system would be (and I mean that in the hope that it would be more responsive, and responsible, to we the citizens who don't belong to the country club set) when it was no longer just "the family business".

Yet More Bad Medicine...

I watch entirely too much television, but then again, I have far too much free time on my hands.

One of the things I find most entertaining about television these days are the wall-to-wall advertisements for prescription drugs and over-the-counter supplements that take up about one-quarter of the broadcasting day. What I find entertaining about them is that they usually follow a familiar format:

Scene: Two splendidly-preserved Baby Boomers are enjoying their ideal active retirement. They seem to be enjoying themselves more than people who don't snort cocaine regularly do in real life. Then, the Voice Over Lady chimes in, and begins to tell us all about the devastating malady (usually on the order of hangnail, vaginal/scrotal dryness, smelly feet, wrinkles or Old Lady Mothball Smell) that keeps one of those Boomers from achieving her (it's usually a Her) dream of conquering Everest, learning the cello, or fucking like a mink.

Only, the medical complaint Voiceover Lady is yacking about is usually not all that big a deal. In days past, people suffering from this minor malady simply "sucked it up", or chalked their discomfort up to "getting older". But Baby Boomers think they should be able to live forever, free of complaint, and at someone else's expense, and with their sexual potency intact (see: Medicare, ObamaCare).

Anyways, the commercial very quickly degenerates from Hippie Bob and Mary's slight physical impairment (usually only 10 seconds on the disease in question), and becomes a laundry list of warnings, listing of side effects, and godawful effects of the drug in question, that you begin to wonder just why anyone in his right fucking mind would take this dangerous-sounding pill. And then you laugh.

Unless you're me -- and then you do a little research to ensure that's what being sold as the fountain of youth and the cure to all that ails you, is all that. I've done a bunch of these, and you can read them by simply hitting the Bad Medicine tag at the bottom of the post.

This time, we're looking at a bullshit arthritis "cure", yet another statin drug, a couple of over-the-counter "remedies" for your stomach, and a drug that deals with pain you only imagine you feel. So, here you go:

1. Arthri-D - Glucosamine and "Key Plant Extracts" (including frankincense -- if it was good enough for Jesus...) many herbal fillers, and Vitamin D3. It claims to "enhance your diet...and your life!", and is sold as the answer to your creaking, arthritic joints. It's a nutritional supplement of dubious value, and has not been tested in regards to ANY malady, whatsoever.

It's selling point seems to be that if you take this, your arthritis will be magically cured, although they take great pains not to guarantee that claim, in extremely small print, on the website. Oh, and the other selling point is that Arthri-D3 is made right here in the good 'ol USA in a "superior manufacturing facility that adheres to the highest quality standards".

Okay, so I guess that makes it the highest-quality crap you can waste your money on. Don't take it if you're allergic to seafood, as you will probably explode like a Palestinian on a public bus.Otherwise, the company that makes Arthri-D3 is being investigated by the FTC, and has a chief executive who has had to -- allegedly -- change his name at least once. You can't even find out how much this stuff costs unless you call the 24-hour hotline to order it. You can see the "infomercial" (running on heavy rotation on Fox Business channel on weekends) at the Arthri-D website.

2. Crestor - an oldie-but-goodie, Crestor is once again being heavily flogged on television, which kinda sucks, except for the Patrick Stewart voiceover.

This is another statin drug which is supposed to help you regulate your cholesterol levels. I've taken statin drugs in the past, and I'm convinced that they work by simply giving you the kind of explosive diarrhea one normally associates with Mexico, ensuring that nothing you eat has time to actually stick around long enough to put any extra cholesterol into your system. After that, all statins do something strange to your liver (which produces 70% of all your cholesterol all by itself), that requires monthly blood tests and physician visits, which get annoying and frequent enough for you to believe that having the heart attack you're trying to avoid just might be a better and cheaper option, after all.

If you take Crestor you can look forward to the following side-effects besides the crippling, dehydrating diarrhea that will ruin your life by making it impossible for you to be any more than a quick sprint from a toilet at any time: persistent headaches, abdominal pain, weakness, persistent nausea, elevated blood sugar levels (so that you can trade high cholesterol for diabetes!), myalgia (muscle pains), asthenia, myopathy, rhabdomyalisys (breakdown of skeletal muscle), myglobinaria (too much myoglobin in your kidneys, leading to renal failure), and a host of unspecified skeletal/muscle-related issues.

See the website for details. Crestor will set you back about $150.00 for a month's supply of 20mg pills. If you take 40mg dosages, you can expect to pay nearly $200.00, and have all of the side-effects listed above at about twice-the-intensity.

3. Digestive Advantage - this is an over-the-counter product being sold as a treatment option for those with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), although it bills itself as a "Medical Food Product" on it's website, whatever that means.

Actually, all it is is something like Milk of Magnesia with some "All Natural" additives -- and a higher price. The gist behind this "Medical Food" is that most treatments for IBS don't work because the active ingredients never make it into your intestines -- where all the good stuff happens. Those other medications are all used up or mostly wasted after they enter your stomach, destroyed by contact with stomach acids, and so that you get no relief from your painful, bloody pooping and uber-menstrual-like cramps. Digestive Advantage basically puts Milk of Magnesia into a super, bullet-proof capsule that won't break down as quickly in your stomach acids, and so it is hoped, allow a little more medicine to be delivered to your lower intestine, where all that nasty IBS shit (no pun intended) happens.

The two biggest risk factors for IBS are diet and emotional state, although there are some for whom this is not always the case. Instead of taking medicines and "Medical Food Products" most people who suffer from IBS would probably benefit more from a change in diet and learning how to chill out. But then you wouldn't have the opportunity to pay for this Crap that Helps You Crap, would you?

