674 I'm Going to Give You Something

674 I'm Going to Give You Something

You're at the doc's. You have a headache. He (or she) says "I'm going to give you something for that." Give you? No. He (or she) writes a prescription for Migraineall™. That prescription, you'd better believe, is not on the Wal-Mart $4 list. Nor is there a generic for it. Nor does your mail order pharmacy have it on the cheap list. It's a level 15 drug. (The levels, so far, only go to three. But by the time Migraineall™ gets FDA approval, there WILL be levels up to 15, and that'll cost you more than a boat.)

You call the doc. Hours later, you get a call back: "Doc, this stuff costs more than a boat. Can't I just take aspirin?"
"Oh, no. YOUR headache is a cranial frontal achius severeus, which does not respond to any of the over the counter remedies. Take what I gave you."

Gave?

"Doc, do you have any samples?" "No, the drug companies don't do much of that these days. Sorry."

You consider other remedies. Like sticking your head in the freezer or hunting up some serious anesthetic or maybe just blowing the rest of your brains out and sending them to the makers of Migraineall™ with a note saying "when your patent expires, here's a good generic alternative."

You get "that look" from the pharmacy clerk. It's a combination of "you poor sap" and "oh good, I'm going to make today's sales quota."

So you buy the boat. And you take the Migraineall™ and your achius severeus, subsides, at least enough for you to find your magnifying glass and read the little instruction sheet that comes with the pills. And what do you find? Warnings against blood clots, diarrhea, nausea, stroke, restless leg syndrome, depression, sleepiness, inability to sleep, the Plague, stomach bleeding, bed hair, Sudden Baldness Syndrome and Parkinson's. A feast of new afflictions, but your headache is gone. Well, almost gone, and you spent enough to buy that boat.

The words to watch for, a mere eight of them, "I'm going to give you something for that."

Shrapnel:

--David Letterman won the case against the guy trying to squeeze him for megabucks over sex capades. Now, we want to see Dave's little black book. And the one that belongs to ex-rep Massa.

--United Air has been named the best on-time performer. Great going, but you can expect that to change. As soon as we get on the plane for Taiwan.

--The guy from Lifelock who published his social security number on the side of a truck and drove it around Arizona had his identity stolen. Which proves hackers are smarter than anti-hackers. Lifelock also has been fined 12 million bucks for misleading advertising and broken promises which raises the question "what other advertisers on right wing radio talk shows are in the same boat, but not yet discovered?"

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010