As a society, we're now more focused on our bowels than we ever have been before, which I guess is better than our previous pre-occupation with our genitals, and we're now seeing all sorts of medications, "Medical Food Products" and contrivances hitting the market which are ensuring that your digestive system and poop chute run like the finest Swiss Watch. The Baby-Boomer generation that was once obsessed with the Erection is now Obsessed with it's Feces, just as Freud predicted, and the American pharmaceutical industry is working feverishly to meet the demand!

Who says Capitalism is dead?

The only major side effect seems to be a dramatic increase in flatulence, which might get you tagged as a threat to Mother Gaia by any committed Tree Hugger, and an occasional oily spotting in your undies. These might cause you severe embarrassment in public settings, but it's better than bloody, painful turds and torn, irritated hemorrhoids, isn't it?

You'll be happy to know that the makers of Digestive Advantage also make Gas, Daily Constipation and Lactose "Defense" formulas. Oh, joy! An entire product line devoted to your tushy!

4. Gas-X Protection- a lovely little over-the-counter supplement that will help defend you against the embarrassing and uncomfortable effects of excessive stomach gas, "with unbeatable speed". The selling point here is the terrible embarrassment that people with severe gas will often suffer; as the website advertisement is simply loaded with overwrought references to the public approbation, social isolation, and mental consequences of excessive flatulence. According to the website, your flatulence can "consume your mind, distracting you from what you are doing -- making you feel helpless". Frankly, I've never heard of anyone being so consumed by the fear of farting that they develop social anxiety disorders or ADD, so I'm a bit leary of that claim.

In fact, if you're a perpetual adolescent -- like me -- you find flatulence incredibly funny, and you love to share it. There's no joke yet devised by man that provides as much laughter as a good butt whistle, so far as I'm concerned. Why, the flatus is perhaps mankind's greatest invention: you can share it with your friends for free, it always makes someone in the room laugh, and even the deaf can join in the fun! Be that as it may, however, there are some people, for whom this is not true.

Killjoys!

Thankfully, for all of us Overgrown Children in love with the Fart, all that fun-killing, gas-stopping tomfoolery comes at a cost: you can expect massive cramps whenever you use Gas-X Prevention. Something on the order of birth-contraction-type pain, I'm led to understand. If that wasn't enough of a reason to avoid this stuff, you can also anticipate all the time you'll have to sit around and think of newer and more descriptive adjectives to put in front of the word "diarrhea" -- which is what you'll get with every dose. That's if you can manage to avoid the following: rash, hives, itching, difficult breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face or tongue. All this gas-free happiness for about $40 a box.

It's almost better to just let one rip in the elevator every once in while and just deal with the embarrassment.

5. Lyrica - This is a drug prescribed for people with varying sorts of nerve pain, usually related to diabetes and shingles, but just as often for pain resulting from fybromyalgia, which I gather is a fancy term for "pain which your doctor cannot explain by scientific means". I've known two people with fybromyalgia, both resulting from injuries suffered during automobile accidents, and I'm convinced that their "pain" is no pain at all, but rather a dependence on the opiates they were given to relieve the real discomfort of their long-ago-healed injuries. They feel phantom pains which justifies the continued prescriptions for painkillers. One woman I know required methadone treatments to wean her off the vast array of painkillers she was given. Lyrica is also given to epileptics to prevent seizures.

Side effects of Lyrica include: swelling of the face, lips, gums, mouth, throat, neck and tongue, trouble breathing or swallowing, rashes, hives and blisters of an unspecified sort. You might also experience dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, muscle pain (hey, I thought this was supposed to make pain disappear?), blurry vision, swelling of the hands and feet, and what the website describes as "feeling high", and of course, quite persistent diarrhea. Everything about modern medicine, it seems, now causes diarrhea. People who take Lyrica to control epileptic seizures can also look forward to mood swings, an increase in suicidal thoughts, and amazingly for a medicine that is thought to control them, an increased frequency of seizures(so why take it all, if you're an epileptic?).

Lyrica will set you back about $200.00 for a month's supply. You could almost afford the drug treatment program to wean you off the over-prescribed opiates you were given for your whiplash for that kind of money.

I'm currently investigating another 10 or 11 of these drugs, over-the-counter medicines and other dopey shit that are being advertised heavily these days. I'll be posting about them real soon, promise!

Even More Bad Medcine...

As you know, I watch a lot of television, and one of the things that I hate about TV nowadays are the constant advertisements for all sort of drugs to treat a barrage of complaints and medical problems that somehow warrented billions in R&D and commercials to treat, but which in days past people simply tolerated. I am especially disturbed by the commercials where the voice-over lady spends half the commercial reciting the list of side-effects that come with taking this Godsend Pill (some of these side effects which will make you wonder about the current state of science, and the masochists who are apparently employed in it' service). I find those commercials to be a) funny, and b) disturbing, and then I get curious and do some research on these things, just to see what sort of a desperate asshole you'd have to be to even consider taking some of these drugs.

You can read everything in this series by clicking on the Bad Medicine tag at the bottom of the page.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of "holistic" or"natural" cures for everything from bad breath to brain tumors on screen, although the usual big-ticket prostate or osteoporosis drug still makes an appearance. The big selling point for these patent medicines is that they do not require a doctor's prescription. I think the increase in the ads for non-traditional and non-prescription stuff is a direct response to ObamaCare; people are looking for options that don't involve dealing with doctors and insurance companies. That may not be smart, but it is kind of easy to fall into the "It's all natural and has no side-effects" trap, and take something you think is helpful and harmless but which might not be either.

This week, my television poured forth a shitload of drivel about New Age Medicine, Psychology-and-drug-based weight-loss disguised as a diet plan, and weight-loss "secrets" that makes me despair of Mankind ever returning to any worthwhile endeavor. Without further ado, I give you:

1. Alli -an over-the-counter weight-loss aid. It's selling point is that Alli is "FDA-approved". Then again, the FDA has also approved drugs that have killed and caused birth defects, so why this should mean much of anything is beyond me.

Alli claims to be able to help you "break the cycle of emotional eating" where people use food as a drug to assuage what is basically a range of psychological problems. We're all familiar with the term "comfort food", a concept which recently has been under attack in many culinary and nutritional circles as bad juju, because these foods are often rich in sugar, saturated fats, "bad" carbs, salt and high-calorie. Modern psychological theory about many people's eating habits (and the stigma of gross obesity) pretty much begins with the view that we're all mentally-damaged goods (the better to sell you Zoloft), and that these innate mental illnesses cause us to eat the whole fucking pint of Chunky Monkey instead of stopping at a reasonable, human portion.

If you take Alli -- and follow the complimentary diet plan -- you'll supposedly lose 50% more weight -- and your psychological baggage will melt away with the pounds, too! -- than would be the case by simple dieting and exercise alone. Alli will -- it's never explained how -- put you in a "happier state of mind" that will help you to stop binging on Devil Dogs and Oreos, you Fat, Mentally-Deficient Bastard. How does Alli achieve this remarkable feat? Well, the Alli website doesn't actually say HOW the stuff works -- it only says that it'll block some of the fats you ingest from entering your system. Many statin drugs do this too, by making certain that anything you eat doesn't actually stick around long enough to affect your waistline. What Alli really seems to be selling is an online eating re-education program along with a super-laxative that'll make you shit like a shark; it makes claims and assumptions about your mental state that it doesn't even bother to back up on it's own website, and that most "mental health professionals" wouldn't attempt without at least two office visits.

According to this article, Alli really works by embarrassing the hell out of you whenever you stray from the plan. So, now you can go from solving the problems of emotional eating to a fear of shitting yourself in public as a weight-loss program. Under different circumstances, this sort of thing might see someone convicted of deliberately inflicting gross psychological harm upon another. Fifty dollars a month will also buy you severe vitamin deficiencies, and the dreaded problem of "oily spotting" in your undies. This video was quite informative about the side effects. Alli then has the nerve,incidentally, to call this all "a revolution in weight loss".

2. Australian Dream - I find it peculiar that a product called "Australian Dream" should have been invented by a Redneck. This is a topical cream which is used by those who seek relief from Arthritis, sore muscles and the aches and pains of what used to be called "Getting Old". The commercial is aimed at Baby Boomers, and makes no bones about it, so they at least get some points for honesty.

The selling point is that Australian Dream is not as harsh as some liniments which are Capsacian-based. Capsacian is the main ingredient in chilli peppers. If I have this right, Capsacian works by triggering a histamine response -- the release of natural anti-inflammatories -- into the body. This is why your eyes water and your nose runs when you eat peppers. These histamines then go to work on expanding your capillaries and veins, increasing blood flow and getting some white blood cells into the inflamed area to help defeat infections and speed healing. Increased blood flow is a major component of pain relief (see: Aspirin).

Australian Dream doesn't use Capsacian because, a) it often smells, and b) it often results in discoloration of the skin in the affected area (redness and swelling). So, really what Australian Dream seems to be selling is that you can get the pain relief you need without the embarrassing smells and unattractive welts associated with most over-the-counter analgesic cremes, which is exactly what self-absorbed, horny Baby Boomers -- all hopped up on Viagra and Hormone Replacements -- really want! Those welts and smells are a definite turn-off, and there's already enough obstacles to sex-after-60.

Does Australian Dream work? Who the fuck knows? I couldn't find many complaints online, and I didn't find much in the way of really bad side effects (except for people who may have severe allergies -- all that histamine may be bad for you). But, at $29.95 for a 4-ounce jar, you could probably get the same effect with cheaper Vitamin B, store-brand ibuprofen or plain, old aspirin, if you can't stand the smell of Ben Gay. Unlike many of the drugs I rail about here, this one might actually work -- if you have money to burn.

3. Celedrin - I was very wary about posting this one. This is another patent medicine, sold over-the-counter. Celdarin says it's provides relief for those with arthritis and various sorts of joint pain, by providing a lot of fatty acids that "lubricate" your cell membranes and joints. The reason I was wary of it is because the website is full of claims that are contained within "quotation marks" and usually followed by many an asterisk. This is a warning sign that the infamous statement "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease" is sure to follow, and as sure as Muslims mutilate their daughter's private parts, it most certainly did.

What's in it? Well, there's a lot of talk on the website about "innovative, targeted and proprietary cetylated fatty acid esters and other active synergists" that was just a bit too thick for me to bother looking up just what the heck that all actually means, but it appears to imply that the active ingredient is simple fish oil. But, finding complaints about Celadrin wasn't quite as difficult as wading through euphemisms for "fish oil" was. You'll also be happy to know that Celadrin is the favored drug amongst veterinarians treating dogs with hip dysplasia and arthritis, too. Hey, if it's good enough for Fido...

As for the complaints (which were many!) most seem to revolve around unwanted hair growth, a long lead time before any effect is actually felt (usually measured in weeks), and that the actual relief you get doesn't seem to last very long (in some cases, just a few hours, regardless of dosage). In any case, Celedrin will set you back $21.99 for 150 softgels at your local Costco, and you'll need about three a day, but you don't need a prescription, so that makes it all hunky-fucking-dory, right?

4. i Renew Bracelet - The "Energy-Balancing Bracelet". This has been one of my favorites because it is indicative of the stupidity of Man that he continues to fall for the same scams over and over. I now know why Bugs Bunny was able to use the same gags over and over on Elmer Fudd, and he never saw it coming. This is New Age "Medicine" at it's very best! Every claim is followed by an asterisk and three-paragraphs of very small print, indeed, which is par for the course. Summing up the webpage, it seem that the stress of everyday life is fucking up our "natural energy fields", also known as "the Biofield". The Biofield is supposed to be an aura of unseen, natural "energy" that surrounds and permeates our beings, which is badly influenced by electromagnetic radiation of the sort transmitted by your computer, television, cell phone, wrist watch, and so forth -- not to mention the bullshit you get from the Wife, Kids, Boss and the Donut-eating-jerk-with-a-badge who ticketed you for doing 43-in-a-40 zone.

All this talk of Biofields smells of the ancient Chinese concept of "ki", one of the foundations of Martial Arts training and acupuncture, and both of those are complete bullshit.

The claims made by the iRenew folks are reminiscent of those made in the days when people eagerly bought love potions, the bones of saints, pieces of True Cross, and other nonsense without question and when complete quacks were applying leaches, acids, poisons and sharp blades randomly in the belief that "balancing the humors" by bleeding people could cure warts, leprosy, toothache, acne. and fucking plague. The same dolts who fell for that drivel back in the day, would line up to buy iRenew bracelets.

iRenew promises to restore "balance" to your "Biofield" which will improve your mental condition, physical performance, restore your natural immunity to stress, and give you an enhanced sense of well-being with it's "Energy Balance System" and "Biofield Technology". You'll be happy to know that a "Biofield" is, and I quote, "a New term adopted by the National Institutes of Health" (yeah, nothing like basing a therapeutic product on a term invented last week, and which is really a recycled centuries-old Oriental scam) and describes a growing body of research that purportedly identifies a subtle human energy field that permeates and extends beyond the physical body". You'll also be interested to know that when I tried to copy/paste that gibberish so that I wouldn't have to type it, I got a computer message that stated this piece of text is protected by strict copyright laws! Ooops.

So, what is an iRenew Bracelet? The website calls it "proprietary quantum-based technology" that further states "the Process is beyond magnetic technology and ionic jewelry", but nothing describes what the bracelet is made of, or why it should do what it claims to do -- except in the most confusing, esoteric and ephemeral terms that probably won't make sense to anyone who doesn't smoke hash, studied yoga for 400 years, or doesn't "belong" to the world of Far-eastern religions. So, I had to do some digging to figure out what all that meant -- in plain English. And I still haven't found anything that tells me what the fuck this thing really is (probably just a bracelet made of recycled stainless steel wrapped around a cheap, copper core).

There's an awful lot of impressive-sounding terms being tossed about here: Biofields, Energy-balancing, Quantum-based technology, magnetic and ionic. Quite frankly, it's a pretty basic scam which which attempts to sell you a Good Luck charm, or Amulet that Wards off the Evil Spirits, and attempts to make you feel better about being duped by implying that the whole thing is based upon sound, scientific principles. iRenew appears to be nothing more than a $19.99 placebo. If you think it'll help you, it probably will, but it certainly won't hurt you.

But someone is probably going to jail in the very near future. Here's the commercial with really bad actors in it.

More Bad Medicine...

Anyone who's followed this blog for a while knows I like to point out the ridiculous pharmaceutical ads that run on television these days. Mostly, it's because I object to the utter bullshit that they try to sell; that the solution to every problem is to be found in a new pill. But there are other reasons as well.

The main reason is that modern pharmacology seems to deliver medications which are heavy on side-effects, and often low on results. They very often warn of side-effects which might be worse than the malady the drug was designed to treat. Many patients who take these drugs then complain to their doctors about the side-effects, and the doctor will then write 'em a new prescription for yet another drug that deals with those side-effects. Some patients, either because their physicians don't give a damn -- or because they're crazy -- will end up taking multiple medications for what are usually minor maladies that could have been treated without medicines, or with older and more-effective, not to mention cheaper, alternative treatments.

There's also the tendency for these medications and commercials to be targeted to a specific demographic, which nowadays is the Baby Boomer. All of these meds promise the Boomers two things: first, they promise to be a convenient and painless solution to a problem that used to just be chalked up to "Getting Older". Second, is the false hope that these drugs are some sort of Fountain of Youth. The commercials typically depict older men and women in absolutely superb physical condition, engaging in very active lifestyles. The message is that, unlike previous generations, when the Baby Boomers retire they will do so in a Brave New World where they will be forever young, free of physical ill or complaint, and possessed of the ability and energy to screw all day long (because to the Hippie Generation, Eternal Youth can only be expressed or experienced in terms of sexual desire and potency).

These people (Baby Boomers) will be retiring soon, and in future, they'll want Medicare (or whatever destruction of the healthcare system Nancy Pelosi manages to pass) to pay for these drugs for as long as they can take them. They'll have the numbers in terms of votes to see them kept in Wonder Drugs forever, if we let them.

I usually write about these drugs one at a time, as I see them advertised, because I find the whole notion ridiculous. But this last week, I began an experiment in which I counted the number of TV ads I saw in one afternoon, and then I wrote some commentary on what they were trying to sell. You can read that here. People got so many laughs out of that one, that I'm doing it again. So, here's another list. Please note that not only are prescription drugs on this list, but so are some other "patent medicines" and even a food item being sold as medicine that are being heavily advertised!

1. Activia - this is a yogurt which includes several "active cultures", which from what I gather is Scientific Crapspeak for "additional molds, bacteria and fungi". It's purpose is to "regulate" your digestive system, which makes a certain amount of perverted sense -- after the fascination with your genitalia (See Cialis, Viagra) wears off, you should give your bowels the lovin' they deserve. Baby Boomers are now deathly afraid of their stoppered innards -- which is apropos, since most are full of shit, and at some point they might explode. The spokeswoman for Activia is Jamie Lee Curtis -- certainly the first person I think of every time I muse upon the problem of "irregularity". Why Jamie Lee finds it necessary to talk to us about our bowel movements from her couch (or maybe that's her doctor's office?) is beyond me. Maybe she should get a better interior decorator, because just seeing that room made me constipated. Activia costs about $1.25 a pot here in my neighborhood, which had me wondering if the anticipation of a really a good dump two weeks from now was worth $17 -- since you have to eat one a day for two weeks to get the desired results) . Here's the commercial for it, with some creative sound dubbing (but it wasn't me, I promise).


2. Advair - intended to treat people with COPD or asthma. On average, it costs: $186.00. Now, what makes Advair perhaps one of the more perplexing drugs on my list is this; it's supposed to help people with compromised respiratory systems breathe easier, but two of the major side-effects are -- Upper respiratory infections and unspecified "breathing problems"! Other major side effects include: menstrual irregularities, diarrhea, frequent nosebleeds, irregular or rapid heartbeats, osteoporosis, depression, cataracts and glaucoma. It seems that if you take Advair, you might suddenly become a candidate for anti-depressants or any medicine that Sally Field sells. Note the super-surgically-enhanced Baby Boomer Babe (definite cheek job, lip job, boob job and perhaps multiple face-lifts), and notice the part where they say that Advair contains anti-inflammatories, and then goes on to say "It's is not known how anti-inflammatories work in COPD" - a condition this med is being specifically advertised as treating!

3. Avodart - A treatment for enlarged prostate glands, which may be an early indication of prostate cancers...or just old fuckin' age. It costs about $150.00 for a 90-day supply. Avodart is one of those meds that are supposed to relieve the symptoms of enlarged prostate (frequent pissing, start-and-stop urinary flow)... but it does oh-so-much more. Why, take enough Avodart and you'll trade the comparatively-minor annoyance of not being able to piss properly for the following; impotence (Good thing there's Viagra, huh?), abnormal ejaculation (what was that about Viagra, again?), breast enlargement (which would probably be great on the Missus, but who the hell wants Moobs?), unexplained skin rashes (and you won't believe where!), birth defects, wheezing and difficulty breathing and swallowing. Yeah, I already can't pee straight, gimme a drug that'll make me unable to breathe properly, too. That'll work. You also shouldn't give blood for six months after taking it because it's probably deadlier than AIDS for a while, and you may find your liver shrinking and trying to escape your body of it's own accord. Note the ruggedly-handsome 50-60 something who is the focal point of the commercial and is intended to represent the Idealized Baby Boomer.

4. Colon Flow - this is not a medicine, but rather a collection of minerals, herbs and perhaps whatever cleaning products were in the cabinets below the kitchen sink. Colon Flow claims to be a "colon cleanser" -- which gives me visions of the old TV Scrubbing Bubbles running rampant in your intestines. It also claims to "clean your blood" and "unstress your colon", whatever the hell that means. The premise behind Colon Flow is that every time you fail to pinch a loaf, you're retaining 4.5 pounds of dead weight and toxic waste. If you fail to achieve a decent BM on consecutive days, that becomes 9 pounds of deadly poison for every day you don't drop a spike, and so on. I assume you can treble these numbers if you're a democrat. In any case, from what I've read about it online, Colon Flow is really a super-duper laxative being advertised as a "Colon Cleanser", and it seems aimed specifically at people who wish to lose weight rapidly...so long as they don't mind abdominal distention, muscle cramps, lots of gas, bloating, dehydration, irritated bowels, bloody stool, and light-to-moderate anal leakage. That's way too much fun for only $30.95 a bottle, I swear!!! Unfortunately, I could not find a TV commercial for Colon Flow on YouTube.

5. Lipitor - Now, this one I actually have some experience with. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good one, and my doctor very quickly switched me to Zocor. Lipitor is prescribed in order to lower out-of-control cholesterol levels, and it works by preventing your body from processing certain fats and proteins that the liver turns into cholesterol. Sometimes, as in my case, it works too well, and then everything you eat goes right through you like a bloody Ferrari -- no sooner do you eat it then it's on it's way out. Not even enough time to taste it. Lipitor costs $120.00 for a 90-day supply. The side-effects include: unspecified infections of unspecified sorts, Third-world-style diarrhea, influenza, yellow skin and eyes -- which indicate moderate to severe liver dysfunction -- muscular degeneration, hepatitis, urinary problems, impotence and intestinal ulcers. Compared to some of these side-effects, you're probably better off having that heart attack or stroke. The spokesman is the inventor of the artificial heart, which I guess is supposed to lend some sort of gravitas, but as of this date, approximately 800 people have survived an artificial heat transplant operation, and the combined number of years of extended life? 180. Do the math, and tell me if that return on investment warrants a super-expensive operation not covered by most insurance carriers -- and certainly not by Medicare or any future ObamaCare. By the way, of the (few) hospitals in the United States who perform Artificial Heart Transplants, not a single one will post information on how much the procedure costs.

6. Lunesta - Another sleeping pill. You can get up to 7 hours of sleep out of a single dose, you know, and this saves you the trouble of having to watch Letterman, I guess. Like it's counterpart Ambien, those who take Lunesta are known to take frequent Midnight Voyages --- which include driving, operating heavy machinery, splitting atoms or perhaps engaging in ungodly and unnatural activities with farm animals, while asleep. While this might qualify you for a Czar-level appointment int he Obama Administration, it's not a good thing for the rest of us. Possible side effects: aggressiveness, distorted sense of taste, confusion, hallucinations (hopefully you don't have these while you're driving in your sleep in the middle of the night!), tongue and throat swelling. Tongue and Throat swelling -- you've just taken a sleeping pill and you can choke to death on your own tongue, or suffocate because your throat closes?. Oh, and while Lunesta claims to be non-narcotic -- they also warn that you just might get hooked on it. Lunesta costs about $273.00 for 50 pills. Here's an older commercial with a real hot babe in it.

7. Propecia - originally developed to fight heart disease, one of it's major side-effects was that it grew hair. Scads of it. I'm not certain if all that hair-growing was on top of the head, but it wasn't long after this discovery that Propecia was being prescribed to treat Advanced Male Pattern Baldness -- or as we people with lovely, naturally-full heads of thick and wavy hair like to call it Chrome Dome Syndrome. By the way, Propecia is for use by men only. Why? Because it's so toxic that the manufacturer advises that pregnant women avoid handling broken tablets. In fact -- from what I've read -- it's more like they recommend that pregnant women not even be in the SAME STATE as Propecia, because there's a chance the drug may cause a specific genital deformity in male offspring. I guess Daddy's hair is more important than Junior's gonads. When you start talking genital deformities we're definitely not cool. Other side effects you can look forward to: inability to get an erection (but hey, there's Viagra for that, right?), loss of interest in sex (assuming you can manage an erection) -- and assuming you can overcome these two hurdles and actually manage the deed -- you might be shooting blanks. We won't even mention what it'll do to your prostate (why is it that once you reach a certain age, everything eventually affects your prostate?) By the way, the best you can hope for is that your bald spots get smaller -- not filled in with thick, lush and luxuriant hair. Propecia costs about $160.00 for a 90-day supply, but hey, assuming you can camouflage those embarrassing bald spots without going sterile or inflicting horrible birth defects upon your male progeny, it's all worth it for the hot babes you'll be picking up with only slightly more hair, right?

Unfortunately, there was no recent commercial for Propecia available on YouTube.

8. Vagifem - Now, I have to admit -- I wasn't actually looking for this one and even talking about it makes me uncomfortable -- but it sort of found me. Honestly, I wasn't reading that women's magazine over that lady's shoulder on the bus! But it was there, and the man in me couldn't help but zero in on the words; Vaginal Dryness -- or as I like to refer to it now, Atrophic Vaginitis (it's amazing what you learn when you read!). Vagifem is a hormone-replacement drug that feeds estrogen into the systems of post-menopausal women, because, let's face it: it really sucks when the men have all this medicine to pump up their junk, and you can't join in the fun because your equipment is drier than a week-old piece of unbuttered toast in the Sahara. No wonder men chase the younger girls! This stuff costs: $115.00. The side effects, though, are whoppers, and include: possible uterine cancer, frequent yeast infections, bloody urine and bronchitis, all of which is certain to make you exceedingly attractive to men everywhere with your newly-irrigated snatch! There is no television ad to post, but here's the website.


Now, I'm not down on modern pharmacology; I've certainly benefited from it, and so do millions of others. But when you stop to consider what many of these drugs do, you have to start to wonder why anyone takes them and bears the expense -- particularly when most of these maladies are all about often-marginal improvements to the quality of life, rather than to the treatment of disease, and can do far more damage than the original malady.

One Pill Makes You Larger, and One Pill Makes you Small...

Literally, considering how many commercials there are devoted to the erection! Not to mention how many of us must be seriously depressed by life.

Yesterday, I decided to perform a little experiment and see just how many drug commercials I might be able to see in a reasonable time frame. So. I set my television to a station where I figured there'd be plenty of commercials, and then set aside three hours of my life to count how many drug commercials there were.

Total number of drug commercials? 12. Total number of drugs advertised? 9. The three extra viewings were for a brand-spanking-new anti-depressant, which I just HAD to do some research on, being something of an expert on the subject (more on this below).

I then took the opportunity to find out how much all of these drugs cost. What follows is a list of the drugs, what they're supposed to do, and how much they cost, with a little commentary from Your's Truly. Where possible, I have included a YouTube link to the commercial. If you have the time, please, please, please view the commercials and actually LISTEN to the warnings they give about the side effects of these drugs, and then, ask yourself a question; who in their right mind takes this shit, and if it were you, would you risk it?

You might be surprised that you're going to hear things you may have missed the 900 other times you saw these commercials.

For a few of these things, the commercial wasn't available on YouTube...except as part of a Consumer Reports expose series. I've linked 'em!

Here's the list, alphabetically:

1. Abilify - This is the new anti-depressant, so I had to do some research on this. In the "Community" (as we call it, "Community" refers to us Lunatics who keep in touch), Abilify has already become known as "Suicidium". Which is a pretty bad rep for a anti-depressant to have. The other bad thing about Abilify; it's usually given to people who are ALREADY taking other anti-depressants. I can tell you from personal experience, if you're taking multiple AD's, you're simply asking for trouble. Average price: $186.00 for 30-day supply. Please take note of the dire warnings about the SEVERE side effects.

2. Ambien - This is a sleep aid. The average cost is $260.00 for 50 pills. I don't know about you, but if I need to sleep that badly, I usually drink. Or watch MSNBC. One of the prime complaints about Ambien is that it's not uncommon for people who take it to suddenly get behind the wheel and start driving, completely unaware that they're doing so because...well, they're asleep! It's believed that Tiger Woods was taking Ambien the night he turned his driveway into the Biggest Soap Opera of 2009. I could not find a video worth posting on this one... Sorry.

3. Boniva - a treatment for Osteoporosis, flogged relentlessly by Sally Field. The advantage to Boniva, so we're told, is that you only need to take it once a month, a relief to busy Baby Boomer Broads for whom a daily pill and a glass of water might consume upwards of, oh... 18 seconds...of their busy, busy schedule. Average cost for Boniva was $348.50 for three treatments. By the way, you won't believe what sort of shit you have to go through in order to take it. Just watch.

4. Cialis - what man wouldn't like the confidence of knowing he can pop a boner on a schedule? Why, if you take Cialis you can rest assured that you can sport wood anytime within a 36-hour period. Just hope your intended doesn't have a 36-hour period of her own, or you're shit out of luck.

Please take note of the part where they say Cialis may affect your vision. I thought you only went blind if...oh, never mind. The average cost of Cialis was $161.00. Oh, and just because you can hold a woody for a real long time or produce one on command, it doesn't mean you won't have a problem with...ummm...early discharge. Which seems like an awful gyp.

5. Chantix - smoking cessation aid. This was another one for which the commercial wasn't available (not with good quality, anyway), but there's a Consumer's Report video of this one, too.
The average price for the Starter Kit was $131.00, and the Continuation kit (apparently, once you start Chantrix you have to continue to take it for several months) costs about the same. For that kind of money, you could hire someone to smoke for you.

6. Cymbalta - treats depression. But then again, I can tell you from personal experience that no drugs actually TREATS depression; they all just cover up the symptoms. Be that as it may, the worst aspect of Cymbalta is that you can't take a fucking aspirin with it because you might bleed to death. Average cost for this Absolute Godsend was $402.00 for a 90-day supply. Here's the commercial. I might want to bleed to death if I ever spent $402.00 on something and it didn't have a Hemi in it, or it didn't blow me with just a minimum of gentle persuasion.

7. Seroquel XR - another anti-depressant. Please note: it's also given to schizophrenics. I swear, we're all head cases in this country, aren't we? There was no commercial available for Seroquel, so I linked to the webpage. Seroquel costs about $100 for a month's supply (low dosage), but pay attention to the list of some of the most incredible side-effects: especially the part where it says that if you have some form of dementia and take this drug, you might just die. The involuntary facial tics, salivation, diabetes, possible sudden seizures and neurological disorders, and the possible liver damage, are just the bonus prizes you get for taking Seroquel.

8. Valtrex - for the treatment of genital herpes. Let's get something straight: despite all the young-ish, apparently straight actors in this commercial, I'm told by reliable sources that genital herpes is most often to be found amongst those over 55, and in Gay Men (Herpes was all the rage in the 1970's and 80's, you know. Then AIDS came along, and everyone forgot about it). This is another drug for Baby Boomers trying to disguise itself! Are you beginning to notice a pattern; how many commercials aimed at Baby Boomers have something to do with the crotch and screwing? I knew you would! The average cost of Valtrex was $151.00. And just like your herpes, you're probably stuck with Valtrex forever if you want to have any kind of sex life whatsoever.

9. Viagra - the Granddaddy of them all! The ultimate tribute to the Erect Phallus. Please take note of the very artistry of this commercial (as well as the list of side effects); well-preserved Woodstock-rejects, in a scene vaguely reminiscent of their "garage-band" days, sitting around, a-strummin' and a-singin' about Doin' the Nasty with Betty Sue, and then they sing the paean to the little blue bugger that makes it all possible! VEEEEE-VAAAAAAAH VIAGRA! You can't mistake just who this commercial is aimed at. Viagra has probably been responsible for more heart attacks in the last five years than red meat, a tanking NASDAQ, unexpected paternity test results and the erection...errr...ELECTION... of Barack Obama combined. Average cost of Viarga; $153.00.

Now, why did I do all this? What possible reason could I have for devoting this much time and effort to nonsense?

Because these are the drugs the Baby Boomers are taking, and they'll soon be retiring in huge numbers....and they'll want whatever version of ObamaCare that might pass to, eventually, pay for their prescriptions. You think it can't happen? If ObamaCare becomes the law of the land, within a decade there will be a voting bloc so monumentally huge that they will be denied nothing; 70 million Baby Boomers who'll want strong bones...and even stronger boners. And they'll have absolutely nothing to do (besides fuck, apparently) except vote, and what they'll vote for is what previous monolithic voting blocs have always voted for: someone pay for my shit!

Just as Social Security became the "third-rail" of American politics, so will ObamaCare for a generation that will depend upon it as recent economic loses will have destroyed much of their retirement assets.

This is what they'll expect to have others pay for. Magic pills that cure everything, expensively, but often cause far more problems then they solve...only more expensively. Which leads to a much more expensive Medical System.

You have been warned.

Update: The response to this post has been so positive, I'm thinking of making it a regular feature. So, every so often, I'll be posting more obnoxious crap about the silly prescription drug commercials we're deluged with ona daily basis.

Hospitals and Insurance...

One of the blogs I frequent is Stilettos in the Sand, where the author, Sabra, sometimes cross-links my blog posts (like I have anything important to say?). You should take awalk over there sometimes, and see just what she's up to over there in Muslim Sand Flea Heaven. Anyways, there was a discussion begun on one of her threads that was prompted by a post of mine. You can read it here.

One of Sabra's respondents, posted the following:

"I live in a nation with univeral health care but guess what if you need an operation you have to wait, if you need some medical exams you have to wait but if you have an insurance and pay for your exams, operation and so on you don't have to wait...I had to have a small operation but if I had to have it through the national health care I should have to wait 2 or 3 months but i have a private insurance and I had to wait one week...Some time ago an american told me that part of the 30 millions without insurance are people that even if they have the $ to pay for it they opt to go without an insurance because they are healty/young and prefer to spend the money in other stuff. Please tell me if I wrong but if someone without insurance is sick isn't left outside the hospitals..."

This is a common misconception about the American healthcare system overseas. I have heard similar stuff from my English friends, and also from Italians and Spaniards on my travels.

I'll be happy to tell you that, No, if you're ill or injured, you cannot be turned away from a hospital regardless of ability to pay. In the United States of America, everyone is entitled to treatment in the Emergency Room. Free of Charge, unless they have insurance to defray or cover the costs.

And therein lies some of the problem, because Emergency Room treatment is the most expensive kind available, and what's supposed to be a last resort for the general public has become the means of first resort for far too many.

Many of these who use the Emergency Room as the first line of defense simply can't afford insurance. They don't earn enough, or rather, often can't earn enough. They belong to the economic lower class, mostly because they are unskilled, uneducated or have never worked before in their lives. The American social welfare system is quite generous; According to various sources, the official Federal Poverty level in the United States is something like $26,000 a year for a family of four, and that's before you include housing subsidies, tax credits -- only in America can people who don't pay taxes, get tax credits -- food assistance, and eligibility for Medicare on both the state and federal levels, which many never bother to sign up for, because that means effort. When you add in the fact that American Public schools are taxpayer funded, and that many colleges and organizations provide competitive scholarships, you begin to wonder just how anyone in America can ever be considered "poor".

It's just more like "lazy".

Ask someone in Calcutta, Sudan or Cambodia if $26k a year, plus a subsidized apartment, food, public schools and healthcare sounds like a good deal? Why do you think the world beats a path to our door, and not, say, Belize or Zimbabwe?

Anywhoo, the number of these people on the lower end of the economic spectrum is growing, mostly because of unchecked out-of-wedlock births in many minority communities, and because of illegal immigration. In fact, many illegal immigrants travel to the United States specifically to give birth, because we confer birthright citizenship upon their children if they're born in a U.S. Hospital, which make the entire family eligible for all sorts of welfare.

So, the Emergency Rooms are being flooded by by people who haven't the means to pay for their treatment, which means the taxpayer and those who do have private insurance subsidize the Emergency Room system for everyone else. And their numbers are growing; It is estimated that 12-15 million illegal immigrants are in the United States right now, and they're all using Emergency Rooms and Community Clinics, and not paying a red cent for it. That's about half the number of "uninsured" that ObamaCare assumes.

The second problem we face is that there are about to be 70 million more useless mouths added to the welfare rolls in the next decade; The Baby Boomers are about to retire. And never in the history of the world has there been a generation of people so obsessed with their health. They will expect to have every ache and pain catered to -- and paid for by someone else -- because, well, they'll be retired, you see.

And with the recent destruction of wealth caused by the shenanigans in world markets, and the loss of value in solid assets like real estate over the last few years, they'll be begging for more largess than even their parents received -- the typical "Greatest Generation" (i.e. born before/during the Great Depression) retiree lives(d) to an average age of 83, and 90-yr olds are not uncommon, meaning they are a net drain on the resources of Medicare and Social Security, which were both designed with the assumption that not many of them would live past 70. Now a great many of them (Baby Boomers) will have no or greatly-reduced assets to carry them comfortably through retirement.

The Medicare/Social Security system is already on the order of (depending on who's figures you believe) $40-170 trillion in the red, and we're about to run another 70 million souls onto the rolls, who medical science is now keeping alive even longer. Do the math. That's 100 million (the current 30, plus the Baby Boomer 70) people in a country of 300 million who will require "free" healthcare on a shrinking employment and tax base.

And not only are these folks obsessed with their health (after all, they've brought us jogging, aerobics, the healing power of minerals, yoga and Pilate's, the Nautilus machine, the macrobiotic and organic diets and so forth), they expect to be catered to -- because in addition to being the most health-conscious generation, they happen to be the most spoiled generation in history.

These two traits have combined to produce the modern pharmaceutical industry, which now caters to individual maladies (which used to be just associated with "old age" and borne gallantly and silently by those afflicted) with Silver Bullet pills. There are now designer drugs for Erectile Dysfunction, Depression, Osteoporosis, Liver Disorders, Lung Disorders, Incontinence, Swollen Prostates, Un-swollen Prostates, the list goes on and on. That's when they aren't developed to treat "made up" diseases (mostly caused by an increase in 'vanity' diseases, like Chronic Dry Eye , or sedentary lifestyles, like Restless Leg Syndrome). Each is incredibly expensive -- mostly because they are heavily marketed on American television. It is NOT unusual to see the same medication being advertised six to ten times a day.

If that isn't bad enough, most of these medications have side-effects which require other medications to counteract. This gets extremely expensive. The typical story is of someone who takes a medicine for an otherwise controllable-by-a-change-in-lifestyle problem, but then develops a variety of "syndromes" brought on by the side effects of these designer meds, and before you know it, your simple toenail fungus problem soon requires you to take four medications and spend $300 a month on them all.

A great number of these medications are NOT covered by medical insurance, mostly because the insurance companies consider them to be of dubious value, or because the side-effects are often worse than the disease they were meant to treat.

Then there are the predatory lawyers -- like former Presidential Candidate John Edwards -- who make a living suing doctors and hospitals. More like extorting settlements from them through the use of the legal system -- which causes doctors to practice defensive medicine; the ordering of unnecessary tests, the performing of unnecessary procedures -- just to keep the shysters of their backs. These lawyers treat the medical malpractice system like their own personal trough. If I'm not mistaken, John Edwards managed to milk it for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million by filing questionable "Cerebral Palsy and Birth Defect" suits, in which doctors are somehow to blame if your child is born with a genetic disorder, and must somehow be made to pay.

Now, the lawyers will argue they do noble work keeping bad doctors out of the system -- and many do -- but far too many run scams that they know they can earn good cash from, and not get called on it. Ever. The ABA and their democratic party protectors defend them. It's why Tort Reform hasn't even been discussed in ObamaCare. I'm of Sicilian lineage; if I did something similar to this the Federal Authorities would be at my doorstep with a RICO warrant and asking me if I knew anything about the Kennedy Assassination.

To sum up:

1. No one is denied medical care in the United States, regardless of ability to pay.
2. We're flooded by lazy, stupid people and illegal aliens who can't afford to pay for their care, and who use the Emergency Room for everything from the sniffles to childbirth-for-the-purposes-of -stealing-welfare-benefits.
3. 70-million useless mouths who feel they should be able to live forever at someone else's expense with the ability to sport pharmaceutally-enhanced erections will soon join the system without paying anything further into it, and they will live for far longer than even their free-loading parents did.
4. The legal profession is out of control in this country, and no longer exists to protect people's rights, but to enrich lawyers at the expense of the rest of us, and has done a great deal towards creating many of the problems we now face.

We won't even get into the stupidity of unionizing hospitals (anything run by unions usually produces terrible results, see: General Motors, the Public School System Homeland Security, FEMA, et. al.) , and don't get me started on government mandates upon States and employers with respect to healthcare. Take all of this into consideration and it's no wonder we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world.

What's amazing is that we still manage to have THE BEST Healthcare system in the world. America is that sort of country; it always has been. If the government would get out of the way, we'd not only have the best system, but the least expensive and the most responsive.

ObamaCare, in whatever form it takes, will achieve none of this. It will simply extend an unpaid-for entitlement to people who will never have to bear any responsibility for paying for it. In two US States where "Universal" healthcare was tried (Massachusetts and Tennessee), it has failed abominably, producing lower standards of general health, rationing, rising taxes and public debt.

UPDATE: I was in a hurry this afternoon when I originally wrote this; it has been edited for spelling/grammar, and some of my basic points expanded upon.